IV

My next, and what proved to be my last, letter from F---- reached me

in London:--

“Our general advance has begun, and we have attained our first

important objective in the occupation of the ‘Garden of Eden.’ Not

the greater ‘Garden of Eden,’ which name Sir William Willcocks applies

to all of Mesopotamia south of Hitt and Samara, but the traditional

site of the Garden at the meeting of the Tigris and Euphrates. This

was surely one of the strangest engagements in history. The country

was under water for miles around, and the Turks had fortified and

elected to make their stand on the only dry ground in the whole

region, a series of low rises--hardly to be called hills--in the rear

of Kurna. Fortunately, their available artillery was not powerful. We

had prepared for the assault by emplacing batteries of heavy howitzers

at every point sufficiently solid to support them, while lighter guns

were mounted on the river-steamers and on barges.

“After a heavy shelling of the Turkish positions our troops, in

everything from _balems_ and _gufas_ to _kaleks_ and gunboats, were

rowed, paddled, poled, and steamed forward to the limit of the draught

of their respective craft. Then over they went into the water, and the

assault commenced. Luckily the Turkish guns had been pretty well put

out of action by our howitzers, else that half-mile or more through

mud and water would have been a very costly business for us. As it

was, some barges and _kaleks_ with machine-guns on them were brought

up close to the enemies’ lines, and, the fire of these and the

gunboats having made the Turkish positions practically untenable, the

troops had to do little more than go and round up a very sizeable

bunch of prisoners who had been cut off by a swift flanking movement

of a column of Sepoys. Some of our men, in their eagerness, went

overboard into deep water, and, as a consequence, had to chuck their

accoutrements and swim for it. A number of them, in fact, lost more

than their arms; and a bevy whom I saw later helping to shepherd some

Turkish prisoners aboard a gunboat had little to differentiate them,

sartorially, from Father Adam in the earliest days of this same

‘Garden of Eden.’

“I had a rather interesting job a few days ago. This was to lead a

small picked force across country and destroy a bridge of boats which

the Turks were endeavouring to maintain across the Tigris at the Tomb

of Ezra, for the use of any stragglers who might still be drifting

back from the south.

“You recall the Bible story of this famous structure. The Prophet

Ezra, faring about this region in his old age, feeling the hand of

Death upon him, directed his followers to bind his body to a camel,

drive the animal into the desert, and where it finally lay down to

rest, there to make the holy man’s burial-place. The camel headed

straight for the nearest reach of the Tigris, and there the

brilliantly-tiled tomb which was reared above the Prophet’s remains

stands to this day, a mecca for Jews and Mohammedans alike.

“I didn’t make a very brilliant success of my job with the bridge of

boats. We got into a marsh in the darkness and waded about in it until

too late to make the night surprise I had counted upon at Ezra’s Tomb.

We did get there at dawn, however, and, principally because the Turks

must have thought we had strong support coming up, managed to induce

the latter to evacuate his very good position about the Tomb and

retire to the east bank of the river. We established ourselves in one

of the Tomb gardens, but could go no farther for the moment on account

of the brisk and accurate fire of the enemy from the other side.

“Most of the day I lay on my back in a bed of petunias under the

garden wall, and gorged myself on the ripe pomegranates which the

Turkish bullets cut down from the trees above. But about mid-afternoon

they knocked a couple of bee-hives off the wall into the very midst of

us, and, as we were wearing ‘shorts,’ with nothing to protect the leg

from calf to knee, the sequel was a very unpleasant one. So dead sure

were those bees that our inoffensive little party was responsible for

upsetting their homes that they divided themselves into just as many

bands as we were men, and started, impartially and systematically, to

sting us to death. My men were out of hand in an instant, and I really

believe that, had not a modern miracle been wrought, another

minute would have seen the whole pack of us, careless of such

trifles as Turkish rifle and machine-gun fire, wallowing in the

fifty-yard-distant Tigris.

