The Secrets of a Kuttite Part 2

Don hates camels, and was rearing up in fine style. Therein he showed judgment more correct than did the General, for, in answer to my spur, he had no sooner drawn level with the beast than the "dead" camel swung its long snaky neck round upon us and opened eyes and mouth simultaneously.

Don jumped the bank and the whole staff of telephonists and landed almost on top of General Smith, whose horse objected considerably. I laughed until the general restrained my humour.

The horses were awfully done, and in the batteries could just move the guns at the slowest walk. We did about a mile an hour. About 3 p.m. General Townshend shouted to General Smith that one of our batteries was sh.e.l.ling our own transport which appeared round the head of the river, miles ahead. My general apparently forgot me, and went off on his old charger. The transport could not have been saved by the time he got up to the guns. I put Don at a ditch and, racing up a knoll close by, blew on my long sounding whistle "cease fire," and held up my hand. The battery commander saw it, and when I galloped up I apologized for interrupting his shooting, and explained. They had bracketed the transport and a shot was in the breech of the gun, so my whistle had just got them in time. A splendid fellow is the commander of that battery, Major Broke-Smith, an excellent soldier and cheerful friend. Unperturbed, he said, "Well, if I'm to sh.e.l.l all Arab bodies, and the river will wind so----"

And when I got back General Townshend thanked me, at which I was much elated.

In the afternoon we halted for two and a half hours to enable the straggling crowds to catch up. I rode miles trying to find our transport cart with the stores, but it had got somewhere in the front several miles off. Some one produced a cube of Oxo, and we had that divided and a whisky peg each.

"G. B." slept, and I saw the horses watered and unsaddled.

The general had some biscuits given him, and some signalling officer--whom the G.o.ds preserve!--gave me a sausage, which I ate before considering whether it would divide or not.

Then on again, on, on, for hours. Mules fell down and were helped up only to fall again a hundred yards further on.

Then word came by aeroplane that we might have to fight our way into Kut through an Arab and Turkish force. Later, to every one's dismay, we heard that we were not to reach Kut that night after all, but to bivouac five miles from it. In the last light of December 2nd, we saw the sun on the distant roofs of the village we had legged it so strenuously to reach.

The brisk and prolonged marching of yesterday, and of last night, had reduced the present possible pace to a mile an hour.

We found a ruined _serai_, a four-walled enclosure of ground thirty yards square. Headquarters came here. A heap of dust and trampled chaff I selected as a sleeping place for the General, Captain Garnett, and me. It was colder than ever and a biting wind blew through our very souls. No one who has not sampled it for himself can credit the intense cold of such a Mesopotamian night. I have registered the cold of Oberhof, where twenty feet of snow and icicles forty feet high rendered every wood impa.s.sable. I have boated on the west coast of Scotland, where the wind from Satan's antipodes cuts through coat and flesh and bone. I have felt the cold from the glaciers of New Zealand. But I have never felt cold to equal that of December 2nd of the Retreat. Perhaps hunger and extreme exhaustion help the cold.

We lay close together for warmth. Late in the night some bread arrived from Kut. I had an awful pa.s.sage of a mile, falling over ruts and into nullahs, and once very nearly into the river. We could not show lights as the opposite bank swarmed with Arabs. I walked with General Hamilton to the supply column. While we waited he told me of the battle of Ctesiphon. I got five stale loaves, two of which I gave Don Juan, who was shivering violently. Then I picketed the horses close together for warmth and we three ate our loaves.

General Townshend occupied the far corner of the _serai_, and he spoke very cheerily to me for a minute or two. It was very extraordinary how well I had got to know some of the Staff during the last two days. Our acquaintanceship seemed of years. But then the retirement itself seemed that long.

CHAPTER III

WE REACH KUT--BEGINNING OF THE SIEGE--THE CHRISTMAS a.s.sAULT

We left at 5 a.m. and trotted over the _maidan_ to Kut.

The horses knew that there food and rest awaited them. We got in at 730 a.m., but the column took hours. I found Headquarters on the river front of the town and our ill-omened transport already arrived there. I rode on ahead to get things ready. First, I quieted my stomach with some whisky and warm water, and then had a remarkable breakfast of bacon and eggs, cold ham, cold fowl, toast and marmalade and coffee.

