rushes to a distance of a hundred and fifty yards beyond the Second
Median Wall. They were within three hundred yards of the main enemy
trenches. Battalion Head Quarters was at the wall, the 56th Rifles were
to the left, the two Sikh regiments a quarter of a mile to the rear.
Machine-gun sections were at the wall, supporting the forward
regiments. The 56th Brigade, R.F.A., had moved up, and were firing
close behind Wilson's new aid-post. Presently two more companies of
Leicestershires were sent beyond the wall, the third in response to a
message that the front line had suffered heavily and were short of
ammunition. Before the final assault, then, the Leicestershires' line,
from the east inland, was D, A, B, these three companies in this order.
But I am anticipating.
Wilson's A.P. was in a dwarf amphitheatre, and was filling up fast.
Bullets were zipping over from left and front. The enemy position
rested on river and railway, a half-dug position which some six
thousand men were frantically completing when we caught them. Away
beyond Tigris glittered the golden dome of Samarra mosque; Samarra town
and Samarra station, like Baghdad town and station, are on opposite
banks of the river. The station was railhead for this finished lower
line of eighty miles, and in it were the engines and rolling-stock
which had been steadily withdrawn before our advance. Beyond the mounds
the ground dropped and stretched, level but broken, swept by
machine-gun and rifle, torn with shell and shrapnel, away to Al-Ajik,
against Samarra town. Here the Turk resisted savagely. He was ranging
on the wall, which was an extremely unhealthy spot, particularly in its
gaps, and he enfiladed the mounds from the railway. We flung our
fifteen hundred bayonets and our maniple of cavalry at the position.
The one British regiment, the Leicestershires, went in three hundred
and thirty strong, and lost a hundred and twenty-eight men.
Dropping bullets took toll even before we left the mounds. As I came up
to join Wilson a man was carried past. It was Major Adams, acting
second-in-command of the 53rd Sikhs. He had gone ahead of his battalion
to the wall, where a bullet struck him in the forehead. He died within
fifteen minutes, and was unconscious as he went past me. No man in the
brigade was more beloved. He was always first to offer hospitality. It
was he who met our mess when they first reached Sumaikchah and invited
them to come to his own for lunch. I never saw him but with a smile of
infinite kindliness on his face, and I saw him very often.
Face swift to welcome, kindling eyes whose light
Saw all as friends, we shall not meet again!
Here in the aid-post sat the Cherub, struck at last, a flesh-wound in
his thigh; with many others. Next to him was Charles Copeman,
unwounded, waiting to go forward with his bombers. Presently came
Warren, bright and jaunty as a bird, and carrying his left arm. 'I'm
all right,' said Montag, 'got a cushy one here.' On his heels came
G.A.; his face was that of a man fresh from the Beatific Vision. Much
later, when I had managed to get transport to push him away, I asked
him, 'Got your stick, G.A.?' This was a stout stave on which he had
carved, patiently and skilfully, his name, 'H.T. Grant-Anderson,' and a
fierce and able-looking tiger at the top, then his regiment, then
curving round it the names of the actions in which it had supported
him: _Sannaiyat_, _Iron Bridge_, _Mushaidie_, _Beled Station_; while
down the line now he was to add _Istabulat-Samarra_. This famed work of
art he flaunted triumphantly as he climbed into the ambulance.
But with these, and before some of them, came very heavy news. By that
fatal wall and on the bullet-swept space before it died many of our
bravest. Hall, M.C., aged nineteen, who looked like Kipling's Afridi:
He trod the ling like a buck in spring, and he looked like a
lance in rest;
Hall fell, facing the finish of our journey and those bright domes of
Samarra, already gilded from the sloping sun. His death was merciful, a
bullet through the heart; 'and sorrow came, not to him, but to those
who loved him.'
The theory was strongly held in the Leicestershires that the only way
was to advance steadily. This weakened the enemy's morale, and,
further, he had no chance to pick out his ranges accurately. To this
theory and practice of theirs they put down the fact that, though in
the forefront of all their battles, their losses were often so much
slighter than those of units that had acted more cautiously. I quote
again from Hasted's brilliant lecture on the battle:
There was no hesitation about the advance. Rushes were never more
than twenty yards, more often ten to fifteen yards, as hard as
one could go, and as flat as one could lie, at the end of it. The
theory, 'the best way of supporting a neighbouring unit is to
advance,' was explained at once. The attention of the enemy's
rifles and machine-guns was naturally directed to the platoon or
section advancing, even when they had completed their rush.
