Carry On! A Story of the Fight for Bagdad

by Herbert Strang

  CHAPTER XVII

  RAISING THE SIEGE

  Burnet felt that the checks they had suffered were not likely to causesuch tenacious fighters as the Turks to abandon their object. The factthat the attacks had been made by Turks and not by Halil's Arabs wasclear proof that the enemy's high command attached importance to thecapture of the island. With ample resources in their rear it could notbe doubted that artillery would be brought up, and then the inevitableend was a matter of a day or two, perhaps only of hours, unless helpcame. Such help had been promised, but Burnet knew well enough thatthe strategic plans of the coming campaign could not be disarranged forhis benefit, and though the possession of the island was of someimportance to the security of the British left flank, it might well bethat other considerations would prevent the dispatch of a relief force.In any case relief might not arrive in time.

  Whether Rejeb would allow his men to prolong their resistance when theodds against them became overwhelming was a question that gave Burnetsome concern. He thought it fair to put the situation frankly beforethe young chief, who was mending but slowly, and was in no condition totake an active part in the defence. Rejeb replied with equal frankness.

  "The burden is truly heavy upon us, my brother," he said, "but we willnot cast it from our backs until there is no more hope. What if weshould steal away by night? Without our horses we should fall a preyto Halil's mounted legion. Moreover, even if I escaped alive, my namewould be evermore a reproach. Surely it is better to fight and diethan to run and live dishonoured."

  "That is well said. With your consent, then, we will resist the enemyto the death."

  He thought of sending a messenger into the British lines with a noterelating what had happened and explaining that he could scarcely hopeto carry on more than a few days longer. But reflecting that it wouldtake the man several days to reach his destination, even with the bestof luck, and that unless the relieving force had already started bythen it could hardly arrive in time, he gave up the idea. If he hadbeen able to overhear the counsels of the Turkish officers he wouldhave found his worst fears realised. The destruction of the guns andthe capture of Major Burckhardt had infuriated General Eisenstein, whohad dispatched a German officer from his staff to conduct theoperations, with more field-guns.

  For some days the enemy's activity was limited to sniping, and topushing forward the walls along the island section of the causeway.The Arabs could do little to impede them. The work was done at night,with the assistance of kelaks, and always under cover of as many troopsas could be concentrated on the causeway and the kelaks on either side.An attempt to attack the wall-builders must inevitably be outflanked.Nor could another gap, nearer the island, be made in the causeway. Theenemy was always on the alert, and working parties of Arabs would onlyhave been destroyed.

  Day by day Burnet saw the walls approaching the bridgehead.Provisions, in spite of the most careful rationing, were running low;and another action like the last would exhaust his stock of ammunition.

  The walls had been pushed to within fifty yards of the bridgehead when,early one morning, the garrison was startled by the sound of anexploding shell. It had burst on the embankment a few yards below theemplacement from which the machine-gun had repelled the last attack:the enemy was clearly ranging on that spot. The Arabs showed signs ofnervousness, but were reassured by the broad smiles upon the faces ofthe two machine-gunners. Burnet's first precaution after the lateaction had been to change the position of the gun. Two newemplacements, well masked, had been prepared within a short distance ofeach other and connected by a shallow trench. Before a second shellfell, Sturge and Jackson, assisted by a party of Arabs, had removed thegun from the threatened position to another about twenty yards away.But Burnet realised that bombardment was the beginning of the end.

  To avoid useless loss of men, he withdrew the garrison from thebridgehead. The defences, consisting only of piles of loose stones andrubble, while effective against bullets, must soon be knocked to piecesby shells, even from field-guns, and would prove only a death-trap tomen congregated behind them. He had reason to be thankful for theprecautions he had taken when the enemy, after sending shell aftershell into the vacant emplacement until it was thoroughly demolished,got to work on the bridgehead. Some twenty rounds reduced this, thefirst line of defence, to a mere rubbish heap.

