Читать книгу The Secrets of a Kuttite - Edward O. Mousley - Страница 11

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"Fruit-salt" and I joined our batteries, mine being the 76th R.F.A. All the force bore marks of a great struggle, great losses, keen hardship. The weary army was resting. That was well. Some kindly god that knew what still awaited them smiled on them, and they slept. Here at last, I thought, is the famous army of General Townshend, the fighting Sixth Division, that had overcome difficulties that few other armies had been called on to do, that had endured hardships of heat and thirst and pestilence in the cauldron of Asia, marched hundreds of miles with improvised transit, and moved from victory to victory until Ctesiphon. General Townshend's was the most loyal of armies in adversity. They knew that against his counsel he had been ordered to risk the action, where even if doubly victorious their tiny numbers would have been insufficient to hold Baghdad. There was also the haunting dream of that lonely river, our sole communication, winding through a hostile country five hundred miles to Basra. Reinforcements there were none at all in the country, which was a fortnight's distance from India and more from Egypt. Anyway, this was the army of which I, a subaltern in the 76th Battery, Royal Field Artillery, was now privileged to consider myself a member.

Rapid plans were in execution to strengthen Azizie, as the Turks might try a night attack. The troops had only arrived that morning, but by nightfall we had thrown up quite a bit of cover with gun pits and light breastwork for the infantry. Perfect order reigned over the customary military procedure. No Turks were in sight. Every man of the fatigued army worked as happens on manœuvres. It was only the battered condition of the gun carriages, the gaping wounds in the diminished teams of horses and that quiet "balanced up" look in the eyes of every Tommy that told of a reality more grim. On the flat mud desert, with no kind asset of nature to assist them, the nearest reinforcements hundreds of miles away, but with its own transport and some limited supplies, this lonely British army formed its semi-circle on the river. So it faced this unkind plain, its destiny in its hands.

An atrociously bad place to defend is Azizie, merely a meagre bend in the river, a floody or dusty desert with a few mud-walled buildings on the Tigris edge. Much of our baggage had to be left on a barge and the rest was taken from the Shirin into the R.A. shed. The first was ultimately sunk and the latter burned. None of it I have ever seen since—saddlery, coats, uniforms, camp equipment—all went.

All the officers of the 76th Battery had been wounded except one—Devereux, who had been with me at Hyderabad, and Captain Carlyle of the 63rd Battery was in command.

I slept by the gun pits. Beyond the line of infantry that separated us from the Turk, some jackals howled in ghoulish song. They had followed on the flank of our army and waited expectant, for they too had visited the field of Ctesiphon! Their devilish symphony grew fainter, and I slept. Now and then I was awakened by sniping.

The next day, November 29th, we got matters in order, rearranged teams and sections to replace casualties, and overhauled. We continued our vigilance. There was much to be done and, as might be expected after the recent ordeal, many were nerve-ragged and irritable, but all were light-hearted. We expected to move that evening, but did not. I slept on the perimeter by the guns again, and awoke to find my servant packing up. Orders to stand by to move in an hour set me going at once. After an early breakfast I had to go and relieve another artillery officer on the observation post, which was merely a few sandbags on the roof of a house, covered with rushes to keep off the sun. At 11 a.m. the greater part of the force had got on the road. Southward ho! The Staff left about 11.30. General Smith, C.R.A., asked me my orders, which were to wait there until sent for, but which should have included "unless the Staff leaves first," as I was left without any guard and surrounded by hostile Arabs. I thought it better to wait a little and give a last attention to the column I had seen emerging from the northward clumps of trees where the enemy was waiting. I am glad I did so, for I was afforded the privilege of witnessing a spectacle at once unique and magnificent.

Below me the river lay blue in the morning sun between the black winding banks, and dark Arab forms dotted its shores. Somewhere ahead upstream was Baghdad. Distant horsemen scoured the plain. Some cavalry of ours lay hidden in an old smashed serai just north of the village. Moving south-eastward rose the dust of the main Turkish advance, mounting in clouds higher and higher. The quicker dust marked their cavalry, and here and there in dense column formation their wheeled traffic came on. To the southward in perfect order, and moving at an even pace, was our own army in retreat. The khaki column reached away to the horizon of dust, and the swarthy visages of our Indian troops doing rearguard in extended order, and the gleam from the accoutrements of the 14th Hussars were visible without field glasses. The village itself that was burning in a dozen places now broke into one great conflagration, and simultaneously some Arab bullets cut their way unmistakably near. I decided to rejoin my battery that was waiting half a mile off, as it was selected for rear guard. Fortunately, before climbing down the observation post I took the precaution to peer over the edge at the doorway. I saw about a dozen gigantic Arabs, one or two with knives, lounging round the exit, evidently counting on my uniform and equipment after they had despatched me. So I talked and answered for a minute, and shouted an order for them to think I was not alone. Then I ducked out the other side and jumped the back wall. I met my orderly coming with my horse. The Arabs around the doorway yelled in disappointment as we both galloped off. I brought the battery into action just south of the town, but we did not open fire. Then the C.O. signalled "Retire." It was "Rear limber up, walk march, trot, canter," then a mile farther on "Halt! Action rear," and so on. A delightful battery, men and horses knew their job perfectly and foresaw the order every time.

