Carry On! A Story of the Fight for Bagdad

by Herbert Strang

To Burnet's surprise, though the bombardment was kept up intermittently by the field-guns during the rest of the day, there was no infantry assault. He jumped to the conclusion that they intended to attack during the night; perhaps to make a feint along the causeway, and try to gain the shore of the island in their kelaks. At nightfall one part, at any rate, of their plan was disclosed. From the causeway came the sounds of many men hard at work: it was clear that the enemy were toiling with fierce energy to finish the walls that would cover the last fifty yards of their approach. The task could easily be completed before the dawn, for it could not be effectually hindered; the machine-gun was now so placed that it could not fire directly along the causeway, but only at an angle across it, and the builders, being protected by the walls already raised, were not likely to suffer much loss in pushing the additions forward.

The enemy's full purpose was patent. Covered by the walls, they would rush the ruins of the bridgehead, debouch behind the embankment, and trust to their superior numbers to carry the inner defences by one overwhelming assault. Hampered by the darkness, the garrison would be at a great disadvantage. Neither rifles nor machine-guns could command the whole front of attack. If the enemy were contained in the centre, they had sufficient men to sweep round on both flanks and take the defenders in the rear.

Burnet saw that there was only one means of saving the situation—of gaining time until, with the morning, relief came. The enemy must be forestalled. It was important to choose the right moment for the counter-move. If made too early, and defeated, it might precipitate disaster. If too long deferred, it might be just too late. Leaving judgment or chance to decide the point, he quickly made preparations. He sent for the small reserve which had hitherto occupied the underground chambers in the centre of the island, posted them just behind the advanced breastwork, and dividing the rest of the garrison, some three hundred in all, into two parties, he ordered them to steal quietly down to the embankment, and be ready to scale it at the word of command.

In the early hours of the morning the lessening of sounds from the causeway seemed to indicate that the work on the walls was nearly completed. It was pitch dark; not even a reflection of starlight could be seen in the water. Burnet gave the word; the men slipped noiselessly across the embankment, half of them on each side of the causeway; then, no longer preserving silence, dashed into the shallows, which extended some fifteen or twenty paces from the shore, and began to wade towards the working party. The Turks had only a few moments' warning; but they made fierce resistance with clubbed rifles and pioneer tools to the Arabs who swarmed up on each side of the causeway. There were some minutes of bitter hand-to-hand fighting; but the enemy were for the nonce outnumbered; they received no support from the rear; and presently they fled helter-skelter, suffering heavy losses in their flight from the rifle fire of their assailants.

Burnet carried the pursuit along the causeway until progress was blocked by a traverse. The enemy were apparently not in sufficient strength to attempt a counter-attack until reinforced. Taking advantage of their inaction, which he knew could not last long, he ordered some of his men to demolish the newly constructed mud walls, while the remainder kept up a dropping fire. When the walls lining the last thirty yards of the causeway had been destroyed, he led the men back to their entrenchments, leaving a small detachment at the ruins of the bridgehead.

The night work of the enemy had been frustrated, but Burnet did not flatter himself that the danger was over. Without doubt they were determined to capture the island before the arrival of the relieving force, of whose approach they must by this time be well aware. How would the Arabs, wearied by exertions unfamiliar to them, suffering from scarcity of food, endure the shock and strain of the crisis?

With the first lifting of the sky at dawn the field-guns began a systematic shelling of the embankment and of the area immediately behind it, where it was now clear to them from previous events that the garrison were entrenched. The Arabs, lying close under their breastwork, suffered few serious casualties, though many of them were bruised and grazed by fragments of stone and shell, and some were overcome by the nauseating fumes. Presently the guns were turned on the ruins of the bridgehead, and Burnet at once withdrew the detachment from its precarious shelter there.

He had scarcely done so when the storm broke. A dense column of Turks came rushing along the causeway. Kelaks, one of large size, carrying a machine-gun protected with sand-bags, swept out from the gap. From loopholes in the walls on the causeway the enemy poured a hot fire upon the flanks of the defenders' position. Numbers of Halil's Arabs swam in the wake of the kelaks, which were approaching the island on the side of the causeway remote from Jackson's machine-gun. Jackson directed his fire across the causeway, and took a heavy toll of the horde of Turks, but failed to check the determined rush. Finding that the machine-gun had not been disposed of, the Turkish gunners again searched the right flank of Burnet's position, and though they did not succeed in hitting the exact spot where Jackson, unperturbed, was emptying his belts of ammunition one after another, he was struck more than once by chips and slivers of metal and stone.

As soon as the field-guns changed the direction of their fire, Burnet called on some of the Arabs to follow him to the embankment, from which they poured a hail of bullets upon the enemy. In spite of losses, the Turks and their Arab allies pressed on and penetrated to the bridgehead. Meanwhile some of the kelaks had reached the shore opposite Burnet's left, and parties of the enemy swarmed up to the further side of the embankment and established themselves there.

The enemy found it impossible to maintain their position at the bridgehead in the centre beneath the withering fire of the Arabs under Burnet's immediate command. Baffled but not beaten, they too sought shelter under the embankment on either side, and some of them, at the extreme horn of the arc, so placed themselves that they could enfilade the defenders. Burnet was compelled to withdraw his men hastily behind their breastwork. If that was carried the whole island was at the enemy's mercy.