But there was no chance of rest yet awhile. A siege was impending. No reinforcements were in the country and Townshend's plan was to hold up the Turkish advance at Kut.

While we defended this strategical junction of the Tigris and Shat-al-Hai, the enemy could neither get to Nasireyeh nor down to Amarah. The river is the means of transport. And so there was much to be done--wounded and ineffectives to be moved downstream, trenches and gun-pits and redoubts to be made, defences erected, and everywhere communication trenches miles long to be dug and a thousand other things arranged for. It was a race of parapet building against the Turk. The army could not be spared much rest. I had to collect the B.G.R.A.'s stores from _mahelas_ and elsewhere, get a secure place for ourselves and our horses, and buy stuff for the possible siege, although it might be for only three weeks.

The river-front then became too hot for the Staff, so we adjourned to dug-outs in the construction of which hangs a story. In the meantime one learned that we had lost a barge of wounded, several _mahelas_ of supplies, supply barge, H.M.S. _Firefly_, _Comet_, and _Shaitan_ in the retirement. The _Firefly_ was an unfortunate affair, the sh.e.l.l striking her boiler.

There might have been time to blow her up, but it appears that there was a wounded man down below. The breech-blocks of her guns were thrown overboard and the crew escaped.

An excellent range-finder was captured on her. At the moment of writing she is pelting sh.e.l.ls at us into Kut.

We also heard that two cavalry officers who had ridden through the Arabs' lines to General Melliss' brigade with orders to join in the Um-al-Tabul engagement on the night of December 1st, had been recommended for the V.C.

On December 4th, the day after we entered Kut, the last boat left for down the river. On the 5th the Cavalry Brigade and S Battery left Kut for down below, as they would not be of so much importance in a siege. Before they went Major Rennie-Taylor, commanding S Battery, had lunch with us.

A day later the aeroplanes flew away. Then we were decidedly alone. Bullets fell from the north. Soon they came from every direction.

The dug-out for the B.G.R.A.'s Staff was to be made out on the _maidan_ near the brick-kilns. The General added to the plans of the Pioneers for its construction, and so the thing was built like a long grave and the poles laid cross-wise. As a traveller of some experience myself I saw that trouble was obviously ahead. I hinted that as three poles were bearing on the centre one, that was insufficient to carry the total weight. My suggestion was dispersed by an eloquent explosion on the part of my General. So it was built; and somewhere in high heaven a humorous Fate looked down and smiled. At midnight the roof that carried tons of bricks and soil collapsed without warning. It was the greatest luck we escaped without awful accident. I occupied the end farther from the entrance where General Smith slept, Garnett sleeping underneath beneath the ledge.

Luckily I was awake and, hearing the beam snap, I was out of my sleeping bag like a bullet, accidentally upsetting the General on top of Garnett. As I moved it fell in. I had taken the precaution to sleep with my head towards the entrance, else I had never escaped. For the rest of the night I shivered in the cold alongside the cook, without blankets, sleeping bag, or even jacket. All these were pinned down.

In the morning when the working party came, we found that the central beam had broken and the two broken ends were forced a foot into the hard bas.e.m.e.nt of my bed, just where my chest would have been. My General offered the remark: "An orderly officer is responsible for the health of his General." And remembering the mental curses I had manufactured at the time of the occurrence, and extracting further humour from having accidentally omitted to remove a stone from the part of the trench where the general had been compelled to lie, I proffered embrocation, and, being a dutiful subaltern, hid my smile. In the teeth of Turkish opposition the West Kents remade the dug-out that day. It has not collapsed yet.

To get from the dug-out to the town we had to cross a sh.e.l.l-swept zone. Every few yards was a splash of smoke and flame. That was, of course, at the beginning of the siege.

Our dug-outs were near several brick-kilns, themselves sufficient target without our gun flashes. We had a battery of 18-pounders on one side, 5-inch on the other, and howitzers behind. So we came in for all the ranging. It was out of the question to leave any cooking utensils above ground, for they were certain to be perforated within a few moments.

A most wretched existence it was in that abominable little dug-out, but the balancing feature was our proximity to Colonel Courtenay of the 5-inch. A fountain of good-humour, ever flowing, an excellent story-teller, and a very human person. I delighted in his company. He was a very brave man, not of the defiant sort, but rather as one who has learned not to fear the inevitable. I saw him observing one day and a burst described a complete zone around him, but he went on stuffing tobacco into his pipe as if it was all November fireworks.

