Part 2 (2/2)

As we sat and gazed at these bending and twisting Narrows the idea arose that it might be possible, by a little cutting, to do away with the worst bits and open up a straight channel. For there were two main places of obstruction, called the Devil's Elbow and Pear Drop Reach.

But it is necessary to say this with caution, for tampering with great rivers like the Tigris may cause unthought-of trouble. It upsets the natural balance of the waters.

Gradually the other convoys drew near and dropped anchor above and below the obstructing vessel. Some native troops in one of them got out on the bank and began to bathe, or wandered about looking for fuel to cook their evening meal, and towards evening a string of Arab women and children, from some remote village, came along with eggs and melons and pumpkins. In the meanwhile a kind of activity prevailed in the region of the obstruction. A tug boat appeared and ropes were stretched out to posts on the land and the water was being churned to foam by the paddles. It was said that General Y was on a convoy ahead, and General X, who was going up to replace him, was in a convoy behind us. It was possible to count seven convoys in all, and smoke columns were still rising in the south. It was not until darkness fell that the s.h.i.+p was pulled off, and it was too late to move on that night. So we ate our bully beef and settled down for the night. Once more our sensations were indescribable. The sand-flies were like a million little red-hot wires.

There was not a breath of air and the mules screamed and fought and gasped alongside. One hundred and fifty people packed on a small deck, round a funnel that is still burning hot, make a poor job of sleeping in such a climate.

It was the devout prayer of everyone that we might reach our destination next day and get off the s.h.i.+p and away from those mules. That was not to be. We reached Amara in the darkness of the evening, and anch.o.r.ed near the Rawal Pindi Hospital. Owing to a case of cholera that had developed that day on the starboard barge, we were put in quarantine, so it was necessary to unpack one's kit again and shake down for the night on deck. One of the most refractory mules kicked itself loose of its moorings and fell into the stream in the darkness. Several men risked their lives in rescuing it. One would have thought, seeing that it had been the noisiest and most vicious brute on the barge, that drowning was scarcely good enough for it. And what is a wife to think of her husband when she is told that he was drowned while gallantly attempting to rescue from the swift current of the Tigris a mule that could swim far better than he could? As no one was drowned, perhaps it is unnecessary to ask the question.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ARAB BELUM ON TIGRIS.]

VIII

AMARA

We reached Amara about the middle of July. At that time there was practically nothing happening at the front, but the sickness was great.

Amara, by reason of its openness, was a little fresher than Basra, but the temperature was high. It was 125 degrees in the shade on the day following our arrival.

The white low houses line along the river front on the left bank in a more orderly fas.h.i.+on than at Ashar. A bridge of boats connects the two banks. This bridge, which existed before the war, swings open from the centre and lets traffic through. On the right bank a few houses were scattered amongst thick groves of palms. There is somehow a more oriental spirit at Amara than at Basra. The _belums_ are more fantastically curved, the mystery of the town more apparent, and the narrow-domed bazaar, full of dim light and vivid colour, is permeated with the spirit of the Arabian Nights. There are some cunning craftsmen in the bazaar, particularly the silver-and gold-smiths, who make exquisite inlaid work. They do this after the manner of true artists, in that they work seemingly more by a process of thought and feeling rather than with the aid of tools. For they sit on the ground with a bowl of water, a small charcoal fire, a strip of metal, and a deeply preoccupied look, and after a time the article is finished. The overlaying of silver by antimony is their particular craft. Owing to the orders they received, they soon began to charge prohibitive prices. At certain times it was possible to get egret feathers, and also astrachan--the skin of unborn lambs--in the bazaar. The old copper vessels that were sold in many of the shops were sometimes very beautiful.

The suspected cholera case proving doubtful, we were put out of quarantine next morning, and moved across the river to the site of the hospital which we were to take over. It lay round a bend in the river on the right bank above and well out of the town. To the north lay the river, to the south the desert. A large number of mud and reed huts, in long rows, stood on the plain, covering an area of about a quarter of a square mile. These were the wards. There was a sense of s.p.a.ce that was refres.h.i.+ng after the cramped and littered area of the clearing at Basra, with its surrounding marshes and palm groves. We officers were put in tents in a small palm and pomegranate thicket at the periphery of the hospital area. The nursing quarters were at the other end, nearer the town. These quarters were built of wood and low roofed, with a layer of mud on the top. The nurses were in many cases volunteers who had seen service in Mudros, and these had just got the Royal Red Cross Medal, equivalent to a D.S.O. Very pleased they were with it, and greatly they deserved it. Their quarters were divided by thin mud walls into narrow compartments, and they found the lack of sound-deadening properties trying. But that is a universal experience of this war--the continual overhearing of conversation, the necessity for being in a crowd, and the lack of moments of privacy. They slept out of doors, on the river front, in a wired enclosure, patrolled by a sentry. The sentries were a peculiarity of the place which distinguished it from Basra. For in that region looters came in from the desert, some from the villages and some from camps of nomad Arabs. Their great ambition was firearms. The second ambition seemed to be clothing. There must exist somewhere a complete colony of khaki-clad Arabs, of all ranks up to Staff officers, probably in some district Persia-way, in the Pashtikhu hills. They were extremely daring. They would come in at night on horseback, leave their horses out on the plain and stroll in under the sentries' noses. For many months a spirit of compromise was shown in the matter, but eventually a stronger line was taken and the Sheiks of the surrounding country were put under the penalty of a heavy fine if looting continued. Occasionally men were stabbed by these marauders, who carried long, curved knives, but the main object was looting and not killing.

