'Field notes: Mesopotamia. General Staff, India. February, 1917.' [‎34v] (75/350)

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features extending outwards on both sides from the main rivers,
viz. :—
River.
Narrow dry belt traversed by creeks.
Marsh and lake area.
Desert.
Marsh and lake area.
Narrow dry belt traversed by creeks.
River.
This sequence continues from the Pusht-i-Kuh on the one
side to the eastern edge of the Arabian desert on the other,
only in the south does a different picture present itself. Here,
from Suk-us-Sheyukh downwards, the Euphrates cannot be
said to have a clearly-defined bed, and the whole area included
in the triangle Nasiriyah, Gurmat Ali and a point midway
between Qurnah and Ezra’s Tomb becomes one huge expanse
of open water and marsh, with only a solitary half inundated
village here and there and with the Hamar Lake as its principal
feature. In the dry weather the marshes recede but the general
marshy-character of the triangle remains unchanged. The
northern and southern sides merge into desert, its eastern
side is closed by the Tigris and by the dense belts of palm
groves that follow that river’s course for nearly 120 miles,
from Qurnah down to the sea. They are another landmark
of the country, but a detailed description of them need not
be given here; suffice it to say that fighting in them resembles
fighting in woodland, aggravated by the presence, every few
yards, of ditches deep with bog or water, and innumerable
low banks and mud walls.
The palm-belt area is always damp, and here it is that
the humid heat takes quite as much out of man and beast
as the scorching sun up-country. In Basrah the maximum
shade temperature recorded last year was 115° Fahrenheit;
this year the highest up to date has been 112‘2°. The mini
mum temperature in Basrah for 1915 was 36°, and for 1916
it stands at present at 32°. Inland the average readings vary
at different places up to Baghdad, but the contrasts between
maximum and minimum are even greater than near the sea.
It will thus be seen that the climate of Iraq is one of extremes.
The hot weather begins in May and ends about the beginning