Directly one saw a party getting slated, one took advantage of it
to advance oneself, in turn drawing fire, but taking care to
finish the rush before being properly ranged on. One seldom
halted long enough to open covering-fire, and besides, there was
nothing to fire at. Despite the very short halt, it is no
exaggeration to say that I have seen men go to sleep between the
rushes.
Shell-bursts provided excellent cover to advance behind.
Individuals, such as runners, adopted a zigzag course with
success; we lost very few. Platoons and companies got mixed, but
it was not difficult to retell off. Perhaps control was easier
owing to very little rifle-fire from our side and the majority of
enemy shells landing on the supports. There was no question of
men taking insufficient cover; they melted into the sand after
five minutes with an entrenching tool, and during the actual
advance they instinctively took advantage of every depression.
Officers had no wish to stand up and direct; signallers lay flat
with telephones. Stretcher-bearers did not attempt to work in
front of the wall. Lewis-gunners suffered; they carried gun and
ammunition on the march (there were no mules), and the men were
tired; their rushes were not so fast as the platoon advances.
To G.A., lying waiting, before he was hit, came up his sergeant and
said, 'That's Mr. Hall over there, sir. I can see him lying dead.' But
G.A. had thoughts which pressed out even grief for his dead friend. 'I
shall find time, Cassius, I shall find time.' Shakespeare might have
added these men to those Time stood still withal. For over four hours
they lay, within three hundred yards of their invisible foe, under the
sleet of bullets. McInerney told me afterwards that it was the heaviest
rifle-fire he had known, except the Wadi.[13] The Wadi was the one
which made the deepest impression of horror, of all those dreadful and
useless slaughters in Aylmer's and Gorringe's attempt to relieve
Kut--made this impression, that is, so far as (to paraphrase Macaulay)
there _is_ a more or less in extreme horror. And McInerney had seen the
1915 fighting in Flanders. Fortunately the enemy kept most of his
shells for farther back. We got plenty in the ruins. But by far the
greatest number went far back, where he supposed our reinforcements
were coming up. All afternoon we worked in the aid-post under a roof of
shells, screaming in both directions, from the enemy and from our own
guns. In front the enemy watched the ground so closely that G.A. got
his wound by the accident of raising his elbow. But now, as it drew
towards noon, there was a clatter as of old iron behind him, and
Service, the machine-gunner, rushed up and erected his tripod and
lethal toy. No man was more popular than Service in normal times. But
to-day he and all his tribe stirred the bitter enmity that Ian Hay
tells us the trench-mortar people aroused in France. 'Go away,
Service,' his friends entreated. But Service stayed, a fact which
precipitated G.A.'s next short rush forward.
On the left the three Indian battalions did a holding attack, pushing
out from the wall. They lost heavily. The 53rd Sikhs lost their Colonel
(Grattan), their second-in-command (Adams), their adjutant (Blewitt),
their quartermaster (Scarth), all killed or died of wounds. The
last-named, a very gallant and lovable boy, died in my own aid-post,
which he reached after nightfall. On the right Graham, of the
machine-gunners, won the V.C. For this battle he was attached to the
56th Rifles. In the advance from the mounds and the heavy fighting on
the left all his men became casualties. His gun was knocked out, and he
was wounded. McKay, his second-in-command, was hit in the throat, and
died. Graham then went back for his other gun. This also was knocked
out. Meantime he had collected two more wounds. Compelled to retire, he
disabled his second gun completely; then he carried on with the
Lewis-gun, though very short of ammunition, till a fourth wound put him
out of action. Single-handed he held up a strong counter-attack from
the Turks massing on our left. Had these got round, the Leicestershires
would have been cut off. It is satisfactory to be able to say that he
survived, with no worse hurt than a scar across his face.
Before noon Wilson asked me to take charge of the aid-post. Dobson
remained with me; Wilson and Whitehead went up to the wall and
established a new A.P. With me were left many stretcher-cases. In the
confused character of the ground my place quickly developed into an
independent aid-post, and, in addition to receiving a stream of
walking cases, methodically passed down by Wilson, had some hundred and
thirty wounded, including Turks, who had no other treatment than such
as Dobson and I knew how to give. I had never bandaged a man before,
but my hands grew red to the elbow. Dobson worked grandly. As far as
possible I left our own men to him, and dressed wounded Turks, of whom
seventy were sent in late in the afternoon. This was on the _fiat
experimentum in corpore vili_ principle, as my fingers were unskilled,
and yet the work was very great.
