Chapter V: Mirage

On the 28th of April, after a week of conflicting rumours, we heard that Kut had fallen. As a nation we take reverses with consummate coolness. Whatever one thought inwardly, work went on as usual, and in the men's lines there was very little comment. Up to the last moment Rumour was optimistic. She spread a most mysterious yarn about the ship that tried to escape Turkish vigilance and get to Kut with supplies. It was, she said, full of gold. For what purpose she did not specify, but it sounded promising. This was her last fling. After that she changed her mask and looked ugly. Forty thousand Arabs were mustering at Kuweit. German cruisers were in the Persian Gulf, sinking shipping right and left. The Turks were coming down on Nasireyah in tremendous force. Trouble was brewing at Shaiba. In the last respect she proved correct, though the trouble was not great. At Shaiba, which lies about twenty miles west of Basra across the plain, a remarkable battle was fought in the April of the year before. A Turkish force of twelve thousand regulars and thirty odd guns, with numerous Arabs, was routed at an extreme and critical moment, it is said, owing to a mistake. The mistake, for once, was on the part of the Turks. Fighting had been very severe. We had no reserves and things were looking black. Numerous Arab tribesmen who had remained as neutral spectators were beginning to take it into their heads that we were losing, and that only means one thing to them. It means they at once join forces with the victorious side, and add their ghastly devilry to the general merriment. The Turks, under Suleiman Askari, had been certain of victory. Victory would have meant the evacuation of Basra, if not of Mesopotamia. So sure had the Turks been that they had struck a medal for the occasion, celebrating the triumph of the capture of Basra. Our men found sacks full of these cheap aluminum badges in the Turkish trenches, and they were sold afterwards in the bazaar at Basra by the thousand. But the Turks never wore them, for, at the most extreme and critical moment, across the plain there came a swirling column of dust, a flashing of wheels, and a thundering of hoofs. The sight was too much for the Turks. Another battery, or even a whole brigade of artillery, after those three exhausting days of fighting, was not worth waiting for. So they rose from their trenches and began to flee, and the Arabs, changing their minds with incredible swiftness, fell on them in the rear and cut and slashed them about considerably. In the meanwhile the strange column galloped up. But there were no guns. In place of guns stood a strangely assorted collection of wagons, spring carts, tongas--anything on wheels--that a certain doctor had got together and brought up at full speed to take away the wounded. The Turkish Commander, Suleiman Askari, committed suicide.

A New Zealander came into hospital one day from Shaiba way. He was a wireless man, and being so, had found something in the desert that puzzled the science of his mind. He explained the matter. Out there it is a white, undulating expanse, burning hot, but with more air than in Basra. There are extraordinary effects of perspective. A man standing a short way off may assume gigantic proportions, or look like a dwarf. A motor car near by would seem to lose its solidity and dissolve into a few filmy lines. The mirage of water is everywhere. An Arab might lie in the open and no one would see him. A post might look like a horseman at full gallop. It was a country of topsy-turveydom as regards the subjective estimate of the eyes. But what puzzled the wireless man was this. He thought he understood how eye-strain and difference of refractive power of the layers of heated air, or reflected light from the ground and such physical considerations could cause these illusions. But what he could not understand was how it came about that several men would experience exactly the same illusion. Why should a post simultaneously appear as an Arab on horseback or an Arab crawling stealthily on the ground to half a dozen men? Mirage, like Rumour, is a curious thing. It may have some inner connection with the set of a man's feelings. It has its pleasant side when it paints water and palms where there is no water nor any palms. It has its sinister side when it clothes the most innocent features of the landscape in images of dread. Who knows how it touched up that flying column of ambulance wagons in the eyes of the Turks? There are certain areas that are constantly the site of mirage. Our gunners found this a continual difficulty at the front, for the hostile Arabs, knowing the mirage areas, would get into them and make ranging impossible. A transport column on the move through mirage is a curious sight. You see, across the plain, a long line of black dots, which are the wagons on the move. But apparently they are passing through the centre of a narrow lake, that runs in the same direction as their line of advance. The reflection in the lake is perfect in every detail and that is suspicious, for a train of wagons and horses crossing a shallow lake would stir up the water and disturb reflection. But there is another thing that helps you to recognise mirage. At the tail of the column rises a cloud of dust and here and there along the line you can make out a little wreath of dust rising apparently from the surface of the mirroring water.

The fall of Kut did not ease the pressure at the hospitals. The sick rate was increasing steadily. The Shimal, the north-west wind that comes just in time to make it possible for you to believe in Providence, was not due until the middle of June. Down by the river-side, where the official meteorological station stood, the day temperature was far over 100 degrees, and up in the airless creeks, in the palm groves, it was much higher. Clinical thermometers cracked if they were left lying about on tables. Our staff was getting seriously depleted. No Tommy had to work so hard as those hospital orderlies, and it is not surprising that our casualties in sick men were very heavy. Clerks in the office became ward masters at a moment's notice. But in spite of all this the spirit of the place remained unshaken. However great the heat, it did not destroy that sense of humour which is the glory of the British Army. Rather be beaten and retain that sense than be victorious and lose it. And if you come to think of it, no man who retains his sense of humour is ever really beaten.