The aerodrome lay six or seven miles above the town, and I was anxious to see it and the comfortable billets the Germans had built themselves. I found a friend whose duties required motor transportation, and we set off in his car. A dust-storm was raging, and we had some difficulty in finding our way through the network of trenches. Once outside, the storm became worse, and we could only see a few yards in front of us. We got completely lost, and after nearly running over the edge of the bluff, gave up the attempt, and slowly worked our way back. When we started off on the advance I was reading Xenophon's _Anabasis_. On the day when we were ordered to march on Tekrit a captain of the Royal Flying Corps, an ex-master at Eton, was in the mess, and when I told him that I was nearly out of reading matter, he said that next time he came over he would drop me Plutarch's _Lives_. I asked him to drop it at corps headquarters, and that a friend of mine there would see that I got it. The next day in the heat of the fighting a plane came over low, signalling that it was dropping a message. As the streamer fell close by, there was a rush to pick it up and learn how the attack was progressing. Fortunately, I was far away when the packet was opened and found to contain the book that the pilot had promised to drop for me. After we had been occupying the town for a few days, orders came through to prepare to fall back on Samarra. The line of communication was so long that it was impossible to maintain us, except at too great a cost to the transportation facilities possessed by the Expeditionary Forces. Eight or ten months later, when we had more rails in hand, a line was laid to Tekrit, which had been abandoned by the Turks under the threat of our advance to Kirkuk, in the Persian hills. It was difficult to explain to the men, particularly to the Indians, the necessity for falling back. All they could understand was that we had taken the town at no small cost, and now we were about to give it up.