“The miracle was performed by a little pink-cheeked, bare-footed angel

of a Jewess, evidently the ‘shepherd of the bees.’ Unconcernedly

tripping out among the writhing ‘casualties,’ oblivious alike to the

threat of Turkish bullets and the roaring masses of bees, she set up

the punctured hives in a safe place under the wall, and then began to

beat sharply with a stick upon an old bronze gong which was suspended

from her neck by a thong. Instantly the bees stopped stinging, and

inside of five minutes the last of them was settling back with a

contented buzz into its hive. I could have kissed the stubby brown

toes of the pink-cheeked little angel of mercy. And here again let me

record to the credit of the Turks that, although her head and

shoulders must have been visible to them above the low wall, they made

no attempt to stop with a bullet the work which, had they only known

it, was all that prevented the whole lot of us from falling into their

hands.

“Every man of us was, of course, in beastly shape from the stings. My

own agony from this source was infinitely worse than that from a

bullet which ploughed up my scalp when we cut the bridge of boats

after darkness had fallen; in fact, if the truth were known, I think

the desperate pain all of the boys were in had a good deal to do with

the absolute recklessness they displayed when the time came for us to

try to fulfil our mission. I heard one chap tell another he was afraid

that he _wasn’t_ going to get shot, and the whole bunch acted as if

they felt the same way. Luckily, the Turks had no searchlight, and it

is probable their own fire helped not a little in breaking up the

bridge. At any rate, it went off down the yellow Tigris in a score of

sections, and we--or what was left of us--with it. A half-dozen

impetuous Turks who, in their eagerness to get at close quarters, had

come out to welcome us half-way, were also carried along when the

bridge broke up. After that it was a case of _sauve qui peut_ for all

of us, and I’m sorry to say that only about a third of the force I

started out with has, so far, straggled back to Kurna.”

V

I was still chuckling over F----’s account of his experience with the

bees when, opening the latest issue of the _Sphere_ the following

afternoon, I saw his familiar face smiling back at me from the corner

of one of the first pages. “Been getting mentioned in dispatches,” I

said to myself; and then the title of the page, on which appeared a

score of other portraits, met my eye: “Dead on the Field of Honour;

Officers Killed in Action.” There were no particulars, not even a

date; nor was anything further to be learned behind the tape-bound

portals of Whitehall. To the officers of F----’s regiment, now

fighting in Flanders, some few details were ultimately vouchsafed; and

from one of these, whom I encountered a few days ago, during his leave

in London, I learned all that I have so far been able to gather

concerning the death of my friend.

“F----’s work in cutting the bridge of boats across the Tigris,” he

said, “is spoken of as one of the most daring things of the

Mesopotamian campaign. Undoubtedly he deserved a V.C. for it, and it

is just possible one may be awarded posthumously. He was slightly

wounded there, but must have been out on duty again within a very few

days. According to the account we have received, he was off on some

special detail when he came upon a number of imbeciles of the

transport trying to ferry several camels and machine-guns across a

back channel of the Euphrates on a _kalek_, a sort of raft consisting

of a light platform resting on inflated sheepskins. One of the camels

had kicked a hole in the platform and was rapidly demolishing the

supporting skins, when F----, fearing the loss of the guns, swam off

to try and set things right. In endeavouring to extricate the camel,

he ducked under the _kalek_, where, it seems likely, his wounded head

was struck by one of the brute’s sharp hoofs, and he let go his grip

and sank before any one could get hold of him. Glorious death, wasn’t

it,--for a man who had led the life F---- had, and who, for that

particular region, was the most nearly indispensable man with the

expedition?”

Two months have gone by since F----’s last letter was written, and

the Mesopotamian campaign has been prosecuted along the general lines

he forecasted at the outset. Nasire and Amara have fallen, and the

early winter will see the armies drawn up for the final fight for

Bagdad, probably upon that same Plain of Shinar where the scarlet

desert flowers still keep alive the old belief that

Never blows so red

The rose as where some buried Cæsar bled.

