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[Illustration: THE GARDEN OF EDEN, KURNA.]
IN MESOPOTAMIA
BY
MARTIN SWAYNE
_ILLUSTRATED BY THE AUTHOR_
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO
MCMXVII
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
LORD RICHARD IN THE PANTRY
THE SPORTING INSTINCT
CUPID GOES NORTH
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
CONTENTS
PAGE
I
THE GATEWAY OF THE GARDEN OF EDEN 1
II
BASRA 19
III
THE SICK AND WOUNDED 37
IV
HEAT-STROKE 51
V
MIRAGE 61
VI
THE DAY'S WORK 71
VII
THE NARROWS 85
VIII
AMARA 101
IX
ARABIAN COMEDY 121
X
THE BATTLE OF THE BUND 131
XI
EDEN REVISITED 159
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
The Garden of Eden, Kurna. _Frontispiece_
Towing on the Tigris. 9
A Convoy of Sick and Wounded. 27
The Hospital Washing. 45
Donkey Labour in the Heat of the Day. 63
On the Shatt-el-Arab near Basra. 81
Arab Belum on Tigris. 99
Ezra's Tomb. 117
Walled Village on Banks of Tigris. 135
The Tigris near Kurna. 143
IN MESOPOTAMIA
I
THE GATEWAY OF THE GARDEN OF EDEN
There is nothing to suggest that you are approaching the gateway of the
Garden of Eden when you reach the top of the Persian Gulf, unless the
sun be that Flaming Sword which turns every way to keep the way of the
Tree of Life. Of cherubim we could see no signs. We lay motionless
awaiting orders by wireless. Of the country before us we knew next to
nothing. We did not grasp that the great river at whose mouth we lay was
called the Shatt-el-Arab and not the Tigris; and I do not think that a
single one of us possessed a copy of the "Arabian Nights." Few of us
knew anything about the gun-running troubles in the Persian Gulf of
recent years, and of the exploits of the Royal Indian Marine.
The approach to the Shatt-el-Arab is remarkably featureless. After the
stark fissured coast hills of Persia and the strip of red Arabian coast
that marks Kuweit, the mouth of the river appeared as a yellow line on
the horizon intersected by the distant sails of fishing boats. At the
bar where the sand has silted, a few steamers were lying. A steam yacht
flying the White Ensign, with a pennant that trailed almost down to her
decks, showing the length of service she had seen, passed us and dropped
her anchor a mile to the south. The silence was only broken by the
clacking of the fans in the saloon. One gazed listlessly west wards at
the quivering haze that veiled Kuweit. There was a rumour that the
ship's launch was going there with a party of nurses and a sharp voice
sounded: "Nobody allowed on shore without a helmet." But it was too hot
to move. At length a fishing boat emerged from the haze and slowly
approached, rowed by four Arabs. It drew alongside, a spot of vivid
colour against the dark sea. In it were half a dozen big fish. The Arabs
began to harangue the occupants of the lower deck. We watched them
curiously, perhaps wondering if they had poisoned the fish. The Tommies
stared at them in silence. They were the first inhabitants of the
country that we had seen.
The business of transhipping at the bar is a burden to all concerned. A
steamer of shallower draught came alongside, and the derricks started to
grind and clatter, and the big crates swung up from one hold and
plunged down into the other for hour after hour. A squall arose and the
ships had to part company and we lay for two days tossing and rolling in
a dun-coloured atmosphere. Then once more we joined up, and the
unloading continued of the four hundred tons of equipment, which had
already been dumped on shore at Alexandria. It is a costly business
bringing out a hospital to these parts. About midday we weighed anchor
on the new ship, and crept up the channel over the bar. There were no
gas buoys to mark its course, and Fao, which lies near the mouth of the
river, had no lighthouse, so night traffic was presumably impossible.
The sudden sight of the belts of palm trees, the occasional square mud
dwellings, and the steamy, hot-house look of the banks came as a
surprise. Those of us who had been to the Dardanelles had half expected
that this end of Turkey would be much like the other--broken country
and sandy scrub, with hills. But here is only a broad swift river, a
strip of vivid green verdure, and beyond the immense plain stretching to
the horizon. In the stream was a small tug bearing the letters A.P.O.C.
At Abadan we saw the big circular tanks of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company
where the oil from Ahwaz, which travels through miles of piping, is
refined. Above Abadan, which is just a cluster of circular tanks,
slender chimneys and square houses on the arid plain, with a mass of
barges lining the numerous wharfs, we passed Mohammerah. On the opposite
bank--the west bank is called the right bank--you can see the Turkish
trenches where they opposed our first advance among the palms at the
battle of Sahil on November 16th, 1914, with a force of five thousand
men and twelve guns. The ground is intersected with narrow creeks cut
for irrigation purposes; and the trenches form little crescent-shaped
depressions almost hidden by the reeds and grasses. From the ship it
looks a lush green country here, for there are rice fields dotted about
and the river broadens out and surrounds an emerald island. Our 4,000
ton vessel swept up-stream at a speed of ten knots, with a great wash
spreading behind her, and her funnels towering high above the palms. Our
destination was reached at six in the evening, about sixty miles from
the mouth of the river, and the whole way up the scene had been
practically unvarying--river and plain, and countless palms. We had
passed the vessels sunk by the Turks to bar the progress of the original
expedition. Masts and a funnel are visible, standing clear of the main
channel.
