Part 22 (1/2)

A bare strip of filthy ground ran down to the river some two hundred yards off. Along the wall, protected by only a few scanty leaves and loose gra.s.s flung over some tatti work of branches through which the fierce sun streamed with unabated violence, I saw some human forms which no eye but one acquainted with the phenomenon of the trek could possibly recognize as British soldiery. They were wasted to wreathes of skin hanging upon a bone frame. For the most part they were stark naked except for a rag around their loins, their garments having been sold to buy food, bread, milk, and medicine. Their eyes were white with the death hue. Their sunken cheeks were covered with the unshaven growth of weeks. One had just died and two or three corpses just been removed, the Turkish attendant no doubt having heard of the approach of an officers' column. But the corpses had lain there for days. Some of the men were too weak to move.

The result of the collection of filth and the unsanitary state in the centre of which these men lay in a climate like this can be imagined. Water was not regularly supplied to them, and those unable to walk had to crawl to the river for water.

One could see their tracks through the dirt and grime. Three or four hard black biscuits lay near the dead man. Other forms near by I thought dead, but they moved unconsciously again. One saw the bee-hive phenomenon of flies which swarmed by the million going in and out of living men's open mouths. I was discovered talking to the men by a Turk and ”haideed” off to the Turkish officer. Having a.s.sured them of doing all in my power, and having given them the two or three poor useless little coins I could spare, I went to the Turk, having got the topee of Lieutenant O'Donoghoe, who had died under conditions little better, with no doctor, no medicine, and no food but ”chorba” (vegetable soup, practically water). He had lingered in this awfully lonely place for weeks and no transport had been offered him.

I talked long to the Turk, who understood some French, and told him how this sort of thing was destroying the name of Turkey and how for these things the day of reckoning must come. He was more moved by the latter than the former, knowing that in Turkey officials may be sacrificed for any caprice of another person. An Armenian was there also, and I much despised him for expressing horror to me of _les barbares_ when the Turk was outside, but obviously siding with him when together. He then showed me the place of the men in order to point out that I was wrong in not understanding that Turkish kindness was proportionate to their mercy. He was angry, however, when I tried to take him towards ”the”

place, and more so when he heard that I had actually been allowed to go. The case was taken up by our padre, Rev.

H. Spooner, and Father Mullan. What men could move, came along with us. We have raised a subscription of some 60 for the men. Then we heaped large curses on the Commandant and vowed vengeance. The men's lot altered for the better, and we promised to press Turkish authority to send transport. The great pity is that General Melliss, who had achieved miracles _en route_ in alleviating the sufferings of our men, did not stop at Nisibin, the real state of the worst quarters having been withheld from him.

Nisibin is halfway on the second trek, and the column is getting decidedly weaker. At night, when the remorseless sun is gone, we wander up and down our tiny front between the sentries smoking what Arab tobacco we can get and casting many an anxious glance towards the western horizon over which far, far away lies Ras-el-Ain, the railway terminus.

Between this and that there are many marches throughout long nights and days. Shall we reach it?

_Ras-el-Ain, July 4th._--I am thankful to Providence that I am lucky enough to write this heading. At last we are arrived in the wretched village, but as I write I hear a locomotive puffing and puffing. We are on the railhead. No sailor after being tossed amid s.h.i.+pwreck in a frantic ocean ever felt happier to be in port than do we, to realize the long march is done. There are other marches ahead over mountains, but they are short, we hear. The desert is crossed.

We left Nisibin on June 29th at 6.30 p.m. with some very unsatisfactory donkeys, taking with us all the sick we could.

One or two of these had slipped out from hospital unawares, and joined us as we pa.s.sed on. They begged to be allowed to come, saying they preferred dying on the desert to going back to the terrors of Nisibin. We put them up on every available donkey, and some in our hospital cart, and our orderlies helped the rest along. For the most part they did well, although, as the trek wore on, one after another collapsed, and those that did not die at once we left in the most congenial camp we could. The first two nights were bad. The donkeys went stubbornly, as they invariably did, before getting into the swing of the trek.

The pace of the column was coming down to about two miles and often less an hour. The local Arabs seemed wilder, and we had to keep together, as one party of Turks had been recently ma.s.sacred outright.

