The Thirty Days War

by John Harris

  ‘The horse,’ he had heard Colonel Wood-Withnell say more than once, ‘pulls things, you can ride it, it raises the ego, takes the weight off your feet and allows you to go to war sitting down. When it’s cold you can borrow its warmth and when it’s dead you can even eat it. But it has no place whatsoever on a modern battlefield. In the last war the movement of the armies was halted time and time again by the fodder they had to bring up for them, and outside Kut all the bloody things did was die on us.’

  Craddock had never been convinced. Horses, he felt, were needed for shock action. Charging cavalry had a demoralising effect on infantry and he could just imagine what effect it would have on Irazhi policemen.

  As the horsemen left the city their route passed near the Place Habib abi Chahla. The streets were jammed with people and, as the horsemen clattered past, they started to shout insults.

  Craddock ignored the yells and the stale rubbish that was thrown at them. The opposition was stronger than he had expected, but it was none of his business to deal with it. But, then at the end of the Bab el Wastani, he ran into the crowd trying to get into the Place Habib abi Chahla. It was an immense crowd. The Italian-paid agents had worked well and the Habib abi Chahla was a popular place. It was little more than an open space surrounded by buildings and devoid of greenery, but to the people of the poor quarter of Mandadad it was a park and they had been arriving ever since the previous afternoon. The Italian agent had spread it around that the British were to make concessions and they were anxious to hear them but, because there were concessions, none of them was really particularly opposed to the British. According to what they had heard, the British were even due to leave.

  Those who had arrived the previous night had slept on the dusty ground, pi-dogs scavenging for food around the muttering groups. Most of the people had gathered near a large tree in a corner of the ground where there was a little shade. Among the innocent and unconcerned, however, there were others who had heard different stories. The story they’d heard was not that the British were leaving but that they were being thrown out, and some of them had come from outside the city with carts because there had been talk of loot.

  Many of the people in the Place Habib abi Chahla weren’t even aware of Craddock’s approach. They had drifted inside, seeking the shade of the few trees and, although speeches had started, most of them weren’t listening. Some were playing cards or dice, some were sleeping or gossiping, some merely guarding the shoes or sandals of friends who were in the nearby mosque. It was only slowly that they became aware of the growing disturbance outside the square and rose to their feet to see what was happening.

  In the Bab el Wastani, Craddock had suddenly realised that he was facing a solid wall of people. Most of them weren’t looking at him, but were moving across his front, blocking the road. Then a few of the paid agitators became aware of the approaching horsemen and began to shout. Immediately, the moving crowd turned to their left and found themselves staring at a column of men mounted on huge foreign horses.

  With Craddock was an interpreter on a white mount. He was an Irazhi and, because Craddock had never mastered the language, he went everywhere Craddock went when he was likely to be confronted by locals.

  Craddock lifted his arm and the column halted. An officer cantered up to him then Craddock’s hand gestured to the interpreter to join him.

  ‘I want these people out of the way,’ he said. ‘They’re blocking our route. Tell them to move. I’ll have the trumpeter sound to attract their attention.’

  The high notes of the instrument stopped the shouting and there was an abrupt silence which, to the trumpeter, the interpreter, the officer and every man in the column of horsemen, suddenly seemed ominous. Only Craddock appeared not to notice it.

  ‘Tell them what I want,’ he said.

  The interpreter swallowed, knowing perfectly well that his association with foreign troops had damned him forever. He had fallen into the job quite by accident, simply as a means of earning money, because he had once been employed at the oil depot on the coast and spoke English. Now he was wishing he’d never heard of England.

  ‘Go on,’ Craddock said calmly.

  The interpreter swallowed again and started to shout the instructions on a high note, trying to keep his voice steady when it threatened to slide off into a nervous quaver. As he finished, there was a long silence and for a moment he thought he had done the trick. But the yells started again, at first in patches, then the noise grew in volume and it became clear that the agitators in the crowd had no intention of clearing the route.

  ‘Warn them,’ Craddock said, ‘that if they don’t clear the road I shall make it my business to clear it.’

