rate was increasing steadily. The Shimal, the north-west wind that comes
just in time to make it possible for you to believe in Providence, was
not due until the middle of June. Down by the river-side, where the
official meteorological station stood, the day temperature was far over
100 degrees, and up in the airless creeks, in the palm groves, it was
much higher. Clinical thermometers cracked if they were left lying about
on tables. Our staff was getting seriously depleted. No Tommy had to
work so hard as those hospital orderlies, and it is not surprising that
our casualties in sick men were very heavy. Clerks in the office became
ward masters at a moment's notice. But in spite of all this the spirit
of the place remained unshaken. However great the heat, it did not
destroy that sense of humour which is the glory of the British Army.
Rather be beaten and retain that sense than be victorious and lose it.
And if you come to think of it, no man who retains his sense of humour
is ever really beaten.
VI
THE DAY'S WORK
The great distances that separate the main stations in Mesopotamia, and
the long sea voyage between Basra and Bombay, threw a considerable
strain on that part of the army that sits in offices and deals with army
forms. At Poona the supreme headquarters of the campaign resided amid
the clear breezes of the Indian hills. The consequence was that in cases
where two or three copies of a form would have sufficed on the Western
front, there it was necessary to multiply them indefinitely, so as to
satisfy all the various authorities down the line. For example, in
sending sick to India, a nominal roll is compiled with name, number,
rank, regiment, nature of disease and so on. This, in triplicate, is an
ordinary procedure anywhere. But in Basra it was necessary, for some
reason, to make out over twenty copies, and this is a long business on a
typewriter that will only do a small number at a time, and is wanted for
other things. It also caused a great delay before indents could
materialise. You wished, say, to order a truss for a patient. Out there,
owing to the heat, articles of this nature perished quickly. You
reported the measurements to the quartermaster. He made a copy of the
indent in triplicate, as well as an office copy. The indents went to the
Assistant Director of Medical Services for approval. They were then sent
back to the quartermaster. He then sent them to the Base Medical Depot,
who acknowledged their receipt and said they would be sent to India as
soon as possible. In India they passed through other complicated
machinery and the weeks went by. A truss, I suppose, is worth a few
shillings.
There were three other factors that added to the difficulties, apart
from distance. One was the bar at the mouth of the river, which made it
impossible for deeply laden vessels coming up the Persian Gulf and
drawing many feet of water to pass without unloading in part into
another vessel. The other was that strip of river between Kurna and
Amara known as the Narrows, where river boats with supplies stuck
constantly, especially when the floods fell and the water was low. One
boat sticking here would hold up all traffic.
The third factor was the effect of the excessive heat. This effect,
rather subtle in itself, might be called the psychological factor of the
situation, for there is not the slightest doubt that it produced a kind
of cussedness in everyone, from the highest to the lowest, and sapped
energy and made changes unwelcome. For excessive and prolonged heat--and
the hot season lasted seven or eight months--rouses a defensive
mechanism of inertia whose aim is to preserve life. You saw that in the
earliest cases of incipient heat-stroke. A man felt suddenly all the
power go out of his legs. He wanted to lie down, and this was the best
thing he could do.
Mental exertion became almost impossible. Reading was not easy, writing
was a burden, and thinking a matter of extreme difficulty. Your interest
lay in watching the simplest thing. A Japanese fly-trap with its
slowly-turning, sticky surfaces was fascinating. There was a spice of
oriental cruelty in the way it slowly entrapped the fly, and it was
exactly that which made the appeal. You soon understood how it comes
about that the Eastern takes all the natural facts of life for granted,
without bothering about fine shades, and acts on them unquestioningly.
What is called altruism in the West seems artificial. It is not cynicism
exactly that the place breeds, and I never met anyone who was
sentimental in Mesopotamia, but it is a kind of descent that occurs to a
level of values that are coloured black and white, quite plain. A man
who expected to throw a spell over the country and act as a stimulant on
everyone would truly need to possess a prodigious character. "In the
tropics there is going on continually and unconsciously a tax on the
nervous system which is absent in temperate climates. The nervous
system, especially those parts which regulate the temperature of the
body, is always on the strain, and the result is that in time it suffers
from more or less exhaustion." The common effect of this is a
"deficient mental energy generally commencing with unnatural drowsiness
or loss of appetite and a yearning for stimulants which culminates in
that lowering of nerve potential which we know so well as neurasthenia."
