“When once again the dust had settled, the Turks, observing that the attack was for the moment over, sallied forth from their trenches to pay attention to the casualties. An Arab relieved me of my possessions and led me to an officer in the trench. This officer, on seeing me approach, forsook the machine-gun he had been manipulating and shook my uninjured member warmly--a thing which no good Mahomedan should have done, as such contact with the ‘infidel’ is forbidden in terms of Koran regulations. Some one applied a tourniquet to my arm, which was still dripping, and I was taken to a bend in the trench where I came across Sergeants Gilbert and Spanton, and Trooper Morrison, the only other survivors amongst those who had fallen into Turkish hands. The horses of the two sergeants had been shot down, and Morrison was suffering from a wound in the forearm. We were led out of the trench and across the open country to the Headquarters of the Turkish forces (instead of rounding up a convoy the Thirteenth had ridden through a Division), and in the course of our journey to the rear had ample opportunity of realising how much nastier is the effect of British shrapnel than that of the Turk. Arrived at Headquarters, we were separated and interrogated in a very polite manner by one who spoke English fluently. In this interrogation, to my surprise and the credit of the enemy, there was not the slightest suggestion of coercion to extract information. After a few hours’ rest, Morrison and I, with some wounded Turkish soldiery, were given seats in a rickety waggon, and with Sergeants Gilbert and Spanton marching behind, we set out. It was early the next morning that the palm groves of Baghdad, topped by the domes and minarets of the city’s many mosques, came to sight. At Baghdad, Morrison and I were taken direct to a hospital, where a Jewish doctor, Alalou by name, dressed our wounds and gave us food and drink.” [Illustration: SCENE OF THE FIGHT AT LAJJ. 5TH MARCH 1917] Lieutenant Pinnington was afterwards sent on to Mosul, and he writes: “It is perhaps worthy of mention that on many occasions during my imprisonment there I received compliments from Turkish officers on the bravery of the British Cavalry in making their ill-fated charge on the 4th [? 5th] March.” Captain Newton, the one squadron leader who came out unwounded from the “ill-fated” charge, evidently took much the same view of it as his subordinate. The entry in his diary for the 5th March is as follows:--