We did about fifteen miles, and halted by the river side at Um-al-Tabul, a mere locality without a building. I had scarcely seen that the horses were fixed up and fed, when an order came that General Smith, B.G.R.A., C.R.A., wanted me as orderly officer. I was to report immediately. An orderly officer, I was told at once, is responsible for the health and well being of his general, and has many details to attend to. In action there are countless orders to deliver and reports to make. The Brigade Major, mistaken for General Smith, had unfortunately been knifed by an Arab while asleep one night on a boat, so the Staff Captain and I were the only Staff. We shared a dug-out, or rather hole, eighteen inches deep and of course uncovered. Reinforced with some bread, meat, and whisky, I scooped a pillow place for the General's head, and in the darkness tried to collect some little of my kit, which, however, got lost in the subsequent events of the night. I completed arrangements for the morning and then slept.

General Townshend's jugga was next ours. We were on the river bank. Behind us lay H.M.S. Firefly and other boats and barges.

Presently from out of the darkness shells began to fall around us. We were right in the line of fire. It appeared that they were shelling the Firefly. One shell pitched just short of us and wounded the syces, another burst exactly over us, but too high for the spread to reach us. Then a brisk rifle fire commenced and here and there we heard a suppressed groan. These were my first real moments under fire. The darkness and scantiness of cover made it seem worse, but I was not half so frightened as I thought I should be, and after some minutes, when it was necessary for me to deliver some messages, I gave myself up to Fate with a light heart and blundered in the darkness on my several errands. That was infinitely better than lying pinched up in the inadequate hole watching the dried grass being cut by bullets a foot above one's head. It is a great thing to be occupied in times like this. In passing through my battery I heard that two drivers of my section had been killed. On returning to the dug-out I saw the Staff Captain ferociously digging with a mess-tin. I did the same for the General's side with his own shaving mug—which I bent, to his disgust—and then got on to my own. About midnight the rifle fire thickened. Now of all entirely horrid things under these conditions you have first and foremost the bullet. It is a thing conceived by Satan for the dispatch of his outsiders and unbeloved. Invisible it comes from anywhere. You hear it and know you are safe. Or you feel it and know you're hit. Since then I have often been under rifle fire, but that night the devilry of the bullets was strange. At 3 a.m. General Townshend said he would attack in two columns unless the fire ceased. I delivered orders connected therewith, but the fire slackened. I slept, and awoke before the dawn, and bustled around after our headquarters' transport, as we expected an immediate move. I also got breakfast ready. This was December 1st.

At 8 a.m. the transport began to move. At 8.30 it had got fairly on its way. At nine I was standing by the Headquarters transport ready to move off, when the fog cleared as suddenly as the shadows lift when the moon comes from behind a cloud. Before us, some eighteen hundred to two thousand yards off, on the higher ground, we saw a host of tents. Even as we looked the guns of the Field Brigade on the outer perimeter were limbering up. But within two minutes they were down again in action, and the first shell sang out the delight of the gunner at the prospect of so gorgeous a target. For one minute it was splendid. The spirits of the incarnated field guns ripped their music across the morning sky and over the dewy earth in quick and lightning song. The next his shells came back. I relished much less the white puffs up in the air near us, each burst a better one. But almost immediately I found myself taking a professional interest in the faulty fuses of the Turk. Our own shells were cutting great gaps in the tents and in the columns of panic stricken fleeing Turks. I saw our bursts in excellent timing, quite low. But their fire also thickened, and converged on the mass of troops not yet under way, and also on our shipping, which was caught at a wholesale disadvantage. Still, a great mass of transport stuff and ammunition was on the move.

At last it was all off, and only the perimeter of our camp remained, the four field batteries and the single line of infantry close beyond them. Standing in the centre of the shell-strewn ground was General Townshend and his Staff. I stood for a while between him and General Smith, from time to time galloping to the several batteries with orders or inquiries about ammunition. Away to our right between the Turkish advance and our own, the 14th Hussars were very busy, now covering behind the knolls and now swooping upon the enemy, who, however, gave them no chance of getting in at close quarters. S Battery, R.H.A., which worked with them, was pouring shell after shell into the teeth of the Turkish force.