Basra was like coming on a bit of the London Thames from a distance.
Lines of big ships appeared suddenly, round a bend of the river,
anchored in mid-stream. There were hospital ships, cargo vessels,
transports, war-ships, monitors, tugs, river boats, oil-driven
lighters--the ones we made the landing from at Suvla, with a coat of new
paint and the letters ML instead of K--barges, launches, native
dhows--which travel to Mombasa and Bombay--and innumerable lesser craft.
Basra itself lies up a creek, and is invisible from the river. What you
see on the shore is properly called Ashar, but the two places merge into
one another. Owing to the absolute flatness of the country, a sense of
smallness is produced everywhere. There is no background to give
perspective, and the great breadth of the sable river dwarfs the shore.
We dropped anchor a little below the town, near Korah creek. It was
Sunday and at that time it was still the custom of the inhabitants of
Basra to collect on the banks of the creek and hold a kind of social
parade from which the suggestion of a slave market was not entirely
absent. There was a continual procession of boats and painted _belums_,
the native gondola, long and narrow, with curved ends, and either rowed
or poled by two _belumchis_. In them were fair-skinned, unveiled women
with many bangles on their arms, wearing robes of dark brilliant hues.
On the shore, under the palms, wandered a crowd of white-robed Arabs,
with red or blue turbans. Occasionally one saw a khaki uniform. It was
intensely hot and damp. A haze lay over the further reaches of the
river, and the sky had a brassy look unlike the intense turquoise
clarity of the Egyptian sky. The palm fronds seemed metallic. As far as
the eye could see along the right bank lay a confused mass of low white
buildings, tents, huts of yellow matting and piles of stores. Gangs of
Arabs and Indian coolies were at work at the low wooden landing stage,
and over the scene towered the gaunt masts of the wireless station. The
left bank was chiefly palm grove, save for a gap where stood a big
building taken over by our flying men.
[Illustration: TOWING ON THE TIGRIS.]
A military authority came on board, wondering whether we were a cargo
of wood or mules. A hospital had not been expected, and we passed the
next day in idleness. On the third day our four hundred tons of stuff
were swung off into _mahallas_, the native barges, which are wide craft
decorated with carving and paint, both stem and stern pointed and high
out of the water, and amidships close down to the water-line. The Arabs
squatting on the painted poops of these ships seemed sullen. They looked
as cut-throat a lot as you could desire. When the boats were loaded up
they drifted off, and by means of a tattered bit of sacking for a sail,
and a long pole, managed to reach their destination somehow. It was
curious to see these primitive craft filled with the black cases of the
precious X-ray plant.
The creeks round Ashar branch off at right angles to the Shatt-el-Arab
at intervals of a few hundred yards, and extend for two or three miles
inland. They are broad and richly bordered with palms and pomegranate.
In places a network of vines festoons the trunks. A yellow tinge in the
heart of the palms showed the coming crop of dates. Seen in a picture
these creeks are idyllic, winding broad, calm and peaceful through the
groves. Slim boats glide up and down them, nut-brown children splash in
them, and women, veiled in black, come from the little villages to draw
water in brass vessels at their margins with graceful movements.
We landed from a roomy barge with a tug fastened alongside. The men
were cheery, and a mouth-organ and a mandoline wafted us on. Something
dark and indeterminate swept by on the swift current. It was said to be
the body of a dead Turk, bound for the Persian Gulf, after its voyage of
two hundred odd miles from Kut. We landed, uncomfortably hot. The men
fell in and we prepared to march off. A swarthy Arab, in red and white
headgear held in position by two thick rings of camel hair, wearing
curved slippers and saffron-coloured robes, stood scowling before us,
spitting at intervals. A group of sappers near by seemed unaffected by
his behaviour. The scowl and the spitting seem merely habits, induced by
the country. But it is necessary to orientate oneself very carefully in
the East. A long tramp followed up Dusty Lane, between scorching mud
walls. We passed dirty booths, naked children with frizzy hair, thin
faced women with swaggering hips, and occasional military police in
shirt-sleeves carrying thick sticks. The sight of a large cat sitting in
a niche, blinking in that excellent manner of inward ecstasy, was
cheering. On, beyond the town the march continued, the sweat pouring off
us, and tunics becoming stained with dark patches--through the camp
area, past Indian troops; past horses, tossing and switching, surrounded
by clouds of flies; past bullocks, huge, delicately pastel-tinted
beasts, sprawling under the feathery palms; past screaming mules, motor
lorries, wayside canteens and squads of men, until Makina Plain came in
sight. It was in this neighbourhood that our site lay, alongside a creek
where a liquorice factory had been in the days of peace. The first
impression was desolating. The place looked like a bricklayer's yard. A
glance was sufficient to estimate it would take many long weeks before
it was completed for use. Several large iron-roofed sheds stood by the
water's edge. Gangs of Arabs were at work; strings of donkeys carrying
mud raised the dust in heavy clouds; carpenters in blue trousers
hammered and sawed; planks, bricks, barrels of concrete, and piles of
matting littered the ground: and upon all the vertical rays of the sun
beat down unmercifully. The creek was full of the _mahallas_ that had
brought up our equipment, and for the rest of that day our men toiled
and sweated over the crates and boxes, and bedsteads and bales of
blankets, singing in monotone a rhythmic refrain in imitation of the
native coolies when carrying loads. The native chants are simple.
