Letters from Mesopotamia Part 3

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 anch.o.r.ed 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 foresh.o.r.e of a third-rate port. The only relief to the landscape was when we pa.s.sed 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 compet.i.tion, 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 entree, since amply atoned for so far as Nature is concerned.

We reached Basra about 2 p.m. and anch.o.r.ed 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 Pa.s.sing, 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 bh.e.l.lum. 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.

Ash.o.r.e one wanders along raised d.y.k.es 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 cl.u.s.ters 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 a.s.sumed we should breakfast before starting and not a sc.r.a.p 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. n.o.body 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 gla.s.ses 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 nincomp.o.o.ps about fit to look after a c.o.c.ker-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 const.i.tutions they stood it so well.

I, having my private spine-pad and gla.s.ses, 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 ash.o.r.e with another sick man immediately after evening service (the Bishop of Lah.o.r.e 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.

I must go and dress for Church parade.

To P.C., _September, 1915._

"I believe that if I could choose a day of heavy fighting of any kind I liked for my draft, I should choose to spend a day in trenches, under heavy fire without being able to return it. The fine things of war spring from your chance of being killed: the ugly things from your chance of killing."

_September, 1915._

TO THE SAME.

"I wonder how long H---- 's 'delirious joy' at going to the front will last. Those who have seen a campaign here are all thoroughly converted to my view of fronts. I can't imagine a keener soldier than F----, and even he says he doesn't care if he never sees another Turk, and as to France, you might as well say, 'Hurrah, I'm off to h.e.l.l.'

Pat M---- goes as far as to say that no sane fellow ever has been bucked at going to the front, as distinguished from being anxious to do his duty by going there. But I don't agree with him. Did you see about the case of a Captain in the Sikhs, who deserted from Peshawar, went to England, enlisted as a private under an a.s.sumed name, and was killed in Flanders? The psychology of that man would be very interesting to a.n.a.lyse. It can't have been sense of duty, because he knew he was flagrantly violating his duty. Nor can you explain it by some higher call of duty than his duty as a Sikh Officer, like the duty which makes martyrs disobey emperors. It must have been just the primitive pa.s.sion for a fight. But if it _was_ that, to indulge it was a bad, weak and vicious thing to do. Yet it clearly wasn't a selfish thing to do: on the contrary, it was heroic. He deliberately sacrificed his rank, pay, and prospects and exposed himself to great danger. Still, as far as I can see, he only did it because his pa.s.sion for fighting was stronger than every other consideration, and therefore he seems to me to be morally in the same cla.s.s as the man who runs away with his neighbour's wife, or any other victim of strong (and largely n.o.ble) pa.s.sions. And I believe that the people who say they are longing to be at the front can be divided into three cla.s.ses (1) those who merely say so because it is the right thing to say, and have never thought or wished about it on their own. (2) Those who deliberately desire to drink the bitterest cup that they can find in these times of trouble. These men _are_ heroes, and are the men who in peace choose a mission to lepers. (3) The savages, who want to indulge their primitive pa.s.sions. Perhaps one ought to add as the largest cla.s.s (4) those who don't imagine what it is like, who think it will be exciting, seeing life, an experience, and so on, and don't think of its reality or meaning at all."

AMARA.

_Thursday, September 2nd, 1915._

TO HIS MOTHER.

I only had time to scrawl a short note last night before the mail went. But I wrote to Papa the day before we left Basra.

Our embarkation was much more sensibly managed this time, a Captain Forrest of the Oxfords being O.C. troops, and having some sense, though the bra.s.s hats again fixed 10 a.m. as the hour. However he got all our kits on the barge at 7 and then let the men rest on the big ship till the time came. Moreover the barge was covered. We embarked on it at 9.30 and were towed along to the river steamer "Malamir," to which we transferred our stuff without difficulty as its lower deck was nearly level with the barge. The only floater was that my new bearer (who is, I fear, an idiot) succeeded in dropping my heavy kit bag into the river, where it vanished like a stone. Fortunately that kind of thing doesn't worry me much; but while I was looking for an Arab diver to fish for it it suddenly re-appeared the other side of the boat, and was retrieved.

These river boats are flat-bottomed and only draw six feet. They have two decks and an awning, and there was just room for our 200 men to lie about. Altogether there were on board--in the order of the amount of room they took up--two bra.s.s hats, 220 men (four Hants drafts and some odds and ends), a dozen officers, four horses and a dozen native servants and a crew.

Altogether I had to leave four sick men at Basra, all due more or less to that barge episode, and I have still two sickish on my hands, while two have recovered.

There was a strong head-wind and current so we only made about four or five knots an hour. The river is full of mud banks, and the channel winds to and fro in an unexpected manner, so that one can only move by daylight and then often only by constant sounding. Consequently, starting at noon on Monday, it took us till 5 p.m. Wednesday to do the 130 miles. It is much less for a crow, but the river winds so, that one can quite believe Herodotus's yarn of the place where you pa.s.s the same village on three consecutive days. Up to Kurna, which we reached at 7 a.m. Tuesday, the river is about 500 yards to 300 yards broad, and the country mainly poor, bare, flat pasture; the date fringe diminishing and in places altogether disappearing for miles together.