About noon a gun was heard on the left bank of the river. Shrapnel
burst 'unpleasantly close,' says Hasted, 'to our front line. More
followed, and, after bracketing, seemed to centre about two hundred and
fifty yards in front of us. We then realized that General Marshall's
Column had joined in, supporting us with enfilade gunfire; we were
unable to see their target, and could see nothing of the enemy
trenches. We could make out single occasional shivering figures moving
laterally in the mirage. One Turk was seen throwing up earth, standing
up now and then to put up his hands to us. We tried him at ranges of
three hundred to twelve hundred yards, but did not even frighten him;
observation was absurdly difficult. Firing slackened down, but on the
left, out of sight in a depression, we could hear the 56th engaged.'
As Hasted remarks, it seems incredible that our men lay from 11 a.m.
till 3.30 p.m. within three hundred yards of the enemy's trenches. Yet
such is the fact.
At 4 p.m. we put down a concentrated bombardment of twenty minutes.
The Leicestershires, a forlorn and depleted hope, moved swiftly up to
within assaulting distance, C Company in reserve behind the right. The
51st Sikhs supported the attack. The 56th Rifles put down the heaviest
fire they could, of rifles and all the efficient machine-guns with the
Brigade. At 4.20 the guns lifted one hundred yards, and the
Leicestershires rushed in. Hasted, watchful behind with C Company,
pushed up rapidly to assist the front line. A long line of Turks rose
from the ground. All these, and the enemy's second line also, were
taken prisoners. Dug-outs were cleared, and many officers were taken,
where lofty cliffs overhang the Tigris. These prisoners were sent back
with ridiculously weak escorts. They were dazed, their spirits broken.
G.A., wounded and falling back in search of the aid-post, came on a
large body, wandering sheep without a shepherd. These he annexed, and
his orderly led them; he himself, using the famous stick as a crook,
coaxed them forward. Prisoners came, ten and twenty in charge of one
man. When night had fallen, they sat round us and curiously watched us.
Altogether the 'Tigers'--hardly two hundred strong by now--took over
eight hundred prisoners. Many of these escaped by reason of the poverty
of escort.
But I will not speak of prisoners now. Whilst our scanty stock of
ammunition was being fired at the Turks, retiring rapidly, the
Leicestershires were pushing far out of reach of telephone
communication. 'Limited objectives were not known in the open
fighting.'[14] To Captain Diggins fell an amazing success. Suddenly
there were flashes almost in his face. 'Guns,' he shouted, and rushed
forward. On and on he rushed, till he reached the enemy's guns, he and
three of the men of A Company, which he commanded. These guns were in
nullas by the river-bank. Their crews were sitting round them. Diggins
beckoned to them to surrender, which they did. He was so blown with
running that he felt sick and faint. Nevertheless he recovered, and
rose to the occasion. To us, away in the aid-posts, came epic stories
of 'Digguens,' with the ease and magnificence of Sir Francis Drake
receiving an admiral's sword, shaking hands with the battery commander.
He is a singularly great man in action, is Fred Diggins. In all, from
several positions, Diggins took seven fourteen-pounders and two 5.9's.
They were badly hit, some of them. The horses were in a wretched
condition, none of them unwounded. Several were shot by us almost
immediately. Diggins sent his prisoners back, battery commanders and
all, in charge of Corporal Williamson and one private. On his way back,
after delivering up his prisoners, Williamson was killed.
Very soon on Diggins's arrival his subalterns, Thorpe and McInerney,
joined him. He sent them racing back across the perilous mile which now
lay between them and the wall. Thorpe went to Lieutenant-Colonel
Knatchbull, and McInerney to Creagh, the second-in-command this day.
All did their best to get reinforcements. The two other brigades,
however badly hit the previous day, were now close up. The 19th
Brigade, becoming aware of the situation, eagerly put their services
at our disposal. After the action the official explanation of the loss
of the guns was that the Leicestershires got out of hand and went too
far; so I was told in the colloquial language which I have set down. A
nearer explanation is that they went because of over-confidence
somewhere back. Night was falling, and the guns already gone, when
reinforcements from the 19th Brigade came past my aid-post and asked me
the direction. Had the guns been kept, I verily believe at least one
V.C. would have come our way, for Diggins, and M.C.'s for his
lieutenants. As it was, Diggins got an M.C. and Thorpe a 'mention.'
