“I can’t write proper letters from here, because I am told all officers’ letters are invariably opened and read right through by the Censor.... “We anchored about 1 P.M., and then moved on about 3.15 to our berth, and got tied up about 4.30 to the most ramshackle wooden pier--everything truly Eastern, you know what I mean. Luckily there was a good bridge down the river. I disembarked the horses, all down one gangway, in about 1 hour 20 minutes, and put them in sort of railed paddocks on shore. It was very hot. We then got to work at baggage, all the regimental transport, &c., a terrible long, slow business, and we worked the whole night, and I lay down for three-quarters of an hour. The men and we slept on board, a guard with the horses on shore. They came off all fit and well, only two with any temperature. The rest of the Regiment came in a few hours later and started disembarking too. They lost one horse _en route_. I saw the Colonel, who seemed very content. We were at it from 4 next morning, and finally got all ashore about 7.30.” So the voyage ended, and the Thirteenth were safely landed in Mesopotamia, just twenty-eight days after leaving Marseilles. But the first few months in the country were not agreeable. The heat was great, and there was no news or excitement of any kind, nothing to do but to get the men and the new horses fit for the campaign, if there was to be a campaign, when the weather allowed of movement. For the present the Turks were not giving any trouble. Since the capture of Kut they had seemed content to sit quiet, waiting for the British to try another attack if so disposed. Meanwhile, they strengthened the defensive positions on the Tigris, from which they had inflicted so many bloody repulses upon the invaders of their country, and hoped to inflict more. They did not realise that affairs had changed, that troops and guns and equipment of all kinds were pouring in from the sea, and that the attack when it came would be a very different matter from the hasty frontal assaults in the mud, by small forces, which they had beaten off before. The British War Office had now taken over from the Indian Government the control of the expedition, and the whole resources of England were being set in motion to provide the British force with all the things necessary for modern war, and above all, with ample transport for land and river. The Thirteenth at first suffered considerably. The letter-book from which I have quoted goes on to speak of the move from shipboard into camp.