Carry On! A Story of the Fight for Bagdad

by Herbert Strang

The tent pitching was completed. Orderlies came up with the officers' baggage. As the sky darkened, the glow of camp-fires rose from the lower ground on the northern side of the tell. The colonel returned; he was shortly followed by men carrying his evening meal, and he invited Burckhardt to share it with him in his tent. Burnet could see them in the interior, illuminated by a couple of candles, sitting on camp-stools at a small folding table, eating and drinking with the heartiness of men who have had a long day in the open. They lit cigars, smoked them through in drowsy silence; then Burckhardt yawned, stretched himself, and declaring that he was very sleepy, entered his own tent a few yards away, and let down the flap. Through the canvas Burnet saw the kindling of a candle and the German's bulky figure undressing. Then the candle was extinguished: the colonel's tent was already dark. A sentry began to pace up and down between the two tents.

It had been a tedious period of waiting, especially for the Arabs in the stuffy underground chamber. Nothing could be attempted until the camp had settled down. Sounds still came from below the tell. Even when all should be silent, there was much risk to be run. The surface of the tell was very dark; but the moon would rise in two or three hours. What was to be done must be done before then. The sentry was only about thirty yards from the slab; it must be removed in absolute silence. Other sentries, no doubt, were patrolling the camp. Would it be possible to elude them?

At last all was quiet, except for the slight sounds made by the horses. Burnet had arranged his plan. He would take one of the Arabs with him, leaving the other two in hiding. If he failed to return and release them, they were to wait until the camp was broken up and then to make the best of their way back to the island.

It was a nerve-trying moment when the slab was gently raised from below, and Burnet, with his head just above the hole, looked towards the officers' tents. He could barely see the figure of the sentry pacing slowly to and fro. With the silence of moles Burnet and his Arab companion crept out of the hole, and, crawling on all fours, stole along a few yards to the shelter of the ruined wall. Burnet had his revolver, the Arab only a knife.

They peered over the wall. Three campfires burned dully below the mound, some distance apart. Their light was insufficient to reveal the disposition of the bivouac. Moving stealthily round the corner of the wall, and sinking to the ground again, they crawled a few yards down the slope. A little to the right, at the foot of the mound, was a pile of objects which had certainly not been there before. Burnet guessed that it consisted of the stores which had been removed from the mules' backs. The two men threaded their way between boxes and bales, and continuing in the same direction, towards one of the camp-fires, discovered the guns close under the mound on the north-east side. Just above them, shadowing them from the little light that flickered from the stars, was another stack of boxes.

Burnet had expected to find a special guard set over the guns. The camp, however, was so small—the total number of men seemed to be about a hundred and fifty—that the two sentries whose figures could be dimly descried moving up and down along the outer border of the bivouac had been deemed sufficient. There was a tent, however, near one of the camp-fires about a hundred yards away: it was clear that this was being used as a guard-house, for while Burnet, lying flat, was peering into the darkness four men came from the tent and marched northward. The sentries were being relieved. In a few minutes four men returned, and marched up the slope within twenty yards of the two figures lying there like logs. The officers' sentry was relieved; the sergeant came back with the three men released from duty, and re-entered the tent.

Near another camp-fire, farther away, was a larger tent, presumably devoted to the subaltern officers. The men lay here and there on the open ground. From the sounds that reached his ears Burnet guessed that the horses and mules were hobbled near a patch of swamp still farther to his right.

Burnet congratulated himself on his luck in having no special guard over the guns to deal with. He had the average Briton's dislike of attacking a man in the dark and at a disadvantage, and the possible necessity of disposing of an unsuspicious sentry had been disagreeable to contemplate. In the absence of such a guard, everything depended on whether he could move about without attracting the attention of the men in the guard-tent, of the distant sentries, or of any of the soldiers who might chance to be wakeful.

Bidding the Arab remain where he was, Burnet crawled to the foot of the slope, and in the deep shadow there stole along to the guns. He discovered just beyond them, and also beneath the limbers, various packages which from their shape evidently did not contain ammunition. This was disappointing. But going on a little farther, he found the ammunition boxes stacked close under the tell, about thirty yards from the guns.

His aim was to destroy the guns, or at least render them useless. How was he to achieve it? The shells were not of much use for the purpose by themselves: he needed combustibles. No doubt there was plenty of combustible material among the stores; but it would not be easy to find it in the darkness, while the removal of it, necessitating movement to and fro, would increase the danger of detection. The only course possible was to make a rapid tour of all the stacks of stores, and finally to choose such material as seemed most suitable and most easily carried to the spot where it was needed.