I do not know of any other malady so dramatic, or so painful to witness, as heat-stroke, with the exception, perhaps, of acute cholera. It is something that belongs to Mesopotamia in a peculiar sense, in that it seems to express in visible and concentrated form the silent hostility of the country which was noticed by the ancients. For Mesopotamia welcomes no man. It is a profound enigma. What do those two gigantic rivers mean that rush through those vast stretches of barren land? For what ultimate destiny were they designed? It is like looking on two enormous electric cables, carrying a current of incalculable amperage, lying beside a vast but motionless machinery, because no contact has been made. Whatever the answer may be it has been long in coming. Dwelling beside them, one cannot help speculating, for there is a kind of fatality that concerns the disposition of matter in Nature. Oil fields and rubber trees existed, one might say, as enigmas, until the internal combustion engine and motor cars dawned on the world and explained their riddle. This was their fate. And of Mesopotamia, who shall say that it may not be concerned with a yet unborn attitude in us Europeans when we will turn wholly to the produce of the earth?
To gain some idea of heat-stroke it is necessary to grasp the conditions that produce it. A typical hot day begins with a dawn that comes as a sudden hot yellow behind the motionless palms. A glittering host of dragon-flies rises up from the swamps, wheeling and darting after the mosquitoes. In the growing light mysterious shapes slink past. They are the camp dogs returning from their sing-song, which has kept you awake half the night. Inside the mosquito net you see various gorged little insects struggling to get out of the meshing through which they passed so easily when they were slim and hungry. The hot beam of the sun picks out your tent, and the mercury goes up steadily. At five you are bathed in perspiration as you lie in bed. It has been in the neighbourhood of 90 degrees throughout the night; you have probably spent most of it smoking in a chair in the moonlight listening to horses whinnying, donkeys braying, dogs barking and yelping without a pause, and men groaning and tossing in the steamy sick tents. The business of getting up is one of infinite weariness. There is nothing fresh in the morning feeling. At eight the mercury is probably 100 degrees. At times, as you dress after a tepid bath, it is necessary to sit down and take a rest. Your vesture is simple—a thin shirt, open at the collar, and a pair of shorts, stockings and shoes. During the day your feelings do not correspond to the height of the mercury, for after breakfast a certain amount of energy possesses you, and the morning's work becomes possible. But after a couple of hours, in the neighbourhood of eleven, when it may be anything from 110 to 120 degrees in the shade, a kind of enervation sets in. This is partly due to lack of food. For some reason we found it necessary to eat a considerable amount. The theory of a simple diet, a little fruit, meat once a day and in small quantity, did not work out in practice. After midday the world is a blinding glare and the intake of air seems to burn the lungs. A comparative stillness descends on the scene. On the plain activities cease. Through the double canvas roofing of a tent the sun beats down like a giant with a leaden club. The temperature in the wards increases. At the worst moments you feel distinctly that it would be possible, by giving way to something that escapes definition, to go off your head. A spirit of indifference to everything is necessary. Any kind of worry is simply a mode of suicide. A man, for instance, who feels continually he ought to be up and doing, and that to lie still in vacancy is a sin, does not do well, unless, perhaps, he dwells in a cool stone house, under fans, with plenty of ice, as was the luck of some. There must be no inner conflicts. Cranks soon suffer. Life becomes simplified. An oriental contempt of the West, with all its preoccupations, grows insensibly. When a dripping orderly came to rouse you to see some case, you understood perfectly the attitude of mind that has produced the idea of Kismet. Why move? If the man dies, it is Allah's will. It is Allah's will that he is sick. Let him remain in the hands of Allah.
It was during the afternoon and evening that heat-stroke occurred in the main when the humidity of the air began to go up. A great many of the new troops had no idea of the danger of the sun. The Tommy does not estimate a situation very quickly. The attempt to change the main meal of the day to an evening hour did not meet with success, and during the afternoon the men would sit bucking away in their tents, and refuse to adapt themselves to the idea of a siesta. Moreover, the Tommy is obstinate by nature and does not like to give in. He goes on marching in the sun, even though he feels bad, and the collapse is swift and fatal.