Singer: "To-morrow we will eat rice and meat!"
Chorus: "May Allah grant it!"
Singer: "We are doing a great deal of work!"
Chorus: "May Allah reward us!"
* * * * *
The Tommies' refrain was more picturesque. Imagine six men carrying a
crate.
Singer: (Softly) "Is it 'ot?" (Pause.)
Chorus: "I don't think!"
Singer: (Fuller and staccato) "'Ot as 'ell?"
Chorus: "I don't think!" etc.
General Chorus: (repeatedly, with passion).
"Aller, Oller, Aller!
Oh, Aller, Oller, Aller!
Aller, Oller Oo!"
Bully beef came along in the afternoon, and we had landed with full
water-bottles, for drinking water was unavailable. Towards evening some
double-roofed tents were run up. The men settled down in the empty sheds
alongside the creek. We got to bed in a thunderstorm--a vivid zigzag
banging affair that circled round most of the night. The rain turned
the ground into something beyond description as regards its slippery
properties. Only a native donkey can keep footing in such ground. There
is no road metal available in Mesopotamia. It is a stoneless place. The
frogs trumpeted in chorus all night; packs of dogs or jackals swept
about in droves, once at full pelt through our tent, like devils of the
storm. It was nightmarish, but sleep brought that wonderful balancing
force that sometimes clothes itself in dreams, and steeps the spirit in
all that is lacking. Just before falling asleep I reflected that Adam
and Eve might well have been excused in such a country.
II
BASRA
We reached Mesopotamia when the hot weather was beginning. The campaign
to relieve Kut was at its height, and the wounded and sick were coming
down river in thousands. Apart from these there were big reinforcement
camps on Makina Plain, and all around us the daily sick rate was rapidly
increasing, and men straight from England, unused to hot climates, were
being sent in big batches off the incoming transports. There was very
little ice to be had, and so far as we were concerned there were no
fans, electric or otherwise, with which to ventilate the sheds.
The urgency of the situation demanded that we should open what wards we
could for the reception of sick and wounded at once. We had no nurses,
partly because there was no accommodation for them. Four sheds alongside
the creek were got in order. Iron bedsteads draped in white, mosquito
nets resembling bridal veils, bedside tables, and cupboards arranged
themselves in rows. An immense hammering and shouting filled the
stifling air. The sheds began to look moderately inviting--neat and
clean, smelling faintly of antiseptics which smelt better than the
things in the creek. At first about fifty beds were put into each shed;
in a short time beds were crowded into every available corner of the
clearing. Fresh sheds were being erected by natives. Since the ground
was undermined by marsh, the sheds had to be built on piles driven six
feet into the spongy soil. There was only one pile driver, which
resembled a cross-section of a lamp post, and was worked by a fatigue
party of wild-haired Indian troops from Afghanistan regions. One would
have thought from their flashing eyes when the pile driver crashed home
that they played a secret game in which each imagined his bitterest
enemy was in the place of the pile.
The problem of water arose at once. There was no general water supply at
that time, and each unit had to solve its own problem. Our supply had to
come from the creek, which was thick and turbid and contained a
multitude of unsavoury things. At first it was sedimented with alum,
which precipitated the suspended matter in a gelatinous mass, and the
clear fluid was chlorinated with bleaching powder. There is only one
consolation in drinking well chlorinated water. You know that it
contains nothing except chlorine. With whisky it forms a mixture that
it is difficult to describe. After a time two tanks were put in order
and arranged on brick furnaces, and from a third tank water that had
been allowed to settle was run off and boiled. These were satisfactory.
An hour's exposure of the boiling water in jars of porous
clay--chatties--made it decently cool. Chatties of great size were
procured from the bazaar and placed outside each ward. Nowadays water
comes in pipes from the Shatt-el-Arab, being taken from the middle
layer, which is clearest. The best water comes from the Euphrates, which
joins the yellow Tigris at Kurna about forty miles above Basra. It sends
down a tributary which flows into the Tigris a few miles above Basra.
From here water could have been conveyed in pipes. But the scheme was
thought unnecessarily elaborate and costly.
It must be remembered that in a place like Mesopotamia water is the
main problem. A clear, clean, pure water supply means an incalculable
saving of life. A dirty supply may mean the failure of the campaign. In
order to get good water for troops nothing should be neglected or
overlooked, and no kind of compromise should be permitted. There is
perhaps not a single act in war more criminal and more worthy of death
than to allow troops to muddle along and get what water they can, under
local arrangements, when a pure central supply is possible.
Sick Tommies in tropical climates appreciate soda water. At first we
were told to get our supply from a native in the bazaar at Ashar. The
problem at this time did not concern the soda water but the bottles.
