fears, It so happened that a small party of officers, delayed 

 by illness, were sent north after the first batches of men 

 had departed. These officers followed the same track, 

 and presently an urgent message from one of them reached 

 Bagdad, addressed to the Turkish Commander-in-Chief, 

 pressing for a hospital establishment and one of the British 

 staff to be sent at once to Samarra. Hospital and staff 

 w r ere immediately ready, though it took the Turkish 

 authorities five days to provide the necessary pass f|or 

 leaving /the city. At Samarra were then, collected the 

 hundreds of sick who had fallen out of the march during 

 its first stages. They were picked up from the roadside 

 where they lay in the miseries of dysentery, just as they 

 chanced to drop, disregarded and deserted. All possible 

 care was given them at Samarra, but many were beyond 

 help. It was clear enough what would have happened 

 to them all but for (he chance of the state of things being 

 discovered in time. It was a chance that was not allowed 

 to recur; a subsequent party of officers were carefully 

 sent from Bagdad by another route. 



" But it was only those who failed on the first part of 

 the march who could be brought to Samarra ; the main 

 body passed on and out of reach. The track was still 

 followed by the same group of officers, and the sights 

 they saw, at villages and halting places all along the road, 

 hardly bear telling. There were parties of men lying 

 exhausted under any shelter they could find, in all stages 

 of dysentery and starvation ; some dying, some dead ; half 

 clothed, without boots, having sold everything they could 

 to buy a little milk. 



MYSTERY OF KUT SOLVED. 



"Only here and there had an attendant of some kind 

 been left to look after them ; generally there was no one 

 but the Arab villagers, who mercilessly robbed them, or 

 the under-officer of the local police-post, who stared in- 

 differently and protested that he had no authority to give 

 help. The dead lay unburied, plundered and stripped of 

 their last clothing. All across the desert, at one place 

 after another, these sights were repeated; starving and 



57 



