The Secrets of a Kuttite Part 15

Square-Peg sleeps most of the day, and represents the three of us in collecting a daily account of c.o.c.kie's doings. There is no one, I am given to understand, sorrier that c.o.c.kie was. .h.i.t than General "G. B.," who happens to be next door to him. The hospital, I was yesterday informed by an inmate slow to anger and of great mercy, consists of two factions, those that do not love c.o.c.kie and those who can't hear him.

I hope he doesn't mind my writing this. I have sent him fish and fowl, and for my pains he sent me back inquiries as to why I hadn't done so before. Bah! c.o.c.kie can be so rude if you don't always do sufficient homage--and then I'm so forgetful in these matters. Not a man in the garrison has risen to-day to an April fool's joke--not one!

_April 2nd._--We tried some green weed or other the Sepoys gathered on the _maidan_. Boiled and eaten with a little salad oil that Tudway fished out from heaven knows where, it seemed quite palatable. After all, as he says, all we want is something of a gluey nature to keep our souls stuck on to us.

A delightful little mess is ours. There is none cheerier in Kut. Picture a long bare wooden table, the other end piled up with war diaries, books, papers, pipes, and empty bottles, revolvers and field-gla.s.ses, we three at this end. Tudway is much senior to me, but insists that I preside. So I have the camp armchair, and he the other, which has very short legs so that he often seems to be talking under the table. It has also paralysis in the right arm, so that it is necessary to be very careful in leaning that way. Now and then, usually once a night, Tudway forgets, or perhaps he likes doing it, for he simply bowls over sideways, and by dint of repeated practice can now do so while clutching at the bread or joint en route.

Sometimes he does it in the middle of a sentence, which he nevertheless completes leisurely on the floor as becomes an imperturbable sailor.

Square-Peg opposite has a high wooden chair, and is getting up a pose for the Woolsack, which I understand he will one day adorn.

My position is strategically a difficult one, for the other two acting in conjunction can at a pinch remove the victuals beyond my reach towards the other end of the table, and my rum--when we do raise a peg--is in constant danger until consumed.

Square-Peg, whose pseudonym has nothing whatever to do with a drink, is extraordinarily forgetful in this way at times, and has been known in the course of an excellent story to drink all my rum and half of Tudway's. But I've an excellent memory, and the next rum night--possibly weeks after--Square-Peg goes short.

I am carver and taster, both useful functions in a siege.

Tudway likes it thin, but with Square-Peg it is necessary to cut it thick. After the third helping Square-Peg has to carve for himself. We inaugurated that last week. If by accident the horse is extra tough, and Square-Peg gets splashed, he gets four helpings, but Tudway does not, for he can take cover under the table.

As regards the vegetables, "Sparrow-gra.s.s" and potato meal _or_ beetroot and rice, I divide, and we all cut cards for first pick. There is always plenty of horse, but vegetables are a great delicacy. Tudway and I conspire to do Square-Peg out of his greens so as to keep him up to the scratch in procuring or in "pinching" vegetables from the garden of which he is C.O. It works admirably, and I am only sorry his small pockets necessitate his making several trips. On wet days we have "encore" in the vegetables, for then he wears a top coat with big pockets. He refuses to do so on fine days as he says it looks suspicious. If we have an issue of a spoonful of sugar I barter it for milk, and the date juice, when we get it, is measured out with a spoon.

For pudding we have kabobs, fried flour and fat, two each, and we cut for choice. An excellent idea which we have lately followed is to get the fat off a horse--there is very little now, poor things--and render it into dripping, which is quite excellent.

I have sometimes waited for hours to get this from the butchery. While we had sardines our bombardier produced a savoury with toast, but that is long ago. Instead we have coffee, which is mostly ground-up roots, plus liquorice powder, if you're not careful in buying. The date juice goes into the coffee, but Square-Peg complains that he can't "feel it that way," so he drinks his like a liqueur. I prefer bad tea, as the coffee is generally atrocious, but Tudway likes it for the sake of "the smell." I provide the tobacco out of the funds, and sometimes have been diligent enough to make cigarettes, which are better than those the Arabs make, by s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up the paper like a lollipop, pouring the tobacco in and twisting the top end up. The latter cigarettes require great art in smoking. One has to lie back in one's chair and point the cigarette to the roof so as to prevent the baccy emptying out of the cigarette into one's coffee.

