The Secrets of a Kuttite Part 23

In the half light we had "dinner." The padre returned from his soliloquy in a most obviously exemplary and virtuous mood. Oh, to be able to acc.u.mulate virtue on such an occasion like a shilling gas meter, and without warning, turn it on, even if an hour after it has all gone. I suggest taps affixed to the person with little black letters on ivory thereon to the effect: "HUMILITY," "BALM," "PRECEPT," "PATIENCE,"

"MARTYRDOM," "ADVICE--On--Off." Hummerbug annotated him. I encouraged both. I liked it.

We slept that night until about 1 a.m., and in the darkness loaded up the carts and pushed off. All had to walk in turn to give the orderly a lift also. We drove through a pleasing country of green foothills covered by wandering pine and beech. In taking short cuts from road to road to catch up to the carts as we walked, we came across many Armenian homes smashed in and corpses half-covered with soil or flung down a hollow, where the Turk had pa.s.sed. About six o'clock we met a great crowd of Armenian and Greek peasants, with old men and old grey-haired women and children carrying small bundles or articles of cooking, all herded together _en route_ for somewhere. They were guarded by askars (soldiers).

In this way they are moved from place to place, their number dwindling until all have gone. At a tiny coffee-place here we had coffee and lebon and then walked the remaining miles into Marmourie as the carts had been ordered not to wait for us. It was a long and hurried walk.

The country here looked quite pleasing to the eye. Fine terraces, fringing woods that lined the slopes of moderate hills and overlooking green valleys and splashing water-falls, seemed to ask for a hydro and golf links. We reached Marmourie about 8 o'clock, pa.s.sing some Turkish soldiers _en route_ over the Taurus, as also small ammunition transport.

Every bit of their ammunition for Mesopotamia has, it seems, to go over these hills, as the other road, via Diabecca, is crossed and occupied by the Russian troops. Near the top of the Taurus we pa.s.sed fittings for an aeroplane in huge cases that had come all the way from Germany. These were for service in Palestine obviously. Through some difference among the Turkish officers we were not allowed to sit in the shade at Marmourie while we awaited our train, but were made to sit along a dirty wall in the fierce sun for hours like so many convicts. We waited there in the sweltering heat, date the 8th July, from 8 a.m. until 1 p.m., drinking lebon every half-hour, which we got from a shop near by.

The train accommodation was small carriages, and the trucks were reserved for luggage. Only the orderlies were allowed in them, so we sat packed upright, and couldn't sleep a wink. The stations along this line were larger and busier than those east of the Taurus. Only once since getting into the train at Ras-el-Ain had Fauad Bey, our Turkish Commandant, helped us in the way of food. On that occasion he issued a ration of bread to every one. Here we persuaded him to send a wire to Adana to have lunch ready for us, Adana being a large town near Taurus. When we arrived at Adana at 4.30 there was great excitement on the thronged platform.

Gorgeously-attired police and other petty officials buzzed about. It appeared that some Turkish officer was pa.s.sing through. We jumped off and ran along on the edge of the platform, when we were told we were too wild and unkempt-looking to be seen by the high Turkish official. "d.a.m.n the high Turkish official," said we, "we want yesterday's lunch."

Yes! the lunch was there all ready, but they couldn't allow us in! Moreover, we were not allowed to fill our bottles. If we had been fit I verily believe we would have taken our lunch. I was hauled back. But, getting through my train on the other side and the cordon of Turks, I got inside the enclosure unperceived, filled the bottles, brought a loaf of bread, and caught our train as it left. No! escape was useless that way. Soldiers thronged around every station. We went on our doleful way until 9 p.m., when we were pulled up short by a German coffee-shop, to which we were not permitted to go. This was Gulek bei Tarsus of St. Paul's memory.

After hauling our kits some distance we were pushed into a square tent. We fell down and slept at once. It was an awful jamb. My head was half outside the tent, and people kept walking over it as if it were a cushion. Now I don't mind sleeping in the horse lines a bit. But then horses are so sensible. They know a head when they see it. People were going in and out of the tent all night long, but I'm glad to say I got a fair amount of sleep. One or two unfortunate fellows had fever. Before the dawn I was up, and went among the thick settlement of huts to the stream, which I was threatened by the Turk sentry not to cross, but I walked over before the Turk could say anything, and started talking to some Germans there. Even to talk to a German is a pa.s.sport in this benighted land, so thoroughly do they override their allies. I had a splendid dip, while others looked enviously at me from the other side. Recrossing I made the acquaintance of a spectacled German doing Y.M.C.A. work among his own troops here.

