The chief columns of officers have already left for Mosul.

Daily I practise walking on the wall, a space that offers

opportunity for a good promenade. I want to see how much

I can do. Altogether I feel a little better but the dysentery

has left me very weak, and after a half-mile have to sit down.

I have contrived to send my British orderly to the town

where, with the money I have raised by selling some of my

kit, he has bought on occasion small pieces of meat or fish,

a few vegetables, and even a small fowl which we shared among

six sick people. We stewed the fowl to rags and drank the

soup.

I have been allowed by special leave to visit General

Smith in hospital. He had asked me during the last days of

Kut to do A.D.C. again to him in captivity. This was an

excellent chance for which I was most grateful, as it seemed

doubtful whether I would last the trek. But I have no money

and can't get any, and am averse to travelling on my general's

supply, as money now is one's chance of life. I told him frankly

that I am doubtful about being fit enough to carry on very

efficiently for him, but as he is to travel in a carriage over the

desert for all those hundreds of miles I could do a certain

amount, and I hoped to be of use in knowing something of French

and German. However, in my woebegone condition I was

promptly turned down. I recognize now that I am in for the

ordeal of the survival of the fittest with a heavy handicap.

We hear sometimes terrible accounts of the hardships undergone

over these hundreds of miles of foodless and often waterless

land, to struggle over which is an achievement even for a

strong man. But for one thing, we should be too dismayed

to start--that is the hope and will strong within us to survive.

One recognizes this show has become a competition between a

man and a merciless fate. I believe I shall get through.

Major Middlemas and Lieutenant Greenwood shared my

room and we slept on our blankets on the floor.

_Later._--We have been allowed three times into the town

and wandered through a bazaar full of bootshops and cafés.

Gunner Holmes sticks faithfully to me. He is lucky to have

escaped the lot of the others. Shortly after our arrival we

saw what even the oldest soldiers amongst us regarded as the

most awful spectacle of their lives--the sight of a column of

British soldiers under Turk and Arab guards entering Baghdad

after the march from Kut. They were literally walking

corpses, some doubled with the pains of cholera, some limping

from blows received _en route_. They were pressed on by their

guards. Some had lost their boots and shoes or had parted

with them for food. Some fell, but under the coercion of

loud shouts or a Turkish heel got up and lurched forward

again.

We heard from hospital of the awful sufferings of the men

here who were quite unnecessarily confined in a bare baked-up

field near the station. Indians and British were all mixed

up, a deliberate effort of the Turk to encourage strife between

the Mussulman prisoners and the others. For some days,

mad with thirst, they struggled around a tiny foul pool into

which the sick crawled and collapsed. It became stirred up

with mud but the men, poor fellows, drank it.

They have no cover from the sun except a few wretched

sticks propped on poles.

Baghdad is a very old city. But from its grimy and ill-kept

streets and from its dust-smothered houses, the glamour

of its ancient romance seems very far off. One minaret of

Byzantine design we passed on our way to the town. There

is nothing else to tell one of its glorious past, in fact it is said

that all Baghdad was on the other bank. It is merely a drab,

dull succession of buildings formed of the sun-baked mud of the

desert. On the river, however, especially at sunset when the

dirt and dust are obscured and only the pipes of the Baghdadis

and Arabs blaze in the dusk, it is decidedly picturesque.

All the sick, even if only partly able to walk, start on the

desert trek for Mosul in a few days. We have heard so much

of waterless marches and barren lands crossed only by the

nastiest Arabs, that one has the resistless desire to try one's

chance. To move is to live; to stay here is to die.

_Later._--I have made a small tour of some antique shops in

the bazaar with a delightful youth named Lacy of the Hants.

He has just left school and is as slender and green as the young

willow, and yet he has contrived to keep his manners intact,

to await quietly his turn and to prefer dignified acquiescence

to selfishness. We found quite an amount of silver work and

even china, some of which we heard had found its way here

during the war from an old caravan route from China.

I have corrupted my first sentry by giving him a drink,

swallowed a horrible cognac, the immediate effects of which

were promising, and learned two Turkish words. One is

"yok," which means "there is not," and the other is "yesak,"

which means forbidden!

_Mosul, June 14th._--Nearly three weeks ago at Baghdad

the convalescent and sick who were able to move at all were

given several false starts, and then without notice marched in

the fierce heat to the railway station nearly two miles off. We

then lay down in the road until evening when the train was found

to be unable to start. We bought some bread and at intervals

managed leave from our guards to get water. In the early morning

we left by train for Samarra, the rail head eighty miles off, a

tiny village on the scorching plain. Dust storms enveloped

us as we marched to quarters which were on the ground inside

a serai. A few branches interwoven overhead afforded most

inadequate shelter. Here we met some other officers who had

been left behind from previous columns. Feverish preparations

filled the interval while we awaited donkeys which were

to transport us. One heard that previous columns had bought

the few available stores, and that the Arabs had learned

to put up prices. The novelty for the Turk of white prisoners

was wearing off, and altogether we seemed in for a rough time.

We were allowed to go down to the river near by to bathe under

escort. On one occasion our padre quoted "By the waters of

Babylon we sat down and wept when we thought of thee,

O Zion." We realized we were the Third Captivity. In

fact he might have selected another psalm.

About a quarter of the donkeys turned up. Our senior

officer objected; but ultimately we had to start with what we

could get, a half donkey for one's kit and one-third for oneself.

We had to walk in turns, and from the size and condition

of the donkeys a collapse was soon inevitable. Major Middlemas

and I piled our kit on a large donkey, whom we called the

Cynic, from the cut of his head and from his eye and his

perpetual sneer, no doubt brought about by a disgust of the

Turk's hopeless _bandobast_. He went at his own pace.

The sun was setting on the desert as our column of about

forty British officers, a number of native officers, and some

sick men whom we took as orderlies, wound slowly over the

scorching sand. Dust from the forward column blinded us,

and one was frequently almost ridden down by others pressing

on. A riding animal I shared with Lieutenant Lee-Bennett,

who feeling ill collapsed after doing a mile or two, and so he

rode most of the time. He had been very ill, whereas I was

recovering, and although racked with pain I managed to keep

going by holding on to a strap. At intervals in the hot night

we halted. I shall never forget the impressiveness of this

scene. Our long shadows reached far over the plain. For

the most part we were silent men, and determination to get

as far as possible was in every one's heart, but it was an absolute

gamble. Here and there friends walked beside a donkey and

held a sick man up. I felt an inner conviction I would manage

all right, and this kept me up in many a doubtful moment

later. Here and there an Indian Mussulman soldier fell out

for a few seconds, and with his forehead in the desert dust

paid his devotion to Allah. More than one of our guards did

so likewise. A glorious sky of red sailing clouds stretched

above us, and there came over me the battle picture of Détaille's

"Dream," a procession of soldier spirits marching across the

sky with banners streaming, while down on the plain below,

among stacks of piled rifles, men lay sleeping among the dead.

Some Arab set up his chant and the rhythm then fitted

in exactly with that of Beethoven's funeral march. I was

sorry for having had to start without some of my friends.

Lieutenant Lacy of the Hants was too ill. He has drawn

very much on his youth. I have been much struck with his

quiet manly self-possession.

It was a feverish night, and as it wore on we found our

strength giving out. To fall out was to be neglected and lost.

One pressed on as in a sort of nightmare. Now and then

a donkey fell or refused to budge and our orderlies had to be

carried also. This meant casting kit. At last we reached the

camping place, but there was no water. After an hour or two

of broken sleep we were aroused by shouts of "Haidee" (hurry),

"Yallah" (get on). Now our donkeys had been requisitioned

from Arabs at Samarra, and Turkish payment is generally

nothing. These Arabs followed us in the night. In the

morning most of the donkeys were missing. We had had to

sleep where we were ordered and could not guard them

ourselves. This meant a fruitless search, and after much labour

the Cynic only was recovered from another convoy. Our

riding animal was gone so I had to walk. It was an awful

march once the sun had got up. In the distance a few sandstone

hills appeared. Our tongues were swollen and our

throats on fire as we at last staggered on to the river. The

donkeys bolted into the water, and some fell in with their

packs on them. After a rest of two hours we went on again

over stony defiles. I had to fall out several times and then

had some luck in buying from an Arab a ride on his tiny donkey,

whom I called Peter Pan, a small thing not two feet high but

awfully game. We pulled each other up the hills, and hours

afterwards tumbled into Te Krit, a hostile Arab village which

treated our men abominably.

We slept in a Serai stable place and rested two days,

purchasing what food we could. On the river front was a

camp of our soldiers dying from enteritis and dysentery.

Medicine that had been left in charge of a native assistant

surgeon had been sold to the Turks and the money kept by

him. Many and loud were the complaints of our men against

him. This man I understand is to be dealt with. He was an

absolute traitor, in fact, murderer. The Turks had no

medicine, and what this man sold had been carefully preserved

and given to the camp by a previous column. The ration for

the men (who had no money) was indigestible bread, and they

were only allowed to crawl to the muddy river which made

dysentery worse. The Arabs were particularly bad, and it

wasn't safe to go outside the door without a guard. While

defending my bundle of scanty clothes on the donkey from a

big Arab, his friends made off with my spare haversack of

utensils, and I lost this haversack also with my water-bottle.

From here the trek became a daily affair. Men fell out and

died or were left in some village. Donkeys collapsed and kit

had to be abandoned. From out of the darkness one heard

moaning cries of "Marghaya, Sahib" "Marghaya" (dying)

from our Indian friends who could go no farther. One looked

into the night and saw the Arab fires, and knew the fate of

him who fell out.

Turkish troops passing our column in the night seized our

water-bottles and rugs or anything they could get without

making too much disturbance, and although I have no doubt

this was against orders, still no one seems concerned to see

Turkish orders carried out. We made bivouac tents of our

rugs by the river at which we fetched up each night. The

country became a sand-grassy waste. Here and there were

a few goats or sheep herded by the river. The rest was desert.

At Khan Khernina, a stopping place on the Tigris, we prepared

for the long waterless march of which we had heard so much.

We bought waterskins, cast spare kit, and with our dates,

chupattis, and the bones of our last meal for stew, for we could

afford meat only once a week as our small pay from Baghdad

was almost finished, we pressed on. It was a terrible march for

sick men. Hour after hour we kept going, our thirst increasing

and our water evaporating from the skins. I had no donkey

but borrowed one here and there from my brother officers.

We all tried to help our orderlies also.

Later, I coaxed on a small beast that had collapsed and had

been left to die. Gunner Holmes and I had to chastise him

along and he required pushing. After a time we got him to go

a little better and tried making him walk behind our water-bottles

strung on the donkey ahead that carried now three

officers' kits. Every one asked why we bothered. That night,

however, when other donkeys were giving out and the halting

place drew near, our donkey revived and made off at a great

rate expecting to end up with his usual draught of water. It

was this beast that helped us to negotiate the worst patch.

The night of the first great waterless march we rested on

the _maidan_, a hilly bare spot near some salt springs, and had

a most entertaining time of it. Dust storms revolved around

us and donkeys stamped over our heads as they stampeded.

Kit, men, and beasts became indistinguishable. Nightmare

followed nightmare in quick succession, and shortly after, while

it was still dark, we were hurried on. The thing was to get in

the lead of the column and, having the use of a donkey for the

first hour, I left with the leading file alongside Fauad Bey,

our half-Turk, half-Arab Commander. This meant getting

ready early. He was a rough sort but his chief sins were

ignorance and faulty judgment and inability to make any sort

of _bandobast_. With proper orders much of our sorrows could

have been obviated. The waterless march continued through

dust and heat. Donkey after donkey collapsed. Our last

drop of water was evaporating, so we drank it. At last,

after some hours, we looked down over a depression and the

cry "mai," "mai" (water), came from our guards ahead--they,

too, wanted water.

The Tigris lay far below. The cry was taken up in Hindustani

"pani," "pani." It travelled down the column giving

hope to the faltering. The village was still three miles off.

Then a thunderstorm with heavy rain broke over us. The

beautiful water soaked on to our skin. We loved it.

An hour or so afterwards we reached Shergat, that in old

times was Asshur--the Assyrian capital of the 13th century,

B.C. The excavations enabled us to see something of the

life of that ancient town. There seemed much Roman work

there, too. In the first hour we drank and drank and drank

again, and then got into the river, sick men and all, to let

the glorious element caress us once again. Then we settled

down for sleep among donkeys, drivers, and Turks, the bearers

flourishing pots all round us. The better rooms on the balcony

and first floor were for senior officers. I was feeling very

weakened and could not sleep for pain in my spine, but hoped

to get through as the waterless march was over.

Malaria returned the second night, and with a temperature

of 105° I heard we were off. I felt appallingly unsteady and my

head throbbed to every movement of the donkey, as it does

in such cases. I was lucky to have any donkey at all, because

some of the native orderlies having lost their own donkeys clean

shaved most of the others, thus erasing the letters that had

been cut out of the hair of the animal. Wild and high raged

many a conflict over donkeys. I found mine had been re-branded

and was claimed by another. At the last moment I

managed to get a tiny animal from an Arab water-carrier

for my last money.

Once again we filed out to the setting sun past Bedouin

camps. We crossed some heavy water-courses, and more than

one humorous event occurred thereat. To see a colonel

seated on a diminutive donkey that stuck midstream, refusing

to budge either forward or backward while the water gradually

climbed up the angry colonel's breeches, was quite entertaining.