  Fortunately the enemy did not suspect the existence of the main trenchwhich had been dug in the rear, and was masked by the embankment on theshore of the island. Having destroyed the bridgehead, the Turkishgunners began to search the embankment methodically, dropping shells atevery few yards along the front. The embankment, consisting of deepand closely packed mud, could not be broken down by the light shellsfrom field-guns; but the bombardment would have played havoc with thedefenders if, as the Turks no doubt supposed, they were extended behindit.

  As soon as their intentions became clear, Burnet withdrew themachine-gun from the second emplacement to the third, which was wellretired from the shore and beyond the enemy's immediate objective.This precaution turned out to be unnecessary, or at least premature,for the bombardment was limited to about two hundred yards on each sideof the bridgehead. Seeing that the second emplacement was outside theenemy's present zone of fire, Burnet had the machine-gun quicklyrestored to its former position.

  Hitherto the Arabs had not fired a single shot in answer to thebombardment. Not a man of the enemy was in sight, and the guns werefar away on the mainland, completely hidden. The Arabs, at firstalarmed by the deafening explosions and the devastating effects of theshells, had begun to recover tone when they saw that the damage wasmainly material. A few of them had been hit by flying splinters ofstone, but their injuries were light, and none had been killed.

  At last the bombardment of the embankment ceased. A few moments latershells began to fall on the ruined buildings in the centre of theisland. Anticipating this, Burnet had told the small body of Arabswhom he was holding there in reserve what to do, and they, with Rejeb,had already taken refuge in the deep underground chambers.

  Immediately after the enemy's fire was lifted, a strong force of Turksrushed along the causeway, being protected by the walls until they cameto the open stretch of some fifty yards. A few succeeded in reachingthe demolished bridgehead; the rest were caught by the fire of themachine-gun from its new emplacement. The attack was too costly to bemaintained; the survivors were recalled; and during the confusion anddisorganisation due to this unexpected check a party of Arabs creptdown to the ruins of the bridgehead, and after a short, sharp fightkilled or captured the handful of Turks who had penetrated so far. TwoArabs escorted the prisoners to the rear; the others, at Burnet'sorders, took cover behind the remains of the defences, to hold them ifpossible against infantry attack, but to retreat if they were againshelled.

  As Burnet expected, the Turkish gunners again changed their objective,directing their fire upon the neighbourhood of the second machine-gunemplacement. The British soldiers, however, had already withdrawn thegun to its third position. Burnet saw clearly enough that in this gameof hide-and-seek the opponent must ultimately win; but meantime itseemed to him the most effectual means of holding up or disconcertingthe attack and playing for time. Sturge assured him that the enemy hadno more than two field-guns in action, as he had judged by timing theirshots; and the area of the island was large enough to give them plentyof work before they could be assured that they had searched everylikely place for the elusive machine-gun.

  This cheerful forecast was rudely belied only a few minutes afterwards.In altering their range, the Turkish gunners dropped several shells onthe open ground between the central ruins and the embankment. One ofthese burst within a few yards of the machine-gun, which was blown offits stand and irreparably damaged. Sturge himself was hit by flyingsplinters and thrown to the ground. It was seen that he was unable torise, and since he could not be carried to the rear without beingexposed to the view of the enemy, all that could be done was to placehim in
the trench until darkness gave an opportunity of removing him.

  Rejoicing that he had kept the second machine-gun in reserve, Burnetsent Jackson to fetch it from its shelter behind a pile of stones atthe extreme left of the position. The shell that had ruined the firsthad found it by accident; another had exploded in the trench and killedor wounded several of the Arabs; but the Turks had now shortened theirrange and were dropping their shells many yards nearer the shore. Theincident, however, was very disquieting. Luck might favour the enemyagain, or the position of the second machine-gun might be more quicklydiscovered when it came into action, and it was the last reserve.Moreover, the casualties suffered in the trench, more serious than anythat the Arabs had hitherto experienced, had had a manifestlydepressing effect on the rest of the garrison. Burnet felt a rackinganxiety as to their steadiness when the next attack should come.

  He was standing beside Jackson, who had just set up the machine-gun,when the man suddenly swung round, exclaiming:

  "Hear that hum, sir?"

