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The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad

Chapter 14: INDEX
By Edward John Thompson
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About This Book

A firsthand account recounts the 7th Division's Mesopotamian operations, concentrating on campaigns to secure a railhead and to capture Tekrit and Samarra. It interweaves tactical descriptions of engagements, battalion and brigade movements, and map-supported locational detail with personal notebooks, regimental war-diaries, and veterans' recollections. The narrative highlights the practical effects of censorship on press reporting, emphasizes unit-level comradeship and humour under strain, and offers clear, often granular reportage of fighting, logistics, and the sequence of actions that consolidated positions beyond Baghdad.

And when we came to Ashar,[34] we only cheered once;
 And I don't suppose we shall cheer again, for months, and months, and months.

We drifted down the beautiful waterway, past its forest of palms and its abundant willows and waving reeds. We reached Koweit Bay on the 4th and waited for rations and our new boats. On the 7th we were on our way to a new campaign. In nine months the Leicestershires were swinging through Beirut in the old, immemorial fashion, though foot-weary, and singing, whilst the people madly cheered and shouted. But it was not the old crowd. Fowke, Warren, Burrows—these three were gathered, two months after the battalion left Mesopotamia, at Kantara, when the German last offensive burst. They were sent at once to France. Fowke and Warren were badly wounded; a letter from Fowke informed me that he was hit 'while running away,' a jesting statement which one understands. Burrows, one of our keenest minds and a delightful man, a valued friend, did extraordinarily well—he was strangely fearless—but was killed as the French war was ending. From the 19th Brigade Haughton, Thornhill, General Peebles, had all gone long ago. Haughton was wounded in the Afghan War, and Thornhill died of illness. And now, as I write, G.A. is off to South America again, and J.Y. to Canada.

I and my friends have seen our friends no more.


FOOTNOTES:

[31] The domestic ass.

[32] Mimosa.

[33] Concert party.

[34] At Busra; the place of disembarkation.






INDEX


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