The Secrets of a Kuttite Part 1

The Secrets of a Kutt.i.te.

by Edward O. Mousley.

PREFACE

The following pages were actually written during the siege of Kut or during captivity. The original ma.n.u.script was concealed in Turkey and recovered months after the Armistice. I have been persuaded by my friends that to recast or add to the story would detract from whatever appeal it may have as a human doc.u.ment. As such, with all its limitations, it is offered to the public.

The exigencies of a captivity such as mine, even more than in the field, determine from moment to moment one's focus and perspective, and what to-day presents itself for record is to-morrow ignored or forgotten by concentration on the few things and the few moments that count. Added to this there is for the prisoner the pressure of existence when, so far from being allowed a pencil, he is considerably occupied with selling his last fork.

One moves on from minute to minute between walls that recede or converge, and one's experience, therefore, is a series of incidents often unfinished. A diary must reflect one's experience.

The secrets of every Kutt.i.te would "make many books"

as large as this. And from an experience more varied than fell to the lot of many prisoners the author hopes that the following extract, a simple story of incident, adventure and intrigue, may interest the British reader.

EDWARD O. MOUSLEY.

OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE CLUB, PALL MALL, _March, 1921_.

PART I TO THE FALL OF KUT, APRIL 29TH, 1916

THE SECRETS OF A KUTt.i.tE

CHAPTER I

EN ROUTE FROM HYDERABAD TO MESOPOTAMIA--VOYAGE UP THE TIGRIS

_Kut-el-Amara, December 22nd, 1915._--At the present moment I'm snugly settled inside my Burberry sleeping-bag.

The tiny candle that burns gloomily from its niche in the earth wall of the dug-out leaves half the compartment in sharp shadow. But through the doorway it lights a picture eloquent of war. This picture, framed by the sandbags of the doorway, includes a gun-limber, observation pole, rifles, a telescope, and a telephone, along a sh.e.l.l-pierced wall.

Above winding mounds of black soil from entrenchments hang the feathery fronds of the eternal palm. Only some droop, for mostly they hang, bullet-clipped, like broken limbs. The night is still and cold, the stillness punctuated by the rackety music of machine-guns. As I write snipers'

bullets crack loudly on the _mutti_ wall behind my head.

Another night attack is expected from the trenches in front of the 16th Brigade which we must support. When the battery is in action the most unloved entertainment that offers is the rifle fire that just skips the wall enclosing the date-palm grove in which we are hidden. Sometimes the sharp crackling sound of bullets. .h.i.tting the trees increases as the flashes of our guns are seen by the enemy, and resembles in its intensity a forest on fire. One hears a sudden crack just ahead like the sharp snapping of a stick, and in the early days of one's initiation a duck is inevitable. I don't say one ducks, but one finds one has ducked. For a time every one ducks. It is no use telling people that if the bullet had been straight one would have been hit before hearing it strike the palm. Some people go on ducking for ages. Of course I'm talking of the open. In the trenches ducking is a fine art.

The last time I ducked commendably, that I remember, was yesterday. I was observing from our front line trenches with plenty of head protection from the front, when a bullet came from an almost impossible direction. It flung a piece of hard earth sharply on my cheek, and I ducked. Afterwards I laughed and took more care.

By the way, as this is not a diary but an unpretentious record of things not forgotten, and intended on reference to dispel the illusion that all this is a dream, I may as well furnish an explanation of how I, Edward Mousley, a subaltern in the Royal Field Artillery, come to be in this dug-out here in Kut-el-Amara, along with the Sixth Division under General Townshend, that is to say, almost the whole original Force D, besieged by the whole Turkish army in Mesopotamia under Nureddin Pasha.

My brigade was at annual practice near Hyderabad Scind when a wire ordered another subaltern and me to proceed at once on service with Force D (in Mesopotamia) to replace casualties. Some very kind words and excellent advice from my Colonel and innumerable _chota_ pegs from every one else and the next morning we left, the other subaltern and Don Juan and I, to exchange practice for reality. Don Juan is my faithful horse. At Karachi I found several gunners of my acquaintance who had come out from Home with me in the _Morea_, a few months before, including one Edmonds, who had tripped with me across India.

At Karachi I stored much useless kit, motor cycle, and spare saddlery, and notwithstanding a heavy bout of malaria just before, left for service fit and well equipped and with as excellent a horse as one could wish for. We sailed in the tiny mail boat _Dwarka_ for Muscat, Bus.h.i.+re, Basra.

