"أيام ثيم ولَّت" [و‎‎١‎١‎٦] (٢٤٨/٢٣١)

1 1 7
relatively little damage (although there were stories - probably
fu° Cr /u P _ h A 1 ■_ j about th eir having eaten cotton and silk goods in
apocryph a 1
the shops
phi losophical
they said
and even
about
a baby in its
it. "Let them
pram) and
take their
the Arabs were
rights and go,"
It brought us a visit from the Middle East Anti-Locust mission
led by Desmond Vesey-Fitzgera 1d and including amongst its members
the redoubtable Wilfred Thesiger. 'Vesey' I had met a year or two
before on a similar mission to the Trucial Coast, and although no
doubt an excellent entomologist he was no diplomat. While they
were working in Kuwait I had occasion to visit Basra for a few
days on business and, on my return, found that Shaikh Abdullah
Mubarak, in charge of Public Security, had stopped all
anti-locust work owing to some misunderstanding or imagined
slight. I was able to get the work started again after a few
words with the Shaikh.
i r um an o I a
I also had
c ommanding
Basra. We had known each
was a subaltern in the 2nd
pass his promotion exam to captain
only managed to stay on in the Army
the Governor of the Punjab, since
in Shu'aiba near
a visit
the Indian Long-Range Desert Group
other years before in Sialkot when he
Lancers. Poor Sam was quite unable to
in spite of repeated tries and
as A.D.C. to Sir Henry Craik,
J _ - - Sir Henry was very keen on
racing and Sam was an excellent jockey. He was facing compulsory
retirement from the Army when his bacon was saved by
the outbreak of war. He had a most successful and distinguished
war and, after it, retired to a small farm in Ireland where he
found it quite impossible to make both ends meet. In desperation
he want to the War Office in London to ask for a retired
told there was no vacancy; and gloomily
a sandwich. There he found himself
.F. officer, then at the Air Ministry,
his Long Range Desert Group from behind
had crashed in the Western Desert. This
man found him a job in R.A.F. Security at an installation in
Ireland. There he again distinguished himself by
I.R.A. men when armed only with a walking-stick,
another decoration! So much for promotion exams.
officer's job, but was
went off to a pub for
standing next to an R.A
whom he had rescued with
the German lines when he
Northern
capturing
and added
two
yet