Edward O. Mousley

“ It is merely a drab, dull succession of buildings formed of the sun-baked mud of the desert. On the river, however, especially at sunset when the dirt and dust are obscured and only the pipes of the Baghdadis and Arabs blaze in the dusk, it is decidedly picturesque.
All the sick, even if only partly able to walk, start on the desert trek for Mosul in a few days. We have heard so much of waterless marches and barren lands crossed only by the nastiest Arabs, that one has the resistless desire to try one's chance. To move is to live; to stay here is to die. ”

“ Sometimes, again, I awake to the sound of soft ceaseless swishing, that full and incessant sound of early morning in England, dear England, when the gentle rain washes open the eyelids of the waking world and green trees murmur, and birds begin to sing—but I look outside my dug-out and see only a mass of black crows flying over a palm-dotted wilderness to their Tigris haunts.
This morning the Gurkha regiment relieved in the first line. I am quite keen about them, a manly, silent, respectful set of men; but children, too, mere children, for all that they are tigers in a scrap. ”

“ No Turks were in sight. Every man of the fatigued army [11] worked as happens on manœuvres. It was only the battered condition of the gun carriages, the gaping wounds in the diminished teams of horses and that quiet "balanced up" look in the eyes of every Tommy that told of a reality more grim. On the flat mud desert, with no kind asset of nature to assist them, the nearest reinforcements hundreds of miles away, but with its own transport and some limited supplies, this lonely British army formed its semi-circle on the river. So it faced this unkind plain, its destiny in its hands. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The air is full of other hissing things in various stages of their careers. A creepy feeling suggests that the bomb with its tiny propellers rapidly spinning, is going to pitch on the top of one's head and blot one out of existence, like stamping out an ant. It strikes a building a hundred yards off and the resounding smash of falling timber is caught up by another smash which has struck earth, a third that has landed in the hospital, scattering death all around, a fourth that has splashed small pieces of horseflesh and hair on the surrounding walls and trees. ”

“ There is born a patience terrible with hope. To get out on Sunday we waited and planned all through the week, arranging appearances with postas, often waiting a whole day for a chance to speak a word freely to our brother officers, only possible when a certain posta was on duty at night. How seldom all the necessary elements of a setting to a single successful transaction are present, only a prisoner can know. But as I went homeward from that bath and restaurant and saw an avenue through that way to freedom, I felt hope once again stir within me. ”

“ If one could refer to anything so damnable as captivity being blighted, I might say that bruise has blighted mine. Of the untold hours that I lie awake waiting, waiting, for the roof, sky, and earth to stop pulsating to the pulsation in my spine, no one can ever know. But the eye trouble, originally strain from shell-shock and from grit, is now only bad conjunctivitis, although it looks awfully serious. As first violin of our band my bandaged eye, and, later, my absence, had been conspicuous enough to the Turks. ”

“ One could not but feel the keenest admiration for General Townshend, so steady, collected and determined in action, so kind, quick and confident. There, totally indifferent to the shell fire, he stood watching the issue, receiving reports from the various orderly officers and giving every attention to the progress of the transport. Some shells pitched just over us, one, not fifteen yards away, killing a horse and wounding some drivers. The restlessness of the horses, some stamping their feet, others tossing their heads, betokened their objection to standing still at such a time. ”

“ For by eating one cannot mean half a slice of chaff bread, nor by drinking a water-coloured liquid like our siege tea, nor yet by smoking a collection of strange dried twigs and dust. Man, it has been excellently observed, cannot live by bread alone. How much less, then, can he live upon half chaff and half flour?
Far away on the edge of the western horizon I watched for hours, through my telescope, a convoy of camels, each with a tiny white dot of humanity aboard, striding away with delightful patience to the Turkish camp downstream. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 Turk in authority treats 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. ”

“ Only three officers at long intervals have gone over the mountains from our camp to Constantinople. Here in this basin by the Black Sea, buried from the world, and far away from the great issue, one has been left alone with one's inactivity, one's interrupted career, the unaccepted portion of one's sacrifice, and has too much time for morbidity. But now, to-day, the sun shines on Kastamuni as it never did. ”

“ Among the men there is, of course, a good deal of ragging and general barracking about our not being relieved, but their spirit and patience and trust in their general is truly magnificent. No soldier, I truly believe, could wish for a more splendid loyalty from his rank and file than these men, the European troops, at any rate, feel and show in a hundred ways for their "Alphonse." They get little news but of disappointments, still they go about their duties with a step unsteady and painfully slow, and at every fresh misfortune they joke and smile. ”

“ At a conversation in Kut to-day one heard many conclusions about America, who is not yet in the war. "It is a terrible New World," as Dooley said of the war; "but it is better than no world at all." Not the least of our blessings is the gift of Time. Time it is that invites us to sit tight and say nothing while bounders and cleverly veneered barbarians romp rapturously through an applauding world. We have found them out. In time others will find them out. In the meantime we wait patiently. And patience is life. ”