For destiny has decreed that once more the might of two rival races

shall lock in death-grips for the possession of that age-old prize,

the Garden of Eden. Eve was put without the gates when she tasted of

the Forbidden Fruit, and right on down through the ages the same

undeviating penalty has been inflicted upon the Babylonian, Mede,

Assyrian, and other empires that gorged themselves upon the Forbidden

Fruit of Corruption. Brave foeman that he is, the Turk, cloyed with

the same Forbidden Fruit, has long been marked for the inexorable

justice of the ages, and every precedent of tradition, history, and

strategy points to the conclusion that the closing hour of his

stewardship of the Garden of Eden is about to strike.

“IT’S A WAY THEY HAVE IN THE AIR CORPS”

I

It had been all of nine years since I first met Horne at an _estancia_

house-party in the heart of the Argentine Pampas, and fully seven

since I last saw him at a banquet given at the Buenos Aires Jockey

Club in his honour, a day or two after he had led his four to victory

in the finals of the River Plate polo championships. Yet, in spite of

the pallor of a face I had always remembered as bronzed, and a slight

hitch in his once swinging gait, I recognised him instantly--it was

the keen, piercing glance, I think, and the sudden flash of white

teeth in the quick smile--when he hailed me from a passing taxi and

came hobbling back along the broad pavement of Whitehall to meet me.

“What does this mean?” I asked, indicating his jaunty Flying Corps

uniform, after we had shaken hands. “I thought it was the army you

were in before you resigned to become an opulent _estanciero_ and

‘man-about-the-Pampas.’”

“It was the army I came back to,” he replied, “and I was with my old

regiment at Neuve Chapelle when a fragment of hand-grenade effected a

semi-solution of the continuity of one of my Achilles tendons and put

a period on my further usefulness in that branch of the service. The

‘air’ was still open to me, however, and, as I had already dabbled in

flying,--I was the first man to pilot an aeroplane across the Plate

estuary,--I got a commission almost immediately, and so lost very

little time.”

“But your ‘lily-white’ face and hands,” I pressed. “I never heard that

the air had a bleaching effect on the complexion.”

“Oh--that--” (Horne looked absently at a blue-veined hand and shuffled

uneasily), “that must have come from my spell of ‘C.H.’--confined in

hospital. Got knocked up a bit again. Flying over Belgium. Got shot

down and hit the edge of Holland a trifle too hard when I volplaned

over the boundary. Telescoped a few vertebræ, that’s all. Now, be a

good chap and stop asking questions and jump in with me and come along

to the Club.”

Horne waited for me while I picked up a few promised figures at the

“Lloyd-Georgery,” as he facetiously called the new Ministry of

Munitions in Whitehall Gardens, and then took me up to one of the

Service clubs in Piccadilly. There, without giving me further chance

to “get him up into the air,” he launched at once into news and

reminiscence of the Plate and the Pampas. When I left him at six, we

had talked for close on two hours without more than the most casual

reference to events of the war.

“A keen patriot, like all the rest of these young Britons who have

flocked home from overseas to fight for their country,” I reflected as

I sauntered down through Green Park; “but certainly not keen on his

work.” I even speculated as to whether or not Horne might be in some

sort of trouble in the service. Nothing else seemed to account for the

man’s reticence regarding everything connected with his special

activities.

A few days later Horne called me up to ask me to dine with him that

evening at a famous old restaurant in the Strand.

“‘S----’s’ is a bit more ‘merry and bright’ than this old tomb of a

Club,” he said, “and a few of the Flying Corps chaps who are in the

habit of rendezvousing there while in London on leave you’ll find well

worth knowing.”

The gathering was even more informal than I had anticipated. One of

the long tables, it appeared, was set aside for “R.F.C.” officers and

their friends, and these dropped in by twos and threes, as suited

their convenience, all the way from seven to ten o’clock.

