Scorpion Sunset (28 page)

‘How did you know?'

‘These houses belonged to Armenians before they were driven out of the town. Poor beggars have been treated even worse than us by the Turks. Bastards have wiped out the community here.'

John turned to Rebeka, Hasmik, and Mrs Gulbenkian and waved them forward. He slipped his arm around Hasmik's shoulders and carried on speaking to the Turkish major.

The Turkish major nodded, spoke to his men, and left with the captain.

‘The commandant told us we can stay in rooms in the small house.' John pointed to the third house set back away from the others.'

‘That's the hospital,' Grace said.

‘It's kitted out as a hospital?' John asked hopefully.

‘It's where the Turks put the sick men but it has more sick than beds to accommodate them. The two orderlies with us have done what they can but we've no medical supplies and we haven't had a doctor until now.'

‘I told the major the women were nurses and the child belongs to one of them.'

‘The major believed you?'

‘He believes I've trained the two women as nurses.'

‘I hope for your sake, they can give a good imitation of being competent.'

John lifted his bag from the back of the cart. ‘We'll soon find out.'

Bagtsche Prisoner of War Camp for ranks

October 1916

Crabbe took the canvas bucket of broken rocks from Private Crocker and emptied it on top of the debris the German engineers had loosened with their blasting. The truck was three quarters full and he was deliberately taking his time to fill it, in the hope of making it the last truck of the day. He had no way of knowing the time but dusk was falling and all he could think of was stretching out on the dirt floor that served as his bed and closing his eyes.

‘Almost full, sir.' Private Barnabas, universally known as ‘Barney' tipped his bucket on top. ‘Shall we start hauling it, sir?'

Crabbe eyed the Turkish corporal who was guarding the British POWs working on their section of rock face.

‘This truck will take another two buckets, lad,' he answered loudly. Under his breath he muttered, ‘Slow down, I know you've just had a rest in sick bay but we can wait until the knocking off whistle to push this one out. The light's fading, we'll be sent back to our cells soon.' He took a bucket of stones from a third private who barely had the strength to remain upright and emptied it into the truck.

‘Yallah …'

‘Enough!' Crabbe whirled round and yelled back at the Turk. He knew the man couldn't understand a word he said but he hoped the guard would pick up his meaning from the tone of his voice.

‘Yallah!' the guard repeated, shaking his fist at Crabbe.

Crabbe faced him square on and mimed spooning food into his mouth. ‘Enough for today. Time to finish and eat.'

A second guard pushed his way towards them. He pulled a whip from his belt and lifted it high in the air before bringing it down full force across Crabbe's shoulders.

Crabbe screamed.

‘No work. No money. No money. No food. No food you don't eat,' the guard shouted in pidgin English.

Crabbe staggered and fell back. Barney and Crocker caught him and propped him upright.

The guard with a whip stepped closer to Crabbe and repeated. ‘No work! No food!'

Crocker released his hold on Crabbe, took another canvas bucket of stones from a prisoner and emptied it into the truck. ‘Look, work,' he addressed the guard.

A whistle blew, loud and piercing.

‘Finish,' Crocker tried smiling at the guard who didn't smile back.

‘Truck!' The guard raised his whip above Barney's head. Crabbe grabbed the end and pulled it from the guard's grasp. He grasped the handle and slammed it across the guard's cheek.

Half a dozen guards charged towards the melee. Barney and Crocker were pushed aside as the newcomers joined their Turkish comrades. The guard who'd lost his whip cracked Crabbe soundly on the jaw. The major crumpled to the ground. The guards closed in around him. He curled on the floor and attempted to protect his head with his hands and arms as the guards booted him from all sides.

Blood spurted from Crabbe's nose, ears, and mouth, sinking into and staining the dust on the track.

‘Bastards! Leave him alone!' Without sparing a thought for the consequences Crocker grabbed one of the guards' whistles and blew it, hard. More guards came running and so did the prisoners, although they trailed and limped at a slower pace.

