Chapter V (2)

It is a clear, beautiful day and appreciably warmer. Already the flies are dreadful and swarm everywhere in billions. The Kut fly is a pronounced cannibal.

I walked through the palm woods to the 4-inch guns, where I found Parsnip alone in his glory. There he has been the whole siege with a very comfortable tent under the trees, and his only job is to repeat orders from the telephone to his two antediluvian guns. As a field gunner I am not enamoured of his monotonous and stationary job. Parsnip is a subaltern also and has two characteristics. In playing chess he seizes the pieces by the head, and after describing an artistic parabola, sets them down. He is a Radical, as you would expect of any fellow so handling a pawn, let alone a queen. His second claim to notoriety is said to be as author of a future publication entitled, "Important People I intend to meet." As a hobby he kills mosquitos with a horse flick.

For over an hour beneath those biblical palms Parsnip, or Pas Nip, and I stood by his guns and smoked and looked out over the darkening plain where shadow chased shadow under the capricious moon, and where, like will o' the wisps of an extravagant dream, tiny flashes tempted us still to hope on. For what? Well, there were the flashes. They were the flashes of our guns. And I longed for tobacco and wine. Parsnip, on the contrary, was a married man!

_March 25th._--This morning I had a thorough inspection of the horse and wagon lines and inspected shelters previous to my visit to headquarters to report on ammunition. Orders are out for all ranks to prepare to receive heavy bombardment. I am having the ammunition shelter even further reinforced against shell or bomb. The present scheme is to have two thick roofs each topped by kerosene tins packed close and filled with soil. One of these shelters will explode the shell or bomb, and the other receive the burst. The horse-lines have been changed and pits dug for all drivers and detachments and traversed for possible enfilade bursts. The men are working on a shelter for our basement room with tins of earth piled up. Tins are fearfully scarce, as hundreds have been requisitioned for the defence of H.M.S. _Sumana_ and other things. We have, we believe, sheltered the probable zones with what tins we have. Thus the doorway and window are unprotected because the upper back room would stop all except howitzer fire, and the enemy's howitzer is south of Kut. Similarly to prevent a lucky shell bursting through the wall of the first-floor room and roof of our present one, we have had three rows of tins--all we could get--arranged in front of the wall upstairs. I have calculated that any burst entering higher than this would get the opposite upstairs wall and pass out into the street.

Tudway and Square-Peg have accused me of being cold-blooded over the affair. But I intended to be nothing if not practical, and the next morning discovered that any shell of average intentions, in fact one falling ten feet shorter than the very one that had plugged into my bedroom wall up above, would have no difficulty in going through the mess roof and so through the mess cupboard--a large receptacle into the wall--into our so-called impregnable bedroom which was to be the emergency shelter for all hands. My bed was just beyond the cupboard the other side of the three-foot wall. So this evening when Tudway went to the cupboard for the jam and meat and bread he found a solid wall of tins filled with earth. This he considered a master-stroke. The provisions, as he explained, would have been directly in the line of fire!

Moreover, I have had removed a score or two of loose bricks which were wedged in the best Damocletian style between the joists and the ceiling. For last night I dreamed one fell on my head. Why my head is always in the line of trouble I can't say.

Talking of dreams, that is the second nasty one in a few days. The previous time I dreamed I was being hung. That was probably due to a button that I had sewn on to the neck of my pyjama jacket by the uncertain light of dubbin oil!

_10 p.m._--There is heavy and continuous firing downstream. I respectfully suggest a variation of Watts's "Hope"--that popular picture. A junior sub asleep in a barricaded corner of a room in Kut beside a four-ounce slice of bread, listening in his dreams to distant guns.

I must now make one of the most important entries of the whole siege. General Smith gave me a _Punch_. I mean that having finished with a copy of _Punch_, sent to him by aeroplane, he has passed it on to me.

Shakespeare, Thackeray, and Punch. In the flesh, what friends those three would have been!

"If," writes an unborn Teufeldrockh, "I were not a German, I would like to be Punch."

"If," replies Punch, with a dignified bow, "you were not a German, you could aspire."

