It was the same sea power that enabled England to make each of them efficient in itself. Not only did the sea bring them their hundreds of thousands of fighting men, but the sea brought them everything needed to let their men fight with success. As to the Mesopotamian campaign, it was, as its very name implies, a river campaign, and the utilisation of the Turkish rivers, especially the Tigris, was the first essential of success. Nothing was so remarkable in all the history of the campaign as the way in which the Tigris was broken in and transformed from an almost insuperable obstacle into a great military highway. By a hard and sustained effort, impossible for any nation but the mistress of the seas, the turbulent undisciplined river was tamed and enlisted in the service of the invaders, and its carrying power was increased nearly a thousandfold. When Maude began his advance, its surface was swarming with steamboats that had found their way, thanks to the daring and skill of British seamen, from the Hughli and the Irawadi and the Thames, until they were numerous enough to carry a large army into the heart of the Turkish Empire, and to keep it supplied with all the multitudinous necessities of modern war. The river steamers were supported by rapidly constructed railways and roads, and all manner of engineering works; new irrigation channels were made or ancient channels reopened; many of the wild Arab tribes were gradually brought to see the advantages of order and service; crops were raised and gathered; altogether the activities of our people were innumerable, and the conquest of a country almost as large as the United Kingdom went hand-in-hand with the measures necessary for making it prosperous and contented. What its future will be no one can say. To take over such a country, with its turbulent population and unsettled frontiers and outlying responsibilities of many kinds, is a formidable task; but in any case the conquest of it, from such an enemy as the Turk, was no small contribution to the work done by the British Empire in the Great War. It was performed at a distance from England, among scenes unfamiliar to Englishmen, and, partly owing to Press restrictions, it did not greatly appeal to the country’s attention, which was naturally enough fixed upon the progress of the conflict in Europe; but it was none the less a great achievement, and one of which all concerned in it may well be proud. Among those concerned in it was the Regiment whose history forms the subject of this book, and there remains to be considered now the part which the Regiment played in the campaign.