This book deals first with the April campaign as it affected the right bank of the Tigris. Between Baghdad and Samarra was a stretch of eighty miles of railroad, the only completed portion, south of Mosul, of the Berlin-Baghdad Railway. If we could capture this the Turk would have to supply his troops from Mosul by the treacherous and shallow Tigris. The Samarra fighting, these railhead battles, was the last organized campaign which the Turk fought. Our First Corps, consisting of two Indian divisions, the 3rd and the 7th, operated against railhead; while the Third Corps, consisting of the 13th Division, the only all-British division in Mesopotamia, and the 14th Indian Division, fought their way up the left bank. After Samarra fell the Turk could do nothing but collect small bodies of troops, which we attacked in detail, usually with success, and throughout 1918, after Tekrit, always attacked with complete success (as we did at Ramadie in September, 1917, destroying the whole force). Ramadie, on the Euphrates, and Tekrit, on the Tigris, were the first of the campaigns of this last phase of the Mesopotamian War, campaigns that were glorified raids. At the time of Tekrit, General Allenby settled for the Turk, once for all, the choice between Palestine and Mesopotamia. Our Tekrit campaign was a sympathetic attack, concurrent with Allenby's great Gaza offensive. This campaign is the theme of the second portion of this book. I BELED Red of gladiolus glimmering through the wheat-- Red flower of Valour springing at our feet! Dark-flowered hyacinth mingling with the red-- Dark flower of Patience on the way we tread! Scarlet of poppy waving o'er the grass-- Honour's bright flags along the road we pass! Thorns that torment, and grassy spikes that fret, Thistles that all the fiery way beset! These shall be theirs, when Duty's day is sped; They shall lie down, the living and the dead. 1. THE WAY TO BELED Baghdad fell on March 11, 1917. The soldier's joy was deepened by the belief that here his warfare was accomplished, his marching finished. Even when we went by the city, and fought battles on either bank, the 7th Indian Division at Mushaidiyeh (March 14) and the 3rd Indian, most disastrously, in the foothills of the Jebel Hamrin (March 25), this comfort was not destroyed. These two hard actions were but the sweeping away of ants' nests from before a house; our position now secured, we should fall back, and rest in Baghdad. The Turk might try to turn us out; but that was a very different affair, and it would be months before he could even dream of an offensive. So in April the 7th Division had withdrawn to Baghdad, all except the 28th Brigade, who were at Babi, a dozen miles up-stream. At Babi it was not yet desert--there was grass and wheat; but the garden-belt and trees had finished.