The Secrets of a Kuttite Part 3

I arranged for the teams and wagon to be there at 11.40 p.m., and for all links, swingle-tree hooks, drag-washers, and pole-bar to be bound up with rag so as to render them as noiseless as possible. The teams arrived punctually, their breath steaming up in the cold night air. The G.S. wagon had had a mishap over a rut just before pulling up, and the body was flung backward off the axle trees and jambed. We all tried our best to rectify it, but the jamb was so bad that it involved taking the thing to pieces. Here was first-rate luck already. The adjutant had spoken of the difficulties of the job, and strongly doubted the advisability of taking the wagon for the detachment's kit. A wagon is a rattling affair after any length of service. I utilized the accident as an excuse for waiting until the moon had gone down, which I thought advisable. I then awoke the battery sergeant-major and a detachment for a final attempt on the wagon. That was unsuccessful.

My drivers were all picked and excellent fellows. I mounted an old cavalry stager, and we set off about 1 a.m., when I met the guide, who, to my surprise, instead of being an officer or European N.C.O., was a half-caste, and as hopeless an idiot as ever got lost. His teeth were chattering with fright from the start. The _maidan_ we had to cross was scored with trenches and barbed wire, and there was only one crossable place on each occasion that had been purposely made for us to cross. The guide could not even find the first flag. I threatened him with all sorts of disasters if he didn't find the place at once. We wandered about inside the _bund_ of a communication trench for thirty minutes in awful darkness, that was at once our salvation and greatest difficulty. I rode along several trenches, and at last found the bridge the sappers had built for us. I believe they had measured the wheel-tracks of a gun-limber and deducted one-eighth of an inch from each side just to test the driving capacity of the field artillery.

We found a plank and shoved it down. It was quite dark, and any light was fatal. The drivers pointed out the difficulty.

I told them to do their best. They deserved a medal, every man of them. The teams dressed exactly for the bridge, and then, when all was ready, moved forward and crossed safely.

The noise brought rifle and machine-gun fire on us at once, but the bullets went high, a few hitting the ground with a sticky thud. I took the first team to a flank, and then we got the second over. The fire increased. I ordered the second gun team to keep one hundred yards behind the first in case of a volley. I didn't want to lose both. Again the guide was at fault, leading us bang upon our first-line trench some one hundred and fifty yards off the Turks. But the breeze came from the enemy to us, and, besides, the limbers moved almost noiselessly, so excellently taut did the drivers keep their traces. At last we found the small scrub and the guns. A subaltern rushed out and said we should be shot to the devil in two seconds if we came an inch further. Two days under continual rifle fire and no chance of doing anything had naturally not improved his nerves. I remember saying certain "things" about guides. I was much concerned with the state of his guns. They were in a banked hollow, close together in such a way as to render it impossible for the teams to hook in. Besides that, tins and rubbish were right across the track of any team attempting to approach the guns.

As for the guns themselves, they bristled with the surplus baggage. All this meant noise, and my orders were for the greatest silence.

I ordered all baggage to be taken off the guns, and ammunition to replace it, as we had no wagon. We loaded all the ammunition, and after some trouble got the teams hooked in and away, following two feet of cover along the river edge.

It was on the knees of the G.o.ds whether the enemy heard us.

The fire had dwindled to sniping only, but we could see the lights of the Turks. A second guide now appeared. He was to conduct us to the new position for the Volunteer Battery guns in the middle of the _maidan_. To get there we had to cross three or four trenches and barbed-wire entanglements.

The new guide, also a Eurasian gunner of the Volunteer Battery, was more confident than the other, but as utterly useless. He led us everywhere except in the right quarter.

Once he was certain he had found the crossing that had been shown to him that evening. On approaching it, however, I found it to be the flimsy roof of an officers' mess. In desperation I led the guns towards the original crossing, intending to reconnoitre for myself. The fire now increased, and a maxim opened. I believed we were discovered. But the bullets flew high. The Turks never dreamed that we could be so close.

