En Route.
En Route.
Suddenly, some time after sunset, we were just preparing to settle down by the station for the night when a train drew up. With some other subalterns I found a small place for a bed in a truck. There was a space of four feet by two for each of us. We stuffed our legs anywhere and slept. The train started and we awoke. The doors of the truck were open. We watched the desert go by, thankful beyond expression, mystified at this extraordinary change, the conveyance of dying men without their own effort. The terrible bumps and the state of the trucks were nothing. It was a train.
Some time in the early morning we crossed the Euphrates, near where stood the site of ancient Jarabolis. The archæologist of the party told of the excavations here, and, somewhere to the north, of Karkemish the Hittite capital in the twilight of history.
About 10 a.m. we arrived at Mouslemie, the junction of Aleppo, some half-hour off by train from that city, whither were sent most of the sick rank and file that had accompanied us, including all our servants. Only one batman for four officers was allowed us. To my dismay I had to part with poor Graoul, otherwise Holmes, to whom I gave half my rations the Germans had given me and my last kron. I found afterwards more than one had "wangled" an extra servant. Padre Spooner asked me to share with him and a subaltern nicknamed Hummerbug, in order to keep a sick servant he had with him. This meant we had to move our own luggage.The prospect was appalling, as I was too sick and weak to walk far without sitting down.
We had no food and no money, not having been paid since Mosul. Father Mullan, our kind Catholic padre, gave me a piastre. With it I bought a piece of bread, and shared it with another subaltern. Other officers were too poor to pay the small debts they owed.
At five we stopped near a German train bound for Ras-el-Ain. A trooper aboard it was trying to buy gold signet rings at a tenth of their value. He showed us several he had got from other unfortunates. He advised our getting supplies at once, as at the mountain stop there was nothing to be had.
An hour later we proved it true enough. The place was called Islahie—merely a station with two or three new houses where a German Staff dwelt, and some skin and brushwood shelters where sick British soldiers lay—all under the shadow of wooded heights. An awful Turkish brute followed me as I tried to drag our kits over the country to the camping place. Cholera was supposed to be raging here, and we were kept apart from the others. Excellent water was brought us in a water-cart. I missed my orderly Graoul. The padre and a subaltern nicknamed Hummerbug and I now messed together. His servant I afterwards found was too sick to do much.
We boiled the German ration, and I had some soup—besides which we had the coffee. Some real tobacco had turned up, and I remember sitting beside the fire smoking disconsolately and missing Graoul. Graoul, too, would be lost without me. Why, he had no sense of humour whatever!
I sat smoking, I say, disconsolately until the long shadows lengthened along the hills of the Taurus and climbed higher and higher upon the mountain sides. The last twilight left little coppery patterns on the crest of the dark glens. The white-washed houses on the lower slope reminded me forcibly of Scotland. I felt I might hear the tinkle of a bell and expect at any moment to see a brawny Scotch shepherd with his shaggy dogs at his heels take the cottage path from the height above. We made a jugga and slept. The next morning early we came across a German Flying Corps officer, who informed us he was engaged to some one in England, and proceeded to help us. We raked up sardines, a little milk, and small change. Also he promised to speak to a Germancolonel arriving that day, about the way we were being hustled.
We had a better breakfast, and being allowed to see the now isolated patients, I went among the men's quarters and found them in a shocking state. About thirty had died there. They had money which had been given them by the Red Cross people at Aleppo. In the course of the day the German colonel turned up and walked into Fauad in true Prussian style, the result being that carts were provided for us—four to a cart, with kit, and, happy to the point of shouting, we clambered into them. Two officers having to walk an inquiry was made as to who had taken a cart for two only instead of for four. Although they were asked they admitted nothing until a tally of each cart being taken it was found that two officers had bagged one cart to themselves so that they could lie stretched out. This meant others walking. Without carts we must have left half our number behind.
The Turkish method of driving a cart is to gallop 200 yards and then crawl. At 2 a.m. we stopped three-quarters of the way up and, without unpacking our valises, slept on the ground. Before dawn we were away again, and every one had to walk except those crippled with sprained ankles and so on. I found it a most dreadful climb in my condition. I was trembling through weakness, and the well-belaboured mules went at a very fast walk up the steep gradient, so that I had to hustle to keep up. Deep ravines fell away from the road, but the hills were not high enough to grow the mountain fir. Other scrub and dwarf pines grew thickly. We walked for two and a half hours, the perspiration dripping from our clothes. I was in acute pain for some of the time with ravages of old complaints. There were plenty of clear, running streams from springs, and at each of these we soused our hands and heads in the cool water. We walked up the steep inclines. Near the top the wretched drivers galloped away to prevent our getting in, but I caught a belated one after going a mile farther, while some still toddled away astern. The driver tried to turn me out, but his mules required most of his attention, so I stayed up.
The whole trip was to be about twenty-four miles. These mountains were being pierced by tunnels, as yet only recently begun from the western slope, a switchback ride being nothingto it. Without brakes of any kind, but only trusting to the collars and pole chain of the mules, the drivers, with loud shouts, galloped their animals down; now and again a wheel going over the edge of the ravine or the pole fetching up in the cutting, or in the back of some fellow sitting in the rear of the cart ahead. The carts were the usual four-wheeled, groggy thing we had got used to. Several times our cart got away, we tipping another cart over into a hole, and on another occasion we raced to pass another at awful speed before reaching a narrow corner. We did it by inches, but hit the corner, the second cart getting its pole into the kit I sat on, and hoisting me feet uppermost into the air. One collision happened, injuring a mule, smashing a cart, and just missing Colonel Cummings, who said things in English to all whom it might concern. As it was, his servant was sent flying over thekhud.
We arrived at the village of Hassan Beyli at 8.30 a.m. It nestled in a pretty little wooded valley among orchards clustering on the adjoining slopes. As we passed through the main street I noticed that all the houses were closed with shutters. We learned that their Armenian tenants had been butcheredà la Turque. We waited in the sun, and were moved here and there, each time dragging our kits with us. I was waiting beside mine in a stony field when suddenly I felt extremely dizzy and faint with a feeling of nausea. I had to abandon my kit, and I plodded over to some shelter, where I lay down, and a cold perspiration broke out all over my body, and I experienced the pains and vomitings of the enteritis attack in Kut. At this moment the English padre appeared, and suggested that to think one's self well is to be well. Here I said something distressing, so he said. I am sure he meant well. I had not felt so wretchedly sick since Kut fell, and the doctor told me that evening that the chlorodyne I had taken possibly prevented a collapse. We were on the verge of cholera. In the evening after a sleep I gathered some sticks and carried a little water, while the padre was meditating. Then while our orderly made the stew and coffee I strolled away to the stream and bathed. I dallied there quite a long time.
In the half light we had "dinner." The padre returned from his soliloquy in a most obviously exemplary and virtuous mood. Oh, to be able to accumulate virtue on such an occasionlike a shilling gas meter, and without warning, turn it on, even if an hour after it has all gone. I suggest taps affixed to the person with little black letters on ivory thereon to the effect: "HUMILITY," "BALM," "PRECEPT," "PATIENCE," "MARTYRDOM," "ADVICE—On—Off." Hummerbug annotated him. I encouraged both. I liked it.