There was a great shortage of soda water bottles in Mesopotamia. Breaks
and bursts were frequent, and it seemed impossible to import any new
ones, and they cost about sixpence each. Our hospital was situated at a
considerable distance from the town. We were not allowed a motor launch,
and the roads were often impassable for bullock tongas, owing to the
floods which were then prevalent. Soda water was therefore fetched by
_belum_. You were poled down the creek to the river, and rowed through
the maze of traffic to Ashar creek. Turning out of the broad swift
river, up the noisy creek you came on the river-side cafés, built on
piles and filled with splenetic-eyed Arabs sipping coffee and various
coloured sweet drinks. A cheap gramophone playing a thin Eastern music,
may be sounding. The conversation is animated and guttural, constantly
interspersed with that hollow, metallic rasp that is like the noise of
an engine exhaust. The town is of white mud and stone, with wooden
balconies painted a vivid blue, and flat roofs. A minaret rises behind
it with a blue-tiled extremity supporting the upraised hand and
crescent. The streets are narrow and airless. In the shops are a mass of
articles of all descriptions: tinned stuff, tobacco, clocks, hair-oil,
cheap jewellery, odd bottles of doubtful wine, scent, rugs, copper
vessels, sweets, sauces, pickles. Innumerable flies surround everything.
On much of the tinned stuff were very old labels. No man of experience
up-country in India will touch tinned stuff of that description. The
soda water factory was in a small courtyard. There was a big green
gasometer of carbon dioxide, a glittering brass-bound pump and a filling
apparatus. Three tubs were on the floor containing a blue, a red and a
clear fluid. These, said the Arab proprietor, were English disinfectants
in which the bottles were rinsed. Here you waited until your bottles
were refilled, at one anna (one penny) each. This represented a profit
of 1,200 per cent. The water which was used for filling them was taken
from the centre of the Tigris. Ice was obtained elsewhere, made from an
ammonia plant, in bars two feet by six inches. The necessity for ice was
imperative, but it could only be supplied in small quantities then.
These native plants were mostly taken over by the military as time went
on. A single bad heat-stroke case would often use up the whole day's
supply to the hospital. That was why ice was an imperative necessity. It
meant so many lives saved. In India ice is manufactured by machines in
quantity wherever it is required.
[Illustration: A CONVOY OF SICK AND WOUNDED.]
After soda water, the sick Tommy requires certain delicacies in food.
Eggs and chickens and fruit and vegetables were necessary. The
quartermaster soon began to lift up his voice. What with the supply and
transport depots of the Indian Army and our own Army Service Corps, and
the inevitable confusion of two different Army systems, he became
extremely irritable. This confusion existed in every department. On the
medical side, there was the British scale of field ambulances and
hospitals, and this differs entirely from the Indian scale. What could
have been more suitable for muddling than this? Its effects could be
seen in the expression of the quartermaster.
I can see him clearly, a plump, stocky man, with arms akimbo, his helmet
on the back of his head, the flesh of his face in folds of disgust with
sweat pouring off him, and his once elegant waxed moustache drooping,
saying in a chant: "The man who gets me out to this ---- country again
isn't born yet." That was when the bullock tongas, after travelling
over the surface of this cradle of the earth all day in search of
certain supplies, returned empty. Chickens and eggs were local produce.
The natives put fancy prices on things. What we paid was supposed to be
a controlled price. It must be remembered that we introduced a lot of
money into the country, and entirely changed the financial standards of
the Arabs. Arab coolies got tenpence a day--that is, their pay was not
far short of the European Tommy. Sometimes they struck for higher wages.
It did not breed a good spirit, but it may have been the best spirit
under the circumstances. It was, at times, necessary to use violence to
_belumchis_, who insolently demanded absurd charges, and a certain padre
gained respect by administering a severe thrashing to one of these
rascals. When the Russians came down, one of them was obstructed for a
moment by an Arab on the river bank. The Russian officer--a big
fellow--picked him up and threw him into the river.
The chickens were poor. Three might weigh in the aggregate a pound and a
half. The supply of eggs was limited when procured through contractors,
but it was possible to obtain a few from other sources. As regards
fruit, there was practically none. Potatoes were procurable in this
part, but not higher up the river. Owing to the intense heat and lack of
storage accommodation, vast quantities of food perished. Piles of boxes
containing cigarettes, that had lain in the sun, were found to contain
nothing but fine dust on being opened. It was the same way with
biscuits. Potatoes rotted in millions. The whole problem was one of
immense difficulty. The milk that was used was almost wholly tinned. The
use of fresh milk which was tried later at Amara was not a very
successful experiment. It required careful boiling, and often curdled
in mass. It was then boiled in a large number of small vessels, with
better results, but the supply drawn from outlying villages, and brought
down by river, was never adequate, and boiled milk is not very pleasant.
Bread was baked in the neighbourhood by army bakers, and eventually,
when proper ovens were made, was good. Sugar was plentiful, sandy in
colour, and full of extraneous matter, but quite adequate. There was no
shortage in tea. Fresh meat was a ration in Basra, but Indian cooks
seemed to make a better job of it than British. It was tough and stringy
and required a great deal of stewing. Rice was an occasional ration in
Basra, and a daily ration higher up, where it took the place of
potatoes. Lime juice, as a ration, was very uncertain. It was possible
to get it in the bazaar, and the Tommy could get it at the Y.M.C.A.
huts. Of these huts it is impossible to speak too highly. The Tommy
alone knows what he would have done without them. You drank, in the hot
weather, amazing quantities of fluid, and lime juice and water was the
usual mixture until the sun went down. One paid two shillings and
eightpence--two rupees--for one of those long, narrow, golden bottles,
with leaves and fruit moulded on their exterior. Wines and spirits could
be ordered through agents in Basra from Bombay at reasonable rates.
