The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad Part 9

As the Turks ran from their trenches our machine-guns cut them up.

Rumour now grew positive that we had the enemy hemmed against the river. Evening closed with a deal of desultory gunfire, which continued spasmodically all night. My brigade went to rest, in antic.i.p.ation of a renewal of battle next dawn, when our turn would be due. The ambulances had worked n.o.bly all day, cars sweeping up to well within sh.e.l.l-range; and all night long stretcher-bearer parties were busy. Their work was superintended by Captain G.o.dson, whose M.C. was well earned.

Tekrit cost us about two thousand casualties. Many of the wounded collected in the 19 C.C.S.[30] at Samarra had been wounded by aeroplane bombs.

Next morning our orders of the previous night were confirmed. The enemy were supposed to be holding the 'kilns' (actually these were tombs) behind Tekrit. The 28th Brigade were to go through the 8th and 19th Brigades, and drive them out. We were very doubtful of their being there. However, we went forward in the usual artillery formation. Every house in Tekrit had a white flag. This was the place where Townshend's men were spat on as they limped through it, prisoners. Nevertheless there was the same surprising display of fairly clean linen to which the villages before Baghdad had treated us eight months previously, and the Arabs were most anxious for us to realize how extremely friendly their sentiments were.

We went forward, but found the Turks had gone. There were crump-holes everywhere; the amount of our shrapnel lying about, wasted, would have broken a Chancellor of the Exchequer's heart. Parts of the s.p.a.ces between the Turkish successive lines were just contiguous craters. But there had been disappointingly few direct hits on trenches. The cemetery, hard by, possessed one or two craters also. The enemy had left abundant live sh.e.l.ls, sh.e.l.l-cases, cartridge-cases. But there were very few dead. I saw only two; and a few places where the parapet had been pulled in for a hasty burial. The old question was raised, Did the Turk dig graves beforehand, against an action, to hide his losses? If he did, one can imagine few more effective ways of putting heart into his troops than by detailing them for such a job. I heard that the Seaforths buried sixty Turks. But their losses were certainly far less than ours. We took a hundred and fifty-seven prisoners. Corps claimed that evidence collected after the battle showed that the enemy losses for the three actions of Daur, Aujeh, Tekrit, were at least fifteen hundred. The Infantry, who had not access to Corps' means of information, a.s.sessed them much lower. Myself, I think eight hundred would be nearer the mark.

There were great heaps of cartridge-cases, at intervals of fifty yards, along the trenches, where machine-gunners had clearly been. The s.p.a.ces between showed little sign of having been held. From the Turk's point of view, Tekrit was as satisfactory a battle almost as, from our point of view, it was unsatisfactory. His gunners and machine-gunners fought with very great skill and coolness, withdrawing late and rapidly; hence the great dumps of sh.e.l.l-ammunition which were our only booty. We should have got the whole force. But no sufficient barrage was kept up on the lines of retreat during the night; the cavalry's service, though gallant, was ineffective; the 28th Brigade were not used at the one point where they might have done the enemy much harm; and Head Quarters were too far back. The Turks got every gun and machine-gun away. We captured a hundred boxes of field-gun ammunition, four hundred rifles, five thousand wooden beams, gun-limbers, boats, bridging material, buoys, two aeroplanes (one utterly broken up by the enemy, the other repairable), and a box of propellers, all serviceable. The enemy blew up three ammunition dumps before retreating.

Fowke had dragged through the campaign with a crocked knee. He now went into hospital. There J.Y., who always anxiously haunted all battle-purlieus, fearing for the regiment he loved so well, found him; and, since he was not ill, obtained permission to feed him with some of the battalion's Christmas pudding, just arrived. He refreshed him, too, with Kirin beer. Thus J.Y.'s last glimpse of him--for Fowke did not return to the battalion--was a happy one.

These days were very wretched. Turkish camps are unbelievably filthy; and flies swarmed on the battlefield. We salvaged some miles up beyond Tekrit, with the results already stated. One of the two captured planes was a recovered one of our own, with the enemy black painted over our sign. We had a lot of very enjoyable destruction, including that of the musketry school and barracks, four miles away.

Tekrit's chief fame is that Saladin was born just outside it. But it was also an early Christian centre; the town wall is said to be partly the old monastery wall. The town is built on cliffs, which tower very steeply above the Tigris. The inhabitants were keen on trade, taking anything 'not too hot or too heavy'; but were unpleasant and exorbitant beyond any Arabs, even of Mesopotamia.

We now held both the Tigris and the Euphrates ends of the caravan route to Hit. G.A. opined that we should drive the enemy in from both ends, till both British forces were sh.e.l.ling each other. However, the Turk ran some seventy miles farther; and our planes did great bombing raids on their camp in the Jebel Hamrin, having the joy of using some of the enemy's own bombs.

On the 8th I got a lift back to Samarra on a Ford, for the purpose of sending up food and comforts to the battalion. This kindly purpose was never fulfilled. I went sick, but had more sense than to go to hospital this time; and the troops returned from Tekrit. The Leicestershires on route put up a large hyena, but failed to run him down. My premature return became a famous taunt. 'He deserted,' Diggins would say when foiled in fair argument; 'deserted from Tekrit, deserted in face of the enemy.'

