Supplies, however, are the proper point at which to assess his precautions, for they do not merely depend on Alexander's competence or otherwise, a topic which different fashions like to approach differently, however slender the facts. They also depend on his staff. For while the results must not be played down or excused, the march through Makran had been agreed and discussed by the same staff-officers who had transported more tlian 100,000 men down the Indus and equipped an army as far as the Beas. The troops had indeed gone hungry in the past, but that was one more reason for anticipating their needs in future. Makran was known to be a difficult desert, and yet the officers were confident that Alexander would bring them through; it is unthinkable that he had won this confidence without first explaining the sources of food. Had he tried to browbeat them by nothing more than talk of the mishaps of Cyrus and Semiramis and the challenge of difficult exploration, they would have been justified in deserting or poisoning a leader who had clearly lost his sense of the possible. They did neither, and in fact, there is proof that the march had been carefully considered. The region round Pattala was rich in grain and cattle and a huge heap of corn had been plundered: 'four months' supplies for the expedition' had been duly gathered near the base camp before the men set out for the river Hab, and four months, was the likely length of the desert march, through the country of the Oreitans and Gedrosians.

The fate of these stores at Pattala is most mysterious. Wagons and pack-animals did follow the land army into the desert, together with children, women and traders. Clearly, Alexander was not aware of the full horror of Makran, and hoped that a part of the stores could be moved through its sand by pack and cart.

But he cannot have planned to convoy more than a small part of his store-heap in the army's train. Its volume was far too large, so the usual strategy would apply as in the years on the Mediterranean coast. The army's stores would be loaded into the huge grain-lighters which would thus supply the whole expedition from the sea. The histories imply only that Alexander was concerned to supply the fleet with water. There is no clear word of his own dependence on the ships. This may be a concealment of a plan which failed, or it may be one more example of their concentration on Alexander's own role. For the link with the fleet was surely planned to save Alexander, and for once his famous luck deserted him.

First, the monsoon winds blew up the Indus until mid October and detained the fleet for three months, stores and all. Alexander had not allowed for the seasonal weather. Then, the tribesmen struck a blow. Before entering Makran, Alexander had left several thousand troops, a Bodyguard and a satrap to round off the conquest of the Oreitans and to settle the new Alexandria on the old river-site; the satrap is said to have been given other firm orders, and they are easily deduced from the sequel. When the fleet finally reached the first depot in his territory, they took on ten days' supplies. Plainly, the satrap was to be Alexander's link with the fleet. He had been ordered to fill up its stores, direct it to suit the army's timing and detail its meeting-points with Alexander. These would have been specified from the Oreitans’ local knowledge. But when Alexander marched west, the Oreitans round the new Alexandria united with their neighbours and harassed both the satrap and the fleet way back on the Indus. Perhaps they burnt a part of the store-heap. Certainly, they killed the satrap in a major battle. Meanwhile Alexander was far into Makran and daily despairing of contact with his fleet and his main supplies. It never occurred to him to blame their absence on a continuing wind. He could only think that his satrap had betrayed his orders, so he sent orders for his deposition as soon as the army had struggled out of the desert. He did not know that the man had died, still less that he had blamed a wrong, though plausible, culprit.

Alexander was leading a land army which was large, if not excessive: about half the Foot Companions and three-quarters of the Shield Bearers, many of them over sixty years old, had been sent home by the easier route, but his expedition still numbered some 30,000 fighting men, 8,000 of them Macedonians, though accuracy is impossible as the number of ships and sailors detached with the fleet is unknown. They might just have been fed sufficiently, had the satrap of the Oreitans in the rear fulfilled his orders and had Makran been no more fearsome than the desert which led to Siwah. But the fleet delayed, and the march through Makran was so indescribably unpleasant that neither of the two officers, who very probably had been through it could bring themselves to give a history which went beyond the sweeter-smelling kinds of desert flower and a trivial outline of anecdotes.

It was left to Nearchus, following by sea, to describe what the land troops had really suffered; he would have heard it plainly enough from Alexander and his officers when they eventually re-met. The beginning among the Oreitans was as nothing to the trials which followed; in Makran, land of the Gcdrosians, their surroundings were hot, barren and hopeless. The men would only move by night, though even then the temperature would not have dropped below 35 ⁰C, and as the true nature of the desert became apparent, they would be forced across twelve or even fifteen miles at a stage. On solid gravel they had shown they could do it but Makran is not solid; it is a yielding morass of fine sand, blown into dunes and valleys, like waves on a turbulent sea.

In places, the dunes were so high that one had to climb steeply up and down quite apart from the difficulty of lifting one's legs out of the pit-like depths of the sand; when camp was pitched, it was kept often as much as a mile and a half away from any watering-places, to save men plunging in to satisfy their thirst. Many would throw themselves in, still wearing their armour, and drink like fish underwater: then, as they swelled they would float up to the surface, having breathed their last, and they would foul the small expanse of available water.

The expected summer rains, which would run down from the mountains and fill the rivers and the water-holes and soak the plains' had not yet fallen along the coast; that was bad luck, but to crown it all, when the rains came, they fell out of sight in the hills and found the army bivouacked beneath near a small stream. Shortly before midnight, the stream began to swell with the spate of fresh water which was coursing down from its source in a flash-flood. 'It drowned most of the women and children who were still following the expedition and it swept away the entire royal equipment, including the remaining pack-animals. The men themselves only just managed to survive and even then, they lost many of their weapons.'

Hunger increased with despair. As long as the pack-animals survived, they could be slaughtered unofficially and eaten raw by the troops; many died of the drought or sunk into the sand 'as if into mud or untrodden snow', and these were fair game even for the officers. Dates and palm-tree hearts were available for those who were of a rank to sequester them, while sheep and ground flour were seized from the natives: it was the custom in Makran, in years when the harvest ripened without scorching, to store enough to last for the next three seasons. When the fleet first failed to join the army, Alexander had gambled. He had marched on by the most plausible route, eventually turning inland in desperation. Yet as soon as he found supplies he showed his greatness. Reasoning that the fleet, by now, must be starving too, he ordered part to be taken to the coast. This would signal the army's new route. As usual, he did not put himself first when marching. Not so his men, who ate the supplies when entrusted with their convoy to the coast.