  The bursting of a shell drowned all other sounds, but when the rumblingechoes had ceased, Burnet caught a faint drone far away. He scannedthe sky all around; for about a minute nothing was to be seen; butbetween the shots the humming was clearly audible, growing loudercontinually. An aeroplane was approaching: was it friend or foe?

  At last a speck appeared in the eastern sky, growing rapidly larger.It had evidently been seen by the Turks, for the bombardment suddenlyceased: they too, no doubt, were asking themselves the same question.As it drew nearer to the island, the aeroplane rose higher, andpresently the prolonged crackle of rifle fire from the Turkish positionproclaimed that they had recognised it as a British machine.

  Hope surged in Burnet's breast. The eyes of all the garrison werefixed on the aeroplane. It flew high over the island, wheeled round,passed directly over the trench, the disdainful target of innumerableTurkish bullets, then soared away northward. A few moments later twodeafening explosions in quick succession shook the air, and two columnsof smoke rose in the neighbourhood of the northern end of the causeway.The machine again turned, swept away to the east, and was soon out ofsight. Before it disappeared, an Arab ran up to Burnet, and handed himan object which he declared had fallen from the sky as the aeroplanepassed over, and struck the ground near him. Tearing off the canvascover of the missile, Burnet found a small shell case, within which wasa slip of paper. With leaping heart he read the message. "A flyingcolumn of horse is advancing up the Euphrates, and should make contactwith you to-morrow morning. We are opening the ball. Carry on."

  Burnet tingled from head to foot. Without a word he handed the paperto Jackson, who, less restrained, let out a wild cheer. Burnet toldthe Arab to convey the good news to his comrades, and the air was soonfilled with a chorus of discordant shouts. Gloominess of spiritvanished; help was at hand; every man glowed with new courage.

  It was now past midday. Burnet was under no illusion. News of theBritish advance must have reached the Turks opposing him: it probablyexplained their eagerness to rush the island before the walls on thecauseway had been completed. It could hardly be doubted that theywould now make a supreme effort to storm the position: the garrison'ssternest ordeal was yet to come.

  To Burnet's surprise, though the bombardment was kept up intermittentlyby the field-guns during the rest of the day, there was no infantryassault. He jumped to the conclusion that they intended to attackduring the night; perhaps to make a feint along the causeway, and tryto gain the shore of the island in their kelaks. At nightfall onepart, at any rate, of their plan was disclosed. From the causeway camethe sounds of many men hard at work: it was clear that the enemy weretoiling with fierce energy to finish the walls that would cover thelast fifty yards of their approach. The task could easily be completedbefore the dawn, for it could not be effectually hindered; themachine-gun was now so placed that it could not fire directly along thecauseway, but only at an angle across it, and the builders, beingprotected by the walls already raised, were not likely to suffer muchloss in pushing the additions forward.

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

  Burnet saw that there was only one means of saving the situation--ofgaining time until, with the morning, relief came. The enemy must beforestalled. It was important to choose the right moment for thecounter-move. If made too early, and defeated, it might precipitatedisaster. If too long deferred, it might be just too late. Leavingjudgment or chance to decide the point, he quickly made preparations.He sent for the small reserve which had hitherto occupied theunderground chambers in the centre of the island, posted them justbehind the advanced breastwork, and dividing the rest of the garrison,some three hundred in all, into two parties, he ordered them to stealquietly down to the embankment, and be ready to scale it at the word ofcommand.

  In the early hours of the morning the lessening of sounds from thecauseway seemed to indicate that the work on the walls was nearlycompleted. It was pitch dark; not even a reflection of starlight couldbe seen in the water. Burnet gave the word; the men slippednoiselessly across the embankment, half of them on each side of thecauseway; then, no longer preserving silence, dashed into the shallows,which extended some fifteen or twenty paces from the shore, and beganto wade towards the working party. The Turks had only a few moments'warning; but they made fierce resistance with clubbed rifles andpioneer 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 enemywere for the nonce outnumbered; they received no support from the rear;and presently they fled helter-skelter, suffering heavy losses in theirflight from the rifle fire of their assailants.

