had been sent back from Ana; some said one day, and others two, before our
arrival. The supply of fuel that we had brought in the tenders was almost
exhausted, so that it would be necessary to procure more in order to
continue the pursuit. Major Thompson, who was in command of the
armored-car detachment, instructed me to take all the tenders and go back
as far as was necessary to find a petrol dump from which I could draw a
thousand gallons. I emptied the trucks and loaded them with such of the
wounded as could stand the jolting they were bound to receive because of
the speed at which I must travel. I also took a few of the more important
prisoners, among them the governor of Ana. He was a cultivated middle-aged
man who spoke no Arabic but quite good French. It was mid-afternoon when
we started, and I hadn't the most remote idea where I would find a
sufficient quantity of petrol. During the run back we were sniped at
occasionally by Turks who were still hiding in the hills. A small but
determined force could have completely halted the cars in a number of
different places where the road wound through narrow rock-crowned gorges,
or along ledges cut in the hillside and hemmed in by the river. In such
spots the advance of the armored cars could either have been completely
checked, or at all events seriously hampered and delayed, merely by
rolling great boulders down on top of us.
When we had retraced our steps for about sixty miles I was lucky enough
to get wind of an enemy petrol dump that our men had discovered. It was a
special aeroplane supply and the colonel of the infantry regiment who was
guarding it had been instructed to allow none of it to be used for
automobiles. He showed his desire to co-operate and his ability to read
the spirit rather than the letter of a command by letting me load my
tenders. The L.A.M. batteries were well regarded and we everywhere
encountered a willingness to meet us more than half-way and aid us in the
thousand and one points that make so much difference in obtaining results.
By the time that we had everything in readiness for our return run it was
long after dark and the men were exhausted. I managed to get some tea, but
naturally no sugar or milk. The strong steaming brew served to wash down
the scanty supply of cold bully beef. Fortunately it was a brilliant
starlit night, but even so it was difficult to avoid ditches and washouts,
and the road seemed interminable. Not long after we left we ran into a
couple of armored cars that had been detailed to bring the rescued
aviators back, after they had been reoutfitted and supplied as far as our
limited resources would permit. During the halt I found that my sergeant
had produced from somewhere or other an emergency rum ration which he was
issuing. An old-army, experienced sergeant always managed to hold over a
reserve from former issues for just such occasions as this, when it would
be of inestimable value. I had been driving all day and had the greatest
difficulty in keeping awake. Twice I dozed off. Once I awakened just as
the car started over the edge of an embankment; the other time a large
rock in the road brought me back to the world. It was two o'clock in the
morning when we wearily crept into Ana.
The expedition to capture the gold convoy was to start at four, so after
two hours' sleep I bundled into one of the Rolls-Royces and the column
swung out into the road. Through the mist loomed the sinister,
businesslike outlines of the armored car ahead of me. Captain Carr of the
Thirteenth L.A.M.B.'s[1] was in command of the expedition. Unless we were
in action or in a locality where we momentarily expected to be under fire
from rifle or machine-gun, the officer commanding the car and his N.C.O.
stood in the well behind the turret, steadying themselves with leather
loops riveted to its sides. On long runs the tool-boxes on either side of
the well formed convenient seats. When the car became engaged the crew
would get inside, pulling the steel doors shut. The slits through which
the driver and the man next him looked could be made still smaller when
the firing was heavy, and the peep-holes at either side and in the rear
had slides which could be closed. The largest aperture was that around the
tube of the gun. Splinters of lead came in continuously, and sometimes
chance directed a bullet to an opening. One of our drivers was shot
straight through the head near Ramadie. The bottom of the car was of wood,
and bullets would ricochet up through it, but to have had it made of steel
would have added too much weight. The large gasolene-tank behind was
usually protected by plating, but even so was fairly vulnerable. A
reserve-tank holding ten gallons was built inside the turret. We almost
invariably had trouble with the feed-pipes leading from it. During the
great heat of the summer the inside of the turret was a veritable fiery
furnace, with the pedals so hot that they scorched the feet.
[Footnote 1: Light Armored Motor Battery.]
