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General Brooking had just made a most successful attack on the Euphrates front, capturing the town of Ramadie, with almost five thousand prisoners. It was believed to be the intention of the army commander to try to relieve the pressure against General Allenby's forces in Palestine by attacking the enemy on all three of their Mesopotamian fronts.
The largest aperture was that around the tube of the gun. Splinters of lead came in continuously, and sometimes chance directed a bullet to an opening. One of our drivers was shot straight through the head near Ramadie. The bottom of the car was of wood, and bullets would ricochet up through it, but to have had it made of steel would have added too much weight.
On 29 September he pushed forward his defences on the Euphrates by seizing Ramadie and encircling and compelling the surrender of the entire Turkish force. In October he occupied the positions abandoned by the Russians up to the Persian frontier, and early in November drove the Turks out of Tekrit towards Mosul.
Feluja on the Euphrates had already been occupied in March, and the Turks driven up the river to Ramadie; and on 23 April Maude completed his advance up the Tigris by the capture of Samara, where the section of the railway running north from Baghdad came to an end.
Here I stayed over, detailed to escort the army commander on a tour of inspection. The smaller towns along the Euphrates are far more attractive than those on the Tigris. The country seems more developed, and most inviting gardens surround the villages. Hit, which lies twenty miles up-stream of Ramadie, is an exception.
When I was at Samarra an amusing incident took place in connection with a number of officers' wives who were captured at Ramadie. The army commander didn't wish to ship them off to India and Burma with their husbands, so he sent them up to Samarra with instructions that they be returned across the lines to the Turks.
The color was chiefly contributed by the Jewesses who wore their hooded silk cloaks of lively hue green or pink or yellow. The only crowd that I saw to vie with it was one which watched the prisoners taken at Ramadie march through the town.
The first part of the route lay across the desert to Falujah, a prosperous agricultural town on the Euphrates. Rail-head lies just beyond at a place known as Tel El Dhubban the "Hill of the Flies." From there on supplies were brought forward by motor transport, or in Arab barges, called shakturs. We crossed the river on a bridge of boats and continued up along the bank to Ramadie.
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