Letters from Mesopotamia in 1915 and January, 1916 Part 10

TO HIS MOTHER.

I strained a muscle in my leg at football yesterday and consequently can't put my foot to the ground at all to-day. It is a great nuisance as I'm afraid it will prevent my going on our little trek into the desert, which will probably come off next Monday.

The news of the fight at Suliman Pak came through yesterday morning and we had a holiday on spec, and a salute of twenty-one guns was ordered to be fired. The first effort at 8 a.m. was a ludicrous fiasco. The Volunteer Artillery, having no 'blank,' loaded the guns with charges of plain cordite. The result was that as each round was fired it made about as much noise as a shot-gun, and the packet of cordite would hop out of the barrel and burn peacefully on the ground ten yards away, like a Bengal match. Gorringe arrived in the middle in a fine rage, and stopped the show. I took a snapshot of him doing so which I hope will come out. He then ordered the salute to be fired at noon with live sh.e.l.l. This was quite entertaining. They ranged on the flood-land where we go after the geese, 3,700 yards: and it took the sh.e.l.ls about ten seconds to get there. There were some Arab shepherds with their flocks between us and the water, and they didn't appear to enjoy it. They "scorned the sandy Libyan plain as one who wants to catch a train."

_Thursday_. As luck would have it, orders came round at 1 p.m.

yesterday for half the Battalion (including A. Coy.) to move up-stream at once: and after an afternoon and evening of many fl.u.s.ters and changes of plan, they have just gone off this morning. My wretched leg prevents my going with them: but it is much better to-day and I hope to be able to go by the next boat. Destination is unknown but it can only be Kut or Baghdad: and I infer the latter from the facts (1) that Headquarters (C.O., Adjt. Q.M. etc.) have gone, which means that the other half Battalion is likely to follow shortly: and (2) that they won't want a whole Battalion at Kut. The scale of garrison out here is about as follows. Towns under 5,000 one Coy. or nothing, 5,000-10,000 two Coys. Over 10,000 a (nominal) Battalion: bar Basra where there are only three men and one boy. Baghdad being about 150,000 may reasonably require two Brigades or a Division. We haven't heard yet whether we've got Baghdad. They may even have more fighting to do, though most people don't think so.

I will try to cable before I go up.

The M.O. says I have slightly overstretched my calf-muscles. I jumped rather high at a bouncing ball while I was running: and I came down somehow with my left leg stuck out in such a way that the knee was bent the wrong way: and so overstretched the muscles at the back of the calf. But I can already walk with two sticks, and hope to be able to get on a boat in two or three days time. A week on the boat will give it a further rest.

AMARAH.

_December 1, 1915._

TO HIS MOTHER.

Sophy's death affects me more than any since Goppa's. She was the most intimate of all my aunts, as I have constant memories of her from the earliest times I can remember till she went to live at Oxford. I was always devoted to her, and she had an almost uncanny power of reading my thoughts. I don't feel there can have been a shade of bitterness in death for her, though she loved life; but there is something woefully pathetic in its circ.u.mstances, the pain, the loneliness, the misery of the war.

I thought about her all yesterday. The sunset was the most wonderful I have seen out here, and it seemed to say that though G.o.d could be very terrible yet he was supremely tender and beautiful. How blank and futile a sunset would be to a consistent materialist, as A.J.B. points out in his lectures.

The result of publis.h.i.+ng what he called my "hymn" in the _Times_ of October 15th has been an application from an earnest Socialist for leave to print it on cards at 8_s._ 6_d._ a 1,000 to create a demand for an early peace! But I couldn't help focussing my thoughts of Sophy into these lines:

Strong Son of G.o.d is Love; and she was strong, For she loved much, and served; Rejoiced in all things human, only wrong Drew scorn as it deserved.

Fair gift of G.o.d is faith: 'twas hers, to move The mountains, and ascend The Paradise of saints: which faith and love Made even Death her friend.

My leg is much better but will still keep me here some days, as I am not to go till fit to march. It is a great nuisance being unable to take exercise. I was in such splendid condition, and now I shall be quite soft again. However there are compensations. The others are only at Kut, which is as dull as this and much less comfortable; and they have only 60lb. kits, which means precious little.

