2nd Lieutenant Guy Pedder, one of those wounded in the fight, writes to his mother from the hospital at Amara: “No doubt you will have heard by now how we ran into it on the 5th, but in case you haven’t I will try and give you a rough idea of what happened. After camping at Azizieh for four or five days (I wrote to you from there), the Cavalry Division moved at 5 A.M. (we were centre Regiment of the leading Brigade) on March 5th with orders to camp at Lajj, which was about twenty-six miles away, the flying people having reported all clear. After we had gone about twenty miles we halted and watered, and fed on the river bank, three monitors steaming past us up-river, and an aeroplane over our heads--quite a dramatic picture. At 10.30 we moved off again, and almost immediately a sand-storm started, the strong wind taking all our dust out in front of us. We went about five miles, when one of our armoured cars brought in a Turkish officer, and the news that there were a few of the enemy scattered about, who were probably only waiting for us to collect them as prisoners (like the lot we took in the pursuit), so we got orders to move out to the right to verify this or collect prisoners. Eve told us this, and quickly changed on to his favourite mare. Three squadrons moved out to the right, the fourth (‘C,’ Stirling’s and Ormrod’s squadron) right out to the flank; ‘A,’ ‘B,’ and ‘D’ then advanced in line of troop column extended and almost immediately came under heavy rifle-fire. We walked about half a mile and then trotted; the dust was awful and you couldn’t see more than one hundred to two hundred yards in front; all of a sudden, through the dust, I could see a lot of Turks in the open and in a nullah. Eve gave the order, ‘Draw swords--form line--gallop,’ and before we knew where we were we were into them. Some stood up and surrendered, others lay flat on their backs and shot at us at two or three yards’ range; two fellows let off their rifles right in my face, but missed both Matches[43] and me. There was a small nullah at the part of the line where ‘D’ charged, and the Turk lying flat was pretty well safe, but we got a certain number; the noise was tremendous, bullets from revolvers, rifles, and machine-guns cracking all round. Beyond the first nullah, and running at right angles to it, was another much deeper, and we gave the Turks holding it a splendid target. I lost sight of Eve, who was just in front of me at the first nullah, but his orderly who was shot (wounded)[44] close by him, tells me he was shot from two yards’ range, as he was bending down to charge a group of Turks. At any rate, he must have been killed instantaneously.