I felt so sorry for the elderly Senior Officers

TCD MS 3416 page 25

TCD MS 3416 page 25

[May 1916]

He got us safely through, however, and his intentions were genuine in fact we met many a worse man than Essad Bey, the Arab Lieutenant, in our wanderings through the Ottoman Empire. We slept that night at Imam Ali.

Up early on the cold morning of the 25th we proceeded on our way, and reached a ridge after some few miles marching where we saw Mosul, <& the ruins of Nineveh> and the possibility of a few days rest and a good chance of getting rid of our donkeys.

Never did I imagine, in the piping times of peace, that I should ever figure in His Majesty’s uniform driving an obstinate moke over the arid and sunbaked deserts of IRAK, as the Turks call Mesopotamia, with my kit on one side, balanced by some greasy cooking pots on the other! But this I did and I was only one amongst many. I felt so sorry for the elderly Senior Officers who, instead of being in the bosom of their families, or sitting comfortably at their Clubs as one would wish them, were toiling along in the heat. Whack! Whack! go on you clumsy brute! Damn! my saucepan has fallen off! Rough times as they were, I saw their humerous side – those donkeys added miles onto our march, as