Читать книгу The Desert Column - Ion Idriess - Страница 18

April 2nd—They say that some of the infantry on that route march have died. Many are in hospital.

April 4th. 9.30 a.m.—We of the baggage-guard have just left Ismailia. The regiment is riding away. Our carriage is shared by Australian soldiers and Arabs. The Arabs are pointedly cheeky and make a hostile row. We stopped that within reason, and when a crowd of Arabs defiantly marched up our end we marched them back again, lively. They don’t like it. But the angrier they get the better we like it. We have given them a square deal and half the carriage, but insist they must keep their particular brand of lice to themselves.

...We have arrived at Salhia. It looks a little Eden in the desert. The ground all green under intense cultivation, a splendid grove of date-palms, the big clean village, the minaret tower gleaming tinder the sun and a picturesque population of Arabs, Egyptians, and Greeks. It was from Salhia that Napoleon started on his invasion into Syria. Looks as if we are to follow in his footsteps. ... Guarding a stack of horse-fodder is a fresh faced young Tommy. He told us excitedly of the Arabs firing on his mate in the early hours this morning.

April l2th—Days pass uneventfully. The regiment is in strict training; no doubt we will be a formidable crowd to meet when we get into action again. The horses, too, are splendid; they stand these cursed sand-storms marvellously.

Some wild and woolly Bedouins come in from this grim desert. It was a study in nationality yesterday. My section and some En Zeds were on fatigue duty at the station when some unusually hairy camels came lurching in from the beyond. The Bedouins walked with a long, loping stride that reminded me of an emu. They were dressed in an extraordinary rough robe of goat’s hair. Each wore a sheepskin water-bag slung over his shoulder. From under black cowls their jet-black eyes stared at the En Zeds as they filed silently past. You could almost hear the whites and browns say mentally: “And are you the sort of cuss we have got to fight!” The Bedouins were big men and wiry, but without boasting I feel certain our regiment could wipe out any three thousand of them, and meet them in their own country, too.

April 19th—A mixed squadron of the 8th and 9th Light Horse have made a desert raid upon the Jifjafa cisterns, where Turks with a German military artesian-plant under Austrian engineers have been digging water-cisterns. The raiders rode day and night, surprised the enemy and shot them up, capturing the camp. Jifjafa is a Turkish post some fifty-two miles out in the Sinai range.

Rumours are flying about here that we are off again any old day. The weather has been grand lately, but very hot.

April 23rd—Kantara. Early morning. We moved off from Salhia yesterday morning and today are again out in the desert. We hear the Turks are there. The Tommies at Kantara all crowded around us last night. They are such pink-cheeked, decent little chaps.

7.15 a.m.—Big news! The Turks are attacking only a few miles out. C Squadron have doubled out into the desert: we are saddling up: excitement throughout the regiment.

12 a.m.—Now I can write down what happened. The regiment hurried through the big Kantara camp, then on to a metalled road with the horses’ hoofs striking hard and clear. Redoubts and barbed-wire entanglements were here and there, but soon the road ended and the open desert faced us. Then came the order: “Load Rifles!” We spread out in skirmishing order and hurried straight into the desert. The reinforcements got a wee bit excited, and anyway that same strange feeling stole over me. It always comes just when I am going into action—a curious exciting thrill, tinged with a deadly coldness. The desert spread out to the white horizon, occasional sandhills drab under low prickly bushes.

We got to Hill 70 where two companies of the 4th Royal Fusiliers were quickly marching into the desert. We spread out to guard their flanks. An hour passed. Then we heard the faint bang, bang of little guns. We hurried, and Lieutenant Stanfield’s men in the screen in front caught several well-armed Turks. All hands gazed expectantly and then nearly at the top of a sand-rise there gleamed a few white tents and some camel-lines. We broke into a trot—the neddies were very willing. We drew rapidly closer—the camp looked strange! Then our old doctor spurred forward and we cantered by as he jumped off his horse by two dead men on the sand. Suddenly we saw that nearly all the camels were lying in grotesque positions. They were dead. And then we were certain the Tommies had attacked and captured a Turkish camp. Excitedly we gazed at the little oasis rapidly taking shape amongst the sand-dunes; soon we were cantering amongst the trees and there lay British Yeomanry horses. And this we knew: it was the Tommies who had been attacked. Right amongst us were Tommies lying among the palms, not killed, just sweating men—sunburned—very tired. Some wore bandages freshly blood-stained. We plunged past a group of dirty Arab prisoners. And under shady palms there lay wounded Tommies, gazing up at us and smiling and then a group of Turkish prisoners in bright yellow uniform and brilliant sash. Then we spurred out of the palms and my neddy leaped convulsively over the body of a huge Sudanese. I stared down at his hand clutching his crimson breast. Our horses jumped over, or sprang aside from Arabs lying on the ground, their bare brown legs all twisted up in their dirty robes. Then we cantered by the tiniest redoubt I have ever seen and around it lay the yellow uniforms of dead Turks and sprawling Arabs. We spread out and galloped over miles of sand. But the enemy had got clean away on their camels. We made contact with C Squadron who were eight miles farther out in the desert. They had the real fun, for the Turks had kept up the attack until C Squadron galloped up. All that our crowd got was a few prisoners and wounded men who had collapsed in the desert.