Bombay is about five days by steamer from Basra. It was almost a
universal experience to find alcohol necessary in the evening. The mind
was exhausted, food was unattractive, conversation was impossible, the
passage of time immeasurably slow, and a restless irritation pervaded
one until a dose of alcohol was taken. Its effect was humanising. Still,
it is worth remembering that the Prophet forbade alcohol to the people
of the country. But then he permitted other things.
Owing to the complaints about food supplies, in the early part of June,
in the second year of the campaign, there was published an order that
all troops were to have certain fruit and vegetable variations in diet.
Lists of articles were given, and the scale was very generous and
sensible. The actual supply of the stuff, however, did not come as we
might have been led to expect. This was because most of the articles in
the lists were starred, which meant that they were only supplied when
available, and I suppose India, which had to run several other
expeditions besides Mesopotamia, could not possibly produce enough
material to satisfy all requirements. At this time, too, many of the
cargo vessels were occupied in bringing immense supplies of wood from
India, and the local produce of Mesopotamia did not go nearly far
enough for the purpose. Some officers planted various seeds in patches
adjoining their quarters, but the business of watering them was
troublesome. A ration of fresh limes was served to our men on the 21st
of June for the first time, but the supply of these ran out the next
day. Some of the men retained these small, wrinkled fruits as
curiosities. Fish, an intermediate diet for intestinal cases, was sorely
missed. But it was quite out of the question. The river fish, of course,
were fairly numerous, but the uncertainty of their supply was too great,
and they had to be cooked very soon after being caught. There was always
a great deal of amateur angling in the evenings, and in the creek by our
hospital a kind of mud fish was caught, full of small, apparently
unattached bones, and tasting flat and stale.
It is curious to reflect that, in the second year of the campaign, this
great country of future agricultural development which is traversed by
immense volumes of water and whose atmosphere resembles that of a
hot-house, could not produce sufficient fruit or vegetables to supply
the relatively small military forces it contained. For these forces, if
stretched out along one bank in single file, each man at arm's length
from his fellow, would not nearly have reached from the mouth of the
Shatt-el-Arab to Basra itself. And the front lay more than two hundred
miles above Basra.
III
THE SICK AND WOUNDED
The sick and wounded began to arrive as soon as the wards were ready,
coming up the creek in boats from the convoys that were in the river.
The convoys consisted of river boats with a big barge lashed on each
side. The steamers were taken from many quarters, from the great rivers
of India, from the Nile--some saw service in the Nile War--and from the
Thames. Some were local and belonged to Messrs. Lynch, who ran a service
to Baghdad before the war. Some burned coal and some oil. A large
convoy--that is the steamer and its two lateral barges--might carry
three or four hundred cases in emergencies. The time they took to
travel from the front down to Basra, which is a distance of about two
hundred miles, depended very much on the luck they experienced in
getting through the Narrows. The passage of this bit of the river will
be described in a later page. Three days was a pretty quick journey.
Travelling by night was impossible. In rounding the sharp bends of the
river, which winds across the plain in a most extraordinary manner,
these convoys often cannoned helplessly against the banks. At well-known
cannoning places Arabs collected with baskets of eggs and chickens and
melons for sale. The sick and wounded lay closely packed on the deck
under a single thickness of canvas awning. In the great heat of
midsummer this was insufficient protection, but it was impossible for
the medical officers of the ships to obtain any extra canvas, and it
was thought that reed matting in close proximity to the funnels would be
dangerous. Tinned milk for bad cases and bully beef, stew, and bread and
jam for those fit to eat it were the main rations, but soup and eggs
were often available. The difficulties of catering for a crowded convoy,
with only a small galley, were considerable. Water was taken from the
river, and chlorinated in tanks on board.
On reaching Basra the convoys discharged their patients either at the
big British hospital, that was formerly the palace of a Sheik, and
stands on the river's edge, or at one or other of the Indian hospitals
that lie beside it. The accommodation for British troops was not great
at the time, so that it was the custom to transfer cases as soon as
possible into the hospital ships, which could come right alongside the
piers, and send them to India. Our hospital had four hundred beds
available within a short period. As a matter of fact, many more were
squeezed into odd places during times of pressure.
The appearance of the sick and wounded defies description. Like the
Gallipoli lot, only worse, they were lean, gaunt, haggard skeletons,
hollow-eyed, with rivulets of perspiration furrowing the dirt of their
faces. Looking back from a better state of affairs to those days, the
strange spectres that staggered off the boat become softened in outline.
It is only by the aid of pen, pencil, brush or film that their grimness
is kept alive in the mind.