  The announcement only brought more yelling and the first of the stones. There must have been several thousand people now milling about at the end of the street, and as the stones began to rain on them, Craddock and his group retreated to the main body of the squadron. He gestured at his second in command.

  ‘Have the men dismount.’

  ‘Dismount, sir?’ The officer stared at him as if he were mad.

  ‘I said “Dismount”! Horse-holders to the rear. The men are to line up in front of me armed with their rifles.’

  The officer looked at Craddock. His face was uplifted.

  Colonel Wood-Withnell was occupied with his surgery at the British hospital when he learned what was happening. One of the young doctors appeared in front of him, his expression excited and shocked, his breath coming in pants.

  ‘They say what?’ Wood-Withnell asked.

  ‘They say Colonel Craddock is facing the mob by the Place Habib abi Chahla and that his men have dismounted and have rifles. It looks as if there’s going to be trouble.’

  ‘Good God!’ Wood-Withnell tossed down his stethoscope with a clatter. ‘I’ve always said that madman would start something if he got a chance. Have my car brought to the door. I’ll be there in a moment.’

  But when Colonel Wood-Withnell left the hospital and approached the centre of the town, he found it impossible to get through. The news of trouble had spread quickly and the streets had filled up rapidly so that he was quite unable to push towards the Place Habib abi Chahla.

  By this time, Craddock’s men were facing a mob that had grown to the region of fifty thousand. They were yelling ‘Down with the British’ and the Italian agent was urging them to stand fast. It was his job to see that they didn’t move and if he could create a situation where the crowd was fired on so much the better.

  ‘They’ll never shoot,’ he was yelling from behind the safety of a stone pillar. ‘They’ll never shoot! They wouldn’t dare to shoot Irazhis!’

  The Irazhi interpreter with Craddock wasn’t so sure and was already looking about him for a nearby hole into which he could bolt.

  ‘Tell them again,’ Craddock said. ‘Tell them I wish to go about my task. I mean them no harm but I will not have them stop me from doing my duty.’

  Again the interpreter tried but the agitators drowned his shouts with their insistence that the British soldiers wouldn’t dare shoot.

  ‘Very well,’ Craddock said in a flat voice. ‘A Squadron left. B Squadron right. Prepare to fire.’

  A few people ran for safety as the rifles were raised, but the agitators were still yelling from behind the thick ranks of the mob. ‘Ignore them! They’ve only got blanks in the guns!’

  Craddock looked at his watch, took out a cigarette and lit it, then looked at his watch again.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Fire!’

  ‘Over their heads, sir?’

  ‘No, dammit! Into ’em.’

  At the command, the soldiers fired a volley into the heart of the crowd. As a wail of horror rose, people began to run, yelling, and there was a flurry of white garments as the crowd crumbled and began to stream away. Deciding their job was done, the agitators were already disappearing.

  ‘Again,’ Craddock said quite calmly. ‘Rapid fire.’

  The officer gave
him a shocked look but passed on the order, and the soldiers reloaded and fired again. The crash of musketry came like the roar of cannon, then it died to a steady crackle. Eventually it stopped and there was an eerie silence.

  ‘That ought to shift ’em,’ Craddock said. ‘Have the men mount.’

  Looking a little shocked, the soldiers lowered their rifles and the horse-holders ran up holding the reins of the horses. Ahead of them, the walls of the houses were pockmarked and the shuttered windows were splintered. Several of the soldiers, unable to bring themselves to fire directly into the crowd, had aimed high. Ahead of them there was a litter of white-clothed bodies and dust stained red in the sun. A few figures were crawling away like wounded animals.

  Craddock stared ahead and now even he seemed to have doubts. ‘We’ll about turn,’ he announced, ‘and leave by the south gate. Have a messenger sent to the barracks to warn Major Johns with C Squadron that he might be needed but that I expect to be back by this time the day after tomorrow.’

  There was a creak of leather and a jingle of equipment as the soldiers settled in their saddles. Followed by his second in command and the shaking interpreter, Craddock turned his horse and rode back alongside the ranks, each file turning after him to follow.

  By the time Colonel Wood-Withnell arrived, Irazhi doctors had begun to appear on the scene and, hearing the yelling and then the firing, people had arrived to search for relatives.