This is the hour sacred to us. We exchange rumours or invent them. We pool all our gossip into a common heap which becomes the altar of another day's hope. We avoid all matters of misfortune or suffering. We have mutually and tacitly barred the subject of Home. But when the smoke cloud above the remains of our sorry banquet grows dense from the pipes of three excellent smokers, we lapse into silence, and see in the moving mists sweet fantasies far away.

If we were Germans we would, I have no doubt, sing "Home, Sweet Home" in parts, and shake hands, and shed tears in unison. But we are merely Englishmen, and if anyone were to sing five notes of that song he would get slung out for making a brutal a.s.sault on our hearts. So instead we merely smoke on and on, and the jackals' chorus grows less and less as memories drift about among the wisps and wraiths of this strange fog-land.

We are glad we are here. We have no tears to give, but although we know it not, in the heart of us each is a prayer.

_April 3rd._--It is four months to-day since the Sixth Division on its last legs entered Kut-el-Amara, expecting relief to be here in three weeks, a month, possibly six weeks.

Inscrutable are the ways of Allah!

This afternoon a fierce thunderstorm broke over Kut, and hailstones larger than pigeons' eggs rattled upon us with the sharp music of musketry. One should be quite sufficient to knock a fellow out if it got him bare-headed. Afterwards it turned to rain, which we fear may delay the next battle for Kut. We hear that the enemy is making every effort to hold up the relieving force down below, or delay us, for the short time beyond which the garrison cannot now hold out.

I am feeling very seedy again to-day, what with this enteritis and rheumatics and jaundice. So is Tudway, to whom I have given various opium pills and camphoradine.

I am, however, lucky so far to have escaped the severe form of enteritis which many others have had. It is a deadly and horrible thing enough, accompanied by violent pains in the abdomen, and vomiting. To be sure I have had the former for so many weeks that I am used to it, and we often say we can scarcely remember the time when we hadn't these infernal pains. "A brandy flip, my dear fellow, is the one and only for it," our medical friend says, and smiles. Ho! for a brandy flip. In the Arctic circle the two seasons are light and dark, and in India dry and wet, and in Kut when one has stomach ache and when one hasn't.

It is said that a certain cavalry regiment has at last unanimously rescinded the rule that it is bad form for any officer of the regiment not to be fit. Most of us have been put down for sick leave at once when the relief occurs. The India list is the most cheerful phrase one hears. Tudway has asked me to go downstream with him on the _Sumana_, and proposes a grand progression down to Basra and to pa.s.s H.M.S.

_Clio_, his parent boat, when we get there. I am quite intoxicated with the notion. And truly the sight of the _Sumana_ ripped and torn through and through by sh.e.l.l and bullet, with her shotted funnel and her smashed cabins and her twisted bridge, and her white ensign that soiled and tattered bunting, the finest flag in all the world, still fluttering in the stern--would be a sight for the G.o.ds. But then I've had nothing whatever to do with the _Sumana_, so I must prefer to be ash.o.r.e. I see it all exactly, her grey dirty form with the black patches where sh.e.l.ls have s.h.i.+fted her paint, and near the path of that Windy Lizzie that crashed through the bridge, the redoubtable countenance of our friend Tudway, the youthful commander and preserver of this eloquent trophy. The _Clio_, of course, salutes her diminutive sister, and ah, those terrible and honest cheers! An awful moment for Tudway I admit.... But at twelve o'clock that night he will have indigenous metamorphosis!

"Tudway!" I exclaim, "you no longer have the inches of a G.o.d. Can't you stand up?"

"Donsh wansh stansh up. If you'd hads many c.o.c.kstailsh I've had couldn't either."

Perhaps!

_April 4th._--A heavy bombardment downstream continued for hours this morning. The rain has ceased and the soaken earth is steaming under a bright hot sun.

Reports from the hospital are to the effect that c.o.c.kie's temperament "has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished." His delusions include a notion that he still commands the column. To dispel the latter delusion it is necessary for one to cancel quite a number of his orders.