For what duellist but that great English gentleman Punch has the seeing eye, the delicate wrist, the merciful smile?

_March 26th._--I am in Indian khaki again, for summer has come to Kut. It is even getting unpleasantly warm.

The massaging has decreased the rheumatics if anything, although I am very much weaker and can't walk 400 yards without getting blown. It is worth while to avoid the chaff bread, and I stick to an occasional egg and rice-husk and soup.

How fit I was when I started on this front! Square-Peg was seedy yesterday and in pain. I gave him some essence of ginger tabloids, and later on opium, which relieved him somewhat.

It is rumoured that the 6-inch guns from home have at last reached Gorringe. The enemy is now completely outclassed in artillery.

Tudway took me with him on board the _Sumana_ to see the effects of the recent bombardment. By a miracle one shell missed the main steam-pipes and carried away part of the bridge and cabin and funnel. Tudway is a keen officer, and has all the delightful insouciance of his service. We went over the whole boat and the barges. He was all on the alert, in his quiet way, to gather any suggestions for further protecting his alumnus. We sat in his dismantled cabin and talked of the sea, or rather he did, and I mentally annotated him with my own dreams. The sea, the sea, so vast, so great, so deep, so far away! As the hart panteth after the water-brooks so pant we Englishmen after thee, O Sea, even after thee, wild and lonely as thou art, and after thy waters briny as tears. Mighty, untamed, eternal! We, thy children, love thee. Alone, thou art free!

Turkish snipers followed us up, and we had to run the gauntlet on the way to the shore over the waters of the flood. I bought three small fish yesterday here, but some one's native servant was killed last evening by a stray shell while fishing, so for the future it's all off. On one occasion, Tudway and I tried to net some, but both the Turks and the fish were against us.

This siege is a perfect device for leaving a man to his own plaguings. A book is now almost as great a luxury as bread. I am even driven to re-robing and criticizing some of our early endeared legacies. Let us begin with the poet's notion of service--admittedly of a bygone day.

_The Soldier's Dream._

By the other Campbell.

_Our bugles sang truce for the night-cloud had lowered--_

Delightful arrangement that, one must admit. A
truce is, after all, more fun than a night attack. And
perhaps the cloud was a big one and it looked like rain!

_And the Sentinel stars set their watch in the sky--_

Much better! But that does away with the rain theory.

_And thousands had sunk on the ground overpowered--_

Bad-fitting word. Sounds like avoirdupois. But it
must have referred to gas fumes, otherwise the line
certainly reflects on the condition of the men. This
climate could be called "overpowering."

_The weary to sleep and the wounded to die--_

That scouts the gas theory! As a matter of fact it's
the last thing the weary have a chance to do, and the
wounded certainly take weeks to die. Look at Cockie!

_While reposing one night on my pallet of straw--_

Fancy Tommy "reposing"! Campbell, may I inform
you that Thomas neither poses nor reposes, which
suggests the soft, rounded limbs of a Grecian maiden on
a bed of rose-leaves. Tommy likes his mouth open, and
often prefers to lie on his stomach with his legs wide
apart. Reposing! My hat! What an awful swank
the man was with his knocking off work because of the
night-cloud, and what with his reposing on a pallet of
straw. Why he didn't go in for a convertible four-legged
wheelbarrow bedstead puzzles me. Tommy lies on the
"good 'ole dirt" if it's hot, and otherwise screws himself
up into his blanket, head and all. I hear Graoul asking
his pal, "O, Halgie, koindly porse erlong may pallet
hof straarw hat wance."

"Roight yer hare! 'Ere, Toenails, pallit-er strore is
forwerd--hand the quilt halso."

_At the dead of night a sweet vision I saw,
And thrice ere the morning I dreamed it again--_

Kindly eliminate "dreamed" and substitute "saw,"
then re-read it. Don't laugh! Why shouldn't he
"see" it the second and even the third time also?
Tommy sees lots of things--at times.

_I dreamed from the battlefield's dreadful array
Far, far, I had roamed on a desolate track.
It was springtime and summer arose on the way--
To the home of my fathers that welcomed me back--_

Tommy wouldn't dream of dreaming such a thing.
As for the "home of my fathers," the shape of the idea
would give him a fit. "Bit o' skirt more like it."