In such cases a fat Turk or Arab would seize the

animal's nose while the others pushed the beast or the colonel

from behind. I remember that on one such occasion a very

"bobbery" major rode a donkey that had conceived an

affection for mine, and always followed my little beast. So when

we stuck midstream the major's beast stopped also, and, less

lucky than I, his animal happened to have stopped on some

quicksand so that when finally my beast was got to move

the major's could not. The whole four of us were equally

put out. I suggested later that we should exchange donkeys,

but as I had only a slight lien on my animal the major disagreed.

A detailed account of our many wanderings would spoil

the perspective of this diary. We went on through the nights

and through the days; through dust-storms and heat, by

night passing the fires of Arabs who awaited the stragglers,

sometimes camping by Bedouin tents or pebbly water-courses,

always following the trail of dead, for every mile or

so one saw mounds of our dead soldiers by the wayside. We

left Hammamali, a village of sulphur-baths, on the 14th June,

and stumbling over rocky ground for some hours we reached

far-famed Mosul, and with great delight saw again a few trees.

Then appeared the mounds of Nineveh and the mounds of

the palace of the great King Sardanapalus. But even the

shades of Sargon, Shalmaneser and Sennacherib scarcely

interested us. In the foreground we saw a great tomb which

we were told was John the Baptist's! And Alexander's great

battlefield of Arbela lay on the eastern plain.

The impression of life in Mosul is bad. We have some

rooms in an appalling dirty barracks among gangs of Kurds

in chains. Every day or so one of these is hung. Down

below in the basement our men are dying wholesale. They

are the survivors of previous columns. We have been compulsory

guests of a Turkish officers' club. They charged us

three times as much as the town did, and generally neglected

us. General Melliss, however, told us to-day to go to the town.

We quoted his high authority freely and went to a most

excellent little Italian restaurant. The proprietor was from

Naples, and we had some conversation of his old haunts. He

did us very well and quite reasonably, actually cashing a

cheque or two for us.

_Nisibin, June 26th._--After many false rumours of wagons

and carts for transport and the usual half-dozen false starts

we left Mosul on June 20th. Early in the morning before

starting I slipped out in the confusion of preparing the columns

and did the round of Mosul absolutely unattended. With the

little Turkish I had picked up and French here and there, I

visited the bank quarter to try to raise some money by cheque.

There was no chance of this, but I succeeded in changing the

notes I had for smaller. The notes were not accepted in the

bazaar, and one was charged for paper change. I had not

the fortune of meeting one likely person or I should not have

returned, but to attempt to escape without help in such a

place with the desert all around was too hopeless. I saw

merely bazaar and squabbling Arabs.

On the 20th a few tiny donkeys were given us for riding

animals, about enough to allow one officer out of six a ride

one hour in three. Some donkeys were on three legs, some so

poor and sick they could scarcely move. For transport we

were shown a set of a dozen untrained, wild and unharnessed

camels, altogether the most savage and nasty brutes I have

ever seen. They were unapproachable and snapped and

gyrated and then trotted away. If a kit were fixed on they

proceeded to brush it off. One or two had a rotten saddletree

without any girths, bridles or head-straps there were none,

only a piece of rotten rag or rope being around the animals'

heads. We had, however, already laid in a stock of the best

rope we could get, and having first fitted this into the jaws of

the brutes, proceeded to fix on our kit. I was very amused

at the efforts of the Turks to help us. They tied the kit

actually on one camel's neck, and our Indian bearers went one

better by tying it on to his legs. However, finally we got

most of our kit on board, and then the fun started. First

one and then another got loose, as the servants were too

weak to hold them. Soon the road was a procession of fleeing

camels dropping bundle after bundle in their headlong flight.

This pantomime went on for hours. It was awfully hot.

We took a long time to get them refitted. An hour later,

blinded with perspiration and dust and in the last stage of

exhaustion, we set out again, having done only about four

miles of this terrible trek of which we had heard so much and

which was now said to be worse than the other we had just

finished. We plodded on. Presently loud shouts of consternation

broke from the rear, and we saw a gigantic camel laden

up with well-roped valises, firewood, and stores topped with

rugs, and a fowl or two. He simply charged through the

procession, brushing every bit of kit off the other camels as

he passed and setting off two or three along with him. One

camel followed him with a helpless bearer seated on the top

of the stores, the head-rope gone. His shouts as he was borne

toward the wrong part of the horizon would have been funny

if it had not meant disaster for his sahib. We rested an hour

or two and then went on in two columns, one of which got lost

and did several miles too much, joining us before the dawn in

time to start again. The camel pantomime continued. I

walked or borrowed a ride from an Arab. My endurance was

to me the marvellous thing.

I was almost two stone underweight, and very unwell

from the long bout of colitis, my digestion quite out of gear,

weak from want of nourishment and my shell-bruise, not to

mention continual pain from my eyes. Yet with all the

exertion and sleepless nights, so fascinating was movement

after long inaction that I managed to go along quite well, and

at times felt my legs swinging rhythmically along in the night

and believed it possible to be well one day again. One donkey

I managed to get for my baggage and that of my fellow

voyager, Lieutenant Stapleton, I.A.R., who was an official "of

important dimensions" in the I.C.S., and although not much _au

fait_ with knots and donkeys, made a most excellent purchasing

officer, as his Arabic was so doubtful that the Arabs, being at a

loss to know his wants, had to produce all their possessions,

and in this way we ended up more than once in having a

goat's head when he had set out to describe the more expensive

chicken. He was keen on ologies, and we called him the

Ologist. One tried to extract humour out of our incongruous

situations, but getting tired of being humorous we ended by

examining things from the resigned angle of the fatalist.

Each day before the dawn broke we were up, and after a

breakfast of tea, black bread, a small piece of cheese and two

figs, or generally only raisins, we prepared to leave. Then the

camel pantomime started afresh, and it was no uncommon

sight to see half our convoy of camels bolting headlong in

the wrong direction before a crowd of galloping gendarmes and

Turks, their uplifted tails disappearing over a sand-ridge

against the rising sun and their kit distributed at intervals on

the plain.

On this trek we lost the sense of time. Sometimes we

marched by day, but generally in the evening and well on into

the night. But for us time was not. I knew two seasons

only: when we walked and when we did not. I did not always

sleep. We have had to rely on provisions we brought with us

and live chiefly on raisins. Sometimes one was on foot,

sometimes one rode, and a broken-down wagon or two offered

a fraction of a seat to any one that collapsed up to the number

of six. But so many from one cause or another got sick

or footsore that the extra had to hang on to the wagon.

Our Commandant, Fauad Bey, has been in a most obstreperous

and belligerent mood for days. He allowed our senior

officer, Colonel Cummings, to remain and fish at the latter's

request at the first camp out of Mosul on the understanding

that he would follow with his escort the same night. The

colonel turned up some days later, and whatever misunderstanding

there was, Fauad considered his kindness abused, and

made the whole column suffer with regulations and restrictions.

At Demir Kapu we finished the most strenuous march I have

ever done. It was a dry, waterless stretch of forty kilometres

over parched ground with not even salt springs _en route_.

Again and again we had nothing left but the will to go on.

My donkey collapsed, and with difficulty I got him to a swamp

of foul slime in which, besides many bones, were the half-picked

skeletons of two donkeys that had apparently been

drowned in their attempt to get water.

So dry and thirsty were the animals that most of them

rushed into the slimy pool up to their backs and then subsided,

kit and all, into the mud. We extricated them, and having

drunk our fill also of slime, we set out for the last few miles.

This water was green and filled with germs, but one's experience

had pretty well inoculated one by this time. Our thirst

was not to be denied. One's soul was hot within one and one's

tongue dry and hard. With our limit of transport there was

no alternative, and most of us had had no money wherewith

to buy "mussocks" (waterskins). The column reached out

for miles. Even our guard were quite done.

At length we reached Demir Kapu (iron gates), where a cool

translucent stream runs through some rocks, and we drank and

bathed, and some having slept began to fish. At our next

halting-place a dust-storm descended on our camp in the night.

I have been in dust-storms in various places, but this was of a

new order. With a roar like thunder a deluge of sand fell

upon us, travelling terrifically fast. It tore down bivouacs,

carried off tents and valises, pulled up picketing pegs, and rolled

even heavy pots hundreds of yards off, where they were buried

in the sand and many lost. We could not stand against it

any more than against an incoming tide. It lasted for some

minutes. One buried one's head and lay with all one's weight

on one's kit. I understand how people are often suffocated

in these storms, as even this was quite long enough. My

chief loss was my topee, for which I looked long in the dark

and even walked along the river to within a few yards of an

Arab village to see if it had been carried down. The next

day my improvised headgear of a towel proved inadequate,

and I went down with an awful attack of sunstroke. Our

medical officer allowed me to ride some of the way in the ambulance

cart, as my temperature, he said, was quite high. Thanks

to his kindness and attention and wet cloths I picked up enough

to walk a little. I arrived at Nisibin feeling very ill and

feverish.

I am writing under an old Roman stone bridge. Nisibin was

once the outpost of the Roman Empire, and ruins of an

ancient university life are found on the plain and along the

wall. It is frightfully hot. There is little food in the bazaar

and prices are the highest yet met, a handful of raisins being

about half a crown.

I set out yesterday for the hospital to recover a topee, as

I heard a British officer had died there. After many wanderings

through tiny streets and dark quarters and backyards

and many redirections, I was led through a doorway of

matting hanging from the mud-brick wall into a courtyard,

where through an opening in the wall I saw a sight that

staggered the imagination.

A bare strip of filthy ground ran down to the river some two

hundred yards off. Along the wall, protected by only a few

scanty leaves and loose grass flung over some tatti work of

branches through which the fierce sun streamed with unabated

violence, I saw some human forms which no eye but one

acquainted with the phenomenon of the trek could possibly

recognize as British soldiery. They were wasted to wreathes

of skin hanging upon a bone frame. For the most part they

were stark naked except for a rag around their loins, their

garments having been sold to buy food, bread, milk, and

medicine. Their eyes were white with the death hue. Their

sunken cheeks were covered with the unshaven growth of

weeks. One had just died and two or three corpses just been

removed, the Turkish attendant no doubt having heard of

the approach of an officers' column. But the corpses had

lain there for days. Some of the men were too weak to move.

The result of the collection of filth and the unsanitary state in

the centre of which these men lay in a climate like this can be

imagined. Water was not regularly supplied to them, and

those unable to walk had to crawl to the river for water.

One could see their tracks through the dirt and grime. Three

or four hard black biscuits lay near the dead man. Other

forms near by I thought dead, but they moved unconsciously

again. One saw the bee-hive phenomenon of flies which

swarmed by the million going in and out of living men's open

mouths. I was discovered talking to the men by a Turk and

"haideed" off to the Turkish officer. Having assured them of

doing all in my power, and having given them the two or three

poor useless little coins I could spare, I went to the Turk, having

got the topee of Lieutenant O'Donoghoe, who had died under

conditions little better, with no doctor, no medicine, and no

food but "chorba" (vegetable soup, practically water). He

had lingered in this awfully lonely place for weeks and no

transport had been offered him.

I talked long to the Turk, who understood some French,

and told him how this sort of thing was destroying the name

of Turkey and how for these things the day of reckoning must

come. He was more moved by the latter than the former,

knowing that in Turkey officials may be sacrificed for any

caprice of another person. An Armenian was there also, and

I much despised him for expressing horror to me of _les barbares_

when the Turk was outside, but obviously siding with him

when together. He then showed me the place of the men

in order to point out that I was wrong in not understanding

that Turkish kindness was proportionate to their mercy. He

was angry, however, when I tried to take him towards "the"

place, and more so when he heard that I had actually been

allowed to go. The case was taken up by our padre, Rev.

H. Spooner, and Father Mullan. What men could move,

came along with us. We have raised a subscription of some

£60 for the men. Then we heaped large curses on the Commandant

and vowed vengeance. The men's lot altered for

the better, and we promised to press Turkish authority to send

transport. The great pity is that General Melliss, who had

achieved miracles _en route_ in alleviating the sufferings of our

men, did not stop at Nisibin, the real state of the worst quarters

having been withheld from him.

Nisibin is halfway on the second trek, and the column is

getting decidedly weaker. At night, when the remorseless

sun is gone, we wander up and down our tiny front between

the sentries smoking what Arab tobacco we can get and

casting many an anxious glance towards the western horizon

over which far, far away lies Ras-el-Ain, the railway terminus.

Between this and that there are many marches throughout

long nights and days. Shall we reach it?

* * * * *

_Ras-el-Ain, July 4th._--I am thankful to Providence that

I am lucky enough to write this heading. At last we are

arrived in the wretched village, but as I write I hear a locomotive

puffing and puffing. We are on the railhead. No

sailor after being tossed amid shipwreck in a frantic ocean

ever felt happier to be in port than do we, to realize the long

march is done. There are other marches ahead over mountains,

but they are short, we hear. The desert is crossed.

We left Nisibin on June 29th at 6.30 p.m. with some very

unsatisfactory donkeys, taking with us all the sick we could.

One or two of these had slipped out from hospital unawares,

and joined us as we passed on. They begged to be allowed to

come, saying they preferred dying on the desert to going back

to the terrors of Nisibin. We put them up on every available

donkey, and some in our hospital cart, and our orderlies helped

the rest along. For the most part they did well, although,

as the trek wore on, one after another collapsed, and those

that did not die at once we left in the most congenial camp

we could. The first two nights were bad. The donkeys went

stubbornly, as they invariably did, before getting into the

swing of the trek.