We slept that night until about 1 a.m., and in the darkness loaded up the carts and pushed off. All had to walk in turn to give the orderly a lift also. We drove through a pleasing country of green foothills covered by wandering pine and beech. In taking short cuts from road to road to catch up to the carts as we walked, we came across many Armenian homes smashed in and corpses half-covered with soil or flung down a hollow, where the Turk had passed. About six o'clock we met a great crowd of Armenian and Greek peasants, with old men and old grey-haired women and children carrying small bundles or articles of cooking, all herded togetheren routefor somewhere. They were guarded by askars (soldiers). In this way they are moved from place to place, their number dwindling until all have gone. At a tiny coffee-place here we had coffee and lebon and then walked the remaining miles into Marmourie as the carts had been ordered not to wait for us. It was a long and hurried walk.
The country here looked quite pleasing to the eye. Fine terraces, fringing woods that lined the slopes of moderate hills and overlooking green valleys and splashing water-falls, seemed to ask for a hydro and golf links. We reached Marmourie about 8 o'clock, passing some Turkish soldiersen routeover the Taurus, as also small ammunition transport. Every bit of their ammunition for Mesopotamia has, it seems, to go over these hills, as the other road, via Diabecca, is crossed and occupied by the Russian troops. Near the top of the Taurus we passed fittings for an aeroplane in huge cases that had come all the way from Germany. These were for service in Palestine obviously. Through some difference among the Turkish officers we were not allowed to sit in the shade at Marmourie while we awaited our train, but were made to sit along a dirty wall in the fierce sun for hours like so many convicts. We waited there in the sweltering heat, date the 8th July, from 8 a.m. until 1 p.m., drinking lebon every half-hour, which we got from a shop near by.
The train accommodation was small carriages, and the trucks were reserved for luggage. Only the orderlies were allowed in them, so we sat packed upright, and couldn't sleep a wink. The stations along this line were larger and busier than those east of the Taurus. Only once since getting into the train at Ras-el-Ain had Fauad Bey, our Turkish Commandant, helped us in the way of food. On that occasion he issued a ration of bread to every one. Here we persuaded him to send a wire to Adana to have lunch ready for us, Adana being a large town near Taurus. When we arrived at Adana at 4.30 there was great excitement on the thronged platform. Gorgeously-attired police and other petty officials buzzed about. It appeared that some Turkish officer was passing through. We jumped off and ran along on the edge of the platform, when we were told we were too wild and unkempt-looking to be seen by the high Turkish official. "Damn the high Turkish official," said we, "we want yesterday's lunch." Yes! the lunch was there all ready, but they couldn't allow us in! Moreover, we were not allowed to fill our bottles. If we had been fit I verily believe we would have taken our lunch. I was hauled back. But, getting through my train on the other side and the cordon of Turks, I got inside the enclosure unperceived, filled the bottles, brought a loaf of bread, and caught our train as it left. No! escape was useless that way. Soldiers thronged around every station. We went on our doleful way until 9 p.m., when we were pulled up short by a German coffee-shop, to which we were not permitted to go. This was Gulek bei Tarsus of St. Paul's memory.
After hauling our kits some distance we were pushed into a square tent. We fell down and slept at once. It was an awful jamb. My head was half outside the tent, and people kept walking over it as if it were a cushion. Now I don't mind sleeping in the horse lines a bit. But then horses are so sensible. They know a head when they see it. People were going in and out of the tent all night long, but I'm glad to say I got a fair amount of sleep. One or two unfortunate fellows had fever. Before the dawn I was up, and went among the thick settlement of huts to the stream, which I was threatened by the Turk sentry not to cross, but I walked over before the Turk could say anything, and started talking to some Germans there. Even to talkto a German is a passport in this benighted land, so thoroughly do they override their allies. I had a splendid dip, while others looked enviously at me from the other side. Recrossing I made the acquaintance of a spectacled German doing Y.M.C.A. work among his own troops here. He was a Biblical research student, and journeyed frequently to Tarsus, some twelve miles off. This was called Gulek bei Tarsus. Tarsus one could see in the distance. I thought of St. Paul and Cleopatra, and hoped Tarsus had more trees about it than this sandy plain, for their sakes. The German seemed a very decent sort. We discussed Berlin. He had been a visitor there once from Southern Germany. He asked if we were short of money. When we started in motor-lorries some hours later at 10 a.m. he came to my lorry and flung in a bag of several liras from Red Cross Funds. This came to about half a lira a piece. We thanked him sincerely, and he wished us good luck.
He had told me in the morning to come to his quarters, but I had no opportunity. Cholera was raging there, and the Germans had a pumping water-distillery, from which I got some extra water. I learned later that many of our troops were working at a tunnel on the slope of the Anti-Taurus mountain here, and were dying like sheep. We saw nothing of them, nor were we allowed to inquire.
Thebandobastfor this mountain was German, and we were hustled off with commendable dispatch. At 9.45 a dozen motor lorries drew up. At 10 we were off. They were absolutely run by German officers and men. We swayed and bounced about, quite reconciled to that, and thanking God it wasn't a case of "leg it" again. These mountains are much more barren than the others, being largely, on their eastern slopes, white clay or lime-stone ravines and crags, with a few shrubs here and there growing out of the stony ground. They are also much wider. We passed some desolate Armenian villages and tore along to the upper heights. At 11.30 we stopped at a ruined mill by a fall to cool the hot engines, and there had a drink and a piece of bread, also a slab of baked meat, chiefly fat. It was a wild spot, great rocky crags falling across the road. Another hour and we arrived at Park Taurus, a German military halfway house, forty kilos from Gulek, and thirty-two from Bozanti, whither we were going.
Park Taurus is situated on a small plateau leading down into three or four valleys surrounded by hills of crumpled granite dotted with pines. The valleys are now dry, but in winter must be filled with racing torrents. It is absolutely German, and evidently erected during the last eighteen months. The enclosures easily accommodate over a hundred motor lorries, besides which they have huge electrically-lighted store sheds and depôt, where they accumulate storesen route.
We were turned loose at 1.30 p.m. in a field where stood a huge, empty tent. The Germans here were not so well disposed towards us, and would not help us at all. Some N.C.Os. who wanted to do a deal were hustled away. The first arrivals bought out an Arab's tiny shop of honey and raisins and potatoes, and there was little else to go round. After a solid sleep, for our rest the previous night had been very broken, we made a very bad meal. Our application to bathe in an adjoining pool was not allowed. Then we all sat around the side of the hill and smoked while once more night floated down upon the world. The motors that had been passing all day were now housed, and there was an appreciable calm broken by falling streams and tumbling brooks. Pale yellow stars burned passionately over the pine tops; and once again here there was something in the far-away spot that recalled the mountain forests of Thüringen. There was less forest and more rock, but it served as another span in that bridge we are all constructing back to old times—the bridge that must span Kut and the trek....
At 4.15 the next morning, before it was light, we were in the motors and away again. There followed, as usual, a wild scramble and fearful scrumming around the lines, as we were not awakened until five minutes before leaving. This journey was decidedly bumpy, and we had to grip hard to stick inside the four walls of the thing at times. The country became wilder and rockier with only a few boulder pines climbing up the heights. Along the face of these limestone bluffs one observed a queer phenomenon of splashed yellow rocks, seemingly spilled from some gigantic cauldron, dried and hung out like blanketings in the morning sun. Then there were caves and water-worn caverns, said to have been once the homes of the Hittites. Many Turkish and othersworked on the road, and dishevelled troops passed usen routefor the Mosul or Palestine front, via Aleppo.