“ A man astride of a bullet couldn't have gone up faster than we did. Something to do with exploding a gas charge—a secret stunt of Tipton's own. We found ourselves gliding along smoothly and evenly with incredible swiftness, possibly doing eighty knots. The relief from the storm-tossing to the thrill of racing smoothly was wonderful. Have you ever while yachting beaten up in the teeth of a heavy gale round a headland and had the sea sweeping over you and the boat dancing and leaping like a mad thing, and then suddenly found yourself gliding down a smooth channel with the wind behind you? ”

“ After a pleasant run round Ismid Gulf we got to Ismid, a large town with railway works. There in the silvery waters of the Marmora we beheld Principo, Halki, and the other islands, their bronze green shimmering in the bright sunshine. A few sails were on the sea, the sea, the sea! Never shall I forget the thrill we both had as, for the first time, after ages in tiny mud dug-outs, flat plains, and a taunting confinement behind a high range, we saw, a few yards off us, the sparkling drops glistening as they fell from the tiny waves of the Marmora. ”

“ Our duty stands out plain and simple. It is our duty to our Empire, to our beloved King and Country, to stand here and hold up the Turkish advance as we are doing now; and with the help of all, heart and soul with me, together we will make this defence to be remembered in history as a glorious one. All in England and in India are watching us now, and are proud of the splendid courage and devotion you have shown ”

“ In the meantime it will be an interesting spectacle for history to observe—the German nation sprinting on hot foot towards the registered funeral pyre, with all the dramatics of the bolting horse that gathers speed and insanity from its own flight.
Talking of horses, I hear that to-day is the slaughtering day for numbers of them. This is good-bye to any possibility of debouch, for there will be insufficient horses to move the guns. It will eke out our corn and barley that can be made into bread; but what is wanted is sugar or jam for the body, and tea for the spirit. ”

“ Here and there an Indian Mussulman soldier fell out for a few seconds, and with his forehead in the desert dust paid his devotion to Allah. More than one of our guards did so likewise. A glorious sky of red sailing clouds stretched above us, and there came over me the battle picture of Détaille's "Dream," a procession of soldier spirits marching across the sky with banners streaming, while down on the plain below, among stacks of piled rifles, men lay sleeping among the dead. Some Arab set up his chant and the rhythm then fitted in exactly with that of Beethoven's funeral march. ”

“ About 12.30 midday a hot rifle fire broke out over our trenches, and within a few seconds the symphony of bullets crackling in the palm trees swelled to a roar like the falling of fast and dense hail.
We went into a fast rate of fire at once with the battery on our prepared zones, and immediately put up a heavy barrage of shrapnel just in front of our first line. At first the densest fire seemed to come from in front of the 16th Brigade, but soon it extended right round our perimeter. ”

“ It is not too much to say that almost no one has any misgiving as to the future. In this tiny horse-shoe panorama on the Tigris, where the destiny of Kut has pursued its dramatic evolution for the last four and a half months, the garrison awaits the ultimate development of the drama with a feeling merely of wide curiosity. ”

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

“ Cockie is a first-rate chess player, at least so he has repeatedly informed us. He knows the whole history of Ruy Lopez even to his private affairs, and can at any stage of any game tell you the exact measurement of the sphere for evil of any piece on the board. He does not finger his piece and wave it in mid-air before moving as do smaller fry at the game. Neither does he hesitate for four minutes ever. Attacks, counter-attacks, demonstrations, feints, holding and flanking—he is an artist at them all. At every exchange he gets an advantage in pieces—or position. ”

“ It has been said that the soldier becomes callous. It would be more true to say that he merely becomes indifferent. But an exceptional phase of death removes the blinds from many disused windows of his mind, and he sees all too well. Such an event is the loss of this kind-hearted general, and it has given to many a higher altitude in point of view. There is the point of view of the trench and dug-out, of the hospital, of the observation post, on a roof top. There is that of an aeroplane. There is the standpoint of the overhead stars that see us as a flashing sphere. ”

“ This pure and godly element, silent and secretive, the avant-courrier of the Ultimate, of Things doomed, one day to be reclaimed by the once again triumphant elements when, from the dome of the universe, the last white great snow sheets shall fall, fall, fall—and this universe, once again locked in the ice-grip of the Snow God, shall drive forward mysteriously on its lonely way—lonely for it shall have been separated from Life, and the Spirit, Man, will have gone. ”

“ We felt a deep debt of gratitude due to our General for bringing us out of such a tight corner so brilliantly. At one moment the whole force was imperilled. The next our guns smashed lanes of casualties through the Turkish troops. I was assured by senior officers of much service that I had witnessed one of the most brilliant episodes possible in war, where perfect judgment and first-rate discipline alone enabled us to smash the sting of the pursuit and to continue a retreat exactly as it is done at manœuvres. ”