advancing in artillery formation over undulating and broken country,
sparsely set with jujube-bushes (zizyphus). A gazelle bounded away in
front of us. At 6.15, says my diary, the first shells came. Our planes
swept along, klaxons sounding, and the sky became torn with shrapnel.
Johnny felt for us who formed the doctor's retinue, felt with an H.E.
bracket, before and beyond us. The advance was extraordinarily rapid, a
race; consequently the doctor's party got the benefit of most of this
early shelling. Fortunately the enemy seemed to have got on to his old
dumps, for his stuff, which came over plentifully enough, was
detonating badly. A shell burst in Lyons's platoon, apparently under
Lyons; yet he walked out of the dust unhurt. The 56th Rifles went
first, advancing as if on parade; this day they rose high in the
Leicestershires' admiration. The 'Tigers' came next; then the 51st and
53rd Sikhs. The enemy was fairly caught by surprise. Fritz, the
previous day, had brought back the first hint that anything was doing;
and, despite that knowledge, it was not expected that march and fight
would come so swiftly and together. If the doctor stopped to bandage a
man, we had to run to keep touch with the regiment. I was worried with
visions of pockets of fifty or sixty wounded awaiting attention. Very
early in the fight we found two men hit with shrapnel, and left them in
the shell-hole. It was suggested to Sarcka that he stay with them, and
guide the ambulances along our track whenever they came. 'No,' he said
sturdily, 'I'm going on.' And go on he did, and was shortly afterwards
distributing cigarettes under heavy fire. Public opinion had condemned
his coming, for the soldier holds that no man should go under fire
unless he has a definite job there. But when he justified his place by
a score of deeds, from cigarette-distributing to bandaging the wounded,
public opinion rejoiced and accepted him, known for a comrade and a
brave man.
Along the plain the enemy had a number of large thorn-stacks, with
sand-bagged seats in their centres. Here had been snipers. These stacks
we avoided; as we did, as a rule, all such things as battalion head
quarters. The colonel of a regiment moves with a small army of
orderlies; his majestic appearance over a brow rarely fails to draw a
few salvoes. The doctor's meinie, therefore, took their way along the
open, avoiding all prominences of landscape and people. I turned aside
to what proved to be a 56th Rifles' aid-post, with a dead horse before
it. Here had been the first Turkish lines. Our guns pushed on very
rapidly, the gunners riding swiftly by and into a large, deep nulla. We
overpassed them again; there was one smart minute or so when half a
dozen 'pipsqueaks' burst in a narrow fault of the ground, scarcely a
nulla, beside us, the steep sides killing the spread of the H.E. The
enemy had been shrapnelling hard along the line occupied by the 56th
Rifles and the Leicestershires. Nevertheless we picked up very few
wounded.
Johnny's shrapnel now began to get wilder still. We found Colonel
Brock, the Leicestershires' colonel, where several wide, big nullas
met. The battalion was digging in, he said. About thirty prisoners came
over a hill behind us. We set up an aid-post, our first stationary one;
Sarcka produced a tin of Maconochie, and we had tiffin. A few wounded
Indians came, the first being a man from whose pocket-book we extracted
a shrapnel bullet. He had no other hurt.
The colonel was puzzled at our few casualties. There had been not only
a good deal of shrapnel, but heavy rifle and machine-gun fire, yet
hardly a man had been hit. The fight was nearly over, so I went back
for ambulances. John was throwing a certain amount of explosive stuff
about, uselessly and recklessly. On my way back I found Owen, of the
51st Sikhs, with a wounded arm. Owen, long ago, lost an eye in a
bombing accident at Sannaiyat. He pluckily returned from India, and
again took over the work of bombing instructor to his regiment.
It was now getting hot, being well past nine o'clock.
In the trenches by the 56th's aid-post there were two Turks, each with
a leg smashed to pulp by H.E. But the most distressing sight was an
enemy sniper on one of the O. Pips already mentioned. Round him were
many used cartridges and bandoliers. He sat among the thorns, eight
feet above ground, with the impassive mien of a Buddha. His face had
been broken by our shrapnel, and his brains were running down it; the
flies were busy on a clot of red brain by his temple. He was one mess
of blood, and very heavy as well as high up. My efforts to lift him
down simply stained my clothes.
About 4 p.m. I was with a doctor, looking at a dead Turk who was a
particularly gruesome sight, with blood still dripping from his nose.
Suddenly appeared a merchant with a camera, who took this Turk's photo.