At the bridge we made an awful row, the heavy guns straining and creaking abominably. It took some time to dress on to the narrow bridge. I wanted to get both guns over without delay, as I knew we should be spotted then.

The first team refused to cross, but were persuaded to follow my horse, an old cavalry thing I had for the evening, that wanted to gallop on hearing the bullets. The drivers handled their teams magnificently. A few inches of error would have landed the guns in the deep trench--here quite ten feet wide on the top. The first gun got over, and something snapped in the bridge. I cautioned the drivers to have their whips ready. The second gun smashed the plank, and the bridge gave way. But the limber was over, and with whips and spurs the gun was b.u.mped over also. We hurried to a flank, as several machine-guns opened on us. The fire was too high, and neither man nor horse was. .h.i.t. One or two bullets cracked on a limber, and my old horse reared, breaking his girth, and the saddle and I found the ground together. I exchanged horses with a sergeant, and we went on. For the best part of an hour I rode alone up and down trenches, and at last found the crossings and the new gun emplacements.

General Delamain, whose dug-out we missed by a few feet, asked if we had had casualties, and what had happened to our guide. We got back about 3.30 a.m. The sergeant-major had lain awake anxious. He is a father to the battery, and was delighted we had had no casualties. "Didn't expect to see you all back, sir."

My adjutant said he felt certain we were all done in when he heard the machine-guns open fire; and Colonel Maule said: "Good show," and complimented me kindly on the affair.

Looking backwards now, I am sure we could never have managed it with the G.S. wagon.

On the evening of the next day, December 12th, the Turks made an attack they had evidently been preparing some days.

It started so suddenly and decisively we felt no doubt as to the matter. The bullets came without warning, a veritable blizzard. I rushed out to the limber 'phone box, and we were soon at it hammer and tongs. The attack was on the fort, and a demonstration supported it from the trenches and scrub in the zone in front of our guns. We raked the trenches with shrapnel for hours. Subsequently the Arabs reported that while the Turks were concentrating in the scrub, our fire had killed a great many. We also fired some star sh.e.l.l, getting the burst well behind the enemy so as to show him up. Guns were booming all around, and the rifle fusillade on the walls and in the trees crackled like a forest on fire.

On December 13th I began duty as Forward Observing Officer for the field batteries. That meant that from our first-line trenches I was to range our guns into the enemy's trenches and saps. I was advised to dispense with helmet and wear a comforter as offering less target. I left with a signaller so as to reach the trenches at dawn, which was about 6.40 a.m. A surprise was in store for me. Instead of the roomy deep trenches with firing platforms, dug-outs, and so on, I found wretched little ditches, in many cases only three feet deep at the traverses. I did not know then, as I know now, the tremendous amount of work required in digging a good trench, and in Kut there were miles of them to be dug. The first few days I crawled miles on my knees. Every few yards some one had been sniped, so it came to crawling round the traverses.

The trenches smelled horribly in the parts held by the native regiments. The dead were slung over the parapet, and sometimes not buried for days. The Gurkhas are truly gorgeous little men, patient, and very keen. They soon had their trenches wonderfully improved. The parapets varied most unreliably in thickness, and one had to keep one's head below the level, as bullets often came through. Turkish snipers were quite good. One day I saw a Punjabi carrying a pot of curry on his head and a bullet knocked it off. It spilled its hot contents over him and several others that blocked the road as they sat huddled up in the trench.

I ranged our fire on to the Turkish trenches that in places had got so close as fifty yards, and at one place where they were sapping, only thirty yards off. We were firing 18-pounders at very close range, the nearest being eight hundred and fifty yards. It was great fun to correct back a few yards and see the sh.e.l.l burst twenty yards in front of me, having travelled about five feet above one's head. One such occasion I was ordered to empty the trench for some yards in case of accidents. It was as well we did so, for one or two prematures burst behind us, and quite an appreciable amount of shrapnel got in the trench. Several times after ranging I saw dead and wounded among the digging parties of the enemy's trenches.

