I wrote to Papa from just outside the bar, which is a mud-bank across
the head of the Gulf, about seventeen miles outside Fao. We anchored
there to await high tide, and crossed on Tuesday morning.
Fao is about as unimpressive a place as I've seen. The river is over a
mile wide there, but the place is absolutely featureless. In fact all
the way up it is the same. The surrounding country is as flush with
the river as if it had been planed down to it. On either side runs a
belt of date palms about half a mile wide, but these are seldom worth
looking at, being mostly low and shrubby, like an overgrown market
garden.
Beyond that was howling desert, not even picturesquely sandy, but a
dried up marsh overblown with dust, like the foreshore of a third-rate
port. The only relief to the landscape was when we passed tributaries
and creeks, each palm-fringed like the river. Otherwise the only
notable sights were the Anglo Persian Oil Works, which cover over a
hundred acres and raised an interesting question of comparative
ugliness with man and nature in competition, and a large steamer sunk
by the Turks to block the channel and, needless to add, not blocking
it.
There was a stiff, warm wind off the desert, hazing the air with dust
and my cabin temperature was 100°. Altogether it was rather a
depressing entrée, since amply atoned for so far as Nature is
concerned.
We reached Basra about 2 p.m. and anchored in midstream, the river
being eight hundred yards or so wide here. The city of Basra is about
three miles away, up a creek, but on the river there is a port and
native town called Ashar.
The scene on the river is most attractive, especially at sunrise and
sunset. The banks rise about ten feet from the water: the date palms
are large and columnar; and since there is a whole series of creeks,
parallel and intersecting--they are the highways and byeways of the
place--the whole area is afforested and the wharves and bazaars are
embowered in date groves. The river front and the main creeks are
crowded with picturesque craft, the two main types being a large high
prowed barge, just what I picture to have taken King Arthur at his
Passing, but here put to the prosaic uses of heavy transport and
called a mahila; and a long darting craft which can be paddled or
punted and combines the speed of a canoe with the grace of a gondola
and is called, though why I can't conceive, a bhellum. Some of the
barges are masted and carry a huge and lovely sail, but the ones in
use for I.E.F.D. are propelled by little tugs attached to their sides
and quite invisible from beyond, so that the speeding barges seem
magically self-moving.
Ashore one wanders along raised dykes through a seemingly endless
forest of pillared date palms, among which pools and creeks add
greatly to the beauty, though an eyesore to the hygienist. The date
crop is just ripe and ripening, and the golden clusters are immense
and must yield a great many hundred dates to the tree. When one
reaches the native city the streets are unmistakably un-Indian, and
strongly reminiscent of the bazaar scene in Kismet. This is especially
true of the main bazaar, which is a winding arcade half a mile long,
roofed and lined with shops, thronged with men. One sees far fewer
women than in India, and those mostly veiled and in black, while the
men wear long robes and cloakes and scarves on their heads bound with
coils of wool worn garland-wise, as one sees in Biblical pictures.
They seem friendly, or rather wholly indifferent to one, and I felt at
times I might be invisible and watching an Arabian Nights' story for
all the notice they took of me. By the way, I want you to send me a
portable edition of the Arabian Nights as my next book, please.
But the most fascinating sight of all is Ashar Creek, the main
thoroughfare, as crowded with boats as Henley at a regatta. The creek
runs between brick embankments, on which stand a series of Arabian
cafes, thronged with conversational slow moving men who sit there
smoking and drinking coffee by the thousand.
It is a wonderful picture from the wooden bridge with the minaret of a
mosque and the tops of the tallest date palms for a background.
So much for Ashar: I've not seen Basra city yet. We're here till
Sunday probably, awaiting our river boats. There were not enough
available to take us all up on Wednesday, so those who are for the
front line went first. They have gone to a spot beyond Amara,
two-thirds of the way to Kut-al-Amara, which is where the Shatt-al-Hai
joins the Tigris. The Shatt-al-Hai is a stream running from the Tigris
at K-al-A to the Euphrates at Nasria, and that line is our objective.
There is likely to be a stiff fight for the K-al-A, they say, rather
to my surprise. But the 4th Hants has been moved to Amara and put on
line of communication for the present; so our thirst for bloodshed is
not likely to be gratified.
We have moved across to this ship while awaiting our river boat. They
use ships here as barracks and hotels, very sensibly seeing that there
are none fit for habitation on land; while being about 400 yards from
either bank we are practically free from mosquitoes. But this
particular ship is decidedly less desirable for residential purposes
than the Varsova. It was originally a German boat and was sold to the
Turks to be used for a pilgrim ship to Mecca; and I can only conclude
either that the Turkish ideas of comfort are very different to ours or
that the pilgrimage has a marked element of asceticism.
But I am quite ready to put up with the amenities of a Turkish pilgrim
ship. What does try me is the murderous folly of military authorities.
They wouldn't let us take our spine-pads from Agra, because we should
be issued with them here. They have none here and have no idea when
they will get any. Incidentally, no one was expecting our arrival
here, least of all the 4th Hants. Everyone says a spine-pad is a
necessary precaution here, so I am having fifty made and shall try and
make the Colonel pay for them. Every sensible Colonel made his draft
stick to theirs; but our's wouldn't let us take them, because Noah
never wore one.