Not satisfied with this, he proceeded to stage-manage the place. The
ambulance was coming up to remove a wounded Turk. He ordered it back,
then bade it run up smartly, while the man was to be lifted in, equally
smartly. Then he bade the doctor and myself stand behind the dead Turk
aforementioned. When he went, the doctor said, 'Thank God, he's gone.'
I took the man, in my carelessness, for another doctor with a taste for
horrible pictures, and it was not till some time after that I realized
he was the official cinematograph operator, and was merely doing his
job. So, somewhere or other, a film has been exhibited, 'Wounded being
collected on Mesopotamian battlefields.'
Going back to the Turkish sniper, who was still on his stack and had
been overlooked by the cinematograph operator, I found that, in his
agony, he had dug a hole in the thorns, and buried his head; I suppose,
to escape the flies. His legs were waving feebly. It was right he
should be left to the last, as he had no chance of life, and nothing
could be done for him in any way. But never did I feel more the utter
folly and silly cruelty of war than when I saw this brave man's misery.
Next morning he was found to have crawled some hundreds of yards before
dying. He had left his stack.
FOOTNOTES:
[29] Light-armoured motor-battery.
VIII
AUJEH
Our line was where the plateau rose and then dropped steeply into deep,
narrow fissures. The night was maddening with cold, and the rum ration
came as a sheer necessity. All through this brief Tekrit campaign the
British troops were without coats or blankets. The Indian troops had
transport for theirs. The arrangement was correct in theory, since we
came from a chill climate.
None of these later Mesopotamian pushes could be much more than raids.
The rivers in this latitude were too shallow and shifting for
transport, so we had to be fed and watered by means of Ford cars. It
taxed the whole of the army's resources in Fords for Tekrit, blankets
and coats having to give way to rations. Whilst the 7th Division
pushed, the other two fronts were practically immobilized. Maude could
strike on only one at a time of our three rivers. Ramadie was fought in
September; Tekrit in November; Kifri in December; and the same round,
of Euphrates, Tigris, and Diyaleh, was followed in 1918.
So we had ten days of what seemed arctic exposure. This night after
Daur, Diggins shared a Burberry with me; natheless the night was one
of insane wretchedness. We rejoiced, with more than Vedic joy, to greet
the dawn, though the flies swiftly made us long for night again.
On the 3rd we moved slightly forward. My brigade rested, while the 19th
went on. The enemy's lines at Aujeh were taken easily. One wounded Turk
was captured. He was set on a horse, and paraded restlessly back and
forward, for some mystic reason, during the day. Fowke's solution was
that the authorities hoped the troops would count him many times over,
and been heartened by the thought that we had destroyed the Turks' last
force in Mesopotamia. When the Aujeh lines had been taken, our cavalry,
supported by the artillery, tried to rush Tekrit and burn the stores.
This proved impracticable, so we shelled the dumps at long range. My
brigade stood by, and watched from a high plateau the bursts and the
great smoke-curtains which went up, as once from burning Sodom. The
affair furnished Fowke with some excellent fooling. He would stand on a
knoll and gnash his teeth, in Old Testament fashion declaiming, 'I will
neither wash nor shave till Tekrit has fallen.' It is unnecessary to
say that the vow was kept, and overkept; and not by Fowke alone. At
other times he was plaintive and reproachful. We were shelling
Tekrit--Tekrit, the Turkish base, where the Turkish hospitals were, and
'the pretty little Turkish nurses.' 'You chaps don't think about these
things. You're selfish, and don't care. I do.'
The desultory fighting of this day was not without casualties. The 19th
Brigade lost fifty-six men up to 2 p.m.; later I heard the figures
were fourteen killed and seventy-three wounded. These were not in the
'taking' of the single line of Aujeh trenches, but came from
long-distance shell-fire. The cavalry, too, lost men. The enemy slipped
out on our coming, but their guns had the line beautifully registered.
In the evening the 28th Brigade covered the cavalry's return. We had
our own work as well. Fourteen shell-ammunition dumps fell into our
hands by the enemy's retreat from Daur. These we collected, and
quantities of shell-cases and wood. The Turkish gunners had most
elaborate and comfortably-made dugouts, finely timbered. These were
dismantled and fired. We marched in, with the hills ablaze about us,
and the darkness warm and bright.
The 4th was Sunday. Fritz appeared about 6.30 a.m., and bombed us,
coming very low indeed. Mesopotamia being a side-show for us, the enemy
usually had at least one machine better than any of ours. This Sabbath
Fritz spent in fetching bombs and distributing them. Twice he bombed
the Leicestershires in the Turks' old trenches, but hit no one. So he
paid no more attention to the infantry, but looked up the artillery,
and the wagon-lines, and the transport. Here he did a deal of damage,
and we soon had horses careering madly about the place. Reports came
that the Turks were advancing. So, though no one dreamed that they
would make a serious attack, we consolidated the last lines of the Daur
position against them.