He was a Biblical research student, and journeyed frequently to Tarsus, some twelve miles off. This was called Gulek bei Tarsus. Tarsus one could see in the distance. I thought of St. Paul and Cleopatra, and hoped Tarsus had more trees about it than this sandy plain, for their sakes. The German seemed a very decent sort. We discussed Berlin. He had been a visitor there once from Southern Germany. He asked if we were short of money. When we started in motor-lorries some hours later at 10 a.m. he came to my lorry and flung in a bag of several liras from Red Cross Funds. This came to about half a lira a piece. We thanked him sincerely, and he wished us good luck.

He had told me in the morning to come to his quarters, but I had no opportunity. Cholera was raging there, and the Germans had a pumping water-distillery, from which I got some extra water. I learned later that many of our troops were working at a tunnel on the slope of the Anti-Taurus mountain here, and were dying like sheep. We saw nothing of them, nor were we allowed to inquire.

The _bandobast_ for this mountain was German, and we were hustled off with commendable dispatch. At 9.45 a dozen motor lorries drew up. At 10 we were off. They were absolutely run by German officers and men. We swayed and bounced about, quite reconciled to that, and thanking G.o.d it wasn't a case of "leg it" again. These mountains are much more barren than the others, being largely, on their eastern slopes, white clay or lime-stone ravines and crags, with a few shrubs here and there growing out of the stony ground. They are also much wider. We pa.s.sed some desolate Armenian villages and tore along to the upper heights. At 11.30 we stopped at a ruined mill by a fall to cool the hot engines, and there had a drink and a piece of bread, also a slab of baked meat, chiefly fat. It was a wild spot, great rocky crags falling across the road. Another hour and we arrived at Park Taurus, a German military halfway house, forty kilos from Gulek, and thirty-two from Bozanti, whither we were going.

Park Taurus is situated on a small plateau leading down into three or four valleys surrounded by hills of crumpled granite dotted with pines. The valleys are now dry, but in winter must be filled with racing torrents. It is absolutely German, and evidently erected during the last eighteen months.

The enclosures easily accommodate over a hundred motor lorries, besides which they have huge electrically-lighted store sheds and depot, where they acc.u.mulate stores _en route_.

We were turned loose at 1.30 p.m. in a field where stood a huge, empty tent. The Germans here were not so well disposed towards us, and would not help us at all. Some N.C.Os. who wanted to do a deal were hustled away. The first arrivals bought out an Arab's tiny shop of honey and raisins and potatoes, and there was little else to go round.

After a solid sleep, for our rest the previous night had been very broken, we made a very bad meal. Our application to bathe in an adjoining pool was not allowed. Then we all sat around the side of the hill and smoked while once more night floated down upon the world. The motors that had been pa.s.sing all day were now housed, and there was an appreciable calm broken by falling streams and tumbling brooks. Pale yellow stars burned pa.s.sionately over the pine tops; and once again here there was something in the far-away spot that recalled the mountain forests of Thuringen.

There was less forest and more rock, but it served as another span in that bridge we are all constructing back to old times--the bridge that must span Kut and the trek....

At 4.15 the next morning, before it was light, we were in the motors and away again. There followed, as usual, a wild scramble and fearful scrumming around the lines, as we were not awakened until five minutes before leaving. This journey was decidedly b.u.mpy, and we had to grip hard to stick inside the four walls of the thing at times. The country became wilder and rockier with only a few boulder pines climbing up the heights. Along the face of these limestone bluffs one observed a queer phenomenon of splashed yellow rocks, seemingly spilled from some gigantic cauldron, dried and hung out like blanketings in the morning sun. Then there were caves and water-worn caverns, said to have been once the homes of the Hitt.i.tes. Many Turkish and others worked on the road, and dishevelled troops pa.s.sed us _en route_ for the Mosul or Palestine front, via Aleppo.

At last, two great tall upstretching tongues of rock, almost meeting, filled the mouth of the converging valley, and rendered any attempt to cross into that valley by any other way than between them almost impossible, except for an Alpiner. These were the famous Cilician Gates through which pa.s.sed Alexander in the fourth century, B.C., on his way to Syria. Darius had lain in waiting somewhere near Islahie on the other side of the Anti-Taurus mountains, and when Alexander had got safely down between the seacoast and the Anti-Taurus, Darius and his army scampered over the mountains, probably, the very way we had come, and cut Alexander off from his communications. But Alexander turned on the Persian king and smashed him at Tarsus. Five hundred years before that, Shalmanaser II., the great a.s.syrian king, had crossed and recrossed this very pa.s.s on his way to and from his victories. After Alexander, the hordes of Barbarossa, and in fact, every ancient army on its way east had had to pa.s.s through them.

