of the discomfort they had known so long; and when his turn came to
watch, every man was eager to lend his waterproof sheet to Fisher and
me, who had only our thin khaki. Marner's death had gone deep. 'I hear
Mr. Marner's dead,' said a voice. 'I'm sorry to hear that,' said
another; 'he was a nice feller.' 'He was a good feller an' a',' said a
third. 'He was more like a brother to me than an officer,' his
platoon-sergeant told me. These were brief tributes to an able and
conscientious man, but they sufficed. At Sumaikchah our bivvies had
been side by side, where the green was most glowing, and we had
rejoiced together in that light and colour.
Beled Station was a small action, scarcely bigger than those dignified
in the Boer War with the name of battles. Our casualties were little
over a hundred for the whole day, and more than half of these were
incurred in the station itself. The Leicestershires lost twenty, three
killed among them; several of the wounded died later. But the action
attained considerable fame locally as a model of a successful little
battle. Our losses were miraculously slight. But for the very great
skill with which the two separate attacks were organized, and the
constant alertness which exploited every one of the ground's endless
irregularities, our losses must have been many times heavier. The
advance was conducted with caution and the utmost economy of life; but
the moment a breach was effected or an opportunity offered, then there
was a lightning blow and a swift push forward. Thus the enemy in the
station were trapped before they realized that their retreat was
threatened. The careless trooping together at the station was the one
regrettable thing, and it cost us dear. The water of Beled Station was
like the water brought to David from Bethlehem.
For the action itself, a small force advanced steadily throughout the
day, with unreliable maps, over ten miles of broken country, which was
admirably furnished with posts of defence, which posts they seized and
turned into advantages for attack. They captured a strong position and
over two hundred prisoners, three machine-guns, and some hundreds of
rifles with less than half the casualties their numerically superior
foe sustained. Since a small battle is an epitome of a large one, and
far easier to see in detail, even this lengthy account may have
justification. The Army Commander's opinion was shown not alone by his
congratulatory message, but by the immediate honours awarded. To the
Leicestershires fell one Military Cross[4] and four Military Medals,
one of the latter going to Sergeant Batten, Marner's platoon-sergeant.
The water-tank leans against the station no longer, and they have
repaired the crumbled walls. But the cracks and fissures in the great
fort lift eloquent witness to the way both armies desired it, and the
quiet, beautiful hills carry their scars also.
The rushing brook, the silken grass and pride
Of poppies burning red where Marner died,
Unchanged! and in the station still, as then,
The water that was bought with blood of men.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _Anabasis_, Book ii., H.G. Dakyns' translation. The identification
of Sumaikchah and Sittake is due to Major Kenneth Mason, R.E., M.C.
[2] 'Well done' (Hindustani).
[3] High explosive.
[4] Westlake's. See next chapter.
II
HARBE
Behold, as may unworthiness define,
A little touch of Harry in the night.
_King Henry V._
If I thought Hell was worse than Mesopotamia, I'd be a good
man.--_Sayings of Fowke._
Next morning was one of leisure. The 19th Brigade took up our line, and
we bivouacked before the station. We fed and washed and slept. The
enemy put a few shells on to the 19th Brigade, doing no damage, and
when that Brigade pushed on to Harbe he fell back on his strong lines
at Istabulat, another four miles. The 19th Brigade, with only one or
two men wounded, seized Harbe and twenty-four railway-trucks, which
were of great assistance presently, when the mules drew them along the
track with ammunition for the assault on Istabulat.
In the afternoon the 28th Brigade followed to Harbe. The heat was
considerable, but the journey was short. Beyond the river plunging
shells told us that our troops were pushing up both banks of the Tigris
simultaneously.
The 21st Brigade took over Beled. With them remained the Cherub,
wielding for one day the flaming sword of retribution. Arabs had
desecrated our graves as they always did, and had stripped our dead.
The Cherub put the bodies back and dug several dummy graves. In these
last he put Mills bombs; removing the pin, he held each bomb down as
the earth was delicately piled over. The deed called for great nerve;
he could feel the bomb quick to jump under his finger's pressure. Arabs
watched impudently, sniping his party from a few hundred yards away.