It was a singular spot to find a large number of women, away up in the heart of that elemental country of fire and water and earth. But they remained untouched by any kind of pessimism, nor were they greatly interested in the campaign as a military affair. All their interest was in their work. They were a wonderful stimulus. Where a man unwittingly tended to let things slide they exhorted and energised. In details, they did not seem to show that gradual decadence that creeps imperceptibly over men when isolated and overworked. It is perhaps so subtle that it takes a woman to detect it. Women may be theoretically unscientific, but they are essential to the maintenance of the scientific spirit and practice. Naturally they suffered sickness, but not nearly so much as one might have expected; for discipline plays a tremendous part in the avoidance of sickness. It is not so much a physical factor as a moral one. It seemed possible to induce a practice of going sick very easily, and in that climate it was only necessary to permit some inner act of surrender that escapes simple definition, but resembles the lowering of a dog's tail, and one became a sick man. It was not exactly malingering.

Beyond the western boundary of the hospital, behind the officers' tents, lay an oriental garden. An oil engine and pumps at the river's edge supplied the water to it through channels. The machine was worked by an Arab who, as far as one could tell, prayed to it. In the garden, full of moist heat and splashes of colour, lived a colony of jackals, those extraordinary spirits of h.e.l.l, whose wailing and hysteria are so amazing. I do not know how Darwin would have accounted for the particular note they strike. It is probably on a level with the roaring of the lion, in that it is designed to terrify. But the jackal does not terrify by such obvious methods as the lion. He plays on your eerie, ghostly, superst.i.tious side. He brings up into the imagination the malignity and hopelessness of the d.a.m.ned. He seems to people the night with wailing horrors. To a man dying of thirst in the desert, the jackal must just give the final touch of despair that makes death and nothingness seem best. It must be strange to die, surrounded by jackals at their chthonian litanies.

Shortly after we reached Amara, the news came that Sir Victor Horsley had died. It was in a season of extreme heat, when death comes suddenly in many forms. Eighty officers attended his funeral in columns of fours, the most junior in front. He had a coffin. Wood was precious in Amara. There were some other bodies sewn up in army blankets. A long, dusty march of a mile to the cemetery, a shallow earth grave, a brief ceremony, the same for all, and a weary tramp home in the sun--that was the final picture. There is one detail to add, and that is the lovely playing of the ”Last Post” over the graves. In him we lost the finest surgeon in Mesopotamia.

For many days after this we moved about as it were in a vast furnace.

The nights were broken by sand-flies. Personally, I found the only way of keeping them out was to wear socks on the feet and hands, and smear the face and neck with some kind of ointment, on which their feet slip, so that they cannot find a purchase when in the act of driving their sucking apparatus into the skin. In the morning, what with the sweat and the grease, and the tropical exhaustion, one looked like few things on earth. Oil of citronella is only of temporary use; paraffin and creosote are of little good. b.u.t.ter muslin nets are out of the question, as the heat is stifling under them. The burning of aromatic or pungent compounds is useless, and as for killing them, one might lie awake all night, scuffling and dabbing and slapping at the almost invisible forms without gaining the slightest benefit. In the day time they hide in cracks in the ground, under bits of matting or anywhere out of the sun.

Sand-fly fever is a malady that begins like influenza. One aches all over. All the side of life that is enjoyment fades away. It is impossible to smoke, or eat, or drink, or read, or talk. In Malta, where it is indigenous, a convalescence of three weeks is allowed. It was not possible to allow that in Amara. The fever lasts two or three days, coming down in two main stages. The use of opium is recommended. As regards the use of opium in Mesopotamia, it was possible to gain the idea from actual experience that it was a most valuable drug during the hot season. If limited to three drugs and no more, for work in that country, I should prefer opium, Epsom salts and quinine. The quinine that we obtained through official channels was in the form of pink tablets and came from the cinchona plantations at Darjeeling that are run by the Indian Government. These tablets are coloured pink to prevent fraudulent selling, for they are handed out to natives in malarial districts in large quant.i.ties, free of charge, and natives are not great believers in medicine. The tablets are extremely hard and insoluble.