One could not but feel the keenest admiration for General Townshend, so steady, collected and determined in action, so kind, quick and confident. There, totally indifferent to the shell fire, he stood watching the issue, receiving reports from the various orderly officers and giving every attention to the progress of the transport. Some shells pitched just over us, one, not fifteen yards away, killing a horse and wounding some drivers. The restlessness of the horses, some stamping their feet, others tossing their heads, betokened their objection to standing still at such a time. It really is the most difficult thing to do. One's mind was left too free to prophesy where the next shell would fall. More than once I caught a humorous smile on the General's face as some shell just missed us.

Suddenly, to the southward, a thick dust wall appeared. The Turks had got round, and our transport, uncertain about advancing, was held up. For ten minutes it seemed that the issue might become general, but our gunners, and especially S Battery, kept up such a rate of fire that the Turks were paralysed. The officer commanding this battery, acting on local knowledge, remained in action after the order to retire had reached him, and by so doing contributed greatly to the success of the day.

About nine o'clock General Melliss' Brigade, which had preceded us from Azizie by several miles and which had been sent for during the night, arrived on the scene of action, appearing from the south-eastern quarter. That effectively threw back the Turkish attack.

Then, as we gradually gave way, the tide of action moved very slowly southwards. The General motioned us to take cover in a ditch. Our horses we had sent on. It was about this time that H.M.S. Firefly was hit in her boiler and captured by the Turks. Several barges filled with wounded and stores had to be abandoned.

First one battery limbered up and fell into action half a mile to the rear, then another, and so on. Several times I took orders over the intervening ground that was now being plastered with shells bursting either too high or on graze. Don Juan behaved excellently. He shied once violently when a shell burst just behind us, and again as he took off to jump a nullah at the bottom of which a medical officer I knew, Major Walker, was attending to a wounded man. For the rest he went in his best hunting style over ditches and holes and took not the slightest notice of the noise or bursts. I often give him an extra handful of hay when I recall December 1st.

The transport was now some miles on its way and the mule-drivers were doing their utmost. Then the Staff mounted and I was sent to see the whereabouts of the ammunition barge, as the guns, especially S Battery, were running short. Luckily, I discovered where it had got stuck. In feverish haste we replenished the carts ourselves, General Smith, the Staff Captain and I, our telephonists and horseholders, all loading the first few carts at the run. In less than five minutes the cute little Jaipur ponies and mules had galloped to their guns. The batteries remained in action as long as possible without jeopardizing their safety, and each covered the retirement of the other. This went on for hours. We, the Staff, walked our horses half a mile, dismounted and waited. Our pace was the pace of the slowest fighting unit, i.e. a walk. Gradually we out-distanced the enemy, the Cavalry Brigade keeping him back. Once they caught us up and sent shells wildly over our heads. The Turks don't know enough of the science of gunnery. If their fuses had been more correct our casualties could not have failed to be very heavy. As it was they were extraordinarily small considering the huge losses we inflicted on them.

It was a most wonderful engagement, and General Townshend watched its every phase with great satisfaction. An exclamation of delight broke from him as he directed our attention to a charge of the 14th Hussars. Over the brown of the desert a mass of glittering and swiftly-moving steel bore down upon the line of Turks, which broke and bolted. Then the 14th came back.

My next job was to gather spare men and protect the General's flank from Arab snipers. Once or twice a bullet hit the ground at my feet. These Arabs use a tremendous thing, almost as big as an elephant bullet.

At four o'clock I was ordered to ride ahead of the column to find a watering place, which I did; but the Turks still pressed in our rear, and we had to shove on without watering. I managed to water Don Juan, however, and gave him three of my six biscuits. The General had one and Garnett and I had half each. We pushed on, the horses showing signs of fatigue. At 6 p.m. it was dreadfully cold, and dark as Tophet. The order of the column had now been changed, the Field Artillery leading. The B.G.R.A. (General Smith), the Staff Captain, and I, rode at the head of the Division. The orders were seventy paces to the minute with compass directing. We took this in turns of half-hours. The strain was very severe. We had had no food except a sandwich for breakfast for twenty-four hours—violent exercise under exhausting conditions. The ten hours in the saddle had made me stiff, which was to be expected after the slack life of a month on board. We lost our way again and again as we got deeper into the dense black night. Road there was none, only a few hoof marks on the maidan. Tracks that went comfortably for a mile suddenly proved false, and then we had to hunt for the road. We all grew more irritable as we grew more tired, and I got an awful wigging about every two minutes. It's no joke leading an army on a pitch black night and endeavouring to keep to a road that doesn't exist, especially when thousands of Turks are in hot pursuit a mile or two behind the tail of the column.

