Mrs Holt's reference letter for Nancie, 1930.

Disaster as the wadi floods

Life in Baghdad gets even more exciting

Nancie enjoyed playing tennis and swimming in the River Tigris. On one occasion the Tigris and the Euphrates burst their banks and met somewhere south of Baghdad and Nancie was able to boast that she had swum in both rivers simultaneously!

The High Commissioner at the time was Sir Francis Humphrys. Nancie met Sir Kinahan Cornwallis and a Major ? who knew T.E.Lawrence. He always came to the fancy dress ball dressed as a Kurdish rebel.

Nancie remembered one particular garden party in the grounds of the German Billet, when the palm trees were decorated with fairy lights. There were banana trees growing in the gardens and the gardener planted some loofah plants to make a pergola. Nancie had never seen anything grow so rapidly. In less than two months the plants were six feet high and they were able to pick the loofahs which were then dried out and peeled, ready for use in the bath!

The great day came when they were to leave to travel home. Not the easy was for them, of course but blazing the trail overland via Kirkuk, Mosul, Nisibin and Istambul.

By this time the family had grown with the birth of James Alexis Neville Holt who was born in Baghdad. He was Nancie's pride and joy and she always considered him her 'first baby'. Mrs Holt employed an Ayah to look after him but Nancie was delighted to share in his care. Deidre and Gay were very attached to her, by now and she to them, but James, known affectionately as 'Jan' always had a special place in her heart.

Mrs Holt was always late for everything and Major Holt was trying to get her to the station on time. She knew the train wouldn't depart without them but her husband was anxious not to delay it unduly. Eventually they all made it to the station and boarded their special carriage. After several hours they reached Kirkuk and got into a car in a convoy headed for Mosul.

Something held up their departure so they were the last car to leave. The first river they came to was too swollen to cross. The other cars had got across before the rain had come and caused the wadi to flood. By this time it was getting dark and Major Holt didn't want them to spend the night there because of roving bands of nomads. The driver decided to risk crossing but as they reached the middle of the river the engine stopped. They were stuck, with the water lapping through the floorboards: Mrs Holt, Deidre, Gay, Nancie and baby James. Major Holt and the driver got out and tried to push the car but to no avail.

Major Holt decided to set off on foot, with the driver, to look for help in the nearest village. Nancie and the others were left in the car, in the dark, in the middle of the swirling river. Had it rained again they could have been washed away. They whiled away the time by eating some cold chicken that they had brought with them. Nancie had no memory of being afraid.

After a couple of hours Major Holt returned with about twenty evil-looking men in Kurdish robes. They manhandled the car out of the river and then scrambled onto the roof and sides of the car. Major Holt had to sweep them off the car, like flies, with his open hand!

In a short time we reached a mud village, which was surrounded by a mud wall, with an aperture in it, serving as an entrance. Mrs Holt stayed in the car with the three children and Major Holt and Nancie entered the main hut; he, to dry his trousers and she to make the baby's food.  In the centre of the hut was a heap of burning wood, with the smoke curling up and through a hole in the roof. All around them were huddled sleeping and snoring figures.  A man brought them some black, Turkish coffee. While they were drinking it and doing what had to be done, suddenly a crowd of women came in. Nancie describes them as 'all the women of the harem'. They were chattering away in a dialect that Major Holt did not understand. They felt Nancie's arms and touched her hair and face and seemed really amused. Eventually, stepping over the sleeping bodies they found their way out of the darkened, smoky hut and back to the others waiting in the car. Nancie had managed to prepare the food for the baby. They slept, or tried to sleep in the car until dawn when they slipped away, hopefully unnoticed.

The night before Major Holt had told the Chief that they would be rewarded once the party reached Mosul. He told them that they had no money on them just in case they were murdered for it, as he knew that some white people had been killed a few months earlier, for their belongings. At least he hoped that they understood his Kurdish!  Halfway to Mosul they were met by a posse of horsemen who had come looking for them. Their non-appearance at Mosul with the rest of the convoy had caused quite a stir. Once safely at their destination they all had baths and the children were tucked up in bed. The adults also caught up on a bit of sleep and realised that they'd had a lucky escape from a very dangerous situation.  Nancie wrote about this in 1976, but her memories of the events were as fresh as if it had happened the day before.

I recently discovered that Major Holt had got into a similar situation not long after he married when he decided to drive from Damascus to Baghdad across the desert with no road to follow. His party set out in a couple of model T Fords with enough water and petrol, they hoped, to get them to Baghdad. In the second car were Rose Wilder Lane, daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, who wrote 'The Little House on the Prairie' and a Travel journalist called B.D.MacDonald.