There were half-a-dozen men at the table when Horne and I entered, and

all of these--they had stalls for a new “revue”--presently took their

leave. One of the group was a South African, one a New Zealander, and

two Australians. The latter we found bent over the racing page of the

Sydney _Bulletin_, while the New Zealander was evidently trying to

persuade the Africander that a dairy herd near Wellington offered

better prospects than a general farm in Rhodesia. One of the

Australians, whose family was interested in an importing house,

lingered behind a moment to ask me if I thought the war was going to

force up the price of American agricultural machinery in foreign

markets. None of them said a word about flying, and Horne volunteered

no more than that they were all “good men--that little chap from New

Zealand really ‘topping.’”

Horne, with the fleshpots of Argentina in his mind, ordered solidly

and lengthily, and three or four more officers had “wolfed” hasty

meals of roast beef and whisky-and-soda before our _Chateaubriand_

(which represents the nearest Anglo-French equivalent to the _carne

asado_ of the Pampas) had been done to its proper turn over the

coals. These, like the others, rattled on about the music-halls, the

homeland, the “rotten London weather”--anything and everything, in

fact, save the war in general and the war in the air in particular.

One, it is true,--he had come from France only that afternoon,--in

accounting for a bandaged hand, did mention something about getting a

finger jammed under the belt of his machine-gun; but it seemed to

occur to no one to inquire what he had been shooting at, or whether or

not he had hit it, or any of a dozen or so other things concerning

which I, for one, was at once consumed with interest.

By nine all of those with theatre or other engagements had come and

gone, and the eight or ten still seated at the table were leisurely

diners with the evening on their hands. Yet not even among these

unhurried ones was there evident any inclination to talk of their

work. On the contrary, I fancied I discerned an inclination to avoid,

to “side-step” it. When they were reminiscent, it was the friends and

events of their old life--“trekking,” “caravanning,” “hiking,”

“mushing”; Arctic midnights and tropic dawns; strange odds and ends of

adventure by land and sea--that they called up. And when they spoke

of the present, it was in connection with little happenings incident

to their leaves--with the comparative merits of “kit” shops, Turkish

baths, “revue” favourites, the pros and cons of drink restriction, and

the extortionate charges of dentists.

Yet every man of them appeared true to what I have since come to

recognise as a rapidly-developing type--the “Flying Type.” The army

aviator of to-day is picked for his quickness of mind and body, and

the first thing that strikes you about him is a sort of feline,

wound-up-spring alertness. Then you note his reticence, the cool

reserve of a man whose lot it is to express himself in deeds rather

than words. And lastly there is the quiet seriousness, verging almost

on sadness, of the man who must hold himself ready to look Death

between the eyes at any moment, and yet keep his mind detached for

other things.

It was the youngest, and therefore the least “formed,” officer of the

lot--a lad who had left his cacao plantation in Trinidad to come home

and fight--who was responsible for the only “shop” discussion of the

evening. Noting that he was eating but little, and constantly passing

his hand over his temples, some one asked him banteringly if he was

“homesick or only lovesick.”

“Neither,” he answered, relaxing his set lips in a forced smile. “Had

a bit of an accident yesterday, and have had a deuce of a headache

ever since. Can’t for the life of me make out whether it comes from

going up too high or coming down too quick. I went up higher and came

down faster than ever before in my experience. Landed all right, but

ever since I’ve felt as though I were being blown up by a tire-pump

that was driving air into every capillary and nerve-tip. My head feels

as though some one was opening up a jack-screw inside of it. Suppose I

should have gone to the hospital and found out what was wrong, but I

didn’t want to spoil my leave. Maybe some of you chaps can tell me why

I feel as though I had to keep holding my head together to stop its

flying to pieces,” he concluded, pressing the heels of his hands to

his temples to offset the seeming pressure from within.

