Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 279
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[Page 279]
137
next camp at Hinaidi, on the river a couple of miles short of Baghdad, eleven days after we had left Basra.
In my youth I had read romantic stories about Baghdad at the time of the Caliphate and Haroun al Raschid, and ever since I had become a member of the "Baghdad Party" I was looking forward eagerly to seeing it. But it has been said that to travel is to be disillusioned, and so it was in my case. Hardly anything less romantic than this widespread huddle of dirty decrepit mud-walled buildings could be imagined: across its narrow twisted streets even the Turkish Army, during its occupation, had felt the need to ruthlessly blast a wide straight main thoroughfare.
A group of extra officers and N.C.Os. from the Palestinian and Mesopotamian fronts now came to increase the Party, which had grown to a total strength of about a hundred and forty, all officers or sergeants and no privates.
At Baghdad we were again delayed, much to our disgust, and this time for three weeks, in just as boring a situation as at Basra with the added discomfort of choking blinding dust-storms nearly every day. So we formed a proper Mess, with a well-stocked bar in a big marquee, which enabled us to enjoy more conviviality in the evenings, and to engage a local caterer, who for breakfast regularly offered us large portions of coarse river fish which had a slightly muddy taste. One morning I saw a fish being brought to the Mess kitchen. It was slung loosely over a donkey led by a boy and its head and tail nearly touched the ground; it must have been six feet long. If the two that fed the five thousand in the desert place, according to the New Testament, were as big, it was not such a great miracle after all.
During the first few days of May, we were transported overnight by narrow-gauge light railway to Ruz, only a place on the map about forty miles north-east of Baghdad, where the pain ended and the bare brown foothills of the mountains on the Persian Frontier began. Here our first task was to put up our little tents and establish a water supply and other basic facilities. After this work was done we settled down to a more deadly dreary existence than ever to await the arrival of a large