Grandpa started his journal on the day he boarded the troop ship
HMT Huntsgreen
at Southampton. He wrote almost every day of the two years he was away. He arrived back home in January 1923.
The
Huntsgreen
sailed on 22 December 1920 heading for India. On the way they stopped at Port Said where he went ashore into Cairo, visiting the Pyramids at Ghiza.
Steaming down through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, the ship arrived in Bombay on 16 January. The next day,Grandpa left on the
SS Varna
heading for Basrah, calling into Karachi on the way, arriving on 23 January.
After a few days in Basrah he moved to Baghdad where he stayed for the majority of his tour.
In June 1922 he returned to the Basrah office and in July he was sent to Poona in India to audit their accounts. In August he moved on to Meerut near Delhi, one of the biggest and most vital military stations of India. This gave him the opportunity to visit Delhi and the Golden Triangle before returning to Bombay, sailing on 15 September for Basrah.
During his time in Mesopotamia and India he visited many interesting places both in the course of his work and as a tourist and wrote voluably about places visted.
In December 1922 he left Mesopotamia. His journal ends on 6 December. It does appear from the abrupt ending that originally there was more but it was not amongst the papers inherited so presumably, sadly, is lost.
The journal has been transcribed as it was written without any attempt to edit out errors or contentious entries. Some readers may find parts of it offensive. Harry Pearman was a devout christian and from memory was never unkind nor inconsiderate. However he was a man of his time with standards and beliefs no longer ascribed to.
For convenience, the journal has been divided into months. Click in the table to view journal entries for that month.