The pace of the column was coming down to about two

miles and often less an hour. The local Arabs seemed wilder,

and we had to keep together, as one party of Turks had been

recently massacred outright.

We were reinforced with vigilant gendarmes. For the

stragglers it was certain death at the Arabs' hands. The tail

of the column was an awful place. Sometimes one got here

when one's donkey collapsed or kit fell off, or when one felt

too seedy to sit on one's donkey, or too tired to walk fast

when it was one's relay to walk. Four of us shared one

donkey, Stapleton and I and our orderlies. At the rear of

the column the mounted gendarmes, Turk and Arab, galloped

about, exhorting the sick and dying to hurry, almost riding

them down and driving them on with blows of sticks and their

rifle butts. We, of course, stopped this when we could. One

night I got badly left, and the column was miles off. My

donkey and orderly had collapsed at the same time, and

Stapleton was not available on this occasion, in fact he was

probably ill himself. A small band of us we were, and more

than once I was practically knocked over by the impetuous

horsemen.

The padre was awfully good and diligent in assisting men,

but, nevertheless, from out the night one heard the high Indian

wail, "murghaya, sahib," "dying, sahib, dying." For the most

part British soldiers stayed with their friends until they were

dead. I saw some of the finest examples history could produce

of the British soldier's self-sacrifice for and fidelity to his

friend. It was a grim reality for the sick of the column.

For those well, and many were comparatively so, it was

quite a different thing. I shall never forget one soldier who

could go no farther. He fell resignedly on to the ground, the

stump of a cigarette in his mouth, and with a tiredness born

of long suffering, buried his head in his arms to shut out the

disappearing column and smoked on. Night was around us

and Arab fires near. We were a half-mile behind the column.

I was quite exhausted. One sick soldier was hanging on to a

strap of my donkey. My orderly on another. His feet were

all blood, as his boots had been taken from him. A soldier

went to the sick man behind, but I did not see him again.

Shortly after, on the same awful night, I saw another man

crawling on all fours over the desert in the dark quite alone.

He said he hoped to reach the next halt, and get his promised

ride for half an hour, and by that time he might go on again

to the next place. We picked him up, and I gave him my

strap. Another sick orderly held him up. He was all bone,

and could scarcely lurch along. We eventually got him to the

halt, and gave him a place in a cart.

At another place we came across a British soldier whose

suffering had been so acute that he had gone out of his mind

and lost his memory. He had been left in a cave, and had

evidently eaten nothing for days, but had crawled down to

the water. He was delirious and jabbering, and thought he

was a dog. We carried him along in the cart to the next camp.

On another occasion our donkey bolted, and we were left

with no transport whatever, even for our blankets or water.

By the greatest good luck I hired a donkey for some of my kit

from a passing convoy, and the Arab followed me up for days,

getting all he could out of me. Our Commandant finally

thrashed him for charging too much, and gave us the donkey

henceforth for nothing. But it disappeared the same night,

and was probably stolen. I thought hard things of the

Commandant.

The column grew weak and slower, and at the end we had

to use three carts to move the sick on in relays.

The march to Tel Ermen was the worst. We were raided

by Turkish troops on the march, and lost our boots and lots

more. Above us the famous old town of Mardin lay perched

up on its altitude, a high-walled and ramparted city of the

Ancients looking over a waste of desert and enjoying a secluded

life. We wondered how many treks like ours it had seen.

We left more and more of the men and orderlies behind.

The last stage was terribly trying, and we were doing forced

marches by night and day. We were done to a turn. Only

the driving power of one's will made one press on to the magic

word "Ras-el-Ain." The future is doubtful enough. But we

are at least here. To-morrow we may leave for Aleppo or

Konia, no one knows which, least of all the Turk.

We found here most of the doctors, including Fritz and

Murphy, living in a wretched little mud-building on rotten

and stale eggs brought from Aleppo.

The Hindoos, less favoured than the Mohammedan

prisoners, are to remain here. We saw their gaunt skeletons

at work carrying baskets of gravel in constructing the railway

for the Turks back over the desert they had crossed. This

outlook seemed to me sufficiently appalling. They had very

little food. The British soldier was to move on. We were

glad he was spared this.

I have just visited secretly a German N.C.O. camp of

mechanical transport close by. They gave me coffee and

biscuits, and, in exchange for a khaki jacket and jodpurs, some

tins of bully, a bag of coffee, and some cheese. They were on

the point of giving me some more, but I had to go. They

told me a lot about Germany, and of the German victory at

Kattegat, of which I saw a description in a cutting just received

by one of them. We believed, nevertheless, the German had

in reality been well hammered on the sea. The Germans

couldn't understand my incredulity, and said they didn't see

why they shouldn't do on the sea what they had done on the

land. Verdun, they said, would be taken in two weeks.

They admitted the French defence was a surprise.

Lord Kitchener's death at sea I didn't believe.

Nevertheless, one feels one has reached partial civilization

to be able to speak of France and the fleet, even to a German.

We were huddled together near some stagnant water in

the village for some hours without cover in the heat of the

day. Then the sun went down behind the tiny collection of

mud huts. Our future was in doubt. We smoked for the

most part in silence, and watched the shadows lengthening

towards the Eastern desert over which we had managed to

survive. I can only record the dreadful aspect of the lot of

those unfortunate prisoners destined to remain here until the

end of the war.

* * * * *

I feel dreadfully ill and weak. The last spurt has drained

our remaining vitality.

CHAPTER VIII

BY RAIL AND TREK OVER THE TAURUS TO ANGORA--THE LAST

TREK TO KASTAMUNI

_En Route._

Suddenly, some time after sunset, we were just preparing

to settle down by the station for the night

when a train drew up. With some other subalterns

I found a small place for a bed in a truck. There was a space

of four feet by two for each of us. We stuffed our legs

anywhere and slept. The train started and we awoke. The

doors of the truck were open. We watched the desert go by,

thankful beyond expression, mystified at this extraordinary

change, the conveyance of dying men without their own effort.

The terrible bumps and the state of the trucks were nothing.

It was a train.

Some time in the early morning we crossed the Euphrates,

near where stood the site of ancient Jarabolis. The archæologist

of the party told of the excavations here, and, somewhere

to the north, of Karkemish the Hittite capital in the twilight

of history.

About 10 a.m. we arrived at Mouslemie, the junction of

Aleppo, some half-hour off by train from that city, whither

were sent most of the sick rank and file that had accompanied

us, including all our servants. Only one batman for four

officers was allowed us. To my dismay I had to part with

poor Graoul, otherwise Holmes, to whom I gave half my

rations the Germans had given me and my last kron. I found

afterwards more than one had "wangled" an extra servant.

Padre Spooner asked me to share with him and a subaltern

nicknamed Hummerbug, in order to keep a sick servant he

had with him. This meant we had to move our own luggage.

The prospect was appalling, as I was too sick and weak to

walk far without sitting down.

We had no food and no money, not having been paid since

Mosul. Father Mullan, our kind Catholic padre, gave me a

piastre. With it I bought a piece of bread, and shared it with

another subaltern. Other officers were too poor to pay the

small debts they owed.

At five we stopped near a German train bound for Ras-el-Ain.

A trooper aboard it was trying to buy gold signet rings

at a tenth of their value. He showed us several he had got

from other unfortunates. He advised our getting supplies at

once, as at the mountain stop there was nothing to be had.

An hour later we proved it true enough. The place was

called Islahie--merely a station with two or three new houses

where a German Staff dwelt, and some skin and brushwood

shelters where sick British soldiers lay--all under the shadow

of wooded heights. An awful Turkish brute followed me as I

tried to drag our kits over the country to the camping place.

Cholera was supposed to be raging here, and we were kept

apart from the others. Excellent water was brought us in a

water-cart. I missed my orderly Graoul. The padre and a

subaltern nicknamed Hummerbug and I now messed together.

His servant I afterwards found was too sick to do much.

We boiled the German ration, and I had some soup--besides

which we had the coffee. Some real tobacco had turned up,

and I remember sitting beside the fire smoking disconsolately

and missing Graoul. Graoul, too, would be lost without me.

Why, he had no sense of humour whatever!

I sat smoking, I say, disconsolately until the long shadows

lengthened along the hills of the Taurus and climbed higher

and higher upon the mountain sides. The last twilight left

little coppery patterns on the crest of the dark glens. The

white-washed houses on the lower slope reminded me forcibly

of Scotland. I felt I might hear the tinkle of a bell and expect

at any moment to see a brawny Scotch shepherd with his

shaggy dogs at his heels take the cottage path from the height

above. We made a jugga and slept. The next morning

early we came across a German Flying Corps officer, who

informed us he was engaged to some one in England, and proceeded

to help us. We raked up sardines, a little milk, and

small change. Also he promised to speak to a German

colonel arriving that day, about the way we were being

hustled.

We had a better breakfast, and being allowed to see the

now isolated patients, I went among the men's quarters and

found them in a shocking state. About thirty had died there.

They had money which had been given them by the Red Cross

people at Aleppo. In the course of the day the German

colonel turned up and walked into Fauad in true Prussian

style, the result being that carts were provided for us--four

to a cart, with kit, and, happy to the point of shouting, we

clambered into them. Two officers having to walk an inquiry

was made as to who had taken a cart for two only instead of

for four. Although they were asked they admitted nothing

until a tally of each cart being taken it was found that two

officers had bagged one cart to themselves so that they could

lie stretched out. This meant others walking. Without carts

we must have left half our number behind.

The Turkish method of driving a cart is to gallop 200

yards and then crawl. At 2 a.m. we stopped three-quarters

of the way up and, without unpacking our valises, slept on

the ground. Before dawn we were away again, and every one

had to walk except those crippled with sprained ankles and

so on. I found it a most dreadful climb in my condition. I

was trembling through weakness, and the well-belaboured

mules went at a very fast walk up the steep gradient, so that

I had to hustle to keep up. Deep ravines fell away from the

road, but the hills were not high enough to grow the mountain

fir. Other scrub and dwarf pines grew thickly. We walked

for two and a half hours, the perspiration dripping from our

clothes. I was in acute pain for some of the time with

ravages of old complaints. There were plenty of clear, running

streams from springs, and at each of these we soused our

hands and heads in the cool water. We walked up the steep

inclines. Near the top the wretched drivers galloped away to

prevent our getting in, but I caught a belated one after going

a mile farther, while some still toddled away astern. The

driver tried to turn me out, but his mules required most of his

attention, so I stayed up.

The whole trip was to be about twenty-four miles. These

mountains were being pierced by tunnels, as yet only recently

begun from the western slope, a switchback ride being nothing

to it. Without brakes of any kind, but only trusting to the

collars and pole chain of the mules, the drivers, with loud

shouts, galloped their animals down; now and again a wheel

going over the edge of the ravine or the pole fetching up in

the cutting, or in the back of some fellow sitting in the rear

of the cart ahead. The carts were the usual four-wheeled,

groggy thing we had got used to. Several times our cart got

away, we tipping another cart over into a hole, and on another

occasion we raced to pass another at awful speed before

reaching a narrow corner. We did it by inches, but hit the

corner, the second cart getting its pole into the kit I sat on,

and hoisting me feet uppermost into the air. One collision

happened, injuring a mule, smashing a cart, and just missing

Colonel Cummings, who said things in English to all whom it

might concern. As it was, his servant was sent flying over

the _khud_.

We arrived at the village of Hassan Beyli at 8.30 a.m. It

nestled in a pretty little wooded valley among orchards

clustering on the adjoining slopes. As we passed through the

main street I noticed that all the houses were closed with

shutters. We learned that their Armenian tenants had been

butchered _à la Turque_. We waited in the sun, and were moved

here and there, each time dragging our kits with us. I was

waiting beside mine in a stony field when suddenly I felt

extremely dizzy and faint with a feeling of nausea. I had to

abandon my kit, and I plodded over to some shelter, where I

lay down, and a cold perspiration broke out all over my body,

and I experienced the pains and vomitings of the enteritis

attack in Kut. At this moment the English padre appeared,

and suggested that to think one's self well is to be well. Here

I said something distressing, so he said. I am sure he meant

well. I had not felt so wretchedly sick since Kut fell, and

the doctor told me that evening that the chlorodyne I had

taken possibly prevented a collapse. We were on the verge of

cholera. In the evening after a sleep I gathered some sticks

and carried a little water, while the padre was meditating.

Then while our orderly made the stew and coffee I strolled away

to the stream and bathed. I dallied there quite a long time.

In the half light we had "dinner." The padre returned

from his soliloquy in a most obviously exemplary and virtuous

mood. Oh, to be able to accumulate virtue on such an occasion

like a shilling gas meter, and without warning, turn it on, even

if an hour after it has all gone. I suggest taps affixed to the

person with little black letters on ivory thereon to the effect:

"HUMILITY," "BALM," "PRECEPT," "PATIENCE,"

"MARTYRDOM," "ADVICE--On--Off." Hummerbug

annotated him. I encouraged both. I liked it.

We slept that night until about 1 a.m., and in the darkness

loaded up the carts and pushed off. All had to walk in turn

to give the orderly a lift also. We drove through a pleasing

country of green foothills covered by wandering pine and

beech. In taking short cuts from road to road to catch up

to the carts as we walked, we came across many Armenian

homes smashed in and corpses half-covered with soil or flung

down a hollow, where the Turk had passed. About six o'clock

we met a great crowd of Armenian and Greek peasants, with

old men and old grey-haired women and children carrying

small bundles or articles of cooking, all herded together _en

route_ for somewhere. They were guarded by askars (soldiers).