These trenches! They have their advantages, it is true, for the Turks dare not sh.e.l.l them, and if you keep your head down they are about the safest place in Kut; but in the course of their construction it was a case of a breaking back from hours of stooping, or a bullet if one stretched. I've had bullets knock dirt into my face, so that I thought that I was. .h.i.t, and had periscopes smashed to bits in my hand. Once a bullet cut dead in the centre of the gla.s.s of the exposed end, and pieces crashed all around my head, burying themselves in the wall of the trench, and wounding a _naik_ near by. The Turks even came to know my yellow ranging flag, and cut the bamboo rod time and again. They also had a nasty trick of ricochetting bullets at us by firing them just ahead on the ground. Not a few came into the trenches, especially before they were very deep. Another factor that brought more fire on us was the necessity of signalling from the trenches to the battery by flag, and also having a danger flag. The reason for this was the shortage of wire. The Turks always opened a hot fire in the vicinity of the flags, and observation was very difficult, except by periscope, as the loopholes were most unsafe.

One afternoon I had been trying to discover a hostile maxim that was playing havoc in our main communication trench. A native reported that he had located it, and while looking through a tiny loophole in plate iron he was shot through the forehead, the bullet making a ghastly mess of his head. Such a quick, silent death makes one careful. By and by more periscopes were made by the sappers, and there were fewer casualties. One mistake is enough, unless one is very lucky. Turkish snipers lay with their rifles ready on a part of our trench that was insufficiently deep. The first sign of a movement there was the signal for a volley. After a time we got accustomed to the dead things in the trenches, and ate by them and slept by them. After all, they are only earth full of memories as is an old coat.

Direct hits were very rare, but on one occasion I had the satisfaction of seeing a machine-gun hurled over the Turkish parados. The 82nd was an excellent battery, and shot well.

It was great fun ranging on the new trenches that had begun to appear since the night. We blew one whole trench completely out of shape and there was a stampede of Turkish heads.

Great luck decreed that two sh.e.l.ls, on different days, both premature, should scatter shrapnel in our trenches, while emptied for safety. On one occasion Major Nelson, of the West Kents, I, and my signaller were there standing at the end of a traverse. A kerosene tin and some utensils were scuppered between us, and dozens of our shrapnel bullets buried themselves in the wall of the trench. But incidents of this nature grew too numerous for mention, and happened to many. Another round from a cold gun landed into the cookhouse of the 76th Punjabis. No one was there, but the cookhouse was not improved. Another tragic premature killed a private of the Hants and badly wounded a second.

Some of the shrapnel of this burst reached to where I was in the trenches nine hundred yards away.

We were in daily dread of another attack, and at night all our guns were placed on their night-lines, each to its zone, just over our trenches. On the first indication of a general attack we thus made a curtain of fire that the Turks funked breaking through. Two or three times a night we would sometimes have to go into action for this purpose.

The West Kents improved their trenches splendidly, and made them quite comfortable. A very nice regiment they were, and on many occasions I have been grateful for their hospitality at a breakfast.

They had a wee wooden home-made trench-mortar that we christened "Gra.s.shopper," as every time he was fired he jumped, sometimes several feet back over the parados, out of the trench, and had to be recovered with la.s.sos. Once he tried to range to some trenches farther away, and blew himself to small bits. The casualties during these first weeks were very heavy. Our line was short, scarcely more than a mile and a half, and the enemy swept this with fair regularity. The fatigue parties often had to risk going over the top in the night, and there was almost always a casualty. I often think of my great luck on that night when I went for the guns.

Nor shall I easily forget the first time I was in a trench when an attack began. This trench was about eighty yards from ours, and the rate of fire was terrific, but not so fast as ours. The Turks well knew that although only eighty yards had to be crossed nothing human could arrive.