At about five o'clock, with the temperature falling and the humidity of the air increasing, a period of intense discomfort set in. Perspiration was so profuse that clothes became wringing wet like bathing suits, even if you were sitting still. A kind of air hunger ensued. The few birds in the groves sat with their beaks wide open. It was then that the ambulance wagons began to roll in with their burden of heat-stroke cases, and continued until after sunset. It is a malady which, as I have said, is dramatic and painful to witness....
A heat-stroke station was prepared at the water's edge containing a couple of baths and an ice chest, and patients were put into the chill water as soon as possible. They were slapped and punched and laved till they began to turn blue and the temperature fell. Then they were put in a blanket, if any collapse showed, or just left naked on a bed in the open. Fear played a powerful part in the malady. It tended to produce it and to cause relapses, and it was good practice to use direct counter-suggestion whenever the patient was conscious, as well as brandy and morphia. The worst of it was that many of those patients who recovered over night died next afternoon as they lay in the suffocating ward. What was possible with wet sheets and small pieces of ice was done, but it was a wretched business, and those who were in Basra at that time and saw those spectacles will never forget them; nor will they forget the silent, impotent rage that filled the mind at the thought of the giant-bodied, small-headed Colossus of war which makes a useless sacrifice of men in ways such as these every day. But it had one useful effect, perhaps. A really Zoroastrian reverence for the sun came after seeing a case, and a man learnt to look on his pith helmet and spine pad as his best friends.
V
MIRAGE
On the 28th of April, after a week of conflicting rumours, we heard that Kut had fallen. As a nation we take reverses with consummate coolness. Whatever one thought inwardly, work went on as usual, and in the men's lines there was very little comment. Up to the last moment Rumour was optimistic. She spread a most mysterious yarn about the ship that tried to escape Turkish vigilance and get to Kut with supplies. It was, she said, full of gold. For what purpose she did not specify, but it sounded promising. This was her last fling. After that she changed her mask and looked ugly. Forty thousand Arabs were mustering at Kuweit. German cruisers were in the Persian Gulf, sinking shipping right and left. The Turks were coming down on Nasireyah in tremendous force. Trouble was brewing at Shaiba. In the last respect she proved correct, though the trouble was not great. At Shaiba, which lies about twenty miles west of Basra across the plain, a remarkable battle was fought in the April of the year before. A Turkish force of twelve thousand regulars and thirty odd guns, with numerous Arabs, was routed at an extreme and critical moment, it is said, owing to a mistake. The mistake, for once, was on the part of the Turks. Fighting had been very severe. We had no reserves and things were looking black. Numerous Arab tribesmen who had remained as neutral spectators were beginning to take it into their heads that we were losing, and that only means one thing to them. It means they at once join forces with the victorious side, and add their ghastly devilry to the general merriment. The Turks, under Suleiman Askari, had been certain of victory. Victory would have meant the evacuation of Basra, if not of Mesopotamia. So sure had the Turks been that they had struck a medal for the occasion, celebrating the triumph of the capture of Basra. Our men found sacks full of these cheap aluminum badges in the Turkish trenches, and they were sold afterwards in the bazaar at Basra by the thousand. But the Turks never wore them, for, at the most extreme and critical moment, across the plain there came a swirling column of dust, a flashing of wheels, and a thundering of hoofs. The sight was too much for the Turks. Another battery, or even a whole brigade of artillery, after those three exhausting days of fighting, was not worth waiting for. So they rose from their trenches and began to flee, and the Arabs, changing their minds with incredible swiftness, fell on them in the rear and cut and slashed them about considerably. In the meanwhile the strange column galloped up. But there were no guns. In place of guns stood a strangely assorted collection of wagons, spring carts, tongas—anything on wheels—that a certain doctor had got together and brought up at full speed to take away the wounded. The Turkish Commander, Suleiman Askari, committed suicide.
