The Secrets of a Kuttite Part 8

The fine spell of weather seems about to break.

_February 29th._--It is raining in a most shocking fashion.

Lord! How it does rain here--when it wants to! The sun goes, the sky shuts its eyes and rains with all its might, so that it is difficult to believe there ever was a time when it did not rain.

c.o.c.kie is sick. I took his duty on the river-front observation post and watched for hours the deluge of water falling down and flowing past in a yellow turgid current. The reports are that it is hourly rising. Every endeavour is being made to strengthen the _bunds_ and build others. The main _bund_ across our front still holds and the other side of it is already a great lake where our former position was. The Turks have had to leave this part of their line and go back a few hundred yards to the sand-hills. Through my telescope I can see tiny waves dashing up against the _bund_ like a drifting sea against a breakwater. I met Captain Stace, R.E., to whom I lent a clinometer while he worked at this invaluable construction.

He is most rea.s.suring in his quiet optimistic way.

The next most important event of to-day is that Dorking was persuaded to exchange seven cigars for my ten cigarettes.

I came by them yesterday in a special issue "found" by the Supply and Transport people. By the way, there are more things in the Supply and Transport philosophy than heaven and earth ever dreamed of.

It is the gala-day of Leap Year, but I have no extra proposals to record--not even from Sarah Isquashabuk, the Arabian lady with bread-plate feet and small gate-post legs and a card-table back on which she carries small trees and walls of houses. She is a hard worker and always cheerful, but with a most murderous-looking eye, and I confess that one doesn't always see daylight through all her actions. This morning I saw her dragging a stalwart Arab along by the unshaven hair with much laughter--possibly her truant Adonis.

The Arab population have done themselves fairly well until recently, for they had hidden much foodstuff and stolen considerable supplies since. But the last few weeks they have been begging, and the children search corners and rubbish heaps.

If the siege goes to extremities it will be ten thousand pities that the Arab population was not removed out at the outset. For the laws of humanity would restrain our pushing them out now--the Turks or surrounding hostile Arabs would murder the lot. But we should have had the food they are getting now for rations, and that might have saved the lives of thousands of British downstream. All we did was to invite them to stay at their peril. They accepted.

_March 1st._--A most eventful day. c.o.c.kie is still down with dysentery, and I have relieved him all day at the observation post. Everything was very quiet on my way to tea.

I walked through the palm grove intending to examine the mountings of the anti-air gun when I heard the m.u.f.fled boom of guns to the north. Then others sounded--that ruffling sound of a blanket being shaken. I hastened back to the observation post, sh.e.l.ls falling in the trees and alongside the trench. I got on top and ran until I got back. The fire increased into the biggest artillery bombardment the enemy has yet made, lasting for two and a half hours. About ten batteries opened out on us, searching the palm grove for our 4-inch, and then four batteries concentrated on the 47 guns in the horse boats and barges moored in the river 150 yards from them, and also on the 5-inch heavies immediately below them but thirty yards to a flank. Thankful I was indeed for that thirty yards respite. At least fifty sh.e.l.ls pitched at exact range for my few sandbags that any direct hit would knock flying--exact range but always within those thirty yards to a flank, and of course on the other side into the river dozens of them. But not all, for sometimes they "swept"

and the heavy Windy Lizzies tore up the green ground all around, and the building, on the roof of which were my bags, shook so much that the bags moved. Then one lucky sh.e.l.l struck the _mahela_ near by, another got the building I was on, smashing down the end room, and yet another pierced the side part.i.tion ten yards off, and for a few seconds I didn't know whether I had been blown into the river or not, for the shock was severe and all was yellow darkness. Large pieces of wood and _mutti_ were hurled all around my sandbags, one piece fetching me a clout on the helmet and denting in my megaphone. I remember a faint cheer from the Supply and Transport shelters when the smoke cleared away and the observation post was seen still to exist. All this time I had been engaging one target with our 18-pounders, and keeping the rifle fire of Snipers' Nest down with another.

It all seemed to come about so very quickly. One moment I was walking out of the trench in the date grove threading my way over the slippery ground when the first three m.u.f.fled booms told me B target had opened fire. The next, without wondering what the grimy Turkish gunners at B were shooting at, or what the result of the sh.e.l.ls still in the air would be, I was tearing back to the river front. One counted the usual twelve seconds from the distant boom of these targets and then heard the invisible singers in the mid-air, and then krump-kr-rump-sh-sh-sh-sh as the sh.e.l.ls struck with a deep ba.s.s explosion followed by the swishing sound of falling earth that had been hurled up aloft. I recollect now seeing a mule bolt as it heard the increasing hits, and although I felt quite as uncomfortable as the mule I was tickled with the notion of a mule developing the fire instinct, for it bolted intelligently to a flank. That mule deserves to live.