My trench incidents would fill a volume, which I have no time to write, and even with time it would be difficult to isolate individual instances of extraordinary routine.

What a kaleidoscopic mixture this diary is, to be sure. I confess that on reading a pa.s.sage here and there it seems merely an autobiographical sequence, and egoistical into the bargain.

But the truth is, that personal experience in this thing called war is at best an awakening of memory from a dream of seas and foggy islands bewildering and confusing. A few personal incidents loom a little clearer, deriving what clarity they have from the warmth of personal contact. Then incidents fraught even with the greatest danger become commonplace, until the days seem to move on without other interest than the everlasting proximity of death. Even that idea, prominent enough at first, gets allocated to the back of one's mind as a permanent and therefore negligible quant.i.ty. I firmly believe that one gets tired of an emotion. A man can't go on dreading death or extracting terrific interest from the vicinity of death for over long. The mind palls before it, and it gets shoved aside. I have seen a man shot beside me, and gone on with my sentence of orders without a break. Am I callous? No, only less astonished. Death has lost its novelty. I am tempted to diverge into a speculation as to the necessary permanency of Heaven's novelty, a novelty of which one can never tire. Alas, I am not now up in the cloistral peacefulness of Cambridge, so I can't follow up that speculation.

Life never seemed so wonderful a thing as it does now. I am extracting more fun and fact to the square inch here than I ever did before. Now we know death as a tangible and non-abstract affair. Let me not be accused of irreverence if I say we walk in his shadow and lunch with him.

Every evening I return to the battery and enjoy a meal in mess or relieve my major at his post. Then follows a look around my section and inspection of the night-lines, and then bed in my dug-out among the date palms. Our sergeant-major is the best I've seen yet. The other day, just as he put down his megaphone in the speaking hole, a bullet plugged clean through it into the opposite wall, a vicious tw.a.n.g. He laughed quietly. "I believe it was alive," he said.

The Turks have moved their big guns closer, and their sh.e.l.ls crash straight at this wall, which before was perfectly safe. On the 20th, two days ago, a sh.e.l.l smashed into our ammunition boxes after coming through the wall, a few yards from my dug-out, which I have been deepening this afternoon.

It is a quiet day, and I left the firing-line early. The enemy can't locate our guns, as there is a wall some eighty yards ahead of the battery, so his gunners range just over the wall and search. Several sh.e.l.ls have been through the gun emplacements, and some trenches have been smashed. Now and then a palm tree goes down with a crash. I've often awakened in the night thinking the whole place on fire. Sometimes, again, I awake to the sound of soft ceaseless swishing, that full and incessant sound of early morning in England, dear England, when the gentle rain washes open the eyelids of the waking world and green trees murmur, and birds begin to sing--but I look outside my dug-out and see only a ma.s.s of black crows flying over a palm-dotted wilderness to their Tigris haunts.

This morning the Gurkha regiment relieved in the first line. I am quite keen about them, a manly, silent, respectful set of men; but children, too, mere children, for all that they are tigers in a sc.r.a.p. Their genial colonel and I had a pleasant conversation after my morning ranging was done. We discussed the war and the Mesopotamian campaign and the eternal question of relief. He is a most active C.O.

of a sprightly regiment. It yet remains a wonder to me how these full-sized colonels can possibly get along the half-completed trenches, which the first fortnight were only some 3 ft. 6 ins. deep, and often barely 2 ft. wide, and partly filled with ammunition boxes, stores, men's kit, and sundry cooking pots.

Among the gunner subs, is one known as R. A., which some say means Royal Artillery, and others the Ricochetting American. He has just returned from ranging, with the announcement that he knocked out half a dozen maxims with his 18-pounders. We have been ragging him by suggesting his field-gla.s.ses must be faulty, and asking to see them.