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

  The night work of the enemy had been frustrated, but Burnet did notflatter himself that the danger was over. Without doubt they weredetermined to capture the island before the arrival of the relievingforce, of whose approach they must by this time be well aware. Howwould the Arabs, wearied by exertions unfamiliar to them, sufferingfrom scarcity of food, endure the shock and strain of the crisis?

  With the first lifting of the sky at dawn the field-guns began asystematic shelling of the embankment and of the area immediatelybehind it, where it was now clear to them from previous events that thegarrison were entrenched. The Arabs, lying close under theirbreastwork, suffered few serious casualties, though many of them werebruised and grazed by fragments of stone and shell, and some wereovercome by the nauseating fumes. Presently the guns were turned onthe ruins of the bridgehead, and Burnet at once withdrew the detachmentfrom its precarious shelter there.

  He had scarcely done so when the storm broke. A dense column of Turkscame rushing along the causeway. Kelaks, one of large size, carrying amachine-gun protected with sand-bags, swept out from the gap. Fromloopholes in the walls on the causeway the enemy poured a hot fire uponthe flanks of the defenders' position. Numbers of Halil's Arabs swamin the wake of the kelaks, which were approaching the island on theside of the causeway remote from Jackson's machine-gun. Jacksondirected his fire across the causeway, and took a heavy toll of thehorde of Turks, bu
t failed to check the determined rush. Finding thatthe machine-gun had not been disposed of, the Turkish gunners againsearched the right flank of Burnet's position, and though they did notsucceed in hitting the exact spot where Jackson, unperturbed, wasemptying his belts of ammunition one after another, he was struck morethan once by chips and slivers of metal and stone.

  As soon as the field-guns changed the direction of their fire, Burnetcalled on some of the Arabs to follow him to the embankment, from whichthey poured a hail of bullets upon the enemy. In spite of losses, theTurks and their Arab allies pressed on and penetrated to thebridgehead. Meanwhile some of the kelaks had reached the shoreopposite Burnet's left, and parties of the enemy swarmed up to thefurther side of the embankment and established themselves there.

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

  There was a brief lull. Some hundreds of Turks and Arabs had nowgained a footing on the island, and were no doubt collecting theirenergies for a final overwhelming rush. Burnet employed the intervalin doing what was possible for his wounded, and in going from end toend of the defences, speaking words of encouragement to the men.

  It was nearly two hours before the rush came. Across the gap at theend of the causeway, or wading through the shallows, or on the kelaks,which had returned for reinforcements, the enemy swarmed to the assaultwith exultant cries. They were now protected by the embankment exceptwhere the machine-gun still enfiladed them, but Jackson's ammunitionwas running short, and fired less rapidly than before. They had landedtheir own machine-gun on the extreme left, and were seen hastilycutting an embrasure in the embankment. If they were unmolested, thedefences would soon be swept from end to end, and all would be over.

  Burnet hurriedly collected fifty men, and led them straight for thegun. A few fell to rifle fire; Burnet himself had his rifle struckfrom his hand; but they flung themselves upon the machine-gun team withthe swiftness of a tornado. A crowded minute of fierce hand-to-handfighting gave them possession of the gun, and they dashed back with it,the retreat involving more losses but not one-tenth of those that thegun would have inflicted in a few seconds Burnet's only regret was thathe could not employ the gun against the enemy.

  THE DASH FOR THE MACHINE-GUN]

  By this time they had scrambled over the embankment and were swarmingtowards breastwork. Burnet rushed to the centre, and succeeded inmaintaining a certain fire discipline among the Arabs within sound ofhis voice. Again and again the enemy recoiled before the defenders'fire, at point-blank range. But reinforcements were continuallystreaming up; one of the field-guns was now concentrating its fire onthe centre of the position; and the sight of comrades falling aroundthem severely strained the resolution of the Arabs. Their valour,proof against infantry attack, could scarcely be expected to endureshelling to which no reply could be made. If the risk of hitting theirown men had not constrained the Turkish gunners to plant their shellswell beyond them, Burnet felt that his force might soon have becomeutterly demoralised.

