Each sentry moved to and fro over a distance of a couple of hundred
yards. Opposite the place where we lay two of them met. Choosing his
opportunity, one of my comrades, who had provided himself with rubber
gloves some weeks before for this critical moment, rushed forward to the
spot where the two sentries had just met. Scrambling through barbed wire
and over an unelectrified wire, he grasped the electrified wires and
wriggled between them. We came close on his heels. He held the deadly
electrified wires apart with lengths of thick plate glass with which he
had come provided while first my other companions and then I crawled
through. Before the sentries returned we had run some hundreds of yards
into No Man's Land between the electrified wires and the real Dutch
frontier.
[Sidenote: Arrival at Rotterdam.]
Only one danger remained. We had no certainty that the Dutch frontier
guards would not hand us back to the Germans. We took no risks, though
it meant wading through a stream waist deep. Our troubles were now
practically over. By rapid stages we proceeded to Rotterdam.
I was without money. My watch I had given to the Belgian villager in
whose cottage I had found refuge. My clothes were shabby from frequent
soakings and hard wear. I had shaved only once in Belgium, and a stubby
growth of beard did not improve my general appearance.
[Sidenote: Sent on to London.]
At Rotterdam I reported myself to the British Consul. I was treated with
the utmost kindness. My expenses during the next four or five days,
while I waited for a boat, were paid and I was given my fare to Hull.
There I was searched by two military police and questioned closely by an
examining board. My papers were taken and I was told to go to London and
apply for them at the Home Office. As I was again practically without
means I was given permission to go to my home in Bradford before
proceeding to London.
* * * * *
In cooperation with the British forces, a Russian army took part in
movements against Bagdad and Turkish cities in Armenia and Persia. These
military movements were marked by varying success on the part of the
Russian and Turkish forces. Certain phases of this campaign are
described in the following chapter.
THE ANGLO-RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN IN TURKEY
JAMES B. MACDONALD
Copyright, American Review of Reviews, April, 1916.
[Sidenote: Mesopotamia important to Great Britain.]
It is perhaps not generally realized how important the future of
Mesopotamia is to the British, or why they originally sent an expedition
there which has since developed into a more ambitious campaign. Ever
since the Napoleonic period British influence and interests have been
supreme from Bagdad to the Persian Gulf, and this was the one quarter of
the globe where they successfully held off the German trader with his
political backing.
[Sidenote: Great Britain's war with Persia.]
[Sidenote: British steamer on the Tigris.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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