Neither did they let him get more than a quarter of a mile away, when
he had finished, before they flocked down. The Cherub made his way to
the station, and watched, as a boy watches a bird-trap. The Arabs fell
to scooping out the soil badger-fashion with their hands. There was an
explosion, and the earth shot up in a fountain of clods. The robbers
ran, but returned immediately and carried off two of their number,
casualties. Then they remained to dig. Colonel Leslie, commanding the
21st Brigade, had watched from Beled Station with enthusiasm, and he
now turned a machine-gun on them. The Cherub, returning to the scene of
his labours, found that the Arabs had dug two feet deeper than his
original grave, breaking up the stiff ground with their fingers. To
these desperate people a piece of cloth seemed cheap at the cost of two
dead or wounded.
From first to last nothing moved deeper anger than their constant
exhumation of our dead, and murder, for robbery's sake, of the wounded
or isolated. Major Harley, A.P.M. of Baghdad in later days, learnt to
admire the ability of the Arabs, whose brief Golden Age, when Abbasids
ruled, so far outshone contemporary Europe. When he pressed them on
their ghoul-like ways, they replied, 'You British are so foolish. You
bury the dead with the clothes. The dead do not need clothes, and we
do.' The logic of this does not carry far. To them, as Mussulmans,
graves were sacrosanct to a unique degree; a suspicion of disrespect on
our part would rouse the whole of Islam to flaming wrath. They were
criminals, by their own _ethos_, when they desecrated our dead.
Moreover, they murdered whenever they could, in the cruellest and
beastliest fashion. The marvel is, our actions of reprisal were so
rare. Apart from this of the Cherub's, only two came within my personal
knowledge. Of these two cases, one I and nearly the whole division
considered savage and unjustifiable, which was also the official view.
It was the act of a very young subaltern, mistakenly interpreting an
order. In the other case an Arab was caught red-handed, lurking in a
ditch on our line of march, with one of their loaded knobkerries for
any straggler. I do not know what happened, but have no doubt that he
was shot.
It cannot be said that they acted for patriotic motives, as the Spanish
guerrillas against Napoleon's troops. I remember an article[5] by Sir
William Willcocks dealing with his experiences before the war, in which
he tells how he and a friend went ashore from a steamer on the Tigris.
An Arab calmly dropped on one knee and took aim at the Englishmen, as
if the latter were gazelles or partridges. He missed, and they followed
him into his village, where they asked him why he had fired. The man
answered that he did it in self-defence, for the others had fired
first. 'That,' said the Englishmen, 'is impossible, for you see we are
unarmed.' Hearing this, the village rushed on them and robbed them of
their valuables. Yet one of them was an official high in Government
service.
The other side of the shield, as it affected Brother Buddu, was shown
next day at Harbe. At dawn three men and four women were found in the
middle of the 19th Brigade's camp, outside General Peebles' tent,
wailing. The women said their husbands had been bayoneted and mutilated
by Turks a fortnight before, and buried here. This story proved true.
The women dug up and bore off the decomposing fragments for decent
burial.
The Buddu was an alien in his own land, loathed and oppressed by the
Turk. In his turn he robbed and slew as chance offered. He pursued the
chase for the pelt, and went after human life as our more civilized
race go after buck.
About this time the Bishop of Nagpur was on his second visit from
India. His see was usually mispronounced as Nankipoo. He was following
us up to consecrate the graves of our battlefields. Great delight was
given by the thought that Westlake's still unexploded bombs would
receive consecration also for any retributive work that awaited them.
And we brooded over the suggestion that the good Bishop might find,
even in Mesopotamia, Elijah's way to heaven, fiery-chariot-wise.
Our new camp was amid mounds and ruins. We found green coins, pottery
fragments, and shells with very lovely mother-of-pearl. The Dujail ran
near by, and made a green streak through an arid waste. The whole
landscape seemed one dust-heap, sand and rubbish. But by the brook
were poppies, marguerites, delicate pink campions, wheat and barley
growing as weeds of former cultivation, and thickets of blue-flowered
liquorice. There were many thorns, especially a squat shrub with white
papery globes. A large and particularly fleshy broom-rape, recently
flowering, festered unpleasantly everywhere.