Shouts and screams filled the air as the more robust among the prisoners tried to pull the guards away from Crabbe. A shot was fired. Both guards and prisoners turned to the commandant who was standing on a block holding his revolver high in the air. The commandant shouted in Turkish and the guards began herding the prisoners back towards their accommodation.

Crocker and Barney fought to stay with Crabbe. Crocker bent over him and refused to move even when the guards tried dragging him away. Crocker pointed at Crabbe and shouted as loud as he could, ‘Major,' while holding the insignia on the collar of the remains of Crabbe's tunic.

The commandant stepped down from the block and loomed over them. Crocker stared up at him. The commandant barked at the guards and four of them physically lifted Crocker and dragged him away, still shouting and screaming. Two more guards pushed Barney behind the truck.

‘Push! Push!'

Barney put his shoulder against the truck and pushed with all the strength left to him. It didn't budge an inch.

The guards started laughing.

‘Push! Push!'

Barney looked down at Crabbe's bloody broken body on the track and tried pushing again.

The guards' laughter escalated, ominous, terrifying.

A gun butt was rammed into Barney's back, another his stomach. The last thing he saw as he fell headlong alongside his major was his blood drying in the dust alongside Major Crabbe's.

Chapter Nineteen

Turkish Prisoner of War Camp

October 1916

‘If there's a louse left in this house, it's a dead lonely louse, sir,' Greening said proudly to John as they walked through the rooms, Baker, Williams, Roberts, Jones and all the other orderlies had scoured with boiling water and evil smelling powders. John had bought the powders from one of the merchants who were allowed to ‘sell' goods to the British POWs in exchange for promissory notes, exchangeable for gold at the end of the war.

John had been amazed at the trust placed in the British POWs by the merchants, the high value of credit extended to them and the quantity and quality of the goods on offer that included food and much-needed clothes.

‘There's no way of knowing if the boiling water or the powders killed off the blighters. But they certainly appear to have gone.' John bent down and examined cracks in the floorboards. He spotted a mouse hole in a skirting board but when he looked at it closely he saw that it had been blocked up with clay.

‘It's an old one, sir,' Greening reassured him.

‘So I see. You've done a great job here, Greening.'

‘I only supervised, sir.'

‘Like an officer,' John joked.

‘Exactly, sir.'

‘When I first saw this place a month ago, I doubted that it would ever be fit for habitation let alone a hospital, now it's probably cleaner than the hospital in Kut was, even in the early days of the siege.'

‘So can I tell the orderlies to move the quilts in, sir? The cold weather's coming and the sick are freezing in the tents in the garden.'

‘Yes, Greening. As discussed keep the surgical cases on the ground and first floor. The medical cases on the second. Mrs Gulbenkian, Rebeka, and Hasmik can move into two of the attic rooms on the top floor. I'll take the third. You take the small room at the foot of the attic stairs to the right. Dira can take the one on the left. Baker, Roberts, Williams, and Jones can share the one at the back as it's the largest. If they all agree, Evans can join them. He seems to have become a volunteer orderly since he recovered.'

‘More like our resident joker and jester, sir, but the men seem to like him. I'll ask our orderlies what they think of the idea of him moving in here with us. I'll get things going now, and we'll have this hospital organised and operational by the end of the day.'

‘Greening,' John stopped the sergeant as he was about to leave.

‘Sir.'

‘Let the men know how much I appreciate what they and you have done here.'

‘I will, but we enjoyed having something to do. It was a pleasure, sir.'

‘Pleasure?' John repeated. ‘Killing lice and scrubbing out a filthy building is a pleasure?'

‘The men will do anything for you, sir. They even set up a sweepstake on who would kill the most bedbugs.'

‘Who won?'

‘Need you ask, sir?'

‘Evans?'

‘He found a filthy old mattress in one of the attic rooms he christened “Bedbug Heaven” then proceeded to turn it into “Bedbug Hell”. None of the guards here seemed to know who lived in this building before we took it over and moved in, but judging by the amount of blood Evans squashed out of the little beggars the poor souls must have been anaemic, sir.'