We were reinforced with vigilant gendarmes. For the stragglers it was certain death at the Arabs' hands. The tail of the column was an awful place. Sometimes one got here when one's donkey collapsed or kit fell off, or when one felt too seedy to sit on one's donkey, or too tired to walk fast when it was one's relay to walk. Four of us shared one donkey, Stapleton and I and our orderlies. At the rear of the column the mounted gendarmes, Turk and Arab, galloped about, exhorting the sick and dying to hurry, almost riding them down and driving them on with blows of sticks and their rifle b.u.t.ts. We, of course, stopped this when we could. One night I got badly left, and the column was miles off. My donkey and orderly had collapsed at the same time, and Stapleton was not available on this occasion, in fact he was probably ill himself. A small band of us we were, and more than once I was practically knocked over by the impetuous hors.e.m.e.n.

The padre was awfully good and diligent in a.s.sisting men, but, nevertheless, from out the night one heard the high Indian wail, ”murghaya, sahib,” ”dying, sahib, dying.” For the most part British soldiers stayed with their friends until they were dead. I saw some of the finest examples history could produce of the British soldier's self-sacrifice for and fidelity to his friend. It was a grim reality for the sick of the column.

For those well, and many were comparatively so, it was quite a different thing. I shall never forget one soldier who could go no farther. He fell resignedly on to the ground, the stump of a cigarette in his mouth, and with a tiredness born of long suffering, buried his head in his arms to shut out the disappearing column and smoked on. Night was around us and Arab fires near. We were a half-mile behind the column.

I was quite exhausted. One sick soldier was hanging on to a strap of my donkey. My orderly on another. His feet were all blood, as his boots had been taken from him. A soldier went to the sick man behind, but I did not see him again.

Shortly after, on the same awful night, I saw another man crawling on all fours over the desert in the dark quite alone.

He said he hoped to reach the next halt, and get his promised ride for half an hour, and by that time he might go on again to the next place. We picked him up, and I gave him my strap. Another sick orderly held him up. He was all bone, and could scarcely lurch along. We eventually got him to the halt, and gave him a place in a cart.

At another place we came across a British soldier whose suffering had been so acute that he had gone out of his mind and lost his memory. He had been left in a cave, and had evidently eaten nothing for days, but had crawled down to the water. He was delirious and jabbering, and thought he was a dog. We carried him along in the cart to the next camp.

On another occasion our donkey bolted, and we were left with no transport whatever, even for our blankets or water.

By the greatest good luck I hired a donkey for some of my kit from a pa.s.sing convoy, and the Arab followed me up for days, getting all he could out of me. Our Commandant finally thrashed him for charging too much, and gave us the donkey henceforth for nothing. But it disappeared the same night, and was probably stolen. I thought hard things of the Commandant.

The column grew weak and slower, and at the end we had to use three carts to move the sick on in relays.

The march to Tel Ermen was the worst. We were raided by Turkish troops on the march, and lost our boots and lots more. Above us the famous old town of Mardin lay perched up on its alt.i.tude, a high-walled and ramparted city of the Ancients looking over a waste of desert and enjoying a secluded life. We wondered how many treks like ours it had seen.

We left more and more of the men and orderlies behind.

The last stage was terribly trying, and we were doing forced marches by night and day. We were done to a turn. Only the driving power of one's will made one press on to the magic word ”Ras-el-Ain.” The future is doubtful enough. But we are at least here. To-morrow we may leave for Aleppo or Konia, no one knows which, least of all the Turk.

We found here most of the doctors, including Fritz and Murphy, living in a wretched little mud-building on rotten and stale eggs brought from Aleppo.

The Hindoos, less favoured than the Mohammedan prisoners, are to remain here. We saw their gaunt skeletons at work carrying baskets of gravel in constructing the railway for the Turks back over the desert they had crossed. This outlook seemed to me sufficiently appalling. They had very little food. The British soldier was to move on. We were glad he was spared this.

I have just visited secretly a German N.C.O. camp of mechanical transport close by. They gave me coffee and biscuits, and, in exchange for a khaki jacket and jodpurs, some tins of bully, a bag of coffee, and some cheese. They were on the point of giving me some more, but I had to go. They told me a lot about Germany, and of the German victory at Kattegat, of which I saw a description in a cutting just received by one of them. We believed, nevertheless, the German had in reality been well hammered on the sea. The Germans couldn't understand my incredulity, and said they didn't see why they shouldn't do on the sea what they had done on the land. Verdun, they said, would be taken in two weeks.

They admitted the French defence was a surprise.

Lord Kitchener's death at sea I didn't believe.