{vii} War has figured very largely in my life. For the past twenty years, as Special Correspondent of the _Daily Chronicle_, I have been privileged to be present at most of the world's great upheavals, both military and political. From July, 1914, on, for some eighteen months, I followed the fortunes of the Entente armies in the field as a war chronicler, first in Serbia, next in Belgium, and afterwards in Italy and Greece--a poor journalistic Lazarus picking up such crumbs of news as fell from the overladen table of Dives, the Censor. But I was not happy, because I felt I was not doing my "bit" as effectively as I might; so I followed the example of millions of other citizens of the Empire and joined the army. Detailed to the Intelligence Corps, I was sent first to Roumania, then to Russia. Escaping from the "Red Terror" in Petrograd, I finally found myself one day embarking for the remote land of Iran as Special Service Officer with "Dunsterforce"--at which point this chronicle begins. THE AUTHOR. PARIS, _October_, 1919. {ix} CONTENTS CHAPTER I THE START OF THE "HUSH-HUSH" BRIGADE A mystery expedition--Tower of London conference--From Flanders mud to Eastern dust--An Imperial forlorn hope--Some fine fighting types--The amphibious purser--In the submarine zone--Our Japanese escort CHAPTER II EGYPT TO THE PERSIAN GULF Afloat in an insect-house--Captain Kettle in command--Overcrowding and small-pox--The s.s. _Tower of Babel_--A shark scare--Koweit CHAPTER III THE CITY OF SINBAD Arrival at Basra--A city of filth--Transformation by the British--Introducing sport to the natives--The Arabs and the cinema CHAPTER IV AT A PERSIAN WEDDING Visit to the Sheikh of Mohammerah--A Persian banquet CHAPTER V UP THE TIGRIS TO KUT Work of the river flotilla--Thames steamboats on the Tigris--The waterway through the desert--The renaissance of Amarah--The river's jazz-step course--The old Kut and the new--In Townshend's old headquarters--Turks' monument to short-lived triumph {x} CHAPTER VI BAGDAD Arabian nights and motor-cars--The old and the new in Bagdad--"Noah's dinghy"--Bible history illustrated--At a famous tomb-mosque CHAPTER VII EARLY HISTORY OF DUNSTERVILLE's FORCE Jealousy and muddle--The dash for the Caspian--Holding on hundreds of miles from anywhere--A 700-mile raid that failed--The cockpit of the Middle East--Some recent politics in Persia--How our way to the Caspian was barred CHAPTER VIII OFF TO PERSIA Au revoir to Bagdad--The forts on the frontier--Customs house for the dead--A land of desolation and death--A city of the past--An underground mess--Methods of rifle thieves CHAPTER IX THROUGH MUD TO KIRIND A city of starving cave-dwellers--An American woman's mission to the wild--A sect of salamanders--Profiteering among the Persians--A callous nation--Wireless orders to sit tight--Awaiting attack--The "mountain tiger" CHAPTER X KIRIND TO KERMANSHAH