Carry On! A Story of the Fight for Bagdad

by Herbert Strang

CHAPTER XVII

RAISING THE SIEGE

Burnet felt that the checks they had suffered were not likely to cause such tenacious fighters as the Turks to abandon their object. The fact that the attacks had been made by Turks and not by Halil's Arabs was clear proof that the enemy's high command attached importance to the capture of the island. With ample resources in their rear it could not be doubted that artillery would be brought up, and then the inevitable end was a matter of a day or two, perhaps only of hours, unless help came. Such help had been promised, but Burnet knew well enough that the strategic plans of the coming campaign could not be disarranged for his benefit, and though the possession of the island was of some importance to the security of the British left flank, it might well be that other considerations would prevent the dispatch of a relief force. In any case relief might not arrive in time.

Whether Rejeb would allow his men to prolong their resistance when the odds against them became overwhelming was a question that gave Burnet some concern. He thought it fair to put the situation frankly before the young chief, who was mending but slowly, and was in no condition to take an active part in the defence. Rejeb replied with equal frankness.

"The burden is truly heavy upon us, my brother," he said, "but we will not cast it from our backs until there is no more hope. What if we should steal away by night? Without our horses we should fall a prey to Halil's mounted legion. Moreover, even if I escaped alive, my name would be evermore a reproach. Surely it is better to fight and die than to run and live dishonoured."

"That is well said. With your consent, then, we will resist the enemy to the death."

He thought of sending a messenger into the British lines with a note relating what had happened and explaining that he could scarcely hope to carry on more than a few days longer. But reflecting that it would take the man several days to reach his destination, even with the best of luck, and that unless the relieving force had already started by then it could hardly arrive in time, he gave up the idea. If he had been able to overhear the counsels of the Turkish officers he would have found his worst fears realised. The destruction of the guns and the capture of Major Burckhardt had infuriated General Eisenstein, who had dispatched a German officer from his staff to conduct the operations, with more field-guns.

For some days the enemy's activity was limited to sniping, and to pushing forward the walls along the island section of the causeway. The Arabs could do little to impede them. The work was done at night, with the assistance of kelaks, and always under cover of as many troops as could be concentrated on the causeway and the kelaks on either side. An attempt to attack the wall-builders must inevitably be outflanked. Nor could another gap, nearer the island, be made in the causeway. The enemy was always on the alert, and working parties of Arabs would only have been destroyed.

Day by day Burnet saw the walls approaching the bridgehead. Provisions, in spite of the most careful rationing, were running low; and another action like the last would exhaust his stock of ammunition.

The walls had been pushed to within fifty yards of the bridgehead when, early one morning, the garrison was startled by the sound of an exploding shell. It had burst on the embankment a few yards below the emplacement from which the machine-gun had repelled the last attack: the enemy was clearly ranging on that spot. The Arabs showed signs of nervousness, but were reassured by the broad smiles upon the faces of the two machine-gunners. Burnet's first precaution after the late action had been to change the position of the gun. Two new emplacements, well masked, had been prepared within a short distance of each other and connected by a shallow trench. Before a second shell fell, Sturge and Jackson, assisted by a party of Arabs, had removed the gun from the threatened position to another about twenty yards away. But Burnet realised that bombardment was the beginning of the end.

To avoid useless loss of men, he withdrew the garrison from the bridgehead. The defences, consisting only of piles of loose stones and rubble, while effective against bullets, must soon be knocked to pieces by shells, even from field-guns, and would prove only a death-trap to men congregated behind them. He had reason to be thankful for the precautions he had taken when the enemy, after sending shell after shell into the vacant emplacement until it was thoroughly demolished, got to work on the bridgehead. Some twenty rounds reduced this, the first line of defence, to a mere rubbish heap.

Fortunately the enemy did not suspect the existence of the main trench which had been dug in the rear, and was masked by the embankment on the shore of the island. Having destroyed the bridgehead, the Turkish gunners began to search the embankment methodically, dropping shells at every few yards along the front. The embankment, consisting of deep and closely packed mud, could not be broken down by the light shells from field-guns; but the bombardment would have played havoc with the defenders if, as the Turks no doubt supposed, they were extended behind it.

