II

The following day we caught the river steamer at Bassorah, and four

days later arrived at Bagdad, F---- putting up at the grim brown fort

which housed the British Consulate, post office, and telegraph

station. I saw him on and off for a week, usually at tiffins or

dinners given for him by some of his British friends. At other times

he was not to be found. “F---- _Sahib_ gone to bazaar,” his Pathan

bearer invariably answered my inquiries; and F---- himself volunteered

no more than that he was spending a good deal of time “renewing old

acquaintances.” Then, at the end of about ten days, without a good-bye

to anybody, so far as I could learn, he dropped from sight. “F---- is

off again to his Arabs,” said his friends.

“I am much relieved,” the Consul whispered to me. “They hung on him

like leeches this time, but F---- got away by togging up as an

Armenian _arabana_ driver when they were expecting him as an Arab. The

Armenian came here, F---- stained his face, got into the chap’s

clothes, and actually drove the _arabana_, with a load of passengers,

to Kerbela. The Turks nabbed the real driver when they caught him

going out on foot, but got little out of him, and I don’t think they

know yet exactly what happened. F---- is far into the desert by this

time.”

This was in 1912, and at that time no one--least of all F----, who had

the most to gain by such an event--appeared to dream that the

blood-drenched plains of Babylonia and Assyria were likely to echo ere

many years to the tramp of hostile armies. The broad scope of

Germany’s activities, extending far beyond the mere construction of

the Bagdad Railway, was evident to every one; but, this

notwithstanding, the general impression seemed to be that the

whip-hand in this region was Russia’s. This feeling was aptly

expressed by an old Turkish officer with whom I discussed Near Eastern

politics at Mosul. “The Germans may build railroads,” he said,

punctuating his measured speech with puffs from a gurgling _hookah_,

“and the British may build ships, and the Turks may build dams and

canals,”--referring to the reclamation work at Hindia on the

Euphrates,--“but in the end the Great White Bear will come down to the

Persian Gulf and have his drink of warm water.”

That the Germans had ambitious plans for controlling the commerce of

the incalculably rich Tigro-Euphrates Valley no one doubted, or even

that the Kaiser aimed at some sort of political control. But that

German influence should prevail over that of Britain and Russia in

Constantinople, to the extent of aligning the Porte on the side of the

Kaiser against the Triple Entente, was not dreamed of in Mesopotamia,

even by the Turks themselves. The price to the Entente, however, of

alienating Italy from the Triple Alliance by acquiescing in that

Power’s conquest of Tripoli, was the irretrievable loss of Turkey’s

friendship; and with the succession of Enver Pasha to the War Ministry

at the end of the first Balkan conflict, there is no doubt that the

Porte stood absolutely committed to action with Germany. After the

outbreak of the present war, Turkey’s participation on the side of the

Central Powers was only a matter of the Kaiser’s nod. Enver Pasha,

educated in Berlin and always actively anti-Russian, had spent nearly

two years in preparation for the struggle which the Germans had

doubtless assured him was inevitable; and the making ready for a fight

to the death at the Dardanelles was not allowed to interfere with a

general stiffening of the Eastern defences. This, briefly, was the way

in which it came about that Britain is facing Turkey instead of the

long-prepared-against Russia in the Mesopotamian “theatre.” But I will

let my friend F----, to whom it was given to help set and stage the

opening scenes of the play, tell something of what happened up to the

moment of his tragic exit.

Late in the fall of 1914, a hastily scribbled card reached me in

California. “Things looming large at last,” it read. “Am off for the

‘P.G.’[1] to-morrow with big work in prospect. Will write when I can

get anything of interest passed.” The card was post-marked Karachi,

and dated but a few days previous to Turkey’s official entry into the

war. I took it, therefore, that the Indian Government had discounted

this action, and that at the moment the Turks opened hostilities by

bombarding the Russian coast, F----, doubtless with considerable

forces, was on the way to his “sphere.”

[1] Persian Gulf.

The promised letter was long delayed, and when it came bore the

post-mark Bassorah, not in the pothook Turkish characters, but in

plain English letters, while the blue two-and-a-half anna stamp of

India appeared in the corner formerly sacred to the narrow, pink,

half-gummed one-piastre sticker which you had often to affix with a

pin to keep it from falling off. Thus ran the letter:--

“I am writing you this from the one-time home port of ‘Sinbad the

Sailor,’ which, I am rejoiced to say, has been under our flag for some

days. The Turks had considerable forces of seasoned troops

here,--doubtless you remember how much of the old town was taken up by

barracks,--but, evidently because they did not expect us so soon, or

in such force, had done little in the way of outpost defence. This,

coupled with the facts that our naval strength was overwhelming and

the river very ineffectively mined, made what might have been an

operation of tremendous difficulty comparatively easy. The guns of our

cruisers outranged those of the old forts at the mouth of the

Shat-el-Arab, and, with sweepers working ahead of them, the

light-draught gunboats peppered so hotly those dense palm groves which

fringe the river banks that we had little difficulty in fighting our

way through them without great loss.

“Co-operating with the advance up the river, our main force was landed

above Koweit and marched across the open desert to attack Bassorah on

the west, threatening the rear of the Turkish positions on the left

bank. Here the Turk could have made us no end of trouble had he been

in sufficient force, for the lowlands were partly inundated and a

defence of the practicable routes could have been made very effective.

“It was the weakness of the opposition met here that first led us to

hope that Bassorah was not going to be strongly defended. Although the

advance resolved itself into little more than a series of outpost

actions, the period was an anxious one for us--and especially for

me--in that it put to the acid test the result of our work, not only

in forecasting the capricious and variable overflow, but also in

conciliating the no less capricious and variable Arabs of a region

nominally subject to Turkey. I can only tell you now that things

turned out, and are continuing to turn out, even better than we had

any reason to hope they would. There was no suggestion of a menace to

our exposed left flank from the hordes of curious but in no wise

hostile Arabs who showed themselves all along the way, and the censor

will probably not allow me to tell you that our transport and

commissariat, if nothing more, will probably be much helped by active

assistance from this source. [Here several sentences, doubtless

telling something more of the attitude of the Arabs, were obscured by

the censor’s brush.] So you will see that the Turk is reaping the

harvest he deserves from his sowing of harshness and duplicity among

the Bedouins, and that the time and efforts of us ‘language students’

who have worked this sphere will not have been spent in vain.

“The Turks have undoubtedly been quite sound in deciding not to make a

stand at Bassorah. With the sea approaches in our hands, and with the

city entirely encompassed by desert and marsh, the holding of it for

any time would have hinged upon command of either the Tigris or the

Euphrates all the way to the rich agricultural region to the west of

Bagdad. As the cutting of this line by us was only a matter of time,

the city would have been isolated and forced to withstand a siege

which could only have ended in the capture of whatever forces were

locked up there. As it is, the most of these forces are now at liberty

to dispute our advance, through a very difficult country, to

Mesopotamia and Bagdad. Here it seems certain we shall have all the

fighting we care for.

“I have not mentioned the fact that I have received my captaincy and

am assigned to the general staff. In an ordinary campaign the latter

circumstance would mean a lot of dreary consultations at headquarters,

and no action. Here, Allah be praised, the case is quite different.

R----, K---- (the two chaps who have also worked this sphere), and I

are always called in, if we chance to be on hand, when the maps are

unrolled; but most of the time the whole lot of us are off on

something else. R---- has been through the Turkish lines twice, once

spending three days in Kurna, their advanced base, and I have been off

on a week’s journey to receive renewed assurances of the friendship of

my Bedouin ‘blood-brother.’ It is going to be a jolly amusing game.”