B00D2VJZ4G EBOK (47 page)

I was separated by the crush from Brandreth, and very soon lost view of the platoon commander. At all costs, I must regain touch, I thought, and was still worrying about my predicament when a flare curved over, showing up our front in a great white light. Then out of the dark came a hurricane of screaming lead and shot, so staggering that the men reeled under it in confusion. There was a rush forward on my left, instinctively I followed, and found myself against a bank or nullah, behind which I took cover along with the others.

I quickly realized that this was wrong, so turned from the nullah and ran forward. I found myself going over a white patch of ground, bare of grass, and already littered with the accoutrement of the wounded. I was alone. The machine-gun and rifle-fire seemed to gather intensity. My sole thought on that short run was where the impact of the bullet would be. The irresistible impulse for self-preservation came uppermost again, and I flung myself on the ground, this time my cover being a discarded valise. I was now conscious of the dawn, and, peering forward, saw a trench. My first thought was, I am there!

This did not seem to worry me much, not near so much as the infernal screaming overhead; but when I became accustomed to the gloom I noticed that the faces in the trench were turned from me. Then came a hoarse voice calling, ‘Come on, mate!’ The firing was now less intense, I rushed forward and saw at once that the attack had failed. The Turks remained secure behind their wire.

All was quiet in front. The dim outline of the Turkish trench showed no breach. The scattered forms of the wounded and dead lay round about. On the left a few Turks came through the wire and began to bludgeon the wounded with the butt-ends of their rifles. They were soon driven back.

Nothing further could be done. So when the morn advanced we sought our depleted and scattered units – feeling subdued and shaken in spirit. The platoon had suffered severely. The commander was killed, also the sergeant and many others. Brandreth I never saw nor heard of again.

Soldiers have a nice sense of delicacy. They did not pry too closely into each other’s movements on that fatal morning. They realize that success in war, as in other affairs of life, depend largely on circumstance. Neither did they blame their harassed leaders, though there was bitter comment because they felt they had not been given a fair chance.

Corporal T. Clayton enlisted January 1915, in the Cheshire Regt. Embarked for Gallipoli in November 1915. Arrived in Mudros harbour, but sent to Alexandria. Back at Lemnos at Christmas, stayed until the 8th Cheshires arrived from Cape Hellas, and joined them. Sent to Port Said in January 1916, and from thence to Mesopotamia. Took part in the Townshend relief operations on both banks of the Tigris, in the spring and early summer of 1916, and in the offensive against Kut 1916–1917. Took part in operations on the Shatt-el-Adhaim in April 1917, and in subsequent minor operations. In the Abu-Hajar pass until the end of the War
.

It is dawn and we are marching towards the sunrise. Khaki-clad British soldiers with bare, brown knees and wide-brimmed topees swing cheerfully along, marching to they know not where, for at nightfall we shall bivouac somewhere in the Arabian Desert.

Behind us plod the camels, carrying the kits and the very few necessities of desert warfare. They are controlled by coloured-turbaned Indian drabis, who know these ships of the desert as a captain knows his ship.

And then come the Gurkha boys, with a merry stride. Every one of these stocky little fellows wears a beaming face – all ready and willing to march until their limbs sink beneath them. Some are leading the chafing mules, which clink noisily in the harness, and pull along the iron wagons which carry the precious water-tanks.

At the rear slow-moving oxen draw the small, dome-shaped wagons with the Red Cross painted on the sides.

We are approaching the last outpost of the Basra Cantonment. The next camp is 140 miles away. Where, only the scouts know. It does not matter where; the order is to march hard and fight hard.

We march on. Loneliness closes around, creeping, sinister, and comfortless, till all that is real loses its reality in a monotonous circle of horizon and hard, cracked sand.

‘Keep step, mate!’ says one to another faltering in front. It is easier going in step.

‘I’m dying for a drink,’ says another. But the allowance is a pint a day, to be drunk when ordered.

We trudge on, and men bow beneath the weight of ammunition, equipment, and rifle. The brazen sun burns; clothes become wet with sweat; topees heavy and big.

At hourly halts we sink to the ground, and rise again with stiff joints and aching shoulders. At given times we drink, and march again, until the sun sinks low and tinges the desert red.

