Harry Bowen, brother-in-law of General Cobbe, was the political officer in charge of Kizil Robat. He spoke excellent Arabic and was much respected by the natives. His house was an oasis in which I could always look forward to a pleasant talk, an excellent native dinner, and some interesting book to carry off. Although the town was small, there were three good Turkish baths. One of them belonged to Jameel Bey, but, judging from the children tending babies while squatting in the entrance portico, was generally given over to the distaff side and its friends. The one which we patronized, while not so grand a building, had an old Persian who understood the art of massage thoroughly, and there was nothing more restful after a number of days' hard work with the cars. In the end of February there passed through Kizil Robat the last contingent of our former Russian Allies. They were Cossacks--a fine-looking lot as they rode along perched on their small chunky saddles atop of their unkempt but hardy ponies. When Russia went out of the war they asked permission to keep on fighting with us. They were a good deal of a problem, for they had no idea whatever of discipline, and it was most difficult to keep them in hand and stop them from pillaging the natives indiscriminately. They had been completely cut off from Russia for a long time but were now on their way back. A very intelligent woman doctor and a number of nurses who had been with them were sick with smallpox in one of our hospitals in Baghdad. When they recovered they were sent to India, for it was not feasible to repatriate them by way of Persia. When the Russians first established connection with us, some armored cars were sent to bring in the Cossack general, whose name we were told was Leslie. We were unprepared to find that he spoke no English! It turned out that his ancestors had gone over from Scotland to the court of Peter the Great. V THE ADVANCE ON THE EUPHRATES Early in March we got orders to return to Baghdad, where all the armored cars were to be concentrated preparatory to an attack on the Euphrates front. There was much speculation as to our mission. Some said that we were to break through and establish connection with General Allenby's forces in Palestine. While I know nothing about it authoritatively, it is certain that if the state of affairs in France had not called for the withdrawal from the East of all the troops that could be spared, the attack that was launched in October would have taken place in March. We could then have advanced up the Euphrates, and it would have been entirely practical to cross over the desert in the cars by way of Tadmor.