My diary notes: 'Rum ration. Flies.' For such elemental things had
existence become memorable.
The day was cheered by news of the Gaza successes, as the previous day
had been by that of Beersheba.
Fritz occupied his afternoon and evening in the same disreputable
fashion. At nightfall our authorities were debating whether to go on to
Tekrit or fall back to Samarra. Diggins, the fire-eater, hoped
earnestly for the former course, and laid confident bets that it would
be. Our brigadier, when I ran across him, deplored that in April we had
stopped at Samarra, though he had urged our going on to Tekrit (or
anywhere else where there were Turks).
Orders came. We were to fall back two miles, then sweep westward, and
on to Tekrit. Fowke reiterated his engagement not to shave or wash till
Tekrit had fallen; and we burned, with reluctant glee, the excellent
wood that Johnny Turk had collected against our coming to Daur. Now in
Mesopotamia wood is far, far more precious than rubies. But this wood
had to be burned, since we were not coming back. So vast and glorious
fires sprang up. And each hero, in his turn lifting a long beam, like a
_phalarica_, hurled it at the blaze. The assembled Trojans cheered,
with admiration or derision, according as each shot fell accurately or
short. In this wise, then, did Sunday evening pass with the 17th Foot.
IX
TEKRIT
We moved off, footsore. Mention of the cold must have become
monotonous. But this night's cold touched a sharper nerve of agony than
any before. Our 'rest' came, by a refinement of cruelty, not
immediately before dawn, but between 2.30 and 4.30 a.m. We were then on
bleak uplands, swept by arctic winds. In Baghdad winter is a time of
frost; and we were far north of Baghdad. No men lay down; very few even
stood still. The majority used the two hours of 'rest' in running to
and fro, and it was with immense thankfulness that we took up our
trudge once more.
This time there was no question of surprise. Morning found us on a vast
plain, set with yellow-berried jujube-bushes and low scrub. Shortly
after 6 a.m. the enemy began shelling our transport, which accordingly
moved out of range. My brigade fell slightly back, in conformity.
Captain McIntyre, in a gloomy mood perhaps due to the freezing night
just finished, prophesied that we should get the 'heavy stuff' and the
'overs' when once the enemy gunners got their nefarious game fairly
going. Everything was bustle. Signallers set up their posts, Head
Quarters were established, caterpillars crawled up with their heavy
guns. Lieutenant-General Cobbe, the First Corps commander, was
controlling operations. Fritz also seemed interested. He came over
twice, very low and very hurriedly, but did no bombing. His second
visit was followed by half a dozen crumps, from the 5.9's, for our
6-inch guns.
This whole campaign had come very suddenly. Corps, I was told, were
ignorant up to almost the day of our starting out from Samarra.
Staff-captains and quartermasters received orders at the eleventh hour
for transport arrangements. The campaign was a _tour de force_,
everything being sacrificed to rations and water. A stream of Fords ran
night and day between the troops and Samarra.
My brigade had a day of inaction, being moved up from time to time, and
momentarily expecting to be sent in. The 21st Brigade had moved up the
left bank, meeting with no opposition. Their part was enfilade gunfire.
Our old colleagues, the 8th Brigade (from the 3rd Lahore Division), and
the 19th Brigade attacked. The battle was largely one of gunfire. For
such an exhibition Guy Fawkes' Day had been fitly chosen.
Tekrit was one of the Turk's best battles in the class of which he is
such a master, the rearguard action. Our airmen reported that, from our
arrival, his troops and transport were flowing away steadily. His lines
were held by artillery and machine-guns, fearlessly worked to the last
minute of safety. Our cavalry operated on the left. It was here the
action broke down. At this point there was only one line of trenches
against us, and many think the 28th Brigade should have been sent in.
Had this been done, the enemy right would have been forced back, and
his troops pinned to the river, with large captures of men and guns as
result. But the 28th Brigade were kept out, because of a cavalry
mistake. The latter's orders were to drop one brigade on the flank, and
then push through to the river, behind the enemy. Then the 28th Brigade
were to go in, and, when they had cleared the Turks out of their
entrenchments, the cavalry were to collect the prisoners. But, instead,
the cavalry, after dropping a brigade to watch the flank, waited, and
finally did a very gallant but useless charge.