Swinburne I will begin when I feel stronger. The Golden a.s.s hasn't come. I ordered it years ago, before the war, to be sent on publication. It is a curious product of Latin decadence, about second century; the first notable departure from the cla.s.sical style. The most celebrated thing in it is the story of Cupid and Psyche: didn't Correggio paint it round the walls of a palace in Rome? I went to see it with Sophy.

AMARAH.

_December 8, 1915._

TO HIS MOTHER.

We are more cheerful now. In the first place we are less cold. The wind has dropped and we have devised various schemes for mitigating the excessive ventilation. I have hung two gaudy Arab rugs over my window, with a layer of _Times_ between them and the bars. Some genius had an inspiration, acting on which we have pitched an E.P. tent in the mess room. It just fits and is the greatest success. Finally, I sent my bearer to speculate in a charcoal brazier. This also is a great success. Three penn'orth of charcoal burns for ages and gives out any amount of heat; and there is no smell or smoke: far superior to any stove I've ever struck. So we live largely like troglodytes in darkness but comparative warmth. Between breakfast and tea one can sit on the sunny side of the verandah round the inner court, though all suns.h.i.+ne has still to be shared with the flies; but they're not the flies they were, more like English October flies.

Secondly, as far as we can see, the main troubles up stream are over.

My account to Papa last mail was not very accurate, but I will write him the facts again, in the light of fuller information. Anyway they're back at Kut now, and ought to be able to look after themselves till our reinforcements come up. The first two boat-loads have arrived here this morning, and are pus.h.i.+ng on. But it was a serious reverse and may have very bad effects here and in India and Persia unless it is promptly revenged.

Owing to the Salsette's grounding, there will be no mail this week.

My leg remains much the same. I can walk quite well with a slight limp but the doctor won't let me walk more than fifty yards. I am very thankful I was stopped from going up to Kut. "A" Coy. has been working at top pressure there, entrenching and putting up wire entanglements.

And now they will have to stand a siege, on forty days' rations, till Younghusband and Gorringe can relieve them. So I should be very much _de trop_ there. I always felt that my _entree_ into the football world should be pregnant with fate, and so it is proving.

I have been reading some Swinburne. He disappoints me as a mind-perverse, fantastic and involved. Obscure when he means something, he is worse when he means nothing. As an imagination he is wonderful. His poetry is really a series of vivid and crowding pictures only held together by a few general and loose, though big ideas. His style is marvellously musical but overweighted by his cla.s.sical long-windedness and difficult syntax. Such a contrast to Tennyson where the idea s.h.i.+nes out of the language which is so simple as to seem inevitable, and yet wonderfully subtle as well as musical.

AMARAH.

_December_ 12, 1915.

TO R.K.

In the stress of the times I can't remember when I last wrote or what I said, so please forgive repet.i.tions and obscurities.

Let me begin at November 24th, the day we heard of the victory at Ctesiphon or Sulman Pak. That afternoon I crocked my leg at footer and have been a hobbler ever since with first an elephantine calf and now a watery knee, which however, like the Tigris, gets less watery daily.

The very next day (November 25th) half the battalion, including my "A"

Coy., was ordered up stream and departed next morning, leaving me fuming at the fancied missing of a promenade into Baghdad. But providence, as you may point out in your next sermon, is often kinder than it seems. Two days later I could just walk and tried to embark: but the M.T.O. stopped me at the last moment. (I have stood him a benedictine for this since.)

Meanwhile, events were happening up-river. The Press Bureau's account, I expect, compresses a great deal into "Subsequently our force took up a position lower down the river" or some such _facon de parler_. What happened was this. We attacked without reserves relying on the enemy having none. We have done it several times successfully: indeed our numbers imposed the necessity generally. This time there were reinforcements en route, had we waited. But I antic.i.p.ate.

Well, we attacked, and carried their first line and half their second before darkness pulled us up. A successful day, though expensive in casualties. We bivouacked in their first line. Daybreak revealed the unpleasant surprise of strong enemy reinforcements, who are said to have diddled our spies by avoiding Baghdad: 5,000 of them. As we had started the affair about 12,000 strong to their 15,000, this was serious. They attacked and were driven off. In the afternoon they attacked again, in close formation: our artillery mowed them, but they came on and on, kept it up all night, with ever fresh reinforcements, bringing them to 30,000 strong all told. By dawn our men were exhausted and the position untenable. A retreat was ordered, that meant ninety miles back to Kut over a baked billiard table. The enemy pressed all the way. Once they surrounded our rear brigade. Two officers broke through their front lines to recall the front lot.