From the observation post there was no need of a telescope to tell me that B was in action. The three puffs stood out very clearly and three more to the right. I reported a new target, gave the bearing, and watched our 5-inch and 47's reply. This brought A and B targets to engage our 47 and 5-inch below me. The 40-pounders tore up the water, going very close to but always missing the barges, and the shock from a Windy Lizzie hitting the water was always much greater to my sandbags on the roof, than when hitting the earth beneath us. In the former case my six-foot stack vibrated several inches. I saw one sh.e.l.l actually enter the 5-inch emplacement. It exploded on touching the other side, missing a gun-layer by inches. The shock knocked him down--that was all. Ten minutes later another sh.e.l.l got there again, within two feet of the former one. This time the men were taking cover. It was now that the battery opened on the town with 16-pounders, and on my engaging them the Turkish heavies lengthened and sh.e.l.led my observation station, also the other observation station for our heavies 100 yards away.

As I have noted, they got me in a beautiful 100-yards bracket, the one crashing into the poor devils in the hospital amid awful yells, and the two nearest getting the end of this building and smothering me with debris. Some pitched into the hospital forty yards away, their trajectory just above us. It is extraordinary the tricks one gets up to on occasions. The sergeant-major, an excellent soldier and very cool fellow, stuck his hands on his head more than once, and I found myself leaning hard up against the sandbags the hissing Lizzies were directly making for, just as if my doing so would help the bags to stick there. They came with a slow hiss that finished in a vicious whip past for the last bit. The sandbags stopped scores of bullets this afternoon, and that is all they are meant to do. I had very good luck with the target we had previously registered on. It is a target of three guns over the Shat-el-hai.

I shut them up with half a dozen rounds, and then took on another new target that opened further south. Then still another target on the Woolpress sector sh.e.l.led Kut and the 82nd engaged them. We had barely shut up this target M, and also S, when several other Turkish batteries that had been silent for months opened up on the town. This proved too much for the youthful spirit of Funny Teddy, that ardent and sprightly young mountain gun, which just as a puppy watching a fight between his seniors tries to have a look in too and barks and bucks about in the most promising style, opened up on H.M.S. _Sumana_. From my observation post I could see targets all round the compa.s.s being engaged by our guns.

The Turk was out-gunned and out-shot absolutely, but his target was Kut and ours merely his guns.

A hot rifle fire sprang up from the Snipers' Nest, Shat-el-hai, and from across the river by the tomb. This we kept down in a fashion in our sector, and the 12-pounders of the _Sumana_ also gave them hot music, as the men call it.

The town then came in for it badly, the hospital especially catching it. We may thank heaven the Turks haven't anything much in the way of high-explosive sh.e.l.l. They use old stuff, common and segment, and the thick crust of baked mud wall is usually sufficient percussion to bring about the burst.

The danger then is from the fragments. The building usually escapes. I have seen segments of a Windy Lizzie as big as a half loaf embedded in a wall opposite to the aperture it made on entering. High-explosive sh.e.l.l would demolish the building altogether.

At the height of the show the sharp notes of the alarm gong rang over Kut, and Fritz, with a second machine accompanying his Morane, was seen approaching rapidly from the north. Our machine-guns opened on them and also a brisk fusillade from the trenches as they came over. They bombed Kut and then returned to their camp for more bombs.

This was repeated again and again, making a dozen trips in all. Every one took cover in bas.e.m.e.nts. Scarcely a soul was to be seen. We had to stick where we were, as our guns were still in action, but one had plenty of time to look skyward and see the death-bird there, as I did three or four times this afternoon, directly in a plumb-line over our heads, and to hear the whirring propeller of the bomb increasing in loudness and pace as it fell. One trusted in Providence or luck. He got the bank of the river and the hospital several times, but his nearest to us was at least forty yards off. The bombs cannot be placed with great accuracy, so they drop three or four close together to make a zone. Some of the bombs were 100-pounders, which would blot a fellow out as effectually as an hydraulic stamp.

Funniest of all, the heavy mortar, Frolicsome f.a.n.n.y, tiring of acting wallflower on the other bank, chucked her big bombs at us. But she is a left-handed and cross-eyed filly, and the G.o.ds have set a limit to her range for evil. Some went in the river near the horse boats. These were received calmly by the Tigris. Another got into the sand-heap near our butchery and fell into it without exploding. Some scientifically minded Arabs charged up to secure it and were within thirty yards when the thing went off to their huge astonishment.