Some old Hitt.i.te inscription was on the outer face of the rock, and on either side of the road a Roman altar cut out of the flat rock by the roadside testified to the military importance conceded to this Gate by Roman Generals, locking the way to the Orient. In those days the pathway was a few feet wide only, and now cannot be more than five yards.

Heavy blasting, however, widened the way along which we came.

A few miles further on we reached the rail-head again at Bozanti from where they were tunnelling the Taurus.

Here we saw many British soldiers at work. They were mostly from the Dardanelles and some of them seemed quite fit, but the tunnelling was heavy work, and they said that the men from Kut there could not stand it--and had died.

For some hours we were shoved in a stable with billions of flies. Many officers were very indignant at being put alongside horses. Being a field artilleryman it didn't worry me in the least after what we had gone through. We bought a few stores and a German presented me with a bottle of beer, as he found I spoke German!

At 8 p.m. that night we left, packed in a train, all very tired and weak. There were in the train some German N.C.Os. and men all on their way back to Berlin, and in a highly hilarious state at the prospect. Some of them were the nasty sort, and they all told us of the English naval disaster off the Skager Rack in which we had lost ten large ships and so on. We knew this was an untruth and suspected it was a fine victory for us, especially as the Boches ran back to Kiel.

We travelled all night fearfully cramped up in carriages.

I managed to get two or three hours of restless sleep among moving boots and feet on the floor, with my knees by my nose and some one's boots in my face. At 12 noon we arrived at Cognia or Konia, the Iconium of St. Paul, a large town with a real hotel to which only a few of us were allowed to go, and a plentiful array of shops. After the usual dozen moves up and down the station, each time entailing carrying our beds and kits, we were taken to a restaurant where our notes were refused, but ultimately taken at a large discount. How we carry on without money is really extraordinary! One simply does not eat, but gets weaker and weaker. Acute diarrhoea has broken out again with many of us, for we are still on nuts and sour bread and water. That night, the 12th July, we slept in the station yard.

The next morning we were aroused at an unearthly hour, and then did not leave until quite 11.15 a.m., the intervening hours being employed by waiting in a queue to get water or being moved first this way and then that. No Turk as yet seems to know his own mind or any one else's apparently.

The country around Konia is very flat and more or less bare.

The Hindoo native officers remain in Konia, which should be a good spot for them, and quite healthy. Konia appears to be absolutely rebuilt and quite new. Two hours out of Konia our engine broke down. We waited four hours for another engine from Konia. I found a German doctor travelling on our train, and from him I got some colitis and cholera powders.

He also was quite polite and anxious to help one. Then we pa.s.sed Kala Hissar, a lonely town on the plain with a fort perched high up on a hill. Here a good many Russian, French, and British prisoners are said to be placed, but we saw nothing of any of them. We travelled all night over the plain, and it was another wretched night for sleep, as we had to take it in turns sleeping on the floor. We had by this time lost a lot of our veneer of desert sunburn, and the pallor of sickness stared out from our faces. Father Tim, our excellent Catholic padre, told me this evening that I had appeared twenty years older during the last few days. At 11, forenoon, on the 13th, we arrived at Eski Chehir, a large town on the junction of lines to Constantinople and Angora. Here, again, the want of a servant made the immediate present a tragedy of vile proportions. Thus we would get the order to move at once, no one knowing where. Everything had to be moved with you. So you gathered up water-bottle, haversack, blankets and coat, and dragged your valise over lines and other obstacles indefinitely. Then you sat on them until you had to take them back, crossing trains and piles of luggage and stores, a _posta_ or Turkish guard at your heels with a rifle shouting, "Yallah" or "Haidee Git." We dropped Captain Booth accidentally on the way from Konia. He was asleep in a carriage which was taken off near Kala Hissar. Great excitement prevailed as to whether he would take the branch line to Smyrna and try to escape, but he turned up again later. In the meantime, Fauad Bey thrashed every Turkish official within reach.

At Eski Chehir we were allowed into an hotel restaurant place near the station and forbidden to go outside. We saw one or two Greek maidens, well on towards their prime, welcoming us with smiles, but although the first of Eve's daughters seen for a long time, one's heart did not flutter much. We were so whacked that we wanted a meal and a bed on which to sleep, sleep, sleep. So we fell to discussing what we would do at Constantinople, whither both Fauad Bey and some Germans at Konia had a.s.sured us we were being taken. The prospect of seeing this famous city and especially of seeing Europe again, and of having amba.s.sadors and consuls to take a friendly interest in us, cheered up our tired and sad hearts.