In this way they are moved from place to place, their number

dwindling until all have gone. At a tiny coffee-place here we

had coffee and lebon and then walked the remaining miles

into Marmourie as the carts had been ordered not to wait for

us. It was a long and hurried walk.

The country here looked quite pleasing to the eye. Fine

terraces, fringing woods that lined the slopes of moderate hills

and overlooking green valleys and splashing water-falls,

seemed to ask for a hydro and golf links. We reached

Marmourie about 8 o'clock, passing some Turkish soldiers

_en route_ over the Taurus, as also small ammunition transport.

Every bit of their ammunition for Mesopotamia has, it seems,

to go over these hills, as the other road, via Diabecca, is crossed

and occupied by the Russian troops. Near the top of the

Taurus we passed fittings for an aeroplane in huge cases that

had come all the way from Germany. These were for service

in Palestine obviously. Through some difference among the

Turkish officers we were not allowed to sit in the shade at

Marmourie while we awaited our train, but were made to sit

along a dirty wall in the fierce sun for hours like so many

convicts. We waited there in the sweltering heat, date the

8th July, from 8 a.m. until 1 p.m., drinking lebon every half-hour,

which we got from a shop near by.

The train accommodation was small carriages, and the

trucks were reserved for luggage. Only the orderlies were

allowed in them, so we sat packed upright, and couldn't sleep

a wink. The stations along this line were larger and busier

than those east of the Taurus. Only once since getting into

the train at Ras-el-Ain had Fauad Bey, our Turkish Commandant,

helped us in the way of food. On that occasion he

issued a ration of bread to every one. Here we persuaded

him to send a wire to Adana to have lunch ready for us, Adana

being a large town near Taurus. When we arrived at Adana

at 4.30 there was great excitement on the thronged platform.

Gorgeously-attired police and other petty officials buzzed

about. It appeared that some Turkish officer was passing

through. We jumped off and ran along on the edge of the

platform, when we were told we were too wild and unkempt-looking

to be seen by the high Turkish official. "Damn the

high Turkish official," said we, "we want yesterday's lunch."

Yes! the lunch was there all ready, but they couldn't allow

us in! Moreover, we were not allowed to fill our bottles. If

we had been fit I verily believe we would have taken our

lunch. I was hauled back. But, getting through my train

on the other side and the cordon of Turks, I got inside the

enclosure unperceived, filled the bottles, brought a loaf of

bread, and caught our train as it left. No! escape was useless

that way. Soldiers thronged around every station. We went

on our doleful way until 9 p.m., when we were pulled up short

by a German coffee-shop, to which we were not permitted to

go. This was Gulek bei Tarsus of St. Paul's memory.

After hauling our kits some distance we were pushed into

a square tent. We fell down and slept at once. It was an

awful jamb. My head was half outside the tent, and people

kept walking over it as if it were a cushion. Now I don't

mind sleeping in the horse lines a bit. But then horses are

so sensible. They know a head when they see it. People

were going in and out of the tent all night long, but I'm

glad to say I got a fair amount of sleep. One or two unfortunate

fellows had fever. Before the dawn I was up,

and went among the thick settlement of huts to the stream,

which I was threatened by the Turk sentry not to cross,

but I walked over before the Turk could say anything,

and started talking to some Germans there. Even to talk

to a German is a passport in this benighted land, so

thoroughly do they override their allies. I had a splendid

dip, while others looked enviously at me from the other

side. Recrossing I made the acquaintance of a spectacled

German doing Y.M.C.A. work among his own troops here.

He was a Biblical research student, and journeyed frequently

to Tarsus, some twelve miles off. This was called Gulek bei

Tarsus. Tarsus one could see in the distance. I thought of

St. Paul and Cleopatra, and hoped Tarsus had more trees

about it than this sandy plain, for their sakes. The German

seemed a very decent sort. We discussed Berlin. He had

been a visitor there once from Southern Germany. He asked

if we were short of money. When we started in motor-lorries

some hours later at 10 a.m. he came to my lorry and flung in

a bag of several liras from Red Cross Funds. This came to

about half a lira a piece. We thanked him sincerely, and he

wished us good luck.

He had told me in the morning to come to his quarters,

but I had no opportunity. Cholera was raging there, and the

Germans had a pumping water-distillery, from which I got

some extra water. I learned later that many of our troops

were working at a tunnel on the slope of the Anti-Taurus

mountain here, and were dying like sheep. We saw nothing

of them, nor were we allowed to inquire.

The _bandobast_ for this mountain was German, and we

were hustled off with commendable dispatch. At 9.45 a

dozen motor lorries drew up. At 10 we were off. They were

absolutely run by German officers and men. We swayed and

bounced about, quite reconciled to that, and thanking God it

wasn't a case of "leg it" again. These mountains are much

more barren than the others, being largely, on their eastern

slopes, white clay or lime-stone ravines and crags, with a few

shrubs here and there growing out of the stony ground. They

are also much wider. We passed some desolate Armenian

villages and tore along to the upper heights. At 11.30 we

stopped at a ruined mill by a fall to cool the hot engines, and

there had a drink and a piece of bread, also a slab of baked

meat, chiefly fat. It was a wild spot, great rocky crags falling

across the road. Another hour and we arrived at Park Taurus,

a German military halfway house, forty kilos from Gulek,

and thirty-two from Bozanti, whither we were going.

Park Taurus is situated on a small plateau leading down

into three or four valleys surrounded by hills of crumpled

granite dotted with pines. The valleys are now dry, but in

winter must be filled with racing torrents. It is absolutely

German, and evidently erected during the last eighteen months.

The enclosures easily accommodate over a hundred motor

lorries, besides which they have huge electrically-lighted

store sheds and depôt, where they accumulate stores _en

route_.

We were turned loose at 1.30 p.m. in a field where stood

a huge, empty tent. The Germans here were not so well

disposed towards us, and would not help us at all. Some

N.C.Os. who wanted to do a deal were hustled away. The

first arrivals bought out an Arab's tiny shop of honey and

raisins and potatoes, and there was little else to go round.

After a solid sleep, for our rest the previous night had been

very broken, we made a very bad meal. Our application

to bathe in an adjoining pool was not allowed. Then we all

sat around the side of the hill and smoked while once more

night floated down upon the world. The motors that had

been passing all day were now housed, and there was an

appreciable calm broken by falling streams and tumbling

brooks. Pale yellow stars burned passionately over the pine

tops; and once again here there was something in the far-away

spot that recalled the mountain forests of Thüringen.

There was less forest and more rock, but it served as another

span in that bridge we are all constructing back to old times--the

bridge that must span Kut and the trek....

At 4.15 the next morning, before it was light, we were

in the motors and away again. There followed, as usual, a

wild scramble and fearful scrumming around the lines, as we

were not awakened until five minutes before leaving. This

journey was decidedly bumpy, and we had to grip hard to

stick inside the four walls of the thing at times. The country

became wilder and rockier with only a few boulder pines

climbing up the heights. Along the face of these limestone

bluffs one observed a queer phenomenon of splashed yellow

rocks, seemingly spilled from some gigantic cauldron, dried

and hung out like blanketings in the morning sun. Then

there were caves and water-worn caverns, said to have been

once the homes of the Hittites. Many Turkish and others

worked on the road, and dishevelled troops passed us _en route_

for the Mosul or Palestine front, via Aleppo.

At last, two great tall upstretching tongues of rock, almost

meeting, filled the mouth of the converging valley, and rendered

any attempt to cross into that valley by any other way than

between them almost impossible, except for an Alpiner. These

were the famous Cilician Gates through which passed Alexander

in the fourth century, B.C., on his way to Syria. Darius

had lain in waiting somewhere near Islahie on the other side

of the Anti-Taurus mountains, and when Alexander had got

safely down between the seacoast and the Anti-Taurus,

Darius and his army scampered over the mountains, probably,

the very way we had come, and cut Alexander off from his

communications. But Alexander turned on the Persian

king and smashed him at Tarsus. Five hundred years before

that, Shalmanaser II., the great Assyrian king, had crossed

and recrossed this very pass on his way to and from his

victories. After Alexander, the hordes of Barbarossa, and

in fact, every ancient army on its way east had had to pass

through them.

Some old Hittite inscription was on the outer face of the

rock, and on either side of the road a Roman altar cut out

of the flat rock by the roadside testified to the military importance

conceded to this Gate by Roman Generals, locking

the way to the Orient. In those days the pathway was a

few feet wide only, and now cannot be more than five yards.

Heavy blasting, however, widened the way along which we

came.

A few miles further on we reached the rail-head again

at Bozanti from where they were tunnelling the Taurus.

Here we saw many British soldiers at work. They were

mostly from the Dardanelles and some of them seemed quite

fit, but the tunnelling was heavy work, and they said that the

men from Kut there could not stand it--and had died.

For some hours we were shoved in a stable with billions

of flies. Many officers were very indignant at being put

alongside horses. Being a field artilleryman it didn't worry

me in the least after what we had gone through. We bought

a few stores and a German presented me with a bottle of beer,

as he found I spoke German!

At 8 p.m. that night we left, packed in a train, all very

tired and weak. There were in the train some German

N.C.Os. and men all on their way back to Berlin, and in a

highly hilarious state at the prospect. Some of them were

the nasty sort, and they all told us of the English naval

disaster off the Skager Rack in which we had lost ten large

ships and so on. We knew this was an untruth and suspected

it was a fine victory for us, especially as the Boches ran back

to Kiel.

We travelled all night fearfully cramped up in carriages.

I managed to get two or three hours of restless sleep among

moving boots and feet on the floor, with my knees by my nose

and some one's boots in my face. At 12 noon we arrived at

Cognia or Konia, the Iconium of St. Paul, a large town with

a real hotel to which only a few of us were allowed to go,

and a plentiful array of shops. After the usual dozen moves

up and down the station, each time entailing carrying our

beds and kits, we were taken to a restaurant where our notes

were refused, but ultimately taken at a large discount. How

we carry on without money is really extraordinary! One

simply does not eat, but gets weaker and weaker. Acute

diarrhoea has broken out again with many of us, for we are

still on nuts and sour bread and water. That night, the

12th July, we slept in the station yard.

The next morning we were aroused at an unearthly hour,

and then did not leave until quite 11.15 a.m., the intervening

hours being employed by waiting in a queue to get water or

being moved first this way and then that. No Turk as yet

seems to know his own mind or any one else's apparently.

The country around Konia is very flat and more or less bare.

The Hindoo native officers remain in Konia, which should be

a good spot for them, and quite healthy. Konia appears to

be absolutely rebuilt and quite new. Two hours out of Konia

our engine broke down. We waited four hours for another

engine from Konia. I found a German doctor travelling on

our train, and from him I got some colitis and cholera powders.

He also was quite polite and anxious to help one. Then we

passed Kala Hissar, a lonely town on the plain with a fort

perched high up on a hill. Here a good many Russian, French,

and British prisoners are said to be placed, but we saw nothing

of any of them. We travelled all night over the plain, and

it was another wretched night for sleep, as we had to take

it in turns sleeping on the floor. We had by this time lost

a lot of our veneer of desert sunburn, and the pallor of sickness

stared out from our faces. Father Tim, our excellent

Catholic padre, told me this evening that I had appeared

twenty years older during the last few days. At 11, forenoon,

on the 13th, we arrived at Eski Chehir, a large town on the

junction of lines to Constantinople and Angora. Here, again,

the want of a servant made the immediate present a tragedy

of vile proportions. Thus we would get the order to move

at once, no one knowing where. Everything had to be moved

with you. So you gathered up water-bottle, haversack,

blankets and coat, and dragged your valise over lines and

other obstacles indefinitely. Then you sat on them until

you had to take them back, crossing trains and piles of luggage

and stores, a _posta_ or Turkish guard at your heels with a rifle

shouting, "Yallah" or "Haidee Git." We dropped Captain

Booth accidentally on the way from Konia. He was asleep

in a carriage which was taken off near Kala Hissar. Great

excitement prevailed as to whether he would take the branch

line to Smyrna and try to escape, but he turned up again

later. In the meantime, Fauad Bey thrashed every Turkish

official within reach.

At Eski Chehir we were allowed into an hotel restaurant

place near the station and forbidden to go outside. We saw

one or two Greek maidens, well on towards their prime, welcoming

us with smiles, but although the first of Eve's daughters

seen for a long time, one's heart did not flutter much. We

were so whacked that we wanted a meal and a bed on which

to sleep, sleep, sleep. So we fell to discussing what we would

do at Constantinople, whither both Fauad Bey and some

Germans at Konia had assured us we were being taken. The

prospect of seeing this famous city and especially of seeing

Europe again, and of having ambassadors and consuls to take

a friendly interest in us, cheered up our tired and sad hearts.

But by this time we knew the Turk well enough to doubt

all things. In the meanwhile we were shut up. We had a

decent meal or two at terrible prices, so we ate sparingly.

Some of the senior officers had wandered too far away at Konia

so Fauad said, and it was "Yesak"--forbidden. In fact,

just before leaving Konia he would not allow them to recross

for a final meal, but I bolted around the station over a fence,

and on his seeing me I humbly pretended I wanted to ask

his permission. To my surprise, he asked me if the colonel

and all had returned, and on my reassuring him he took me

to a restaurant and demanded meat and rolls and soup and

cheese. None appearing to be ready he created such a storm

in the place that the people evidently produced their own

meal. Moreover, he paid and would not take any money

from me; but then I have never quarrelled much with him,

and he knows he is to leave us and wants a good report.

