After my unsuccessful shikar for food through the great building I returned in no amiable mood, and it was then that the humorous gods held high council, and, remembering my opinion on Angora bugs, provided a little joke for themselves afresh. These new bugs were for shock tactics. There was no artillery preparation or demonstration from flank battalions, but suddenly I was awakened from a doze by bitings in fifty places. Leaping out of bed I gathered them up in threes and fours. Tearing my clothes off I caught the rear files before they could get to cover. Undismayed, they renewed the attack as soon as I again tried to sleep. This became too ridiculous. Finally, my language attracted a crowd of laughing Turks, and one informed me in French that the hospital was famous for bugs. The pillow and mattress I discovered to be their first line, but their reserve lines were in the wooden frieze. "Ye gods!" I thought, "this is too much. Here am I starving and curing myself and doing my best to smile over it when I'm expected to put up a regular hunt!" I slung the mattress away and, seizing some clothes from a wardrobe outside, with the orderly hanging on to me the while, remade the bed. Still on they came. I decided that if I were Napoleon I would change the Turkish crescent to a bug passant, with that half-comical grin the lions passant have, the near fore paw in the air and face screwed around at you. I collapsed towards dawn with sheer irritation. But in my sleep on they came, on from every wall, from every point of the horizon, from the sky, from beyond the confines of the universe—I myself was becoming a bug—when I awoke with a roar, and saw the Turkish orderly standing beside me grinning. I gave him cigarettes for appreciating a situation I no longer could myself, and he taught me some more Turkish "Zorari yok" (never mind), and "Yawash" (gently).
I awaited the dawn with an increasing hunger, having now devoured about a handful of lump sugar I had put into my pocket as an emergency ration. The hours crawled by until eleven, when the visiting doctor came.
Now, by this time I had begun to find out a thing or two about the Turk. Unless you ask, he never does anything; if you do, he merely promises he will. Your only chance is to be demonstrative and impress him. This fellow was a robust, bouncing, overfed, callous, perpetual-smile-sort-of-fellow. Waiting until he wished me good morning, I leaped clean out of bed, with a frightful roar that brought a dozen people into the room, and showed him pints of blood—mine and the bugs'—all over the wall, bed, mattress, etc., etc. Then I cursed the place in German, in English, and terrible French, and applied my word, "fenner," vigorously, ending up my objecting to my treatment with gestures, etc., etc. For the first minute or two he laughed, and then he sat down and mopped his forehead and explained he came only once a day, and without an order from him it might have been risky to give me any food, etc. He wrote out a beautiful diet sheet, and sent me some medicine for the colitis. This did me good, certainly, but I waited all day for the milk and cornflour and soup. At five o'clock one small cup of the weakest imaginable tea arrived. Nothing else. It now appeared that an order by the doctor on one day did not take effect until the following day, as they had to send out for supplies. I was really terribly ravenous. That evening, about 8 p.m., when two orderlies brought round a trench table filled with loaves of bread and plates of soup, I waited until they were gone a second and seized a loaf, which I plunged in the soup, and returned to my bed, where I devoured most of it. The other Turks in the room, I believe, informed the orderly, who searched for the remainder of the loaf in my bag; but we had a wrestle for it, and while he sent out for a posta, I finished it. Later he appeared, laughing, and took some more cigarettes.
The situation developed along these lines until the next morning, when the doctor came again. This time I was coldly indignant, and showed him a letter of complaint to the American Ambassador at Stamboul, and requiring to be sent back to my house. The result was he put me on an enormous diet at once of bread and buffalo meat that would have killed any Englishman, certainly a siege-battered, starved, feverish, colitis-stricken sick man. I distributed my rations among the two officers next door, one of whom was a most congenial person, named Fox—an officer I didn't know in Kut, as he had been in Woolpress most of the time. We had long discussions on Turks and bugs. The next morning another doctor came, and, seeing my diet sheet full, evidently thought the Turkish commissariat couldn't stand this, and discharged me from hospital.
The medicine had done me some good, but otherwise I was weaker on leaving the hospital than entering it. Fox and I trekked back. How glad we were to get out of it! I had expected an interesting girl in a purdah to look after me, and all kinds of delicacies. One learns apace in these days. On the way we passed Captain Martin, I.M.S., recently arrived, and he sympathized with us, and promised us that in future he would look after us all. I was very glad to regain my room once more. Another small party of relicts had arrived from Angora, amongst whom were Blind Hookey, who was at the Christmas dinner in Kut, and Young Lacy, whom I had left at Samarra. He had had great luck. When he was quit of the fever he had managed to join a small party and was driven the whole way. Our column, including as it did the native officers, and travelling in the wake of the whole division, seems to have had probably the worst time of any, and certainly one saw most of the tragedy of the trek. Our whole house is now pretty full.
August 7th.—Malaria returned. The ague was more severe this time. Quinine we have at last procured in small quantities at the rate of five piastres a cachet, which means that one's malaria medicine bill will be fifteen shillings daily. A cold snap in the weather has sent several others here down with malaria. Kastamuni is said to have a cold winter, so we hope to get this fever quite out of our system. It is raining steadily—the first rain since arriving here.
We have no books as yet, but it is to be hoped the Turks will allow them to come through later on. I have finished the Bible—a complete reading now since Baghdad. What a vigorous teacher is St. Paul. No mundane considerations seemed to prevent his putting the true value on this transient existence, and from that probably sprang the facility with which he decided always for the Lord.
August 17th.—The mornings continue fine and sunny, but in the afternoons a sharp, shadowy wind springs up, and the evenings are quite cold. We are anxiously awaiting the parcels waylaid in Stamboul. The fever has largely gone, but muscular rheumatism has taken its place. No one hears from or is allowed to write to Yozgad or Kara Hissa.
The Turks here seem to have already settled on their plan of campaign, which is to make us get into debt at huge prices, which already are increasing. I am, however, assuming a sublime indifference to money matters. The financial anxiety of the trek was enough, and I have a long score to pay off against the Turk in this respect, so once in his debt he will have to facilitate our getting our money from home, or else receive cheques.
August 22nd.—On the 18th I attempted a long walk, permission having been obtained for a party of us to go. The direction led me over hills towards some pine woods—a considerable climb for those in our condition. An extraordinary phenomenon common to almost all Kut people, young and old—but more especially to the young who had starved on account of enteritis troubles—is their sudden huge girth expansion. One's figure protrudes like any Turk's. The fatty foods and weak state of the stomach are said to be the cause of this.