Winds of Eden (4 page)

‘Where did you get this?' Crabbe asked.

‘Norfolks' mess. I told their cook that their officers had been out all night helping Major Sandes.'

‘They haven't been near here.'

‘I know that and you know that. The Norfolks' cooks didn't.'

‘I like your style, Smythe.' Sandes stared as a wave of Turkish infantry headed by an officer brandishing his sword rushed the far side of his bridge.

‘Bollocks!' Crabbe yelled to one of the Dorset privates, ‘Evans, get to HQ. Tell them we're under attack.'

‘Sergeant Lane,' Peter shouted in the direction of the fort. ‘Troops out of the front trench. Now!'

‘To the fray, gentlemen.' Sandes unbuckled his pistol.

‘The only way to stop them is to demolish the bridge, sir.' Lieutenant Matthews picked up a fifty-pound gun cotton charge.

‘Not at this end. It'll be an invitation to use the remains on the far bank as a bridging point.'

‘Then we'll have to blow it up on the opposite bank.' Peter took a second gun cotton charge from a private.

‘It would be suicide to go over there,' Sandes warned.

‘Want to try your luck?' Peter grinned at Matthews. The two of them jumped into a boat.

‘Idiots!' Crabbe shouted after them. He pulled Sandes into a sandbagged dugout.

Peter and Mathews reached the centre of the river to be met by a barrage of Turkish gunfire.

Major-General Mellis charged up harrying a contingent of reinforcements. ‘Covering fire! Pin Johnny Turk down! Into the forward trenches!' he ordered, before joining Crabbe and Sandes in the dugout. He indicated the mass of Turkish snipers on the opposite bank. ‘We'll have to wait until nightfall to destroy your bridge Sandes. Crabbe, organise volunteers from the sappers, miners and Gurkhas and find two officers to go over to the opposite bank with them tonight.'

‘The officers will be easy, sir.' Crabbe looked to where Peter and Matthews were lying low in their boat, scanning the bridge with binoculars.

Kut al Amara, nightfall, Friday 10th December 1915

Peter watched the sun turn from gold to red as it sank slowly to the horizon. He was mentally and physically drained. The Turkish snipers hadn't let up since their main force had abandoned their failed attack on the bridge early that morning. As a result, over two hundred British troops had been stretchered into the town. The fortunate to the makeshift improvised hospitals set up by the medics, the less fortunate to the mortuaries.

When the Turks had attacked he'd been prepared to fight a battalion single-handed without covering fire, but interminably long hours spent lying in the bottom of the boat before he and Matthews had managed to paddle back to the home bank, had sapped his enthusiasm and energy.

Crabbe slithered down the bank on elbows and knees to where Peter and Lieutenants Mathews and Sweet were waiting. ‘Ready?' he whispered.

Peter nodded. He and the two lieutenants waded into the river alongside the poised and waiting Gurkhas. Before they could push out the first boat, the Turkish fusillade started up again. Bullets hailed into the water around them.

Within seconds covering fire from the 2nd and 7th Gurkhas whistled over their heads.

‘Mellis's men,' Mathews breathed.

Peter dropped the gun cotton charges into a boat and pushed it towards the centre of the river. Clinging to the stern, he and his two fellow officers headed for the opposite bank. Behind them two boats steered by volunteers from the ranks floated in their wake.

‘We've sent those men on a suicide mission,' Sandes declared when Crabbe crawled back into the dugout.

‘Smythe's come through worse.'

‘Didn't it occur to the bloody brass when they ordered me to build that pontoon bridge that the Turks would see it as an invitation to visit?'

‘Possibly they thought you needed something to occupy yourself and your men.'

‘I know just how I'd like to occupy myself.'

‘Engineering officers are not permitted to blow up HQ.'

‘More's the pity.'

They stood side by side, peering over the sandbags. Tense minutes ticked past as they strained their eyes monitoring the shadowy figures of the small party pushing boats packed with explosive to the opposite bank.

‘Suicide!' Sandes reiterated as a bullet hit a Gurkha. The man fell back into the river. His body was carried downstream.

A voice resounded behind them. ‘If they'll succeed there'll be a medal in it for the officer in charge.'

Crabbe turned. Colonel George Perry had entered the dugout.

Crabbe couldn't resist answering. ‘Medals lose their gloss when they're pinned on a corpse, Colonel Perry.'