I observe he is very nervous whenever I talk to a German,

and asks me to talk in French if at all. French he understands

a little.

At 10 p.m. the same day, as we arrived in Eski Chehir, we

were again packed frightfully close into carriages, and left

for where we did not know, but half expected to awake

beholding the minarets of Stambul. The Mohammedan native

officers had all been dropped at Eski Chehir, where from all

accounts they were to be done quite well. However, after

starting it proved that our destination was Angora. Our

hopes fell below zero. I clambered out of the carriage and,

worming my way into the luggage car, slept full length on a

blanket, or almost full length. Presently, other officers filled

the place up. I determined to sleep that night, and drinking

half a bottle of local cognac I had luckily procured for a debt,

I gave the other to the orderlies and slept. It was an uphill

climb, and we went very slowly. With the dawn we met a

startling rumour that some prisoners, having attempted an

escape, we were all being sent on to Kastamuni, a lonely town

on the edge of the hills, fringing the Black Sea, and 150 miles

distant from Angora--150 miles that had to be trekked!

This was just the last edge. One wondered whether the

journey would ever end or whether our kind protecting gods

would get tired of fathering our shattered and siege-battered

systems to the terminus.

If our health had been so good as even at the beginning

of the trek it would all have seemed very funny no doubt.

But people's nerves were shattered and ragged and tempers

raw, and our digestions quite gone.

The train climbed a gradient plain, treeless and lifeless,

until 10 a.m., when we arrived at Angora, a dilapidated old

town on undulating country. The station seemed the only

decent building in it. We seemed to be at the end of creation.

Everything was so quiet and sleepy. It is indeed a branch

line and one sees no Germans or Europeans. We were hustled

at once into two deep and marched half a mile to a wretched

low little eating restaurant place with some sleeping rooms

upstairs. Our luggage came in afterwards. Mine had been

looted, I found, quite considerably, two or three times since

the Aleppo change, but I don't know where. The hotel

promised us a gay time, as we saw battalions of bugs skirmishing

on the walls. We had marched up at a smart pace

and I felt like collapsing at every step. Then we were left

in the sun for hours outside the place, with the result that

I was soon pouring with the perspiration of fever. Then

ague succeeded. A Turk took my temperature as 102°, and

left me.

Six hours afterwards I got a bed on a landing and fell

into it, my temperature being over 103°.

There is no tea or coffee except the black smoky stuff.

The senior officers and those first to arrive, including the

padre and Hummerbug, went to another hotel somewhat

better, taking the one orderly with them, so I lost the only

servant who ever did a thing. No one else cared for the sick

or took any notice. I had a tiny bowl of rice soup. The

rest of the fatty fare I avoided. The next morning three-quarters

of us had collapsed. Colitis and fever were all

around, and the Turkish doctor inoculated those who were

well enough to be done, for cholera, of which Angora was full.

During the night a fearful itching broke out all over my body,

the most maddening itching imaginable. Spots and a red

flush followed. I thought I was in for scarlet fever or something.

It proved to be "hives," however, and others had

it at the same time in less degree. Reports from the hotel

were that most of them were in bed sick also. It seemed as

though we had forced ourselves on to the railways' end by

will power, and then, that being over, had collapsed.

_July 20th._--We are still in Angora, and are not allowed

to go outside the door, while for the first day or so they objected

to one's going downstairs. Sending out for supplies is also

forbidden, and we are thus forced to leave ourselves to the

mercy of the hotel-keeper, who, by the way he behaves, I

should say is a Young Turk. Hives leaves one a mass of

swellings that itch like a million chilblains, and is due, I hear,

to the impoverished nature of the blood and general want

of nourishment.

The time here is no rosy one, and although more comfortable

than in Mosul, the trek being mostly behind us,

still one's vitality is even worse.

Two days after we arrived another party that had been

waylaid at Kala Hissar came along with several officers I

knew, and some I didn't, Colonel Peacock amongst them. He

and I and another made tea between us, and then they were

moved to dingy quarters up the road, and the surplus fellows

without rooms were sent also. Trembling with weakness and

fever I stumbled into my clothes and found I could scarcely

walk; but the Turks were demonstratively insistent, and,

carrying a few things, I assisted an orderly to carry my bed

and kit. We hauled it upstairs, and then another Turkish

officer turned up and ordered me back as being sick. Leaving

my luggage I toddled back, but that kindly-hearted cavalry

giant, Captain Kirkwood, followed me with it, for which I

was more grateful than I can say.

We are still without money. One day some of those fit

enough were taken to a café near by, but as they had no money

"nothing happened," as they expressed it on returning.

Anyway we are running up a bill here, and unless they pay us

before leaving, the hotel walla will get nothing. I have a few

spoonfuls of fatty rice, and lebon, and marrow soup daily.

Stapleton and another officer share my room.

There is no news, except a reported Russian shove through

Roumania. It is also rumoured that we may move in a day

or two. A Turkish doctor has been round, and has ordered

me milk, etc., with medicine. I've sent frequently for both,

but neither has come so far--four days since.

And these bugs are the "Devil's own." I suggest the

Inns of Court Officers' Training Corps should have a bug

rampant as their crest.

Except the Bible, one has no books. I have now finished

the Psalms and Proverbs to-day, and am going on. They say

the second phase of the Titanic struggle (or Teutonic struggle)

is beginning in France. I wish nothing better than to be fit

again and in it.

_July 22nd._--Oh! This wretched confined bug-eaten little

café! They would not let us go to hospital, where one might

have got milk. They had no carts, they said, no medicine,

no room ..., and cholera was there, etc., etc. To-day the

doctor brought us black draughts for colitis, which we have

chanced taking, and it has already done us some good. I am

bitten red with bugs, and can feel at any moment several

on me at once. The bed is full. I must try to sleep

and forget them, as it is no use brushing them off. Temperature

100°.

_July 23rd._--We left Angora to-day in carts. Feeling a

little steadier, and the hospital being so inhospitable, I decided

to try and keep going with the same column, trusting my luck

once again. From the money they paid us I promptly kept

a lira, and left the hotel-keeper's account partly unpaid. We

promised him the money when we could cash cheques or get

our remittances. With some of the cash I got the interpreter

to buy two tins of milk and a little sugar and tea for the

journey. We did not, however, get clear of the hotel-keeper

and Commandant of Angora so easily. There was a riotous

scene, yelling and screaming, shaking of fists in one's face,

because we hadn't paid, when the Turks themselves had not

paid us since Mosul! What an awful brute that Commandant

of Angora was! A vicious, spiteful, selfish, callous savage.

We let him know it, too, by the time we had finished with him.

For instance, a lot of us were very ill and without money, and

although there were rooms full of parcels sent us from home

when Kut fell, he wouldn't even look to see. We saw some

marked for several officers through a chink in the door, but he

wouldn't shift himself an inch to see about anything. So we

had malaria without quinine, and drank wheat-coffee when

tea was lying in our parcels inside.

I am glad to have left that vile café.

We went on all day very cramped, in the same carts, and

that night slept in a stable full of bugs and fleas. I bought

some lebon and slept. At 4 a.m. we were away again through

hills and bare, treeless heights all day. The horses galloped

and walked, and one's back bounced on the side of the narrow

carts, which at the bottom were about two feet six inches wide,

with sides sloping outwards. There were the usual upsets,

and boltings, racing, and collisions. Twice our cart jambed

another over the edge of a cliff, and we got rammed. There is

nothing to eat except bread. It was an extra weary day.

For fourteen hours we jolted and jerked onwards, and then a

pretty little green village hove in sight. We saw geese and

ducks and fowls, which meant eggs, and a running stream,

and brushwood for fires. But we were driven on and past

this into the night. An hour and a half later we reached a

filthy Arab enclosure, inside which we were driven. There

was scarcely room for us to lie. One could not get water or

firewood or anything. There was no Turkish officer to appeal

to. We were all under the orders of a choush or sergeant.

The colonel was very indignant, but the choush seemed afraid

we might escape unless we were shut up. The place swarmed

with mosquitoes and fleas. This choush was taking no risks.

It was only after a long delay, when I found a Greek youth

who knew a little German, that arrangements were made for

one or two of us to go to a spring and get water. We had

some tea and tried to sleep. That, however, was out of the

question. For the last dozen miles one of the occupants of

our cart was taken suddenly ill and had to lie down, so we had

to break our backs under the driver's seat while the vehicle

galloped and jolted. To any one except those in our condition

this would have been merely inconvenience. It was an

exceptionally beautiful sunset, with pink-limbed baby clouds

resting on the rolling summits of soft grassy hills.

_July 25th._--We were up at 6 a.m. The horses were very

done, but their drivers goaded or thrashed them with thick

sticks and made them gallop, and there were no brakes to

help them. To pull up they ran into the bank, or into another

cart. We had, on the previous day, passed through hilly

country dotted with villages and fairly well cropped. Everywhere

we saw grazing the herds of Angora goats with their

gaily-dressed goatherd standing over them blowing his pipes.

The Angora goat is a most beautifully fleeced animal with

twisted horns and snow-white curly locks of fleece. The

animals are kept for their wool as well as milk, and often

supply the chief means of the people's subsistence in these

parts. Besides milk, butter, and cheese, and sometimes the

meat, the wool is woven into various garments, and the hide,

laced with string, forms their shoes. These goatherds are

very picturesquely dressed with coloured jackets and caps,

and a bright red-striped kummerbund, in which is stuck the

eternal Turkish knife. The arms and legs are criss-crossed

with coloured cord.

The hills here and there are covered with herds, and at the

head of these moving white dots moves their picturesque

goatherd, blowing quaint sounds from his pipes. We passed

lots of these fellows marching as impressed recruits between

Turkish soldiers, and shoved on to fight in the forlorn

hope.

We have left the peak El Divan far behind. It is 4900 feet,

so we must have climbed some 3000 feet above Angora. The

country has now changed again to the more barren higher

hills. A thunder shower surprised us on the top of one, but

it cleared the air immensely. Then our cart broke down, and

they repaired the pole with a pine tree growing near.

My wonder at these carts increases daily. Rattling and

loosely bolted and wobbling, they appear to be on the point

of breaking down every minute. Sometimes three of the tyres

of our cart simultaneously were almost off, and the pole hung

between the body of the cart and the tree often quite detached.

If the wheel slips off they bash it on with a rock or lump of

wood, and, like Turkey itself, it just goes on.

At 3 p.m. we reached the small town of Changrai, the only

place of any importance between Angora and Kastamuni.

We were frightfully done, but luck ordained it that we were

bivouacked by a stream and under some trees quite close to

the town.

Changrai is a pleasant little town with ten mosques on the

steep hillside, heights all round, and many green orchards all

about. We got honey, apples, and apricots, fairly cheap. I

saw the Angora goat at close quarters. He is a classy little

fellow, small, and prettily shaped, with fine bright eyes and

carrying the most spotless silken white fleece in the world.

_July 26th._--We left Changrai about 9 a.m. I had managed

to change to another broken cart which would support me. It

was more comfortable, and I travelled alone with the choush,

enjoying my own thoughts and amusing myself by watching

the antics of the goats or weaving romance around the feet of

every goatherd. I could stretch my limbs, and I thanked

God I was left to enjoy the peace of the mountain heights alone

with a pipe. My cart being broken we were far in the rear of

the column. At the hills I drove, and so escaped walking,

the driver, a huge fellow, walking to watch his cart, and

perhaps not unduly strain his repairs. As for me, my weight

had fallen from ten stone twelve pounds to considerably under

nine stone, so this came in convenient just now. In the afternoon

we followed a track fringed by deep precipices crossed

only by goat tracks. We camped in a gully near a village, to

which we were not permitted to go. A few loaves arrived for

us. We were very hungry in this spot, and the cold night

sharpened up one's craving for food. We made some cocoa

and soup, and after a spot of cognac like nothing quite else

on earth we slept--for a time--until we discovered we were on

ant-hills. I have since decided to back a squadron of red ants

on the war-path against two battalions of Angora bugs. It

was very cold, but the ants kept us moving.

_July 27th._--We made an early start just after the dawn.

We went down, down, down for 2000 feet, and then gradually

up again over hills and gullies. We passed some well-worn

Hittite caves, like watch-keepers of the valley below. These

quaint people that sprinted about among primæval dews, and

about whom so little is known, must have had a queer life of

it in those high detached and lonely caves. They selected

inaccessible places, like the eyrie of the eagle.

We rested at midday from eleven till one. Two goats were

killed, but as we had no money we did without. The note is

of no value in the country, and of little value in the town. No

change can be got for any, however big the note is. Two of

our officers we had to leave behind at Changrai sick with fever.

We subscribed some cash for them. I was glad to be able to

keep going still, although I often felt fearfully nauseous and

weak, with a thundering headache, at which time the cart

generally started some of its gymnastic tricks. Malaria was

still on me.

The big climb now lay ahead of us. We pushed on. The

scenery became much more interesting. The forest thickened,

and instead of chestnut and beech appeared the _pinus insignis_

and the mountain fir. We went up and up. Again I was

reminded of Thüringen in Germany, and this time it was much

more like it. The road grew steeper, the ravines larger, and

the courses of winter's mountain torrents were now dry rocky

boulder paths. The mountain fir with its drooping branches

stood erect in marshalled battalions on the mountain slopes

in the valleys, the tops swaying to the eternal music of the

mountains. We quenched our thirst at excellent falls and

springs on the way. It grew from chilly to very cold. Our

blood was in a very poor condition, and the biting wind bit

clean through one. We were now at the last climb of (Mount)

El Ghaz Dagh, 5481 feet high, the ridge of which we were to

cross being 4500. At five o'clock other horses gave out, and

ours were taken, so I cramped up in another vehicle with the

choush, from whom I understood by signs that we had in our

turn invested Kut. Our heavy guns will soon shake it to

pieces if we do invest it.

