Part 8 (1/2)
The fine spell of weather seems about to break.
_February 29th._--It is raining in a most shocking fas.h.i.+on.
Lord! How it does rain here--when it wants to! The sun goes, the sky shuts its eyes and rains with all its might, so that it is difficult to believe there ever was a time when it did not rain.
c.o.c.kie is sick. I took his duty on the river-front observation post and watched for hours the deluge of water falling down and flowing past in a yellow turgid current. The reports are that it is hourly rising. Every endeavour is being made to strengthen the _bunds_ and build others. The main _bund_ across our front still holds and the other side of it is already a great lake where our former position was. The Turks have had to leave this part of their line and go back a few hundred yards to the sand-hills. Through my telescope I can see tiny waves das.h.i.+ng up against the _bund_ like a drifting sea against a breakwater. I met Captain Stace, R.E., to whom I lent a clinometer while he worked at this invaluable construction.
He is most rea.s.suring in his quiet optimistic way.
The next most important event of to-day is that Dorking was persuaded to exchange seven cigars for my ten cigarettes.
I came by them yesterday in a special issue ”found” by the Supply and Transport people. By the way, there are more things in the Supply and Transport philosophy than heaven and earth ever dreamed of.
It is the gala-day of Leap Year, but I have no extra proposals to record--not even from Sarah Isquashabuk, the Arabian lady with bread-plate feet and small gate-post legs and a card-table back on which she carries small trees and walls of houses. She is a hard worker and always cheerful, but with a most murderous-looking eye, and I confess that one doesn't always see daylight through all her actions. This morning I saw her dragging a stalwart Arab along by the unshaven hair with much laughter--possibly her truant Adonis.
The Arab population have done themselves fairly well until recently, for they had hidden much foodstuff and stolen considerable supplies since. But the last few weeks they have been begging, and the children search corners and rubbish heaps.
If the siege goes to extremities it will be ten thousand pities that the Arab population was not removed out at the outset. For the laws of humanity would restrain our pus.h.i.+ng them out now--the Turks or surrounding hostile Arabs would murder the lot. But we should have had the food they are getting now for rations, and that might have saved the lives of thousands of British downstream. All we did was to invite them to stay at their peril. They accepted.
_March 1st._--A most eventful day. c.o.c.kie is still down with dysentery, and I have relieved him all day at the observation post. Everything was very quiet on my way to tea.
I walked through the palm grove intending to examine the mountings of the anti-air gun when I heard the m.u.f.fled boom of guns to the north. Then others sounded--that ruffling sound of a blanket being shaken. I hastened back to the observation post, sh.e.l.ls falling in the trees and alongside the trench. I got on top and ran until I got back. The fire increased into the biggest artillery bombardment the enemy has yet made, lasting for two and a half hours. About ten batteries opened out on us, searching the palm grove for our 4-inch, and then four batteries concentrated on the 47 guns in the horse boats and barges moored in the river 150 yards from them, and also on the 5-inch heavies immediately below them but thirty yards to a flank. Thankful I was indeed for that thirty yards respite. At least fifty sh.e.l.ls pitched at exact range for my few sandbags that any direct hit would knock flying--exact range but always within those thirty yards to a flank, and of course on the other side into the river dozens of them. But not all, for sometimes they ”swept”
and the heavy Windy Lizzies tore up the green ground all around, and the building, on the roof of which were my bags, shook so much that the bags moved. Then one lucky sh.e.l.l struck the _mahela_ near by, another got the building I was on, smas.h.i.+ng down the end room, and yet another pierced the side part.i.tion ten yards off, and for a few seconds I didn't know whether I had been blown into the river or not, for the shock was severe and all was yellow darkness. Large pieces of wood and _mutti_ were hurled all around my sandbags, one piece fetching me a clout on the helmet and denting in my megaphone. I remember a faint cheer from the Supply and Transport shelters when the smoke cleared away and the observation post was seen still to exist. All this time I had been engaging one target with our 18-pounders, and keeping the rifle fire of Snipers' Nest down with another.
It all seemed to come about so very quickly. One moment I was walking out of the trench in the date grove threading my way over the slippery ground when the first three m.u.f.fled booms told me B target had opened fire. The next, without wondering what the grimy Turkish gunners at B were shooting at, or what the result of the sh.e.l.ls still in the air would be, I was tearing back to the river front. One counted the usual twelve seconds from the distant boom of these targets and then heard the invisible singers in the mid-air, and then krump-kr-rump-sh-sh-sh-sh as the sh.e.l.ls struck with a deep ba.s.s explosion followed by the swis.h.i.+ng sound of falling earth that had been hurled up aloft. I recollect now seeing a mule bolt as it heard the increasing hits, and although I felt quite as uncomfortable as the mule I was tickled with the notion of a mule developing the fire instinct, for it bolted intelligently to a flank. That mule deserves to live.
From the observation post there was no need of a telescope to tell me that B was in action. The three puffs stood out very clearly and three more to the right. I reported a new target, gave the bearing, and watched our 5-inch and 47's reply. This brought A and B targets to engage our 47 and 5-inch below me. The 40-pounders tore up the water, going very close to but always missing the barges, and the shock from a Windy Lizzie hitting the water was always much greater to my sandbags on the roof, than when hitting the earth beneath us. In the former case my six-foot stack vibrated several inches. I saw one sh.e.l.l actually enter the 5-inch emplacement. It exploded on touching the other side, missing a gun-layer by inches. The shock knocked him down--that was all. Ten minutes later another sh.e.l.l got there again, within two feet of the former one. This time the men were taking cover. It was now that the battery opened on the town with 16-pounders, and on my engaging them the Turkish heavies lengthened and sh.e.l.led my observation station, also the other observation station for our heavies 100 yards away.