At last, two great tall upstretching tongues of rock, almost meeting, filled the mouth of the converging valley, and rendered any attempt to cross into that valley by any other way than between them almost impossible, except for an Alpiner. These were the famous Cilician Gates through which passed Alexander in the fourth century,B.C., on his way to Syria. Darius had lain in waiting somewhere near Islahie on the other side of the Anti-Taurus mountains, and when Alexander had got safely down between the seacoast and the Anti-Taurus, Darius and his army scampered over the mountains, probably, the very way we had come, and cut Alexander off from his communications. But Alexander turned on the Persian king and smashed him at Tarsus. Five hundred years before that, Shalmanaser II., the great Assyrian king, had crossed and recrossed this very pass on his way to and from his victories. After Alexander, the hordes of Barbarossa, and in fact, every ancient army on its way east had had to pass through them.
Some old Hittite inscription was on the outer face of the rock, and on either side of the road a Roman altar cut out of the flat rock by the roadside testified to the military importance conceded to this Gate by Roman Generals, locking the way to the Orient. In those days the pathway was a few feet wide only, and now cannot be more than five yards. Heavy blasting, however, widened the way along which we came.
A few miles further on we reached the rail-head again at Bozanti from where they were tunnelling the Taurus. Here we saw many British soldiers at work. They were mostly from the Dardanelles and some of them seemed quite fit, but the tunnelling was heavy work, and they said that the men from Kut there could not stand it—and had died.
For some hours we were shoved in a stable with billions of flies. Many officers were very indignant at being put alongside horses. Being a field artilleryman it didn't worry me in the least after what we had gone through. We bought a few stores and a German presented me with a bottle of beer, as he found I spoke German!
At 8 p.m. that night we left, packed in a train, all verytired and weak. There were in the train some German N.C.Os. and men all on their way back to Berlin, and in a highly hilarious state at the prospect. Some of them were the nasty sort, and they all told us of the English naval disaster off the Skager Rack in which we had lost ten large ships and so on. We knew this was an untruth and suspected it was a fine victory for us, especially as the Boches ran back to Kiel.
We travelled all night fearfully cramped up in carriages. I managed to get two or three hours of restless sleep among moving boots and feet on the floor, with my knees by my nose and some one's boots in my face. At 12 noon we arrived at Cognia or Konia, the Iconium of St. Paul, a large town with a real hotel to which only a few of us were allowed to go, and a plentiful array of shops. After the usual dozen moves up and down the station, each time entailing carrying our beds and kits, we were taken to a restaurant where our notes were refused, but ultimately taken at a large discount. How we carry on without money is really extraordinary! One simply does not eat, but gets weaker and weaker. Acute diarrhœa has broken out again with many of us, for we are still on nuts and sour bread and water. That night, the 12th July, we slept in the station yard.
The next morning we were aroused at an unearthly hour, and then did not leave until quite 11.15 a.m., the intervening hours being employed by waiting in a queue to get water or being moved first this way and then that. No Turk as yet seems to know his own mind or any one else's apparently. The country around Konia is very flat and more or less bare. The Hindoo native officers remain in Konia, which should be a good spot for them, and quite healthy. Konia appears to be absolutely rebuilt and quite new. Two hours out of Konia our engine broke down. We waited four hours for another engine from Konia. I found a German doctor travelling on our train, and from him I got some colitis and cholera powders. He also was quite polite and anxious to help one. Then we passed Kala Hissar, a lonely town on the plain with a fort perched high up on a hill. Here a good many Russian, French, and British prisoners are said to be placed, but we saw nothing of any of them. We travelled all night over the plain, and it was another wretched night for sleep, as we had to takeit in turns sleeping on the floor. We had by this time lost a lot of our veneer of desert sunburn, and the pallor of sickness stared out from our faces. Father Tim, our excellent Catholic padre, told me this evening that I had appeared twenty years older during the last few days. At 11, forenoon, on the 13th, we arrived at Eski Chehir, a large town on the junction of lines to Constantinople and Angora. Here, again, the want of a servant made the immediate present a tragedy of vile proportions. Thus we would get the order to move at once, no one knowing where. Everything had to be moved with you. So you gathered up water-bottle, haversack, blankets and coat, and dragged your valise over lines and other obstacles indefinitely. Then you sat on them until you had to take them back, crossing trains and piles of luggage and stores, apostaor Turkish guard at your heels with a rifle shouting, "Yallah" or "Haidee Git." We dropped Captain Booth accidentally on the way from Konia. He was asleep in a carriage which was taken off near Kala Hissar. Great excitement prevailed as to whether he would take the branch line to Smyrna and try to escape, but he turned up again later. In the meantime, Fauad Bey thrashed every Turkish official within reach.
At Eski Chehir we were allowed into an hotel restaurant place near the station and forbidden to go outside. We saw one or two Greek maidens, well on towards their prime, welcoming us with smiles, but although the first of Eve's daughters seen for a long time, one's heart did not flutter much. We were so whacked that we wanted a meal and a bed on which to sleep, sleep, sleep. So we fell to discussing what we would do at Constantinople, whither both Fauad Bey and some Germans at Konia had assured us we were being taken. The prospect of seeing this famous city and especially of seeing Europe again, and of having ambassadors and consuls to take a friendly interest in us, cheered up our tired and sad hearts. But by this time we knew the Turk well enough to doubt all things. In the meanwhile we were shut up. We had a decent meal or two at terrible prices, so we ate sparingly. Some of the senior officers had wandered too far away at Konia so Fauad said, and it was "Yesak"—forbidden. In fact, just before leaving Konia he would not allow them to recross for a final meal, but I bolted around the station over a fence,and on his seeing me I humbly pretended I wanted to ask his permission. To my surprise, he asked me if the colonel and all had returned, and on my reassuring him he took me to a restaurant and demanded meat and rolls and soup and cheese. None appearing to be ready he created such a storm in the place that the people evidently produced their own meal. Moreover, he paid and would not take any money from me; but then I have never quarrelled much with him, and he knows he is to leave us and wants a good report. I observe he is very nervous whenever I talk to a German, and asks me to talk in French if at all. French he understands a little.
At 10 p.m. the same day, as we arrived in Eski Chehir, we were again packed frightfully close into carriages, and left for where we did not know, but half expected to awake beholding the minarets of Stambul. The Mohammedan native officers had all been dropped at Eski Chehir, where from all accounts they were to be done quite well. However, after starting it proved that our destination was Angora. Our hopes fell below zero. I clambered out of the carriage and, worming my way into the luggage car, slept full length on a blanket, or almost full length. Presently, other officers filled the place up. I determined to sleep that night, and drinking half a bottle of local cognac I had luckily procured for a debt, I gave the other to the orderlies and slept. It was an uphill climb, and we went very slowly. With the dawn we met a startling rumour that some prisoners, having attempted an escape, we were all being sent on to Kastamuni, a lonely town on the edge of the hills, fringing the Black Sea, and 150 miles distant from Angora—150 miles that had to be trekked! This was just the last edge. One wondered whether the journey would ever end or whether our kind protecting gods would get tired of fathering our shattered and siege-battered systems to the terminus.
If our health had been so good as even at the beginning of the trek it would all have seemed very funny no doubt. But people's nerves were shattered and ragged and tempers raw, and our digestions quite gone.
The train climbed a gradient plain, treeless and lifeless, until 10 a.m., when we arrived at Angora, a dilapidated old town on undulating country. The station seemed the onlydecent building in it. We seemed to be at the end of creation. Everything was so quiet and sleepy. It is indeed a branch line and one sees no Germans or Europeans. We were hustled at once into two deep and marched half a mile to a wretched low little eating restaurant place with some sleeping rooms upstairs. Our luggage came in afterwards. Mine had been looted, I found, quite considerably, two or three times since the Aleppo change, but I don't know where. The hotel promised us a gay time, as we saw battalions of bugs skirmishing on the walls. We had marched up at a smart pace and I felt like collapsing at every step. Then we were left in the sun for hours outside the place, with the result that I was soon pouring with the perspiration of fever. Then ague succeeded. A Turk took my temperature as 102°, and left me.
