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Austrian success would make the Adriatic a mere clausum to the allied fleets and cripple Italy in one of her chief arms of defense and offense. The British campaign in Mesopotamia during the first year of the war had been generally successful. After the capture of Basra in November, 1914, the Delta country was cleared of the enemy and the safety of the oil fields assured.
Then at last I thought surely I knew what his objective MUST be. It had been common talk in Flanders how an expedition marched from Basra up the Tigris. "Bagdad!" I said. "We march to Bagdad to join the British there! Bagdad is good!" But he answered, "Bagdad is not yet taken not yet nearly taken. Between us and Bagdad lies a Turkish army of fifty or sixty thousand men at least." I sat silent.
This would have saved endless transport difficulties, if a light railway had been constructed. But no doubt the military situation rendered the carrying out of such an idea impracticable. Heat-stroke in Amara was common enough, but it did not seem so fatal as at Basra. This, perhaps, was due to the air, which was drier and fresher. The supply of ice was also more adequate.
Almost immediately preparations for the route were worked out, twenty-five airdromes and landing-fields were designated, of which the main ones would be at Cairo and Basra on the Tigris, with subsidiary fields at Marseilles, Pisa, or Rome, Taranto, Sollum, Bushire, Damascus, Bagdad, Bander Abbas, Karachi, Hyderabad, and Jodhpur.
Riches not productive of Happiness: The Story of Ortogrul of Basra. IDLER, No. 99.
A large convoy that is the steamer and its two lateral barges might carry three or four hundred cases in emergencies. The time they took to travel from the front down to Basra, which is a distance of about two hundred miles, depended very much on the luck they experienced in getting through the Narrows. The passage of this bit of the river will be described in a later page.
The woollen cloaks, of abbas, made at El Hassa are in great demand all over Arabia and Mesopotamia: they cost from ten to fifty dollars each. Here also, as well as in Nedjed, are some of the Beni Hosseyn, a tribe belonging to the Persian sect of Moslims. Between El Hassa and. Basra, water abounds.
This, in triplicate, is an ordinary procedure anywhere. But in Basra it was necessary, for some reason, to make out over twenty copies, and this is a long business on a typewriter that will only do a small number at a time, and is wanted for other things. It also caused a great delay before indents could materialise. You wished, say, to order a truss for a patient.
Being asked why he had deserted his own king, to whom he was so near in blood; he gave information of the revolutions which had happened at Basra, which had forced him to fly to Siraff; where, hearing of the glory of the emperor of China, and the abundance of every thing in his empire, he had been impelled by curiosity to visit it; but that he intended soon to return to the kingdom of his cousin, where he should make a faithful report of the magnificence of China, the vast extent of its provinces, and of the kind usage he had met with.
On the starboard side a barge of fodder, and various bales and cases, surmounted by a crowd of coolies. The smell from either side was like a Zoo. We set off in high spirits, for we had heard that Amara, whither we were bound, was a Paradise compared to Basra. The heat was excessive.
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