Some of the Staff suggested a halt. But our Napoleonic general drove us on. Again, as we learned subsequently, he saved us. That night the Turkish army, reinforced, was trying to outmarch us.
We pressed on and on. Don Juan followed with my orderly. It was awfully cold, but I preferred the cold to the weight of my coat. I slung it over Don Juan. The poor brute shivered from cold and hunger every halt. The march became a nightmare. With frequent drinks of water I managed to keep on. At eleven o'clock we were almost into the halting-place—Monkey Village by name—when the whole column, which was some five miles long, was compelled to halt owing to a block. The ground was very uneven and scored with nullahs, and had only the one narrow track leading to the village. Across this track the Cavalry Brigade, which had gone on ahead of us as advance guard, had bivouacked. The block took about an hour and a half to rectify.
At last we got to some open ground past the village. How cold it was! We bivouacked on sandy soil. I scooped a dug-out for the General, got a few handfuls of hay for Don Juan, and a whisky and water for myself. General Smith got some sort of a meagre meal with me from a tin of jam, a little bully and a biscuit. We kept half for the morning. All our delightful yak-dans of stores, hams, fowls, biscuits, jam, tea and coffee were miles away with the transport, and I inquired a hundred times that night before turning in, without result. Those of our blankets which were not lost in the scurry of the morning fight, were there also with the transport. So in the bitter cold wind, feet numbed and teeth chattering, I scraped a hole for my arm and a sand pillow for my head, and shoving my topee over my ears to drown the nervy rip-rip of the Arab snipers, I slept. It was not for many minutes. The cold was too intense, without a coat. Then I had to ride to General Townshend for orders several times. Poor Don Juan was awfully done, but very game. There was a tiny stone bridge over a deep nullah near the village. Each time I was held up there. The scene was of the wildest confusion. Camels were being thrashed across, kicking mules hauled across, troops trying to cross at the same time. Several overturned vehicles complicated matters. The whole force had to go over that tiny bridge. After all had crossed the sappers blew it up.
I was quite an important person that night, what with orders and reports. The Blosse Lynch, with Major Henley aboard and also plenty of food, if I had known, was alongside. Captain Garnett was quite done up with continuous fatigue, although he had not ridden very much. We couldn't sleep for the cold, so we talked and hoped to get to Kut the next morning. That day, December 1st, he informed me, was his birthday. There could be many worse ways of passing one's birthday than in participating in the engagement we had fought that day. We felt a deep debt of gratitude due to our General for bringing us out of such a tight corner so brilliantly. At one moment the whole force was imperilled. The next our guns smashed lanes of casualties through the Turkish troops. I was assured by senior officers of much service that I had witnessed one of the most brilliant episodes possible in war, where perfect judgment and first-rate discipline alone enabled us to smash the sting of the pursuit and to continue a retreat exactly as it is done at manœuvres.
At 4 a.m. we were away again. We walked half a mile, then rested. After an hour or two of this the pace got slower and troops began to fall out and sit down. More than one dusky warrior unconsciously depicted the Dying Gladiator. We spoke kind words to them and where possible gave them a lift. Many mules were shot as their strength gave out. I ate my biscuit and gave Don a pocketful of hay I had kept for him. He rubbed his nose on my cheek and wished he were back in his excellent stable at Hyderabad.
Once this day my General's horse nearly unseated him as we crossed a nullah where a camel was lying stretched out.
"Come on," he shouted to me. "It's dead, and won't bite."
Don hates camels, and was rearing up in fine style. Therein he showed judgment more correct than did the General, for, in answer to my spur, he had no sooner drawn level with the beast than the "dead" camel swung its long snaky neck round upon us and opened eyes and mouth simultaneously. Don jumped the bank and the whole staff of telephonists and landed almost on top of General Smith, whose horse objected considerably. I laughed until the general restrained my humour.
The horses were awfully done, and in the batteries could just move the guns at the slowest walk. We did about a mile an hour. About 3 p.m. General Townshend shouted to General Smith that one of our batteries was shelling our own transport which appeared round the head of the river, miles ahead. My general apparently forgot me, and went off on his old charger. The transport could not have been saved by the time he got up to the guns. I put Don at a ditch and, racing up a knoll close by, blew on my long sounding whistle "cease fire," and held up my hand. The battery commander saw it, and when I galloped up I apologized for interrupting his shooting, and explained. They had bracketed the transport and a shot was in the breech of the gun, so my whistle had just got them in time. A splendid fellow is the commander of that battery, Major Broke-Smith, an excellent soldier and cheerful friend. Unperturbed, he said, "Well, if I'm to shell all Arab bodies, and the river will wind so——" And when I got back General Townshend thanked me, at which I was much elated.
In the afternoon we halted for two and a half hours to enable the straggling crowds to catch up. I rode miles trying to find our transport cart with the stores, but it had got somewhere in the front several miles off. Some one produced a cube of Oxo, and we had that divided and a whisky peg each. "G. B." slept, and I saw the horses watered and unsaddled. The general had some biscuits given him, and some signalling officer—whom the gods preserve!—gave me a sausage, which I ate before considering whether it would divide or not.