Forty miles above Ana we came upon a large khan. These road-houses are
built at intervals along the main caravan routes. Their plan is simple:
four walls with two tiers of rooms or booths built into them, enclosing an
open court in which the camels and horses are tethered during the night.
The whole is strongly made to resist the inroads of the desert tribesmen.
As we drove to the heavy gate, a wild clamor met our ears from a confused
jumble of Jewish and Armenian merchants that had taken refuge within. Some
of them had left Ana on their way to Aleppo before the news of the fall of
Khan Baghdadi had reached the town. Others had been despatched by the
Turks when the news of our advance arrived. All had been to a greater or
lesser degree plundered by the Arabs. Most of the baggage animals had been
run off, and the merchants were powerless to move. The women were weeping
and imploring help, and the children tumbled about among the confused
heaps of merchandise. Some of the Armenians had relations in Baghdad about
whom I was able to give them bits of information. All begged permission to
go back to Ana and thence to the capital. We, of course, had no means of
supplying them with transportation, and any attempt to recapture their
lost property was out of the question.
A few miles on we made out a troop of Arabs hurrying inland, a mile or so
away from us, across a couple of ravines. They had some of the stolen
camels and were laden down with plunder. Two of our cars made a fruitless
attempt to come to terms with them, but only succeeded in placing a few
well-aimed bursts from their machine-guns among them.
We now began to come up with bands of Turks. We ran across a number of
isolated stragglers who had been stripped by the Arabs. A few had been
killed. They as a rule surrendered without any hesitation. We disarmed
them and told them to walk back toward Ana. Several times we had short
engagements with Turkish cavalry. As a general thing the ground was so
very broken up that it was impossible to manoeuvre. I was riding a good
deal of the time in the Ford tender that we had brought along with a few
supplies, and when one of the tires blew out I waited behind to replace
it. The armored cars had quite a start and we raced along to catch them.
In my hurry I failed to notice that they had left the road in pursuit of a
troop of cavalry, so when we sighted a large square building of the sort
the Turks use as barracks, I made sure that the cars had been there before
me. We drove up to the door and I jumped out and shoved it open. In the
yard were some infantry and a few cavalry. I had only my stick--my Webley
revolver was still in its holster. There was nothing to do but put on a
bold front, so I shouted in Arabic to the man I took to be the officer in
command, telling him to surrender, and trying to act as if our forces were
just outside. I think he must have been more surprised than I was, for he
did so immediately, turning over the post to me. Eldridge, the Ford
driver, had succeeded in disengaging the rifle that he had strapped in
beside him, and we made the rounds under the escort of our captive.
One wing of the post was used as a hospital, under the charge of an
intelligent little Armenian. He seemed well informed about the war, and
asked the question that was the universal wail of all the Armenians we
encountered: "When would Great Britain free their country, and would she
make it an independent state?" There was a definite limit to the number of
prisoners we could manage to carry back, but I offered the doctor to
include him. His answer was to go to his trunk and produce a picture of
his wife and little daughter. They were, he told me, in Constantinople,
and it was now two years since he had had leave, so that as his turn was
due, he would wait on the chance of seeing his family.
When the cars came up we set off again in pursuit of the elusive gold
convoy. We could get no accurate information concerning it. Some said it
was behind, others ahead. We never ran it down. It may well be that it was
concealed in a ravine near the road a few yards from where we passed. Just
short of a town called Abu Kemal we caught three Germans. They were in
terror when we took them, and afterward said that they had expected to be
shot. Under decent treatment they soon became so insolent that they had to
be brought up short.
[Illustration: A "Red Crescent" ambulance]
During the run back to Ana we picked up the more important of our
prisoners and took them with us. Twenty-two were all we could manage. I
was running one of the big cars. It was always a surprise to see how easy
they were to handle in spite of the weight of the armor-plate. We each
took great pride in the car in which we generally rode. All had names. In
the Fourteenth one section had "Silver Dart" and "Silver Ghost" and
another "Gray Terror" and "Gray Knight." The car in which I rode a
great deal of the time met its fate only a few days before the armistice,
long after I had gone to France. Two direct hits from an Austrian
"eighty-eight" ended its career.