As soon as their intentions became clear, Burnet withdrew the machine-gun from the second emplacement to the third, which was well retired from the shore and beyond the enemy's immediate objective. This precaution turned out to be unnecessary, or at least premature, for the bombardment was limited to about two hundred yards on each side of the bridgehead. Seeing that the second emplacement was outside the enemy's present zone of fire, Burnet had the machine-gun quickly restored to its former position.

Hitherto the Arabs had not fired a single shot in answer to the bombardment. Not a man of the enemy was in sight, and the guns were far away on the mainland, completely hidden. The Arabs, at first alarmed by the deafening explosions and the devastating effects of the shells, had begun to recover tone when they saw that the damage was mainly material. A few of them had been hit by flying splinters of stone, but their injuries were light, and none had been killed.

At last the bombardment of the embankment ceased. A few moments later shells began to fall on the ruined buildings in the centre of the island. Anticipating this, Burnet had told the small body of Arabs whom he was holding there in reserve what to do, and they, with Rejeb, had already taken refuge in the deep underground chambers.

Immediately after the enemy's fire was lifted, a strong force of Turks rushed along the causeway, being protected by the walls until they came to the open stretch of some fifty yards. A few succeeded in reaching the demolished bridgehead; the rest were caught by the fire of the machine-gun from its new emplacement. The attack was too costly to be maintained; the survivors were recalled; and during the confusion and disorganisation due to this unexpected check a party of Arabs crept down to the ruins of the bridgehead, and after a short, sharp fight killed or captured the handful of Turks who had penetrated so far. Two Arabs escorted the prisoners to the rear; the others, at Burnet's orders, took cover behind the remains of the defences, to hold them if possible against infantry attack, but to retreat if they were again shelled.

As Burnet expected, the Turkish gunners again changed their objective, directing their fire upon the neighbourhood of the second machine-gun emplacement. The British soldiers, however, had already withdrawn the gun to its third position. Burnet saw clearly enough that in this game of hide-and-seek the opponent must ultimately win; but meantime it seemed to him the most effectual means of holding up or disconcerting the attack and playing for time. Sturge assured him that the enemy had no more than two field-guns in action, as he had judged by timing their shots; and the area of the island was large enough to give them plenty of work before they could be assured that they had searched every likely place for the elusive machine-gun.

This cheerful forecast was rudely belied only a few minutes afterwards. In altering their range, the Turkish gunners dropped several shells on the open ground between the central ruins and the embankment. One of these burst within a few yards of the machine-gun, which was blown off its stand and irreparably damaged. Sturge himself was hit by flying splinters and thrown to the ground. It was seen that he was unable to rise, and since he could not be carried to the rear without being exposed to the view of the enemy, all that could be done was to place him in the trench until darkness gave an opportunity of removing him.

Rejoicing that he had kept the second machine-gun in reserve, Burnet sent Jackson to fetch it from its shelter behind a pile of stones at the extreme left of the position. The shell that had ruined the first had found it by accident; another had exploded in the trench and killed or wounded several of the Arabs; but the Turks had now shortened their range and were dropping their shells many yards nearer the shore. The incident, however, was very disquieting. Luck might favour the enemy again, or the position of the second machine-gun might be more quickly discovered when it came into action, and it was the last reserve. Moreover, the casualties suffered in the trench, more serious than any that the Arabs had hitherto experienced, had had a manifestly depressing effect on the rest of the garrison. Burnet felt a racking anxiety as to their steadiness when the next attack should come.

He was standing beside Jackson, who had just set up the machine-gun, when the man suddenly swung round, exclaiming:

"Hear that hum, sir?"

The bursting of a shell drowned all other sounds, but when the rumbling echoes had ceased, Burnet caught a faint drone far away. He scanned the sky all around; for about a minute nothing was to be seen; but between the shots the humming was clearly audible, growing louder continually. An aeroplane was approaching: was it friend or foe?

At last a speck appeared in the eastern sky, growing rapidly larger. It had evidently been seen by the Turks, for the bombardment suddenly ceased: they too, no doubt, were asking themselves the same question. As it drew nearer to the island, the aeroplane rose higher, and presently the prolonged crackle of rifle fire from the Turkish position proclaimed that they had recognised it as a British machine.

