Part of the night I marched with my friends of the 53rd Sikhs, with
Newitt and with Heathcote. Every one anticipated a very hard fight. We
were up against a position which was reputed to be as strong as
Istabulat had been. Before dawn we found ourselves among
ghostly-looking bushes, and lay down for one shivering hour. We had
marched over seventeen miles, with the usual exhausting checks and
halts attendant on night-marching, and we were dead-beat to the wide.
Yet nothing could be finer than the way the men threw weariness away,
like a garment, with the first shells, and went into battle.

Sarcka, the excellent Yank who ran our Y.M.C.A., marched with us,
carrying a camel-load of cigarettes. He was usually called 'Carnegie'
by Dr. Haigh. That classical mind memorized Sarcka's name as meaning
'flesh'; then, since it moved with equal ease in Greek and Latin,
unconsciously transliterated. As we went forward, and a red sun rose
over Tigris, Sarcka remarked: 'The sensation I am about to go through
is one which I wouldn't miss for worlds.' Mester Dobson looked
surprised. I bided my time, knowing how unpleasant the first fifteen
minutes under shell-fire are for even the bravest.

Soon after 6 a.m. the enemy advanced pickets were driven in. We were
advancing in artillery formation over undulating and broken country,
sparsely set with jujube-bushes (zizyphus). A gazelle bounded away in
front of us. At 6.15, says my diary, the first shells came. Our planes
swept along, klaxons sounding, and the sky became torn with shrapnel.
Johnny felt for us who formed the doctor's retinue, felt with an H.E.
bracket, before and beyond us. The advance was extraordinarily rapid, a
race; consequently the doctor's party got the benefit of most of this
early shelling. Fortunately the enemy seemed to have got on to his old
dumps, for his stuff, which came over plentifully enough, was
detonating badly. A shell burst in Lyons's platoon, apparently under
Lyons; yet he walked out of the dust unhurt. The 56th Rifles went
first, advancing as if on parade; this day they rose high in the
Leicestershires' admiration. The 'Tigers' came next; then the 51st and
53rd Sikhs. The enemy was fairly caught by surprise. Fritz, the
previous day, had brought back the first hint that anything was doing;
and, despite that knowledge, it was not expected that march and fight
would come so swiftly and together. If the doctor stopped to bandage a
man, we had to run to keep to