It
was a bad wreck, but we were able to tow it. I wished to have a reckoning
with the village head man, and walked to an isolated group of houses a few
hundred yards to the left of the village. As I neared them a lively
fusillade opened and I had to take refuge in a convenient irrigation
ditch. The country was so broken that it was impossible for us to operate,
so we towed the car back to camp.
[Illustration: Hauling out a badly bogged fighting car]
[Illustration: A Mesopotamian garage]
Our section from Deli Abbas was moved up to take the place of the one that
had been engaged, which now returned to Baghdad. We were camped at
Mirjana, a few miles north of Kizil Robat, on the Diyala River. A pontoon
bridge was thrown across and the cars were taken over to the right bank,
where we bivouacked with a machine-gun company and a battalion of native
infantry. The bed of the river was very wide, and although throughout the
greater part of the year the water flowed only through the narrow main
channel, in the time of the spring floods the whole distance was a riotous
yellow torrent. We had no sooner got the cars across than the river began
to rise. During the first night part of the bridge was carried away, and
the rest was withdrawn. The rise continued; trees and brush were swept
racing past. We made several fruitless attempts to get across in the
clumsy pontoons, but finally gave it up, resigning ourselves to being
marooned.
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