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Updated: May 23, 2025
It was hoped that we might recapture Colonel Tennant, who was in command of the Royal Flying Corps forces in Mesopotamia. He had been shot down at Khan Baghdadi the day before the attack. We learned from prisoners that he had been sent up-stream immediately, on his way to Aleppo, but it was thought that he might have been held over at Haditha or at Ana.
We recaptured a lot of medical equipment and some ammunition that had been taken from our forces during the Gallipoli campaign. Haditha is thirty-five miles from Khan Baghdadi, and Ana is an equal distance beyond. It was decided that we should push on to a big bridge shown on the map as eight miles this side of Ana.
It must be of great antiquity, for the prophet Isaiah speaks of it as a place where kings had reigned, but from which, even in his time, the grandeur had departed. The greater part of the enemy had already abandoned the town, but we captured the Turkish governor and a good number of the garrison, and many that had escaped from Haditha.
He was a solemn old Arab, and showed me the damage done by the shells with an absolutely expressionless face. The houses within a fair radius had been riddled, but the natives had taken our warning and no one had been killed. After a cup of coffee in a lovely garden on the river-bank, I came back to the cars and we ran on through to Haditha.
It was hard to see the wounded withering in the increasing heat the dead were better off. We reached the heights overlooking Haditha to find that the garrison was in full retreat. Most of it had left the night before. Those remaining opened fire upon us, but in a half-hearted way, that was not calculated to inflict much loss. Many of the inhabitants of the town lived in burrows in the hillsides.
From the prisoners we had taken at Haditha we had extracted conflicting estimates as to the time when Colonel Tennant, the commander of our air forces, had been sent on, and from those we took at Ana we received equally varying accounts. The cars had been ordered to push on in search of the colonel as long as sufficient gasolene remained to bring them back.
Among the cartouches that follow we read the names of a Migdol, of Shebtuna, the modern Shebtîn, of Naun which reminds us of the name of Joshua's father, and of Haditha, now Hadîtheh, five miles to the west of Shebtîn. The list has thus led us to the foot of Mount Ephraim, and it is not surprising that the next name should be that of the Har or "Mountain" itself.
In the centre a servant roasted coffee-beans on the large shovel-spoon that they use for that purpose. The representative village worthies impressed me greatly. The desert Arabs are always held to be vastly superior to their kinsmen of the town, and it is undoubtedly true as a general rule; nevertheless, the elders of Haditha were an unusually fine group of men.
Oddly enough, I was the only member of the brigade occupying Haditha who could speak enough Arabic to be of any use, so I was sent to look up the local mayor to see whether there was any food to be purchased. The town is built on a long island equidistant from either bank. We ferried across in barges. The native method was simpler.
Their intrenching tools and medical supplies were of Austrian manufacture, as were also the rolling kitchens. These last were of an exceedingly practical design. While we were taking stock of our capture we got word that Khan Baghdadi had been occupied and a good number of prisoners taken. We were instructed to press on and take Haditha, thirty miles above Khan Baghdadi.
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