When we got word to come in, the roads were in fearful shape and the rain was falling in torrents, but we were so afraid that we might miss the attack that we salvaged everything not essential and started to fight our way through the mud. It was a slow and wearisome process, but we managed to get as far as Bakuba by evening. The river was rising in one of its periodical floods and we found that the pontoon bridge had been cut half an hour before our arrival. No one could predict how long the flood would last, but the river rarely went down sufficiently to allow the bridge to be replaced within a week. At that time the railroad went only as far as Bakuba, and crossed the river on a wooden trestle, so I decided to try to load the motors on a flat car and get across the Diyala in that way. After having made arrangements to do this I wandered off into the bazaar to get something to eat. In native fashion I first bought a big flap of bread from an old woman, and then went to a pickle booth to get some beets, which I wrapped in my bread. Next I proceeded to a meat-shop and ordered some lamb kababs roasted. The meat is cut in pellets, spitted on rods six or eight inches long, and lain over the glowing charcoal embers. In the shop there are long tables with benches beside them. The customer spreads his former purchases, and when his kababs are ready he eats his dinner. He next proceeds to a coffee-house, where he has a couple of glasses of tea and three or four diminutive cups of coffee to top off, and the meal is finished. The Arab eats sparingly as a rule, but when he gives or attends a banquet he stuffs himself to his utmost capacity. Next morning we loaded our cars successfully and started off by rail for Baghdad, some thirty miles away. The railroad wound across the desert, with here and there a water-tank with a company from a native regiment guarding it. As we stopped at one particularly desolate spot, a young officer came running up and asked if we would have tea with him. He took us to his tent, where everything was ready, for he apparently always met the two trains that passed through daily. Poor fellow, he was only a little over twenty, and desperately lonely and homesick. Many of the young officers who were wounded in France were sent to India with the idea that they could be training men and getting on to the methods of the Indian army while yet recuperating and unfit to go back to the front. They were shipped out with a new draft when they had fully recovered. This boy had only been a month in the country, and ten days before had been sent off in charge of his Sikh company to do this wearisome guard duty.