, and
we had a small force that had come up from Samarra on the left bank, for
we had no means of ferrying troops across. Our casualties during the day
had amounted to about two thousand. The Seaforths had suffered heavily,
but no more so than some of the native regiments. In Mesopotamia there
were many changes in the standing of the Indian battalions. The
Maharattas, for instance, had never previously been regarded as anything
at all unusual, but they have now a very distinguished record to take
pride in. The general feeling was that the Gurkhas did not quite live up
to their reputation. But the Indian troops as a whole did so exceedingly
well that there is little purpose in making comparisons amongst them. At
this time, so I was informed, the Expeditionary Force, counting all
branches, totalled about a million, and a very large percentage of this
came from India. We drew our supplies from India and Australia, and it is
interesting to note that we preferred the Australian canned beef and
mutton (bully beef and bully mutton, as it was called) to the American.

At dusk the fighting died down, and we were told to hold on and go over at
daybreak. As I was making my way back to headquarters a general pounced
upon me and told me to get quickly into a car and go as rapidly as
possible to Daur to bring up a motor ration-convoy with fodder for the
cavalry horses and food for the riders. A Ford car happened to pass by,
and he stopped it and shoved me in, with some last hurried injunction. It
was quite fifteen miles back, and the country was so cut up by nullahs or
ravines that in most places it was inadvisable to leave the road, which
was, of course, jammed with a double stream of transport of every
description. When we were three or four miles from Daur a tire blew out.
The driver had used his last spare, so there was nothing to do but keep
going on the rim. The car was of the delivery-wagon type--"pill-boxes"
were what they were known as--and while we were stopped taking stock I
happened to catch sight of a good-sized bedding-roll behind. "Some one's
out of luck," said I to the driver; "whose roll is it?" "The corps
commander's, sir," was his reply. After exhausting my limited vocabulary,
I realized that it was far too late to stop another motor and send this
one back, so I just kept going. Across the bed of one more ravine, the
sand up to the hubs, and we were in the Daur camp. I managed to rank some
one out of a spare tire an