It was slow work to the top of the peak, but once over we

descended rapidly in the face of an icy wind for two hours.

Tiny log-built hamlets lay clustered up together for warmth

on the sides of the valleys. We followed the main valley until

the stream widened at a saw-mill. There we lit fires and made

ourselves warm and cooked some soup. We slept inside dark

empty rooms in the mill, and here struck a new pest. They

were swarms of lice and fleas, and we did a _shikar_ for them

most of the night. I arose early feeling a rhythm of returning

health. The cold bracing air of the mountains had undoubtedly

done me a lot of good, and I felt stronger, although

colitis and malaria still troubled me, and everything we ate

was followed by sharp abdominal pains--a legacy of the siege.

I washed in the icy stream by the light of dawn. What a

magnificent morning it was! The last mists of night floated

away, and left the terraces of bronze-green firs shimmering

in the morning sun and climbing up to the blue of heaven on

the white sheets of El Ghaz Dagh. This would make an

excellent trout stream. My last tin of milk and sugar which

had kept me going so far was finished. My own cart had

appeared in the night, and I left in it at 7 a.m. After a few

miles of fern-edged brooks that tumbled along quite New

Zealandy, we reached the plain again, and followed a road

among scantily cropped stretches until three o'clock, when

my driver pointed away to the right and said the one word.

"_Kastamuni!_" Turning around I beheld far away in a treeless

basin a reddish-brown patch which proved to be the clay tiles

of houses. In the distance it appeared as a brown-carpeted

dip sunk down beneath the almost treeless grassy plain. This,

then, was my first glimpse of our immediate bourne.

We were divided into two columns outside the town--evidently

intended for different houses. I now learnt that in

previous columns the officers of British regiments, including

the R.F.A., my own regiment, had gone to Yozgard, due east

from Angora. This was rather bad luck in a way, as among

them were most of the officers I knew best.

We strolled down into a town larger than Changrai, with

plentiful minarets arising above the brown roofs. The houses

line the sides of the basin, which is merely the broadening out

of a fertile little valley watered by a small stream that in the

town is crossed by an interesting looking old stone bridge.

In the background and overlooking the town is a picturesquely

situated fort, now in ruins.

We were rattled through the town, the people all gazing

at us very interestedly. The shops, we observed, actually had

in them such things as local tobacco (dreadful stuff, but better

than nothing), sugar, and rice, and even sardines. We walked

behind the carts that climbed and climbed to the further side

of the town, which was the Greek Christian quarter, and on

passing a long row of dirty houses saw some of the other officers

on the look-out, including Square-Peg. There were two groups

of houses, Upper and Lower. We were to occupy a new house,

the highest of all, attached to the Upper House. We swarmed

into a front door down along an alley flanked by a wall, and

found ourselves in what appeared a decent house for Turkey.

On going upstairs I found a landing, off which led four doors.

I opened one of them, and found myself inside a small room

fourteen feet by ten feet, containing two beds, and, on going

to the windows, saw a glorious view of the whole of Kastamuni

and of the valley reaching out to the blue ranges in

the distance, beyond which lay, somewhere near by, the Black

Sea. A fresh breeze, seemingly straight from the hidden sea,

drifted towards me as I stood by the open window. That

decided me. I slung my things down and fell on the bed

nearest the window, thanking God that the trek was done. I

am now writing at the corner facing the same hills. It seems

that here we must rest until we have done with these chains.

Our brother officers had put the Turks up to preparing a meal

for us. Heavens! how we ate! There was white bread,

boiled eggs, honey, butter, fresh milk. We ate and drank

and drank and drank. There was a hot competition now for

bedrooms, and as mine had to be shared, I was fortunate

enough to get a quiet stable companion to share with me.

We were not allowed out of the house until 7.30, when

we were taken to a large two-storied Upper House--Mektub

they called it, as it had previously been a school, and there

a large room had been turned into a restaurant, and was run

by a Turkish caterer. He gave us soup, and what we called

toad-in-the-cucumber, or tomato as it happened, rice _pilau_,

and a fried meat dish all heavily reeking with fat. A coffee

shop was opened, which ran extra supplies of butter and

honey, and also cognac, _mastik_ (the Turkish drink tasting of

aniseed), and local thin German beer at 5_s._ a bottle. We got

back after a lengthy wait, which we beguiled by comparing

our experiences with those of other officers, and then hastened

to bed. A few celebrated our arrival by a carousal, but I

slept. Oh! the ecstasy of that night with the breeze playing

over one's face--sleep that would not be broken at any unearthly

hour by a "_Yallah_" for donkeys or by dust-storms or

by a stampede.

At intervals in the night I awoke startled. Once I imagined

I had fallen asleep on my donkey again, that we were pressing

on in darkness over the desert, and, again, that an order had

been given to move. But each time I found myself in bed

beneath the cool night wind laden with scents of the mountains

and the sea, and heard above the deep silence the sound of

splashing water from some spring below. And I thought how

very life-like was the trek that had led we knew not whither,

and how, as in life also, we had craved for a sight beforehand

into the future for a glimpse at our destiny. But one sees

now the greater wisdom of God's plan that denied us a vision

into the future which might have lessened our motive power

and removed the need for trust or hope, but which demanded

of us instead the virtue of patience to await the evolution of

God's ways. And now more than that priceless perfect gift

of being able to say honestly, "Thy will be done," would I

desire to achieve the patience to overcome the difficult stretches

of any road, patience to wait and await. We are told that

whatever sorrow one has, it must exist in one's mind _only_ at

the present. In this sense only the Present can be sorrow,

and it is often a joy. But carrying us on from Present to

Present, from Sorrowful Present to Happy Present, be it near

or far, there is the Stream of Time, which the Divine Giver

has placed by us all. To await, then, is merely to make a

friend of this Stream of Time, the Happy Carrier, and pray

for the patience to endure until....

_July 29th._--No words could describe my unbounded joy at

receiving to-day news from the outside world. There was a

postcard from friends in Camberley, saying that our defence

has at last been understood, and asking what one wanted. It

was such a cheery word. There was also a tiny letter three

and three-quarter lines in length, which came many thousands

of miles congratulating us on the siege, and announcing that

parcels had already left for me. We hear they cannot arrive

for months. There is yet, however, no word from my dear

mother, or from home. I am now practically without socks,

shirt, vests, or anything else, my boots in ribbons, and with

one blanket.

We are to get seven liras a month, and our board and

lodging costs nine liras at the least, as we have to pay an

unjustified rent. What with tobacco and medicine, not to

mention English food with which we must reinforce this

Oriental provender, it will be at least fourteen liras and

possibly eighteen a month.

_July 30th._--The intervening hours we have slept. One

eats and then goes back to bed. We are all still extraordinarily

done. To-day we visited the Turkish bath. One enters a

large dilapidated vestibule with tiny sitting-up beds about

four feet long arranged around the room. One undresses and

wraps oneself up in a towel and shuffles in clogs into other

rooms where hot water pours from a jet. Here one douses

oneself, and then sweats heavily. A bucketful of cold water

completes the bath, and then arrayed in clean towels we

retreat to the bed, and over a cigarette and black coffee (awful

stuff) watch the spiders in the great dome of the roof, or by

counting the dozen layers of clothes with which the Turks

hide their iniquities. We lie at full length, letting our legs

stick out, feet beyond the beds, or cock them up on the

nearest wall.

All the people here seem well disposed towards us. They

know we represent cash to them. At least they think so.

After the bath we were allowed to visit the bazaar for a

few moments under the charge of a _posta_. There was an

awful climb back to our house, to which we shall no doubt

get accustomed in time.

We have written four postcards home, chiefly about what

to send us. I am anxious to hear from my parents and sisters.

Their letters must have been returned, and I suppose they

have had anxious times, not hearing from me for so long or

knowing whether I was still alive. The cheerful four-lined

letter I received from Camberley must have been written after

newspaper announcement of the fall of Kut.

CHAPTER IX

LIFE IN KASTAMUNI--THE FIRST SUMMER, 1916

_July 31st._--Yesterday was two months since leaving

Baghdad, a journey I shall always associate with

sorrow and fortitude. It was already a trail of dead

and dying from other columns, and we freshened it up with

contributions of our own. But time flies. It is already

three months since we left Kut. During that time I cannot

recall one Turkish promise that they have kept. This is a

performance, but for us to have so far survived it and also

their indifference, is an achievement.

After a time we hope news will leak through, but at

present there is none. We are to be allowed a German-inspired

daily written in French and published in Stamboul,

called the _Hillal_. According to it fighting still proceeds

in France in the same old zone, while in Mesopotamia the

front is near Amara--which one doubts. It is almost two

years since the war started. Great movements in the national

life of most European nations seem to be merging into international.

With peace, I believe fresh and wonderful Gulf

Streams will circulate in the new political world that must

arise.

_August 1st._--I have met Haig of the 24th, whom I knew

at Hyderabad, and whom I saw last in the retirement. We

have so far almost no liberty, not being allowed to go even

to the second part of the house. But we understand this

will change very soon. Once a week we are permitted to go

to the Turkish bath, and once a week to the bazaar, where

the prices are exorbitant. Butter or honey is 30 piastres an

oke, or 2_s._ 6_d._ a pound, sugar 40 to 50 piastres, or 4_s._ 6_d._ a

pound, and tea, bad tea at that, 10_s._ a pound. There is little

else to be had, and clothing is a fictitious price. However,

one's credit in the bazaar is practically unlimited. The shopkeepers

prefer to trust us rather than their own people, and

take cheques rather than paper money. Medicines are more

or less unprocurable.

_5 p.m._--Turned in with rising fever. Several officers in

our house have been down with it already, and I hoped I

was to have escaped. A strong physical reaction has set in

with many of our column, and all sorts of sicknesses are going

about. For one thing, we have practically starved for half

a year, and now these fatty foods of the Turks rather try

one's weakened digestion. We negotiate huge quantities of

fresh milk and lebon.

_August 2nd._--Lieut. Locke died in the Turkish hospital

last night, and, as a result, a scare started among the Turkish

officials. One of their doctors came around to see all those

in bed, and I was ordered, much against my will, to the

Turkish hospital. They don't understand malaria at all, or

that, for colitis, the only thing to do is to diet. And, from

what we hear, the last place for diet is a Turkish hospital.

However, one is in the hands of these interpreters, and for

the most part they are lying, frightened, Greek or Armenian

knaves. Ours required me to leave everything--even mere

requisites--and set out for the hospital a "few moments away."

Extraordinarily weak, I shambled off and followed him on

a considerable trek, for a sick man, all around the town.

Then he bolted for his dinner, leaving me in charge of the

soldier, who, poor chap, couldn't read his papers. On

arriving at the place we were refused admittance, and there

was no one there to read the admission paper. A wait of

hours I spent by sitting out on the roadside in the hot sun,

near a café; a delightful occupation for a man shivering with

ague and with a temperature of 103°. Then I discovered a

patient who spoke some French, and he got the only Turkish

orderly there to show me a bed. I was taken to the bed

whereon poor Locke had just died from enteritis and dysentery.

They had not even removed the sheets. How I loathed the

Turks at that moment. However, I was so tired that I got

into bed. In the same room were three Turkish civilians,

and two British officers I found next door.

No one appeared. I had left my room in the morning, but

by night I had only succeeded in getting some water. By

evening the ague had gone, and I wanted some nourishment,

and set to prowl around the place to get it. I had plenty of

violent scenes, but did not succeed in finding the pantry.

I began to believe that I had come to a huge automatic

healing establishment where by a series of Christian Scientific

brain waves one imagined oneself fed and convalescent. I

heard that Locke had been left unattended in his house, after

request, four or five days before he was even inspected by

the Turkish doctor, and then, on his moving to this hospital,

had a reception similar to mine. He died the same evening

as he entered.

After my unsuccessful shikar for food through the great

building I returned in no amiable mood, and it was then that

the humorous gods held high council, and, remembering my

opinion on Angora bugs, provided a little joke for themselves

afresh. These new bugs were for shock tactics. There was

no artillery preparation or demonstration from flank battalions,

but suddenly I was awakened from a doze by bitings in fifty

places. Leaping out of bed I gathered them up in threes

and fours. Tearing my clothes off I caught the rear files

before they could get to cover. Undismayed, they renewed

the attack as soon as I again tried to sleep. This became too

ridiculous. Finally, my language attracted a crowd of laughing

Turks, and one informed me in French that the hospital

was famous for bugs. The pillow and mattress I discovered

to be their first line, but their reserve lines were in the wooden

frieze. "Ye gods!" I thought, "this is too much. Here

am I starving and curing myself and doing my best to smile

over it when I'm expected to put up a regular hunt!" I

slung the mattress away and, seizing some clothes from a

wardrobe outside, with the orderly hanging on to me the

while, remade the bed. Still on they came. I decided that

if I were Napoleon I would change the Turkish crescent to

a bug passant, with that half-comical grin the lions passant

have, the near fore paw in the air and face screwed around at

you. I collapsed towards dawn with sheer irritation. But in

my sleep on they came, on from every wall, from every point

of the horizon, from the sky, from beyond the confines of the

universe--I myself was becoming a bug--when I awoke with

a roar, and saw the Turkish orderly standing beside me

grinning. I gave him cigarettes for appreciating a situation

I no longer could myself, and he taught me some more Turkish

"Zorari yok" (never mind), and "Yawash" (gently).

