When the Russians
first established connection with us, some armored cars were sent to bring
in the Cossack general, whose name we were told was Leslie. We were
unprepared to find that he spoke no English! It turned out that his
ancestors had gone over from Scotland to the court of Peter the Great.
V
THE ADVANCE ON THE EUPHRATES
Early in March we got orders to return to Baghdad, where all the armored
cars were to be concentrated preparatory to an attack on the Euphrates
front. There was much speculation as to our mission. Some said that we
were to break through and establish connection with General Allenby's
forces in Palestine. While I know nothing about it authoritatively, it is
certain that if the state of affairs in France had not called for the
withdrawal from the East of all the troops that could be spared, the
attack that was launched in October would have taken place in March. We
could then have advanced up the Euphrates, and it would have been entirely
practical to cross over the desert in the cars by way of Tadmor.
When we got word to come in, the roads were in fearful shape and the rain
was falling in torrents, but we were so afraid that we might miss the
attack that we salvaged everything not essential and started to fight our
way through the mud. It was a slow and wearisome process, but we managed
to get as far as Bakuba by evening. The river was rising in one of its
periodical floods and we found that the pontoon bridge had been cut half
an hour before our arrival.
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