April was well on, and the sun gained power daily. The camp had a
thousand discomforts. We lay under bivvies formed of a blanket,
supported on a rifle and held down uncertainly by stones. Blinding
dust-storms careered over the desert. These _djinns_, with their
whirling sand-robes, would swoop down and whisk the poor shelters away.
If the courts above take note of blasphemy under such provocation, the
Recording Angel's office was hard worked these days. One would be
reading a letter, already wretched enough with heat and flies, and
suddenly you would be fighting for breath and sight in a maelstrom of
dirt, indescribably filthy dirt, whilst your papers flew up twenty feet
and your rifle hit you cruelly over the head. As a Marian martyr
observed to an enthusiast who thrust a blazing furze-bush into his
face, 'Friend, have I not harm enough? What need of that?' One storm at
Harbe blew all night, having made day intolerable and meals out of the
question. As Fowke curled himself miserably under his blanket for the
night, I heard him deliver himself of the opinion quoted at the head of
this chapter.
Flies may be taken for granted. They swarm in these vile relics of old
habitation. Moreover, there had been a Turkish camp at hand. But
snakes and scorpions were found also almost hourly. The snakes were
small asps; the scorpions were small also, but sufficiently painful. My
batman was consumed with curiosity as to what a scorpion was like; he
had 'heard tell of them' in Gallipoli. The listening Gods took account
of his desire, and he was mildly stung the day we left.
We spent the best part of a fortnight at Harbe. Morning and evening
were enlivened by regular hates. So we had to dig trenches. But there
were more memorable happenings at Harbe than the discomforts. Hebden
returned with stores of sorts from Baghdad. Two new subalterns, Sowter
and Keely, came. On Tuesday Hall's M.C. for Sannaiyat was announced. We
celebrated this with grateful hymn far into night. Thursday brought the
Cherub's M.C., another very popular honour, and we sang again, and the
mules from their mess sang a chorus back, as before.
When as at dusk our Mess carouse,
With catches strong and brave,
The mules their tuneful hearts arouse,
And answer stave for stave.
'Dumb nature' breaks in festive noise,
Remembering in this East
The mystic bond which knits the joys
Of righteous man and beast.
Then pass the flowing bowl about--
Our stores have come to-day--
And let the youngest captain shout,
And let the asses bray.
The thorny trudge awhile forget,
And foeman's waiting host!
To-morrow bomb and bayonet--
To-night we keep the toast!
These light-hearted evenings seemed, even then, sacramental. We were
waiting while the Third Corps and the cavalry cleared the other bank of
the Tigris, level with us. On the 19th the river was bridged at
Sinijah, which made close touch between the two corps possible and
passage of men and guns. About the same time the cavalry captured
twelve hundred and fifty Turks on the Shat-el-Adhaim. Our wait was
necessary. But we knew the enemy was terribly entrenched less than six
miles away, and that our sternest fight since Sannaiyat was preparing.
'This will be a full-dress affair, with the corps artillery,' I was
told. Some of my comrades were under twenty; others, like Fowke and
Grant-Anderson, were men of ripe age and experience in many lands. But
all had aged in spirit. Hall, though his years were only nineteen, had
grown since Sannaiyat into a man, responsibility touching his old
gaiety with power. So we waited on this beach of conflict.
One evening stands out by its beauty and unconscious greatness. It
happened thus. Remember how young many were, and it is small wonder if
depression came at times. After the trying trench warfare before Kut
had come the rush to Baghdad, a period of strain and tremendous effort.
We had been fighting and marching continuously for many weeks, with
every discomfort and over a cursed monotonous plain, without even the
palliation of fairly regular mails. When men have been 'going over the
top' repeatedly, emerging always with comrades gone, the nerves give
way. We longed to be at that Istabulat position. Yet here we had to
wait while Cailley's Column fought level with us, and day by day those
sullen lines were strengthening. We had barely six thousand men to
throw at them. So one night talk became discontented, and some one
wished some reinforcement could be with us from the immense armies
which our papers bragged were being trained at home. Then another--G.A.
or Fowke--replied:
Oh that we now had here
But one ten thousand of those men in England
That do no work to-day!
Swiftly that immortal scene, of the English spirit facing great odds
invincibly, followed, passage racing after passage.