But by this time we knew the Turk well enough to doubt all things. In the meanwhile we were shut up. We had a decent meal or two at terrible prices, so we ate sparingly.

Some of the senior officers had wandered too far away at Konia so Fauad said, and it was "Yesak"--forbidden. In fact, just before leaving Konia he would not allow them to recross for a final meal, but I bolted around the station over a fence, and on his seeing me I humbly pretended I wanted to ask his permission. To my surprise, he asked me if the colonel and all had returned, and on my rea.s.suring him he took me to a restaurant and demanded meat and rolls and soup and cheese. None appearing to be ready he created such a storm in the place that the people evidently produced their own meal. Moreover, he paid and would not take any money from me; but then I have never quarrelled much with him, and he knows he is to leave us and wants a good report.

I observe he is very nervous whenever I talk to a German, and asks me to talk in French if at all. French he understands a little.

At 10 p.m. the same day, as we arrived in Eski Chehir, we were again packed frightfully close into carriages, and left for where we did not know, but half expected to awake beholding the minarets of Stambul. The Mohammedan native officers had all been dropped at Eski Chehir, where from all accounts they were to be done quite well. However, after starting it proved that our destination was Angora. Our hopes fell below zero. I clambered out of the carriage and, worming my way into the luggage car, slept full length on a blanket, or almost full length. Presently, other officers filled the place up. I determined to sleep that night, and drinking half a bottle of local cognac I had luckily procured for a debt, I gave the other to the orderlies and slept. It was an uphill climb, and we went very slowly. With the dawn we met a startling rumour that some prisoners, having attempted an escape, we were all being sent on to Kastamuni, a lonely town on the edge of the hills, fringing the Black Sea, and 150 miles distant from Angora--150 miles that had to be trekked!

This was just the last edge. One wondered whether the journey would ever end or whether our kind protecting G.o.ds would get tired of fathering our shattered and siege-battered systems to the terminus.

If our health had been so good as even at the beginning of the trek it would all have seemed very funny no doubt.

But people's nerves were shattered and ragged and tempers raw, and our digestions quite gone.

The train climbed a gradient plain, treeless and lifeless, until 10 a.m., when we arrived at Angora, a dilapidated old town on undulating country. The station seemed the only decent building in it. We seemed to be at the end of creation.

Everything was so quiet and sleepy. It is indeed a branch line and one sees no Germans or Europeans. We were hustled at once into two deep and marched half a mile to a wretched low little eating restaurant place with some sleeping rooms upstairs. Our luggage came in afterwards. Mine had been looted, I found, quite considerably, two or three times since the Aleppo change, but I don't know where. The hotel promised us a gay time, as we saw battalions of bugs skirmishing on the walls. We had marched up at a smart pace and I felt like collapsing at every step. Then we were left in the sun for hours outside the place, with the result that I was soon pouring with the perspiration of fever. Then ague succeeded. A Turk took my temperature as 102, and left me.

Six hours afterwards I got a bed on a landing and fell into it, my temperature being over 103.

There is no tea or coffee except the black smoky stuff.

The senior officers and those first to arrive, including the padre and Hummerbug, went to another hotel somewhat better, taking the one orderly with them, so I lost the only servant who ever did a thing. No one else cared for the sick or took any notice. I had a tiny bowl of rice soup. The rest of the fatty fare I avoided. The next morning three-quarters of us had collapsed. Colitis and fever were all around, and the Turkish doctor inoculated those who were well enough to be done, for cholera, of which Angora was full.

During the night a fearful itching broke out all over my body, the most maddening itching imaginable. Spots and a red flush followed. I thought I was in for scarlet fever or something.

It proved to be "hives," however, and others had it at the same time in less degree. Reports from the hotel were that most of them were in bed sick also. It seemed as though we had forced ourselves on to the railways' end by will power, and then, that being over, had collapsed.

_July 20th._--We are still in Angora, and are not allowed to go outside the door, while for the first day or so they objected to one's going downstairs. Sending out for supplies is also forbidden, and we are thus forced to leave ourselves to the mercy of the hotel-keeper, who, by the way he behaves, I should say is a Young Turk. Hives leaves one a ma.s.s of swellings that itch like a million chilblains, and is due, I hear, to the impoverished nature of the blood and general want of nourishment.

The time here is no rosy one, and although more comfortable than in Mosul, the trek being mostly behind us, still one's vitality is even worse.