Hope surged in Burnet's breast. The eyes of all the garrison were fixed on the aeroplane. It flew high over the island, wheeled round, passed directly over the trench, the disdainful target of innumerable Turkish bullets, then soared away northward. A few moments later two deafening explosions in quick succession shook the air, and two columns of smoke rose in the neighbourhood of the northern end of the causeway. The machine again turned, swept away to the east, and was soon out of sight. Before it disappeared, an Arab ran up to Burnet, and handed him an object which he declared had fallen from the sky as the aeroplane passed over, and struck the ground near him. Tearing off the canvas cover of the missile, Burnet found a small shell case, within which was a slip of paper. With leaping heart he read the message. "A flying column of horse is advancing up the Euphrates, and should make contact with you to-morrow morning. We are opening the ball. Carry on."

Burnet tingled from head to foot. Without a word he handed the paper to Jackson, who, less restrained, let out a wild cheer. Burnet told the Arab to convey the good news to his comrades, and the air was soon filled with a chorus of discordant shouts. Gloominess of spirit vanished; help was at hand; every man glowed with new courage.

It was now past midday. Burnet was under no illusion. News of the British advance must have reached the Turks opposing him: it probably explained their eagerness to rush the island before the walls on the causeway had been completed. It could hardly be doubted that they would now make a supreme effort to storm the position: the garrison's sternest ordeal was yet to come.

To Burnet's surprise, though the bombardment was kept up intermittently by the field-guns during the rest of the day, there was no infantry assault. He jumped to the conclusion that they intended to attack during the night; perhaps to make a feint along the causeway, and try to gain the shore of the island in their kelaks. At nightfall one part, at any rate, of their plan was disclosed. From the causeway came the sounds of many men hard at work: it was clear that the enemy were toiling with fierce energy to finish the walls that would cover the last fifty yards of their approach. The task could easily be completed before the dawn, for it could not be effectually hindered; the machine-gun was now so placed that it could not fire directly along the causeway, but only at an angle across it, and the builders, being protected by the walls already raised, were not likely to suffer much loss in pushing the additions forward.

The enemy's full purpose was patent. Covered by the walls, they would rush the ruins of the bridgehead, debouch behind the embankment, and trust to their superior numbers to carry the inner defences by one overwhelming assault. Hampered by the darkness, the garrison would be at a great disadvantage. Neither rifles nor machine-guns could command the whole front of attack. If the enemy were contained in the centre, they had sufficient men to sweep round on both flanks and take the defenders in the rear.

Burnet saw that there was only one means of saving the situation—of gaining time until, with the morning, relief came. The enemy must be forestalled. It was important to choose the right moment for the counter-move. If made too early, and defeated, it might precipitate disaster. If too long deferred, it might be just too late. Leaving judgment or chance to decide the point, he quickly made preparations. He sent for the small reserve which had hitherto occupied the underground chambers in the centre of the island, posted them just behind the advanced breastwork, and dividing the rest of the garrison, some three hundred in all, into two parties, he ordered them to steal quietly down to the embankment, and be ready to scale it at the word of command.

In the early hours of the morning the lessening of sounds from the causeway seemed to indicate that the work on the walls was nearly completed. It was pitch dark; not even a reflection of starlight could be seen in the water. Burnet gave the word; the men slipped noiselessly across the embankment, half of them on each side of the causeway; then, no longer preserving silence, dashed into the shallows, which extended some fifteen or twenty paces from the shore, and began to wade towards the working party. The Turks had only a few moments' warning; but they made fierce resistance with clubbed rifles and pioneer tools to the Arabs who swarmed up on each side of the causeway. There were some minutes of bitter hand-to-hand fighting; but the enemy were for the nonce outnumbered; they received no support from the rear; and presently they fled helter-skelter, suffering heavy losses in their flight from the rifle fire of their assailants.

Burnet carried the pursuit along the causeway until progress was blocked by a traverse. The enemy were apparently not in sufficient strength to attempt a counter-attack until reinforced. Taking advantage of their inaction, which he knew could not last long, he ordered some of his men to demolish the newly constructed mud walls, while the remainder kept up a dropping fire. When the walls lining the last thirty yards of the causeway had been destroyed, he led the men back to their entrenchments, leaving a small detachment at the ruins of the bridgehead.

