With Roosevelt in Iraq

Captain James Roosevelt, observer extraordinary, showed up in Cairo last week, looking a little peaked and touched with the popular complaint known as Gyppie (for Egyptian) Tummy--a light form of dysentery. Part of his peakedness came from the fact that he had just been on a remarkable desert march and had his baptism of fire.

He had gone along to have a look at the Iraq situation. The British had decided to get the pro-Axis revolt there in hand while the invasion of Crete gave them a breather on Middle Eastern mainlands. A trek of hundreds of British trucks, armored cars and mechanized guns, and thousands of Indian and Arab levies set out from the Mediterranean coast for Middle Iraq, to relieve the besieged airport of Habbania. The last 400 miles was across waterless, roadless wastes.

Observer Roosevelt went along. Just as his car was approaching the airport, four Messerschmitts appeared and went to work. James Roosevelt was frank to admit later that he did not like his first taste of targetry at all. He scrambled out of the car, he said, "faster than I ever got out of anything in my life." In 130-degree heat, which made the metal of motorized units untouchable, the British broke the Iraqi siege of Habbania and drove them right to Feluja on the Euphrates River. There the Iraqi picked positions across the river from the British and dominating the only good bridge leading to Bagdad, 40 miles farther along.

At dawn next day, the British dropped Arabic proclamations asking the Iraqi to surrender at once--or else. After a few minutes the British applied the or else. It consisted of a severe bombing assault, a hail of artillery, and three ground attacks--one straight across the bridge, one which crossed the river farther up, and an airborne assault which landed in the desert behind the Iraqi, cutting off their retreat to Bagdad. By week's end, with the help of Curtiss P-40 Tomahawks (fighters) and Martin 1675 (bombers), the British had the situation well enough in hand so that pro-Axis Premier Rashid Ali El-Gailani and his Defense Minister were reported to have requested visas to flee to Turkey. Incidentally, in the first dogfight between a Curtiss P-40 and a Messerschmitt, the German was shot down.

Oil. But the British were not overly sanguine. They thought El-Gailani's troops might withdraw to the north of Iraq, to the area which makes hot and barren Iraq so worthy of a scrap: the oil fields around Mosul. Last week London reported that strong forces of German airborne troops, complemented with bombers and fighters, had made their way across Syria and were well established in the oil-bearing area.

Germany's total output of oil products, including both imports and synthetic production, is thought to equal only 5% of U.S. production of crude oil, though no one knows exactly how much synthetic fuel she produces. In synthesis, it is easiest to produce gasoline (composed of lighter, simpler molecules), harder to produce fuel oil, hardest to produce lubricating oils and greases. For this reason, while Germany is moderately well off for gasoline, she is thought to be desperately short of the heavier oils. This would explain her eagerness to lay hands on every possible field of natural petroleum.

It appeared last week that the airborne Germans who were rushing across Syria to Iraq were not particularly solicitous for their puppet revolt; that was serving its purpose of worrying the British very well unsupported. The Germans headed straight for the oil.

Two Back Doors. The British would doubtless make every effort to dislodge the Germans from the oil fields. But it appeared last week that the Germans might be able to supply their forces in Iraq through Turkey. It was reported in Vichy that the first German force straddled the Bagdad-Istanbul railway and refused to get off it unless the Turks allowed German equipment to ride its rails across Turkey.

The Turks, it was said, gave in.

In any case, materiel was still hopping across Syria, and the French in Syria showed signs of being hopping mad. Some were angry at the British for bombing Syrian airports. General Henri Fernand Dentz, who is supposed to bear the British a grudge because it was his unpleasant job to turn Paris over to the Germans last summer, and thinks the fall of Paris was mostly Britain's fault, warned that he would "oppose force with force." But other Frenchmen were angry at Frenchmen--for helping the Nazis. Colonel Philibert Collet, tiny, quiet, Arab-speaking onetime Governor of Lebanon, whose wife is English and whose spirit is French but tough, last week went over to the British and Free French cause, leading with him some of his wiry Circassian cavalrymen.

Captain Jimmy's View. In Cairo Captain Roosevelt hobnobbed with Kings --Farouk of Egypt, George of Greece and Peter of Yugoslavia. He had a talk with General Sir Archibald Wavell. Then he gave out his personal observation on the Iraq situation: though the Iraqis seemed to outnumber the British five-to-one, and though the Germans were leading them they were still rotten fighters, and the British would be able to handle them. But as to British chances against the Germans in that sphere. Jimmy was mum.

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