Nothing came to McInerney, who was one of the many soldiers who went
through years of battle, always doing their duty superbly, but emerging
ribbonless at the end. Six months later, at Tekrit, these guns took a
heavy toll from our infantry. Now, after all effort, scarcely fifty men
could be got up to them.
In these exalted moments of victory glorious almost beyond belief
Sergeant-Major Whatsize fell, twenty yards from the enemy's line. In
his last minutes he was happy, as a child is happy.
The handful at the guns waited. A large barrel of water had been put
there for the Turkish gunners. This was drained to the last drop. The
guns were curiously examined. 'Besides the intricate mechanism and
beautifully finished gear, there were some German sextants and
range-finders, compasses like those on a ship's binnacle, and other
instruments on a lavish scale,' says Hasted. But this inspection was
cut short, for now came the counter-attack. The Turks began to shell
the captured gun-position. Then, from the railway-embankment, nearly a
mile to the Leicestershires' left front, several lines of Turks
emerged, in extended formation, a distance of fifty yards between each
line. At least two thousand were heading for the fifty Leicestershires
holding the guns. 'It was like a crowd at a football-match,' a
spectator told me. Diggins sent word to Lowther, commanding B Company,
a little to his left rear, 'The Turks are counter-attacking.' Lowther
replied that he was falling back. Diggins and Hasted fell back in
conformity. Hasted was asking his men how many rounds of ammunition
they had left. None had more than five rounds, so perforce we ceased
fire. The 51st Sikhs, with the exception of Subahdar Aryan Singh and
two sepoys, had not appeared. The Leicestershires damaged the guns as
they might for half a dozen fevered, not to say crowded, minutes of
glorious life. Hasted, who was one of those who enjoyed this
destruction, complains that they did not know much about what to do;
they burred the breech-block threads and smashed the sights with
pickaxes. The Mills bombs put in the bores did not explode
satisfactorily. Then they fell back. One of the sergeants was hit in
the chest, Sergeant Tivey, a Canadian; he was put on one of the Turkish
garrons and led along. 'From the attention he received from the enemy's
guns, they must have thought him a Field-Marshal.'[15] The Turks, for
all their force, crept up timidly. After securing the guns, they raced
to Tekrit, thirty miles away. But they sent a large body in pursuit of
the retreating 'Tigers.'
The Leicestershires fell back rapidly, the enemy pressing hard. The
51st Sikhs were found, hidden by the hollows of the ground; they had
been a buttress to the left flank of that handful of adventurous
infantry in their forward sweep into the heart of the Turkish position.
It was now that Graham and the 56th Rifles checked the counter-attack,
which threatened to drive a wedge between the Leicestershires and the
river. The whole front was now connected up, and, in face of an
attacking army, British and Indians dug themselves in. The 51st sent
along some ammunition. The sun was setting, and in the falling light
the last scene of this hard-fought day took place. Turkish officers
could be seen beating their men with the flat of their swords. The
enemy came, rushing and halting. The sun, being behind them, threw a
clear field of observation before them; but over them it flung a
glamour and dimness, in which they moved, a shadow-army, silhouettes
that made a difficult mark. And our men were down to their last rounds
of ammunition. Our guns opened again, but too late, and did not find
their target. But the Leicestershires' bombers, sixty men in all, were
thrown forward, bringing ammunition which saved the day. Thirty of the
sixty fell in that rush. The Turks were now within two hundred and
fifty yards; but here they wavered. For half an hour they kept up a
heavy rifle-fire. Then, at six o'clock, the 19th Brigade poured in, and
the thin lines filled up with Gurkhas, Punjabis, and Seaforths.
Moreover, the new-comers had abundance of ammunition. Darkness fell,
and our line pushed forward. For over two hours we could hear the
Turks man-handling their guns away. But there were strong
covering-parties, and our patrols were driven back with loss. Our guns
put down a spasmodic and ineffectual fire. Then all became quiet. All
along the enemy's line of retreat and far up the river were flares and
bonfires. Away in Samarra buildings were in flames, and down the Tigris
floated two burning barges, of which more hereafter.