"Is this the road?" asks one.

"I don't believe it is."

"I think he's wrong. He's taking that fire for the star."

"He must be wrong. That fire has been directly ahead for hours and now it's to the left."

This was the eternal conversation behind as one tried to count the seventy and answer inquiries as to the magnetic bearing at the same time. With such preoccupations one could not very well suggest that the nearer one got to the fire, the more to a flank it must appear unless we were to walk on the top of it.

Then arguments would follow as to whether such a mark were really a hoof-mark or wheel track. The Staff Captain lost his way several times running, and I confess my heart rejoiced thereat. But we soon passed from levity that was born of nervous exhaustion, to silence, grim and impenetrable. I shall never forget that night. The want of sleep was maddening. Since then I have gone without sleep for days together, except for an hour or so once or twice. Then it came on one unprepared. We stumbled on. I thought of the army behind us, men as tired and hungry as I was, the army that had conquered Mesopotamia, all bravely staggering onwards in the darkness; heroes of Ctesiphon, full of painful memories of lost pals somewhere behind, marching, marching, marching to the pace we set, and following the indication of my prismatic compass.

Some of the Staff suggested a halt. But our Napoleonic general drove us on. Again, as we learned subsequently, he saved us. That night the Turkish army, reinforced, was trying to outmarch us.

We pressed on and on. Don Juan followed with my orderly. It was awfully cold, but I preferred the cold to the weight of my coat. I slung it over Don Juan. The poor brute shivered from cold and hunger every halt. The march became a nightmare. With frequent drinks of water I managed to keep on. At eleven o'clock we were almost into the halting-place—Monkey Village by name—when the whole column, which was some five miles long, was compelled to halt owing to a block. The ground was very uneven and scored with nullahs, and had only the one narrow track leading to the village. Across this track the Cavalry Brigade, which had gone on ahead of us as advance guard, had bivouacked. The block took about an hour and a half to rectify.

At last we got to some open ground past the village. How cold it was! We bivouacked on sandy soil. I scooped a dug-out for the General, got a few handfuls of hay for Don Juan, and a whisky and water for myself. General Smith got some sort of a meagre meal with me from a tin of jam, a little bully and a biscuit. We kept half for the morning. All our delightful yak-dans of stores, hams, fowls, biscuits, jam, tea and coffee were miles away with the transport, and I inquired a hundred times that night before turning in, without result. Those of our blankets which were not lost in the scurry of the morning fight, were there also with the transport. So in the bitter cold wind, feet numbed and teeth chattering, I scraped a hole for my arm and a sand pillow for my head, and shoving my topee over my ears to drown the nervy rip-rip of the Arab snipers, I slept. It was not for many minutes. The cold was too intense, without a coat. Then I had to ride to General Townshend for orders several times. Poor Don Juan was awfully done, but very game. There was a tiny stone bridge over a deep nullah near the village. Each time I was held up there. The scene was of the wildest confusion. Camels were being thrashed across, kicking mules hauled across, troops trying to cross at the same time. Several overturned vehicles complicated matters. The whole force had to go over that tiny bridge. After all had crossed the sappers blew it up.

I was quite an important person that night, what with orders and reports. The Blosse Lynch, with Major Henley aboard and also plenty of food, if I had known, was alongside. Captain Garnett was quite done up with continuous fatigue, although he had not ridden very much. We couldn't sleep for the cold, so we talked and hoped to get to Kut the next morning. That day, December 1st, he informed me, was his birthday. There could be many worse ways of passing one's birthday than in participating in the engagement we had fought that day. We felt a deep debt of gratitude due to our General for bringing us out of such a tight corner so brilliantly. At one moment the whole force was imperilled. The next our guns smashed lanes of casualties through the Turkish troops. I was assured by senior officers of much service that I had witnessed one of the most brilliant episodes possible in war, where perfect judgment and first-rate discipline alone enabled us to smash the sting of the pursuit and to continue a retreat exactly as it is done at manœuvres.

At 4 a.m. we were away again. We walked half a mile, then rested. After an hour or two of this the pace got slower and troops began to fall out and sit down. More than one dusky warrior unconsciously depicted the Dying Gladiator. We spoke kind words to them and where possible gave them a lift. Many mules were shot as their strength gave out. I ate my biscuit and gave Don a pocketful of hay I had kept for him. He rubbed his nose on my cheek and wished he were back in his excellent stable at Hyderabad.

Once this day my General's horse nearly unseated him as we crossed a nullah where a camel was lying stretched out.

"Come on," he shouted to me. "It's dead, and won't bite."

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 shelling 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 shell 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 gods 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 impassable. 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 passage 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.