Kermit Roosevelt

War in the Garden of Eden Kermit Roosevelt

Publisher Marketing: It was at Taranto that we embarked for Mesopotamia. Reinforcements were sent out from England in one of two ways-either all the way round the Cape of Good Hope, or by train through France and Italy down to the desolate little seaport of Taranto, and thence by transport over to Egypt, through the Suez Canal, and on down the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf. The latter method was by far the shorter, but the submarine situation in the Mediterranean was such that convoying troops was a matter of great difficulty. Taranto is an ancient Greek town, situated at the mouth of a landlocked harbor, the entrance to which is a narrow channel, certainly not more than two hundred yards across. The old part of the town is built on a hill, and the alleys and runways winding among the great stone dwellings serve as streets. As is the case with maritime towns, it is along the wharfs that the most interest centres. During one afternoon I wandered through the old town and listened to the fisherfolk singing as they overhauled and mended their nets. Grouped around a stone archway sat six or seven women and girls. They were evidently members of one family-a grandmother, her daughters, and their children. The old woman, wild, dark, and hawk-featured, was blind, and as she knitted she chanted some verses. I could only understand occasional words and phrases, but it was evidently a long epic. At intervals her listeners would break out in comments as they worked, but, like "Othere, the old sea-captain," she "neither paused nor stirred." There are few things more desolate than even the best situated "rest-camps"-the long lines of tents set out with military precision, the trampled grass, and the board walks; but the one at Taranto where we awaited embarkation was peculiarly dismal even for a rest-camp. Contributor Bio:  Roosevelt, Kermit Kermit Roosevelt is an assistant professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. A former clerk to a U. S. Supreme Court justice, he is a graduate of Yale Law School and a member of the Human Rights Advisory Board of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.