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Updated: June 14, 2025
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.
Moreover, this might be my last journey in, on the old road, under the old order. So I declined, but I lunched with Charles Miller Before I went on. Marvell was there, the Kaffir store-keeper from ten miles away. He had much to tell me of his wonderful good luck. The big firm that were putting up the new Store at Alexandra, that rail-head terminus designate, had asked him to manage it.
It typified the slow tranquillity of the bailiwick, which was removed from the central life of the Five Towns, and unconnected therewith by even a tram or an omnibus. Only within recent years had Turnhill got so much as a railway station rail-head of a branch line. Turnhill was the extremity of civilization in those parts.
"Which reminds me," he added, "that I met Armitage when I was coming back from leave." Sir William removed his cigar and contemplated the pale ash with inscrutable eyes. "I heard from Armitage," he replied. "Did you by any chance meet his companion on the journey up?" James shook his head. "No, I only saw Armitage for a moment, and that was in the darkness at the rail-head.
The time had passed uneventfully with the three young telegraphers, the end of the second week finding Alex and Jack together with the construction-train at the rail-head, and Wilson Jennings back at the temporary station and material-sidings at the viaduct. Perhaps the last few days had passed least interestingly with Wilson, alone in his little box-car station, not far from the old river-bed.
He had to mount and away, with the antidote and stimulant of responsibility driving him on. Another occasion was equally perilous to his safety. They had been idle for days in a hot week in summer, waiting for orders to return from the rail-head where they had gone to quell a riot, and where drink and hilarity were common.
They had passengers in green as well as in khaki. The first hospital trains were pulling out from the rail-head across from a clearing station. Thus promptly, as foreseen, the processes of battle had worked themselves out.
Still, though the number of the track-layers was largely reduced, the inhabitants of the mining region had waited long enough, and so, in spite of many hardships, slowly, fathom by fathom, we carried the rail-head on. Now and then for several days together we sat in our log-built shelter while a blinding snowstorm raged outside and the pines filled the valley with their roaring.
The transport was, naturally, the great problem which faced the generals. I have already said something about the extreme difficulty of that transport. I have seen at Seleniki, which is the point at which the rail-head was, within thirty miles of Constantinople as the crow flies, ox-wagons, which had come from the Shipka Pass, in the north of Bulgaria.
A few feet from the rear car Alex came upon a three-wheeled track velocipede, used by Elder, the superintendent's clerk in running backwards and forwards between the rail-head and the junction. Pausing, he debated whether he should not put it on the rails, and make a run for the junction immediately.
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