Thus write the professors of medicine in India on the effects of
prolonged heat. I would add to it a large mental element, partly induced
by the lack of any kind of amusement, by the want of interest, and by
the peculiar effect of a landscape that is entirely flat and uniform. An
artificial mountain scenery, painted on canvas, such as one used to see
at Earl's Court, would have been a blessed relief. I think a London fog
would have been delightful. Towards the end of September, a few small,
fleecy clouds appeared one day in the sky and everyone ran out and
stared solemnly at them as if they were angels. But there is one phrase
that sums up the prolonged effects of heat better than any scientific
rigmarole. It takes the silk out of a man.
In Basra there was published daily a small, excellent newspaper which
gave the latest Reuters and printed selections from papers that came by
the mail. It was sorely missed when we went up river. I believe it was
edited by a lady. There was a club in Ashar where it was possible to sit
under electric fans. In old Basra there was an Arab theatre, containing
a few dancing girls and a cinematograph. But the arrival of the mails
was the great feature of life out there. They came roughly once a week,
and it is difficult to describe with what emotions they were received.
The whole district became revivified for a space under their influence.
Through the month of June the sickness increased and work went on
steadily increasing. We had 400 beds in the wards at that time, and it
was necessary to find accommodation for an average of 700 patients.
Anyone who was likely to be sick for any length of time was sent to
India whenever the opportunity arose. Down at the British Hospital on
the river front they were sending cases off that were likely to be more
than three days ill. It was an oriental polyglot scene down there on the
hospital quay in the comparative cool of evening, when the big white
hospital ship lay off the bank and crowds of ticketed patients sat under
the shelters waiting their turn to embark. Now and then a pale nurse,
dressed in white, with white helmet and red-lined parasol would walk
through the throng. Arab _belumchis_, Jews, Persians, Armenians, Sikhs,
Gurkhas, Pathans, and Ghats crowded the bank, voluble and picturesque.
Dhobies thrashed clothes at the river edge. Bhisties drew water in
kerosene tins. Convalescent Tommies in blue dungaree, fished
stolidly--wishing they were bound for India. The roofs of the square
white buildings were filled with nurses taking tea. Launches whirled up
and discharged Staff officers. All down the centre of the stream lay big
vessels. Already the place had a cosmopolitan spirit--a new-born
genius--and one could see it dimly in the future, when the Baghdad
railway runs through it to Kuweit, a white city, garish with painted
promenades and electric lights, with as many languages sounding in the
street as in Port Said.
The dates were now hanging in big masses of oval, greeny-yellow fruit,
some in clusters of two hundredweight and more, and the palm leaves were
turning brown at their points. The scarlet of the pomegranate trees had
vanished from the date groves and the floods were beginning to fall. It
had been necessary to surround the hospital clearing with a mud wall, or
bund, about four feet in height, in order to keep out the water, for at
times there is as much as a six foot rise when the tide comes up the
Shatt-el-Arab.
At any simple job of this kind the Arabs are quite good. They can
plaster mud on a roof, or make a bund, or run up a mud and reed hut, or
raise the level of the flooring of a ward, and they take their time over
it. But anything that savours of machinery is usually beyond them. It
was a common saying amongst the Arabs that sickness stopped as soon as
the dates were gathered in. That proved to be untrue. It was a long
while until the dates were ripe, and after they were gathered sickness
still continued. The amount of heat those dates required before they
turned yellow and soft, and their skins began to crinkle faintly, was
extraordinary. For weeks and weeks they remained hard and green, though
exposed to the fiercest heat of the sun. Pomegranates, in the same way,
hung for months before their skins turned to that beautiful deep
mahogany hue of the ripe fruit.
[Illustration: ON THE SHATT-EL-ARAB NEAR BASRA.]