Another evening we pitched a camp and left it empty to delay the enemy. Daily rearguard actions were fought. Five feverish days got us back to Kut, without disorder or great loss of men; but the loss in material was enormous. All possible supplies had been brought close up to the firing line to facilitate our pursuit: mainly in barges, the rest in carts. The wounded filled all the carts, so those supplies had to be abandoned. The Tigris is a cork-screwed maze of mud-banks, no river for the hasty withdrawal of congested barges under fire. You can imagine the scene. Accounts differ as to what we lost. _Certainly_, two gunboats (destroyed), one monitor (disabled and captured), the telegraph barge and supply barge, besides all supplies, dumped on the bank. Most accounts add one barge of sick and wounded (400), the aeroplane barge, and a varying number of supply barges. In men from first to last we lost nearly 5,000: the Turks about 9,000--a guess of course.

The tale of woe is nearly complete. My "A" Coy. got as far as Kut and was set to feverish entrenching and wiring. Now the whole force there, some 8,000 in all, is cut off there and besieged. They have rations (some say half rations) for six weeks or two months, and ammunition.

They are being bombarded, and have been attacked once, but repelled it easily. We aren't worried about them; but I with my leg (like another egoist) can't be sorry to be out of it. I should like to be there to mother my men. Our Major is wounded and the other officers infants; the Captain a Colonial one I'm glad to say.

Meanwhile our reinforcements have turned up in great numbers and expect to be able to relieve Kut by the end of the month. I mustn't particularise too much. In fact I doubt whether this or any letters will be allowed to go through this week. The men are warned only to write postcards. The dear censor has more excuse where Indians are concerned. I can walk short walks now. Life is rather slow, but I have several books luckily.

AMARAH.

_December_ 20, 1915.

TO N.B.

There is a double mail to answer this week and only two days to do it in, so this may be rather hurried.

I do get the _Round Table_. I don't think it suggests a World State as practical politics, but merely as the only ideal with which the mind can be satisfied as an ultimate end. If you believe in a duty to all humanity, logic won't stop short of a political brotherhood of the world, since national loyalty implies in the last resort a denial of your duty to everyone outside your nation. But in fact, of course, men are influenced by sentiment and not logic: and I agree that, for ages to come at least, a World State wouldn't inspire loyalty. I don't even think the British Empire would for long, if it relied only on the sentiment of the Mother Country as home. The loyalty of each Dominion to the Empire in future generations will be largely rooted in its own distinctive nationalism, paradoxical as that sounds: at least so I believe.

Please don't refrain from comments on pa.s.sing events for fear they will be stale. They aren't, because my _Times's_ are contemporary with your letters: and the amount of news we get by Reuter's is negligible.

Indeed Reuter's chiefly enlighten us as to events in Mesopotamia. Last night we heard that Chamberlain had announced in the House that the Turks lost 2,000 and the Arabs 1,000 in the attack on Kut on December 12th: that was absolutely the first we'd heard of it, though Kut is only ninety miles as the crow flies, and my Company is there! All we hear is their casualties, thrice a week. They now total 2 killed and 11 wounded out of 180: nearly all my Company and 3 of my draft wounded.

I want to be there very much, to look after them, poor dears: but I must say that T.A's view that a place like Kut is desirable to be in _per se_ never fails to amaze me, familiar though it now is. I had another instance of it last night. About twelve of my draft were left behind on various duties when the Coy. went up-river in such a hurry.

Hearing that my knee was so much better they sent me a deputy to ask me to make every effort to take them with me if I went up-river. I agreed, of course, but what, as usual, struck me was that the motives I can understand--that one's duty is with the Coy. when there's trouble around, or even that it's nicer to be with one's pals at Kut than lonely at Amarah--didn't appear at all. The two things he kept harping on were (1) it's so dull to miss a "sc.r.a.p" and (2) there may be a special clasp given for Kut, and we don't want to miss it. They evidently regard the Coy. at Kut as lucky dogs having a treat: the "treat" when a.n.a.lysed (which they don't) consisting of 20lb. kits in December, half-rations, more or less regular bombardment, no proper billets, no shops, no letters, and very hard work!