to their camp at Hinaidi, two
miles below. Baghdad streets were frozen every morning; a bucket of
water, put out overnight, would be almost solid next day. Nevertheless
there were enough flies to be an intolerable pest. When we passed the
variously spelt station of Mushaidiyeh, Keely noted the script
preferred by the railway, Mouchahadie, and observed, 'Evidently it was
connected in their mind with flies; no doubt with good reason.'

Baghdad in winter is given up to immense flocks of crows and starlings
and to the 'Baghdad canary.'[31] No wild flowers were out, except a
white _alisma_. We purchased 'goodly Babylonish garments,' the _abbas_
for which the town is famous. Mine were sent home in an oil-sheet. The
oil-sheet arrived, the postal-service satisfying themselves with
looting the _abbas_. After all, men who have the monotony of service at
the Base are entitled to indemnify themselves for the trouble to which
men up the line put them.

We got our last glimpse of Fritz on the 15th. He was over Baghdad, and
was said to have dropped a message, 'Good-bye, 7th Division.' The
countryside was stiff with troops moving up and down.

Our destination was matter of constant speculation. When orders to
leave Beled reached the 19th Brigade, there came a wire from Divisional
Head Quarters, 'Tell the padre to preach from Matthew twenty, verse
eighteen.' But the 28th Brigade knew nothing of this hint to Lee. Some
thought we were going to Ahwaz, and thence up to Persia; others held
this Persian theory with a modification, that we should arrive
up-country from Bushire. The favourite notion was that we were going to
do another Gallipoli landing, behind Alexandretta. Some one got hold of
a map, and announced that there were mountains there nine thousand feet
high.

On the 18th we embarked, and began our slow drift down the flooded,
racing stream. We passed the old landmarks, so known and so remembered.
On the 20th we passed Kut, and knew that for most of us it was our
farewell glimpse of the town that through so many dreadful months had
seemed a place of faery, and inaccessible.

Red Autumn on the banks,
Where, through fields that bear no grain,
A desolate Mother treads,
By the brimming river, torn with rain!
A chill wind moves in the faded ranks
Of the rushes, rumpling their russet heads.
And out of the mist, on the racing stream
As I drift, I know that there gathers fast,
Over the lands I