We get hardly any news up here, so please kindly continue your
function of war correspondent whenever you have time, and especially
mention any casualties which affect me.
One of the few bits of news which have reached us is a report of a
speech of yours in which you mention that Milner's Committee
recommended the Government to guarantee 45s. a year for four years,
but the Government wouldn't. Reuter deduces from this that we have
found a way of keeping the whip hand of submarines: but it looks to me
much more like Free Trade shibboleths + the fact that there has
already been a 30% increase in the area under wheat. I hope you will
have written me something about this.
Now for the military news. This battalion, when we arrived here, was
nominally nearly 300 strong, but actually it could hardly have paraded
100. This reduction is nearly all due to sickness. The deaths from all
causes only total between forty and fifty, out of the original 800:
and of these about twenty-five, I think, were killed in action. But
there has been an enormous amount of sickness during the hot weather,
four-fifths of which has been heat-stroke and malaria. There have been
a few cases of enteric and a certain number of dysentery; but next to
heat and malaria more men have been knocked out by sores and boils
than by any disease. It takes ages for the smallest sore to heal.
Of the original thirty officers, eight are left here, Major Stillwell,
who is C.O., one Captain, Page-Roberts, a particularly nice fellow,
and five subalterns, named Harris, Forbes, Burrell, Bucknill and
Chitty: (Chitty is in hospital): and Jones, the M.O., also a very nice
man and a pretty good M.O. too. The new Adjutant is a Captain from 2nd
Norfolks named Floyd: he is also nice and seems good: was on
Willingdon's staff and knows Jimmy.
In honour of our arrival, they have adopted Double Company system. I
am posted to "A" Double Company, of which the Company Commander and
only other officer is Harris, aet. 19. So I am second in command and
four platoon commanders at once, besides having charge of the
machine-guns (not that I am ever to parade with them) while Chitty is
sick. It sounds a lot, but with next to no men about, the work is
lessened. On paper, "A" D.C was seventy-two strong, which, with my
fifty, makes 122: but in fact, of these 122, twenty-five are sick and
sixteen detached permanently for duties at headquarters and so on,
leaving eighty-one. And these eighty-one are being daily more and more
absorbed into fatigues of various kinds and less and less available
for parade. In a day or two we shall be the only English battalion
remaining here, so that all the duties which can't be entrusted to
Indian troops will fall on us.
I haven't had time to observe the birds here very much yet, but they
seem interesting, especially the water-birds. With regard to what I
wrote to Mamma about the teal, people who have been up the river say
they saw a very big flock of them at Kut. There were a lot of snipe
with them and about twenty bitterns, which surprises me. And about
eighty miles north of here there is a mud flat where great numbers of
mallards are assembling for migration northwards: and there are more
bitterns there than there are higher up even. These flocks about the
equinoxes are very curious. I expect the mallards will migrate
northwards, and the teal soon afterwards will become very scarce, but
I hope the bitterns will stay where they are. The snipe are less
interesting: they move about all over the place, wherever they can
pick up most food. These people put the size of the flock of teal at a
hundred and fifty and the mallards at five hundred, but you should, I
think, multiply the first by a hundred and the second only by ten.
I got Mamma's letter via the India Office just after we got here. I
quite agree with her view of war, though I must admit the officers of
1/4 Hants seem to me improved by it. While sitting on that court
martial at Agra I expressed my view in a sonnet which I append, for
you to show to Mamma:
How long, O Lord, how long, before the flood
Of crimson-welling carnage shall abate?
From sodden plains in West and East the blood
Of kindly men streams up in mists of hate
Polluting Thy clear air: and nations great
In reputation of the arts that bind
The world with hopes of Heaven, sink to the state
Of brute barbarians, whose ferocious mind
Gloats o'er the bloody havoc of their kind,
Not knowing love or mercy. Lord, how long
Shall Satan in high places lead the blind
To battle for the passions of the strong?
Oh, touch thy children's hearts, that they may know
Hate their most hateful, pride their deadliest foe.
I must stop now, as a mail is going out and one never knows when the
next will be.
* * * * *
NORFOLK HOUSE.
AMARAH, _September 13th_, 1915.