  ‘Good God Almighty,’ the old man said. ‘What on earth has that idiot been up to?’

  The cries of protest and horror were being drowned by the wails of the injured. The wounded were being hurried away and overhead the vultures, aware of blood, began to gather. Suddenly the whole of the poor quarter of the city seemed to be sending up a single wail of misery and protest. A sixteen-year-old boy was sitting with his back against a wall, trying to hold his entrails in. Alongside him a man was crawling away on hands and knees, his jaw shot away, his tongue flopping out, pink and obscene. By this time the bodies of the dead were being taken to the mosques where crowds were gathering, yelling their fury. One of the Irazhi doctors, seeing Colonel Wood-Withnell bent over a dying woman, moved quietly to his side.

  ‘Colonel Pasha!’ he said. ‘I would advise you to go home. Soon there will be trouble.’

  Wood-Withnell looked up, his leathery face indignant. The cries of the mob in the distance were chilling. ‘My place’s here,’ he said.

  ‘Sir!’ The Irazhi doctor was adamant. ‘You are a good man. I know that. I have known you a long time. But I say “Go”. Soon you’ll not be able to go. I beg you – leave.’

  The colonel stared at him, his face expressionless, then he wiped his bloody hands on his khaki trousers and straightened up. ‘Very well,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ll go.’

  From his window, squinting against the sun, Group Captain Vizard was watching the descent of an Audax trainer, wondering just how good the pupil pilot was and if he’d be able to use him in an emergency.

  Apart from the freeing of the Irazhi prisoners at Musol and the rough handling of the British employees at Zuka, so far there had been no further move from the Irazhi authorities. A good forty-eight hours had elapsed and, though air reconnaissance near the Irazhi airfields had reported that there were the expected Irazhi Gladiators, Audaxes, Northrops, Bredas and Savoias, there was so far no sign of anything more up to date and no sign of German machines.

  He decided that perhaps they were going to get away with it after all. He’d heard of the Royal Engineers being fired on, on the road towards the Transjordan frontier at Hatbah, but that was not being allowed to go unanswered and he’d heard that the ambassador had agreed to Craddock and a squadron of his dragoons in lorries going out to rescue them.

  The shrilling of the telephone made him turn. The air vice-marshal’s voice spoke as he picked it up.

  ‘Get over here, Tom,’ it said. ‘Quickly! We have trouble.’

  By the time he reached the air vice-marshal’s office, the place was full of officers. The AVM filled him in at once.

  ‘That damn fool Craddock fired on the mob in Mandadad,’ he said. ‘Two hundred dead, I understand, though that seems a lot and may be exaggerated.’

  ‘Where’s Craddock now?’

  ‘On the way to Hatbah,’ the AVM said. ‘On horses! Horses, for God’s sake! He said he was taking one squadron in lorries but during the night he changed his mind and instead he’s taken two – on horses! What’s more, he’s picked up the troop from Bisha, so that now there’s nothing to stop the Irazhis occupying the place and threatening the north side of the camp from across the river. The man must be off his head.’

  It had long been Vizard’s belief that Craddock going round the bend was an event they could all expect sooner or later, but he said nothing. The AVM had plenty on his plate already.

  ‘Rioting’s started,’ the AVM said. ‘One of the banks has been attacked and a British official has been beaten to death. It wasn’t even a British bank but, because a British national was there in an advisory capacity, they set it on fire. It’s already burned out and the mob’s now raiding the store next door. What’s more, it’s spreading. The one squadron Craddock left to handle the mess he created just isn’t enough. They turned out under Craddock’s second in command and tried to bar the way to the station but the crowd was around forty thousand strong and they were forced to retreat to their barracks. Major Johns thinks he can hold the barracks but already he’s getting people in, scared stiff and seeking safety. They’re also turning up at the embassy and the ambassador’s sufficiently alarmed to ask if British women and children can be evacuated from Kubaiyah.’

  ‘The Valentias can move some of them, sir. But there won’t be enough.’

  The AVM gestured. ‘I’ve been in touch with Shaibah,’ he said. ‘They’ve agreed to send Dakotas up to help. They’ll be bringing extra troops and weapons for the defence of this place, but the ambassador’s clearly worried and half-expecting a siege of the embassy and he’s asking if we can supply a few extra weapons, supplies and sandbags. What can you do?’