It was after midnight when we got back to our camp in a palm-garden in
Ana. Although we had not succeeded in capturing the gold convoy, we had
brought in a number of valuable prisoners, and among other things I had
found some papers belonging to a German political agent whom we had
captured. These contained much information about the Arab situation, and
through them it was all but proved that the German was the direct
instigator of the murder of the political officer at Nejef. An amusing
sidelight was thrown in the letters addressed by Arab sheiks through this
agent to the Kaiser thanking him for the iron crosses they had been
awarded. There must have been an underlying grim humor in distributing
crosses to the Mohammedan Arabs in recognition of their efforts to
withstand the advance into the Holy Land of the Christian invaders.
On our arrival at Ana we were told that orders had come through that the
town be evacuated on the following morning. Preparations were made to
blow up the ammunition dump, which was fortunately concentrated in a
series of buildings that joined each other. We warned the inhabitants and
advised them to hide in the caves along the hillsides. We ourselves went
back to the camp which we had occupied near the bridge the night before
entering Ana. During the afternoon Major Edye, a political officer, turned
up, travelling alone with an Arab attendant. He pitched his camp,
consisting of a saddle and blanket, close beside us. He was an
extraordinarily interesting man, with a great gift for languages. In the
course of a year or so's wandering in Abyssinia he had learned both
ancient and modern Abyssinian. There was a famous German Orientalist with
whom he corresponded in the pre-war days. He had mailed him a letter just
at the outbreak, which, written in ancient Abyssinian, must have been a
good deal of a puzzle to the censors.
The main explosion, taking place at the appointed time, was succeeded by
smaller ones, which continued at gradually lengthening intervals
throughout the night. General Cassels, who had commanded the cavalry
brigade so ably throughout the advance, wished to return to Ana on the
following morning in order to check up the thoroughness with which the
dump had been destroyed. He took an escort of armored cars, and as I was
the only one in the batteries who could speak Arabic, my services were
requisitioned. As we approached the town the rattle of the small-arms
ammunition sounded like a Fourth of July celebration. The general noticed
that I had a kodak and asked me to go out into the dump and take some
photographs. There was nothing to do but put on a bold front, but I have
spent happier moments than those in which I edged my way gingerly over the
smoking heaps to a ruined wall from which I could get a good view for my
camera. As I came back a large shell exploded and we hastily moved the
cars farther away.
I went to the mayor's house to find out how the town had fared. He was a
solemn old Arab, and showed me the damage done by the shells with an
absolutely expressionless face. The houses within a fair radius had been
riddled, but the natives had taken our warning and no one had been killed.
After a cup of coffee in a lovely garden on the river-bank, I came back
to the cars and we ran on through to Haditha. Here we were to remain for a
week or ten days to permit the evacuation of the captured supplies.
Thus far we had been having good luck with the weather, but it now began
to threaten rain. We crawled beneath the cars with our blankets and took
such precautions as were possible, but it availed us little when a
veritable hurricane blew up at midnight. I was washed out from under my
car, but before dark I had marked down a deserted hut, and thither I
groped my way. Although it was abandoned by the Arabs, living traces of
their occupancy remained. Still, even that was preferable to the rain, and
the roof proved unexpectedly water-tight.
All next day the storm continued. The Wadi Hauran, a large ravine reaching
back into the desert for a hundred and fifty miles, became a boiling
torrent. When we crossed over, it was as dry as a bone. A heavy lorry on
which an anti-aircraft gun was mounted had been swirled away and smashed
to bits. The ration question had been difficult all along, but now any
further supply was temporarily out of the question.
Oddly enough, I was the only member of the brigade occupying Haditha who
could speak enough Arabic to be of any use, so I was sent to look up the
local mayor to see whether there was any food to be purchased. The town is
built on a long island equidistant from either bank. We ferried across in
barges. The native method was simpler. They inflated goatskins, removed
their clothes, which they had fastened in a bundle on top of their heads,
and with one hand on the goatskin they paddled and drifted over. By
starting from the head of the island they could reach the shore opposite
the down-stream end. The bobbing heads of the dignified old graybeards of
the community looked most ludicrous. On landing they would solemnly don
their clothes, deflate the skins, and go their way.
