Sunday, April 30, 1916. H.M.S. “Mantis.” The Events of Saturday: Yesterday morning Colonel Beach came to the Mantis at seven and took me off. We rode across the bridge to General Younghusband’s H.Q. Nothing that I have ever seen or dreamed of came up to the flies. They hatched out until they were almost the air. They were in myriads. The horses were half mad. The flies were mostly tiny. They rolled up in little balls when one passed one’s hand across one’s sweating face. They were on your eyelids and lashes and in your lips and nostrils. We could not speak for them, and could hardly see.
We went into General Younghusband’s tent. The flies, for some reason, stayed outside. He put a loose net across the door of the tent. They were like a visible fever, shimmering in the burning light all round. Inside his tent you did not breathe them; outside you could not help taking them in through the nose and the mouth. We left General Younghusband and went on to the front trenches, where we met Colonel Aylsmee. There Lawrence joined us. We three then went out of the trenches with a white flag, and walked a couple of hundred yards or so ahead, where we waited, with all the battlefield smells round us. It was all a plain, with the river to the north and the place crawling with huge black beetles and singing flies, that have been feeding on the dead. After a time a couple of Turks came out. I said: “We have got a letter to Khalil.” This they wanted to take from us, but we refused to give it up, and they sent an orderly back to ask if we might come in to the Turkish lines. Meanwhile we talked amiably. One of the Turkish officers, a Cretan, had left school five years ago and had been in five wars. He reckoned that he had been in 200 attacks, not counting scraps with brigands and comitadjis. The Turks showed us their medals, and we were rather chagrined at not being able to match them, but they and we agreed that we should find the remedy for that in a future opportunity.
Several hours passed. It was very hot. I was hungry, having had no breakfast. Again they asked us to give up our letter. I said that our orders were to deliver it in person and, as soldiers, they knew what orders were, but that Colonel Beach would give the letter up if their C.O. would guarantee that we should see Khalil Pasha. This took a long time. The Turks sent for a tent. A few rifle shots went off from our lines, but Beach went back and stopped it. The Turks sent for oranges and water, and we ate and drank. We had to refill these bottles from the Tigris, and up and down the banks were a lot of dead bodies from shot-wounds and cholera. After some time they agreed to Beach’s proposal. We were blindfolded and we went in a string of hot hands to the trenches of the Turks. When it was plain going the Turk, who talked French, called: “Franchement, en avant,” and when it was bad going, over trenches, “Yavash Dikatet.” We marched a long way through these trenches, banging against men and corners, and sweating something cruel. Beyond the trenches we went for half an hour, while my handkerchief became a wet string across my eyes. Then we met Bekir Sami Bey. He was a very fine man and very jolly, something between an athlete and old King Cole. He lavished hospitality upon us, coffee and yoghurt, and begged us to say if there was anything more he could get us, while we sat and streamed with perspiration. He told us how he had loved England and still did. He was fierceness and friendship incarnate. He said it was all Grey’s fault, and glorified the Crimea. Why couldn’t we have stuck to that policy? Then, as we were going off, I said that he would not insist on our eyes being bandaged, showing him my taut, wet rag of a pocket-handkerchief. He shouted with laughter and said: “No, no; you have chosen soldiering, a very hard profession. You have got to wear that for miles, and you will have to ride across ditches.” Then he shook hands and patted us on the shoulder.
My eyes were bound, and I got on a horse that started bucking because of the torture of the flies. The Turk was angry and amused. I heard him laughing and swearing: “This is perfectly monstrous. Ha, ha! He’ll be off. Ha, ha! This is a reproach to us.” I was then given another horse that was not much of an improvement, and off we three went with a Turkish officer, Ali Shefket, and a guard. Lawrence had hurt his knee and could not ride. He got off and walked, a Turkish officer being left with him. Colonel Beach and I went on. Then our eyes were unbound, though as a matter of fact this was against the orders I had heard given. The Turk Ali Shefket and I talked. He knew no French. He said to me: “Formerly the Arabs would not take our bank-notes; now they take them. Once upon a time they would not take medjids; two days ago they took them. To what do you put that down?” I knew he meant the fall of Kut, but it was not said maliciously. I said that I put it down to the beautiful character of the marsh Arabs, “yerli bourda beule” (here the native are thus). He laughed and agreed. We passed formidable herds of horses and mules, our road a sand-track. The escort rode ahead of us. The heat was very great, but we galloped. The Turks we met thought that we were prisoners. They saluted sometimes at strict attention, sometimes with a grin, and later our Indians were told in return to salute the Turkish officers, who looked at them as black as thunder.