On a particular day at the end of June one might have fancied a crisis
had been reached. Curiously enough, by the irony of coincidence, the
Reuters of that day contained the news that it had been stated in
Parliament that, in the interests of the public, no statement would be
made about the state of affairs in Mesopotamia.
That night it was rumoured that Verdun had fallen....
The gift of a large fleet of motor ambulances presented by the cinema
people at home was a great boon, for urgent cases could be transported
to hospital rapidly, instead of jolting over the plain in bullock
tongas. Unfortunately, the axles of these cars were not quite equal to
the rough work, and in a short time they were sent away to other spheres
where roads were better. The ground in our neighbourhood was so
undermined by floods that on one occasion one of these cars, standing
empty, suddenly broke through the upper crust up to its axles. A great
deal of perspiration flowed before it was extricated.
In the meanwhile the creek was full of _mahallas_ loading up equipment,
for we had received orders to go higher up-river.
VII
THE NARROWS
We left Basra when the Arabs, and the Indian troops, were celebrating
the Mohammedan feast of Ramadhan. During the feast, which lasts a month,
night is turned into day. No food is allowed, in theory, from sunrise to
sunset. Drums beat, dogs howl, cocks crow and the revellers shout and
wail and clap their hands in long, rhythmic, staccato periods, and
explosions of powder occur under the crescent moon.
A small, double-decked, squat river boat which had been captured from
the Turks took us on board. It burned oil fuel. A single canvas awning
with many gaps in it covered the upper deck. The lower deck was nearly
taken up by engine and boiler, save for a small saloon aft, and water
tanks and a galley forward. Our strength was about 100 men with twenty
Indians belonging to the hospital, and there were a few odd details
travelling as well and the crowding was considerable. On each side of
the steamer were big barges. On the port side was a barge of mules. On
the starboard side a barge of fodder, and various bales and cases,
surmounted by a crowd of coolies. The smell from either side was like a
Zoo. We set off in high spirits, for we had heard that Amara, whither we
were bound, was a Paradise compared to Basra. The heat was excessive.
Behind the funnel on deck, where our quarters lay, it was 125 degrees,
and the awning did not do much towards keeping out the burden of the
sun. The country through which we passed was green-tinged with sparse
palms, and absolutely flat. In the river were long strings of
_mahallas_, being towed by teams of Arabs. These craft may take sixteen
days to reach Amara. In the heat of the day the towing team gets into
the river and moves slowly along up to their waists in water. Owing to a
long stop at Margil, which lies two miles above Basra, and is the site
of the Supply people, we did not make much progress the first day. At
sunset it is necessary to tie up, or anchor, in the stream. The night
was not so bad save for mosquitoes, and after a sousing of river water,
drawn forward of the mule barge, and a cup of tea at dawn, we felt
cheerful. We started at four-thirty and passed Kurna.
Kurna is the Garden of Eden. It lies at the junction of the Euphrates
and Tigris, and is a small hamlet of white houses. Here there is a wide
area of date palms and a great brown, tranquil stretch of river. A white
doorway in a yellow wall, shaped like a pear, marks the supposed
position of Paradise. The doorway bears a tablet with an Arabic
inscription. Behind the doorway, just visible over the wall, a tree
grows. This may or may not be the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and
Evil, because a dwarfed sinister tree lower down, to which barges tie
up, is given the name. But I prefer the one in its walled garden, a
faded, simple, harmless-looking tree. And the result of eating its fruit
can be moralised on here, for on one side of it is the bazaar square,
where whisky and beer and tobacco are sold, and on the other side is the
telegraph office with the news of the war blazoned on the iron-studded
door and an armed sentry before it.
Beyond Kurna the Tigris takes some immense curves so that at times you
seem to see the sails of _mahallas_ all round the horizon. We lay on
deck, staring idly at the unvarying landscape which quivered under the
sun. Occasionally Arab villages were passed, constructed out of the
matting made from reeds, which is a local industry. The reeds grow in
big patches all the way up the river banks. On the second night we tied
up below Ezra's tomb. There was local Arab trouble in this part at the
time and we passed an outpost of native troops; also a mud hut, standing
solitary in a swamp in the plain and bearing the words "Leicester
Lounge" in black lettering. It seemed deserted.
