ip so long that only under very exceptional
circumstances was leave to England given. One spring it was announced
that officers wishing to get either married or divorced could apply for
leave with good hopes of success. Many applied, but a number returned
without having fulfilled either condition, so that the following year no
leaves were given upon those grounds. The army commander put all divorce
cases into the hands of an officer whose civil occupation had been the
law, and who arranged them without the necessity of granting home leave.

A week after our return to Samarra a rumor started that General Maude was
down with cholera. For some time past there had been sporadic cases,
though not enough to be counted an epidemic. The sepoys had suffered
chiefly, but not exclusively, for the British ranks also supplied a quota
of victims. An officer on the staff of the military governor of Baghdad
had recently died. We heard that the army commander had the virulent form,
and knew there could be no chance of his recovery. The announcement of his
death was a heavy blow to all, and many were the gloomy forebodings. The
whole army had implicit confidence in their leader, and deeply mourned his
loss. The usual rumors of foul play and poison went the rounds, but I
soon after heard Colonel Wilcox--in pre-war days an able and renowned
practitioner of Harley Street--say that it was an undoubted case of
cholera. The colonel had attended General Maude throughout the illness.
The general had never taken the cholera prophylactic, although Colonel
Wilcox had on many occasions urged him to do so, the last time being only
a few days before the disease developed.

[Illustration: Towing an armored car across a river]

[Illustration: Reconnaissance]

General Marshall, who had commanded General Maude's old division, the
Thirteenth, took over. The Seventeenth lost General Gillman, who thereupon
became chief of staff. This was a great loss to his division, for he was
the idol of the men, but the interest of the Expeditionary Force was
naturally and justly given precedence.

In due course my transfer to the Motor Machine-Gun Corps came through
approved, and I was assigned to the Fourteenth battery of light-armored
motor-cars, commanded by Captain Nigel Somerset, whose grandfather, Lord
Raglan, had died, nursed by Florence Nightingale, while in command of the
British forces in the Crimean War. Somerset himself was in the infantry at
the outbreak