Every one stopped talking and leaned forward with interest, and for an

instant I thought the curtain was going to drop and reveal something

of the experiences, if not the minds, of those khaki-clad sphinxes of

the air. Horne’s coldly professional diagnosis dashed the hope.

“Altitude,” he pronounced laconically. “Got over twelve thousand,

didn’t you? Over thirteen thousand? That accounts for it. And you

went up wide-open, trying to take ‘pride of place’ away from a Fokker,

I suppose? Of course. And when you got there you began to feel like a

deep-sea fish looks when you bring him up out of the kelp-beds and his

own air-bladders blow him up? A man can go up fifteen thousand feet by

rail or on foot without more than a shortness of breath and occasional

nose-bleed. But not every man--and not even every seasoned flyer--can

stand jumping up to twelve thousand feet in the half-hour that some of

the new machines can negotiate that height in. The difficulty’s almost

entirely physical, and it all depends upon how a man is made whether

or not his flesh and blood will accommodate themselves to the suddenly

reduced pressure of the atmosphere. There’s no growing used to it. If

it ‘gets’ you once, it’s pretty sure to do it again. At the best you

may only have a bad headache and a sort of ‘boiled-owl’ feeling for a

week. At the worst you faint, lose control of your machine, and are

listed among the casualties of ’cause unknown.’ Did _you_ lose

control, by any chance?”

“I think not,” was the reply. “It was a second German machine--one

that I hadn’t seen--that brought me down. It came nose-diving down

out of a cloud, shaking its tail, and giving me a regular shower-bath

of bullets--the usual Fokker trick. I’m almost positive I can remember

all the way down. Fact is, with my machine in the shape that it was

after its peppering, any ‘lapse’ on my part would have started it

somersaulting at once. No. Rotten as I felt, I’m sure I kept

‘connected up’ mentally all the way down.”

Horne shook his head dubiously. “You may be able to stick it,” he

said; “but before you try any more big-game shooting among the high

places, best have a few practice flights in the upper empyrean. The

sooner a man learns his altitude limit the better. There’s plenty of

useful work below twelve thousand feet for the man who begins to

‘blow-up’--mentally or physically--above that height.”

Conversation became general again even before Horne had finished

speaking, for to most of them there was nothing new in what he was

saying. None but the man on the left of the young West Indian ventured

an inquiry as to the details of what had happened, and it was only by

straining my ears that I was able to catch the drift of the

low-voiced, almost monosyllabic exchange.

“Get your petrol tank?”

“No, for a wonder. Got about everything else, though. Propeller all

chewed up; wings a pair of sieves. Bumped the bumps all the way down.

Ground was about the softest thing I hit.”

“Any one get the Hun?”

“None of us. Got himself, though. He came breezing out of a tuft of

cirro-cumuli all of fifteen thousand feet up, and seemed to be going

wild; sort of running amuck. Seemed to be trying to ram me when he

nose-dived, and the reason he bored me so full of holes was that he

didn’t sheer off to give me a berth. Missed me by a hair, and almost

upset me with his wind. But he never recovered from his dive. Just

seemed to lose control and started going end over end. Fell almost

into some of our trenches. I landed five miles away from the wreck of

him with nothing shot up but my machine and my nerves.”

“Any one get the first machine--the one you went up after?”

“No. It had the heels of all of us. The Hun’s ‘Archies’[2] brought

down one of our machines that tried to follow it.”

[2] Soldiers’ slang for anti-aircraft guns.--THE EDITORS.

“Shop” interest waned at this juncture, and the conversation upon

which I had been eavesdropping veered off _viâ_ headache-remedies and

a pretty Scotch nurse at a hospital in France to the comparative

merits of the “Empire” and “Alhambra” choruses; and I was able to turn

both ears to Horne, who had been holding forth learnedly for some

minutes on the points of the Andean pony-thoroughbred cross as a polo

mount.