Six hours afterwards I got a bed on a landing and fell into it, my temperature being over 103°.
There is no tea or coffee except the black smoky stuff. The senior officers and those first to arrive, including the padre and Hummerbug, went to another hotel somewhat better, taking the one orderly with them, so I lost the only servant who ever did a thing. No one else cared for the sick or took any notice. I had a tiny bowl of rice soup. The rest of the fatty fare I avoided. The next morning three-quarters of us had collapsed. Colitis and fever were all around, and the Turkish doctor inoculated those who were well enough to be done, for cholera, of which Angora was full. During the night a fearful itching broke out all over my body, the most maddening itching imaginable. Spots and a red flush followed. I thought I was in for scarlet fever or something. It proved to be "hives," however, and others had it at the same time in less degree. Reports from the hotel were that most of them were in bed sick also. It seemed as though we had forced ourselves on to the railways' end by will power, and then, that being over, had collapsed.
July 20th.—We are still in Angora, and are not allowed to go outside the door, while for the first day or so they objected to one's going downstairs. Sending out for supplies is also forbidden, and we are thus forced to leave ourselves to the mercy of the hotel-keeper, who, by the way he behaves, I should say is a Young Turk. Hives leaves one a mass ofswellings that itch like a million chilblains, and is due, I hear, to the impoverished nature of the blood and general want of nourishment.
The time here is no rosy one, and although more comfortable than in Mosul, the trek being mostly behind us, still one's vitality is even worse.
Two days after we arrived another party that had been waylaid at Kala Hissar came along with several officers I knew, and some I didn't, Colonel Peacock amongst them. He and I and another made tea between us, and then they were moved to dingy quarters up the road, and the surplus fellows without rooms were sent also. Trembling with weakness and fever I stumbled into my clothes and found I could scarcely walk; but the Turks were demonstratively insistent, and, carrying a few things, I assisted an orderly to carry my bed and kit. We hauled it upstairs, and then another Turkish officer turned up and ordered me back as being sick. Leaving my luggage I toddled back, but that kindly-hearted cavalry giant, Captain Kirkwood, followed me with it, for which I was more grateful than I can say.
We are still without money. One day some of those fit enough were taken to a café near by, but as they had no money "nothing happened," as they expressed it on returning. Anyway we are running up a bill here, and unless they pay us before leaving, the hotel walla will get nothing. I have a few spoonfuls of fatty rice, and lebon, and marrow soup daily. Stapleton and another officer share my room.
There is no news, except a reported Russian shove through Roumania. It is also rumoured that we may move in a day or two. A Turkish doctor has been round, and has ordered me milk, etc., with medicine. I've sent frequently for both, but neither has come so far—four days since.
And these bugs are the "Devil's own." I suggest the Inns of Court Officers' Training Corps should have a bug rampant as their crest.
Except the Bible, one has no books. I have now finished the Psalms and Proverbs to-day, and am going on. They say the second phase of the Titanic struggle (or Teutonic struggle) is beginning in France. I wish nothing better than to be fit again and in it.
July 22nd.—Oh! This wretched confined bug-eaten littlecafé! They would not let us go to hospital, where one might have got milk. They had no carts, they said, no medicine, no room ..., and cholera was there, etc., etc. To-day the doctor brought us black draughts for colitis, which we have chanced taking, and it has already done us some good. I am bitten red with bugs, and can feel at any moment several on me at once. The bed is full. I must try to sleep and forget them, as it is no use brushing them off. Temperature 100°.
July 23rd.—We left Angora to-day in carts. Feeling a little steadier, and the hospital being so inhospitable, I decided to try and keep going with the same column, trusting my luck once again. From the money they paid us I promptly kept a lira, and left the hotel-keeper's account partly unpaid. We promised him the money when we could cash cheques or get our remittances. With some of the cash I got the interpreter to buy two tins of milk and a little sugar and tea for the journey. We did not, however, get clear of the hotel-keeper and Commandant of Angora so easily. There was a riotous scene, yelling and screaming, shaking of fists in one's face, because we hadn't paid, when the Turks themselves had not paid us since Mosul! What an awful brute that Commandant of Angora was! A vicious, spiteful, selfish, callous savage. We let him know it, too, by the time we had finished with him. For instance, a lot of us were very ill and without money, and although there were rooms full of parcels sent us from home when Kut fell, he wouldn't even look to see. We saw some marked for several officers through a chink in the door, but he wouldn't shift himself an inch to see about anything. So we had malaria without quinine, and drank wheat-coffee when tea was lying in our parcels inside.
I am glad to have left that vile café.
We went on all day very cramped, in the same carts, and that night slept in a stable full of bugs and fleas. I bought some lebon and slept. At 4 a.m. we were away again through hills and bare, treeless heights all day. The horses galloped and walked, and one's back bounced on the side of the narrow carts, which at the bottom were about two feet six inches wide, with sides sloping outwards. There were the usual upsets, and boltings, racing, and collisions. Twice our cart jambed another over the edge of a cliff, and we got rammed. There isnothing to eat except bread. It was an extra weary day. For fourteen hours we jolted and jerked onwards, and then a pretty little green village hove in sight. We saw geese and ducks and fowls, which meant eggs, and a running stream, and brushwood for fires. But we were driven on and past this into the night. An hour and a half later we reached a filthy Arab enclosure, inside which we were driven. There was scarcely room for us to lie. One could not get water or firewood or anything. There was no Turkish officer to appeal to. We were all under the orders of a choush or sergeant. The colonel was very indignant, but the choush seemed afraid we might escape unless we were shut up. The place swarmed with mosquitoes and fleas. This choush was taking no risks. It was only after a long delay, when I found a Greek youth who knew a little German, that arrangements were made for one or two of us to go to a spring and get water. We had some tea and tried to sleep. That, however, was out of the question. For the last dozen miles one of the occupants of our cart was taken suddenly ill and had to lie down, so we had to break our backs under the driver's seat while the vehicle galloped and jolted. To any one except those in our condition this would have been merely inconvenience. It was an exceptionally beautiful sunset, with pink-limbed baby clouds resting on the rolling summits of soft grassy hills.
July 25th.—We were up at 6 a.m. The horses were very done, but their drivers goaded or thrashed them with thick sticks and made them gallop, and there were no brakes to help them. To pull up they ran into the bank, or into another cart. We had, on the previous day, passed through hilly country dotted with villages and fairly well cropped. Everywhere we saw grazing the herds of Angora goats with their gaily-dressed goatherd standing over them blowing his pipes. The Angora goat is a most beautifully fleeced animal with twisted horns and snow-white curly locks of fleece. The animals are kept for their wool as well as milk, and often supply the chief means of the people's subsistence in these parts. Besides milk, butter, and cheese, and sometimes the meat, the wool is woven into various garments, and the hide, laced with string, forms their shoes. These goatherds are very picturesquely dressed with coloured jackets and caps, and a bright red-striped kummerbund, in which is stuck theeternal Turkish knife. The arms and legs are criss-crossed with coloured cord.
The hills here and there are covered with herds, and at the head of these moving white dots moves their picturesque goatherd, blowing quaint sounds from his pipes. We passed lots of these fellows marching as impressed recruits between Turkish soldiers, and shoved on to fight in the forlorn hope.