Dorking has evolved quite a number of literary ideas since my leaving the battery. He has read the letters of "Dorothy to Temple" which I recommended to him, and quite enjoyed them. In fact he says he would not have minded marrying Dorothy himself. Now I wonder what Dorothy would have had to say about Dorking--I wonder.

I hear on very reliable authority that the plane, our own plane, dropped yesterday a packet which was supposed to be a stop-valve for the _Sumana_. The valve, however, went off on the _maidan_, and in fact proved to be a three-pound bomb.

To-day another plane dropped another supposed valve which turned out to be a gear-box for an L boat.

Very facetious of them, I'm sure, but Tudway calls it an indifferent joke.

A mild artillery duel wound up the day's events.

_April 5th._--To-day we have had a strenuous s.h.i.+kar after food. We raised a half-pound of dirty dates which we boiled into jam; also two rupees worth of chupattis and hard, white, mealy flat-jacks--they are eight in number, a two-pound tin of barley which will make an exciting porridge.

We visited the officers' hospital which is full again to overflowing with dysentery, jaundice, and malaria cases. The doctors have put me on diet of one egg and cup of milk daily, which commodities are only procurable on special certificates, and rarely. The mess bombardier draws these.

"I 'ear, sir, that this 'ere milk is sometimes 'uman and sometimes donkey's. I 'ope as you won't drink it, sir."

"To save one's life, bombardier, one may have to eat anything," I told him. Then I heard him in sad conference with the mess cook.

"Gawd! It's 'ot 'uman milk, Bill. An' 'e ain't 'ad no milk for ages. It'll knock 'im hover like 'ot punch."

"Wen you live in Kut," said Bill, "you 'ave to do az Gawd's hancient people do."

_10 p.m._--Cheerful news at last! Early this morning Gorringe bombarded and smashed through the Turkish lines above Hannay, and five lines of trenches have been taken.

He is consolidating his position before advancing on Essin.

It does not seem clear on which bank this success was.

At 8 p.m. this evening the heavy firing recommenced.

Square-Peg and I restrained our enthusiasm by a long game of chess. The news has cheered up every one immeasurably.

It is the most hopeful night for months.

_April 6th._--Downstream a terrific bombardment went on intermittently for hours. We are on six ounces of bread to-day and are almost on to our emergency rations, which can be made to spin out for three days.

The _Sumana_ is going over to Woolpress to bring over reliefs. I had arranged with Tudway to have a starlight excursion there and see something of these strangers, but headquarters disapproved.

Green cress has been issued from the gardens, and every effort is made to save every crumb. The sick and those in hospital are worst off, as hospital comforts like cornflour and Mellins' Food have long since gone.

It is a beautiful day, but the river came up during the night and beat all previous records of the siege by two inches.

How very close the relieving force has driven things. Altogether the situation, as Punch said of the man dangling from the drag rope of a balloon, is most interesting.

I have made inventories of ammunition and wagons, lines and horse-lines of the 6th D.A.C., as I am officially returned to my battery pending the relief of Kut. I hope to enter on the next page that the siege has been lifted.

_April 7th._--There is a lull in the operations downstream.

How we hate lulls. A lull is a divine leg-pull. The word "lull" has an odious sound!

Gunner Graoul has returned to me from the battery apropos of my re-transfer to my original battery, and Amir Bux has returned to duty. There are a good many things to fix up in the ammunition column, so I am remaining in my comfortable billet here unless wanted for urgent duty at the battery--pending relief. I am so weak that my legs collapsed on the ladder, and I find a long staff better than a walking-stick.

We killed one of our two emergency fowls, which we boiled, and I found the broth delicious. Graoul called it "'en brorth."

The river has risen seriously and is now a good three feet deep all over the plain in front of the _bunds_. General Gorringe has had hard work to bund the river down below and has evidently met with flood difficulties already.

There is an ominous whisper about a "wireless" which is not being made known.

Other and wilder rumours, obviously untrue, are in quick circulation. The men, poor fellows, are keenly on edge for news. There are many merely remaining alive to hear that Kut is saved. They all know the end is now in sight and the coma of the past months is over. We are like restless bees in swarming time.