  Eight

  Boumphrey was caught out of touch by the rioting.

  By this time, with the troops in the capital insufficient to deal with the crisis and with the Irazhi government and army affecting not to have noticed what was going on, incident had piled on incident and the air was filled with shouts of revenge. A British corporal sent some time before to the post office on behalf of Major Johns was caught outside by the mob. Backing up against a wall, with only a little of the Irazhi language at his command, he was set upon and beaten to death. He didn’t even have the pleasure of knowing why, because the shooting at the Place Habib abi Chahla had occurred far enough away not to be heard. A British telegraph office was set on fire and the telegraph master, an Irazhi who worked for the British, was torn limb from limb. The goods yard was attacked and British equipment there, which had come up on the single line from Basra at great expense, was covered with kerosene and set on fire. A British bank was attacked and the manager and his assistant, normally both popular men who had had many dealings with the Irazhi businessmen, were murdered and their bodies thrown onto the pile of furniture from their office which was then set on fire with the building.

  The rioting had started so quickly and spread so rapidly after the shooting, many people were caught unawares. A woman missionary was dragged from her bicycle and, though she managed to escape to the home of a local family who knew her, she was dragged out again and savagely beaten. Left for dead, she was rescued once more by the Irazhi family who placed her in a cart, covered her with a blanket and took her to the embassy, more dead than alive. A British electrician working at the power station had his skull smashed in, again – like the soldier at the post office – without even knowing why.

  By this time the news was spreading and British homes were being evacuated, the families who occupied them leaving with only what they could carry. Some fled without even packing the bare essen
tials and made their way to an old stone barracks used by Craddock’s troops as a fodder store. As they gathered behind the line of British soldiers who held the gate, more news of burnings and killings came in. The heat was appalling because the day was windless and stifling and there was an acute shortage of fans. Realising that, with only one squadron, he couldn’t hold the larger new barracks, Major Johns had occupied the smaller old ones which, though they were stronger and of stone and couldn’t be set on fire, were dirty, lacked proper sanitation and were short of mosquito nets. To the perspiring British women and children, used to being waited on hand and foot, the conditions were agonising.

  News came in dribs and drabs. The Christian church had been burned down and the Missionary Society’s school had been destroyed, the four women who normally occupied it rescued by a squad of men sent by Major Johns. It was quite clear the Mandadad police were making no attempt to help and small groups of Europeans prayed for darkness so they could sneak across the railway lines past the mob and make their way either to the barracks or to the embassy which was already surrounded and in a state of siege.

  In the old barracks and in spare quarters at the embassy the wilting women and children were being packed in sixteen to a room and already there was a case of typhoid among the children. They all had horrifying tales of the mob yelling for British blood. Those who could understand Arabic knew what they were saying: ‘Rise! Murder the Europeans!’

  With dark, the rioting died down and the streets became deserted. But the uncanny silence was perhaps even more unnerving than the din. There was debris everywhere and every now and then flickering flames where some house or building had been set on fire. Discarded plunder from British-owned warehouses was scattered among the gutted-buildings, and telegraph wires hung in festoons to the road where British motorcars still burned.

  Uncertain what was happening fifty-five miles away, the RAF had nevertheless not been idle. They had been on the alert for some time and reconnaissances were being made by the remaining armoured cars, and by aircraft – still trying to maintain the fiction of training – over the neighbouring villages. They had confirmed that Irazhi troops had picketed the bridge at Fullajah and the iron bridge at Shawah over the canal leading into Mandadad; and that Howeidi, a village fourteen miles to the west along the trans-desert road from Palestine to Mandadad, had been occupied by what appeared to be a whole brigade of Irazhi troops soon after Craddock and his squadrons had trotted through on their way to Hatbah, so that now they would be unable to get back. Aircraft flying over the fort had found him and his two squadrons inside. They had evidently reached the Engineers but were now sealed up with them, and the fort was surrounded by Irazhi police and regular soldiers, together with a few robed horsemen who had been identified as belonging to Fawzi ali Khayyam.