Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: April 30, 2025
In our previous discussion of the British campaign in Mesopotamia we left the British forces intrenched at Kurna, and also occupying Basra, the port of Bagdad. The object of the Mesopotamia Expedition was primarily to keep the enemy from the shores of the Gulf of Persia.
The tribes will keep quiet because an army at Kerachi might be meant for their benefit. Oh, yes, I'm quite sure they were entraining for Kerachi in readiness to move on Basra. Trucks ready for camels and camel drivers and food for camels and Eresby, who's just come from taking a special camel course. Not a doubt of it!
During the first half of November detachments of the Indian army sailed up the Shat-el-Arab, the joint estuary of the Tigris and the Euphrates, defeated the Turks at Sahil on the 17th, occupied Basra on the 22nd, and cut off Kurna, which surrendered on 9 December.
What was possible with wet sheets and small pieces of ice was done, but it was a wretched business, and those who were in Basra at that time and saw those spectacles will never forget them; nor will they forget the silent, impotent rage that filled the mind at the thought of the giant-bodied, small-headed Colossus of war which makes a useless sacrifice of men in ways such as these every day.
Nevertheless I do solemnly state that I had not the slightest idea where Brown was doing his bit in the war. I had last heard of him in France in the Naval Division. That we should both have travelled half across the world to meet with a crash in a backwater at Basra was one of the strangest freaks of fortune I have come across.
It can be done, however, express, by taking the train from Basra to Amara, leaving Basra about five in the evening and arriving at Amara in the morning. Then the journey is continued by boat to Kut, and thence from Kut in the evening by train, arriving in Baghdad in the early morning the whole distance within two days. The railway does not run the whole way.
For this ancient Persian town lies on the main caravan route from Mesopotamia to Teheran, passing over the high Zaros range, as well as on other roads, leading to Tabriz in the north and to Kut-el-Amara and Basra in the south. It brought this Russian army within less than 200 miles of Bagdad.
Brown, it appeared, had joined the Naval Division, been to Antwerp, Gallipoli and France, and then been transferred for gunnery duties to the rivers of Mesopotamia, and was now Lieut. R.N.V.R. in the Dalhousie stationed at Basra.
A large number of mud and reed huts, in long rows, stood on the plain, covering an area of about a quarter of a square mile. These were the wards. There was a sense of space that was refreshing after the cramped and littered area of the clearing at Basra, with its surrounding marshes and palm groves.
There dwelt at Basra one Ebn Wahab, of the tribe of Koreish, descended from Hebar, the son of Al Asud, who quitted Basra when it was sacked, and came to Siraff, where he saw a ship preparing to sail for China . The humour took him to embark in this ship for China, and he had the curiosity to visit the emperor's court.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking