RAISING THE SIEGE
Burnet felt that the checks they had suffered were not likely to cause
such tenacious fighters as the Turks to abandon their object. The fact
that the attacks had been made by Turks and not by Halil's Arabs was
clear proof that the enemy's high command attached importance to the
capture of the island. With ample resources in their rear it could not
be doubted that artillery would be brought up, and then the inevitable
end was a matter of a day or two, perhaps only of hours, unless help
came. Such help had been promised, but Burnet knew well enough that
the strategic plans of the coming campaign could not be disarranged for
his benefit, and though the possession of the island was of some
importance to the security of the British left flank, it might well be
that other considerations would prevent the dispatch of a relief force.
In any case relief might not arrive in time.
Whether Rejeb would allow his men to prolong their resistance when the
odds against them became overwhelming was a question that gave Burnet
some concern. He thought it fair to put the situation frankly before
the young chief, who was mending but slowly, and was in no condition to
take an active part in the defence. Rejeb replied with equal frankness.
"The burden is truly heavy upon us, my brother," he said, "but we will
not cast it from our backs until there is no more hope. What if we
should steal away by night? Without our horses we should fall a prey
to Halil's mounted legion. Moreover, even if I escaped alive, my name
would be evermore a reproach. Surely it is better to fight and die
than to run and live dishonoured."
"That is well said. With your consent, then, we will resist the enemy
to the death."
He thought of sending a messenger into the British lines with a note
relating what had happened and explaining that he could scarcely hope
to carry on more than a few days longer. But reflecting that it would
take the man several days to reach his destination, even with the best
of luck, and that unless the relieving force had already started by
then it could hardly arrive in time, he gave up the idea. If he had
been able to overhear the counsels of the Turkish officers he would
have found his worst fears realised. The destruction of the guns and
the capture of Major Burckhardt had infuriated General Eisenstein, who
had dispatched a German officer from his staff to conduct the
operations, with more field-guns.
For some days the enemy's activity was limited to sniping, and to
pushing forward the walls along the island section of the causeway.
The Arabs could do little to impede them. The work was done at night,
with the assistance of kelaks, and always under cover of as many troops
as could be concentrated on the causeway and the kelaks on either side.
An attempt to attack the wall-builders must inevitably be outflanked.
Nor could another gap, nearer the island, be made in the causeway. The
enemy was always on the alert, and working parties of Arabs would only
have been destroyed.
Day by day Burnet saw the walls approaching the bridgehead.
Provisions, in spite of the most careful rationing, were running low;
and another action like the last would exhaust his stock of ammunition.
The walls had been pushed to within fifty yards of the bridgehead when,
early one morning, the garrison was startled by the sound of an
exploding shell. It had burst on the embankment a few yards below the
emplacement from which the machine-gun had repelled the last attack:
the enemy was clearly ranging on that spot. The Arabs showed signs of
nervousness, but were reassured by the broad smiles upon the faces of
the two machine-gunners. Burnet's first precaution after the late
action had been to change the position of the gun. Two new
emplacements, well masked, had been prepared within a short distance of
each other and connected by a shallow trench. Before a second shell
fell, Sturge and Jackson, assisted by a party of Arabs, had removed the
gun from the threatened position to another about twenty yards away.
But Burnet realised that bombardment was the beginning of the end.
To avoid useless loss of men, he withdrew the garrison from the
bridgehead. The defences, consisting only of piles of loose stones and
rubble, while effective against bullets, must soon be knocked to pieces
by shells, even from field-guns, and would prove only a death-trap to
men congregated behind them. He had reason to be thankful for the
precautions he had taken when the enemy, after sending shell after
shell into the vacant emplacement until it was thoroughly demolished,
got to work on the bridgehead. Some twenty rounds reduced this, the
first line of defence, to a mere rubbish heap.
Fortunately the enemy did not suspect the existence of the main trench
which had been dug in the rear, and was masked by the embankment on the
shore of the island. Having destroyed the bridgehead, the Turkish
gunners began to search the embankment methodically, dropping shells at
every few yards along the front. The embankment, consisting of deep
and closely packed mud, could not be broken down by the light shells
from field-guns; but the bombardment would have played havoc with the
defenders if, as the Turks no doubt supposed, they were extended behind
it.
As soon as their intentions became clear, Burnet withdrew the
machine-gun from the second emplacement to the third, which was well
retired from the shore and beyond the enemy's immediate objective.
This precaution turned out to be unnecessary, or at least premature,
for the bombardment was limited to about two hundred yards on each side
of the bridgehead. Seeing that the second emplacement was outside the
enemy's present zone of fire, Burnet had the machine-gun quickly
restored to its former position.
Hitherto the Arabs had not fired a single shot in answer to the
bombardment. Not a man of the enemy was in sight, and the guns were
far away on the mainland, completely hidden. The Arabs, at first
alarmed by the deafening explosions and the devastating effects of the
shells, had begun to recover tone when they saw that the damage was
mainly material. A few of them had been hit by flying splinters of
stone, but their injuries were light, and none had been killed.
At last the bombardment of the embankment ceased. A few moments later
shells began to fall on the ruined buildings in the centre of the
island. Anticipating this, Burnet had told the small body of Arabs
whom he was holding there in reserve what to do, and they, with Rejeb,
had already taken refuge in the deep underground chambers.
Immediately after the enemy's fire was lifted, a strong force of Turks
rushed along the causeway, being protected by the walls until they came
to the open stretch of some fifty yards. A few succeeded in reaching
the demolished bridgehead; the rest were caught by the fire of the
machine-gun from its new emplacement. The attack was too costly to be
maintained; the survivors were recalled; and during the confusion and
disorganisation due to this unexpected check a party of Arabs crept
down to the ruins of the bridgehead, and after a short, sharp fight
killed or captured the handful of Turks who had penetrated so far. Two
Arabs escorted the prisoners to the rear; the others, at Burnet's
orders, took cover behind the remains of the defences, to hold them if
possible against infantry attack, but to retreat if they were again
shelled.
As Burnet expected, the Turkish gunners again changed their objective,
directing their fire upon the neighbourhood of the second machine-gun
emplacement. The British soldiers, however, had already withdrawn the
gun to its third position. Burnet saw clearly enough that in this game
of hide-and-seek the opponent must ultimately win; but meantime it
seemed to him the most effectual means of holding up or disconcerting
the attack and playing for time. Sturge assured him that the enemy had
no more than two field-guns in action, as he had judged by timing their
shots; and the area of the island was large enough to give them plenty
of work before they could be assured that they had searched every
likely place for the elusive machine-gun.
This cheerful forecast was rudely belied only a few minutes afterwards.
In altering their range, the Turkish gunners dropped several shells on
the open ground between the central ruins and the embankment. One of
these burst within a few yards of the machine-gun, which was blown off
its stand and irreparably damaged. Sturge himself was hit by flying
splinters and thrown to the ground. It was seen that he was unable to
rise, and since he could not be carried to the rear without being
exposed to the view of the enemy, all that could be done was to place
him in the trench until darkness gave an opportunity of removing him.
Rejoicing that he had kept the second machine-gun in reserve, Burnet
sent Jackson to fetch it from its shelter behind a pile of stones at
the extreme left of the position. The shell that had ruined the first
had found it by accident; another had exploded in the trench and killed
or wounded several of the Arabs; but the Turks had now shortened their
range and were dropping their shells many yards nearer the shore. The
incident, however, was very disquieting. Luck might favour the enemy
again, or the position of the second machine-gun might be more quickly
discovered when it came into action, and it was the last reserve.
Moreover, the casualties suffered in the trench, more serious than any
that the Arabs had hitherto experienced, had had a manifestly
depressing effect on the rest of the garrison. Burnet felt a racking
anxiety as to their steadiness when the next attack should come.
He was standing beside Jackson, who had just set up the machine-gun,
when the man suddenly swung round, exclaiming:
"Hear that hum, sir?"
The bursting of a shell drowned all other sounds, but when the rumbling
echoes had ceased, Burnet caught a faint drone far away. He scanned
the sky all around; for about a minute nothing was to be seen; but
between the shots the humming was clearly audible, growing louder
continually. An aeroplane was approaching: was it friend or foe?
At last a speck appeared in the eastern sky, growing rapidly larger.
It had evidently been seen by the Turks, for the bombardment suddenly
ceased: they too, no doubt, were asking themselves the same question.
As it drew nearer to the island, the aeroplane rose higher, and
presently the prolonged crackle of rifle fire from the Turkish position
proclaimed that they had recognised it as a British machine.
Hope surged in Burnet's breast. The eyes of all the garrison were
fixed on the aeroplane. It flew high over the island, wheeled round,
passed directly over the trench, the disdainful target of innumerable
Turkish bullets, then soared away northward. A few moments later two
deafening explosions in quick succession shook the air, and two columns
of smoke rose in the neighbourhood of the northern end of the causeway.
The machine again turned, swept away to the east, and was soon out of
sight. Before it disappeared, an Arab ran up to Burnet, and handed him
an object which he declared had fallen from the sky as the aeroplane
passed over, and struck the ground near him. Tearing off the canvas
cover of the missile, Burnet found a small shell case, within which was
a slip of paper. With leaping heart he read the message. "A flying
column of horse is advancing up the Euphrates, and should make contact
with you to-morrow morning. We are opening the ball. Carry on."
Burnet tingled from head to foot. Without a word he handed the paper
to Jackson, who, less restrained, let out a wild cheer. Burnet told
the Arab to convey the good news to his comrades, and the air was soon
filled with a chorus of discordant shouts. Gloominess of spirit
vanished; help was at hand; every man glowed with new courage.
It was now past midday. Burnet was under no illusion. News of the
British advance must have reached the Turks opposing him: it probably
explained their eagerness to rush the island before the walls on the
causeway had been completed. It could hardly be doubted that they
would now make a supreme effort to storm the position: the garrison's
sternest ordeal was yet to come.
To Burnet's surprise, though the bombardment was kept up intermittently
by the field-guns during the rest of the day, there was no infantry
assault. He jumped to the conclusion that they intended to attack
during the night; perhaps to make a feint along the causeway, and try
to gain the shore of the island in their kelaks. At nightfall one
part, at any rate, of their plan was disclosed. From the causeway came
the sounds of many men hard at work: it was clear that the enemy were
toiling with fierce energy to finish the walls that would cover the
last fifty yards of their approach. The task could easily be completed
before the dawn, for it could not be effectually hindered; the
machine-gun was now so placed that it could not fire directly along the
causeway, but only at an angle across it, and the builders, being
protected by the walls already raised, were not likely to suffer much
loss in pushing the additions forward.
The enemy's full purpose was patent. Covered by the walls, they would
rush the ruins of the bridgehead, debouch behind the embankment, and
trust to their superior numbers to carry the inner defences by one
overwhelming assault. Hampered by the darkness, the garrison would be
at a great disadvantage. Neither rifles nor machine-guns could command
the whole front of attack. If the enemy were contained in the centre,
they had sufficient men to sweep round on both flanks and take the
defenders in the rear.
Burnet saw that there was only one means of saving the situation--of
gaining time until, with the morning, relief came. The enemy must be
forestalled. It was important to choose the right moment for the
counter-move. If made too early, and defeated, it might precipitate
disaster. If too long deferred, it might be just too late. Leaving
judgment or chance to decide the point, he quickly made preparations.
He sent for the small reserve which had hitherto occupied the
underground chambers in the centre of the island, posted them just
behind the advanced breastwork, and dividing the rest of the garrison,
some three hundred in all, into two parties, he ordered them to steal
quietly down to the embankment, and be ready to scale it at the word of
command.
In the early hours of the morning the lessening of sounds from the
causeway seemed to indicate that the work on the walls was nearly
completed. It was pitch dark; not even a reflection of starlight could
be seen in the water. Burnet gave the word; the men slipped
noiselessly across the embankment, half of them on each side of the
causeway; then, no longer preserving silence, dashed into the shallows,
which extended some fifteen or twenty paces from the shore, and began
to wade towards the working party. The Turks had only a few moments'
warning; but they made fierce resistance with clubbed rifles and
pioneer tools to the Arabs who swarmed up on each side of the causeway.
There were some minutes of bitter hand-to-hand fighting; but the enemy
were for the nonce outnumbered; they received no support from the rear;
and presently they fled helter-skelter, suffering heavy losses in their
flight from the rifle fire of their assailants.
Burnet carried the pursuit along the causeway until progress was
blocked by a traverse. The enemy were apparently not in sufficient
strength to attempt a counter-attack until reinforced. Taking
advantage of their inaction, which he knew could not last long, he
ordered some of his men to demolish the newly constructed mud walls,
while the remainder kept up a dropping fire. When the walls lining the
last thirty yards of the causeway had been destroyed, he led the men
back to their entrenchments, leaving a small detachment at the ruins of
the bridgehead.
The night work of the enemy had been frustrated, but Burnet did not
flatter himself that the danger was over. Without doubt they were
determined to capture the island before the arrival of the relieving
force, of whose approach they must by this time be well aware. How
would the Arabs, wearied by exertions unfamiliar to them, suffering
from scarcity of food, endure the shock and strain of the crisis?
With the first lifting of the sky at dawn the field-guns began a
systematic shelling of the embankment and of the area immediately
behind it, where it was now clear to them from previous events that the
garrison were entrenched. The Arabs, lying close under their
breastwork, suffered few serious casualties, though many of them were
bruised and grazed by fragments of stone and shell, and some were
overcome by the nauseating fumes. Presently the guns were turned on
the ruins of the bridgehead, and Burnet at once withdrew the detachment
from its precarious shelter there.
He had scarcely done so when the storm broke. A dense column of Turks
came rushing along the causeway. Kelaks, one of large size, carrying a
machine-gun protected with sand-bags, swept out from the gap. From
loopholes in the walls on the causeway the enemy poured a hot fire upon
the flanks of the defenders' position. Numbers of Halil's Arabs swam
in the wake of the kelaks, which were approaching the island on the
side of the causeway remote from Jackson's machine-gun. Jackson
directed his fire across the causeway, and took a heavy toll of the
horde of Turks, but failed to check the determined rush. Finding that
the machine-gun had not been disposed of, the Turkish gunners again
searched the right flank of Burnet's position, and though they did not
succeed in hitting the exact spot where Jackson, unperturbed, was
emptying his belts of ammunition one after another, he was struck more
than once by chips and slivers of metal and stone.
As soon as the field-guns changed the direction of their fire, Burnet
called on some of the Arabs to follow him to the embankment, from which
they poured a hail of bullets upon the enemy. In spite of losses, the
Turks and their Arab allies pressed on and penetrated to the
bridgehead. Meanwhile some of the kelaks had reached the shore
opposite Burnet's left, and parties of the enemy swarmed up to the
further side of the embankment and established themselves there.
The enemy found it impossible to maintain their position at the
bridgehead in the centre beneath the withering fire of the Arabs under
Burnet's immediate command. Baffled but not beaten, they too sought
shelter under the embankment on either side, and some of them, at the
extreme horn of the arc, so placed themselves that they could enfilade
the defenders. Burnet was compelled to withdraw his men hastily behind
their breastwork. If that was carried the whole island was at the
enemy's mercy.
There was a brief lull. Some hundreds of Turks and Arabs had now
gained a footing on the island, and were no doubt collecting their
energies for a final overwhelming rush. Burnet employed the interval
in doing what was possible for his wounded, and in going from end to
end of the defences, speaking words of encouragement to the men.
It was nearly two hours before the rush came. Across the gap at the
end of the causeway, or wading through the shallows, or on the kelaks,
which had returned for reinforcements, the enemy swarmed to the assault
with exultant cries. They were now protected by the embankment except
where the machine-gun still enfiladed them, but Jackson's ammunition
was running short, and fired less rapidly than before. They had landed
their own machine-gun on the extreme left, and were seen hastily
cutting an embrasure in the embankment. If they were unmolested, the
defences would soon be swept from end to end, and all would be over.
Burnet hurriedly collected fifty men, and led them straight for the
gun. A few fell to rifle fire; Burnet himself had his rifle struck
from his hand; but they flung themselves upon the machine-gun team with
the swiftness of a tornado. A crowded minute of fierce hand-to-hand
fighting gave them possession of the gun, and they dashed back with it,
the retreat involving more losses but not one-tenth of those that the
gun would have inflicted in a few seconds Burnet's only regret was that
he could not employ the gun against the enemy.
[Illustration: THE DASH FOR THE MACHINE-GUN]
By this time they had scrambled over the embankment and were swarming
towards breastwork. Burnet rushed to the centre, and succeeded in
maintaining a certain fire discipline among the Arabs within sound of
his voice. Again and again the enemy recoiled before the defenders'
fire, at point-blank range. But reinforcements were continually
streaming up; one of the field-guns was now concentrating its fire on
the centre of the position; and the sight of comrades falling around
them severely strained the resolution of the Arabs. Their valour,
proof against infantry attack, could scarcely be expected to endure
shelling to which no reply could be made. If the risk of hitting their
own men had not constrained the Turkish gunners to plant their shells
well beyond them, Burnet felt that his force might soon have become
utterly demoralised.