Muscat is a mere safety valve of Satan in his sparest wilderness, a lonely patch of white buildings completely shut in by awful mountains, rocks that in remote ages seem to have frowned themselves into the most fearful convulsions.

And, even in November, hot!

After two days of scorching heat and tempestuous seas we arrived at Bus.h.i.+re, where a spit keeps s.h.i.+pping off.

Fifty Gurkhas, and a subaltern of whom I was to see something by and by, came aboard. Fine little fellows they are and very cheerful and contented even on the wretched deck of a tiny steamer loaded with fowls, food, a Persian donkey, vermin, and half-breeds.

Then, in a resplendent dawn, I saw the banks of the Shatt-el-Arab, verdant with the greenness of a new lawn, where millions of date palms cl.u.s.tered side by side on the flat, flood-washed sh.o.r.es. Here the river is half a mile wide.

One may imagine its changed appearance when the great floods come, that are now three months off. Outside the entrance on the right bank, Fao, a tiny village and fort, marks the initial landing and conquest by Force D--General Delamain's brigade--in October, 1914.

Both banks of the river are thickly forested with date-palms right up to Basra, a crowded spot of a few hundred yards in frontage on both sides of a tiny creek Ashar, whence once Sinbad sailed. It was brimful of soldiers and Arabs, and quant.i.ties of stores and planks stood around half-erected buildings. It had the appearance of a very busy port, some dozen huge ocean-going vessels being anch.o.r.ed in the stream.

There was no wharfing accommodation at all. One communicates with the sh.o.r.e by bellums. This is a flat-bottomed pointed boat and propelled by bamboo poles or paddled by sticks nailed on to a round blob of wood.

The s.h.i.+pping included H.M.S. _Espiegle_, the _Franz Ferdinand_, and the _Karadenis_, the two latter being large steamers captured by us and used as accommodation boats, each taking a thousand men if necessary. Pending the arrival of our upstream transport I was ordered with the other officers on to the _Karadenis_ which lay in mid-stream. Some wretched-looking Turkish prisoners were aft.

We little knew it at the time, but our few days on this s.h.i.+p or mosquito-hive were destined to be our last in even moderate comfort. Henceforth we were to be playthings of the G.o.d of War.

There was a strange silence about news on this front.

Some thought our army was near Azizie, over four hundred miles up river; others that we were just outside Baghdad. We were chafing to get away to our units before we got malaria.

A sudden chance with a detachment of the 14th Hussars was offered to a subaltern nick-named "Fruit-salt," because "'e knows," and myself. We left on a paddle-boat called the _P.5_, a barge of horses, Don Juan among them, on either side.

To get on the _P.5_ again from the horse-barges we hop over to the paddle-box and clamber on deck. Our camp beds we stretched out forward, the men, arms, and maxims arranged aft. We had a comfortable mess table set so that we could see upstream and also a good deal of the left bank. The officers of this troop of the 14th Hussars on board were all very young, very pleasant, and very keen.

We sat and drank or smoked and talked, and war seemed then very far away. Or we watched a wandering tribe of Arabs trekking in the distance. The country was, of course, dead flat and except for a scrubby gra.s.s there was nothing to intercept one's eye reaching to the horizon. The river winds a lot and far away the _mahela_ sails seemed to be making over land. One thought of the Norfolk Broads. Somewhere in the early morning we pa.s.sed the confluence of the Euphrates and Tigris, and Ezra's tomb. (Maxim fire increasing: I must switch off here now.) _Later._--No harm occurred except the heavy sniping has knocked out some poor horses and wounded a syce and spoiled some more palms. I continue.

There was also on board an excellent engineer, full of "sunny retrospect." He could talk or listen, which is like unto a horse that can gallop and walk. As he explained on inquiry, he had never married, nor had he ever avoided marriage. Altogether he was a delightful fellow for company.

We pa.s.sed the marshes of Kurna of an earlier engagement in this campaign, where our army had dislodged the Turk with guns mounted on planks between bellums, and whole brigades punted and poled their way up. "Forward the light bellums!" "Charge!" were the orders the commanding officers yelled on that day. Britain was always irresistible on the water! The whole affair is now called "Regatta week."