At a conversation in Kut to-day one heard many conclusions about America, who is not yet in the war. "It is a terrible New World," as Dooley said of the war; "but it is better than no world at all." Not the least of our blessings is the gift of Time. Time it is that invites us to sit tight and say nothing while bounders and cleverly veneered barbarians romp rapturously through an applauding world. We have found them out. In time others will find them out. In the meantime we wait patiently. And patience is life. This has no connection with America, except that the Americans, with all their virtues, and they have many, have adopted impatience as their national characteristic. And Impatience is the offspring of Ambition, and Ambition is forgetful of many things.

"Hitch your wagon to a star," suggests Emerson to his countrymen. "I guess I'll do better," says the American citizen, "I'll hitch it to a comet." At what time the shade of Don Quixote, that excellent gentleman, smiles quietly as he recalls having once hitched his charger to a windmill!

_Later. Quos Di Amant._--I hear that poor Courtenay and Garnett are dead. Some days have elapsed since writing the last lines owing to a severe engagement we fought on the 24th and 25th. I will revert to that in a moment, but just now, as I sit here writing in the Fort, my narrative seems incapable of any reference quite fitting for that excellent soldier Colonel Courtenay. My General was ill when I left Headquarters to replace a casualty in the 82nd Battery that day under heavy fire.

Colonel Grier became C.R.A., and got hit in the head with the splinter of a sh.e.l.l. Then Colonel Courtenay became C.R.A., and Captain Garnett, Staff Captain of retirement memories, removed with the office of the B.G.R.A. on top of the building where the helio men had been. It was quite a good place, but conspicuous and dangerous, and sh.e.l.ls struck incessantly on the wall behind. It was also in line for Headquarters, which the Turks had located. Not long after my leaving the building a disastrous sh.e.l.l killed Captain Begg instantly, an awfully nice fellow, with whom I had often had a joke, wounded and burned Captain Garnett severely in the leg, and hit Colonel Courtenay badly in the lower leg, smashing it. I tried hard to get along to see them, but urgent duties prevented. Garnett's case was complicated with jaundice.

He died suddenly, to our great surprise and grief. I thank goodness I am not married just now. The General, he, and I, were together in that awful retirement, and during that time we exchanged many confidences, and he had censured me for taking risks. Now he is fallen already. Colonel Courtenay died heroically two days after the amputation. He was known throughout India as "Mike." After the operation we were discussing how fine it would be for him to be able to ride still. They had amputated his leg some few inches below the knee, leaving plenty for a grip. I suppose the shock took him away, that and the inadequacy of medical conditions. He was a robust soldier, and every one says the Service has lost a great sahib and an excellent officer.

Several other amputated cases have died with equal suddenness. It seems that they are mostly run down with the effects of this dug-out, exerciseless life. And the strain is constant. No part of Kut escapes the sh.e.l.l and rifle fire.

The hospital has several casualties daily.

We have been on half rations in some things, and others have ceased altogether. Tinned milk and fresh have both stopped. There were a few goats, which have gone under from sh.e.l.l fire. Drinks have become a memory, except for the lucky ones who had huge mess stores awaiting them in Kut. The bread ration is one half, bacon twice weekly, (a tiny portion), no potatoes, and some cheese. Bully and bullocks will last for some little time longer. The trouble is that very many have dysentery, or colitis, or acute diarrhoea, and cannot take much except milk and eggs. These are almost un.o.btainable. What little there is, goes to the hospital.

The weather is bright and sunny, quite warm at midday and freezing at night. The extremes serve to emphasize the cold, and I find I require more blankets than ever I did even in the coldest weather at s...o...b..ry. I have contrived to be comfortable by the help of my Burberry sleeping-bag and riding coat, combined with a travelling rug that is warm with distant and pleasant memories.

During the week preceding Christmas the a.s.siduous Turk completed alternative positions for most of his guns, and it became necessary for us to do the same, so that at emergency we could shoot over the river also. For this a place was selected on the _maidan_, as we call the bare flat plain. We began with the pits by night fatigues, under fire the whole time. The high parapet of a communication trench probably saved a lot of us from getting hit. In two nights we equipped my section, which was on the right, with a communication trench, and I then fixed up an excellent little observation post by a wall for myself. Long ramps were made for the guns, so that we could get them into and away from the pits without difficulty. It was to be my show, and I was very keen on it.

