Part 6

The expedition to capture the gold convoy was to start at four, so after two hours' sleep I bundled into one of the Rolls-Royces and the column swung out into the road. Through the mist loomed the sinister, businesslike outlines of the armored car ahead of me. Captain Carr of the Thirteenth L.A.M.B.'s was in command of the expedition. Unless we were in action or in a locality where we momentarily expected to be under fire from rifle or machine-gun, the officer commanding the car and his N.C.O. stood in the well behind the turret, steadying themselves with leather loops riveted to its sides. On long runs the tool-boxes on either side of the well formed convenient seats. When the car became engaged the crew would get inside, pulling the steel doors shut. The slits through which the driver and the man next him looked could be made still smaller when the firing was heavy, and the peep-holes at either side and in the rear had slides which could be closed. The largest aperture was that around the tube of the gun. Splinters of lead came in continuously, and sometimes chance directed a bullet to an opening. One of our drivers was shot straight through the head near Ramadie. The bottom of the car was of wood, and bullets would ricochet up through it, but to have had it made of steel would have added too much weight. The large gasolene-tank behind was usually protected by plating, but even so was fairly vulnerable. A reserve-tank holding ten gallons was built inside the turret. We almost invariably had trouble with the feed-pipes leading from it. During the great heat of the summer the inside of the turret was a veritable fiery furnace, with the pedals so hot that they scorched the feet.

Forty miles above Ana we came upon a large khan. These road-houses are built at intervals along the main caravan routes. Their plan is simple: four walls with two tiers of rooms or booths built into them, enclosing an open court in which the camels and horses are tethered during the night. The whole is strongly made to resist the inroads of the desert tribesmen. As we drove to the heavy gate, a wild clamor met our ears from a confused jumble of Jewish and Armenian merchants that had taken refuge within. Some of them had left Ana on their way to Aleppo before the news of the fall of Khan Baghdadi had reached the town. Others had been despatched by the Turks when the news of our advance arrived. All had been to a greater or lesser degree plundered by the Arabs. Most of the baggage animals had been run off, and the merchants were powerless to move. The women were weeping and imploring help, and the children tumbled about among the confused heaps of merchandise. Some of the Armenians had relations in Baghdad about whom I was able to give them bits of information. All begged permission to go back to Ana and thence to the capital. We, of course, had no means of supplying them with transportation, and any attempt to recapture their lost property was out of the question.

A few miles on we made out a troop of Arabs hurrying inland, a mile or so away from us, across a couple of ravines. They had some of the stolen camels and were laden down with plunder. Two of our cars made a fruitless attempt to come to terms with them, but only succeeded in placing a few well-aimed bursts from their machine-guns among them.

We now began to come up with bands of Turks. We ran across a number of isolated stragglers who had been stripped by the Arabs. A few had been killed. They as a rule surrendered without any hesitation. We disarmed them and told them to walk back toward Ana. Several times we had short engagements with Turkish cavalry. As a general thing the ground was so very broken up that it was impossible to manoeuvre. I was riding a good deal of the time in the Ford tender that we had brought along with a few supplies, and when one of the tires blew out I waited behind to replace it. The armored cars had quite a start and we raced along to catch them. In my hurry I failed to notice that they had left the road in pursuit of a troop of cavalry, so when we sighted a large square building of the sort the Turks use as barracks, I made sure that the cars had been there before me. We drove up to the door and I jumped out and shoved it open. In the yard were some infantry and a few cavalry. I had only my stick--my Webley revolver was still in its holster. There was nothing to do but put on a bold front, so I shouted in Arabic to the man I took to be the officer in command, telling him to surrender, and trying to act as if our forces were just outside. I think he must have been more surprised than I was, for he did so immediately, turning over the post to me. Eldridge, the Ford driver, had succeeded in disengaging the rifle that he had strapped in beside him, and we made the rounds under the escort of our captive.

One wing of the post was used as a hospital, under the charge of an intelligent little Armenian. He seemed well informed about the war, and asked the question that was the universal wail of all the Armenians we encountered: "When would Great Britain free their country, and would she make it an independent state?" There was a definite limit to the number of prisoners we could manage to carry back, but I offered the doctor to include him. His answer was to go to his trunk and produce a picture of his wife and little daughter. They were, he told me, in Constantinople, and it was now two years since he had had leave, so that as his turn was due, he would wait on the chance of seeing his family.