The troops were back at Samarra by the 13th. 'Ah!' Busra surmised, 'they've had a bad knock. "Withdrawn on account of difficulty of communications." We know that story.' It was as after the April fighting, when the wildest distortions were believed down the line, and when I was asked in confidence by an officer formerly with the Leicestershires if it was true that his old regiment had lost eighteen of our own guns.

Nearly every one was seedy for a while, with chills on the stomach and sore feet; and a great wave of depression pa.s.sed over the division. We would have made any effort to hold Tekrit after our toil and losses.

But the Fords were needed for another front. So Johnny, after a time, was able to creep cautiously back, to the extent of cavalry patrols at Daur and Tekrit.

FOOTNOTES:

[30] Casualty clearing-station.

X

DOWN TO BUSRA

Events moved rapidly for the division. The brigades scattered down the line, and H.Q. went to Akab, near the supposed site of Opis. The 21st Brigade went across the river. Only the Leicestershires remained at Samarra, and even they sent one company to Istabulat. Our other three companies went to the station. The 3rd Division took over Istabulat and Samarra. The conviction took root that we were leaving the country.

On the 19th General Maude's death was told. A pack of rumours came as to how he had come to die, and as to how many others had died. His funeral took place in Baghdad; Fritz attended and dropped a message of sympathy. Mistaking his purpose when he flew so low, the archies fired on him. Also, for once, they are said to have nearly hit him.

Knowledge of the magnitude of the Italian reverses filtered in. Our Baghdad Anzac wireless heard 'one hundred thousand prisoners,' when the German wireless broke in, 'Hallo, hallo, hallo, Baghdad! We can tell you later news. It is three hundred thousand prisoners, two thousand five hundred guns.' The enemy wireless possessed the code-name of our own, and frequently broke in on our messages with information, asking us to acknowledge; but this was forbidden.

In December's first week the Kifri push took place. This was not the 7th Division's affair. The Third Corps had it in charge. We rationed them, which meant thirty-five miles of communications, up the left bank of the Tigris, into the sub-hills of the Persian borderlands. The 20th Punjabis furnished dump-guards. These days I spent, exceedingly pleasantly, with the Guides in the Adhaim Valley. Here was a scene of exquisite loveliness. The Adhaim was dry; but, in its deep bed, green lines showed where the water ran. The winter floods were even then beginning to gather higher up, and had reached to within a dozen miles of the brook's junction with Tigris. The valley was thick jungle. There were no trees, but a most dense and luxuriant growth of tamarisk, _populus euphratica_, zizyphs and other thorns, forming a covert six to fourteen feet high. Liquorice grew freely. Wild pig abounded, hares, black partridge, and _sisi_. In my very brief stay I saw no pig; but their signs were everywhere, and their water-holes in the river-bed bore marks of constant resort. The Adhaim was crossed by Nebuchadnezzar's great Nahrwan Ca.n.a.l. This was now, in effect, a deep nulla, and had silted in, so that its bottom was above the Adhaim bank.

Its cliffs were tenanted with blue rock-pigeon, with hedgehogs and porcupines. Shoals of mackerel-like fish used to swim up the Tigris, with fins skimming the surface. Erskine showed me how to shoot these; as, in later days, when we were in the Palestine line at Arsuf, I have seen Diggins stunning fish with rifle-shots in the old Roman harbour.

In their Samarra digging the Guides had found a stone statue, which is what they asked me up to see. The head and arms had been broken off, obviously deliberately; but it was plainly the G.o.ddess Ishtar, with b.r.e.a.s.t.s remaining. She was sitting before the mess-tent, like Demeter before the House of Triptolemus. This discovery was of interest beyond itself. The books place Opis near Akab, apparently because the Adhaim enters the Tigris opposite Akab. But, as I have said already, Kenneth Mason has acc.u.mulated good reasons for placing Opis near Samarra. With those reasons, this statue of Ishtar may take its place. The Samarra of history was not much more than a standing camp for caliphs in refuge from their true capital, Baghdad. But old Samarra covers nearly twenty square miles of ruins upon ruins. Opis was a great mart; and Samarra, in the relics of Eski Baghdad, to the north, reaches almost to the Tigris end of the Tekrit-Hit caravan road.

The Kifri push resulted in another withdrawal of the fight-weary John.

He set Kifri coal-mine on fire, and it burned for some days. We took a hundred and fifty prisoners and two field-guns. Though Russia was out of the war, a local force of Russians helped us. They were told they would find their rations in a certain place when they took it. They took it all right.

I left the Guides, and went back to Beled, to my good friends of the 56th Brigade, R.F.A. On December 6 the 19th Infantry and the 56th Artillery Brigades received orders to move down-stream immediately. All came suddenly; I was awakened by the striking of tents. On the 8th the Leicestershires left Samarra. In less than six days they were in Baghdad. In those six days of marching they suffered terribly from cold, rain, and footsoreness. But they swung through Baghdad singing.