Then I chose a dark night and took my section down on the edge of the _maidan_ near the river to demolish a _mutti_ building that came in the way of our fire zone. Very heavy fire, but fortunately much too high, broke out from over the river.

One man had a shovel hit, and another bullet struck a huge lump of _mutti_ two men were carrying in my direction. Then we built a wall with the _debris_ to screen us from machine-gun fire immediately over the river. Altogether we made a good job of it.

The horses are having many casualties daily. Already we have lost a fourth of their number.

The relieving force is rumoured to be expected about January 3rd. It cannot be a very large force, although on the date of Ctesiphon large reinforcements were wired for immediately. At first we were told that our concentration was taking place near Shaik Saad, some thirty miles below, on December 15th, but the rumours and counter-rumours cast considerable doubt on the whole thing.

On December 24th the enemy tried to storm Kut with a surprise attack by way of the Fort. It was a cold but eventful Christmas Eve. About 12.30 midday a hot rifle fire broke out over our trenches, and within a few seconds the symphony of bullets crackling in the palm trees swelled to a roar like the falling of fast and dense hail.

We went into a fast rate of fire at once with the battery on our prepared zones, and immediately put up a heavy barrage of shrapnel just in front of our first line. At first the densest fire seemed to come from in front of the 16th Brigade, but soon it extended right round our perimeter.

Woolpress appeared to be busy in action also, and then our guns were hotly engaged by enemy guns of varying calibre, but chiefly 16-pounders, shrapnel, and high explosive. From our concealed position in an old orchard surrounded by a high thick wall we were not definitely located, and the Turkish gunners, often after having got our exact range, went on sweeping and searching, hoping to get us. More than one dug-out and gun-pit was entered by a sh.e.l.l, and one particularly narrow shave was when a 16-pounder crashed through the revetment of sandbags, smashed the shield of the gun, and buried itself in the earth behind without exploding. The rifle fire was so thick that our telephone wire in the trees was cut through the first two minutes. Major Harvey, our adjutant, had selected this position for the guns. The dug-outs of the gun detachments and the communication trenches were by this time well and deep down.

The fire became general all round Kut. High above the roar of rifle fire and scream of sh.e.l.l rose the sharp high note of the Turkish mitrailleuses. Suddenly most of his guns concentrated on the Fort, a salient by the river, none too strongly held. The Turk was evidently merely demonstrating on our sector, and intended to attack through the Fort. All our available guns in turn were switched on to their Fort lines, _i.e._ for a barrage, already prepared, just over the walls of the Fort. We increased our range and searched, getting in among the Turkish reserves all piled up and awaiting ready to support.

A red glow hung over the low mud walls, and reports said that the Turks with great gallantry and determination had rushed up to the outer ramparts with grenades and charges of dynamite.

By this time their guns had made a breach or two in the eastern sector known as Seymour bastion, and heavy hand-to-hand fighting ensued. Grenades and the bayonet were chiefly in operation. At one time some hundreds of Turks had entered the ramparts, and it was touch and go.

The Oxfords and Norfolks were hurried up to stiffen the Indian regiments, and every available man, sappers or pioneers included, was given a weapon and pushed into the fray. The Volunteer Battery did extremely well with rifle and grenade.

Instances of pluck and daring were many. Handfuls of men from the British regiments in little knots formed the backbone of the struggle, and, nipping around behind the attackers, dispatched them to a man. Finally, thanks largely to the terrible casualties our guns had inflicted on the enemy supports, the pressure slackened, and the last Turks were bombed out of the bastion. It was a great resistance, and successful chiefly owing to the outstanding merit and fighting quality of the British regular infantry.