We have left the peak El Divan far behind. It is 4900 feet, so we must have climbed some 3000 feet above Angora. The country has now changed again to the more barren higher hills. A thunder shower surprised us on the top of one, but it cleared the air immensely. Then our cart broke down, and they repaired the pole with a pine tree growing near.
My wonder at these carts increases daily. Rattling and loosely bolted and wobbling, they appear to be on the point of breaking down every minute. Sometimes three of the tyres of our cart simultaneously were almost off, and the pole hung between the body of the cart and the tree often quite detached. If the wheel slips off they bash it on with a rock or lump of wood, and, like Turkey itself, it just goes on.
At 3 p.m. we reached the small town of Changrai, the only place of any importance between Angora and Kastamuni. We were frightfully done, but luck ordained it that we were bivouacked by a stream and under some trees quite close to the town.
Changrai is a pleasant little town with ten mosques on the steep hillside, heights all round, and many green orchards all about. We got honey, apples, and apricots, fairly cheap. I saw the Angora goat at close quarters. He is a classy little fellow, small, and prettily shaped, with fine bright eyes and carrying the most spotless silken white fleece in the world.
July 26th.—We left Changrai about 9 a.m. I had managed to change to another broken cart which would support me. It was more comfortable, and I travelled alone with the choush, enjoying my own thoughts and amusing myself by watching the antics of the goats or weaving romance around the feet of every goatherd. I could stretch my limbs, and I thanked God I was left to enjoy the peace of the mountain heights alone with a pipe. My cart being broken we were far in the rear of the column. At the hills I drove, and so escaped walking,the driver, a huge fellow, walking to watch his cart, and perhaps not unduly strain his repairs. As for me, my weight had fallen from ten stone twelve pounds to considerably under nine stone, so this came in convenient just now. In the afternoon we followed a track fringed by deep precipices crossed only by goat tracks. We camped in a gully near a village, to which we were not permitted to go. A few loaves arrived for us. We were very hungry in this spot, and the cold night sharpened up one's craving for food. We made some cocoa and soup, and after a spot of cognac like nothing quite else on earth we slept—for a time—until we discovered we were on ant-hills. I have since decided to back a squadron of red ants on the war-path against two battalions of Angora bugs. It was very cold, but the ants kept us moving.
July 27th.—We made an early start just after the dawn. We went down, down, down for 2000 feet, and then gradually up again over hills and gullies. We passed some well-worn Hittite caves, like watch-keepers of the valley below. These quaint people that sprinted about among primæval dews, and about whom so little is known, must have had a queer life of it in those high detached and lonely caves. They selected inaccessible places, like the eyrie of the eagle.
We rested at midday from eleven till one. Two goats were killed, but as we had no money we did without. The note is of no value in the country, and of little value in the town. No change can be got for any, however big the note is. Two of our officers we had to leave behind at Changrai sick with fever. We subscribed some cash for them. I was glad to be able to keep going still, although I often felt fearfully nauseous and weak, with a thundering headache, at which time the cart generally started some of its gymnastic tricks. Malaria was still on me.
The big climb now lay ahead of us. We pushed on. The scenery became much more interesting. The forest thickened, and instead of chestnut and beech appeared thepinus insignisand the mountain fir. We went up and up. Again I was reminded of Thüringen in Germany, and this time it was much more like it. The road grew steeper, the ravines larger, and the courses of winter's mountain torrents were now dry rocky boulder paths. The mountain fir with its drooping branches stood erect in marshalled battalions on the mountain slopesin the valleys, the tops swaying to the eternal music of the mountains. We quenched our thirst at excellent falls and springs on the way. It grew from chilly to very cold. Our blood was in a very poor condition, and the biting wind bit clean through one. We were now at the last climb of (Mount) El Ghaz Dagh, 5481 feet high, the ridge of which we were to cross being 4500. At five o'clock other horses gave out, and ours were taken, so I cramped up in another vehicle with the choush, from whom I understood by signs that we had in our turn invested Kut. Our heavy guns will soon shake it to pieces if we do invest it.
It was slow work to the top of the peak, but once over we descended rapidly in the face of an icy wind for two hours. Tiny log-built hamlets lay clustered up together for warmth on the sides of the valleys. We followed the main valley until the stream widened at a saw-mill. There we lit fires and made ourselves warm and cooked some soup. We slept inside dark empty rooms in the mill, and here struck a new pest. They were swarms of lice and fleas, and we did ashikarfor them most of the night. I arose early feeling a rhythm of returning health. The cold bracing air of the mountains had undoubtedly done me a lot of good, and I felt stronger, although colitis and malaria still troubled me, and everything we ate was followed by sharp abdominal pains—a legacy of the siege. I washed in the icy stream by the light of dawn. What a magnificent morning it was! The last mists of night floated away, and left the terraces of bronze-green firs shimmering in the morning sun and climbing up to the blue of heaven on the white sheets of El Ghaz Dagh. This would make an excellent trout stream. My last tin of milk and sugar which had kept me going so far was finished. My own cart had appeared in the night, and I left in it at 7 a.m. After a few miles of fern-edged brooks that tumbled along quite New Zealandy, we reached the plain again, and followed a road among scantily cropped stretches until three o'clock, when my driver pointed away to the right and said the one word. "Kastamuni!" Turning around I beheld far away in a treeless basin a reddish-brown patch which proved to be the clay tiles of houses. In the distance it appeared as a brown-carpeted dip sunk down beneath the almost treeless grassy plain. This, then, was my first glimpse of our immediate bourne.
We were divided into two columns outside the town—evidently intended for different houses. I now learnt that in previous columns the officers of British regiments, including the R.F.A., my own regiment, had gone to Yozgard, due east from Angora. This was rather bad luck in a way, as among them were most of the officers I knew best.
We strolled down into a town larger than Changrai, with plentiful minarets arising above the brown roofs. The houses line the sides of the basin, which is merely the broadening out of a fertile little valley watered by a small stream that in the town is crossed by an interesting looking old stone bridge. In the background and overlooking the town is a picturesquely situated fort, now in ruins.
We were rattled through the town, the people all gazing at us very interestedly. The shops, we observed, actually had in them such things as local tobacco (dreadful stuff, but better than nothing), sugar, and rice, and even sardines. We walked behind the carts that climbed and climbed to the further side of the town, which was the Greek Christian quarter, and on passing a long row of dirty houses saw some of the other officers on the look-out, including Square-Peg. There were two groups of houses, Upper and Lower. We were to occupy a new house, the highest of all, attached to the Upper House. We swarmed into a front door down along an alley flanked by a wall, and found ourselves in what appeared a decent house for Turkey. On going upstairs I found a landing, off which led four doors. I opened one of them, and found myself inside a small room fourteen feet by ten feet, containing two beds, and, on going to the windows, saw a glorious view of the whole of Kastamuni and of the valley reaching out to the blue ranges in the distance, beyond which lay, somewhere near by, the Black Sea. A fresh breeze, seemingly straight from the hidden sea, drifted towards me as I stood by the open window. That decided me. I slung my things down and fell on the bed nearest the window, thanking God that the trek was done. I am now writing at the corner facing the same hills. It seems that here we must rest until we have done with these chains. Our brother officers had put the Turks up to preparing a meal for us. Heavens! how we ate! There was white bread, boiled eggs, honey, butter, fresh milk. We ate and drank and drank and drank. There was a hot competition now forbedrooms, and as mine had to be shared, I was fortunate enough to get a quiet stable companion to share with me.