A halt is made. The camels are unloaded and fed, the water-tanks stacked together, and those detailed dig a trench round the camp.

Field kitchens are soon brewing tea, and a frugal meal of bully beef, hard biscuits, and milkless tea is taken by famished men. At last blankets are unpacked from the camel lines, and those fortunate ones who are not on guard sink like logs and remain so until Reveille.

The camp awakes by a shrill voice calling: ‘Camels! Fetch the camels!’ Fellows stir in their blankets, as stiff and weary as though they had just laid themselves down. It is a little before dawn. The moon has sunk low.

There is a roaring, and the camels, as irritable and as tired as all, loom in the morning mist. Blankets are rolled and packed on the camels’ backs: bitter, black tea and some more biscuits are swallowed for breakfast; and then we move on again as the sun lifts its dreaded golden light over the horizon.

A corporal plays a tune on his mouth organ to keep spirits up. Plucky devil! He is as tired as the rest of us, and yet he forces out that little extra bit, and is admired for it.

A man collapses in a heap, sweat pouring out of his pores. But someone bathes his face with a moist handkerchief and passes on. The ambulance is behind!

Suddenly there is a halt. What’s that? Bones? Yes, a camel’s. But the others, white and glistening…and the skull and ivory teeth? A Gurkha’s, we are told; and our plight, too, if we fall and faint by the way.

A sergeant gives a ghastly shriek, and begins to charge his magazine desperately with live rounds. He is grabbed by an officer and held to the ground, shrieking the while: ‘See them? Look! Thousands of them – all charging upon us!’ He struggles frantically, roaring like a mad bull, until the sound makes the marrow creep, Then he falls back unconscious…and the column passes on, leaving him behind till the ambulance comes.

Evening again: camp is made and trenches dug. But the order is ‘Stand to.’ Hostile Arabs are near; and through the night every eye is skinned to pierce the darkness for the glint of a curved knife or rifle.

Dawn comes. Men’s eyes are heavy, and limbs weary and limp. But still we plod on. Nerves are keyed high: a small, prickly bush to be avoided or a clump of hard earth irritates. A soldier looks at his comrade and sees fixed, glazed eyes and cracked lips. His own tongue is swollen, furry, and leathery.

Corporal Ben tries at his mouth organ again, but fails at the first notes, for his lips are blistered and cracked.

The only thought is for water. A sparkling waterfall to lie and drown under, drinking, drinking; the tap at home; the green, green water in stagnant pools – all would taste delicious.

We come to a stagnant oasis, fast drying and black with dead insects and flies. And deaf to the warning shouts of the medical officer and others, many sink upon their knees and drink.

At midday there is an unexpected halt, and the scouts ride into the horizon and are lost to sight. We rest our lean, unshaven heads on haversacks and sleep fitfully. There is no sound save the jingling of the mules in the harness. Even the camels rest.

The column stirs again, though no one knows the reason why. Camp lines are marked out, deeper trenches dug, every man stands at the parapets, officers consult together.

A mug of warm tea, beef, and biscuits brighten spirits a little; but the word is passed to keep a sharp look-out, for Arabs are near.

A large-limbed man falls to the floor of the trench, groaning in agony and bent double, his knees pressing against his chest.

The medical officer is summoned, and comes with two orderlies with a stretcher. He knows the curse that has stricken the regiment: he had warned us that in that green pool, passed a few hours before, there lurked the germs of cholera.

Men fall quickly after that, at the very thought of having swallowed the stuff. Corporal Ben and myself are left in the trench where there had stood a dozen men. Corporal Ben who still smiles with lips that quiver, and whose bloodshot eyes are heavy with sleep.

Evening comes; and the moon shines and the stars. And around we lonely two at the parapet looms the desert, ghostly, still, and sinister.

We do not speak, or know how our comrades fare near by. We gaze into the night, tired soldiers and weary – too tired to care for life.

Dawn stirs the darkness. The early mists cling to the ground.

They are there! right in front of us! – a good 600 Arab horsemen. But the sight does not rouse the sluggish pulses of the soldiers.