When the cars came up we set off again in pursuit of the elusive gold convoy. We could get no accurate information concerning it. Some said it was behind, others ahead. We never ran it down. It may well be that it was concealed in a ravine near the road a few yards from where we passed. Just short of a town called Abu Kemal we caught three Germans. They were in terror when we took them, and afterward said that they had expected to be shot. Under decent treatment they soon became so insolent that they had to be brought up short.

During the run back to Ana we picked up the more important of our prisoners and took them with us. Twenty-two were all we could manage. I was running one of the big cars. It was always a surprise to see how easy they were to handle in spite of the weight of the armor-plate. We each took great pride in the car in which we generally rode. All had names. In the Fourteenth one section had "Silver Dart" and "Silver Ghost" and another "Gray Terror" and "Gray Knight." The car in which I rode a great deal of the time met its fate only a few days before the armistice, long after I had gone to France. Two direct hits from an Austrian "eighty-eight" ended its career.

It was after midnight when we got back to our camp in a palm-garden in Ana. Although we had not succeeded in capturing the gold convoy, we had brought in a number of valuable prisoners, and among other things I had found some papers belonging to a German political agent whom we had captured. These contained much information about the Arab situation, and through them it was all but proved that the German was the direct instigator of the murder of the political officer at Nejef. An amusing sidelight was thrown in the letters addressed by Arab sheiks through this agent to the Kaiser thanking him for the iron crosses they had been awarded. There must have been an underlying grim humor in distributing crosses to the Mohammedan Arabs in recognition of their efforts to withstand the advance into the Holy Land of the Christian invaders.

On our arrival at Ana we were told that orders had come through that the town be evacuated on the following morning. Preparations were made to blow up the ammunition dump, which was fortunately concentrated in a series of buildings that joined each other. We warned the inhabitants and advised them to hide in the caves along the hillsides. We ourselves went back to the camp which we had occupied near the bridge the night before entering Ana. During the afternoon Major Edye, a political officer, turned up, travelling alone with an Arab attendant. He pitched his camp, consisting of a saddle and blanket, close beside us. He was an extraordinarily interesting man, with a great gift for languages. In the course of a year or so's wandering in Abyssinia he had learned both ancient and modern Abyssinian. There was a famous German Orientalist with whom he corresponded in the pre-war days. He had mailed him a letter just at the outbreak, which, written in ancient Abyssinian, must have been a good deal of a puzzle to the censors.

The main explosion, taking place at the appointed time, was succeeded by smaller ones, which continued at gradually lengthening intervals throughout the night. General Cassels, who had commanded the cavalry brigade so ably throughout the advance, wished to return to Ana on the following morning in order to check up the thoroughness with which the dump had been destroyed. He took an escort of armored cars, and as I was the only one in the batteries who could speak Arabic, my services were requisitioned. As we approached the town the rattle of the small-arms ammunition sounded like a Fourth of July celebration. The general noticed that I had a kodak and asked me to go out into the dump and take some photographs. There was nothing to do but put on a bold front, but I have spent happier moments than those in which I edged my way gingerly over the smoking heaps to a ruined wall from which I could get a good view for my camera. As I came back a large shell exploded and we hastily moved the cars farther away.

I went to the mayor's house to find out how the town had fared. He was a solemn old Arab, and showed me the damage done by the shells with an absolutely expressionless face. The houses within a fair radius had been riddled, but the natives had taken our warning and no one had been killed. After a cup of coffee in a lovely garden on the river-bank, I came back to the cars and we ran on through to Haditha. Here we were to remain for a week or ten days to permit the evacuation of the captured supplies.

Thus far we had been having good luck with the weather, but it now began to threaten rain. We crawled beneath the cars with our blankets and took such precautions as were possible, but it availed us little when a veritable hurricane blew up at midnight. I was washed out from under my car, but before dark I had marked down a deserted hut, and thither I groped my way. Although it was abandoned by the Arabs, living traces of their occupancy remained. Still, even that was preferable to the rain, and the roof proved unexpectedly water-tight.