We were not allowed out of the house until 7.30, when we were taken to a large two-storied Upper House—Mektub they called it, as it had previously been a school, and there a large room had been turned into a restaurant, and was run by a Turkish caterer. He gave us soup, and what we called toad-in-the-cucumber, or tomato as it happened, ricepilau, and a fried meat dish all heavily reeking with fat. A coffee shop was opened, which ran extra supplies of butter and honey, and also cognac,mastik(the Turkish drink tasting of aniseed), and local thin German beer at 5s.a bottle. We got back after a lengthy wait, which we beguiled by comparing our experiences with those of other officers, and then hastened to bed. A few celebrated our arrival by a carousal, but I slept. Oh! the ecstasy of that night with the breeze playing over one's face—sleep that would not be broken at any unearthly hour by a "Yallah" for donkeys or by dust-storms or by a stampede.
At intervals in the night I awoke startled. Once I imagined I had fallen asleep on my donkey again, that we were pressing on in darkness over the desert, and, again, that an order had been given to move. But each time I found myself in bed beneath the cool night wind laden with scents of the mountains and the sea, and heard above the deep silence the sound of splashing water from some spring below. And I thought how very life-like was the trek that had led we knew not whither, and how, as in life also, we had craved for a sight beforehand into the future for a glimpse at our destiny. But one sees now the greater wisdom of God's plan that denied us a vision into the future which might have lessened our motive power and removed the need for trust or hope, but which demanded of us instead the virtue of patience to await the evolution of God's ways. And now more than that priceless perfect gift of being able to say honestly, "Thy will be done," would I desire to achieve the patience to overcome the difficult stretches of any road, patience to wait and await. We are told that whatever sorrow one has, it must exist in one's mindonlyat the present. In this sense only the Present can be sorrow, and it is often a joy. But carrying us on from Present to Present, from Sorrowful Present to Happy Present, be it nearor far, there is the Stream of Time, which the Divine Giver has placed by us all. To await, then, is merely to make a friend of this Stream of Time, the Happy Carrier, and pray for the patience to endure until....
July 29th.—No words could describe my unbounded joy at receiving to-day news from the outside world. There was a postcard from friends in Camberley, saying that our defence has at last been understood, and asking what one wanted. It was such a cheery word. There was also a tiny letter three and three-quarter lines in length, which came many thousands of miles congratulating us on the siege, and announcing that parcels had already left for me. We hear they cannot arrive for months. There is yet, however, no word from my dear mother, or from home. I am now practically without socks, shirt, vests, or anything else, my boots in ribbons, and with one blanket.
We are to get seven liras a month, and our board and lodging costs nine liras at the least, as we have to pay an unjustified rent. What with tobacco and medicine, not to mention English food with which we must reinforce this Oriental provender, it will be at least fourteen liras and possibly eighteen a month.
July 30th.—The intervening hours we have slept. One eats and then goes back to bed. We are all still extraordinarily done. To-day we visited the Turkish bath. One enters a large dilapidated vestibule with tiny sitting-up beds about four feet long arranged around the room. One undresses and wraps oneself up in a towel and shuffles in clogs into other rooms where hot water pours from a jet. Here one douses oneself, and then sweats heavily. A bucketful of cold water completes the bath, and then arrayed in clean towels we retreat to the bed, and over a cigarette and black coffee (awful stuff) watch the spiders in the great dome of the roof, or by counting the dozen layers of clothes with which the Turks hide their iniquities. We lie at full length, letting our legs stick out, feet beyond the beds, or cock them up on the nearest wall.
All the people here seem well disposed towards us. They know we represent cash to them. At least they think so.
After the bath we were allowed to visit the bazaar for a few moments under the charge of aposta. There was anawful climb back to our house, to which we shall no doubt get accustomed in time.
We have written four postcards home, chiefly about what to send us. I am anxious to hear from my parents and sisters. Their letters must have been returned, and I suppose they have had anxious times, not hearing from me for so long or knowing whether I was still alive. The cheerful four-lined letter I received from Camberley must have been written after newspaper announcement of the fall of Kut.
July 31st.—Yesterday was two months since leaving Baghdad, a journey I shall always associate with sorrow and fortitude. It was already a trail of dead and dying from other columns, and we freshened it up with contributions of our own. But time flies. It is already three months since we left Kut. During that time I cannot recall one Turkish promise that they have kept. This is a performance, but for us to have so far survived it and also their indifference, is an achievement.
After a time we hope news will leak through, but at present there is none. We are to be allowed a German-inspired daily written in French and published in Stamboul, called theHillal. According to it fighting still proceeds in France in the same old zone, while in Mesopotamia the front is near Amara—which one doubts. It is almost two years since the war started. Great movements in the national life of most European nations seem to be merging into international. With peace, I believe fresh and wonderful Gulf Streams will circulate in the new political world that must arise.
August 1st.—I have met Haig of the 24th, whom I knew at Hyderabad, and whom I saw last in the retirement. We have so far almost no liberty, not being allowed to go even to the second part of the house. But we understand this will change very soon. Once a week we are permitted to go to the Turkish bath, and once a week to the bazaar, where the prices are exorbitant. Butter or honey is 30 piastres an oke, or 2s.6d.a pound, sugar 40 to 50 piastres, or 4s.6d.a pound, and tea, bad tea at that, 10s.a pound. There is little else to be had, and clothing is a fictitious price. However,one's credit in the bazaar is practically unlimited. The shopkeepers prefer to trust us rather than their own people, and take cheques rather than paper money. Medicines are more or less unprocurable.
5 p.m.—Turned in with rising fever. Several officers in our house have been down with it already, and I hoped I was to have escaped. A strong physical reaction has set in with many of our column, and all sorts of sicknesses are going about. For one thing, we have practically starved for half a year, and now these fatty foods of the Turks rather try one's weakened digestion. We negotiate huge quantities of fresh milk and lebon.
August 2nd.—Lieut. Locke died in the Turkish hospital last night, and, as a result, a scare started among the Turkish officials. One of their doctors came around to see all those in bed, and I was ordered, much against my will, to the Turkish hospital. They don't understand malaria at all, or that, for colitis, the only thing to do is to diet. And, from what we hear, the last place for diet is a Turkish hospital. However, one is in the hands of these interpreters, and for the most part they are lying, frightened, Greek or Armenian knaves. Ours required me to leave everything—even mere requisites—and set out for the hospital a "few moments away." Extraordinarily weak, I shambled off and followed him on a considerable trek, for a sick man, all around the town. Then he bolted for his dinner, leaving me in charge of the soldier, who, poor chap, couldn't read his papers. On arriving at the place we were refused admittance, and there was no one there to read the admission paper. A wait of hours I spent by sitting out on the roadside in the hot sun, near a café; a delightful occupation for a man shivering with ague and with a temperature of 103°. Then I discovered a patient who spoke some French, and he got the only Turkish orderly there to show me a bed. I was taken to the bed whereon poor Locke had just died from enteritis and dysentery. They had not even removed the sheets. How I loathed the Turks at that moment. However, I was so tired that I got into bed. In the same room were three Turkish civilians, and two British officers I found next door.
No one appeared. I had left my room in the morning, but by night I had only succeeded in getting some water. Byevening the ague had gone, and I wanted some nourishment, and set to prowl around the place to get it. I had plenty of violent scenes, but did not succeed in finding the pantry. I began to believe that I had come to a huge automatic healing establishment where by a series of Christian Scientific brain waves one imagined oneself fed and convalescent. I heard that Locke had been left unattended in his house, after request, four or five days before he was even inspected by the Turkish doctor, and then, on his moving to this hospital, had a reception similar to mine. He died the same evening as he entered.