At night there was a lot of lamp-signalling all round the horizon in
naval code. One caught M.M.O. repeatedly and then a lot of figures. Some
fires lit up the sky line to the north. On that night the heat was
beyond description. A plague of sand-flies and mosquitoes descended on
the ship. No one slept a wink. The mules screamed and kicked. There was
not a breath of air. A heavy smell pervaded the ship, and at times it
seemed that one's mind wandered a little. Before dawn a great cry came
out of the steamy darkness from some worshipping Arab and was repeated
twice. After a long silence a cock crew far across the plain and was
answered a hundred times. Then came a misty blue light and a sudden
glare of yellow. The day had begun and the engines started.
A monitor passed, bristling with guns and painted a vivid green. Ezra's
tomb is a mosque standing stark on the brown plain beside the river in a
clump of palms. It is kept in beautiful preservation, for it is visited
by pilgrim Jews. Against the lovely blue of the dome, with its circle
of gold, a tall palm leans, bending sharply inward as if to kiss the
Prophet's last resting-place in some sudden mood of devotion. Some way
above it lies a big village, and as we passed crowds of Arabs lined the
bank. Naked boys dived into the river after money. The women, dashing
types with nose rings, clad in robes of wonderful vermilion and purple
colours, ran along the banks with fowls and eggs for sale. Herds of
black buffalo, submerged up to the nose, basked in the water.
At one lonely place we passed a small shelter, a roof of yellow matting
supported by a few posts, containing six rather pale-hued women with
richly coloured robes and bangles seated in a semi-circle on the ground.
Outside stood the lord of the manor, very swarthy, in dazzling white,
with a rifle slung over his shoulder, scowling ferociously as he
surveyed the plains. He was a kind of policeman, I believe, in our pay.
At any rate he seemed to be, like policemen in general, a strong lover
of domestic life. Six wives may have contributed a little towards
overcoming the extreme monotony of life in the place.
Above Ezra's tomb begin the Narrows. The Tigris becomes very narrow,
pouring its filthy yellow water at a great speed between the sharply cut
banks. The turns are so sharp, being at times much more acute than a
right angle, that the only way to get round is to charge the bank, bump
off with a great churning of paddles and creaking of lashings and
clanging of the telegraph from the bridge, and work the steamer's nose
into the centre of the stream again. The banks, at these spots, are
perfectly smooth and polished owing to the constant impacts. By
themselves the river steamers could get round more skilfully, but with
their clumsy barges on each side it was impossible. The S-boats--the
stern wheelers--of which there are only a few, do not carry barges, and
therefore their handiness and speed are much greater. They can run from
Basra to Sheik Saad, close to the front, within three days, and can
travel by night if necessary.
At three in the afternoon as we bumped and scraped and panted up the
tortuous river, we came on the familiar sight of a convoy stuck,
broadside on, across the river in front of us. A little smoke came from
her funnel. The sun beat savagely down on her apparently deserted decks.
Behind her there was nothing but shimmering plain and the occasional
flash of water. Our engine-room telegraph rang. The engines stopped and
we slewed into the bank and dropped anchor. Then the skipper and his
navigating lieutenants withdrew to their cabins and the engine-room
staff, composed of an Englishman who had run boats up to Baghdad for ten
years, and a few Christian Baghdadies--powerful dark men, who seemed to
speak a kind of French--disposed themselves for rest on the lower deck,
and a great peace descended on the scene. Away over the horizon, north
and south, some columns of smoke were visible coming from other convoys
that were converging on the Narrows. It was necessary to wait for the
tide, as well as for a tug. There was nothing to do but to watch the
plain. At first sight it appeared lifeless, an expanse of golden browns,
reds and yellows, with a sharp purple rim on the skyline. But closer
observation showed long lines of cattle, mere dots in the distance,
moving slowly in search of pasture. In the shadow of a hummock an Arab
boy and girl sat together motionless. A mile along the level two Arabs
were rhythmically swinging water up from a cutting by means of a shallow
vessel with ropes attached to the side. The flash of it caught the eye,
and there was a patch of vivid emerald where the water fell. To the
north it was possible to make out the arms of a semaphore lying idle.