We also pa.s.sed where the Garden of Eden was said to have been. As a matter of fact, the whole of this country, like the plains of India, is delta formation. The two rivers must have been higher up and consequently Eden also. The latter fact rather knocks out the little remaining romance about the place. Sir William Wilc.o.c.ks puts the site at Hit, above Baghdad, and says that even going no further back than the tertiary epoch would place the delta there.

We reached Amara on the fourth day. It is a village of some considerable size pleasantly lining both banks of a beautiful straight reach in the Tigris. In the broad, clear water one sees reflected the languid droop of the eternal date palm, the great triangular sails of the _mahela_, the regular contour of the Bridge of Boats. It is not unpicturesque.

Here, some months ago, a delightful _coup_ was effected by the commander of H.M.S. _Shaitan_ and about a dozen men. These were the first in the pursuit from Kurna, and the others not having arrived, determined on a bold policy, as at any moment the Arabs might have joined forces with the Turk and rendered the taking of Kurna quite difficult. These few men went ash.o.r.e and, entering the barracks containing some several hundreds of men, demanded their surrender and the immediate handing over of the town. The prestige of the British Navy or the eloquent silence of the gunboat's guns did the rest.

And so by this remarkable bluff Amara fell without bloodshed, and was held although reinforcements did not arrive until the next day.

Above Amara the country is still perfectly flat, but appears less marshy in winter than lower down. Here a thicker ground scrub teems with black partridge and quail, some of which we shot from the boat. A sub. in the Hussars, named Pope, brought off a wonderful revolver shot into a jackal's ribs from the boat: we practised revolver shooting hard.

Arabs cl.u.s.tered in tiny tribes every few miles along the river. The men, some of whom are quite naked, I thought remarkable for great size of limb and muscular development.

They would sometimes accompany the boat for miles, doing their weird undulating dance, hopping round first on one foot and then on the other. They welcome us when we win and torture and loot our wounded when they get a chance. Here and there Jewish women and old men ladle water by a swinging scoop into a drain for their irrigation. The dress and general customs continually recall one's school days' pictures of Biblical times.

Two or three days later we got to Kut-el-Amara (p.r.o.nounce Kut like foot), pa.s.sing the battlefield of Essin _en route_.

It was at Essin where Townshend, by leaving his tents on one bank of the river and crossing in the night, deceived the Turk into fancied security, and the next day flung him neck and crop out of a position of great strength.

Here the Hussars took my horse on by the desert and I left in the _s.h.i.+rin_ for Azizie. At Kut we had heard that Baghdad would fall that evening, and later that night reverse news that we had had very heavy casualties. The hospitals were removed from the barges, and reinforcements' kit of the West Kents and Hussars was left with us instead. "Fruit-salt"

and I messed with the West Kents, awfully good fellows, one a youngster just from Clare College. The remaining West Kents marched, escorted by the 14th Hussars, and met us at some point on the river each day. One night we were stranded ash.o.r.e and in awful rain. The _tatti_ (rush) roof let most of the water through, and what it did not let through, collected in gutters that every now and then deluged over us.

My sleeping bag became a tank. Suddenly came the dawn and we awoke to a steaming-hot sunny world.

A heavily-armed launch protected with _boosa_ bales pa.s.sed us. Their answer--"Headquarters"--was our first intimation of the seriousness of the position of our army. Two days after this, and about eight or nine since leaving Basra, we got to Azizie, a mere bend in the river with a few huts. There were many horses watering and several hundred Turkish prisoners on the bank. On every side we saw evidence of a hurried march. It was all hustle and haste. We went ash.o.r.e, our last orders being to leave for Salaiman Pak, some thirty miles up river and fifteen from Baghdad. But once ash.o.r.e, we saw from the ungroomed condition of the horses, the dust-covered harnesses and wagons, the exhausted men, many asleep in their roughly arranged lines, that our army after tremendous exertions had just arrived and halted. The C.R.A.'s flag hung over a mud hut. He explained that we had fought a big action at Ctesiphon where the Turks were heavily entrenched, that we had turned them out, and got into their second line when the enemy had retired to the Diala river, his third line. But the action, which was tactically a brilliant success, had cost us a third of our force. The word came that two Turkish divisions were reinforcing them, so we retired in the night. It seems that for a time both armies were in retreat, but the Turks, on hearing of our withdrawal, gave chase. They were, however, doubly respectful in having suffered casualties twice our own, and they held off some few miles from Azizie.