After my unsuccessful shikar for food through the great building I returned in no amiable mood, and it was then that the humorous gods held high council, and, remembering my opinion on Angora bugs, provided a little joke for themselves afresh. These new bugs were for shock tactics. There was no artillery preparation or demonstration from flank battalions, but suddenly I was awakened from a doze by bitings in fifty places. Leaping out of bed I gathered them up in threes and fours. Tearing my clothes off I caught the rear files before they could get to cover. Undismayed, they renewed the attack as soon as I again tried to sleep. This became too ridiculous. Finally, my language attracted a crowd of laughing Turks, and one informed me in French that the hospital was famous for bugs. The pillow and mattress I discovered to be their first line, but their reserve lines were in the wooden frieze. "Ye gods!" I thought, "this is too much. Here am I starving and curing myself and doing my best to smile over it when I'm expected to put up a regular hunt!" I slung the mattress away and, seizing some clothes from a wardrobe outside, with the orderly hanging on to me the while, remade the bed. Still on they came. I decided that if I were Napoleon I would change the Turkish crescent to a bug passant, with that half-comical grin the lions passant have, the near fore paw in the air and face screwed around at you. I collapsed towards dawn with sheer irritation. But in my sleep on they came, on from every wall, from every point of the horizon, from the sky, from beyond the confines of the universe—I myself was becoming a bug—when I awoke with a roar, and saw the Turkish orderly standing beside me grinning. I gave him cigarettes for appreciating a situationI no longer could myself, and he taught me some more Turkish "Zorari yok" (never mind), and "Yawash" (gently).
I awaited the dawn with an increasing hunger, having now devoured about a handful of lump sugar I had put into my pocket as an emergency ration. The hours crawled by until eleven, when the visiting doctor came.
Now, by this time I had begun to find out a thing or two about the Turk. Unless you ask, he never does anything; if you do, he merely promises he will. Your only chance is to be demonstrative and impress him. This fellow was a robust, bouncing, overfed, callous, perpetual-smile-sort-of-fellow. Waiting until he wished me good morning, I leaped clean out of bed, with a frightful roar that brought a dozen people into the room, and showed him pints of blood—mine and the bugs'—all over the wall, bed, mattress, etc., etc. Then I cursed the place in German, in English, and terrible French, and applied my word, "fenner," vigorously, ending up my objecting to my treatment with gestures, etc., etc. For the first minute or two he laughed, and then he sat down and mopped his forehead and explained he came only once a day, and without an order from him it might have been risky to give me any food, etc. He wrote out a beautiful diet sheet, and sent me some medicine for the colitis. This did me good, certainly, but I waited all day for the milk and cornflour and soup. At five o'clock one small cup of the weakest imaginable tea arrived. Nothing else. It now appeared that an order by the doctor on one day did not take effect until the following day, as they had to send out for supplies. I was really terribly ravenous. That evening, about 8 p.m., when two orderlies brought round a trench table filled with loaves of bread and plates of soup, I waited until they were gone a second and seized a loaf, which I plunged in the soup, and returned to my bed, where I devoured most of it. The other Turks in the room, I believe, informed the orderly, who searched for the remainder of the loaf in my bag; but we had a wrestle for it, and while he sent out for a posta, I finished it. Later he appeared, laughing, and took some more cigarettes.
The situation developed along these lines until the next morning, when the doctor came again. This time I was coldly indignant, and showed him a letter of complaintto the American Ambassador at Stamboul, and requiring to be sent back to my house. The result was he put me on an enormous diet at once of bread and buffalo meat that would have killed any Englishman, certainly a siege-battered, starved, feverish, colitis-stricken sick man. I distributed my rations among the two officers next door, one of whom was a most congenial person, named Fox—an officer I didn't know in Kut, as he had been in Woolpress most of the time. We had long discussions on Turks and bugs. The next morning another doctor came, and, seeing my diet sheet full, evidently thought the Turkish commissariat couldn't stand this, and discharged me from hospital.
The medicine had done me some good, but otherwise I was weaker on leaving the hospital than entering it. Fox and I trekked back. How glad we were to get out of it! I had expected an interesting girl in a purdah to look after me, and all kinds of delicacies. One learns apace in these days. On the way we passed Captain Martin, I.M.S., recently arrived, and he sympathized with us, and promised us that in future he would look after us all. I was very glad to regain my room once more. Another small party of relicts had arrived from Angora, amongst whom were Blind Hookey, who was at the Christmas dinner in Kut, and Young Lacy, whom I had left at Samarra. He had had great luck. When he was quit of the fever he had managed to join a small party and was driven the whole way. Our column, including as it did the native officers, and travelling in the wake of the whole division, seems to have had probably the worst time of any, and certainly one saw most of the tragedy of the trek. Our whole house is now pretty full.
August 7th.—Malaria returned. The ague was more severe this time. Quinine we have at last procured in small quantities at the rate of five piastres a cachet, which means that one's malaria medicine bill will be fifteen shillings daily. A cold snap in the weather has sent several others here down with malaria. Kastamuni is said to have a cold winter, so we hope to get this fever quite out of our system. It is raining steadily—the first rain since arriving here.
We have no books as yet, but it is to be hoped the Turks will allow them to come through later on. I have finished the Bible—a complete reading now since Baghdad. What avigorous teacher is St. Paul. No mundane considerations seemed to prevent his putting the true value on this transient existence, and from that probably sprang the facility with which he decided always for the Lord.
August 17th.—The mornings continue fine and sunny, but in the afternoons a sharp, shadowy wind springs up, and the evenings are quite cold. We are anxiously awaiting the parcels waylaid in Stamboul. The fever has largely gone, but muscular rheumatism has taken its place. No one hears from or is allowed to write to Yozgad or Kara Hissa.
The Turks here seem to have already settled on their plan of campaign, which is to make us get into debt at huge prices, which already are increasing. I am, however, assuming a sublime indifference to money matters. The financial anxiety of the trek was enough, and I have a long score to pay off against the Turk in this respect, so once in his debt he will have to facilitate our getting our money from home, or else receive cheques.
August 22nd.—On the 18th I attempted a long walk, permission having been obtained for a party of us to go. The direction led me over hills towards some pine woods—a considerable climb for those in our condition. An extraordinary phenomenon common to almost all Kut people, young and old—but more especially to the young who had starved on account of enteritis troubles—is their sudden huge girth expansion. One's figure protrudes like any Turk's. The fatty foods and weak state of the stomach are said to be the cause of this.
Still, with fixed determination, the walk party pushed on, blowing and perspiring. One remembered one's duty to get fit. At the pine woods one longed to be alone for an hour—a forgotten pleasure—but we were marshalled like geese. It is a pleasant spot of young pines and pleasantly murmuring grassy glades, strewn in places with pine needles, that gave additional exercise by making one fight for a foothold. Through the opening in the pine wood one saw the mountainous horizon that ringed us round. Kastamuni was out of sight somewhere beneath us.
The next day I actually turned out to rugger for our house, as left wing three-quarter. The delight after all one's sickness in feeling one's legs really attempting to run wasso encouraging that one Brabazon and I, for dinner, divided a bottle of German beer. This is to become a custom. We played three spells of ten minutes each, and quite enough too—with a ball stuffed with wool, as we had no bladder. Kastamuni is totally hilly, and the footer ground over a mile away, is uneven and stony, but the best we can get. Correct collaring is barred, but we go croppers just the same. On Sunday we went bazaaring, and were allowed to attend church at 6.30, when we sang hymns from memory. The text was: "You are sons of God." We hope to make a little chapel here, by and by.