‘Bedbugs are known to be inveterate survivors, even during long droughts and famines when they've had no humans to feed on. There haven't been any problems with the Armenians, have there?' John asked.

‘Not since you asked me the same question yesterday, sir. Every POW is looking out for them, and with one or two exceptions, on the whole our guards ignore them.'

‘What kind of exceptions?' John asked, instantly on the alert.

‘It's the little girl, sir. I've seen one or two of the guards trying to give her cake and sweets, nothing wrong with that, they're probably fathers who are missing their own children, but for all of that she never takes anything off them, which isn't surprising after hearing what they've been through from Miss Rebeka. Can I give you a hand to move your things out of your tent and into the building, sir?'

‘My things are my doctor's bag and kitbag,' John answered in amusement. ‘I think I can manage those on my own. What on earth is going on out there?'

The sounds of shouting and excitement echoed in from the garden. John and Greening left the building. Bowditch and Grace were standing behind a rough wooden table set beneath the veranda of the officer's accommodation emptying out sacks of letters.

‘Is that what I think it is?' John shouted.

‘Mail, sir.' Grace ran his hands through the letters, lifted them high in the air, and allowed them to fall through his fingers.

‘There's Red Cross parcels too, sir,' Bowditch added. ‘Some have names on and some are for general use. The colonel's ordered the general ones put into storage for the common good. He asked if you could find a secure cupboard in the hospital to lock them into.'

‘If there isn't one, I'll find someone who can make one, Bowditch.'

‘Here's a parcel for you, sir.' Bowditch looked through the pile of Red Cross boxes that had been heaped on a wooden bench behind him, extracted one, and handed it to John. ‘You probably have letters too, sir, but as you see, we haven't had time to sort them yet.

John took the parcel and looked around at the men. Even with the food procured though the merchants most looked as though they were starving, but they were undoubtedly healthier than they'd been when he'd arrived a month ago. And certainly a lot fitter than they were when they'd left Kut.

‘Baker,' he spotted the corporal and called him over. ‘You've had letters?'

‘Three, sir, from my wife, my mum, and my sister.'

‘Do you have the key I gave you to the store cupboard where we decided to keep drugs and medical supplies?'

‘Safe, sir.' Baker took it from his tunic pocket.

‘Put this in there for me please,' John handed him the Red Cross parcel. ‘And if you want to read your letters in peace you can shut yourself inside. No one will think of looking for you in there.'

‘I may just do that, sir.' He took the parcel. ‘But this food parcel is yours, sir. Shouldn't you keep it in your quarters?'

‘I'll open it later and check the contents. We're not badly off for food at the moment, but things can change and it won't hurt to have extra supplies we can draw on if we have a sudden influx of sick.'

‘I'll lock it in the cupboard, sir.'

Baker left and Greening joined John. ‘Six letters for you, sir.'

‘Thank you.'

‘It's good to know that the outside world hasn't entirely forgotten us, isn't it, sir.'

‘It is. You heard from your wife, Greening?'

‘Yes, sir,' Greening beamed. ‘I have a son, sir. John Mason Alfred Greening.'

‘You named him after me!' John was shocked.

‘The Alfred's for me, sir. After Kut … well you know what we all went through there, sir – I wrote to Harriet and told her that if we had a son I wanted him named after the finest man I knew. I know it's an imposition, sir, and I shouldn't do it, but if we were in Basra I'd have asked if you'd minded standing godfather, sir.'

‘It would be an honour, Greening, and I'm touched that you invited me, much less named your son after me.' There was a sudden unaccountable lump in John's throat that made his voice oddly tremulous. ‘But how did you get your letter to Harriet?'

‘I gave it to Major Knight to take downstream, sir. When General Townshend surrendered, Major Knight passed the word around that he'd take anything we wanted sent out with him when he escorted the sick, sir.'

‘Well congratulations, Greening. We'll toast young John's health tonight.'

‘In what, sir?'

‘We'll find something.' John winked. He took his letters, went into his tent, moved the kitbag and doctor's bag he'd packed earlier, sat in his camp chair, and looked at the return addresses.