Prolonged exposure to the action of dilute mineral acids produces no effect on them. We had, for the men, quinine parades, when five grains were swallowed as a prophylactic against malaria every day. They were amusing affairs to watch--serried ranks with water-bottles, standing to attention while the sergeant dispenser walked with proper dignity down the line handing a pink tablet to each man, who gulped it spasmodically, took a draught of water and returned to attention. It reminded one of a religious ceremony, of some strange communion service. In giving the quinine in large doses it was essential to dissolve it, if any effect was aimed at. Even then it rarely produced symptoms of quinine poisoning. The home preparations were more satisfactory to use. As regards opium, it was useful, apart from sand-fly fever, in those frayed, sleepless states of mind that prolonged heat induces. The English idea that a dose of morphia or laudanum at once induces the opium habit, though very safe, is not altogether sound. Other hypnotics were usually not strong enough to give long sleep; but here, to produce an effect with hypnotics, it seemed necessary to double the dose. This may have had something to do with some deterioration in drugs caused by the big demands of the war. But I do not think it was the only explanation. Of course, for those who dreaded the use of opium, and preferred chloral or bromide, it was only necessary to glance into the tents where the Chinese carpenters slept at night. There one saw rows of comatose figures and if you cared to lift the lips from the gums of those sleepers, you would usually see a little sticky ma.s.s of opium wedged in between the teeth. That was one way of solving the problem of sand-flies and heat at night and no doubt an admirable ill.u.s.tration of the dangers of the drug. But it is possible to find ill.u.s.trations for everything.

At Amara, paratyphoid A was commonest in the troops coming down from the Front. It was not a very grave disorder, but sometimes, particularly when complicated by other factors, it was fatal. It must be remembered that many patients reached us as emaciated skeletons, in the last stage of exhaustion. Special wards were set aside for typhoid cases. Dysentery was also increasing, and wards were reserved for these cases. It was mainly what is called bacillary dysentery, for which Epsom salts is one of the best remedies. All typhoid cases, as soon as convalescent, were sent to India. That was because they often carry the germs in the intestinal tract a long time after recovery and therefore may become a source of infection. They spent on an average three months in India before returning for service. There was no place in Mesopotamia where convalescent patients could be sent with a reasonable prospect of gaining full health. About twenty miles beyond Aligarbi lie the Pashtikhu hills and there in those high alt.i.tudes a big military sanatorium might have been established. This would have saved endless transport difficulties, if a light railway had been constructed. But no doubt the military situation rendered the carrying out of such an idea impracticable. Heat-stroke in Amara was common enough, but it did not seem so fatal as at Basra. This, perhaps, was due to the air, which was drier and fresher. The supply of ice was also more adequate.

We had some unlucky spells. It is a curious thing that luck seems to enter into the matter of death rates. I mean that sometimes for two or three days at a time cases seemed to go wrong and die, on the slightest provocation. At other times, when the luck changed, the most hopeless cases would clear up. It was the same way in the operating theatre. It is the same way with everything, whether it be card playing, or business, or war, or love, or thinking, or sport. There are phases in which something seems to overshadow the scene. The direction of the current changes. For a time everything seems to go wrong. The machinery behind life, that is always helping you on, stops and reverses. And there is another aspect of the same thing which doctors sometimes see in a remarkable way. It is the occurrence of similar kinds of cases at the same time. For part of it there is the scientific explanation of infection by germs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EZRA'S TOMB.]

The s.h.i.+mal was now blowing from the north-west, bringing the dust in from the desert. At times it produced a strange effect. The atmosphere became dun-coloured, thickened at places into opaque and rus.h.i.+ng veils.

Under the pressure of the strong, hot wind the big _mahallas_, with their white sails in tense curves, careered down the river with only a streak of white foam under the prow to show they were not suspended in the air. The further bank, pale and unsubstantial, was outlined fitfully in the hurrying gloom. A kind of lividity spread over the picture, bleaching it of all colour. Everything in the wards became silted over with fine powder, and the big yellow and black hornets and the long-legged wasps that seem to have two or three pendant abdomens and are the hue of Burgundy marigolds, came hurtling through the unglazed windows to crawl, half-stunned, about the mud floors. How the ward Sisters anathematised these days! The storms provoked a feeling not unlike east winds at home. They brought out small aches and pains and one got irritable. A thunderstorm would have cleared away the effect, but the sky remained cloudless and brazen.

IX

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