Perry snorted and moved on. The first explosion rent the air.

‘They did it!' Sandes grabbed Crabbe's shoulder as his bridge was thrown high and splintered in the air. ‘They bloody well did it!'

‘They're back, sir. Look.' A private pointed to Peter who was dragging the wounded Gurkha out of the water. Close behind him were the sodden figures of Lieutenants Alec Matthews and Roy Sweet.

Chapter Four

Lansing Memorial Mission, Basra, Saturday 25th December 1915

‘All day people have been asking me. “How can we celebrate Christmas with so many men dead?” ʼ The Reverend Butler looked down the table to where his wife, Dr Theo Wallace, Theo's sister Angela Smythe, and Dr Picard were sitting. ‘I can only repeat to you what I said to them. It's cold comfort after the news that was brought to our door yesterday, but God's mercy knows no bounds. Unfortunately neither does man's inhumanity to man. We have, all of us, been placed here, in this town, this country, at this time, by God. It is His will that we offer comfort and assistance to our fellow man to the best of our abilities. As for what has happened. It cannot be changed. All we can do is remember the souls of Lieutenant Colonel Harry Downe and Captain John Mason along with those of every other brave man who has fallen, in our private prayers, and pray that God extends his mercy to the courageous men who are besieged at Kut al Amara, including Angela's beloved husband, Peter. So,' he solemnly filled their glasses from the wine decanter, ‘please, join me in a toast to Lieutenant Colonel Harry Downe, Captain John Mason and all absent friends.'

Blinded by tears, Angela rose to her feet and raised her glass along with the others.

‘Two more toasts, ladies and gentlemen before we drain our glasses. To the new life that joined us yesterday by God's will. A posthumous son for Captain Mason, and our guest Mrs Maud Mason. And to peace. May it grace the world in 1916.'

As Angela echoed the toast of ‘Peace' she recalled the troops she'd seen disembarking at the town's wharves. Sepoys and sappers from India and the Western Front, senior officers in splendid dress uniforms and behind them crates of guns, ammunition and stores destined to feed the war effort.

She couldn't help wondering if peace would return to Mesopotamia – or anywhere in the world. Or if she'd ever see Peter in this life again.

Kut al Amara,
Saturday 25th December
1915

Warren Crabbe and Peter Smythe left the improvised mess of the Dorsets after the last post-Christmas dinner toasts had been drunk and all the bottles the steward had permitted to be opened for the occasion, emptied.

‘Leg still bothering you?' Crabbe asked when he noticed Peter limp out of what had been a carpet shop before their regiment had evicted the merchant and taken over the building.

‘When it hits the cold,' Peter admitted.

‘That will teach you to blow up a bridge when you're under it.'

‘You would have found a better way?'

They heard General Charles Townshend's baritone accompanied by his inevitable banjo-playing echoing from the sheikh's house he'd requisitioned. The general exhibited a taste for all things French, and officers who'd been invited into his private quarters swore the mud walls of the room he entertained in were festooned with risqué pictures cut from
La Vie Parisienne
.

‘Alphonse is on good form tonight,' Peter commented.

Crabbe stopped walking and listened. ‘
The Black Cat
, or as the general with his penchant for all things French would say,
Le Chat Noir.'

‘Your accent is improving.'

‘Thanks to the French I hear in the mess every time Townshend's name is mentioned. Why do officers refer to him as “Alphonse” when the men call him “Charlie”?'

‘Possibly because Charlie is more British and French isn't taught in council schools,' Peter suggested.

‘My Glasgow slum school didn't even teach English.'

‘I've noticed,' Peter joked.

‘I'll talk to you when you've mastered the tongue of Robbie Burns, my boy.'

‘Frankly, given the noises you Scots produce I'd rather not try.'

They headed north-east through the rod-straight avenues Sandes and his engineers had hacked through the higgledy-piggledy, cheek-by-jowl housing in Kut. Walls had been torn down and the holes covered by matting, their owners' protests silenced by liberal donations of silver rupees from General Townshend's war chest. The result was a prospective battlefield within the town where communications could be carried by runners from one battalion to another and troops swiftly deployed to any area under attack if – or what was more likely – when the Turks broke through the outer defences.