The night work of the enemy had been frustrated, but Burnet did not flatter himself that the danger was over. Without doubt they were determined to capture the island before the arrival of the relieving force, of whose approach they must by this time be well aware. How would the Arabs, wearied by exertions unfamiliar to them, suffering from scarcity of food, endure the shock and strain of the crisis?

With the first lifting of the sky at dawn the field-guns began a systematic shelling of the embankment and of the area immediately behind it, where it was now clear to them from previous events that the garrison were entrenched. The Arabs, lying close under their breastwork, suffered few serious casualties, though many of them were bruised and grazed by fragments of stone and shell, and some were overcome by the nauseating fumes. Presently the guns were turned on the ruins of the bridgehead, and Burnet at once withdrew the detachment from its precarious shelter there.

He had scarcely done so when the storm broke. A dense column of Turks came rushing along the causeway. Kelaks, one of large size, carrying a machine-gun protected with sand-bags, swept out from the gap. From loopholes in the walls on the causeway the enemy poured a hot fire upon the flanks of the defenders' position. Numbers of Halil's Arabs swam in the wake of the kelaks, which were approaching the island on the side of the causeway remote from Jackson's machine-gun. Jackson directed his fire across the causeway, and took a heavy toll of the horde of Turks, but failed to check the determined rush. Finding that the machine-gun had not been disposed of, the Turkish gunners again searched the right flank of Burnet's position, and though they did not succeed in hitting the exact spot where Jackson, unperturbed, was emptying his belts of ammunition one after another, he was struck more than once by chips and slivers of metal and stone.

As soon as the field-guns changed the direction of their fire, Burnet called on some of the Arabs to follow him to the embankment, from which they poured a hail of bullets upon the enemy. In spite of losses, the Turks and their Arab allies pressed on and penetrated to the bridgehead. Meanwhile some of the kelaks had reached the shore opposite Burnet's left, and parties of the enemy swarmed up to the further side of the embankment and established themselves there.

The enemy found it impossible to maintain their position at the bridgehead in the centre beneath the withering fire of the Arabs under Burnet's immediate command. Baffled but not beaten, they too sought shelter under the embankment on either side, and some of them, at the extreme horn of the arc, so placed themselves that they could enfilade the defenders. Burnet was compelled to withdraw his men hastily behind their breastwork. If that was carried the whole island was at the enemy's mercy.

There was a brief lull. Some hundreds of Turks and Arabs had now gained a footing on the island, and were no doubt collecting their energies for a final overwhelming rush. Burnet employed the interval in doing what was possible for his wounded, and in going from end to end of the defences, speaking words of encouragement to the men.

It was nearly two hours before the rush came. Across the gap at the end of the causeway, or wading through the shallows, or on the kelaks, which had returned for reinforcements, the enemy swarmed to the assault with exultant cries. They were now protected by the embankment except where the machine-gun still enfiladed them, but Jackson's ammunition was running short, and fired less rapidly than before. They had landed their own machine-gun on the extreme left, and were seen hastily cutting an embrasure in the embankment. If they were unmolested, the defences would soon be swept from end to end, and all would be over.

Burnet hurriedly collected fifty men, and led them straight for the gun. A few fell to rifle fire; Burnet himself had his rifle struck from his hand; but they flung themselves upon the machine-gun team with the swiftness of a tornado. A crowded minute of fierce hand-to-hand fighting gave them possession of the gun, and they dashed back with it, the retreat involving more losses but not one-tenth of those that the gun would have inflicted in a few seconds Burnet's only regret was that he could not employ the gun against the enemy.

THE DASH FOR THE MACHINE-GUN

By this time they had scrambled over the embankment and were swarming towards breastwork. Burnet rushed to the centre, and succeeded in maintaining a certain fire discipline among the Arabs within sound of his voice. Again and again the enemy recoiled before the defenders' fire, at point-blank range. But reinforcements were continually streaming up; one of the field-guns was now concentrating its fire on the centre of the position; and the sight of comrades falling around them severely strained the resolution of the Arabs. Their valour, proof against infantry attack, could scarcely be expected to endure shelling to which no reply could be made. If the risk of hitting their own men had not constrained the Turkish gunners to plant their shells well beyond them, Burnet felt that his force might soon have become utterly demoralised.