They got lost and were getting low on both water and petrol. Mrs Holt lost her wedding ring at one point and they spent time searching for it in the sand! Eventually they found themselves only 10 miles from Rutbah. Sighting two men with camels Major Holt approached them. The rest of the party crossed their fingers that these men were not bandits. At night they had slept with rifles at the ready and someone on guard at all times. Luckily the men were friendly and took them to the nearest village where they were able to refill their water bottles.

The unexpected visitors were entertained and a sheep was duly killed and cooked in their honour but the desperately poor Saluba tribesmen were very nervous and feared that bandits might come and attack the visitors while they were in the village and rob them as well, so the visitors were asked to leave after they had eaten. They slept again, in the cars with someone on guard all night, reaching Baghdad safely on the sixth day. There may have been more adventures in the intervening eight years for Major 'Desert' Holt, as he was known, but let us return to Nancie's journey, coming home from Baghdad, in 1930.

The journey was resumed by car the next day as far as Nisibin where they boarded the train to Istambul (now Constantinople). After a couple of hours Nancie was surprised to hear a commotion in the corridor and Major Holt rushed in and covered her with a blanket. He told her she was very ill and she was not to speak to anyone. Poor Nancie was mystified but did as she was told. You didn't argue with Major Holt. He was quite excitable and could be somewhat aggressive.

Later the mystery was explained. Nancie's passport had gone missing and the Turkish authorities wanted to put her off the train. He managed to persuade them that he could get another passport at the next town that the train stopped at. The train was, indeed, held up, whilst he rushed off to the British Consulate to get a temporary passport organised. (It did help that he was in charge of the entire railway network!)

Nancie found out later that the lead driver of their convoy had handed over all the passports except hers. She was very lucky that she had been allowed to carry on with her journey. Major Holt would tease her forever after, saying that the driver must have fancied her and wanted to keep her passport with the photo.

Nancie and the Holt Family spent a few days in Istambul. She remembers vividly seeing a familiar figure on the landing stage as they waited for the ferryboat one day. It was 'Charlie Chaplin', walking about on the pier in his inimitable way. She presumed it wasn't the real one but who knows? Maybe it was!

From Istambul they took the train (probably the Arlberg Orient Express) across Europe, passing through Sophia, Belgrade and Budapest. Nancie remembered being told that Buda was on one side and Pest on the other. She was unimpressed with the Blue Danube and thought it looked very grey and murky. It didn't live up to the romantic 'blue' image at all.

Northern Italy was amazing, she thought, with its huge mountains, topped with snow, and lakes with castles on them, and tiny villages on the mountain slopes.

The journey through Switzerland, at night, with the lights twinkling on the lake below appealed to her more, as the train followed the ' terrifying route round the edge of the mountains'. The route included the Simplon Tunnel where an electric engine took them through.

After a few days in Paris, Major Holt and his wife set off for a month in Spain, leaving Nancie to take the three children back to England. She was accompanied by Major Holt's father who, she said, was in his seventies and not a lot of help. She once told me that she felt she had four children to look after! He was in charge of the tickets. They caught the boat train from Paris to Le Havre and boarded the night-boat for Southampton. James was 15 months old by this time and the girls maybe 7 and 5. Everyone thought she was the Mother and she coped very well, although she missed the extra pair of hands that the Ayah had provided in Baghdad.  They managed a few hours sleep in bunks in a communal cabin.

They were met at Southampton by Major Holt's sister, a Mrs Godfrey. They all set off for Woodbury Salterton, in Devon where Nancie and the children had rooms in a cottage near Mrs Godfrey's house. Nancie's Mother travelled down from Scotland to spend a week with her and, no doubt to hear about all her adventures to date.

Christine Adeline J Holt, the eldest of the Holt children, was called after her Mother, Sophia Adeline Holt, nee Litton. Born in 1884 she was followed by Gabrielle Ines (1886), Alec Horace Edward Litton (Major Holt), 1887, Isabel Norah S. Holt, 1889, Evelyn Maude N. Holt 1890, Kathleen Mary Holt 1891 and Donald Stewart Holt (Lieutenant-Colonel), 1895. Their Father, Horace Henry Holt, was also a Civil Engineer, born in 1856 so would be about 74 when he travelled back to England with Nancie and the little ones. Christine married Brian Godfrey and had two children, Rosemary and Norah.

Nancie visits The Eternal Fires and the arch at Ctesiphon

Sometimes they went north by train. They once went to Kirkuk where the storks nested on most of the rooftops. They visited the 'Eternal Fires' at Baba Gurgur, which can be seen from Kirkuk. Nancie walked between the knee- high and waist-high flames and tried to stamp them out. (No Health and Safety nonsense in those days!). She thought the ground between them felt very brittle and hollow.  Fed by chemicals in the ground they have been burning for centuries and are reputed to be the fiery furnace into which King Nebuchadnezzar cast Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.