I awaited the dawn with an increasing hunger, having

now devoured about a handful of lump sugar I had put into

my pocket as an emergency ration. The hours crawled by

until eleven, when the visiting doctor came.

Now, by this time I had begun to find out a thing or two

about the Turk. Unless you ask, he never does anything;

if you do, he merely promises he will. Your only chance is

to be demonstrative and impress him. This fellow was a

robust, bouncing, overfed, callous, perpetual-smile-sort-of-fellow.

Waiting until he wished me good morning, I leaped

clean out of bed, with a frightful roar that brought a dozen

people into the room, and showed him pints of blood--mine

and the bugs'--all over the wall, bed, mattress, etc., etc.

Then I cursed the place in German, in English, and terrible

French, and applied my word, "fenner," vigorously, ending

up my objecting to my treatment with gestures, etc., etc.

For the first minute or two he laughed, and then he sat down

and mopped his forehead and explained he came only once

a day, and without an order from him it might have been

risky to give me any food, etc. He wrote out a beautiful diet

sheet, and sent me some medicine for the colitis. This did

me good, certainly, but I waited all day for the milk and

cornflour and soup. At five o'clock one small cup of the

weakest imaginable tea arrived. Nothing else. It now

appeared that an order by the doctor on one day did not take

effect until the following day, as they had to send out for

supplies. I was really terribly ravenous. That evening,

about 8 p.m., when two orderlies brought round a trench table

filled with loaves of bread and plates of soup, I waited until

they were gone a second and seized a loaf, which I plunged

in the soup, and returned to my bed, where I devoured most

of it. The other Turks in the room, I believe, informed the

orderly, who searched for the remainder of the loaf in my bag;

but we had a wrestle for it, and while he sent out for a posta,

I finished it. Later he appeared, laughing, and took some

more cigarettes.

The situation developed along these lines until the next

morning, when the doctor came again. This time I was

coldly indignant, and showed him a letter of complaint

to the American Ambassador at Stamboul, and requiring

to be sent back to my house. The result was he put

me on an enormous diet at once of bread and buffalo

meat that would have killed any Englishman, certainly a

siege-battered, starved, feverish, colitis-stricken sick man.

I distributed my rations among the two officers next door,

one of whom was a most congenial person, named Fox--an

officer I didn't know in Kut, as he had been in Woolpress

most of the time. We had long discussions on Turks and

bugs. The next morning another doctor came, and, seeing

my diet sheet full, evidently thought the Turkish commissariat

couldn't stand this, and discharged me from hospital.

The medicine had done me some good, but otherwise I

was weaker on leaving the hospital than entering it. Fox

and I trekked back. How glad we were to get out of it! I

had expected an interesting girl in a purdah to look after me,

and all kinds of delicacies. One learns apace in these days.

On the way we passed Captain Martin, I.M.S., recently

arrived, and he sympathized with us, and promised us that

in future he would look after us all. I was very glad to regain

my room once more. Another small party of relicts had

arrived from Angora, amongst whom were Blind Hookey,

who was at the Christmas dinner in Kut, and Young Lacy,

whom I had left at Samarra. He had had great luck. When

he was quit of the fever he had managed to join a small party

and was driven the whole way. Our column, including as

it did the native officers, and travelling in the wake of the

whole division, seems to have had probably the worst time

of any, and certainly one saw most of the tragedy of the trek.

Our whole house is now pretty full.

_August 7th._--Malaria returned. The ague was more severe

this time. Quinine we have at last procured in small quantities

at the rate of five piastres a cachet, which means that one's

malaria medicine bill will be fifteen shillings daily. A cold

snap in the weather has sent several others here down with

malaria. Kastamuni is said to have a cold winter, so we

hope to get this fever quite out of our system. It is raining

steadily--the first rain since arriving here.

We have no books as yet, but it is to be hoped the Turks

will allow them to come through later on. I have finished

the Bible--a complete reading now since Baghdad. What a

vigorous teacher is St. Paul. No mundane considerations

seemed to prevent his putting the true value on this transient

existence, and from that probably sprang the facility with

which he decided always for the Lord.

_August 17th._--The mornings continue fine and sunny, but

in the afternoons a sharp, shadowy wind springs up, and the

evenings are quite cold. We are anxiously awaiting the

parcels waylaid in Stamboul. The fever has largely gone,

but muscular rheumatism has taken its place. No one hears

from or is allowed to write to Yozgad or Kara Hissa.

The Turks here seem to have already settled on their plan

of campaign, which is to make us get into debt at huge prices,

which already are increasing. I am, however, assuming a

sublime indifference to money matters. The financial anxiety

of the trek was enough, and I have a long score to pay off

against the Turk in this respect, so once in his debt he will

have to facilitate our getting our money from home, or else

receive cheques.

_August 22nd._--On the 18th I attempted a long walk,

permission having been obtained for a party of us to go.

The direction led me over hills towards some pine woods--a

considerable climb for those in our condition. An extraordinary

phenomenon common to almost all Kut people,

young and old--but more especially to the young who had

starved on account of enteritis troubles--is their sudden

huge girth expansion. One's figure protrudes like any

Turk's. The fatty foods and weak state of the stomach are

said to be the cause of this.

Still, with fixed determination, the walk party pushed

on, blowing and perspiring. One remembered one's duty

to get fit. At the pine woods one longed to be alone for an

hour--a forgotten pleasure--but we were marshalled like

geese. It is a pleasant spot of young pines and pleasantly

murmuring grassy glades, strewn in places with pine needles,

that gave additional exercise by making one fight for a foothold.

Through the opening in the pine wood one saw the

mountainous horizon that ringed us round. Kastamuni

was out of sight somewhere beneath us.

The next day I actually turned out to rugger for our

house, as left wing three-quarter. The delight after all one's

sickness in feeling one's legs really attempting to run was

so encouraging that one Brabazon and I, for dinner, divided a

bottle of German beer. This is to become a custom. We played

three spells of ten minutes each, and quite enough too--with

a ball stuffed with wool, as we had no bladder. Kastamuni

is totally hilly, and the footer ground over a mile away, is

uneven and stony, but the best we can get. Correct collaring

is barred, but we go croppers just the same. On Sunday we went

bazaaring, and were allowed to attend church at 6.30, when we

sang hymns from memory. The text was: "You are sons of

God." We hope to make a little chapel here, by and by.

Hailstones as large as hazel nuts, but not so large as in

Kut, made merry music yesterday over the town. The

streets then become drains and gutters, as they are intended

to. Besides being an economy, it cleans the streets.

What a quaint town this is! All water is drawn from

springs or wells. There are no lights of any kind, except,

possibly, some faint glimmer burning from a police station.

There are no trams or much vehicular traffic, donkeys being

the chief transit. In the early morning one hears the ancient

Biblical solid-wheeled oxen cart groaning on its turning axle

beneath the weight of a huge tree trunk brought in for firewood.

At night the distant tinkling of bells sometimes reaches

one as the goats come back. And, later still, over the sheets

of darkness in deep, pulsing waves, like the voice of a dark

and mysteriously moving spirit, floats the muezzin, which is

taken up from mosque to mosque until the whole town echoes

with the cry.

I have had some rough chessmen made out of bits of

wood, and am settling down to discipline my mind again to

some sort of methodical thinking. One feels that some such

effort as this stands between us and oblivion.

_September 1st._--I am feeling very much better than I

have since those awful floods came in Kut that left me legacies

of rheumatics, and Heaven knows what else. We play

rugger three times weekly, and eat huge teas. One of us makes

cakes, another carpenters, another makes jam, and yet another

has started tailoring. My present hobby is to get fit and

clean my windows and "bazaar." I am putting on flesh, or

rather, fat, and must be now a half stone more in weight.

But my digestion is still weak, nerves bad, and a periodical

pain from my spine.

We have been to a Greek dentist (?) The awful stuff we

ate in Kut played havoc with my teeth, which were in rather

good condition before. This fellow proposes to crown about

half of the back ones, is willing to accept a cheque, and talks

frequently in French. These are his distinguishing qualities.

He seems everything. Moreover, he will take a live nerve

out and think nothing of it. Sometimes he pretends to kill

it by pushing in small supplies of something or other which

the nerve likes so much that it fattens on it, with the result

that it grows so rapidly that soon one's whole body exists as

an appendix of the particular nerve! The Turks looted his

rooms lately. He has now, in consequence, only a rickety,

straight-backed kitchen chair, two bottles, a wheel and string,

and about four picks, with which he is very adept, using both

ends of each. Altogether the Greeks here are a most disappointing,

shifty lot. Poor Greece! where Pericles once

lived, and which now exports currants--as they say.

Roumania is in the war at last. Turkey is pretty well on

her last legs; but then, like her carts and donkeys, she always

seems good for another few yards. With returning fitness I

begin to hate, loathe, detest, and abhor this soul-smothering

life. The way the Turk _in authority_ treats us, his ignorance

of his own mind, his partiality for intrigue and roguery and

robbery, as also the way he runs his country, proves him unworthy

of Empire. The brains and finance of this country

are absolutely Greek or Armenian. The Turk holds the

sword, and arrears of mismanagement he puts right by a

periodical massacre. He is barbarously ignorant and misinformed.

The most worthy fellow is the common soldier,

who has some idea of manliness and of service, but the officer

and official is a double-edged scoundrel, a smiling, dishonest,

lubricous sneak, and totally untrustworthy, also a bad soldier.

The Armenian I would describe as the Jew of Turkey,

hence his unpopularity. He hoards money, is indifferent to

the military needs or other aspect of the development of the

country, except the financial one, and is not without treachery.

The Greek is also more able and better educated than the

Turk. With the Armenian he does the penmanship of

Turkey. He supplies surveyors, artisans, architects; but

he, too, cannot go straight. In fact, I would rather trust a

Turkish soldier than any Greek or Armenian. Hundreds of

years of oppression have dried up their springs of independent

action, and the Armenian goes about in constant fear of

massacre; the Greek just escapes it. They have no thought

whatever of throwing off their yoke or leaving the country,

although they have nothing in common with their oppressors,

and their religious divergence is as wide as it can well be.

They hate the Turk, yet choose to suffer. Even among the

children we see the tyranny of the Turk. A diversion of ours

is to watch the children playing near here. Tiny Turkish

boys maltreat and bully big Greek boys and girls, who dare

not retaliate.

The explanation of the sorry state of Greece and of the

Greeks and Armenians here I believe to be the utter selfishness

of the people and their want of public-spirited men. But, if

only because they are less unenlightened than their oppressors,

reform should be possible to them, and although on looking

at the Greeks of the land from Aleppo to Kastamuni, they

seem an indifferent lot, still they have in them the seeds of

culture and the ardent wish for civilization. On this, then,

I believe we can build. The Turk is an interesting study.

He is half child and half savage. His predilection and habits

are like those of a child. He takes offence at small things,

like a child. Like a child, he responds to small favours.

And Germany is the last country to take the Turk successfully

under her wing. England, I believe, alone could do it. We

could utilize the Turkish talent for soldiering and practical

affairs, removing from their midst these over-corrupt officials

and Government, whom they detest. We should win their

confidence by applying rigid and accessible justice between

them and the Greek and Armenian, who would find unswerving

adherence to law and order unavoidable. Religious toleration

we could grant, and I believe that within a few years, Turkey

would settle comfortably under our influence, and learn to

trust us. But as it is, the country is rotten, the habits rotten,

and so many wretched corrupt Turks are in authority, that

one feels inclined to sweep them all away.

_October 1st._--Loud shouting and cheering and wild stampede

towards the restaurant dining-room announced that another

mail had come. We all go quite mad on these occasions, and

charge past postas, knocking over chairs or each other, and

crowd around the table while the letters are given out.

I have heard again from home, written before Kut fell.

I wonder what sort of a time they picture me having. Kut

still seems to have been kept dark from everybody, and

especially so the trek; but I shall always remember the great

thoughtfulness and affection of our friends reaching out to

our lonely life across thousands of miles of sea and land.

With these letters I am among the heath of Camberley, the

hills of New Zealand, and the 'buses of London, once again.

The commandant or kaimakam (colonel) is a foolish and

babyish fellow, and also a rogue; but I, for one, believe he

has less vice in him than the other junior officer, Sheriff Bey,

who is a dangerous and treacherous villain. The old kaimakam

does rake up a smile when we try to be happy, and

although the Tartar is often apparent, he has, on occasion,

given us such a privilege as a special walk.

We are trying to erect some structure of habits wherein

to dwell until God's good time allows us to get away from

here. Thus we make cakes twice a week. This will last

a little longer until prices become too outrageous. Which

makes two events. Church and bazaar and Turkish bath

make three more, total of five altogether, and these, scarcely

incidents in another's life, but episodes in ours, punctuate

the vacuum of time in which we roll. At 6.30 a.m. there is

_chota haziri_, tea and toast, for which we have made private

arrangements.

Then one smokes or sleeps again. At 9 we have breakfast

of eggs and milk and butter and bread. With a posta at our

heels we return to our own house, 150 yards away. Then

some sleep, some play cards, some merely sit on a chair.

Others of us write diaries or re-read an old book. We have

lunch of fatty foods and smoke and sleep. We have tea (our

own _bandobast_ again) after which there may be a walk.

