supply of melons and (rarely) beans. _Djinns_ scoured the plain, and at
any hour of any day half a score of 'dust-devils' could be seen racing
or sweeping majestically along--each _djinn_ seemed to make his own
wind and choose his own pace--now towering to a height of several
hundred feet, with vast, swirling base, and now trailing a tenuous mist
across a nulla. Our few hens ran panting into the tents, ejected at one
door, only to enter at another. And yet, as I have said, only one man
died--with the battalion, that is--and ridiculously few went sick. But
by Colonel Knatchbull's death in Baghdad the battalion lost its
commander, and the division a very fine soldier. Wounded at Sheikh Saad
in January, 1916, he had returned in time for the three railhead
battles. He struggled on with sickness, refusing to contemplate a
second leave to India, and died at midsummer.

The worst of the heats I escaped. After a spell in Beit Na'ama, the
delightful estuary-side officers' hospital, a tangle of citron and
fig-groves, with vines making cool roofs, and with the Shat-el-Arab
flowing by, I was discharged. Feeling more wretched than ever, I
lingered on at Busra in the poisonous billets, filthy Arab houses,
named by their present occupants 'Flea Villa,' 'Bug Cottage,' 'Muddy
View' (this would be for winter; the world nowhere else holds such mud
as Busra mud). Busra is hateful beyond words; any place up the line is
preferable, except perhaps Twin Canals[21] and Beled. I was to be
returned to duty 'in due course'; but the Transport authorities were
never in a hurry. It was like being slowly baked in a brick oven. I had
spent ten days so, with no prospect of being given a boat up-stream,
when some one told General Fane, the O.C. 7th Division, that I had
been very sick and was waiting to get back to duty. He said,
'Nonsense,' and sent a wire direct to G.H.Q., insisting that I be given
a month's leave in India. I got it immediately. But for this action,
leave could not have come my way. No division ever had a kinder O.C.
than Fane. He knew every one, and was constantly doing thoughtful acts
such as this.

India, when it found time to give thought to Mesopotamia, chattered of
the tremendous Turco-German offensive which was to sweep down from
Mosul in the autumn. When I returned, at the end of August, all down
the line I found excitement. Only at Samarra itself was quiet and ease
of mind, where old comrades greeted me joyously and introduce