A Memory of Mesopotamia
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THE YPRES TIMES
AS things turned out, the BasraNasiriya Railway, built as a branch, became the
trunk line, and all other lines were dismantled after the Armistice."Loyalties,
Mesopotamia, 1914-17, p. 193.
The above extract from Lieut.-Colonel Sir Arnold T. Wilson's finely written book
brings vividly to view a picture of one of those now dismantled railways in the early
spring of 1918. It was the BasraAmara line, over 115 miles in length, and only the
previous April converted to metre gauge.
We were working under the dignified title of Railway Construction Battalion.
Actually, with the exception of a company of Royal Engineers, we were a couple of
hundred infantrymen waiting to rejoin our regiments over 300 miles farther up the
Tigris, and temporarily borrowed for this work.
Our camp was on the river bank barely thirty miles distant from Amara, but as
far as we were concerned it might have been 300 miles away, for in every direction
stretched the hard, flat desert, the only signs of life being our railway and the passing
vessels on the Tigris. We were engaged in making a double track line of a few hundred
yards at places a few miles apart, and digging what we hoped would later be reservoirs
filled by the flooded Tigris waters when the snows melted in the mountains away to the
north-east.
Cut off entirely from our units, which meant, for some weeks at least, letters and
parcels from the outside world, we lived an essay in practical socialism which could
never be attained by our Western standards of civilization and theories. In our little
world in the desert money was useless, it could buy nothing. Our rations arrived
each morning by the night train from our base. Our work was communal, we were
working together with one object in view, we had no other life. Each man was judged
on his personal merits alone. We lived a life in the open and in ideal climatic condi
tions, for the much-abused Mesopotamia (why give it the Arabic styleIraq has a
charm quite its own in the early spring when days are sunny and warm, but never too
hot for manual work the day through. I often wonder why tourist agencies have not
yet exploited these odd months in the heart of the Middle East, for not even Egypt can
show such a wealth of historical associations.
To awake to the first streak of dawn on the far-away Persian mountains, and later,
at work, to see the sun rise on the peaks, snow-capped at that time of the year at
midday, when the sun was strong, to look across to our snow mountains, and then,
at evening-tide, to turn your backs on them to watch the sun sinking below the desert
horizon will always remain in the memory as a wonderful riot of colour and beauty.
The spaciousness, the cleanness of your outlook, the last glow of the sun on the distant
desert, then the cool evening breezesthe effect can never be captured on canvas and
paper.
There was no need for us to bother about half days and holidays and high days
we had the last two hours of daylight each day to ourselves. We played footballno
searching for pitches there, the desert was ours to play on. We dug a small bathing
pool by the river bank, and the river itself was never dull, for at that period of the
campaign there were over 1,000 vessels in Government commission on the 600-mile
stretch of river. Old paddle-boats from Rangoon, stern-wheelers from Calcutta,
Thames tugs, local mahaylas, huge sailing-barges, brand new paddle steamers from
the Clyde, manned by men from all parts of the EmpireSierra Leone, Somaliland,
Singapore and Sunderland.
With many recollections of other countries and other sights, of exciting times and
