Tekrit cost us about two thousand casualties. Many of the wounded collected in the 19 C.C.S.[30] at Samarra had been wounded by aeroplane bombs.
Next morning our orders of the previous night were confirmed. The enemy were supposed to be holding the 'kilns' (actually these were tombs) behind Tekrit. The 28th Brigade were to go through the 8th and 19th Brigades, and drive them out. We were very doubtful of their being there. However, we went forward in the usual artillery formation. Every house in Tekrit had a white flag. This was the place where Townshend's men were spat on as they limped through it, prisoners. Nevertheless there was the same surprising display of fairly clean linen to which the villages before Baghdad had treated us eight months previously, and the Arabs were most anxious for us to realize how extremely friendly their sentiments were.
We went forward, but found the Turks had gone. There were crump-holes everywhere; the amount of our shrapnel lying about, wasted, would have broken a Chancellor of the Exchequer's heart. Parts of the spaces between the Turkish successive lines were just contiguous craters. But there had been disappointingly few direct hits on trenches. The cemetery, hard by, possessed one or two craters also. The enemy had left abundant live shells, shell-cases, cartridge-cases. But there were very few dead. I saw only two; and a few places where the parapet had been pulled in for a hasty burial. The old question was raised, Did the Turk dig graves beforehand, against an action, to hide his losses? If he did, one can imagine few more effective ways of putting heart into his troops than by detailing them for such a job. I heard that the Seaforths buried sixty Turks. But their losses were certainly far less than ours. We took a hundred and fifty-seven prisoners. Corps claimed that evidence collected after the battle showed that the enemy losses for the three actions of Daur, Aujeh, Tekrit, were at least fifteen hundred. The Infantry, who had not access to Corps' means of information, assessed them much lower. Myself, I think eight hundred would be nearer the mark.
There were great heaps of cartridge-cases, at intervals of fifty yards, along the trenches, where machine-gunners had clearly been. The spaces between showed little sign of having been held. From the Turk's point of view, Tekrit was as satisfactory a battle almost as, from our point of view, it was unsatisfactory. His gunners and machine-gunners fought with very great skill and coolness, withdrawing late and rapidly; hence the great dumps of shell-ammunition which were our only booty. We should have got the whole force. But no sufficient barrage was kept up on the lines of retreat during the night; the cavalry's service, though gallant, was ineffective; the 28th Brigade were not used at the one point where they might have done the enemy much harm; and Head Quarters were too far back. The Turks got every gun and machine-gun away. We captured a hundred boxes of field-gun ammunition, four hundred rifles, five thousand wooden beams, gun-limbers, boats, bridging material, buoys, two aeroplanes (one utterly broken up by the enemy, the other repairable), and a box of propellers, all serviceable. The enemy blew up three ammunition dumps before retreating.
Fowke had dragged through the campaign with a crocked knee. He now went into hospital. There J.Y., who always anxiously haunted all battle-purlieus, fearing for the regiment he loved so well, found him; and, since he was not ill, obtained permission to feed him with some of the battalion's Christmas pudding, just arrived. He refreshed him, too, with Kirin beer. Thus J.Y.'s last glimpse of him—for Fowke did not return to the battalion—was a happy one.
These days were very wretched. Turkish camps are unbelievably filthy; and flies swarmed on the battlefield. We salvaged some miles up beyond Tekrit, with the results already stated. One of the two captured planes was a recovered one of our own, with the enemy black painted over our sign. We had a lot of very enjoyable destruction, including that of the musketry school and barracks, four miles away.
Tekrit's chief fame is that Saladin was born just outside it. But it was also an early Christian centre; the town wall is said to be partly the old monastery wall. The town is built on cliffs, which tower very steeply above the Tigris. The inhabitants were keen on trade, taking anything 'not too hot or too heavy'; but were unpleasant and exorbitant beyond any Arabs, even of Mesopotamia.
We now held both the Tigris and the Euphrates ends of the caravan route to Hit. G.A. opined that we should drive the enemy in from both ends, till both British forces were shelling each other. However, the Turk ran some seventy miles farther; and our planes did great bombing raids on their camp in the Jebel Hamrin, having the joy of using some of the enemy's own bombs.
On the 8th I got a lift back to Samarra on a Ford, for the purpose of sending up food and comforts to the battalion. This kindly purpose was never fulfilled. I went sick, but had more sense than to go to hospital this time; and the troops returned from Tekrit. The Leicestershires on route put up a large hyena, but failed to run him down. My premature return became a famous taunt. 'He deserted,' Diggins would say when foiled in fair argument; 'deserted from Tekrit, deserted in face of the enemy.'
The troops were back at Samarra by the 13th. 'Ah!' Busra surmised, 'they've had a bad knock. "Withdrawn on account of difficulty of communications." We know that story.' It was as after the April fighting, when the wildest distortions were believed down the line, and when I was asked in confidence by an officer formerly with the Leicestershires if it was true that his old regiment had lost eighteen of our own guns.