Another favourite outing was to Ctesiphon, about thirty miles south of Baghdad. There stands the oldest and highest unsupported man-made arch in the world. Even today despite having been partially demolished it is still an impressive sight. Renovations are in progress as I write this in 2015 but back in 1930 it was a most stunning bit of architecture, standing alone in the desert with no other building for many miles.

The German Billet was on the east side of the river where most of the Railway officials lived. To get to the main shopping area Nancie had to cross the Maude Bridge. The main emporium was called 'Orosdibachs'. During the festival of Ramadan they were not allowed to cross the bridge 'because of the unrest amongst the native Baghdadis'. I'm not quite sure whether she means they were celebrating in the streets or what. There was a 'Railways Club' for the people who worked for the railway but the main British Club was on the Baghdad side of the river and was called " Alwiyah".  Gertrude Bell, the famous 'Arabist' who was Chief Assistant to the British High Commissioner, had founded this club a few years earlier. It had a large swimming pool and other facilities.

Life in Baghdad 1929

The house they were to live in was the top floor flat of a large brick-built building called The German Billet. The heat meant that at night they would sleep outside on the stone balcony. Every evening, at dusk, the two houseboys, Saduk and Jaffa, would splash the stone floor of the balcony with water to cool it down before the family and Nancie went to bed under their protective mosquito nets.

Nancie was quite healthy and managed to avoid the worst of the usual ailments such as 'Baghdad Boils' and 'Greenfly Fever', Typhus, Typhoid etc .I think she meant 'Sandfly Fever' which, like Baghdad Boils, is a form of Leishmaniasis when an insect bite introduces parasites into the blood. Serving soldiers in Iraq, today, still suffer from these.  Nancie was amazed, herself, that she didn't catch anything, after the quantity of filthy River Tigris water that she swallowed when Major Holt was teaching her to swim!

While they were out there the young red-haired wife of Dr Woodman died of Typhoid. Nancie and the girls and Mrs Holt had had tea with her only two weeks earlier. Mrs Woodman had been a friend of Nancie's cousin, Daisy Renwick, wife of Professor Renwick of Edinburgh University.

(There's that small world again.)

The Holt Family had their own personal railway carriage, since Major Alex Holt was Chief Engineer of Baghdad Railways. This could be attached to any train and contained living, sleeping and cooking/washing facilities. When they got to their destination they would be unhitched and left in a siding. Nancie didn't like to hear the jackals and other wildlife prowling around outside their 'wagons-lits'. That must have taken her back to the train trip across Canada when she was four.

On one occasion the train took them south, to Diwaniyah, to visit some friends of the Holts, called Dillon. Nancie experienced her first sandstorm while they were staying at the Dillons' house. Without any warning 'everything turned to night and in the seconds it took to close all the windows, everything indoors was covered with a film of sand'. She found it very frightening and couldn't imagine what would have happened had they been outside at the time. 

At the time of their visit a new policy was being introduced on using inmates of the prison to tend the gardens and the fields around the house where they were staying. For every five prisoners there was a guard, armed with a fierce-looking rifle. Nancie found the guards more terrifying than the prisoners!

While she was in Diwaniyah Nancie met an Iraqi lady called Mrs J. J. Raleigh and corresponded with her for many years. This lady had married a British man and had a son by him. He had then left her. Nancie thought he was English or Irish but she later wrote to Nancie back in England, asking her to buy a complete kilt outfit for her son so I suspect she'd married a Scotsman. Nancie had to decline, as highland outfits were as expensive then as they are today.   

Sometimes they went north by train. They once went to Kirkuk where the storks nested on most of the rooftops. They visited the 'Eternal Fires' at Baba Gurgur, which can be seen from Kirkuk. Nancie walked between the knee- high and waist-high flames and tried to stamp them out. (No Health and Safety nonsense in those days!). She thought the ground between them felt very brittle and hollow.  Fed by chemicals in the ground they have been burning for centuries and are reputed to be the fiery furnace into which King Nebuchadnezzar cast Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.

Another favourite outing was to Ctesiphon, about thirty miles south of Baghdad. There stands the oldest and highest unsupported man-made arch in the world. Even today despite having been partially demolished it is still an impressive sight. Renovations are in progress as I write this in 2015 but back in 1930 it was a most stunning bit of architecture, standing alone in the desert with no other building for many miles.