One evening I stood at the mouth of the dug-out giving orders. Some snipers from over the river must have seen me.

A volley whistled past, one bullet cutting through the pocket of my tunic close to the hip. More extraordinary was the escape of the C.O. of the 63rd Battery, Major Broke-Smith.

One morning he had a bullet through his topee and one through a pocket. In the afternoon another bullet got another pocket. Some one suggested his requiring a new outfit at an early date.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BRICK-KILNS WELL REMEMBERED BY ALL KUTt.i.tES. THE GROUND HERE WAS HONEYCOMBED WITH DUG OUTS, GUN PITS AND TRENCHES.]

After the Cavalry Brigade had crossed our bridge of boats below the town we found it necessary to destroy it, owing to a Turkish concentration upon that side. Its demolition was the occasion of considerable excitement. We lost an officer and men on the further bank. At the last moment it was found difficult to blow the bridge up. The heavy guns could not reach it, and I set off with orders for the howitzers to blow it up--an impossible target. The nearest sh.e.l.l was somewhere about 50 yards off. Then General Melliss rode up across the open to see what could be done, and interviewed my General. Finally, the bridge was destroyed by a very gallant subaltern a.s.sisted by another equally plucky in the following way.

At the further end of the bridge the Turks were in strong force. When night fell, and a dark night fortunately it was, a sapper subaltern started across the bridge with a charge, fuse lighted, strapped to his back. That was to ensure the explosion taking place even if he were hit. Strange to say, he got out, planted his charge, and got back without a shot being fired at him. The Turks must have been slacking.

Then the other charge was laid. Both were quite successful and the bridge totally demolished. The officers have been recommended for the V.C.[1]

I was then quite busy for a few days with communications.

We were very short of thick cable, and the thin stuff was being continually broken by fatigue parties. The General, as a rule, slept a little after tiffin, and at such times I would look up Colonel Courtenay.

"Hallo, Mousley! How are you and the General?

Hope you are keeping him fit. Temperamentally of course, yes."

"h.e.l.lo? Oh, they're all right. Except lucky ones.

Help yourself to that lot. But I've a cigar for you. Now let's talk about fishing."

Then there was Oxo (among the subalterns so named from resemblance to an advertis.e.m.e.nt)--a fiery ha ha, hum hum little colonel, as busy as a pea on a drum and exuberant as a thrush in June. He came to see us frequently.

On the 10th General Smith went sick. Captain Garnett followed suit. We left the dug-out for Headquarters, a building in the centre of the town with a courtyard. Like most others it was a two-story building with a promenade roof that was used for observation. Helio was used up there.

Why, no one knows. Sh.e.l.ls came on the building too, hundreds of them, and smashed the wall or thudded against it. The three legs of the helio disappearing over the balcony was the first sight I saw one early morning, and the signallers came down with white faces. The sh.e.l.l had smashed the helio without touching them. The Turks religiously refrained from hitting the mosque, but the hospital got it badly, and so did the horses which are stalled in the streets.

The enemy's lines have drawn much closer in some places, and are only sixty to two hundred yards off. The Turkish commander, Nureddin Pacha, sent word to Townshend that as our garrison was besieged by all the Turkish forces in Mesopotamia, he called on him to yield up his arms. General Townshend replied characteristically. Daily our General issued _communiques_ urging us to put up a good fight and to dig deep and quickly. Within a week we knew what that meant.

On the morrow I was brimful of influenza and chill contracted in the night the dug-out fell in, and was slacking on the bed when a report came from the 82nd Battery R.F.A.

saying that a subaltern was wounded that morning and the captain was in hospital sick. The other subaltern, who had come from Hyderabad with me, had been slightly wounded days before. The message asked if the General could spare me. A very ardent soldier I was that morning. I jumped into my accoutrements feeling very weak from the influenza.

However, I did not want to lose the opportunity, so with revolver, field gla.s.ses, and prismatic, I set off at once.

So delighted was I at the prospect of leaving the Staff for regimental duty that I had not noticed the artillery duel seemed to have developed into a general attack. No one seemed quite certain as to where the battery exactly was. It appeared to be somewhere in a palm wood some distance up the river. There were no communication trenches yet dug, so I went along the river-front which was shortest, and where I had heard there was also some rudimentary trench. It was a grave mistake, and I paid the penalty with as uncomfortable a half-hour as ever I had in my life. The _maidan_ was deserted. Sh.e.l.ls plunged into the first wood which I skirted.

