er he would drop me Plutarch's _Lives_. I asked him to drop it at corps
headquarters, and that a friend of mine there would see that I got it. The
next day in the heat of the fighting a plane came over low, signalling
that it was dropping a message. As the streamer fell close by, there was a
rush to pick it up and learn how the attack was progressing. Fortunately,
I was far away when the packet was opened and found to contain the book
that the pilot had promised to drop for me.

After we had been occupying the town for a few days, orders came through
to prepare to fall back on Samarra. The line of communication was so long
that it was impossible to maintain us, except at too great a cost to the
transportation facilities possessed by the Expeditionary Forces. Eight or
ten months later, when we had more rails in hand, a line was laid to
Tekrit, which had been abandoned by the Turks under the threat of our
advance to Kirkuk, in the Persian hills. It was difficult to explain to
the men, particularly to the Indians, the necessity for falling back. All
they could understand was that we had taken the town at no small cost, and
now we were about to give it up.

For several days I was busy helping to prepare rafts to take down the
timber and such other captured supplies as were worth removing. The river
was low, leaving a broad stretch of beach below the town, and to this we
brought down the poles. Several camels had died near the water, probably
from the results of our shelling, and the hot weather soon made them very
unpleasant companions. The first day was bad enough; the second was worse.
The natives were not in the least affected. They brought their washing and
worked among them--they came down and drew their drinking-water from the
river, either beside the camels or down-stream of them, with complete
indifference. It is true this water percolates drop by drop through large,
porous clay pots before it is drunk, but even so, it would have seemed
that they would have preferred its coming from up-stream of the derelict
"ships of the desert." On the third day, to their mild surprise, we
managed with infinite difficulty to tow the camels out through the shallow
water into the main stream.

We finally got our rafts built, over eighty in number, and arranged for
enough Arab pilots to take care of half of them. On the remainder we put
Indian sepoys. They made quite a fleet when we finally got them all
started down-stream. Two were