To continue the chapter of incredible muddles; the 780 who went off on
Wednesday were embarked on their river-boat--packed like herrings--at
9 a.m. and never got started till 4 p.m. A bright performance, but
nothing to our little move. This boat is 600 yards from the Varsova,
and they had every hour in the twenty-four to choose from for the
move. First they selected 2 p.m. Wednesday as an appropriate hour! It
was 100° in the shade by 1 p.m., so the prospect was not alluring. At
1.30 the order was washed out and for the rest of the day no further
orders could be got for love or money.
We were still in suspense yesterday morning, till at 8.30--just about
the latest time for completing a morning movement--two huge barges
appeared with orders to embark on them at 10! Not only that, but
although there are scores of straw-roofed barges about, these two were
as open as row boats, and in fact exactly like giant row boats. To
complete the first situation, the S. and S. had not been apprised of
the postponement, and so there was no food for the men on board.
Consequently they had to load kits, etc., and embark on empty
stomachs.
Well, hungry but punctual, we embarked at 10 a.m. It was 102° in my
cabin, so you can imagine what the heat and glare of 150 men in an
open barge was. Having got us into this enviable receptacle, they
proceeded to think of all the delaying little trifles which might have
been thought of any time that morning. One way and another they
managed to waste three-quarters of an hour before we started. The
journey took six minutes or so. Getting alongside this ship took
another half hour, the delay mainly due to Arab incompetence this
time. Then came disembarking, unloading kits and all the odd jobs of
moving units--which all had to be done in a furnace-like heat by men
who had had no food for twenty hours. To crown it all, the people on
board here had assumed we should breakfast before starting and not a
scrap of food was ready. The poor men finally got some food at 2 p.m.
after a twenty-two hours fast and three hours herded or working in a
temperature of about 140°. Nobody could complain of such an ordeal if
we'd been defending Lucknow or attacking Shaiba, but to put such a
strain on the men's health--newly arrived and with no pads or glasses
or shades--gratuitously and merely by dint of sheer hard muddling--is
infuriating to me and criminal in the authorities--a series of
scatter-brained nincompoops about fit to look after a cocker-spaniel
between them.
Considering what they went through, I think our draft came off lightly
with three cases of heat-stroke. Luckily the object lesson in the train
and my sermons thereon have borne fruit, and the men acted promptly
and sensibly as soon as the patients got bad. Two began to feel ill on
the barge and the third became delirious quite suddenly a few minutes
after we got on board here. When I arrived on the scene they had
already got him stripped and soused, though in the stuffy 'tween
decks. I got him up on deck (it was stuffy enough there) and we got
ice, and thanks to their promptness, he was only violent for about a
quarter of an hour and by the time my kit was reachable and I could
get my thermometer, an hour or so later, he was normal. There was no
M.O. on board, except a grotesque fat old Turk physician to the
Turkish prisoners, whose diagnosis was in Arabic and whose sole idea
of treatment was to continue feeling the patient's pulse (which he did
by holding his left foot) till we made him stop.
The other two were gradual cases and being watered and iced in time
never became delirious; so we may get off without any permanent
casualties; but they have taken a most useful corporal and one private
to hospital, which almost certainly means leaving them behind on
Sunday.
The other men were all pretty tired out and I think it does credit to
their constitutions they stood it so well.
I, having my private spine-pad and glasses, was comparatively
comfortable, also I had had breakfast and didn't have to shift kits or
even my own luggage. I don't dislike even extreme heat nearly as much
as quite moderate cold.
I gather it doesn't get so cold here as I thought. 37° is the lowest
temperature I've heard vouched for.
I haven't time nowadays to write many letters, so I'm afraid you must
ask kind aunts, etc., to be content with parts of this; I hope
_they'll_ go on writing to _me_ though.
* * * * *
"P.S.S. KARA DEUIZ,"
BASRA,
To N.B.
_August 29, 1915._
I hope you will be indulgent if I write less regularly now: and by
indulgent I mean that you will go on writing to me, as I do enjoy your
letters so much. I expect I shall have slack times when there will be
plenty of leisure to write: but at others we are likely to be busy,
and you never can be sure of having the necessary facilities. And
personally I find my epistolary faculties collapse at about 100° in
the shade. I wrote quite happily this morning till it got hot; and
only now (4.45) have I found it possible to resume. We get it 102 to
104° every day from about noon to four, and it oppresses one much more
than at Agra as there is no escaping from it and flies are plentiful:
but about now a nice breeze springs up, and the evenings are fairly
pleasant. I thought we were leaving for Amarah to-day, so I told Mama
my letter to her would have to do all-round duty, which is mean, I
admit, but I had no day off till to-day.
Not that I've been really busy, but I've been out a lot, partly
getting things and partly seeing the place.
I've just heard I must go ashore with another sick man immediately
after evening service (the Bishop of Lahore is coming on board), so I
shall have to cut this measly screed very short. We load kits on our
river-boat at 7 a.m. to-morrow and start sometime afterwards for
Amarah. My letter to Mama will give you such news as there is. Since
writing it I've seen Basra city, which is disappointing, less
picturesque than Ashar: also the Base Hospital, which strikes me very
favourably, the first military hospital that has: Dum Dum wasn't bad.
We have a lot of Turkish prisoners on board here, and the Government
is trying the experiment of letting them out on parole and paying them
Rs 10/- a week so long as they report themselves. It is a question
whether the result will be to cause the whole Turkish army to
surrender, or whether their desire to prolong the war will make the
released ones keep their parole a secret. I daresay it will end in a
compromise, half the army to surrender and the other half to receive
Rs 5/- a week from the surrendered ones to fight on to the bitter end.