Hailstones as large as hazel nuts, but not so large as in Kut, made merry music yesterday over the town. The streets then become drains and gutters, as they are intended to. Besides being an economy, it cleans the streets.
What a quaint town this is! All water is drawn from springs or wells. There are no lights of any kind, except, possibly, some faint glimmer burning from a police station. There are no trams or much vehicular traffic, donkeys being the chief transit. In the early morning one hears the ancient Biblical solid-wheeled oxen cart groaning on its turning axle beneath the weight of a huge tree trunk brought in for firewood. At night the distant tinkling of bells sometimes reaches one as the goats come back. And, later still, over the sheets of darkness in deep, pulsing waves, like the voice of a dark and mysteriously moving spirit, floats the muezzin, which is taken up from mosque to mosque until the whole town echoes with the cry.
I have had some rough chessmen made out of bits of wood, and am settling down to discipline my mind again to some sort of methodical thinking. One feels that some such effort as this stands between us and oblivion.
September 1st.—I am feeling very much better than I have since those awful floods came in Kut that left me legacies of rheumatics, and Heaven knows what else. We play rugger three times weekly, and eat huge teas. One of us makes cakes, another carpenters, another makes jam, and yet another has started tailoring. My present hobby is to get fit and clean my windows and "bazaar." I am putting on flesh, or rather, fat, and must be now a half stone more in weight. But my digestion is still weak, nerves bad, and a periodical pain from my spine.
We have been to a Greek dentist (?) The awful stuff we ate in Kut played havoc with my teeth, which were in rather good condition before. This fellow proposes to crown about half of the back ones, is willing to accept a cheque, and talks frequently in French. These are his distinguishing qualities. He seems everything. Moreover, he will take a live nerve out and think nothing of it. Sometimes he pretends to kill it by pushing in small supplies of something or other which the nerve likes so much that it fattens on it, with the result that it grows so rapidly that soon one's whole body exists as an appendix of the particular nerve! The Turks looted his rooms lately. He has now, in consequence, only a rickety, straight-backed kitchen chair, two bottles, a wheel and string, and about four picks, with which he is very adept, using both ends of each. Altogether the Greeks here are a most disappointing, shifty lot. Poor Greece! where Pericles once lived, and which now exports currants—as they say.
Roumania is in the war at last. Turkey is pretty well on her last legs; but then, like her carts and donkeys, she always seems good for another few yards. With returning fitness I begin to hate, loathe, detest, and abhor this soul-smothering life. The way the Turkin authoritytreats us, his ignorance of his own mind, his partiality for intrigue and roguery and robbery, as also the way he runs his country, proves him unworthy of Empire. The brains and finance of this country are absolutely Greek or Armenian. The Turk holds the sword, and arrears of mismanagement he puts right by a periodical massacre. He is barbarously ignorant and misinformed. The most worthy fellow is the common soldier, who has some idea of manliness and of service, but the officer and official is a double-edged scoundrel, a smiling, dishonest, lubricous sneak, and totally untrustworthy, also a bad soldier.
The Armenian I would describe as the Jew of Turkey, hence his unpopularity. He hoards money, is indifferent to the military needs or other aspect of the development of the country, except the financial one, and is not without treachery. The Greek is also more able and better educated than the Turk. With the Armenian he does the penmanship of Turkey. He supplies surveyors, artisans, architects; but he, too, cannot go straight. In fact, I would rather trust a Turkish soldier than any Greek or Armenian. Hundreds ofyears of oppression have dried up their springs of independent action, and the Armenian goes about in constant fear of massacre; the Greek just escapes it. They have no thought whatever of throwing off their yoke or leaving the country, although they have nothing in common with their oppressors, and their religious divergence is as wide as it can well be. They hate the Turk, yet choose to suffer. Even among the children we see the tyranny of the Turk. A diversion of ours is to watch the children playing near here. Tiny Turkish boys maltreat and bully big Greek boys and girls, who dare not retaliate.
The explanation of the sorry state of Greece and of the Greeks and Armenians here I believe to be the utter selfishness of the people and their want of public-spirited men. But, if only because they are less unenlightened than their oppressors, reform should be possible to them, and although on looking at the Greeks of the land from Aleppo to Kastamuni, they seem an indifferent lot, still they have in them the seeds of culture and the ardent wish for civilization. On this, then, I believe we can build. The Turk is an interesting study. He is half child and half savage. His predilection and habits are like those of a child. He takes offence at small things, like a child. Like a child, he responds to small favours. And Germany is the last country to take the Turk successfully under her wing. England, I believe, alone could do it. We could utilize the Turkish talent for soldiering and practical affairs, removing from their midst these over-corrupt officials and Government, whom they detest. We should win their confidence by applying rigid and accessible justice between them and the Greek and Armenian, who would find unswerving adherence to law and order unavoidable. Religious toleration we could grant, and I believe that within a few years, Turkey would settle comfortably under our influence, and learn to trust us. But as it is, the country is rotten, the habits rotten, and so many wretched corrupt Turks are in authority, that one feels inclined to sweep them all away.
October 1st.—Loud shouting and cheering and wild stampede towards the restaurant dining-room announced that another mail had come. We all go quite mad on these occasions, and charge past postas, knocking over chairs or each other, and crowd around the table while the letters are given out.
I have heard again from home, written before Kut fell. I wonder what sort of a time they picture me having. Kut still seems to have been kept dark from everybody, and especially so the trek; but I shall always remember the great thoughtfulness and affection of our friends reaching out to our lonely life across thousands of miles of sea and land. With these letters I am among the heath of Camberley, the hills of New Zealand, and the 'buses of London, once again.
The commandant or kaimakam (colonel) is a foolish and babyish fellow, and also a rogue; but I, for one, believe he has less vice in him than the other junior officer, Sheriff Bey, who is a dangerous and treacherous villain. The old kaimakam does rake up a smile when we try to be happy, and although the Tartar is often apparent, he has, on occasion, given us such a privilege as a special walk.
We are trying to erect some structure of habits wherein to dwell until God's good time allows us to get away from here. Thus we make cakes twice a week. This will last a little longer until prices become too outrageous. Which makes two events. Church and bazaar and Turkish bath make three more, total of five altogether, and these, scarcely incidents in another's life, but episodes in ours, punctuate the vacuum of time in which we roll. At 6.30 a.m. there ischota haziri, tea and toast, for which we have made private arrangements.
Then one smokes or sleeps again. At 9 we have breakfast of eggs and milk and butter and bread. With a posta at our heels we return to our own house, 150 yards away. Then some sleep, some play cards, some merely sit on a chair. Others of us write diaries or re-read an old book. We have lunch of fatty foods and smoke and sleep. We have tea (our ownbandobastagain) after which there may be a walk. We all set off under a guard, and are trying to get farther afield. Once a week a long walk is allowed. On returning some of us change, even if it is to put aside one torn shirt for another or a spare jacket. But in these times I jealously guard every conventional cable that anchors one to the decent life. There is a tendency to allow the coma to steal over one's personality. This, I think, one should combat. Dinner over, we have to wait in themektub, a boresome hour. We attempt bridge or chess. Back again in our room wesmoke awhile and sleep. It may read nicely, but in truth, it is a sorry existence. Still, day by day, the structure grows, and who knows, in a few months we may have a palace like the pleasure dome of Kubla Khan!