The bandobast for this mountain was German, and we were hustled off with commendable dispatch. At 9.45 a dozen motor lorries drew up. At 10 we were off. They were absolutely run by German officers and men. We swayed and bounced about, quite reconciled to that, and thanking God it wasn't a case of "leg it" again. These mountains are much more barren than the others, being largely, on their eastern slopes, white clay or lime-stone ravines and crags, with a few shrubs here and there growing out of the stony ground. They are also much wider. We passed some desolate Armenian villages and tore along to the upper heights. At 11.30 we stopped at a ruined mill by a fall to cool the hot engines, and there had a drink and a piece of bread, also a slab of baked meat, chiefly fat. It was a wild spot, great rocky crags falling across the road. Another hour and we arrived at Park Taurus, a German military halfway house, forty kilos from Gulek, and thirty-two from Bozanti, whither we were going.
Park Taurus is situated on a small plateau leading down into three or four valleys surrounded by hills of crumpled granite dotted with pines. The valleys are now dry, but in winter must be filled with racing torrents. It is absolutely German, and evidently erected during the last eighteen months. The enclosures easily accommodate over a hundred motor lorries, besides which they have huge electrically-lighted store sheds and depôt, where they accumulate stores en route.
We were turned loose at 1.30 p.m. in a field where stood a huge, empty tent. The Germans here were not so well disposed towards us, and would not help us at all. Some N.C.Os. who wanted to do a deal were hustled away. The first arrivals bought out an Arab's tiny shop of honey and raisins and potatoes, and there was little else to go round. After a solid sleep, for our rest the previous night had been very broken, we made a very bad meal. Our application to bathe in an adjoining pool was not allowed. Then we all sat around the side of the hill and smoked while once more night floated down upon the world. The motors that had been passing all day were now housed, and there was an appreciable calm broken by falling streams and tumbling brooks. Pale yellow stars burned passionately over the pine tops; and once again here there was something in the far-away spot that recalled the mountain forests of Thüringen. There was less forest and more rock, but it served as another span in that bridge we are all constructing back to old times—the bridge that must span Kut and the trek....
At 4.15 the next morning, before it was light, we were in the motors and away again. There followed, as usual, a wild scramble and fearful scrumming around the lines, as we were not awakened until five minutes before leaving. This journey was decidedly bumpy, and we had to grip hard to stick inside the four walls of the thing at times. The country became wilder and rockier with only a few boulder pines climbing up the heights. Along the face of these limestone bluffs one observed a queer phenomenon of splashed yellow rocks, seemingly spilled from some gigantic cauldron, dried and hung out like blanketings in the morning sun. Then there were caves and water-worn caverns, said to have been once the homes of the Hittites. Many Turkish and others worked on the road, and dishevelled troops passed us en route for the Mosul or Palestine front, via Aleppo.
At last, two great tall upstretching tongues of rock, almost meeting, filled the mouth of the converging valley, and rendered any attempt to cross into that valley by any other way than between them almost impossible, except for an Alpiner. These were the famous Cilician Gates through which passed Alexander in the fourth century, B.C., on his way to Syria. Darius had lain in waiting somewhere near Islahie on the other side of the Anti-Taurus mountains, and when Alexander had got safely down between the seacoast and the Anti-Taurus, Darius and his army scampered over the mountains, probably, the very way we had come, and cut Alexander off from his communications. But Alexander turned on the Persian king and smashed him at Tarsus. Five hundred years before that, Shalmanaser II., the great Assyrian king, had crossed and recrossed this very pass on his way to and from his victories. After Alexander, the hordes of Barbarossa, and in fact, every ancient army on its way east had had to pass through them.
Some old Hittite inscription was on the outer face of the rock, and on either side of the road a Roman altar cut out of the flat rock by the roadside testified to the military importance conceded to this Gate by Roman Generals, locking the way to the Orient. In those days the pathway was a few feet wide only, and now cannot be more than five yards. Heavy blasting, however, widened the way along which we came.
A few miles further on we reached the rail-head again at Bozanti from where they were tunnelling the Taurus. Here we saw many British soldiers at work. They were mostly from the Dardanelles and some of them seemed quite fit, but the tunnelling was heavy work, and they said that the men from Kut there could not stand it—and had died.
For some hours we were shoved in a stable with billions of flies. Many officers were very indignant at being put alongside horses. Being a field artilleryman it didn't worry me in the least after what we had gone through. We bought a few stores and a German presented me with a bottle of beer, as he found I spoke German!
At 8 p.m. that night we left, packed in a train, all very tired and weak. There were in the train some German N.C.Os. and men all on their way back to Berlin, and in a highly hilarious state at the prospect. Some of them were the nasty sort, and they all told us of the English naval disaster off the Skager Rack in which we had lost ten large ships and so on. We knew this was an untruth and suspected it was a fine victory for us, especially as the Boches ran back to Kiel.
We travelled all night fearfully cramped up in carriages. I managed to get two or three hours of restless sleep among moving boots and feet on the floor, with my knees by my nose and some one's boots in my face. At 12 noon we arrived at Cognia or Konia, the Iconium of St. Paul, a large town with a real hotel to which only a few of us were allowed to go, and a plentiful array of shops. After the usual dozen moves up and down the station, each time entailing carrying our beds and kits, we were taken to a restaurant where our notes were refused, but ultimately taken at a large discount. How we carry on without money is really extraordinary! One simply does not eat, but gets weaker and weaker. Acute diarrhœa has broken out again with many of us, for we are still on nuts and sour bread and water. That night, the 12th July, we slept in the station yard.