We had a good laugh at the way they sprinted back jabbering with rage and fear. The mules have got to know her, and, keeping one eye on the bomb as it comes over the river, continue grazing until it is nearly across and then bolt the opposite way.

One of Fritz's bombs, a 100-pounder, we saw toppling over and over in the air quite plainly. It didn't go off. But another such sent a table at least two hundred feet into the air.

This is true. I won't spoil it by saying that the cloth was laid and set. It was merely a table and its four legs stuck up towards the evening moon.

The bombing raid continued until it was too dark for Fritz to see. Then I went home, and on my way saw interested little crowds that had emerged to examine various sh.e.l.l-holes.

Arabs ran up and down the streets howling for their dead.

Over a thousand sh.e.l.ls have been flung into the town and there were a good few hit among the hospital patients, and the Arabs lost many. About a score only were killed, but many more were injured. Considering the intensity of the bombardment this is an excellent tribute to the shelters of Kut.

_10 p.m._--Every one is extra vigilant to-night although we think it hardly likely the Turks will try to storm us. That they cannot easily do now, and the floods increase their difficulty daily.

_March 2nd._--The whole night long wild howlings and dismal wailing of the Arabs for their dead and wounded continued and kept me awake. Now and then some other Arab extra full of despair would let out a yell like a steam-whistle that rose high above the universal hubbub. The Jews here cry in a different key altogether, a wobbly vibrato long sustained, much less sweet but not wholly unlike the _tangi_ of the Maoris in New Zealand. A Jewish funeral is a sad little affair.

Dressed in long black robes and carrying lights in little tins they escort the dead to a grave way out on the _maidan_. They walk with bowed heads in twos, a tiny column and a sort of acolyte person following the body. They perform their ceremonies by night so as to avoid drawing fire upon themselves.

It is a peaceful day, the peace that follows a violent storm.

Rumour has it that various Turkish guns which had been withdrawn for service downstream have been brought back here, and the bombardment was intended to acquaint us with the fact. Or else they are thinking of sending the guns down and wanted to disillusion us on the point. This is most likely.

It certainly hasn't done much harm, and surely Khalil Pacha does not suppose he can give us "nerves" by this sort of thing.

A beautiful aeroplane of ours flew over, her wings resplendent with the morning sun.

It has been very cold and windy all day, but so very peaceful--not the peacefulness of calm but of a windy, lonely day.

During the show yesterday I was practically doing C.R.A River-front, a high-sounding t.i.tle especially pleasing to c.o.c.kie, but as a matter of fact it is merely an observation job, as all he does is to command his own three guns. He is still seedy and inconsolable at his inaction.

_March 2nd._--An uneventful day. We fired a few sniping rounds. I hear the 76th Battery got its share of sh.e.l.ling the other day, and a bombardier was killed.

I persuaded c.o.c.kie to talk about ancient Egyptian kings.

He annotates himself in a most delightful way in talking history, and has an extraordinary imagination for detail.

This imagination it must be admitted does not get much of a chance in Egypt, which has been fairly well explored. I would suggest turning him loose among visions of the lost Atlantis. I believe he would even produce the history of the other Adam's first love affair in that continent. Some such sentence as this--"Yes! In that extraordinary land which history has almost forgotten and which geology never knew, Phargon the bog-king, the praecursor of Romeo, proceeded to divest himself of shoes and jacket, and taking in another hole of his belt, plunged, according to Whinny, feet foremost after Phargette."

_March 3rd._--The cold wind, or the wet, or something, has made my back so rheumaticky that I can hardly turn round or get down to tie my bootlaces. I am very lucky to have kept as fit as I have. Dozens of men from the trenches are in hospital with muscular rheumatism from the floods--the source of many evils.

I have finished "Monte Cristo." What an artist he was!

And I have started "David Copperfield" again.

I omitted to record that a sh.e.l.l tore down the house at the front of this, and one wrecked the base of the column office. Several horses were wounded during the bombardment.

We had a parade of Mussulman drivers, and I read a communique asking them to eat horseflesh, as their Mullah in India requested, this being required by the exigencies of the service. Not they! I believe, nevertheless, there is only one thing rooted deeper than a man's religion, and that is his appet.i.te. This proves it, for hunger is driving them to eat it.

What an awful joke on the part of Charon if, when these fellows reach the banks of the river Styx, he informs them the only available ferry is astride of swine.

We have finished the inspections. The horse rations have fallen away to very little. We give them pieces of palm tree to gnaw at.

