Sep 5 Baghdad Darling Father. I didn't go to Samarra after all. Doom struck out, as the poet says, like a blind camel, and he caught me straight and full. For with my box and bedding packed, my dinner almost carried to General Lubbock's hospitable board - I was going to dine with the Father of Railways on my way to the train - I began to feel curiouser and curiouser and anyhow very certain that I had fever. And then Col. Wilcox [i.e. Willcox] drifted in (Providence always directs the angelic man to my door just when I want him) took my temperature and shattered my plans. I held out for two miserable days in my own house, too achy and above all too headachy to stir, and then came into hospital with a temp. of 102°. Sandfly fever. Everyone has it; I don't know how I've escaped it so long. They don't know what it is really; they haven't caught its microbe yet. But you get your money's worth out of it, if only from the intolerable headache. Quinine is no good. They give you febrifuges and phenacetine, and feed you only on slops, all of which things being unfit, so to speak, for human consumption, you find yourself pretty ragged when at last the devil thing goes. That's the stage I'm at now and one of my few consolations is that your wonderful emerald is pinned onto the brooch (Mother's brooch) which fastens my night gown and I look at with immense pleasure and think what a Belloved Father you are to be sure.
I'm really over the thing; it's gone. But there's no doubt I shall feel cheap for a bit and as soon as I can I shall go away for a fortnight, to Samarra if General Cobbe can still have me, or if not to Hillah [Hillah, Al] or Karbala. Col. Wilcox is very keen that I should do this and I think it will be salvation. It's so beautifully cool now that one can go anywhere.

Here's the War Loan thing signed - I thought Mother could sign anything for me, or is it only cheques she can sign?

I now consider that I've sampled enough Tropical Diseases and intend to turn over a new leaf. They are extremely kind to me in this hospital. They treat me as if I were a Major General.

But Lord! how I hate fever.

Lady Cox has come up on a visit, but I haven't seen her yet, having been cut off from visitors.

Goodbye darlingest Father. Damnable as sandfly fever is, it isn't a matter for the smallest anxiety, so please feel none, you and Mother. I feel ashamed of behaving like this. Gertrude