The terrain was extremely difficult. Almost the first thing the
assaulting forces had to do was to cross a nulla sixty feet deep and a
quarter of a mile wide, commanded by machine-guns, and searched with
shrapnel. Later, when my own brigade moved up in support, we crossed
this nulla. The toilsome going over slipping shingle was like Satan's
painful steps on the burning marl,
not like those steps
On Heaven's azure, and the torrid clime
Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with fire.
The story of this day belongs to the 8th and 19th Brigades. My own were
spectators only; deeply interested, and our own fate might at any
moment become involved, but harassed with heat and flies and the
unspeakable boredom born of long warfare, which even a battle can
disperse only in part. Stories filtered through of the heroic work of
the Seaforths and Manchesters and of the 47th and 59th Sikhs. Report
persisted that the Seaforths' head quarters had been knocked out by a
direct hit, with twelve casualties, and that their regimental
sergeant-major (Sutherland) was killed. This rumour was partly true,
but a little exaggerated. Their colonel (Reginald Schomberg) was
wounded, and their adjutant (McRae). This was the McRae who had fought
the Turks with his naked fists at Sheikh Saad in January, 1916, and who
rose from sergeant-major to Lieutenant-Colonel, with D.S.O. and Bar.
Sutherland was not killed, but wounded. Lee, the Seaforths' padre, kept
up the tradition set by Dr. Ewing, that 'unsubduable old Roman' whose
white locks had waved through so many battles, till he was wounded at
the forcing of Baghdad. Burn, the one Seaforths' officer killed, out of
twelve hit, was struck close behind Lee. Milne and Baldry were killed
among the Manchesters' officers.
From 10.30 to 11 a.m. was a time of artillery preparation. Fritz
drifted restlessly about; our own planes were busy; klaxons sounded;
messages were dropped. According to information, opposite us the
Turkish 51st and 52nd Divisions were unsupported. Both were old foes of
Sannaiyat days. By 11.30 the enemy's first two lines were taken by
direct assault. At 3 p.m. my own brigade moved two miles closer in, on
the left. It was a costly business, pushing the enemy back by frontal
attack just where he was strongest in every way. Long lines of our
wounded passed us, with a few Turkish prisoners. The day was as
intolerably hot as the night had been cold. By four o'clock the Turk
had got most of his heavier guns back. We were shelling a small
mosque, which he was using as an O.P. The 6-inches registered a hit,
which sent up a white cloud of dust and powder. Every one was hopeful.
The cavalry and 'lambs' were said to be right round the enemy's flank,
and some thousands of prisoners were regarded as certain. Captain
Henderson, the Diggins of the Manchesters, was rumoured to have taken
three guns. At 4.30 the 21st Brigade launched an effective enfilade on
the enemy's transport from across the river; the two attacking brigades
went in again; the cavalry charged across the Turks' right trenches. We
of the 28th could watch it all with the naked eye, the one confusion
being sometimes as to whether it was Turks scurrying away or Seaforths
going in. But we saw the Seaforths' magnificent charge. Unfortunately
most of the crumps which we took to be among a Turkish counter-attack
were among our own men, who at one time ran into their own barrage.
Their line swept forward, irresistible as always. In later days, in
Palestine, when a despatch praised various miscellaneous troops who had
been in their first actions and done not too badly, some one was
foolish enough to express surprise that the Seaforths were not
mentioned by name. 'I should consider it an insult,' said their
colonel, 'if any one thought it worth mentioning that my regiment had
done what they were told to do. We take some things for granted.' At
Tekrit Schomberg, though already wounded, led his men in person. He was
scholar and Christian; 'the bravest of the brave,' yet a lover of all
fair things.
As the Turks ran from their trenches our machine-guns cut them up.
Rumour now grew positive that we had the enemy hemmed against the
river. Evening closed with a deal of desultory gunfire, which continued
spasmodically all night. My brigade went to rest, in anticipation of a
renewal of battle next dawn, when our turn would be due. The ambulances
had worked nobly all day, cars sweeping up to well within shell-range;
and all night long stretcher-bearer parties were busy. Their work was
superintended by Captain Godson, whose M.C. was well earned.
Tekrit cost us about two thousand casualties. Many of the wounded
collected in the 19 C.C.S.[30] at Samarra had been wounded by aeroplane
bombs.
Next morning our orders of the previous night were confirmed. The enemy
were supposed to be holding the 'kilns' (actually these were tombs)
behind Tekrit. The 28th Brigade were to go through the 8th and 19th
Brigades, and drive them out. We were very doubtful of their being
there. However, we went forward in the usual artillery formation. Every
house in Tekrit had a white flag. This was the place where Townshend's
men were spat on as they limped through it, prisoners. Nevertheless
there was the same surprising display of fairly clean linen to which
the villages before Baghdad had treated us eight months previously, and
the Arabs were most anxious for us to realize how extremely friendly
their sentiments were.