At last we came to Khalil’s camp, a single round tent, a few men on motor cycles coming and going, horses picketed here and there and the camp in process of shifting. Later on, Khalil said that the flies bored him and that he meant to camp beside the river. Colonel Beach told me to start talking. I said to Khalil, whose face I remembered: “Where was it that I met your Excellency last?” And he said: “At a dance at the British Embassy.” Khalil, throughout the interview, was polite. He was quite a young man for his position, I suppose about thirty-five, and a fine man to look at—lion-taming eyes, a square chin and a mouth like a trap. Kiazim Bey, who was also courteous, but silent, was his C.G.S. We began on minor points. The Turks had taken the English ladies in Bagdad. Their husbands were sent across to Alexandretta, where I met them last year; some of them, worse luck, are now prisoners again. We had Turkish ladies at Amara and also twenty-five Turkish civilian officials. This exchange was arranged. They were to meet each other at Beyrout.
I went on to speak of the Julnar. He said that there had been two killed on the Julnar. He was afraid it was the two Captains. He was sorry. It made Beech and me very sad. I did hope they would have got through. Firman was a gallant man—he had had forty-eight hours’ leave in four years—and old Cowley was a splendid old fellow. Well, if you are going to be killed, trying to relieve Townshend is not a bad way to end.
After that, I began talking of the treatment of the Arab population in Kut. I asked Khalil to put himself in the position of Townshend. I said that I knew that he could not help feeling for Townshend, whose lifelong study of soldiering was brought to nought through siege and famine, by no fault of his own. I said that the Arabs with Townshend had done what weak people always do: they had trimmed their sails, and because they had feared him, they had given him their service. If they suffered, Townshend would feel that he was responsible. Khalil said: “There is no need to worry about Townshend. He’s all right.” He added that the Arabs are Turkish subjects, not British, and that therefore their fate was irrelevant, but that their fate would depend upon what they did in the future, not upon what they had done in the past. We asked him for some assurance that there would be no hanging or persecution. He would not give this assurance, for the reasons already stated, but said that it was not his intention to do anything to the Arabs. Then Lawrence turned up.
We discussed the question of our sick and wounded. He said that he would send 500 of them down the river, but that he required Turkish soldiers for them in exchange. I said that he gained by having sound men instead of wounded. He wanted us to send boats to fetch these men. He said that he was sending them drugs, doctors and food, and doing what could be done. Beach asked for the exchange of all our prisoners in Kut against the Ottomans that we had taken. He at first said that he would exchange English against Turk and Arab against Indian, because he had a poor opinion of the fighting qualities of the last two. I said that some of the Arabs had fought very well, and he would gain by getting them back. He then pulled out a list of prisoners of ours, and went through the list of Arab surrenders, swearing. He said: “Perhaps one of our men in ten is weak or cowardly, but it’s only one in a hundred of the Arabs who is brave. Look, these brutes have surrendered to you because they were a lot of cowards. What are you to do with men like that? You can send them back to me if you like, but I have already condemned them to death. I should like to have them to hang.” That ended that. We must see that Arabs are not sent back by mistake.
He then said that he would like us to send ships up to transport Townshend and his men to Bagdad; otherwise they would have to march, which would be hard on them. He promised to let us have these ships back again. Colonel Beach said to me, not for translation, that this was impossible. We have already insufficient transport. He told me to say that he would refer this to General Lake. We then talked about terms and the exchange of the sick and wounded. On this, Khalil said he would refer to Enver or Constantinople as to whether sound men at Kut would be exchanged against the Turkish prisoners in Cairo and India. He did not think it likely. He was going to give us the wounded in any case, at once. He would trust us to give their equivalent.
Guns: Townshend had destroyed the guns. Khalil was angry and showed it. He said he had a great admiration for Townshend, but he was obviously disappointed at not getting the guns, on which he had counted. He said: “I could have prevented it by bombarding, but I did not want to.” Later, one of his officers said to me: “The Pasha’s a most honourable man; all love him. He was first very pleased and said that Townshend should go free. After that something happened, I don’t know what, and now Townshend will be an honoured prisoner at Stamboul.”