old
comrade of his in the Italian War. Many of the officers we got knew him,
for he had been chief of police in Constantinople. Apparently none of them
bore him the slightest ill-will when they found him serving against them.

Among the supplies we captured at Daur were a lot of our own rifles and
ammunition that the Arabs had stolen and sold to the Turks. It was
impossible to entirely stop this, guard our dumps as best we could. On
dark nights they would creep right into camp, and it was never safe to
have the hospital barges tie up to the banks for the night on their way
down the river. On many occasions the Arabs crawled aboard and finished
off the wounded. There was only one thing to be said for the Arab, and
that was that he played no favorite, but attacked, as a rule, whichever
side came handier. We were told, and I believe it to be true, that during
the fighting at Sunnaiyat the Turks sent over to know if we would agree
to a three days' truce, during which time we should join forces against
the Arabs, who were watching on the flank to pick off stragglers or ration
convoys.

That night we bivouacked at Daur, and were unmolested except for the enemy
aircraft that came over and "laid eggs." Next morning we advanced on
Tekrit. Our orders were to make a feint, and if we found that the Turk
meant to stay and fight it out seriously, we were to fall back. Some
gazelles got into the no man's land between us and the Turk, and in the
midst of the firing ran gracefully up the line, stopping every now and
then to stare about in amazement. Later on in the Argonne forest in France
we had the same thing happen with some wild boars. The enemy seemed in no
way inclined to evacuate Tekrit, so in accordance with instructions we
returned to our previous night's encampment at Daur. On the way back we
passed an old "arabana," a Turkish coupe, standing abandoned in the
desert, with a couple of dead horses by it. It may have been used by some
Turkish general in the retreat of two days before. It was the sort of
coupe one associates entirely with well-kept parks and crowded city
streets, and the incongruity of its lonely isolation amid the sand-dunes
caused an amused ripple of comment.

Our instructions were to march back to Samarra early next morning, but
shortly before midnight orders came through from General Maude for us to
advance again upon Tekrit and take it. Next day we halted and took stock
in view of the new orders. The cavalr