There was no sound in the place. The river itself flowed silently. Only
the occasional deep drone of a hornet or the note of a mosquito came to
the ear. The sun seemed to be drawing the land together, sucking up all
the sap it contained.
As we sat and gazed at these bending and twisting Narrows the idea arose
that it might be possible, by a little cutting, to do away with the
worst bits and open up a straight channel. For there were two main
places of obstruction, called the Devil's Elbow and Pear Drop Reach.
But it is necessary to say this with caution, for tampering with great
rivers like the Tigris may cause unthought-of trouble. It upsets the
natural balance of the waters.
Gradually the other convoys drew near and dropped anchor above and below
the obstructing vessel. Some native troops in one of them got out on the
bank and began to bathe, or wandered about looking for fuel to cook
their evening meal, and towards evening a string of Arab women and
children, from some remote village, came along with eggs and melons and
pumpkins. In the meanwhile a kind of activity prevailed in the region of
the obstruction. A tug boat appeared and ropes were stretched out to
posts on the land and the water was being churned to foam by the
paddles. It was said that General Y was on a convoy ahead, and General
X, who was going up to replace him, was in a convoy behind us. It was
possible to count seven convoys in all, and smoke columns were still
rising in the south. It was not until darkness fell that the ship was
pulled off, and it was too late to move on that night. So we ate our
bully beef and settled down for the night. Once more our sensations were
indescribable. The sand-flies were like a million little red-hot wires.
There was not a breath of air and the mules screamed and fought and
gasped alongside. One hundred and fifty people packed on a small deck,
round a funnel that is still burning hot, make a poor job of sleeping in
such a climate.
It was the devout prayer of everyone that we might reach our destination
next day and get off the ship and away from those mules. That was not to
be. We reached Amara in the darkness of the evening, and anchored near
the Rawal Pindi Hospital. Owing to a case of cholera that had developed
that day on the starboard barge, we were put in quarantine, so it was
necessary to unpack one's kit again and shake down for the night on
deck. One of the most refractory mules kicked itself loose of its
moorings and fell into the stream in the darkness. Several men risked
their lives in rescuing it. One would have thought, seeing that it had
been the noisiest and most vicious brute on the barge, that drowning was
scarcely good enough for it. And what is a wife to think of her husband
when she is told that he was drowned while gallantly attempting to
rescue from the swift current of the Tigris a mule that could swim far
better than he could? As no one was drowned, perhaps it is unnecessary
to ask the question.
[Illustration: ARAB BELUM ON TIGRIS.]
VIII
AMARA
We reached Amara about the middle of July. At that time there was
practically nothing happening at the front, but the sickness was great.
Amara, by reason of its openness, was a little fresher than Basra, but
the temperature was high. It was 125 degrees in the shade on the day
following our arrival.
The white low houses line along the river front on the left bank in a
more orderly fashion than at Ashar. A bridge of boats connects the two
banks. This bridge, which existed before the war, swings open from the
centre and lets traffic through. On the right bank a few houses were
scattered amongst thick groves of palms. There is somehow a more
oriental spirit at Amara than at Basra. The _belums_ are more
fantastically curved, the mystery of the town more apparent, and the
narrow-domed bazaar, full of dim light and vivid colour, is permeated
with the spirit of the Arabian Nights. There are some cunning craftsmen
in the bazaar, particularly the silver-and gold-smiths, who make
exquisite inlaid work. They do this after the manner of true artists, in
that they work seemingly more by a process of thought and feeling rather
than with the aid of tools. For they sit on the ground with a bowl of
water, a small charcoal fire, a strip of metal, and a deeply preoccupied
look, and after a time the article is finished. The overlaying of silver
by antimony is their particular craft. Owing to the orders they
received, they soon began to charge prohibitive prices. At certain times
it was possible to get egret feathers, and also astrachan--the skin of
unborn lambs--in the bazaar. The old copper vessels that were sold in
many of the shops were sometimes very beautiful.