All next day the storm continued. The Wadi Hauran, a large ravine reaching back into the desert for a hundred and fifty miles, became a boiling torrent. When we crossed over, it was as dry as a bone. A heavy lorry on which an anti-aircraft gun was mounted had been swirled away and smashed to bits. The ration question had been difficult all along, but now any further supply was temporarily out of the question.

Oddly enough, I was the only member of the brigade occupying Haditha who could speak enough Arabic to be of any use, so I was sent to look up the local mayor to see whether there was any food to be purchased. The town is built on a long island equidistant from either bank. We ferried across in barges. The native method was simpler. They inflated goatskins, removed their clothes, which they had fastened in a bundle on top of their heads, and with one hand on the goatskin they paddled and drifted over. By starting from the head of the island they could reach the shore opposite the down-stream end. The bobbing heads of the dignified old graybeards of the community looked most ludicrous. On landing they would solemnly don their clothes, deflate the skins, and go their way.

The mayor proved both intelligent and agreeable. The food situation was such that it was obviously impossible for him to offer us any serious help. We held a conclave in the guest-house, sitting cross-legged among the cushions. In the centre a servant roasted coffee-beans on the large shovel-spoon that they use for that purpose. The representative village worthies impressed me greatly. The desert Arabs are always held to be vastly superior to their kinsmen of the town, and it is undoubtedly true as a general rule; nevertheless, the elders of Haditha were an unusually fine group of men. We got a few eggs, which were a most desirable luxury after a steady diet of black unsweetened tea and canned beef. We happened to have a sufficient supply of tea to permit us to make an appreciated gift to the village.

My shoes had collapsed a few days before and I borrowed a pair from a Turk who had no further use for them. These were several sizes too large and fashioned in an oblong shape of mathematical exactness. Even in the motor machine-gun service, there is little that exceeds one's shoes in importance, and I was looking forward with almost equal eagerness to a square meal and a pair of my own shoes. The supply of reading-matter had fallen very low. I had only Disraeli's Tancred, about which I found myself unable to share Lady Burton's feelings, and a French account of a voyage from Baghdad to Aleppo in 1808. The author, Louis Jacques Rousseau, a cousin of the great Jean Jacques, belonged to a family of noted Orientalists. Born in Persia, and married to the daughter of the Dutch consul-general to that country, he was admirably equipped for the distinguished diplomatic career that lay before him in the East and in northern Africa. His treatises on the archæological remains that he met with on his many voyages are intelligent and thorough. The river towns have changed but little in the last hundred years, and the sketch of Hit might have been made only yesterday.

Within three days after the rise, the waters of the Wadi Hauran subsided sufficiently for us to cross, and I received orders to return to Baghdad. The rain had brought about a change in the desert since we passed through on our way up. The lines of Paterson, the Australian poet, kept running through my head:

"For the rain and drought and sunshine make no changes in the street, In the sullen line of buildings and the ceaseless tramp of feet, But the bush hath moods and changes, as the seasons rise and fall, And the men who know the bushland they are loyal through it all."

The formerly arid floor of the desert was carpeted with a soft green, with myriads of little flowers, all small, but delicately fashioned. There were poppies, dwarf daisies, expanses of buttercups, forget-me-nots, and diminutive red flowers whose name I did not know. It started raining again, and we only just succeeded in winning our way through to Baghdad before the road became impassable.

BAGHDAD SKETCHES

Although never in Baghdad for long at a time, I generally had occasion to spend four or five days there every other month. The life in any city is complex and interesting, but here it was especially so. We were among a totally foreign people, but the ever-felt intangible barrier of color was not present. For many of the opportunities to mingle with the natives I was indebted to Oscar Heizer, the American consul. Mr. Heizer has been twenty-five years in the Levant, the greater part of which time he has spent in the neighborhood of Constantinople. The outbreak of the war found him stationed at one of the principal ports of the Black Sea. There he witnessed part of the terrible Armenian massacres, when vast herds of the wretched people were driven inland to perish of starvation by the roadsides. Quiet and unassuming, but ever ready to act with speed and decision, he was a universal favorite with native and foreigner alike.