Their boots scuffed the unmade roads as they avoided stinking pools of stagnant effluents. They passed mud brick houses and clumps of palm. On their right, at the eastern edge of town, the ink-black outline of the town's gibbet stood high above the riverbank, reminding Peter of a woodcut illustration he'd seen in a book of medieval torture.

By tacit agreement they shouldered their kitbags and quickened their steps.

‘It's cold enough to addle a man's brains and frost his eyes.' Peter pulled his muffler higher over his face.

‘Not to mention shrivel his balls. There I go, showing my gutter origins again.' Crabbe was a phenomenon rare in the British Army until the onset of war had decimated the ranks of officers. He was a ‘ranker', a private who'd risen beyond sergeant to second lieutenant and on to major by dint of brilliant soldiering.

‘I've been meaning to ask. Do you ever regret leaving the ranks?' Peter side-stepped to avoid a mound of slimy, foul-smelling, mouldering vegetable waste.

‘I did until peacetime soldiering became wartime soldiering. It's easier for an officer to accept a ranker when he sees one ducking the same bullets. What hurt the most was the reaction of the non-commissioned officers. I felt orphaned when they told me I was no longer welcome in the sergeants' mess.'

‘As an officer they never allowed me in, but judging by the noise emanating from their quarters on celebration nights, the non-coms know how to enjoy themselves.'

‘That they do,' Crabbe agreed.

‘Talking of the mess, why did I agree to leave a nice warm room to accompany you on this mission of mercy?'

‘Because you're kind.'

‘More like the mess was so warm I'd forgotten how cold it is out here. It only seems like yesterday we were complaining it was hot enough to fry eggs in the sun, not to mention our boots and brains. Now it's too damned cold for penguins.'

‘How many of those have you seen lately?' Crabbe asked.

‘Don't be pedantic. Why the hell do we have to fight in this cursed land of extremes?'

‘Because king and country put us here.' Crabbe, the elder by more than twenty years, answered philosophically.

‘They should have put us somewhere else.'

‘Like the Western Front?'

‘At least we'd be within kicking distance of Piccadilly. I've forgotten what London looks like.'

‘You'd only see it if you were given Blighty leave.'

‘Leave – what's that?' Peter feigned innocence.

‘It's described in your officer's handbook.'

‘Johnny Leigh collected all the ones he could find in our billet last night to feed the stove.'

‘Did they keep you warm?' Crabbe enquired.

‘Not for long.'

They continued past the ordnance and a row of private houses that had been knocked into a single building by the engineers and transformed into a general hospital by the Medical Service. The entire street had been commandeered. The bank and exchange was now a dressing station for the sepoys and the largest private house requisitioned and converted into an officers' hospital.

Mules, awaiting transfer to the cooks, brayed in the makeshift slaughter house as they skirted the Indian and Gurkha billets.

‘I could get used to this quiet,' Crabbe commented.

‘Quiet! Can't you hear the screams of the Turkish wounded in no-man's-land?' Peter winced when an agonising, ear-splitting cry rent the air.

‘Turkish bastards, leaving their own out there to die,' Crabbe cursed. ‘Damn them to hell for starting a show on Christmas morning and firing on us when we attempted to retrieve their wounded.'

‘I was on duty in the observation post at the fort.' Peter referred to the defences built by the army's civilian contractors, Lynch Brothers, in November. Adjacent to the front-line defences, the Dorsets used it to house their ammunition and field hospital.

‘I heard it was hell there.'

‘It wasn't pleasant,' Peter replied. ‘Shortly after dawn broke I watched a Turkish officer crawl inch by inch from our lines to theirs. It took the poor beggar over two hours. When he reached the parapet of the Turkish front line, they left him hanging. All it would have taken was a tug from a friendly hand to pull him in.'

‘Johnny Turk is thick-skinned, thick-headed and heartless when it comes to the plight of their wounded. Let's hope their attitude doesn't extend to our injured. God alone knows how many of ours fell into their hands after Ctesiphon.'

Peter recalled the hospital barges that had been cut loose from the burning gun boats blown up by Turkish artillery. He'd seen them drift towards the Turkish lines and feared for the fate of their human cargo, even before he'd seen the callous casual brutality the Turks meted out to their own injured.

