The Secrets Of A Kuttite By Edward O. Mousley The Secrets Of A Kuttite PART I TO THE FALL OF KUT, APRIL 29TH, 1916 THE SECRETS OF A KUTTITE CHAPTER I EN ROUTE FROM HYDERABAD TO MESOPOTAMIA—VOYAGE UP THE TIGRIS Kut-el-Amara, December 22nd, 1915.—At the present moment I'm snugly settled inside my Burberry sleeping-bag. The tiny candle that burns gloomily from its niche in the earth wall of the dug-out leaves half the compartment in sharp shadow. But through the doorway it lights a picture eloquent of war. This picture, framed by the sandbags of the doorway, includes a gun-limber, observation pole, rifles, a telescope, and a telephone, along a shell-pierced wall. Above winding mounds of black soil from entrenchments hang the feathery fronds of the eternal palm. Only some droop, for mostly they hang, bullet-clipped, like broken limbs. The night is still and cold, the stillness punctuated by the rackety music of machine- guns. As I write snipers' bullets crack loudly on the mutti wall behind my head. Another night attack is expected from the trenches in front of the 16th Brigade which we must support. When the battery is in action the most unloved entertainment that offers is the rifle fire that just skips the wall enclosing the date-palm grove in which we are hidden. Sometimes the sharp crackling sound of bullets hitting the trees increases as the flashes of our guns are seen by the enemy, and resembles in its intensity a forest on fire. One hears a sudden crack just ahead like the sharp snapping of a stick, and in the early days of one's initiation a duck is inevitable. I don't say one ducks, but one finds one has ducked. For a time every one ducks. It is no use telling people that if the bullet had been straight one would have been hit before hearing it strike the palm. Some people go on ducking for ages. Of course I'm talking of the open. In the trenches ducking is a fine art. The last time I ducked commendably, that I remember, was yesterday. I was observing from our front line trenches with plenty of head protection from the front, when a bullet came from an almost impossible direction. It flung a piece of hard earth sharply on my cheek, and I ducked. Afterwards I laughed and took more care. By the way, as this is not a diary but an unpretentious record of things not forgotten, and intended on reference to dispel the illusion that all this is a dream, I may as well furnish an explanation of how I, Edward Mousley, a subaltern in the Royal Field Artillery, come to be in this dug-out here in Kut-el-Amara, along with the Sixth Division under General Townshend, that is to say, almost the whole original Force D, besieged by the whole Turkish army in Mesopotamia under Nureddin Pasha. My brigade was at annual practice near Hyderabad Scind when a wire ordered another subaltern and me to proceed at once on service with Force D (in Mesopotamia) to replace casualties. Some very kind words and excellent advice from my Colonel and innumerablechota pegs from every one else and the next morning we left, the other subaltern and Don Juan and I, to exchange practice for reality. Don Juan is my faithful horse. At Karachi I found several gunners of my acquaintance who had come out from Home with me in theMorea, a few months before, including one Edmonds, who had tripped with me across India. At Karachi I stored much useless kit, motor cycle, and spare saddlery, and notwithstanding a heavy bout of malaria just before, left for service fit and well equipped and with as excellent a horse as one could wish for. We sailed in the tiny mail boat Dwarka for Muscat, Bushire, Basra. Muscat is a mere safety valve of Satan in his sparest wilderness, a lonely patch of white buildings completely shut in by awful mountains, rocks that in remote ages seem to have frowned themselves into the most fearful convulsions. And, even in November, hot! After two days of scorching heat and tempestuous seas we arrived at Bushire, where a spit keeps shipping off. Fifty Gurkhas, and a subaltern of whom I was to see something by and by, came aboard. Fine little fellows they are and very cheerful and contented even on the wretched deck of a tiny steamer loaded with fowls, food, a Persian donkey, vermin, and half-breeds. Then, in a resplendent dawn, I saw the banks of the Shatt-el-Arab, verdant with the greenness of a new lawn, where millions of date palms clustered side by side on the flat, flood-washed shores. Here the river is half a mile wide. One