We all set off under a guard, and are trying to get farther

afield. Once a week a long walk is allowed. On returning

some of us change, even if it is to put aside one torn shirt

for another or a spare jacket. But in these times I jealously

guard every conventional cable that anchors one to the

decent life. There is a tendency to allow the coma to steal

over one's personality. This, I think, one should combat.

Dinner over, we have to wait in the _mektub_, a boresome hour.

We attempt bridge or chess. Back again in our room we

smoke awhile and sleep. It may read nicely, but in truth,

it is a sorry existence. Still, day by day, the structure grows,

and who knows, in a few months we may have a palace like

the pleasure dome of Kubla Khan!

The extraordinary thing is that one is so secluded. One

seems on the other side of creation's wall--in the backwash

of the waters. But we all know it only seems so. The stream

of Time flows on, sweeping along with it great events in the

changing scene from which we here are far removed. I have

ever been of a restless nature, and I am told this may operate

as a rest cure. One hundred and fifty miles from the nearest

railway, and that far from anywhere, locked in by mountains

bordering the Black Sea, cut off from papers and books and

news, in a town that but awakes and sleeps, with no public

institutions or even a picture theatre, one has left for a hobby

only the delivery of direct interrogatories to oneself, and the

supplying of answers thereto. I believe this is a supreme

test of character, and may prove a strength to some and a

ruination to others.

Sometimes an event overtakes us. For instance, I have

been placed in "gaol" for a short time, and the incident was

so funny I must set it down.

One day, while I was filling in notes of this diary, I observed

one of the flimsy untied curtains was ablaze. How

it started I can only conjecture. Either it blew on to the hot

cigarette ash tray, or a hot part of a cigarette must have fallen

down near the bed and caught in the curtain. These local

cigarettes are wretched things and burn furiously, the head

often falling off so that it is a common thing to find one's

clothes alight. I ripped the curtain down and stamped it

out. The two beds had caught, and the room filled with

smoke. I stamped out the fire and doused the bed with

water. As it still smouldered I flung it out of the door. And

then they came, Turks, choushs, postas, Sheriff Bey, the

kaimakam himself, and I began to expect the Sultan. They

were very angry, a fire having occurred in the Gurkhas'

quarters a few days previously. They persisted in saying

I tried to burn the house down and to set fire to Kastamuni.

That afternoon a sort of court-martial was made of it, and

I was arraigned before the Turkish Commandant, thinking

it a delightful joke. Their serious faces amused me. I

told them it was an accident, that I was sorry, that I would

pay the damage, and after a debate of ordinary budget length,

the kaimakam decided to let me off on my paying a lira.

(The curtain would have cost about ten piastres, and the

bed was only singed.) Then Sheriff Bey stormed and protested

for more punishment, and I was sent under an escort

after handing over all my smokes and matches, to a dirty

iron-barred cellar room in a house used by the kaimakam

as an office. It was full of paper, and there was no bed or

chair. I had no supplies at all. When I was left in peace

I took a copy of Robert Louis Stevenson's "Virginibus

Puerisque" from my pocket, and sitting in a corner started

to read. Presently I became aware of an eye watching me

through the crack. In fact, I was just on the point of lighting

up from a spare cigarette case and matches in my hip

pocket. The eye changed. Still reading, I observed several

peering and whispering, so taking a pencil and paper from

my pocket I went through the form of writing a letter to our

Foreign Minister via the American Ambassador, complaining

of my treatment. Then pointing to the eye, I called for the

interpreter, informing him that I wanted this letter to be

shown to the kaimakam, and that even if he didn't send it

I should take care that our Government took the matter

up and dealt with those responsible when I was free. The

result was he bolted from the room, and in ten minutes reappeared

with a posta, and said I was free. Sheriff Bey

met me at the top of the road, and proceeded to harangue

me about wanting to frighten me only.

Bluff is the only thing, and their ignorance one's only

chance. Since then, however, the kaimakam has treated me

with extraordinary respect, so much so, that I have successfully

refused to obey his order to pay for what I have not had,

_i.e._ food in the _mektub_ for all the time I was sick. The best way

to treat these Turks is to be distantly polite. Much annoyance

and trouble has been caused through some officers chumming

up to them, plying them with drinks, and conducting them by

the arm here and there. The next day there's a row about

some point of pay or privilege, and the Turk thinks himself

snubbed. The net result is that the Turk, being our captor,

is in much the better position to hit back. This he does

vigorously, with insulting titles and notices that make life

a great burden. Some of their notices posted up in the

_mektub_ are screamingly funny. The following are actual

samples, with spelling corrected--

* * * * *

1. "English imprisoned officers cannot only please themselves

by disobeying the Turkish posta who have the order

of them. Neither can they go past the posta or outside

the door. In which case the posta can beat them with the

stick or rough handle the officer or officers concerned."

2. "English officers ought to pay their money willingly.

Why do they have the trick of deceiving the peasants and

poor Turkish subjects, which is dishonest?

(Sd.) "TEUFIK,

"Kaimakam."

3. "Officers cannot talk to any one except themselves,

strong punishments will pursue swiftly. What is the use

of pouring dirty water into the street? Surely they need not

chivvy 'bints' in the bazaar, and officers educated in London

could know better. When officers go for a walk in charge

of a posta they shall not go to the front or the posta gets

behind in which case the posta has orders to shoot or

remonstrate with the culprit. Let every one pay the price

in the bazaar and let them pay all their money to Usnu,

the contractor, who is not a robber.

(Sd.) "TEUFIK,

"Kaimakam."

4. "It has been taken to my notice that English officers

never stop kicking up a shinty (shindy) in their rooms. Cards

will be stopped. Let us not play cards or kick up any more

shindy. You shall behave civilized."

5. "In future great supplies of liquor and cognac will

not be drunk by our order as the floor of the school will go

through. In which case the officers concerned cannot hold

Turkish authorities responsible if they meet death. Also

punishment must be given. Officers will be always tidy

the room. Why choose the pig-stye? This is also a punishable

affair.

(Sd.) "TEUFIK,

"Commandant."

6. "Officers are allowed the bath and bazaar and footer.

Why not go about properly dressed. Surely no hat or in the

hand is not properly dressed. Sticks are forbidden and officers

cannot walk with sticks. It is forbidden to get drunk or sing

as the noise stops the sleep of neighbours. If a fire starts

it goes. Therefore don't smoke in bedrooms for God sake.

(Sd.) "TEUFIK,

"Commandant,

"British Prisoners' Camp."

* * * * *

And so on. The explanation of these extraordinary

documents is that some of the postas (bluebottles we call

them) being old dug-outs, can't keep up with us when we walk,

and trail out behind. The people in the town do us down at

every turn, and we have to argue and bargain to get anything.

In fact, we enjoy it. As regards the noise, some of us have

a sing-song on every other Saturday in the _mektub_, and the

Turks fear our applause may be too much for the floor. Regarding

the "bints" we, not having spoken to the gentler

sex from periods ranging to two years, have taught some

Greek dreadnoughts to wish us good morning. The fire episode

was, of course, due to me. Their Captain, Sheriff Bey, is

the source of most of the trouble, and he stirs up the old

kaimakam. Sheriff Bey is captain of the guard, and is at

once treacherous and spiteful. To be sure he had for a time

captured the ear of a few of our officers who were misled by

his lubricity and perpetual smiles. He fawns upon them, defaming

his own country, which he predicts will be finished

in a few weeks, and has decided to leave Turkey after the

war. I loathed the man more than ever on hearing him

speak of his country so. They say he is spying on the kaimakam

in order to get his command.

On arriving here we all hoped to get away within a few

weeks, as there was rumour of an advance in the West. At

present, however, the indications are, at any rate, for a

winter campaign.

CHAPTER X

WINTER--OUR "SELF-MADE" ORCHESTRA

_February 1st, 1917._--Four months have gone. As I

write the earth is white with feet of snow. It is

a white world, the roofs no longer brown, the trees

no longer green, for even those few trees, like pines that have

not shed their verdure, have donned the white raiment of

winter's carnival. Snow! This pure and godly element,

silent and secretive, the _avant-courrier_ of the Ultimate, of

Things doomed, one day to be reclaimed by the once again

triumphant elements when, from the dome of the universe,

the last white great snow sheets shall fall, fall, fall--and this

universe, once again locked in the ice-grip of the Snow God,

shall drive forward mysteriously on its lonely way--lonely

for it shall have been separated from Life, and the Spirit, Man,

will have gone.

As I look out on the undulating expanse terraced down

to me from the mountain horizon to the northward, I am for

a minute tempted to believe that the Great Snow Deluge has

really come, and I alone am awake to behold it. But looking

still closer I see tiny windows peeping out from their white

frames, and I know the bees within that human hive are having

their winter sleep. With an effort I trace among the smothered

definition of the buildings, the snowed-up roads and alleys,

and rising above it all I see, scattered over the town, the

white upright minarets of the mosques. Kastamuni in wintertime

is a picturesque Turkish town, and has a character all

its own. The streets are deserted, but on the hill-path white-mottled

figures move slowly upwards. It is the hour of

prayer, and the _muezzin_ has just begun to swell out in icy

circles from the minarets, reaching out to the hearts of the

prayerful, and calling them to communion with Allah. _La

illaha, illa la._ There is but one God, and that is God. From

how many thousands of mosques, and for how many millions of

the followers of the prophet does the _muezzin_ cry at this hour?

And so I, too, find my silence unlocked after all these months

and am at last persuaded to throw off the coma that has

been stealing over us body and soul, that has buried beneath

its snow-drift our intentions one by one, and I am tempted

to jot down a few more notes to my reminiscences.

Sometimes, as the other day, we are allowed to take down

the bob-sleighs we have made to a hill about a mile away,

and pretend we are schoolboys again. After snowballing the

starters and getting snowballed ourselves, we shot down the

slope or over the bank, as the case occurred, and once or

twice we collided, but no one got seriously hurt. The hard

toiling uphill again, pulling the sleigh, proved how unfit we

were. On the way home we religiously snowballed every

fowl we passed, and the roads are full of them. The days

are dreadfully dreary, and it is only these events that seem

to lighten the monotonous gloom. Firewood is very scarce

and expensive, and only on rare occasions do we have a fire

worth anything. If we do by chance have wood it is often

wet, and the wretched tin stoves choke the place with smoke.

I half decided to have a stove in my bedroom, but, besides

that being fearfully small, the trouble is to get wood, which

comes in tiny donkey loads at fictitious prices. So we lie

in bed under the clothes, and with the intense cold sleep

steals over us. There is the same difficulty in getting kerosene,

now five shillings a bottle, and what one gets either

goes out, or splutters until you kick it out. We hibernate,

therefore. Once or twice it has been so cold that I have gone

down to the kitchen and sat by the smoke heap there. This

is very popular these days.

Letters are turning up more regularly. I am delighted

to have at last heard from home and several friends all over

the world, including the brilliant author of "Problems of

Philosophy." He has very kindly sent me some books and

recommends me to see Schiller on "Grumps." I also heard

from Wallace, from whom I have not heard for years and

years, and to whom I wrote in Kut along with people in the

neglected recesses of my memory, but the letter, of course,

was never sent. It must be eleven years since he and I sat

on the golden sand of a green-vestured island in that silvery

sea around Auckland--smoking our pipes as we lay on our

backs, and filling in with a wish what we wanted to complete

the scene. I remember wanting the suitable girl, but he

wanted books and debate. In between are my world travels,

and Cambridge, and Germany, and now I've been running

about in a war, and he, since a professor in Princetown,

writes to condole with me at being out of the war so early!

He ought to congratulate me on my luck in staying in it so

long. But then, of course, he can't know anything about Kut

yet.

It seems I have been reported dead in Kut, and again on

the trek, and in England they are only just hearing to the

contrary. What an unnecessary suspense for one's people!

Mine have been magnificent, even throughout the long period

of tragic rumour.

About my other friends at Cambridge, and in the regiment,

and in France, I never hear a word.

Parcels have arrived, thank Heaven, from several friends.

Sir Thomas Mackenzie has been a perfect trump, and the

most wonderful and thoughtful parcels from a very kind

heart in Australia. The first three or four have arrived. My

dear old friends, the Pallisers, remember me faithfully. And

Lord Grey, not forgetting the lonely subaltern in the middle

of Asia who once held forth on Imperial affairs sketched out

by the cloistered lawns of the Cam, has sent me kind messages

and a fortnightly parcel. One's emotions of thankfulness

and gratitude are infinite. I feel it is my duty to buck up

every ounce possible when one of the busiest and most over-worked

men in England, in indifferent health, too, finds time

to think of a worthless subaltern like me. My Camberley

friends also have sent me some parcels, and some wonderful

letters. These momentous things happen only once in a while,

but when they do they tell us that somewhere beyond these

snow-bound mountains are English hearts that are glad we

are come through so far, which means they know we have

tried and are chiefly sorry we are chained because we can't

try again.

Some few books have also arrived from time to time, but

only old ones are allowed through, though sometimes we

manage to conceal one or two. This, however, is very difficult,

as all parcels have to be opened before the Turkish authorities.

We have formed a library, and the indefatigable

librarian, Herepath, who catalogues the books and _shikars_

every one a moment overdue, caused us infinite delight

months ago by placing in the library most of Kipling's works

which he had miraculously brought through with him from

Kut. We devour anything in the reading line, especially now,

as bridge has fallen off.

None of the many books sent to me have turned up so

far, and have probably been intercepted at Constantinople,

whither even those that do arrive here have to be sent back

for censorship.