[13 July 1918] Kermanshah [Bakhtaran] July 13 Darling Father. I left the camp at 5.30 yesterday and got in here at 1 - a long barren road. It's a desert, this country; there's little difference between Persia and Mesopotamia, except that in the one the wilderness is set upright and in the other it's laid flat. We ran up 1000 ft, between steep and narrow mountain slopes, and there we found a British camp where I stopped to draw a ration of bread. After that the valley widened; there were tiny villages, all ruined, the best of all Karind [Karand] at the mouth of a gorge, climbing up the mountain side. There's a patch of cultivation Bellow, vinyards [sic], maize fields and popars [sic] - not many of those as the Turks and Russians cut them down. We've saved the remnants of the population from death by starvation with strenuous relief work, distributed seed grain and given plenty of wage-earning work in road making to the Kurds, so that the worst is over for them. The road is a switchback, up and down over low passes, snow-blocked in winter, and across valley bottoms, mud clogged at that season. It's nothing short of a miracle that we can put it to use. Kermanshah province has had a desperate history for the last - I don't know how many hundred years, worst of all for the last 10. Misgovernment and revolution have left it naked. Yet I suppose the valleys might be fertile and the hills forest- clad. The maize fields flourish wherever there's a population to till them, and the dwarf oaks grow fitfully among the rocks, wherever there's a Kurdish graveyard to give them protection, for the woodcutters spare trees which are rooted in graves and even the goats seem to respect them. So that the Kurd, who has probably few good deeds to his credit during life, serves a useful purpose after he is dead. The consul, Col. Kennion, is away, and the bank manager, Mr Hale, has put me up in a charming house with a big garden round it and avenues of poplars. Over the poplar spires you see the flat mud roofs of Kermanshah covering two big mounds which stand side by side with a bank of trees between; and beyond the town rise the barren, rugged hills, very splendid in mountain forms. I found Gen. Wanchope here, but I was dusty and tired and presently left them, to wash and sleep. After which we went to tea with the Russian consul and his wife who live in the town. We sat in the courtyard, which has a big water basin in the middle and flowering shrubs growing round it, like a picture in a Persian illuminated book. And there we eat delicious apricots and talked till dark, Major Ware, the political officer, and a Bellgian customs man, and one or two others joining the party. It's most agreeably cool, the temp. is now only 80° in the middle of the morning - indoors, that is. I feel lazy - and after all why not? Col. Willcox, who is passing through, is presently coming to see me and I lunch with the American missionaries, namens Stead. I shall not go sightseeing till the evening. We have a very long day to Hamadan tomorrow. Col. Willcox will carry this down for he's returning to Baghdad. Thank Heaven I'm not! When I look out on the green garden full of flowers I don't like the memory of that dust and heat down there. Ever your very affectionate daughter Gertrude.
I write whenever I have a good opportunity so as not to let there be too long intervals between letters.