They cheered up considerably after a day or two, and when it came to
censoring their letters, not a word of complaint did one find; nor, for
that matter, any news. The absence of nurses was a disappointment for
them, but the luxury of a spring mattress, of cool water in quantity,
and of being under a roof out of the sun made up for that in some
degree. They were full of rumours. Of the general situation they knew
nothing. One said we had half a million men in the field. Another
reckoned we had a division or two at the most. Many seemed to put the
figure at six divisions. A British division is about eighteen thousand
men, and an Indian division less. They were sure that Kut would be
relieved. It was at the time when the news was looked for daily. The
whole place was rich in tales. Every depot on shore, and every ship in
the stream, had its stories. Kut was to be occupied by us on the
following Sunday. General X had stated it quite decisively, with an
elegant gesture of confidence. General Y had sworn it, banging the
table. General Z had mentioned it casually, a cigar between his teeth.
The Turks were hopelessly demoralised. They had no ammunition, no food,
and no heart. Hopes ran high, and everyone who came up from Ashar was
eagerly questioned. We woke one morning to hear a great noise of steam
sirens from the river, and for a time lay in blissful happiness, certain
it could only mean one thing. It was like the night we lay on the
Gallipoli sand some days after the landing, in the darkness, sipping our
first tot of rum. Our hearts were merry, for had we not just heard that
Achi Baba had fallen, that Bulgaria and Roumania had declared war on
Turkey, and that the crackle of musketry to the north-east was due to
certain Boers who were swarming up the heights overhanging the Kishlar
Rocks? She must be a woman of temperament, Rumour, for when she smiles
she is so charming; but when she frowns, who can be so ugly?
During this time considerable activity prevailed throughout the Basra
region. Near by, on Makina Plain, a vast flat expanse of bare earth
beyond the shadow of the palm plantations, a perpetual dust arose.
Transport columns, guns and troops were always on the move, and the
camps grew in size until the whole place was dotted with white canvas
and yellow matting huts. The skirling of the pipes, the beating of the
drums, the sound of the bugle and the tramp of feet continually came
from the road that ran along the bank opposite the hospital. Wagons
rumbled over the wooden bridge, and the deep note of the incoming
steamers reverberated over the groves. But a difficulty began to arise.
All these incoming troops that were concentrating on the plain were new
to the country. The heat was increasing rapidly. It had long passed the
limits of the most intense English summer, and the mercury was now
rising above 100 degrees in the shade. The sky was cloudless and
brassy. The floods each day left great areas of damp, steamy marsh when
the tidal river fell. Mosquitoes were beginning to fill the night with
their thin screaming. Small, almost impalpable, colourless insects,
whose bite is like a red hot wire and who can penetrate the meshes of an
ordinary mosquito net with ease, began to infest the place. These were
sand-flies. They are surely the most successfully maddening insect ever
designed by the Lord of Flies. They give rise to a malady known as
sand-fly fever, which is like influenza and drains the body of all
vitality for many days. In addition to this, either the food, the water,
the dust, or the day flies were spreading about a form of diarrhoea
which rapidly turned into dysentery. The day flies were a swiftly
growing army. Breeding grounds in the surrounding camps, in the horse
lines, the bullock lines and native villages were numerous. They were
nothing like the flies at Mudros when the whole roof of a tent at night
might be uniformly black with them, and eating was in the nature of a
free fight. A couple of hundred or so to each tent was perhaps the
average, but they made rest a matter of difficulty. The Red Cross
fortunately supplied us with instruments of fly destruction, and later
on fly experts were sent out.
[Illustration: THE HOSPITAL WASHING.]
The result of all this was that the curve of sickness began to mount
steeply, and it became necessary to make some provision for the victims.
Since our position was central as regards reinforcement camps, we were
delegated to deal with local sick, and after that arrangement very few
of the cases sent down from the front came our way. For the first few
days the number of incoming sick could be dealt with adequately. But as
time went on, and the mercury rose higher and higher in the lifeless
air, the number increased and became formidable. Long lines of ambulance
wagons and bullock tongas crept steadily from every quarter to the
hospital. Beds were crowded into every corner of the wards. We had no
fans. Imagine, you who live in civilisation, what an electric fan may
mean. You can see it spinning in the corner of your club or restaurant
and think nothing of it. But in that place it meant the difference
between life and death. Picture yourself tossing in a high fever in the
centre of a stifling ward, with the temperature above 90 degrees all
through the night, and not a breath of wind stirring. Then think what it
would mean to find yourself placed suddenly under the whirling vanes of
a big fan, lying with your mouth wide open, taking great gulps of the
cool rushing air. When we moved up river, three months later, it was
rumoured the fans were on their way from India.
The maladies that were commonest were malaria, diarrhoea, dysentery,
jaundice and heat-stroke. There were some scattered cases of cholera,
and a few of typhoid. The typhoid began in earnest later on, as well as
sand-fly fever. Besides these there was a skin disease which we called
Basra sore--a very indolent ulcer which is not painful, but tends to
spread over the legs and arms, leaving a flexible, bluish scar when it
eventually heals. There was also an ill-defined syndrome, termed
variously Mesopotamitis or acute debility, or the Fear of God.
Officially one described it as the effects of heat. But of all these the
most pitiful was heat-stroke.