  Hurrying from point to point, now to give a heartening word to thesurvivors of a shell-burst, now to direct the rifle fire where especialdanger threatened, he lost count of time and all sense of personalrisk. His sole thought was to hold on as long as possible. Now andagain he found himself asking, "Why don't they come?" and listening forthe shots that would announce the proximity of the relieving force.

  It was nearly midday. Burnet, on the left, was suddenly conscious thatthe machine-gun had ceased firing, and saw Jackson hurrying towards himwith a rifle.

  "Played out, sir," said the man. "Fired my last round."

  He had scarcely finished speaking when a bomb exploded near the angleof the breastwork. Immediately afterwards a strong party of Turksswept round, dashed through the smoke, and began to bomb their wayalong the trench. The Arabs crowded back in panic. Some swarmed outof the trench and rushed frantically towards the centre of the island.Burnet and Jackson, together with a few of the more stout-heartedArabs, fired into the advancing mass of Turks; but there was noadequate defence against bombs, no possibility of stemming the rout.

  Step by step they fell back, towards the men who, as yet unaware of thenew weapon in use against their left, were still holding the defenceswith grim valour. The Turkish bombers advanced slowly, respecting therifles which so steadily sped their bullets through the increasingvolume of smoke. And now Burnet saw that another party of the enemy,passing the end of the breastwork, was striking up across the island.At this moment a shell burst a few yards away; he was struck below theknee, and sank to the ground. Jackson, smothered with earth, rushed tohis side.

  "Carry on!" gasped Burnet. "We won't give in till the last gasp."

  Jackson turned about, and fired again into the advancing bombers. Thefield-guns ceased to play; only rifle fire and bomb explosions could beheard. Then, after a minute or two, came reports of guns again, but noshells fell. The blare of bugles was heard, and a few secondsafterwards Jackson, still facing the enemy, shouted:

  "By Jupiter, they're bolting, sir."

  It was true. The men who had penetrated the island were running back.At the breastwork the Turks had suddenly dropped away, and were nowstreaming along the causeway, scrambling on board the kelaks, plunginginto the water, in desperate anxiety to save themselves from the newdanger that threatened them. The ever-increasing boom of guns away tothe west told them clearly enough what that danger was; and Jackson,running a little way up the rising ground behind the scene of the longstruggle, soon declared that he saw the glint of sunlight on lancesabove the patches of vegetation.

  Rejeb's Arabs, weary though they were, sprang over the breastwork andthe embankment and dashed along the causeway in pursuit of theirretreating foe. Many of them suffered from their own temerity, for theTurk in defeat is still a dangerous man, and some of the fugitiveshalted and turned upon their pursuers with grim ferocity.

  Some hours later, Burnet, lying on a couch in Rejeb's tower, wasembarrassed by the congratulations of the colonel commanding therelieving force.

  "Thanks to you," said that officer, "we've made a bag of some five orsix hundred Turks who are now on their way to enjoy the luxuries ofimprisonment, for by all accounts they'll fare better with us thanthey've been doing with their own people lately."

  "Did they put up a fight, sir?" asked Burnet.

  "They made a little noise until our main body came up. Unluckily thatold rascal Halil's men got away on their horses, most of them: afterour long march our horses were too fagged to round them up. But Halilwon't give any more trouble in these parts."

  "And what of our big push, sir?"

  "We've started, and one may say that Bagdad will be our next stop.You'll be out of it, I'm afraid, young man; you'll be under treatmentfor synovitis or something of the sort when we march in."

  "I hope to goodness not, sir," said Burnet, pulling a long face.

  The colonel smiled.

  "That's the right spirit," he said. "Well, I'll take care that theChief knows all about your doings here. If the enemy had got thisposition they might have worried us a good deal on our left flank. ButI'm not sure that your friend the chief here doesn't owe you more thanwe do, for it seems to me that he stood an uncommonly good chance ofbeing wiped out."

  And later, when Rejeb and Burnet were alone together, the Arab thankedthe Englishman with all the fervour of a generous nature.

  "I kiss your eyes, my brother," he said in conclusion, and Burnet knewthat no Eastern phrase more expressive of gratitude could have beenused.