As I have noted, they got me in a beautiful 100-yards bracket, the one cras.h.i.+ng into the poor devils in the hospital amid awful yells, and the two nearest getting the end of this building and smothering me with debris. Some pitched into the hospital forty yards away, their trajectory just above us. It is extraordinary the tricks one gets up to on occasions. The sergeant-major, an excellent soldier and very cool fellow, stuck his hands on his head more than once, and I found myself leaning hard up against the sandbags the hissing Lizzies were directly making for, just as if my doing so would help the bags to stick there. They came with a slow hiss that finished in a vicious whip past for the last bit. The sandbags stopped scores of bullets this afternoon, and that is all they are meant to do. I had very good luck with the target we had previously registered on. It is a target of three guns over the Shat-el-hai.
I shut them up with half a dozen rounds, and then took on another new target that opened further south. Then still another target on the Woolpress sector sh.e.l.led Kut and the 82nd engaged them. We had barely shut up this target M, and also S, when several other Turkish batteries that had been silent for months opened up on the town. This proved too much for the youthful spirit of Funny Teddy, that ardent and sprightly young mountain gun, which just as a puppy watching a fight between his seniors tries to have a look in too and barks and bucks about in the most promising style, opened up on H.M.S. _Sumana_. From my observation post I could see targets all round the compa.s.s being engaged by our guns.
The Turk was out-gunned and out-shot absolutely, but his target was Kut and ours merely his guns.
A hot rifle fire sprang up from the Snipers' Nest, Shat-el-hai, and from across the river by the tomb. This we kept down in a fas.h.i.+on in our sector, and the 12-pounders of the _Sumana_ also gave them hot music, as the men call it.
The town then came in for it badly, the hospital especially catching it. We may thank heaven the Turks haven't anything much in the way of high-explosive sh.e.l.l. They use old stuff, common and segment, and the thick crust of baked mud wall is usually sufficient percussion to bring about the burst.
The danger then is from the fragments. The building usually escapes. I have seen segments of a Windy Lizzie as big as a half loaf embedded in a wall opposite to the aperture it made on entering. High-explosive sh.e.l.l would demolish the building altogether.
At the height of the show the sharp notes of the alarm gong rang over Kut, and Fritz, with a second machine accompanying his Morane, was seen approaching rapidly from the north. Our machine-guns opened on them and also a brisk fusillade from the trenches as they came over. They bombed Kut and then returned to their camp for more bombs.
This was repeated again and again, making a dozen trips in all. Every one took cover in bas.e.m.e.nts. Scarcely a soul was to be seen. We had to stick where we were, as our guns were still in action, but one had plenty of time to look skyward and see the death-bird there, as I did three or four times this afternoon, directly in a plumb-line over our heads, and to hear the whirring propeller of the bomb increasing in loudness and pace as it fell. One trusted in Providence or luck. He got the bank of the river and the hospital several times, but his nearest to us was at least forty yards off. The bombs cannot be placed with great accuracy, so they drop three or four close together to make a zone. Some of the bombs were 100-pounders, which would blot a fellow out as effectually as an hydraulic stamp.
Funniest of all, the heavy mortar, Frolicsome f.a.n.n.y, tiring of acting wallflower on the other bank, chucked her big bombs at us. But she is a left-handed and cross-eyed filly, and the G.o.ds have set a limit to her range for evil. Some went in the river near the horse boats. These were received calmly by the Tigris. Another got into the sand-heap near our butchery and fell into it without exploding. Some scientifically minded Arabs charged up to secure it and were within thirty yards when the thing went off to their huge astonishment.
We had a good laugh at the way they sprinted back jabbering with rage and fear. The mules have got to know her, and, keeping one eye on the bomb as it comes over the river, continue grazing until it is nearly across and then bolt the opposite way.
One of Fritz's bombs, a 100-pounder, we saw toppling over and over in the air quite plainly. It didn't go off. But another such sent a table at least two hundred feet into the air.
This is true. I won't spoil it by saying that the cloth was laid and set. It was merely a table and its four legs stuck up towards the evening moon.
The bombing raid continued until it was too dark for Fritz to see. Then I went home, and on my way saw interested little crowds that had emerged to examine various sh.e.l.l-holes.
Arabs ran up and down the streets howling for their dead.
Over a thousand sh.e.l.ls have been flung into the town and there were a good few hit among the hospital patients, and the Arabs lost many. About a score only were killed, but many more were injured. Considering the intensity of the bombardment this is an excellent tribute to the shelters of Kut.
_10 p.m._--Every one is extra vigilant to-night although we think it hardly likely the Turks will try to storm us. That they cannot easily do now, and the floods increase their difficulty daily.
_March 2nd._--The whole night long wild howlings and dismal wailing of the Arabs for their dead and wounded continued and kept me awake. Now and then some other Arab extra full of despair would let out a yell like a steam-whistle that rose high above the universal hubbub. The Jews here cry in a different key altogether, a wobbly vibrato long sustained, much less sweet but not wholly unlike the _tangi_ of the Maoris in New Zealand. A Jewish funeral is a sad little affair.