Letters from Mesopotamia by Robert Palmer
page 31 of 150 (20%)
page 31 of 150 (20%)
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Consequently they had to load kits, etc., and embark on empty
stomachs. Well, hungry but punctual, we embarked at 10 a.m. It was 102° in my cabin, so you can imagine what the heat and glare of 150 men in an open barge was. Having got us into this enviable receptacle, they proceeded to think of all the delaying little trifles which might have been thought of any time that morning. One way and another they managed to waste three-quarters of an hour before we started. The journey took six minutes or so. Getting alongside this ship took another half hour, the delay mainly due to Arab incompetence this time. Then came disembarking, unloading kits and all the odd jobs of moving units--which all had to be done in a furnace-like heat by men who had had no food for twenty hours. To crown it all, the people on board here had assumed we should breakfast before starting and not a scrap of food was ready. The poor men finally got some food at 2 p.m. after a twenty-two hours fast and three hours herded or working in a temperature of about 140°. Nobody could complain of such an ordeal if we'd been defending Lucknow or attacking Shaiba, but to put such a strain on the men's health--newly arrived and with no pads or glasses or shades--gratuitously and merely by dint of sheer hard muddling--is infuriating to me and criminal in the authorities--a series of scatter-brained nincompoops about fit to look after a cocker-spaniel between them. Considering what they went through, I think our draft came off lightly with three cases of heat-stroke. Luckily the object lesson in the train and my sermons thereon have borne fruit, and the men acted promptly and sensibly as soon as the patients got bad. Two began to feel ill on the barge and the third became delirious quite suddenly a few minutes |
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