The men of the Anzac wireless bought up oranges, and threw them to our fellows as they pa.s.sed out of Baghdad to their camp at Hinaidi, two miles below. Baghdad streets were frozen every morning; a bucket of water, put out overnight, would be almost solid next day. Nevertheless there were enough flies to be an intolerable pest. When we pa.s.sed the variously spelt station of Mushaidiyeh, Keely noted the script preferred by the railway, Mouchahadie, and observed, 'Evidently it was connected in their mind with flies; no doubt with good reason.'

Baghdad in winter is given up to immense flocks of crows and starlings and to the 'Baghdad canary.'[31] No wild flowers were out, except a white _alisma_. We purchased 'goodly Babylonish garments,' the _abbas_ for which the town is famous. Mine were sent home in an oil-sheet. The oil-sheet arrived, the postal-service satisfying themselves with looting the _abbas_. After all, men who have the monotony of service at the Base are ent.i.tled to indemnify themselves for the trouble to which men up the line put them.

We got our last glimpse of Fritz on the 15th. He was over Baghdad, and was said to have dropped a message, 'Good-bye, 7th Division.' The countryside was stiff with troops moving up and down.

Our destination was matter of constant speculation. When orders to leave Beled reached the 19th Brigade, there came a wire from Divisional Head Quarters, 'Tell the padre to preach from Matthew twenty, verse eighteen.' But the 28th Brigade knew nothing of this hint to Lee. Some thought we were going to Ahwaz, and thence up to Persia; others held this Persian theory with a modification, that we should arrive up-country from Bushire. The favourite notion was that we were going to do another Gallipoli landing, behind Alexandretta. Some one got hold of a map, and announced that there were mountains there nine thousand feet high.

On the 18th we embarked, and began our slow drift down the flooded, racing stream. We pa.s.sed the old landmarks, so known and so remembered.

On the 20th we pa.s.sed Kut, and knew that for most of us it was our farewell glimpse of the town that through so many dreadful months had seemed a place of faery, and inaccessible.

Red Autumn on the banks, Where, through fields that bear no grain, A desolate Mother treads, By the br.i.m.m.i.n.g river, torn with rain!

A chill wind moves in the faded ranks Of the rushes, rumpling their russet heads.

And out of the mist, on the racing stream As I drift, I know that there gathers fast, Over the lands I shall see no more, Another mist, which with life shall last, Till all that I watched and my comrades bore Will be autumn mist, in an old man's dream.

Here an Empire's might had agonized; and many of us had buried more hopes than we shall cherish again.

It rained, and kept on raining. Knowing what wretchedness this meant on sh.o.r.e, we were glad of the crowded shelter of our P-boat, maugre its noises and discomforts. Marshall, the semi-mythical person at Corps, who had visited the Turks at Tekrit, scattering ruin from a 'lamb,' was everywhere said to be taking bets, ten to one, that the war would be ended by Christmas. If rumour spoke truth, Marshall must have lost a pile of money.

On the 22nd we entrained at Amara, reaching Busra late on the 23rd. We spent Christmas encamped on a marsh. My mare developed unsuspected gifts as a humorist. Every time she saw a tree, even a date-palm, she shied, cavorted, and leapt, showing the utmost amazement and terror.

This was witty at first, but she kept it up too long. Busra backwaters were lovelier than ever, with the willows in their winter dress, gold-streaked, and the brooding blue kingfishers above the waveless channels. _Bablas_[32] were in yellow b.u.t.ton, scenting the ditches where huge tortoises crawled and cl.u.s.tered. On the 30th I got a glimpse of Shaiba, of the tall feathery tamarisks above the Norfolks' graves and trenches. On January 2 we embarked on the _Bandra_. With the cheering as we moved away, the words of a Mesopotamian 'gaff'[33]

recurred to memory:

And when we came to Ashar,[34] we only cheered once; And I don't suppose we shall cheer again, for months, and months, and months.

We drifted down the beautiful waterway, past its forest of palms and its abundant willows and waving reeds. We reached Koweit Bay on the 4th and waited for rations and our new boats. On the 7th we were on our way to a new campaign. In nine months the Leicestershires were swinging through Beirut in the old, immemorial fashion, though foot-weary, and singing, whilst the people madly cheered and shouted. But it was not the old crowd. Fowke, Warren, Burrows--these three were gathered, two months after the battalion left Mesopotamia, at Kantara, when the German last offensive burst. They were sent at once to France. Fowke and Warren were badly wounded; a letter from Fowke informed me that he was. .h.i.t 'while running away,' a jesting statement which one understands. Burrows, one of our keenest minds and a delightful man, a valued friend, did extraordinarily well--he was strangely fearless--but was killed as the French war was ending. From the 19th Brigade Haughton, Thornhill, General Peebles, had all gone long ago. Haughton was wounded in the Afghan War, and Thornhill died of illness. And now, as I write, G.A. is off to South America again, and J.Y. to Canada.

I and my friends have seen our friends no more.

FOOTNOTES:

[31] The domestic a.s.s.

[32] Mimosa.

[33] Concert party.

[34] At Busra; the place of disembarkation.