I left the Guides, and went back to Beled, to my good friends of the 56th Brigade, R.F.A. On December 6 the 19th Infantry and the 56th Artillery Brigades received orders to move down-stream immediately. All came suddenly; I was awakened by the striking of tents. On the 8th the Leicestershires left Samarra. In less than six days they were in Baghdad. In those six days of marching they suffered terribly from cold, rain, and footsoreness. But they swung through Baghdad singing. The men of the Anzac wireless bought up oranges, and threw them to our fellows as they passed out of Baghdad to their camp at Hinaidi, two miles below. Baghdad streets were frozen every morning; a bucket of water, put out overnight, would be almost solid next day. Nevertheless there were enough flies to be an intolerable pest. When we passed the variously spelt station of Mushaidiyeh, Keely noted the script preferred by the railway, Mouchâhadie, and observed, 'Evidently it was connected in their mind with flies; no doubt with good reason.' Baghdad in winter is given up to immense flocks of crows and starlings and to the 'Baghdad canary.'[31] No wild flowers were out, except a white _alisma_. We purchased 'goodly Babylonish garments,' the _abbas_ for which the town is famous. Mine were sent home in an oil-sheet. The oil-sheet arrived, the postal-service satisfying themselves with looting the _abbas_. After all, men who have the monotony of service at the Base are entitled to indemnify themselves for the trouble to which men up the line put them. We got our last glimpse of Fritz on the 15th. He was over Baghdad, and was said to have dropped a message, 'Good-bye, 7th Division.' The countryside was stiff with troops moving up and down. Our destination was matter of constant speculation. When orders to leave Beled reached the 19th Brigade, there came a wire from Divisional Head Quarters, 'Tell the padre to preach from Matthew twenty, verse eighteen.' But the 28th Brigade knew nothing of this hint to Lee. Some thought we were going to Ahwaz, and thence up to Persia; others held this Persian theory with a modification, that we should arrive up-country from Bushire. The favourite notion was that we were going to do another Gallipoli landing, behind Alexandretta. Some one got hold of a map, and announced that there were mountains there nine thousand feet high. On the 18th we embarked, and began our slow drift down the flooded, racing stream. We passed the old landmarks, so known and so remembered. On the 20th we passed Kut, and knew that for most of us it was our farewell glimpse of the town that through so many dreadful months had seemed a place of faery, and inaccessible.