Rifle fire thickened and cracked fiercely in the trees. Snipers fired at me from over the river and I ran for it, stooping low, a hundred yards at a time. The Turkish gunners appeared to be sweeping all the woods. I got through to a little _maidan_, dead flat, not a blade of gra.s.s on it, and here was the hottest cross-fire I have yet seen. I crawled along back into the wood to get some way from the bank before going on. Then I raced for it and did about a fifth of the distance, bullets humming like bees in swarm. I took cover from the frontal fire, and then flank fire from over the river made it intolerable.

About half way I saw a heap of rubbish and dirt about two feet high. I arrived breathless and fell flat. Sh.e.l.ls came too, one burst on a building thirty yards nearer the river and the bullets splashed all round me. I had evidently been spotted over the river; bullets began to make a tracery around the rotten little heap. One dug itself in a few niches from my knee. The base of the mound stopped some, but when one bullet came clean through the middle, the dust being flung over my face and eyes, I got up and ran my best. This time I reached a nullah where a mule that had been hit was kicking to death invisible devils. From here I was fairly protected from flank fire so I bolted through the wood, and two hundred yards in I heard the battery in action. I shall never forget that horrible little affair behind the dust heap. I could see the Arabs' heads over the river as they shifted to take better aim, and the dust every yard or so that the bullets knocked up reminded one of Frying-Pan Flat in the volcanic region of New Zealand.

I sprinted over to the cover of a wall in the centre of the palm wood, and following it came across a gun-limber on end used sometimes as an observation post. It was protected by a few sandbags in front. I found the sergeant-major carrying on, the subaltern just hit being in a dug-out near by, where he was left until the "strafe" was over. The sergeant-major asked me to take better cover as several casualties had just occurred. I am now writing the first pages of this account from the identical dug-out near the limber. For hours I could not leave the post. The telephonist lay huddled underneath the wheels and orders coming by wire from the major I shouted on by megaphone to the battery, which was dug in thirty yards in front. Later on, reporting myself to my C.O. and the colonel of the brigade, I was laughed at for coming across the open, and they were astonished at my arriving at all.

"It's a miracle you weren't knocked over," was the colonel's comment.

The fire slackened and fell to mere sniping. I looked around. The battery had excellent gun-pits, sandbagged in front. The dug-outs were very well built, the roofs being supported by beams and trees. Each detachment had its own dug-out, and the men had furnished them snugly with old horse-rugs and rush curtains and ammunition boxes inlaid into the walls. Our chief zone was directly up river.

My own dug-out was built up rather than dug out, being constructed against a _mutti_ wall which we believed was sh.e.l.l proof until one day three sh.e.l.ls plugged straight through near by. Then we dug down. The mess was a very thick-walled building and heavily sandbagged. It also formed brigade headquarters. To get to the mess from the battery or from one's dug-out, one had to run the gauntlet through the incessant sharp music of rifle bullets cracking against trees or branches. As a rule, we one and all arrived in the mess breathless from an ever-improving sprint. This, of course, and also the going from here to Kut, will be better when the communication trenches have been dug.

On the same evening at dinner a native servant brought in most startling news that a bullet had gone through the last barrel of beer. But jubilation succeeded dismay when we found that a gunner, with the instinct of the British soldier for preserving anything in the "victuals" line, had turned the barrel over. The bullet had entered near the ground, so quite three-quarters was saved. I hear on good authority that the gunner will get the D.C.M. We are almost out of anything drinkable and the siege may go on several weeks.

At 9.30 p.m. I felt tired from the excitement of the day and from the influenza, and turned in. Ten minutes afterwards I was summoned on a night job. Two guns of the Volunteer Battery were in difficulties in an advanced position near the river bank and just behind the first-line trenches.

They had been under heavy rifle and maxim fire at two hundred yards range, and were enfiladed from over the river.

The guns were thus rendered unworkable. I was to take two gun teams and a G.S. wagon at midnight to retrieve them.

This meant crossing the main _maidan_ in the open without an inch of cover. It meant going almost under the rifles of the enemy scarcely two hundred yards off, and being visible in any sort of light to the enemy over the river. A guide was to await me at twelve midnight, near the battery.