Hurrying from point to point, now to give a heartening word to the
survivors of a shell-burst, now to direct the rifle fire where especial
danger threatened, he lost count of time and all sense of personal
risk. His sole thought was to hold on as long as possible. Now and
again he found himself asking, "Why don't they come?" and listening for
the shots that would announce the proximity of the relieving force.
It was nearly midday. Burnet, on the left, was suddenly conscious that
the machine-gun had ceased firing, and saw Jackson hurrying towards him
with a rifle.
"Played out, sir," said the man. "Fired my last round."
He had scarcely finished speaking when a bomb exploded near the angle
of the breastwork. Immediately afterwards a strong party of Turks
swept round, dashed through the smoke, and began to bomb their way
along the trench. The Arabs crowded back in panic. Some swarmed out
of the trench and rushed frantically towards the centre of the island.
Burnet and Jackson, together with a few of the more stout-hearted
Arabs, fired into the advancing mass of Turks; but there was no
adequate defence against bombs, no possibility of stemming the rout.
Step by step they fell back, towards the men who, as yet unaware of the
new weapon in use against their left, were still holding the defences
with grim valour. The Turkish bombers advanced slowly, respecting the
rifles which so steadily sped their bullets through the increasing
volume of smoke. And now Burnet saw that another party of the enemy,
passing the end of the breastwork, was striking up across the island.
At this moment a shell burst a few yards away; he was struck below the
knee, and sank to the ground. Jackson, smothered with earth, rushed to
his side.
"Carry on!" gasped Burnet. "We won't give in till the last gasp."
Jackson turned about, and fired again into the advancing bombers. The
field-guns ceased to play; only rifle fire and bomb explosions could be
heard. Then, after a minute or two, came reports of guns again, but no
shells fell. The blare of bugles was heard, and a few seconds
afterwards Jackson, still facing the enemy, shouted:
"By Jupiter, they're bolting, sir."
It was true. The men who had penetrated the island were running back.
At the breastwork the Turks had suddenly dropped away, and were now
streaming along the causeway, scrambling on board the kelaks, plunging
into the water, in desperate anxiety to save themselves from the new
danger that threatened them. The ever-increasing boom of guns away to
the west told them clearly enough what that danger was; and Jackson,
running a little way up the rising ground behind the scene of the long
struggle, soon declared that he saw the glint of sunlight on lances
above the patches of vegetation.
Rejeb's Arabs, weary though they were, sprang over the breastwork and
the embankment and dashed along the causeway in pursuit of their
retreating foe. Many of them suffered from their own temerity, for the
Turk in defeat is still a dangerous man, and some of the fugitives
halted and turned upon their pursuers with grim ferocity.
Some hours later, Burnet, lying on a couch in Rejeb's tower, was
embarrassed by the congratulations of the colonel commanding the
relieving force.
"Thanks to you," said that officer, "we've made a bag of some five or
six hundred Turks who are now on their way to enjoy the luxuries of
imprisonment, for by all accounts they'll fare better with us than
they've been doing with their own people lately."
"Did they put up a fight, sir?" asked Burnet.
"They made a little noise until our main body came up. Unluckily that
old rascal Halil's men got away on their horses, most of them: after
our long march our horses were too fagged to round them up. But Halil
won't give any more trouble in these parts."
"And what of our big push, sir?"
"We've started, and one may say that Bagdad will be our next stop.
You'll be out of it, I'm afraid, young man; you'll be under treatment
for synovitis or something of the sort when we march in."
"I hope to goodness not, sir," said Burnet, pulling a long face.
The colonel smiled.
"That's the right spirit," he said. "Well, I'll take care that the
Chief knows all about your doings here. If the enemy had got this
position they might have worried us a good deal on our left flank. But
I'm not sure that your friend the chief here doesn't owe you more than
we do, for it seems to me that he stood an uncommonly good chance of
being wiped out."
And later, when Rejeb and Burnet were alone together, the Arab thanked
the Englishman with all the fervour of a generous nature.
"I kiss your eyes, my brother," he said in conclusion, and Burnet knew
that no Eastern phrase more expressive of gratitude could have been
used.