We were then heavily counter attacked

TCD MS 3416 page 38

TCD MS 3416 page 38

[June 1916]

a lot of experience on railways, having served his time on an English railway, said that the track was very badly laid, due to the fact no doubt that the Germans laid the line for the Turks with Turkish capital. We reached Aleppo (Halep) early next morning, having crossed the Chabur and Euphrates rivers. The senior officers were at once despatched to the Baron Hotel, but the Captains and Subalterns underwent the usual circus march to be shown off to the populace, who, by the way, seemed disinterested, and eventually arrived at a Turkish barrack on the hill to the west of the Town. In this barrack we “gained a footing” in a large room similar to a fox hounds kennel with its continuous raised platform all round the room a foot from the ground; we were then “heavily counter attacked” by several nations of the insect world in vastly superior numbers! & were obliged to withdraw and “consolidate our positions” in the passage.

An Armenian medical officer of senior rank then brought about an interview with the Turkish General <[?Shafgat] Pascha, defender of [?A]>: while we were waiting for the General he informed me that out of some 490 English and Indian prisoners taken at Ctesiphon the previous December, less than half had reached Aleppo, the rest he said “died from neglect