Page 251 - Life of Gertrude Bell

THE MANDATE 227
he told a group of Iraqis to mend a culvert at Kadhimain near
Fallujah. One of the Iraqis, Shaikh Dhari, turned to his friends
and said that Leachman was strong and might do them harm if
they refused. Leachman strode out to show them the way and as !
he went he was shot in the back. He was buried near the site of his
murder but his body was later exhumed and taken to Baghdad
where he was re-buried with full military honours at the North
Gate cemetery on March ist, 1921.
‘He always used extremely unmeasured language to the Arabs
and Shaikh Dhari had many grudges against him,’ wrote Gertrude.
Tie was a wild soldier of fortune but a very gallant officer and his
name was known all over Arabia.’ He was also capable of straight
talking with Gertrude. ‘Colonel Leachman told me the other day
that my unbounded conceit was the talk of Iraq,’ she admitted to
Philby.
Another soldier of fortune, Sayid Talib, was back in Iraq and
now saw himself as a suitable Head of State. ‘The Lord knows
what is going to happen here —the best suggestion I can make is
that now Faisal is in England Sir Percy should crown him King
of Mesopotamia in Westminster Abbey (if it hasn’t tumbled
i
down) and then come back hand in hand with him ... I don’t see
S. Talib as King, however, and I fancy that he had some doubts
about it himself... ’ In September they were holding farewell
parties for AT. ‘The night before he left he came in to say good­
bye. I told him that I was feeling more deeply discouraged than
I could well say and that I regretted acutely that we had not made
a better job of our relations. He replied that he had come to
apologise and I stopped him and said I felt sure it was as much
my fault as his and that I hoped he would carry away no ill-feel­
ings, a sentiment to which he cordially responded.’
But she still thought he was wrong. ‘What has happened here
will always be remembered against him ... It may be my point of
view that is wrong, in which case I certainly ought not to remain
here. That will be for Sir Percy to judge.’
Sir Percy arrived in Basra in October 1920 to a popular welcome
and a 17-gun salute. He had recently signed the Anglo-Persian
agreement which was heralded as a triumph for Curzon’s policy
of barring the Bolsheviks’ route to India, as earlier British policies
had barred the same route to their imperial predecessors, but the
euphoria did not last long. The Bolshevik army advanced through
northern Persia and the country’s administrative centre was
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