We went forward, but found the Turks had gone. There were crump-holes
everywhere; the amount of our shrapnel lying about, wasted, would have
broken a Chancellor of the Exchequer's heart. Parts of the spaces
between the Turkish successive lines were just contiguous craters. But
there had been disappointingly few direct hits on trenches. The
cemetery, hard by, possessed one or two craters also. The enemy had
left abundant live shells, shell-cases, cartridge-cases. But there were
very few dead. I saw only two; and a few places where the parapet had
been pulled in for a hasty burial. The old question was raised, Did the
Turk dig graves beforehand, against an action, to hide his losses? If
he did, one can imagine few more effective ways of putting heart into
his troops than by detailing them for such a job. I heard that the
Seaforths buried sixty Turks. But their losses were certainly far less
than ours. We took a hundred and fifty-seven prisoners. Corps claimed
that evidence collected after the battle showed that the enemy losses
for the three actions of Daur, Aujeh, Tekrit, were at least fifteen
hundred. The Infantry, who had not access to Corps' means of
information, assessed them much lower. Myself, I think eight hundred
would be nearer the mark.
There were great heaps of cartridge-cases, at intervals of fifty yards,
along the trenches, where machine-gunners had clearly been. The spaces
between showed little sign of having been held. From the Turk's point
of view, Tekrit was as satisfactory a battle almost as, from our point
of view, it was unsatisfactory. His gunners and machine-gunners fought
with very great skill and coolness, withdrawing late and rapidly; hence
the great dumps of shell-ammunition which were our only booty. We
should have got the whole force. But no sufficient barrage was kept up
on the lines of retreat during the night; the cavalry's service, though
gallant, was ineffective; the 28th Brigade were not used at the one
point where they might have done the enemy much harm; and Head Quarters
were too far back. The Turks got every gun and machine-gun away. We
captured a hundred boxes of field-gun ammunition, four hundred rifles,
five thousand wooden beams, gun-limbers, boats, bridging material,
buoys, two aeroplanes (one utterly broken up by the enemy, the other
repairable), and a box of propellers, all serviceable. The enemy blew
up three ammunition dumps before retreating.
Fowke had dragged through the campaign with a crocked knee. He now went
into hospital. There J.Y., who always anxiously haunted all
battle-purlieus, fearing for the regiment he loved so well, found him;
and, since he was not ill, obtained permission to feed him with some of
the battalion's Christmas pudding, just arrived. He refreshed him, too,
with Kirin beer. Thus J.Y.'s last glimpse of him--for Fowke did not
return to the battalion--was a happy one.
These days were very wretched. Turkish camps are unbelievably filthy;
and flies swarmed on the battlefield. We salvaged some miles up beyond
Tekrit, with the results already stated. One of the two captured planes
was a recovered one of our own, with the enemy black painted over our
sign. We had a lot of very enjoyable destruction, including that of the
musketry school and barracks, four miles away.
Tekrit's chief fame is that Saladin was born just outside it. But it
was also an early Christian centre; the town wall is said to be partly
the old monastery wall. The town is built on cliffs, which tower very
steeply above the Tigris. The inhabitants were keen on trade, taking
anything 'not too hot or too heavy'; but were unpleasant and exorbitant
beyond any Arabs, even of Mesopotamia.
We now held both the Tigris and the Euphrates ends of the caravan route
to Hit. G.A. opined that we should drive the enemy in from both ends,
till both British forces were shelling each other. However, the Turk
ran some seventy miles farther; and our planes did great bombing raids
on their camp in the Jebel Hamrin, having the joy of using some of the
enemy's own bombs.
On the 8th I got a lift back to Samarra on a Ford, for the purpose of
sending up food and comforts to the battalion. This kindly purpose was
never fulfilled. I went sick, but had more sense than to go to hospital
this time; and the troops returned from Tekrit. The Leicestershires on
route put up a large hyena, but failed to run him down. My premature
return became a famous taunt. 'He deserted,' Diggins would say when
foiled in fair argument; 'deserted from Tekrit, deserted in face of the
enemy.'
The troops were back at Samarra by the 13th. 'Ah!' Busra surmised,
'they've had a bad knock. "Withdrawn on account of difficulty of
communications." We know that story.' It was as after the April
fighting, when the wildest distortions were believed down the line, and
when I was asked in confidence by an officer formerly with the
Leicestershires if it was true that his old regiment had lost eighteen
of our own guns.