With him I used to ferry across the river for tea with the Asadulla Khan, the Persian consul. The house consisted of three wings built around a garden. The fourth side was the river-bank. The court was a jungle of flowering fruit-trees, alive with birds of different kinds, all singing garrulously without pause. There we would sit sipping sherbet, and cracking nuts, among which salted watermelon seeds figured prominently. Coffee and sweets of many and devious kinds were served, with arrack and Scotch whiskey for those who had no religious scruples. The Koran's injunction against strong drink was not very conscientiously observed by the majority, and even those who did not drink in public, rarely abstained in private. Only the very conservative--and these were more often to be found in the smaller towns--rigorously obeyed the prophet's commands. It was pleasant to smoke in the shade and watch the varied river-craft slipping by. The public bellams plied to and fro, rowed by the swart owners, while against them jostled the gufas--built like the coracles of ancient Britain--a round basket coated with pitch. No Anglo-Saxon can see them without thinking of the nursery rhyme of the "wise men of Gotham who went to sea in a tub." These gufas were some of them twenty-five feet in diameter, and carried surprising loads--sometimes sheep and cattle alone--sometimes men and women--often both indiscriminately mingled. Propelling a gufa was an art in itself, for in the hands of the uninitiated it merely spun around without advancing a foot in the desired direction. The natives used long round-bladed paddles, and made good time across the river. Crossing over in one was a democratic affair, especially when the women were returning from market with knots of struggling chickens slung over their shoulders.

Asadulla Khan's profile always reminded me of an Inca idol that I once got in Peru. Among his scribes were several men of culture who discoursed most sagely on Persian literature; on Sadi and Hafiz, both of whom they held to be superior to Omar Khayyam. I tried through many channels to secure a manuscript of the "Rubaiyat," but all I succeeded in obtaining was a lithograph copy with no place or date of publication; merely the remark that it had been printed during the cold months. I was told that the writings of Omar Khayyam were regarded as immoral and for that reason were not to be found in religious households. My Persian friends would quote at length from Sadi's Gulistan or Rose Garden, and go into raptures over its beauty.

* * * * *

Below the consulate was a landing-place, and when we were ready to leave we would go down to the river-bank preceded by our servants carrying lanterns. They would call "Abu bellam" until a boat appeared. The term "abu" always amused me. Its literal meaning is "father." In the bazaars a shop-owner was always hailed as "father" of whatever wares he had for sale. I remember one fat old man who sold porous earthenware jars--customers invariably addressed him as "Abu hub"--"Father of water-coolers."

My best friend among the natives was a Kurdish chief named Hamdi Bey Baban. His father had been captured and taken to Constantinople. After living there a number of years in semicaptivity he died--by poison it was said. Hamdi was not allowed to return to Kurdistan until after he was a grown man and had almost forgotten his native language. He spoke and read both French and English. Eventually permission was granted him to live in Baghdad as long as he kept out of the Kurdish hills, so he set off by motor accompanied only by a French chauffeur. Gasolene was sent ahead by camel caravan to be left for him at selected points. The journey was not without incident, for the villagers had never before seen an automobile and regarded it as a devil; often stones were thrown at them, and on one occasion they were mobbed and Hamdi only escaped by driving full speed through the crowd.

His existence in Baghdad had been subject to sudden upheavals. Once he was arrested and convoyed back to Constantinople; and just before the advance of the British his life was in great danger. Naturally enough he had little love for the Turk and staked everything on the final victory of the Allies.

He intended writing a book on the history of his family, in which he was much interested. For material he was constantly purchasing books and manuscripts. In the East many well-known histories still exist only in manuscript form, and when a man wishes to build up a library he engages scribes and sends them to the place where a famous manuscript is kept with an order to make a copy. In the same way Hamdi Bey had men busied transcribing rare chronicles dealing with the career of his family--extant in but one or two examples in mosques. He once presented me with a large manuscript in Persian in which his family is mentioned, the mention taking the form of a statement to the effect that seventeen of them had had their heads removed!