The mayor proved both intelligent and agreeable. The food situation was
such that it was obviously impossible for him to offer us any serious
help. We held a conclave in the guest-house, sitting cross-legged among
the cushions. In the centre a servant roasted coffee-beans on the large
shovel-spoon that they use for that purpose. The representative village
worthies impressed me greatly. The desert Arabs are always held to be
vastly superior to their kinsmen of the town, and it is undoubtedly true
as a general rule; nevertheless, the elders of Haditha were an unusually
fine group of men. We got a few eggs, which were a most desirable luxury
after a steady diet of black unsweetened tea and canned beef. We happened
to have a sufficient supply of tea to permit us to make an appreciated
gift to the village.
My shoes had collapsed a few days before and I borrowed a pair from a Turk
who had no further use for them. These were several sizes too large and
fashioned in an oblong shape of mathematical exactness. Even in the motor
machine-gun service, there is little that exceeds one's shoes in
importance, and I was looking forward with almost equal eagerness to a
square meal and a pair of my own shoes. The supply of reading-matter had
fallen very low. I had only Disraeli's _Tancred_, about which I found
myself unable to share Lady Burton's feelings, and a French account of a
voyage from Baghdad to Aleppo in 1808. The author, Louis Jacques Rousseau,
a cousin of the great Jean Jacques, belonged to a family of noted
Orientalists. Born in Persia, and married to the daughter of the Dutch
consul-general to that country, he was admirably equipped for the
distinguished diplomatic career that lay before him in the East and in
northern Africa. His treatises on the archæological remains that he met
with on his many voyages are intelligent and thorough. The river towns
have changed but little in the last hundred years, and the sketch of Hit
might have been made only yesterday.
Within three days after the rise, the waters of the Wadi Hauran subsided
sufficiently for us to cross, and I received orders to return to Baghdad.
The rain had brought about a change in the desert since we passed through
on our way up. The lines of Paterson, the Australian poet, kept running
through my head:
"For the rain and drought and sunshine make no changes in the street,
In the sullen line of buildings and the ceaseless tramp of feet,
But the bush hath moods and changes, as the seasons rise and fall,
And the men who know the bushland they are loyal through it all."
The formerly arid floor of the desert was carpeted with a soft green, with
myriads of little flowers, all small, but delicately fashioned. There
were poppies, dwarf daisies, expanses of buttercups, forget-me-nots, and
diminutive red flowers whose name I did not know. It started raining
again, and we only just succeeded in winning our way through to Baghdad
before the road became impassable.
VI
BAGHDAD SKETCHES
Although never in Baghdad for long at a time, I generally had occasion to
spend four or five days there every other month. The life in any city is
complex and interesting, but here it was especially so. We were among a
totally foreign people, but the ever-felt intangible barrier of color was
not present. For many of the opportunities to mingle with the natives I
was indebted to Oscar Heizer, the American consul. Mr. Heizer has been
twenty-five years in the Levant, the greater part of which time he has
spent in the neighborhood of Constantinople. The outbreak of the war found
him stationed at one of the principal ports of the Black Sea. There he
witnessed part of the terrible Armenian massacres, when vast herds of the
wretched people were driven inland to perish of starvation by the
roadsides. Quiet and unassuming, but ever ready to act with speed and
decision, he was a universal favorite with native and foreigner alike.
With him I used to ferry across the river for tea with the Asadulla Khan,
the Persian consul. The house consisted of three wings built around a
garden. The fourth side was the river-bank. The court was a jungle of
flowering fruit-trees, alive with birds of different kinds, all singing
garrulously without pause. There we would sit sipping sherbet, and
cracking nuts, among which salted watermelon seeds figured prominently.