_Stay, stay with us, thou art weary and worn;
And fain was the war beaten soldier to stay--
But sorrow returned with the dawning of morn
And the voice in my dreaming ear melted away--_

"D'ye 'ear this, Spud?" says Tommy Toenails.
"The voice in 'is dreeamin' hear melted."

"Bit o' wax, more like," says Spud.

"I say a flea an' charnce it," adds Tooting Tom.

"Hand," says Spud, "wen 'e hawoke 'e got anuther
stomikful o' sorrer. Marrid man, too. Gawd 'elp 'im."

We pass on. Let us take that dear little hymn lots
of us learned at our mother's knee--

"_There is a green hill far away
Without a city wall._"

How I used to wonder what a green hill could possibly
want _with_ a city wall. Ah! the dear doubts of childhood!
I shall be told that "without" meant "beyond."
Another doubt was about "Llewellyn and his
Dog." How the siege has helped us to join hands with
childhood once more. Surely I haven't thought of
the lines for many years. They run--

"_The gallant hound the wolf had slain,
To save Llewellyn's heir._"

I remember we had to write a composition on the
poem, and having decided that it was the wolf that had
killed the hound--just as one says, "The scanty bone
the beggar picked"--I had to square matters so as to
explain how the hound died a second time at the hands
of Llewellyn. It's all misty now, but I at least remember
propounding the theory that the Welsh chieftain, in his
terror, must have mistaken the wolf for the hound, and
consequently did _him_ in for murdering the lost child.
It was this incident, I believe, that induced my parents
to select for me a career at the Bar.

That incident recalls another one later on. At school
we had a delightful master who hated using chalk. He
informed us that we were to write an essay on--

"_Beneath the rule of men entirely great
The pen is mightier than the sword._"

One promising fellow misheard the last word as
"saw." He was rather an authority on saws, and treated
us to a delightful treatise on saws in general, band-saws,
hand-saws, rip-saws, fret-saws, and circular saws. As
far as I remember, the drift of his argument was that
a pen could merely write, whereas a saw could cut a
piece of wood.

Once more, "Eheu! _Fugaces postumi----_"

I wonder where that lad is now. I should think he
must be a large saw-miller somewhere--possibly asleep
on a "pallet of straw" in France, and seeing "visions"
of his beloved saws. Why not! God bless him. I've
forgotten his name and even what he was like.

Well, well, these frivolities must come to an end for it's ten o'clock. I had intended to set out more details of our starvation methods, but we talk enough of it and I'm sick of the subject. Besides, what is happiness but a big digression?

_March 27th._--The day's bulletin is that the Churches in England are praying for us. How we hope they pray hard. There is, we understand, to be a last forward movement of all arms to the relief of Kut. The position down below seems to have developed into something like that in France, as the Turkish forces are dug deep and well flanked with impassable swamps. It is difficult to force such a position against the clock, but we easily outnumber the enemy, so it is said, and then our heavy guns may do a great deal.

The water of the floods is now all over the _maidan_ around our old first line, in fact in front of our present first line is a great lake some feet deep, and possibly eight feet above the dry base of our trench. The large _bund_ or wall we have made is excellent. The enemy has had to withdraw still further back, and in places he is 1500 yards off. In this way the floods have saved us. There is little chance of an attack through the water. It may be doubted whether our men could have stood the strain in their present condition if the enemy had maintained his original proximity of from 50 to 150 yards. I remember a listening post at C Redoubt something like ten yards from the first line of the enemy.

Over the river all around Woolpress and beyond, and also reaching southward, are shining sheets of water with ever-diminishing green patches between. During the last flood of a few days back the water percolated into Woolpress, which, of course, is on the bank of the river, and wrought great havoc in the trenches and among the men there.

