The patient runs a temperature which it
was impossible to control until the ice-making machines were installed.
The camps were situated in the coolest and most comfortable places, but in
spite of everything, death was a frequent result, and recoveries were apt
to be only partial. Men who had had a bad stroke were rarely of any
further use in the country.
Another sickness of the hot season which now began to claim less victims
was sand-fly fever. This fever, which, as its name indicates, was
contracted from the bites of sand-flies, varied widely in virulence.
Sometimes it was so severe that the victim had to be evacuated to India;
as a rule he went no farther than a base hospital at Baghdad or Amara.
One of the things about which the Tommy felt most keenly in the
Mesopotamian campaign was that there was no such thing as a "Cushy
Blighty." To take you to "Blighty" a wound must mean permanent
disablement, otherwise you either convalesced in the country or, at best,
were sent to India. In the same manner there were no short leaves, for
there was nowhere to go. At the most rapid rate of travelling it took two
weeks to get to India, and once there, although the people did everything
possible in the way of entertaining, the enlisted man found little to make
him less homesick than he had been in Mesopotamia. Transportation was so
difficult and the trip so long that only under very exceptional
circumstances was leave to England given.
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