may imagine its changed appearance when the great floods come, that are now three months off. Outside the entrance on the right bank, Fao, a tiny village and fort, marks the initial landing and conquest by Force D—General Delamain's brigade—in October, 1914. Both banks of the river are thickly forested with date-palms right up to Basra, a crowded spot of a few hundred yards in frontage on both sides of a tiny creek Ashar, whence once Sinbad sailed. It was brimful of soldiers and Arabs, and quantities of stores and planks stood around half-erected buildings. It had the appearance of a very busy port, some dozen huge ocean-going vessels being anchored in the stream. There was no wharfing accommodation at all. One communicates with the shore by bellums. This is a flat-bottomed pointed boat and propelled by bamboo poles or paddled by sticks nailed on to a round blob of wood. The shipping included H.M.S. Espiegle, the Franz Ferdinand, and the Karadenis, the two latter being large steamers captured by us and used as accommodation boats, each taking a thousand men if necessary. Pending the arrival of our upstream transport I was ordered with the other officers on to the Karadenis which lay in mid-stream. Some wretched-looking Turkish prisoners were aft. We little knew it at the time, but our few days on this ship or mosquito- hive were destined to be our last in even moderate comfort. Henceforth we were to be playthings of the God of War. There was a strange silence about news on this front. Some thought our army was near Azizie, over four hundred miles up river; others that we were just outside Baghdad. We were chafing to get away to our units before we got malaria. A sudden chance with a detachment of the 14th Hussars was offered to a subaltern nick-named "Fruit-salt," because "'e knows," and myself. We left on a paddle-boat called the P.5, a barge of horses, Don Juan among them, on either side. To get on the P.5 again from the horse-barges we hop over to the paddle- box and clamber on deck. Our camp beds we stretched out forward, the men, arms, and maxims arranged aft. We had a comfortable mess table set so that we could see upstream and also a good deal of the left bank. The officers of this troop of the 14th Hussars on board were all very young, very pleasant, and very keen. We sat and drank or smoked and talked, and war seemed then very far away. Or we watched a wandering tribe of Arabs trekking in the distance. The country was, of course, dead flat and except for a scrubby grass there was nothing to intercept one's eye reaching to the horizon. The river winds a lot and far away the mahela sails seemed to be making over land. One thought of the Norfolk Broads. Somewhere in the early morning we passed the confluence of the Euphrates and Tigris, and Ezra's tomb. (Maxim fire increasing: I must switch off here now.) Later.— No harm occurred except the heavy sniping has knocked out some poor horses and wounded a syce and spoiled some more palms. I continue. There was also on board an excellent engineer, full of "sunny retrospect." He could talk or listen, which is like unto a horse that can gallop and walk. As he explained on inquiry, he had never married, nor had he ever avoided marriage. Altogether he was a delightful fellow for company. We passed the marshes of Kurna of an earlier engagement in this campaign, where our army had dislodged the Turk with guns mounted on planks between bellums, and whole brigades punted and poled their way up. "Forward the light bellums!" "Charge!" were the orders the commanding officers yelled on that day. Britain was always irresistible on the water! The whole affair is now called "Regatta week." We also passed where the Garden of Eden was said to have been. As a matter of fact, the whole of this country, like the plains of India, is delta formation. The two rivers must have been higher up and consequently Eden also. The latter fact rather knocks out the little remaining romance about the place. Sir William Wilcocks puts the site at Hit, above Baghdad, and says that even going no further back than the tertiary epoch would place the delta there. We reached Amara on the fourth day. It is a village of some considerable size pleasantly lining both banks of a beautiful straight reach in the Tigris. In the broad, clear water one sees reflected the languid droop of the eternal date palm, the great triangular sails of the mahela, the regular contour of the Bridge of Boats.