I cannot speak as they deserve of the gallant work of the Indian
regiments. The severity of their losses is eloquent testimony. 'Boomer'
Barrett came down the field, shot through the face, cheerfully
announcing his good luck: 'I've got a soft one, right through the
cheek.' I have spoken of the 53rd Sikhs. They lost their four senior
officers, killed. But every regiment had brave leaders to mourn. One
thinks with grief and admiration of that commander, a noble and greatly
beloved man, whom a bullet struck down, so that he died without
recovering consciousness several days later. Though the body's tasks
were finished, his mind worked on the fact that his men had been
temporarily checked, and he kept up the cry, 'What will they say in
England? The ---- fell back; ---- failed them.' Even so, when duty has
become life's ruling atmosphere,
One stern tyrannic thought which makes
All other thoughts its slave,
it matters little that the body should fail. The mind labours yet,
fulfilling its unconscious allegiance.
He went, unterrified,
Into the Gulf of Death.
In my aid-post we carried on, secure beneath our canopy of racing
shells. The slope gave cover against 'over' bullets, except when it was
necessary to walk about. Early in the afternoon, during a lull, a
doctor appeared and asked if it was safe to bring up his ambulances. I
told him 'Yes'; there were dropping bullets, but very little
shell-fire. He replied that he would come immediately. But the supply
of shells greatly quickened, and he did not appear again till near
darkness, when he brought two motor ambulances, taking five sitting and
four lying cases in each. He promised to return, but did not. Apart
from these eighteen, only the walking wounded got away, pushing back
into our noisy and perilous hinterland.
About four o'clock the Turks, in reply to our intense bombardment, put
a brief but terrific fire on the mounds, blowing up men on every side.
I decided to clear out to where, round the corner, an old wall gave
upright shelter. As our first exodus swung round, a huddled, hobbling
mass, two 'coal-boxes' burst in quick succession, each closer than the
last shell before it. I shouted 'Duck!' We ducked, then made a few
yards and ducked for the second time. A perfect sleet of wind and steel
seemed to pass overhead. But no one was hit, and we were round the
corner, where, I fear, I dropped the Cherub with considerable emphasis
on his gammy leg. But indeed we were very lucky. Shells burst on every
side of the aid-post--on right and left, but not on us. This was one of
the rare occasions when I have felt confidence. Dobson and I were far
too busied to worry. Also it seemed hard to believe that a shell would
be allowed to fall on that shattered, helpless suffering. I saw,
without seeing, things that are burnt into memory. We had no morphia,
nothing but bandages. There was a man hit in the head, who just flopped
up and down, seemingly invertebrate as an eel, calling out terribly for
an hour till he died. Another man, also hit in the head--but he
recovered, and I afterwards met him in Bombay--kept muttering, 'Oh
those guns! They go through my head!'
A large body of prisoners was massed in the hollow beside us. When
these marched off, some seventy wounded were sent to me, under the
impression that the place was a regular aid-post. They were horribly
smashed. General Thomson's Brigade (14th Division) had enfiladed them
with artillery fire from the other bank, with dreadful effect. He got
into their reserves, their retreat, their hospitals, and broke them up.
In one place his fire caught a body of Turks massing for a
counter-attack, beneath big bluffs by the water, and heaped the sand
with dead and maimed. These men came with their gaping wounds and
snapped limbs. Private Clifton, a friend of mine, brought bucket after
bucket of water from the river. They drank almost savagely. My inexpert
fingers hurt cruelly as I bandaged them, and they winced and cried. But
the next minute they would stroke my hand, to show they understood good
intentions. They had a great belief in the superiority of our
civilization--at any rate in its medical aspect. They insisted, those
who had been bandaged by the Turkish aid-posts, in tearing off their
bandages--perfectly good ones, but smaller than ours--and on having
new bandages from me. Just when the 5.9's blew us round the corner,
Waller, adjutant of the 56th Brigade, R.F.A., came up and asked if I
could send any one to look at some men just hit by the tornado. Mester
Dobson was as busied as a man could be, his inevitable pipe in his
mouth, so I went with Waller. One man was breathing, his head broken
behind; the others were dead. Beside one of the corpses was a red mass.
I saw, noting the fact automatically and without the least
squeamishness, that it was his brains. We carried the living man in.
In the darkness Dobson came and said. 'There's a wounded officer just
come in. I've given him a drink and dressed him.' A minute later he
said, 'That officer's dead, sir.' I went across, and found it was
Scarth, of the 53rd. No braver spirit went out in this day of storm and
sorrow than this very gallant boy. He was aged nineteen.