It must be an awfully lonely and desolated existence over there at Woolpress, a siege within a siege. The post is a mere sequence of mud houses, all adjoined, five yards or so from the water and forming a segment of a circle on the river about 250 yards frontage, its first line being the arc extending 150 yards inland at its farthest. They have first and second line trenches, and barbed wire, and since the heavy floods, a _bund_. So that it is now practically an island. The Turkish lines reach all round it in larger arcs also resting on the river-bank. They have not even the chance of buying stores as we have, and never come over, nor is it permitted for any to cross. The communication is by motor-boat or almost always by the _Sumana_. Tudway has the nerve of Beelzebub, and delights most of all in his moonlight trips. It would, of course, be certain destruction for him to cross in the daytime. At the beginning of the siege there was telephonic communication, but the wire was rotten and broke continually. We have helio now, and some sort of understanding for emergency signalling by lights. Our river-front guns are all registered on the enemy's lines around the place, and on one or two occasions we have gone to gun-fire, thus preventing any Turkish reserves getting up. From this side of the river a section of the 82nd R.F.A.'s guns can enfilade the enemy's northern lines around Woolpress.

We get news of the place by the drafts that now and then reinforce the post on relief. The story goes that the other day a party of Turks peered over their trenches and cried aloud to our Mussulman soldiers not to fight against their brother followers of Mahomet, but to go over to them who had plenty of food. This sort of thing had gone on quite a time when the officer on picket duty got about a dozen sepoys to fire a volley at the Turks just by way of exchanging compliments. The Turks replied, and general fire ensued. That highly intuitional body over here, Headquarters, believing that Woolpress was being attacked by all the spare Turks in the Ottoman Empire, gave our artillery enthusiastic orders, and Woolpress began to think they took some part in the siege after all, in fact that they belonged to us. And although it was a storm in a teapot, no doubt for those in the teapot it was highly interesting. It is even said that senior officers struggled out from beneath spider-webbed blankets where they had hoped to complete their hibernation until the siege was over, to see the reason for this turn of events. Woolpress are a gallant little band, no doubt, and there have been times when no insurance company on earth would have looked twice at any one of them, although a philanthropic society might have stretched a point for those certified able to swim; for a red Turkish crescent ringed them in and grew ever closer to them, and once the river took sides and offered to drown them. But that was months ago.

Woolpress, too, has its advantages. They have been practically never shelled and rarely bombed. On the contrary, when we are getting bombarded or any particular show is on, they all take front seats on their river-bank in absolute security and observe our emotions. I well remember that gala day of March 1st, when enemy guns of both sides took part in that very well conducted "command matinée" performance for the entertainment of the gods. The whole crowd of Woolpress was seated early, orchestral stalls for field officers, subalterns in specially erected boxes, and the rank and file everywhere else. I was, of course, very much on the stage, being stuck up there shooting my guns, while the Turks cut patterns round me with all the artistry of Turkish artillery. The heavy gunners on the observation post farther along, that well-battered remnant that is the despair of the Sultan's artillery observers, also attracted considerable attention from an audience particularly sporting. I felt that the Woolpressers were making and taking huge bets as to what time my wee sandbag arrangement with contents would go by the board. Opera glasses were there by the dozen. But Jove, Trenchion, and Shraptune, the sporting gods that had decreed the performance, naturally objected to such small fry sharing the entertainment, and sent Fritz along with bombs. This considerably thinned the box plan, from which many adjourned for afternoon tea, while those more deeply in debt remained taking still larger bets on their own immediate existence.

This is my birthday. We have raised a small quantity of rum with which we three shall notch the year to-night. Why doesn't one feel older? Life lies immediately behind us like the wake of a ship, but _we_ don't change--only the distance behind us changes (and a few of us are a stone lighter!).

9.30 _p.m._--I returned from my round with a copy of _The Field_ from General Smith. There was an excellent article on Pan-Germanism, and another that brought to Kut the brown wintry heather, the smell of the peat streams, the pheasants, and the free rolling moors of Yorkshire. And that led me to contrast the present flooded aspect of this dreary stretch of God's ancient mud with the frilled hedges and those gay wild banners of English springtime.

Speaking for myself on this my thirtieth birthday, I never felt so restful and free from the gnawings of ambition. For better fellows have fallen, and promising careers have closed, and disastrous ones terminated before amends could be made; while I have lots of credit in hand, for I have had many lucky narrow shaves.