_March 4th._--The rheumatism is much worse. It is bleak and cold in the observation post. On such an occasion the vigil is a wretchedly dull one. I'm too cold to dream. One can only psychologize viciously on the difference in point of view between a full man and an empty one. Eating maketh a satisfied man, drinking a merry man, smoking a contented man. But eating, drinking, and smoking maketh a happy man--that is, the heart of him glad.

It is not far from the truth to say I have to-day done none of these. For by _eating_ one cannot mean half a slice of chaff bread, nor by _drinking_ a water-coloured liquid like our siege tea, nor yet by _smoking_ a collection of strange dried twigs and dust. Man, it has been excellently observed, cannot live by bread alone. How much less, then, can he live upon half chaff and half flour?

Far away on the edge of the western horizon I watched for hours, through my telescope, a convoy of camels, each with a tiny white dot of humanity aboard, striding away with delightful patience to the Turkish camp downstream. They were conveying stores from Shamrun, the enemy depot on the river above us.

General Smith, of former mention in these notes, has been dangerously ill in hospital, but the crisis has been pa.s.sed. He contracted pneumonia on the retirement. I have been to see him. He is very full of pluck, and gave me a _Times_.

Tudway, R.N., dropped in for a pipe. We talked of the sea, and he spoke of the soft life on the Chinese station.

The adjutant of the Dorsets was killed while strolling in a communication trench yesterday--a chance bullet getting his heart. The D.A.A.G. is being operated on to-day with an abscess in the thigh. The facilities for operating on such cases are very modest. But nothing less than raising the siege could alleviate these matters. And in this little maelstrom of destiny here at Kut, we and our weaknesses are whirled around together. Some of us disappear in the vortex, and others continue circling around the swift walls, and may or may not be fortunate enough to so continue. But from this seething cauldron none can escape by his own effort, for we are all up against a thing greater than ourselves.

_March 5th, 6th._--Shortly after daybreak, as usual, I got up, feeling awfully full of aches and unsteady. c.o.c.kie, however, being still seedy, it was necessary for me to be on duty on the observation post, so I flannelled myself up and went. I stuck it until 9 a.m., when I returned for breakfast. Our Pa.r.s.ee regimental doctor, from whom I required a dose of rheumatism physic, sent for a major of the Fourth Field Ambulance, who p.r.o.nounced me bad enough with muscular rheumatism to have to go into hospital. I was awfully disgusted at this after holding out so long, and begged to be allowed to stay in my billet. But it was of no use. He said strict orders made it imperative, also that in hospital eggs were forthcoming. Four native bearers and a stretcher turned up shortly afterwards, much to my disgust. Anyway I walked, after fixing up for the sergeant-major to carry on.

I entered a ward too terrible for words, next bed to a most sad and awful apparition of a poor fellow who had been very ill. It was a long skin-covered skeleton with skinless ears, eyes protruding so far that one wondered how they stuck up at all, teeth on edge, legs thinner than a pick handle, and two arms like gloved broom-sticks catching frantically at various parts of his apparel where creatures of the amoebic world fled before those awful eyes. Add to this a half-insane chattering, punctuated with a periodical sharp crack as louse after louse was exploded between the creature's two thumbs, and you have the picture ent.i.tled, "A Hospital Shikar." Altogether it was a sight utterly terrible.

I thought of flight, and other things, but the hospital was small, and there was no other available room. So I wished them all good morning, and sat on the side of my bed farthest away, and having undressed got into bed as the a.s.sistant-surgeon, otherwise apothecary, directed. I had not been there for more than three minutes when the Enigma's Hindoo bearer entered. He became quickly engaged with his master in strenuous argument relating to curry, what time the Enigma ricochetted on and off the bed, and his mouth became the exhaust valve for his pent-up opinions of the world in general and his bearer in particular. I discovered later that malaria and dysentery had between them rendered him temporarily insane.

He had been in the hospital for the whole of the siege, but was now slowly recovering. While he was _in extremis_, however, I should say from all accounts that he must have been by far the most interesting person in Kut. For many days it seems his main hobby was in trying to make his bearer precede him through a door which did not exist at the foot of his bed.

Another diversion was in seating himself on the window-sill stark naked about 1 a.m. in the night and mimicking, often with ghastly relish, the sounds and noises of various members of the Turkish artillery from Windy Lizzie to Naughty Nellie, the buzzing howitzer. I believe he was quite good at the bullets, and very promising on Frolicsome f.a.n.n.y, which was easy, and only required an awful noise without warning--for as I have noted f.a.n.n.y's jokes sometimes held fire for minutes.

But in reproducing vocally the aeroplane's 100-pound bombs he is reported as having outdone even the bomb itself. In fact his own nerves could not stand this performance, and he generally wound up the item by taking cover under his bed.