Coffee and sweets of many and devious kinds were served, with arrack and
Scotch whiskey for those who had no religious scruples. The Koran's
injunction against strong drink was not very conscientiously observed by
the majority, and even those who did not drink in public, rarely abstained
in private. Only the very conservative--and these were more often to be
found in the smaller towns--rigorously obeyed the prophet's commands. It
was pleasant to smoke in the shade and watch the varied river-craft
slipping by. The public bellams plied to and fro, rowed by the swart
owners, while against them jostled the gufas--built like the coracles of
ancient Britain--a round basket coated with pitch. No Anglo-Saxon can see
them without thinking of the nursery rhyme of the "wise men of Gotham who
went to sea in a tub." These gufas were some of them twenty-five feet in
diameter, and carried surprising loads--sometimes sheep and cattle
alone--sometimes men and women--often both indiscriminately mingled.
Propelling a gufa was an art in itself, for in the hands of the
uninitiated it merely spun around without advancing a foot in the desired
direction. The natives used long round-bladed paddles, and made good time
across the river. Crossing over in one was a democratic affair, especially
when the women were returning from market with knots of struggling
chickens slung over their shoulders.
Asadulla Khan's profile always reminded me of an Inca idol that I once got
in Peru. Among his scribes were several men of culture who discoursed most
sagely on Persian literature; on Sadi and Hafiz, both of whom they held to
be superior to Omar Khayyam. I tried through many channels to secure a
manuscript of the "Rubaiyat," but all I succeeded in obtaining was a
lithograph copy with no place or date of publication; merely the remark
that it had been printed during the cold months. I was told that the
writings of Omar Khayyam were regarded as immoral and for that reason were
not to be found in religious households. My Persian friends would quote
at length from Sadi's _Gulistan_ or _Rose Garden_, and go into raptures
over its beauty.
* * * * *
Below the consulate was a landing-place, and when we were ready to leave
we would go down to the river-bank preceded by our servants carrying
lanterns. They would call "Abu bellam" until a boat appeared. The term
"abu" always amused me. Its literal meaning is "father." In the bazaars a
shop-owner was always hailed as "father" of whatever wares he had for
sale. I remember one fat old man who sold porous earthenware
jars--customers invariably addressed him as "Abu hub"--"Father of
water-coolers."
My best friend among the natives was a Kurdish chief named Hamdi Bey
Baban. His father had been captured and taken to Constantinople. After
living there a number of years in semicaptivity he died--by poison it was
said. Hamdi was not allowed to return to Kurdistan until after he was a
grown man and had almost forgotten his native language. He spoke and read
both French and English. Eventually permission was granted him to live in
Baghdad as long as he kept out of the Kurdish hills, so he set off by
motor accompanied only by a French chauffeur. Gasolene was sent ahead by
camel caravan to be left for him at selected points. The journey was not
without incident, for the villagers had never before seen an automobile
and regarded it as a devil; often stones were thrown at them, and on one
occasion they were mobbed and Hamdi only escaped by driving full speed
through the crowd.
His existence in Baghdad had been subject to sudden upheavals. Once he was
arrested and convoyed back to Constantinople; and just before the advance
of the British his life was in great danger. Naturally enough he had
little love for the Turk and staked everything on the final victory of the
Allies.
He intended writing a book on the history of his family, in which he was
much interested. For material he was constantly purchasing books and
manuscripts. In the East many well-known histories still exist only in
manuscript form, and when a man wishes to build up a library he engages
scribes and sends them to the place where a famous manuscript is kept with
an order to make a copy. In the same way Hamdi Bey had men busied
transcribing rare chronicles dealing with the career of his family--extant
in but one or two examples in mosques. He once presented me with a large
manuscript in Persian in which his family is mentioned, the mention taking
the form of a statement to the effect that seventeen of them had had their
heads removed!
Next to various small tradesmen with whom I used to gossip, drink coffee,
and play dominoes, my best Arab friend was Abdul Kader Pasha, a striking
old man who had been a faithful ally to the British through thick and
thin. The dinners at his house on the river-bank were feasts such as one
reads of in ancient history. Course succeeded course without any definite
plan; any one of them would have made a large and delicious meal in
itself. True to Arab custom, the son of the house never sat down at table
with his father, although before and after dinner he talked and smoked
with us.
[Illustration: A jeweller's booth in the bazaar]