Volleys are fired – rapid, continuous volleys which make gaps in the Arab lines, but the fighting blood of our men is cold.

The Arabs charge; are beaten back like a wave against a rock; and then there is a silence.

An orderly arrives, grey with sand and sickness: ‘Beat a rearguard action quickly, and join the Gurkha boys!’

And Corporal Ben smiles. ‘Retreat before
them?’
he says slowly, wearily raising his heavy lids…
‘We British retreat!’

He jumps to the top of the parapet and, kneeling, charges his magazine full ten rounds. He fires off five of them. Then a bullet enters his brain. He rolls over with a sigh.

Private Robert Harding served in the ranks of the 1/4th Battalion Dorset Regt., Territorials, from September 1914 till early 1916; from 1916–1918 was attached as Staff clerk to Headquarters, 15th (Indian) Division
.

The first time we tried to saddle him he sent two men to hospital.

It wasn’t viciousness: he was young; he had never been backed before; he didn’t understand. He only knew an unmolested life on a South African farm, and the sudden change upset him. The herding down to the coast and the long stifling sea voyage up to German East must have been unpleasantly strange.

He landed at a malarial little port called Kilwa Kissiwani, and, the day after, was handed over with a batch of remounts to an Indian cavalry regiment. He came to my squadron, and I picked him out as a charger because his head and ears, fine muzzle, and wide nostrils showed breeding.

My orderly christened him
Shaitan
(the Devil), mainly, I think, because the first thing the horse did was to bite him in the seat of the breeches.

He certainly was a devil at the beginning. His was the nervous kind of temperament one should have coaxed. But we hadn’t time for that; we had to be ruthless. We had to throw him. All horses hate that, and he soon gave in. In three days he was ridable, and when, on the fourth, we started off, I took him as my charger.

The country was unlike anything I had seen before. In places we came across open grassland, but most of it was dense. Oppressive. It shut one in. One longed to push it all away and hold up one’s head and breathe. All around huge trees towered up out of the ground, bent and twisted into grotesque shapes as they fought each other for the space to live. Here and there thin, knarled branches hung down like the withered tentacles of some great forest octopus groping in the earth. Up above the canopy of leaves and intertwining branches almost blotted out the sky.

One learnt, for the first time in one’s life, to value water. Through those long weary days of striving Shaitan and I got to know each other, though he often did try to give me a nip in the seat of the breeches when I mounted. And he had a great heart. He never slacked. He never spared himself. He was always willing. When everyone else was worn out and weary, he’d hold up his eager head and stride along as if he never knew fatigue.

But the strain told. It was a very different Devil that stood beside me somewhere south of the Rufiji four months later.

We had had a hard day. A night without water or fodder, a long march round behind the German position to cut off the retreat, and some fighting. Late in the afternoon we were waiting to rejoin the column.

It was a remnant of the squadron that rested, the men silent, dirty, and dejected, the horses with drooping heads. Tunics were torn. Many men looked ill, with sunken eyes and thin, pinched faces. The horses were like skeletons.

Rawlins, the adjutant, had gone to find out where we were to camp, and we were waiting for him to come back. I felt dreadfully weary and sat down on the ground. Jackson came and sat beside me.

‘Bedford is pretty bad,’ he said.

‘Really? I thought he was only hit on the arm?’

‘Yes, but it’s a ghastly hole. Must have been a soft-nosed bullet.’

‘Elephant, perhaps.’

‘Quite likely… The sods!…’

‘Poor devil.’

For a while we sat silent. Behind us a man started spewing. I looked round. He was leaning up against a tree holding his stomach and being violently sick. The malaria there must have been a particularly virulent type; it seemed to knock the men out altogether.

Jackson lay back and shut his eyes. After a while Rawlins returned and told us we were to camp inside the old German perimeter.

We marched in. The ground was undulating, and intersected here and there by deep trenches. A strong boma of twisted branches enclosed the whole position. Most of the other units of the column were already in camp and several fires had been lighted, at which men were cooking. We led up the main centre road and turned off on to the site that we were to occupy.

As the men were putting up the long line from tree to tree to which head ropes are fastened, the C.O. came over and spoke to me, and Rawlins joined us.