Crabbe walked past the brick kilns into the second lines. The Anglican priest, Reverend Harald Spooner, was holding an impromptu service in a dugout. His altar was a dried milk box, a tin plate did duty as patten for the cream cracker host, and a brandy flask the cup, a score of officers and men crowded around him as he led them in a rendition of
Hark the Herald Angels Sing.
Further down the line they heard voices raised in a discordant version of
Silent Night
.

‘Bizarre to be singing about heavenly peace when the entire world is at war. Especially when we're losing the best of our officers and men to the daily Turkish fusillade. There's no let-up for the burial parties. The damned brass …'

‘Steady, Smythe. Ranks' ears.' Crabbe whispered. ‘We're all upset and capable of unravelling, but don't let anyone in command hear you talk like that. Think of the men. In a siege situation, morale is everything. You brought the cigarettes as well as the bottles?'

‘Now you ask me?'

‘Now I thought of it. After weeks of tight rations that whisky's gone straight to my head.'

‘One tot?' Smythe was incredulous.

‘That's all it took. Even that liberal helping of festive Donkey a la lamb didn't help.'

‘We'll be relieved before we have to eat the horses, won't we?'

‘You worried about Harry's Dorset and Somerset?'

‘Bizarre, isn't it,' Smythe agreed. ‘After what's happened to Harry, all I can think of is saving his horses.'

‘Possibly because it's the only thing we can do for him now. Middle line ahead,' Crabbe warned. ‘Remember, morale first, second, third, and last. No defeatist talk.'

They stopped at a gun emplacement manned by the Dorsets. The sappers had hung a reed curtain in front of the trench opening, carpeted it with a cheap rug from the bazaar and embellished the walls with palm leaves and crayoned illustrated texts.

GOD BLESS OUR MUD HOME,

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND PLENTY OF TURKS,

and below the decorated papers.

EXCURSIONS TO KUT AL AMARA ON CHRISTMAS DAY AND BOXING DAY BY ARRANGEMENT.

‘I would knock, but you can't on reeds. Officers begging admittance.' Crabbe pushed aside the curtain.

A sergeant, corporal, and half a dozen privates snapped to attention.

Crabbe lifted his kit bag from his shoulders and set it on the mat. ‘At ease.'

‘Welcome, Major Crabbe, Captain Smythe, sirs, and a Merry Christmas,' the sergeant offered them a tin plate that held half a dozen crackers.

‘We would pour you a drink, sirs, but all we have is chlorinated Tigris water with a dash of lime. You're welcome to try it.' Private Evans picked up his flask and tin mug in readiness.

‘We're here to offer you Christmas cheer, not the other way round.' Crabbe eyed a line of socks pinned to the side of the trench with tent pegs. One had no foot and a wag, he suspected Private Evans, had placed a bucket beneath it with another crayoned sign,

THANK YOU SANTA. OVERFLOW TO FALL BELOW.

Peter crouched down, opened his kit bag and fumbled through the contents with his mittened hands. He pulled out five packs of cigarettes, a couple of bars of chocolate and a bottle of Turkish brandy and placed them in the pail.

‘Thank you, sirs. That's jolly nice of you,' Sergeant Lane picked up the brandy.

‘Never thought I'd see Santa wearing an officer's uniform, Major Crabbe, Captain Smythe.'

‘He comes in all guises, Private Evans. These are from the late Lieutenant Colonel Downe's personal private store, and they're to be shared between two dozen.'

‘We'll drink a toast to him, sirs. May he find a good stock of brandy as well as peace in heaven.' Private Evans took the cigarettes from the pail and handed them out.

‘Amen to that,' Crabbe voice wavered with suppressed emotion.

Peter averted his eyes. ‘We have more Dorset dugouts to visit, so if you'll excuse us.'

‘Yes, sirs. Thank you, sirs, and Merry Christmas.'

Peter and Crabbe continued walking to the outer defences to a tuneless ‘
For they are jolly good fellas …
'.

When they reached the front line they distributed the store of cigarettes, whisky, brandy and chocolate they'd taken from Harry's private supply and supplemented with donations they'd begged from fellow officers.

They passed sappers trying to divest themselves of dirt accumulated during a day spent digging, deepening, and widening the trenches that had become ‘home'. Men with torn and bloodied hands and faces who'd returned from laying swathes of barbed wire in no-man's-land, waiting their turn for a bucket of cold water and sliver of soap. They stepped over corporals and privates curled in blankets who were trying to sleep on the damp, frozen ground.