We are back now in Bir-el-Dueidar, the little oasis camp, tired and disappointed. The Tommies are identifying their mates. There are nineteen of them, lying in a row under the palms. They are shot through the head, and such a fine bay horse is lying by them. It is an unhappy little scene.

...A Yeomanry man is telling us dolefully that five thousand Turks attacked his brigade at El Quatia this morning. He seems to think the brigade is annihilated. El Quatia is only a few miles away. There may be something doing here then, at any time.

8.30 p.m.—Eight of our ‘planes have buzzed overhead. One returned flying at a terrific pace, dropped a message, and then sped off towards Kantara.

...We can hear the faintest boom of guns.

...The wee garrison here numbered ninety-six, and are men of the Royal Scots Fusiliers. They put up a great fight. The few prisoners we have got are sullen, but one has admitted that the attacking force consisted of seven hundred camelmen.

...The fight yesterday lasted for five hours. The Turkish raid was utterly unexpected. The early hours were bitterly cold and a dense fog enveloped the desert. The Turks crept right up to the tiny redoubt. It had one sheltering strand of barbed wire, looking for all the world like a drooping grocer’s-string. A cheeky terrier belonging to the sentry on duty pricked its ears and growled, then hopped up on the parapet to shield its master. The sentry could just see the terrier’s stumpy tail, erect and bristly. The terrier growled furiously—the alarmed sentry siting up his rifle and challenged. A cloaked figure loomed gigantic out of the fog—the terrier snarled forward and a rifle-butt crushed him dead—the sentry fired and the shrouded figure pitched headlong down into the trench.

Such was their sudden awakening, as the Scotties told us this morning. The very fog itself that had so befriended the Turks, saved the Scotties. For the Turks and Arabs lay straight down and fired, not knowing whether they had merely run into an outpost or a heavily-manned trench. If they had just sprung forward they would have been into the tiny redoubt with its sleep-dazed men.

The fight flared up, neither side being able to see more than a yard ahead. The Arabs sneaked to the flanks for they smelt the camels. They rushed the camel-lines, bayoneting the camel-drivers. The Bedouins showed every bravery, perhaps because of the fog and the knowledge that they were creeping on a sleeping foe. However that may be, the Bedouins are this morning lying side by side with the Turks right up to that ineffectual strip of barbed wire. There are seventy-five dead desert men, and there are a few more lying away out in the desert where they fell from wounds during the getaway. The Scotties had twenty-three men killed. Their Lewis-gun was worth a battalion of men to them. The Scotties are enthusiastic about it, as they are of their commanding officer. Its moral effect when it barked in the fog must certainly have helped to hold the Turk back those precious few seconds until the men awakened.

...A troop of us rode out on patrol this morning, it was an interesting patrol; in the very early morning the hills of Sinai are soft in almost purple shadows. The sun rises above the horizon in needles of molten flame. We rode on a dead Bedouin lying headlong down a gully, his face buried in the sand. He must have had just strength to crawl to the gully edge. His bandolier was empty, proving the shots he fired yesterday. His long curved dagger made a souvenir for the trooper that clambered down to the burnouse-shrouded form.

We gazed eagerly about, expectant of a shower of shots, ready to fight or gallop as the case might he. Our troop now has been heavily reinforced and we are up to full strength, thirty-three men. We are full of fight and our horses are in great nick.

But the Turk and Arab had “folded their tents and silently stolen away.” We followed the broad road of camel-hooves that wound in and out among the desert hills, but the tracks ever spread away and away and away. Five aeroplanes flying low buzzed over us straight out into the desert, with the risen sun reflecting from the machines like the glint of looking-glasses.

...It is all rumours yet as to what has occurred at the oases away out on our left. The 5th Mounted Brigade (Yeomanry) the Warwicks, Worcesters, and Gloucesters, were stationed out there in the big Katia oasis area, their posts at the different oases at Romani, Katia, Oghratina and Hamisah, all a few miles apart. Five thousand Turks have attacked the scattered posts, simultaneously in the fog. The only thing certain is that of all the posts, the Scotty one at Bir-el-Dueidar is the only survivor. The others seem to be either annihilated, or their men scattered lost over the desert.

...The joy-spots of this old Bible desert are the oases. They seem to be about twenty-five to thirty miles apart, except when there are groups within a few miles of one another as in the huge Katia oasis area. Each little group of date-palms among the sandy hills shelters that most precious thing to man—water. It is in tiny wells which have been used since countless centuries before Moses.