God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more!
It was an electric spark. I never heard poetry, or literature at all,
mentioned save this once. But all were eager and speaking, for all had
read _Henry V._ When the lines were reached,
Rather proclaim it, Westmorland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart,
laughter cleansed every spirit present of fear, and the shadow of fear,
misgiving. Nothing less grimly humorous than the notion of such an
offer being made now, or of the alleged consequences of such an offer,
in the instant streaming away of all His Majesty's Forces in
Mesopotamia, could have made so complete a purgation. Comedy took upon
herself the office of Tragedy. When voices could rise above the
laughter, they went on:
His passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse.
'Movement-orders down the line and ration-indents,' was the emendation.
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
And Fowke's voice towered to an ecstasy of sarcasm as he assured his
unbelieving hearers that
Gentlemen in England, now abed,
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here.
As a Turkish attack was considered possible, every morning we stood-to
for that 'witching hour,' immediately before dawn, which is usually
selected for 'hopping the parapet.' The brigades reconnoitred, and
exchanged shots with enemy pickets. Fritz came, of course. Then the
19th Brigade went on, and took up a position two miles in front behind
the Median Wall, of which more hereafter. The battle preparations went
busily forward.
Our camp was strewn with pebbles, an old shingle-beach, for we were on
the ancient edges of the sea, before the river had built up Iraq.[6]
The stones at Beled had been the first signs that we were off the
alluvial plain. South of Baghdad it was reported that a reward of £100
would be paid (by whom I never heard) to the finder of any sort of
stone. And now, after our long sojourn in stoneless lands, these
pebbles were a temptation, and there was a deal of surreptitious
chucking-about. One watched with secret glee while a smitten colleague
pretended to be otherwise occupied, but nevertheless kept cunning eyes
searching for the offender. I enjoyed myself best, for I lay and
watched the daily parade of the troops before breakfast, and could
inquire genially, 'Have you had a good stand-to?' Fowke asked the
wastes in a soaring falsetto, 'Why do the heathen rage?' And he was
returned question for question, with 'Why do you keep laughing at me
with those big, blue eyes?' Then the camp would rock with song as we
fell to shaving and, after, breakfast.
The superstitions which old experience had justified waxed strong as
the days went by. When McInerney marked out a quoits-court and Charles
Copeman dug a mess--these officers found their amusement in singular
ways, and would have been hurt had any one attempted to usurp their
self-appointed duties--and when I put in services for Sunday, the 22nd,
it was recognized that we should march, and fight on the Sabbath. Not
more anxiously did the legionary listen for tales of supernatural fires
in the corn and of statues sweating blood than the regiments asked each
other, 'Have you dug a mess yet? Has the padre put in services?' Two of
us went down with colitis--possibly the Sumaikchah waters were not even
yet done with--and Fowke, as they left us, profaned Royal Harry's
words:
He which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart.
For all this, Shakespeare had a share in the storming of Istabulat, as
will be seen; as the ghost of Bishop Adhemar, who had died at Antioch,
was said to have gone before Godfrey of Boulogne's scaling-ladder when
the Crusaders took Jerusalem. ('Thank God!' said they. 'He was not
frustrate of his vows.')
On Friday rain came, and Charles Copeman, who had, as already
indicated, a passion for digging--caught, perchance, in boyhood from
his father's sexton--dug a funk-hole from the enemy shell-fire.
McInerney helped him. Now this was not an ordinary funk-hole. It was a
very splendid and elaborate hole, and no one was allowed to come near,
lest he cause its perfection to crumble away. So, to dry ourselves
after the rain, we all dug, and the Desert-Gods laughed in their bitter
little minds as they saw. Among the rest, Sowter and I dug a hole, dug
deeply, widely, with much laughter and joyfulness. And to us, as the
afternoon wore towards evening, came the C.O., and, after watching us
for a few minutes, told us that we marched in an hour.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] 'Two and a Half Years in Mesopotamia,' _Blackwood's Magazine_
March, 1916.
[6] South Mesopotamia; north is Jezireh.