Two days after we arrived another party that had been waylaid at Kala Hissar came along with several officers I knew, and some I didn't, Colonel Peac.o.c.k amongst them. He and I and another made tea between us, and then they were moved to dingy quarters up the road, and the surplus fellows without rooms were sent also. Trembling with weakness and fever I stumbled into my clothes and found I could scarcely walk; but the Turks were demonstratively insistent, and, carrying a few things, I a.s.sisted an orderly to carry my bed and kit. We hauled it upstairs, and then another Turkish officer turned up and ordered me back as being sick. Leaving my luggage I toddled back, but that kindly-hearted cavalry giant, Captain Kirkwood, followed me with it, for which I was more grateful than I can say.

We are still without money. One day some of those fit enough were taken to a cafe near by, but as they had no money "nothing happened," as they expressed it on returning.

Anyway we are running up a bill here, and unless they pay us before leaving, the hotel walla will get nothing. I have a few spoonfuls of fatty rice, and lebon, and marrow soup daily.

Stapleton and another officer share my room.

There is no news, except a reported Russian shove through Roumania. It is also rumoured that we may move in a day or two. A Turkish doctor has been round, and has ordered me milk, etc., with medicine. I've sent frequently for both, but neither has come so far--four days since.

And these bugs are the "Devil's own." I suggest the Inns of Court Officers' Training Corps should have a bug rampant as their crest.

Except the Bible, one has no books. I have now finished the Psalms and Proverbs to-day, and am going on. They say the second phase of the t.i.tanic struggle (or Teutonic struggle) is beginning in France. I wish nothing better than to be fit again and in it.

_July 22nd._--Oh! This wretched confined bug-eaten little cafe! They would not let us go to hospital, where one might have got milk. They had no carts, they said, no medicine, no room ..., and cholera was there, etc., etc. To-day the doctor brought us black draughts for colitis, which we have chanced taking, and it has already done us some good. I am bitten red with bugs, and can feel at any moment several on me at once. The bed is full. I must try to sleep and forget them, as it is no use brushing them off. Temperature 100.

_July 23rd._--We left Angora to-day in carts. Feeling a little steadier, and the hospital being so inhospitable, I decided to try and keep going with the same column, trusting my luck once again. From the money they paid us I promptly kept a lira, and left the hotel-keeper's account partly unpaid. We promised him the money when we could cash cheques or get our remittances. With some of the cash I got the interpreter to buy two tins of milk and a little sugar and tea for the journey. We did not, however, get clear of the hotel-keeper and Commandant of Angora so easily. There was a riotous scene, yelling and screaming, shaking of fists in one's face, because we hadn't paid, when the Turks themselves had not paid us since Mosul! What an awful brute that Commandant of Angora was! A vicious, spiteful, selfish, callous savage.

We let him know it, too, by the time we had finished with him.

For instance, a lot of us were very ill and without money, and although there were rooms full of parcels sent us from home when Kut fell, he wouldn't even look to see. We saw some marked for several officers through a c.h.i.n.k in the door, but he wouldn't shift himself an inch to see about anything. So we had malaria without quinine, and drank wheat-coffee when tea was lying in our parcels inside.

I am glad to have left that vile cafe.

We went on all day very cramped, in the same carts, and that night slept in a stable full of bugs and fleas. I bought some lebon and slept. At 4 a.m. we were away again through hills and bare, treeless heights all day. The horses galloped and walked, and one's back bounced on the side of the narrow carts, which at the bottom were about two feet six inches wide, with sides sloping outwards. There were the usual upsets, and boltings, racing, and collisions. Twice our cart jambed another over the edge of a cliff, and we got rammed. There is nothing to eat except bread. It was an extra weary day.

For fourteen hours we jolted and jerked onwards, and then a pretty little green village hove in sight. We saw geese and ducks and fowls, which meant eggs, and a running stream, and brushwood for fires. But we were driven on and past this into the night. An hour and a half later we reached a filthy Arab enclosure, inside which we were driven. There was scarcely room for us to lie. One could not get water or firewood or anything. There was no Turkish officer to appeal to. We were all under the orders of a choush or sergeant.

The colonel was very indignant, but the choush seemed afraid we might escape unless we were shut up. The place swarmed with mosquitoes and fleas. This choush was taking no risks.

It was only after a long delay, when I found a Greek youth who knew a little German, that arrangements were made for one or two of us to go to a spring and get water. We had some tea and tried to sleep. That, however, was out of the question. For the last dozen miles one of the occupants of our cart was taken suddenly ill and had to lie down, so we had to break our backs under the driver's seat while the vehicle galloped and jolted. To any one except those in our condition this would have been merely inconvenience. It was an exceptionally beautiful sunset, with pink-limbed baby clouds resting on the rolling summits of soft gra.s.sy hills.