Basrah [Basrah, Al (Basra)] March 2 Belloved Father. I had a grand post at the beginning of the week with 2 letters from you (Jan 11 and 18) and 3 from Mother. I really was starved for letters from home and consequently battened on them. Of course you're perfectly right to put all my balance into the War Loan and I'm glad it's so large. I've drawn a couple of cheques - £50 or £60 if I remember - to cover various expenses of furnishing and I don't rightly call to mind what besides furnishing, but I know there was something, otherwise I spend nothing but for my keep and the wages of my two servants, for the sufficient reason that there's nothing to spend on. So I shall probably be able to take up the balance of the instalments out of income, inshallah. Only of course Mother will have to pay for my summer clothes out of my account. Anyway, always do what you think fit with any money of mine, including appropriating it. I don't care, as I've observed before, a damn. It's ever been a subject on which (up to now unfortunately for you) I can contrive no interest. We really have got the Turks shifted this time, how far shifted we don't yet know. If they make a stand before Baghdad I suppose we shan't go on; in any case I don't know that we shall go on - the line of communications is immensely long. But no matter; what we have already accomplished will make a vast difference and we may expect developments in other directions. Congratulatory effusions are coming in from Basrah - I wonder what the real thought is at the bottom of most of them. But up country the people who have come in to us will be content, for they will feel greater security; and the people who haven't come in will have grave doubts as to whether they've backed the right horse - they're having them already. The Turks thought the crossing of the Tigris in the face of opposition a sheer impossibility. We have that from the prisoners. Let's hope, in consequence, that they are not so well prepared for the achievement as they should be - indeed their headlong flight seems to indicate as much. My own belief is that they won't be able to hold Baghdad for long if we're close up; town and country will rise against them, unless they get strong reinforcements, which doesn't at the moment seem probable.
We have had a cold spell this week, a sharp N. wind which is invigorating. I've ridden every morning and last Sunday I rode all down to Bait Na'mah, about 7 miles, through desert and palm groves and breakfasted with Major Munro, the O.C. and my kind doctor when I was there. He came out to meet me and we had a pleasant ride together. Work has been slack for the last few days, at which times I get rather bored, but I've taken to reading Arabic history every morning with one of our native secretaries, and at the worst I can always put in as much time as I like, and profitably, over Arabic, till things begin again. Today I've been asked to write a brief outline of recent Arabian history for the Intell. Dept. (the sort of thing I really enjoy doing) so I've turned to that. The amount I've written during the last year is appalling. Some of it is botched together out of reports, some spun out of my own mind and former knowledge, and some an attempt to fix the four corners of the new world we are discovering here, and some dry as dust tribal analyses, dull but perhaps more useful than most things. It comes to a great volume of material, of one kind and another and I know I have learnt much if I haven't helped others to learn. But it's sometimes exasperating to be obliged to sit in an office when I long to be out in the desert, seeing the places I hear of and finding out about them for myself. At the end of the war there's one favour I'm going to ask of the authorities and that is that they will give me facilities, so far as they can, to cross southern Arabia. I would like to do one real bit of Arabian exploration, or attempt. But I shall come home first, to see you and get theodolites and things. Dearest I shan't come back this summer. Anyway we are all begged not to travel more than we can help under present conditions. If I feel the summer too long I may go to some hill place in India for a week or two, but it wouldn't amuse me at all - I would much rather stay here. If we are in Basrah this summer we shall be better off than we were last year and more fans and ice; if we're in Baghdad (but we shan't be) we shall be worse off physically but it will be more interesting. I don't much care where I am but on the whole I like the East better than the West as long as there's work to do. And I couldn't leave now when things may be on the point of opening out. You'll agree I know. Darling Father I'm ever your very devoted daughter Gertrude

What extraordinary good fortune keeps Maurice still in England?