The German Billet was on the east side of the river where most of the Railway officials lived. To get to the main shopping area Nancie had to cross the Maude Bridge. The main emporium was called 'Orosdibachs'. During the festival of Ramadan they were not allowed to cross the bridge 'because of the unrest amongst the native Baghdadis'. I'm not quite sure whether she means they were celebrating in the streets or what. There was a 'Railways Club' for the people who worked for the railway but the main British Club was on the Baghdad side of the river and was called " Alwiyah".  Gertrude Bell, the famous 'Arabist' who was Chief Assistant to the British High Commissioner, had founded this club a few years earlier. It had a large swimming pool and other facilities.

Major Holt waits for the plane to land at Baghdad

Nancie mourned the crew of The City of Jerusalem for the rest of her life. She had got to know them on the flight from Gaza to Baghdad, especially when they had lunch together at the re-fuelling stop at Rutbah Wells.
She also realised that it could just as easily have happened to them. Flying over the desert was still a very risky undertaking.
The pilot who lost his life at Jask, Captain Albert E.Woodbridge, was famous for having wounded the German ace, Baron Von Richthoven, better known as The Red Baron, during an aerial battle in the First World War. The Baron received a bullet-wound in the head from which he never fully recovered.
Captain Woodbridge was one of the many surviving British pilots who joined Imperial Airways after the end of the First World War and helped to establish the Postal Route from London to Karachi in the 1920s.
It was a risky job, often involving emergency landings in the desert, brushes with wild tribesmen and dangerous weather conditions like sandstorms. Flying at night was particularly hazardous and if the flight was delayed until darkness fell this meant using flares on landing, both on the ground and on the wings of the plane. The planes were not able to carry enough fuel to get right across the desert to Baghdad, hence the halfway re-fuelling stop.
After a couple of hours at Rutbah Wells, Nancie's plane took off for Baghdad where Major Holt was awaiting their arrival. As they neared the city Mrs Holt pointed out the rivers Tigris and Euphrates and various other landmarks. The plane began to go up and down, rather erratically and the occupants began to be sick It would swoop upwards and then plunge downwards and Nancie missed seeing some of the sights.
Meanwhile Major Holt was watching from Baghdad Airport and thought he was about to lose his entire family as he saw the plane plunge earthwards only to rise again. He was, in fact , ill for some days afterwards, as a result of this experience. Meanwhile, on the plane, Nancie and co were too busy being sick to worry too much. Eventually the crew managed to get the plane safely onto the ground and the weary passengers stepped out into the searing heat of Iraq in the month of June.

Tragic Plane crash at Jask 1929

Three months later, the City of Jerusalem was to crash at Jask, on the Persian Gulf with the loss of  two crew and one passenger. The plane caught fire on landing due to the use of wing flares because it was late in arriving.  Nancie told us about the accident and thought that all the crew had been killed but that was not the case. The details are all available on line and also the newspaper report which I reproduce here, courtesy of The Times Newspaper.

Nancie flies to Baghdad with the Holts

During their stay in Haifa, Nancie befriended an Italian family called Campaneilla, a Colonel and his very attractive wife and their ten children. It must have been at this time that she swam in the Dead Sea which she told us was so salty, that it was impossible to sink when you swam in it. Oddly she doesn't mention this in her own memoirs.
After spending the month of May in Haifa, they drove to Gaza, also on the coast, where they were to board the plane to Baghdad. They stayed for two nights, in huts, on the airfield, with huge planes taxi-ing just outside their windows. The seashore at Gaza was just miles and miles of sand and rolling waves with not a soul in sight. Nancie thought it was probably very different by the time she was writing about it more than forty years later.
They boarded the Imperial Airways bi-plane which was called The City of Jerusalem. Nancie was as she puts it 'over-awed at the immensity of it'.

Nancie was sitting towards the back of the plane and after about ten minutes of flying a pair of legs appeared through an aperture further forward and a uniformed figure dropped down and walked up the aisle to Nancie. "You're weighing the tail down," he told her. "You'll have to come and sit further forward." At first she thought he was joking but he directed her to a seat in front of everyone else. She didn't like the sensation of walking up the plane as she felt she might go through the floor.
She then had to sit, looking at a notice, right in front of her nose, which declared, "No smoking. Not even Kensitas!".She could see the propellors, right outside the window, and the noise made it impossible to converse.I still have the note that she exchanged with Mrs Holt on the flight. The motion of the plane was 'like going over waves'. This was due, someone told her, to the 'desert pattern', presumably caused by the contours of the dunes below. After a few hours they landed in the desert at Rutbah, to refuel. The passengers and crew all had a picnic lunch together and Nancie enjoyed getting to know them.
The above photo is from an amazing collection of old photographs at The Library of Congress, in the USA. Despite some damage they are a wonderful record of aviation in the 1920s.