Hurrying from point to point, now to give a heartening word to the survivors of a shell-burst, now to direct the rifle fire where especial danger threatened, he lost count of time and all sense of personal risk. His sole thought was to hold on as long as possible. Now and again he found himself asking, "Why don't they come?" and listening for the shots that would announce the proximity of the relieving force.

It was nearly midday. Burnet, on the left, was suddenly conscious that the machine-gun had ceased firing, and saw Jackson hurrying towards him with a rifle.

"Played out, sir," said the man. "Fired my last round."

He had scarcely finished speaking when a bomb exploded near the angle of the breastwork. Immediately afterwards a strong party of Turks swept round, dashed through the smoke, and began to bomb their way along the trench. The Arabs crowded back in panic. Some swarmed out of the trench and rushed frantically towards the centre of the island. Burnet and Jackson, together with a few of the more stout-hearted Arabs, fired into the advancing mass of Turks; but there was no adequate defence against bombs, no possibility of stemming the rout.

Step by step they fell back, towards the men who, as yet unaware of the new weapon in use against their left, were still holding the defences with grim valour. The Turkish bombers advanced slowly, respecting the rifles which so steadily sped their bullets through the increasing volume of smoke. And now Burnet saw that another party of the enemy, passing the end of the breastwork, was striking up across the island. At this moment a shell burst a few yards away; he was struck below the knee, and sank to the ground. Jackson, smothered with earth, rushed to his side.

"Carry on!" gasped Burnet. "We won't give in till the last gasp."

Jackson turned about, and fired again into the advancing bombers. The field-guns ceased to play; only rifle fire and bomb explosions could be heard. Then, after a minute or two, came reports of guns again, but no shells fell. The blare of bugles was heard, and a few seconds afterwards Jackson, still facing the enemy, shouted:

"By Jupiter, they're bolting, sir."

It was true. The men who had penetrated the island were running back. At the breastwork the Turks had suddenly dropped away, and were now streaming along the causeway, scrambling on board the kelaks, plunging into the water, in desperate anxiety to save themselves from the new danger that threatened them. The ever-increasing boom of guns away to the west told them clearly enough what that danger was; and Jackson, running a little way up the rising ground behind the scene of the long struggle, soon declared that he saw the glint of sunlight on lances above the patches of vegetation.

Rejeb's Arabs, weary though they were, sprang over the breastwork and the embankment and dashed along the causeway in pursuit of their retreating foe. Many of them suffered from their own temerity, for the Turk in defeat is still a dangerous man, and some of the fugitives halted and turned upon their pursuers with grim ferocity.

Some hours later, Burnet, lying on a couch in Rejeb's tower, was embarrassed by the congratulations of the colonel commanding the relieving force.

"Thanks to you," said that officer, "we've made a bag of some five or six hundred Turks who are now on their way to enjoy the luxuries of imprisonment, for by all accounts they'll fare better with us than they've been doing with their own people lately."

"Did they put up a fight, sir?" asked Burnet.

"They made a little noise until our main body came up. Unluckily that old rascal Halil's men got away on their horses, most of them: after our long march our horses were too fagged to round them up. But Halil won't give any more trouble in these parts."

"And what of our big push, sir?"

"We've started, and one may say that Bagdad will be our next stop. You'll be out of it, I'm afraid, young man; you'll be under treatment for synovitis or something of the sort when we march in."

"I hope to goodness not, sir," said Burnet, pulling a long face.

The colonel smiled.

"That's the right spirit," he said. "Well, I'll take care that the Chief knows all about your doings here. If the enemy had got this position they might have worried us a good deal on our left flank. But I'm not sure that your friend the chief here doesn't owe you more than we do, for it seems to me that he stood an uncommonly good chance of being wiped out."

And later, when Rejeb and Burnet were alone together, the Arab thanked the Englishman with all the fervour of a generous nature.

"I kiss your eyes, my brother," he said in conclusion, and Burnet knew that no Eastern phrase more expressive of gratitude could have been used.