In November we sailed from Dolali for Basra in Iraq. We travelled from there by train; we stopped in Ur (where Abraham was born) for a cup of tea. We then travelled all night onto Baghdad. The carriage we were on was also used to carry horses so there were no seats. It was forty men or eight horses. We then went from Baghdad to Kirkuk. We were four miles from the Little Dab River and fourteen miles from Kirkuk. We were positioned there to protect the oil fields from a possible German break through in the Caucasus Mountains. We formed part of the 10th Army which itself was part of PAIFORCE (Persian and Iraq command). I used to listen to the radio for news, particularly with the better news coming from Russia. However I found that whereas I would tell other soldiers that I had heard on the news that the Russians had killed 10,000 Germans and destroyed 100 tanks but by the time it had gone all around the men it had become 100,000 Germans and 1,000 tanks. What is more it was said that it must be true because ‘John had said so’.


On a Saturday in early December at 2.30 p.m. we saw a large group of people, hundred of them including women and children, who some of the soldiers thought were gypsies. I said that I did not think they looked like gypsies to me. After some discussion some of us spoke to them and discovered that a number of them could speak English. We learnt that they were Polish and had been prisoners of war in Russia. They had walked from Russia to Iran and had carried tents to sleep in. They hated the Russians who had stabbed them in the back in 1939. Their intention was to join the British army. This they were able to do and after two weeks they were given uniforms.

While we were out on manoeuvres I was able to look at and study the different contours of hills and mounds with their different colours. Together with the effect of the sun they often produced quite a pleasing effect, even in this barren land. Once I had got more used to this treeless landscape I could appreciate its bleak and stark beauty.

We would chat to some of the native mounted policemen who with their bony horse and rifles patrolled the oil pipelines and roads. They seemed to be very callous towards their own people and they would shoot anyone caught thieving. We saw more of the natives scratching in the soil with their primitive ploughs or minding their flocks of long tailed, long eared sheep which they would do from dawn to dusk. They wore grey cloaks made from felt and the cloaks sticking straight out from their shoulders gave them the appearance of scarecrows.


On our way back through the native quarters of the town we would sometimes see the women shrouded in black from head to foot and then attractively dressed maidens hurriedly covering their pretty faces from our view with their shawls. We saw the children, many with an almost waxen complexion of strange set beauty, crouched over the bridge over the dried up river bed. Lining the road were the beggars and deformed people so common in the East. On the side of the river bed we saw beds of spinach and in the distance, the quite palatial houses of the rich Armenians and other better off peoples. The learned with their robes sat outside the tea shops in true eastern custom, supping their little glasses of tea and no doubt talking politics. The whole picture was quite pleasing and one which I would have loved to see on an oil painting hung up on the wall at home in England.

I wrote to Vera from Northern Iraq in February 1943 ‘How bleak the world seems at times while at other it seems quite bright and rosy especially when the news is good as it is these days. We live from news bulletin to news bulletin and even on the worst scheme the constant victories of the Russians fill us with hope. Except for the rain last week we did not have too bad a time and even in the most depressing periods, wit and good humour is not lacking among the troops. They always seem to be able to turn the edge of despair into a stream of laughter.’


Following the Russian victories our division was transported from the north of Iraq to Tunisia through Palestine, Egypt, Tripolitania, mainly by lorry, and it took about 10 weeks to move the division. I will never forget the mile after mile of sand, dust and natives, spoken of as ‘wogs’ among the men and where in Palestine the Jews always seemed to be working in orderly fields of different types of fruit.