III
THE FIRST BATTLE OF ISTABULAT
These men, the steadfast among spears, dying, won for themselves
a crown of glory that fadeth not away.--_Greek Anthology._
In the quiet light we crossed the railway, and moved up to the Median
Wall, in all a march of perhaps a mile and a half. This wall was old in
Xenophon's time[7]; and along its northern side his army moved,
watching, and watched by, the troops of Tissaphernes, moving parallel
on the other side. He speaks of it as twenty feet in breadth and one
hundred feet in height. Once it was the border between Assyria and
Babylonia, and must have stretched to the Euphrates. Even now it runs
from the Tigris far into the desert. It has crumbled to one-third of
the height given by Xenophon. The semblance of a wall no longer, it is
a mighty flank of earth, covering tiers of bricks. It effectually hid
our movements as we crossed the plain before it. The Turk was
shrapnelling the wall and its approaches, endeavouring to reply to some
howitzers. These last we left on our right. As I happened to be the
nearest officer, the major came up and asked me that the
Leicestershires should move more to the left, in case any of his guns
had a premature.
We fell silently into our places behind the wall. The artillery behind
us were favoured with a certain amount of zizyph-scrub; but the wall
furnished no cover but itself. Fowke, who at all times indulged in a
great deal of gloomy prognostication, known as 'Fowke-lore,' and
received with delight, but not quite implicit belief, foretold that on
the morrow our cavalry--it was a point of principle with the infantry
to assume that the cavalry, as well as all Higher Commands, were
capable of every stupidity and of nothing but stupidity--would cut up B
Company, his own, who had a certain unattractive duty assigned to them
on the extreme left. He also told us that the Median Wall would be
shelled to blazes, which seemed pretty probable.
The clearest figure in my memory for this hurried, stealthy evening is
J.Y. Copeman, cousin of Charles. 'J.Y.'--for he never carried any
graver appellation than mere initials--once a rising lawyer in
Vancouver, was now our quartermaster. The gayest and most debonair
figure in the division, known and popular everywhere, he was also an
incredibly efficient quartermaster. Possibly the same qualities make
for success in law and quartermastering. His gaiety was the mask for a
most unsleeping energy and very great ability. He was once dubbed, by a
person more alliterative than observant, 'a frail, flitting figure with
a fly-flap.' Yet he had taken over Brodie's job, at Sannaiyat, when
that experienced 'quarter' had wakened suddenly to find that an
aeroplane bomb had wounded him. Within a year of this event I was
privileged to be present at an argument between our D.A.D.O.S. and our
D.A.D.S. & T.,[8] as to whether Copeman or Jock Reid, of the
Seaforths, was the greater quartermaster. Where two such authorities
failed to come to a decision, I must stand aside, especially as both
J.Y. and Reid are my friends. With his ability J.Y. had an indomitable
resolve, which made him refuse to go sick. He carried on through months
of constant ill-health; sometimes he was borne on one of his own
ration-carts, too unwell to walk or ride. He fed alone, but had a
familiar, in the shape of a ridiculously clever and most selfish cat.
And it is J.Y. whom I remember on this eve of Istabulat--J.Y.
marshalling his carts swiftly and silently up to the wall when darkness
had fallen, and J.Y. next morning scurrying them away before dawn.
A Company went on picket, B and C patrolled before our lines, D lay
behind the wall. Fires were kept low. J.Y. got our blankets up to us,
and we had some sleep.
Next day, the 21st, all kit was packed and on the carts by 4 a.m.
Breakfast was at 3.30; hot tea and a slice of bacon. The second line
fell back. Then we clung to the wall, and waited; all but Fowke. That
warrior moved off to the left with part of B Company, all carrying
spades. Their task was to come out of the shelter of the wall as soon
as the action began, and to work their spades frantically, sending up
such dust-clouds that the bemused Turk might suppose a new Army Corps
advancing to attack his right, and take steps accordingly. The
brown-coated figure took a sombre farewell of me, reminding us that,
though his crowd were going to be cut up by our own cavalry, the rest
of us would be shelled into annihilation when Johnny opened on the
famous wall. 'He's bound to have the exact range, for it's such a
landmark. Besides, he's got German archaeologists with him, who've dug
here for years and years; they know every brick. And he's been
practising on it for weeks. You saw how he had it last night when we
came up.'