IV
HEAT-STROKE
I do not know of any other malady so dramatic, or so painful to witness,
as heat-stroke, with the exception, perhaps, of acute cholera. It is
something that belongs to Mesopotamia in a peculiar sense, in that it
seems to express in visible and concentrated form the silent hostility
of the country which was noticed by the ancients. For Mesopotamia
welcomes no man. It is a profound enigma. What do those two gigantic
rivers mean that rush through those vast stretches of barren land? For
what ultimate destiny were they designed? It is like looking on two
enormous electric cables, carrying a current of incalculable amperage,
lying beside a vast but motionless machinery, because no contact has
been made. Whatever the answer may be it has been long in coming.
Dwelling beside them, one cannot help speculating, for there is a kind
of fatality that concerns the disposition of matter in Nature. Oil
fields and rubber trees existed, one might say, as enigmas, until the
internal combustion engine and motor cars dawned on the world and
explained their riddle. This was their fate. And of Mesopotamia, who
shall say that it may not be concerned with a yet unborn attitude in us
Europeans when we will turn wholly to the produce of the earth?
To gain some idea of heat-stroke it is necessary to grasp the conditions
that produce it. A typical hot day begins with a dawn that comes as a
sudden hot yellow behind the motionless palms. A glittering host of
dragon-flies rises up from the swamps, wheeling and darting after the
mosquitoes. In the growing light mysterious shapes slink past. They are
the camp dogs returning from their sing-song, which has kept you awake
half the night. Inside the mosquito net you see various gorged little
insects struggling to get out of the meshing through which they passed
so easily when they were slim and hungry. The hot beam of the sun picks
out your tent, and the mercury goes up steadily. At five you are bathed
in perspiration as you lie in bed. It has been in the neighbourhood of
90 degrees throughout the night; you have probably spent most of it
smoking in a chair in the moonlight listening to horses whinnying,
donkeys braying, dogs barking and yelping without a pause, and men
groaning and tossing in the steamy sick tents. The business of getting
up is one of infinite weariness. There is nothing fresh in the morning
feeling. At eight the mercury is probably 100 degrees. At times, as you
dress after a tepid bath, it is necessary to sit down and take a rest.
Your vesture is simple--a thin shirt, open at the collar, and a pair of
shorts, stockings and shoes. During the day your feelings do not
correspond to the height of the mercury, for after breakfast a certain
amount of energy possesses you, and the morning's work becomes possible.
But after a couple of hours, in the neighbourhood of eleven, when it may
be anything from 110 to 120 degrees in the shade, a kind of enervation
sets in. This is partly due to lack of food. For some reason we found it
necessary to eat a considerable amount. The theory of a simple diet, a
little fruit, meat once a day and in small quantity, did not work out
in practice. After midday the world is a blinding glare and the intake
of air seems to burn the lungs. A comparative stillness descends on the
scene. On the plain activities cease. Through the double canvas roofing
of a tent the sun beats down like a giant with a leaden club. The
temperature in the wards increases. At the worst moments you feel
distinctly that it would be possible, by giving way to something that
escapes definition, to go off your head. A spirit of indifference to
everything is necessary. Any kind of worry is simply a mode of suicide.
A man, for instance, who feels continually he ought to be up and doing,
and that to lie still in vacancy is a sin, does not do well, unless,
perhaps, he dwells in a cool stone house, under fans, with plenty of
ice, as was the luck of some. There must be no inner conflicts. Cranks
soon suffer. Life becomes simplified. An oriental contempt of the West,
with all its preoccupations, grows insensibly. When a dripping orderly
came to rouse you to see some case, you understood perfectly the
attitude of mind that has produced the idea of Kismet. Why move? If the
man dies, it is Allah's will. It is Allah's will that he is sick. Let
him remain in the hands of Allah.
It was during the afternoon and evening that heat-stroke occurred in the
main when the humidity of the air began to go up. A great many of the
new troops had no idea of the danger of the sun. The Tommy does not
estimate a situation very quickly. The attempt to change the main meal
of the day to an evening hour did not meet with success, and during the
afternoon the men would sit bucking away in their tents, and refuse to
adapt themselves to the idea of a siesta. Moreover, the Tommy is
obstinate by nature and does not like to give in. He goes on marching
in the sun, even though he feels bad, and the collapse is swift and
fatal.
At about five o'clock, with the temperature falling and the humidity of
the air increasing, a period of intense discomfort set in. Perspiration
was so profuse that clothes became wringing wet like bathing suits, even
if you were sitting still. A kind of air hunger ensued. The few birds in
the groves sat with their beaks wide open. It was then that the
ambulance wagons began to roll in with their burden of heat-stroke
cases, and continued until after sunset. It is a malady which, as I have
said, is dramatic and painful to witness....
