Armoured cars in Eden

This is the story of a young American man serving in a little documented force in an almost forgotten campaign. More remarkably, he was from a background of military tradition and adventure and the son of a former United States president. His war was against the Turkish Ottoman Empire, his service that of a volunteer in the British army, his familiar locations Negef, Falujah, Baghdad – exotic place names once again familiar to Americans at war. His is a story of parallels and contrasts – of religious sensitivities, rivalries, civil unrest, occupying armies and conflict along the Euphrates and Tigris rivers almost a century ago. Roosevelt’s experiences conclude in the Argonne at the end of hostilities.

One day when the going was too poor to take out the heavy cars, I set off in a tender to visit another section of the battery that was stationed thirty or forty miles away in the direction of Persia, close by a town called Kizil Robat. We had a rough trip, with several difficult fords to cross. It was only through working with the icy water above our waists that we won through the worst, amid the shouts of “Shabash, Sahib!” (“Well done!”) from the onlooking Indian troops.
I reached the camp to find the section absent on a reconnaissance, for the country was better drained than that over which we were working. A few minutes later one of the cyclists came in with the news that the cars were under heavy fire about twenty-five miles away and one of them was badly bogged. I immediately loaded all the surplus men and eight Punjabis from a near-by regiment into the tenders.
We reached the scene just after the disabled car had been abandoned. Some of the Turks were concealed in a village two hundred and fifty yards away; the rest were behind some high irrigation embankments. The free car had been unable to circle around or flank them because of the nature of the terrain. The men had not known that the village was occupied and had bogged down almost at the same time that the Turks opened fire. By breaking down an irrigation ditch the enemy succeeded in further flooding the locality where the automobile was trapped. The Turks made it hot for the men when they tried to dig out the car. The bullets spattered about them. It was difficult to tell how many Turks we accounted for. As dark came on, the occupants of the disabled car abandoned it and joined the other one, which was standing off the enemy but had lost all four tires and was running on its rims. We held a consultation and decided to stay where we were until dawn. We had scarcely made the decision when one of our cyclists arrived with orders from the brigade commander to return immediately. Although exceedingly loath to leave the armoured car, we had no other course than to obey.
It was after midnight by the time we made back to camp. We were told that a small attack had been planned for the morning, and that then we could go out with the troops and recover our car, using some artillery horses to drag it free. The troops soon began filing past, but we didn’t pull out till three o’clock, by which time we were reinforced by an armoured car from another battery. We were held back behind the advanced cavalry until daylight, and felt certain that the Turks would have either destroyed or succeeded in removing our car. Nor were we wrong, for just as we breasted the hill that brought the scene of yesterday’s engagement into view, we saw the smoke of an explosion and the men running back into the village. We cleared the village with the help of a squadron of the Twenty-First cavalry, and found that the car had been almost freed during the night. 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.A few miles on we made out a troop of Arabs hurrying inland, a mile or so away from us, across a couple of ravines. They had some of the stolen camels and were laden down with plunder. Two of our cars made a fruitless attempt to come to terms with them, but only succeeded in placing a few well-aimed bursts from their machine-guns among them.
We now began to come up with bands of Turks. We ran across a number of isolated stragglers who had been stripped by the Arabs. A few had been killed. They as a rule surrendered without any hesitation. We disarmed them and told them to walk back toward Ana. Several times we had short engagements with Turkish cavalry. As a general thing the ground was so very broken up that it was impossible to manoeuvre. I was riding a good deal of the time in the Ford tender that we had brought along with a few supplies, and when one of the tires blew out I waited behind to replace it. The armoured cars had quite a start and we raced along to catch them. In my hurry I failed to notice that they had left the road in pursuit of a troop of cavalry, so when we sighted a large square building of the sort the Turks use as barracks, I made sure that the cars had been there before me. We drove up to the door and I jumped out and shoved it open. In the yard were some infantry and a few cavalry. I had only my stick—my Webley revolver was still in its holster. There was nothing to do but put on a bold front, so I shouted in Arabic to the man I took to be the officer in command, telling him to surrender, and trying to act as if our forces were just outside. I think he must have been more surprised than I was, for he did so immediately, turning over the post to me. Eldridge, the Ford driver, had succeeded in disengaging the rifle that he had strapped in beside him, and we made the rounds under the escort of our captive.