A heat-stroke station was prepared at the water's edge containing a
couple of baths and an ice chest, and patients were put into the chill
water as soon as possible. They were slapped and punched and laved till
they began to turn blue and the temperature fell. Then they were put in
a blanket, if any collapse showed, or just left naked on a bed in the
open. Fear played a powerful part in the malady. It tended to produce it
and to cause relapses, and it was good practice to use direct
counter-suggestion whenever the patient was conscious, as well as brandy
and morphia. The worst of it was that many of those patients who
recovered over night died next afternoon as they lay in the suffocating
ward. What was possible with wet sheets and small pieces of ice was
done, but it was a wretched business, and those who were in Basra at
that time and saw those spectacles will never forget them; nor will they
forget the silent, impotent rage that filled the mind at the thought of
the giant-bodied, small-headed Colossus of war which makes a useless
sacrifice of men in ways such as these every day. But it had one useful
effect, perhaps. A really Zoroastrian reverence for the sun came after
seeing a case, and a man learnt to look on his pith helmet and spine pad
as his best friends.
V
MIRAGE
On the 28th of April, after a week of conflicting rumours, we heard that
Kut had fallen. As a nation we take reverses with consummate coolness.
Whatever one thought inwardly, work went on as usual, and in the men's
lines there was very little comment. Up to the last moment Rumour was
optimistic. She spread a most mysterious yarn about the ship that tried
to escape Turkish vigilance and get to Kut with supplies. It was, she
said, full of gold. For what purpose she did not specify, but it sounded
promising. This was her last fling. After that she changed her mask and
looked ugly. Forty thousand Arabs were mustering at Kuweit. German
cruisers were in the Persian Gulf, sinking shipping right and left. The
Turks were coming down on Nasireyah in tremendous force. Trouble was
brewing at Shaiba. In the last respect she proved correct, though the
trouble was not great. At Shaiba, which lies about twenty miles west of
Basra across the plain, a remarkable battle was fought in the April of
the year before. A Turkish force of twelve thousand regulars and thirty
odd guns, with numerous Arabs, was routed at an extreme and critical
moment, it is said, owing to a mistake. The mistake, for once, was on
the part of the Turks. Fighting had been very severe. We had no reserves
and things were looking black. Numerous Arab tribesmen who had remained
as neutral spectators were beginning to take it into their heads that we
were losing, and that only means one thing to them. It means they at
once join forces with the victorious side, and add their ghastly
devilry to the general merriment. The Turks, under Suleiman Askari, had
been certain of victory. Victory would have meant the evacuation of
Basra, if not of Mesopotamia. So sure had the Turks been that they had
struck a medal for the occasion, celebrating the triumph of the capture
of Basra. Our men found sacks full of these cheap aluminum badges in the
Turkish trenches, and they were sold afterwards in the bazaar at Basra
by the thousand. But the Turks never wore them, for, at the most extreme
and critical moment, across the plain there came a swirling column of
dust, a flashing of wheels, and a thundering of hoofs. The sight was too
much for the Turks. Another battery, or even a whole brigade of
artillery, after those three exhausting days of fighting, was not worth
waiting for. So they rose from their trenches and began to flee, and
the Arabs, changing their minds with incredible swiftness, fell on them
in the rear and cut and slashed them about considerably. In the
meanwhile the strange column galloped up. But there were no guns. In
place of guns stood a strangely assorted collection of wagons, spring
carts, tongas--anything on wheels--that a certain doctor had got
together and brought up at full speed to take away the wounded. The
Turkish Commander, Suleiman Askari, committed suicide.
[Illustration: DONKEY LABOUR IN THE HEAT OF THE DAY.]
A New Zealander came into hospital one day from Shaiba way. He was a
wireless man, and being so, had found something in the desert that
puzzled the science of his mind. He explained the matter. Out there it
is a white, undulating expanse, burning hot, but with more air than in
Basra. There are extraordinary effects of perspective. A man standing a
short way off may assume gigantic proportions, or look like a dwarf. A
motor car near by would seem to lose its solidity and dissolve into a
few filmy lines. The mirage of water is everywhere. An Arab might lie in
the open and no one would see him. A post might look like a horseman at
full gallop. It was a country of topsy-turveydom as regards the
subjective estimate of the eyes. But what puzzled the wireless man was
this. He thought he understood how eye-strain and difference of
refractive power of the layers of heated air, or reflected light from
the ground and such physical considerations could cause these illusions.
But what he could not understand was how it came about that several men
would experience exactly the same illusion. Why should a post
simultaneously appear as an Arab on horseback or an Arab crawling
stealthily on the ground to half a dozen men? Mirage, like Rumour, is a
curious thing. It may have some inner connection with the set of a
man's feelings. It has its pleasant side when it paints water and palms
where there is no water nor any palms. It has its sinister side when it
clothes the most innocent features of the landscape in images of dread.
Who knows how it touched up that flying column of ambulance wagons in
the eyes of the Turks? There are certain areas that are constantly the
site of mirage. Our gunners found this a continual difficulty at the
front, for the hostile Arabs, knowing the mirage areas, would get into
them and make ranging impossible. A transport column on the move through
mirage is a curious sight. You see, across the plain, a long line of
black dots, which are the wagons on the move. But apparently they are
passing through the centre of a narrow lake, that runs in the same
direction as their line of advance. The reflection in the lake is
perfect in every detail and that is suspicious, for a train of wagons
and horses crossing a shallow lake would stir up the water and disturb
reflection. But there is another thing that helps you to recognise
mirage. At the tail of the column rises a cloud of dust and here and
there along the line you can make out a little wreath of dust rising
apparently from the surface of the mirroring water.