The Turkish troops had withdrawn in great haste, and the inhabitants of the city did not seem especially hostile. The dragoons stared in wonderment at the many splendid buildings, the huge mosques, the towering minarets, and the veiled women who looked down on them from the flat roofs which lined the streets.
‘The lads would like a jolly,’ Prendergast muttered. He had been intensely relieved to have Murdoch back, and Murdoch was coming to accept what he had known for some time, that Billy, although a fine fellow and the senior officer in the regiment after himself, was not really command material. There was a looming problem.
One which cropped up sooner than he had expected. General Maude spent the summer consolidating his position around Baghdad, which suited Murdoch, as he was enabled to recover from his wound. It had been a back-handed sabre cut, neither very deep nor affecting any vital part of his body, although his spinal column had certainly received a jolt. But in the heat and lack of proper sanitation of Mesopotamia any wound was potentially dangerous, and healing was a slow and laborious process. The effort of riding into Baghdad at the head of his men brought on a fever which rapidly developed, and he was back in bed for several weeks. But he was well cared for, and if there were no English nurses available he was in the hands of veiled Turkish ladies who fussed over him, resenting the close supervision of Reynolds, who, as on previous occasions, moved into the hospital to make sure nothing went wrong with his Mr Murdoch.
The halt gave time for letters to catch up with him, and there were the usual congratulatory comments from Sir John French and from Sir Edward Allenby who was now commanding the British army in Palestine, really only a desert away, and who commented that he wished he had the Royal Western Dragoons to play with over there. Lee was not quite so complimentary, wondering whether he was going to be held together with string when next she saw him, and why he had not come home like any reasonable wounded officer.
Either Prendergast or Ramage came in every day to keep him up to date on the activities of the regiment, whose duties once more consisted mainly of reconnaissance, and whose problems were the age-old ones of venereal disease and boredom — the situation of the troops as a whole was complicated by a growing number of outbreaks of cholera, mainly amongst the Indian contingents, but none the less worrying.
The victory as a whole had raised the morale of the army immensely, and this was important because the news from overseas was again uniformly bad — in every way but one. Marshal Joffre had suffered the fate of Sir John French for having failed to beat the Germans, and had been replaced as French commander-in-chief by General Nivelle, but his offensive in the spring had been as disastrous as all the others and the French army had actually mutinied when again ordered to advance, although this was a closely guarded military secret. The British, still under Douglas Haig — now a field marshal — had also suffered heavy casualties, but it was exciting for Murdoch to read that Winston Churchill’s enthusiasm and Ernest Swinton’s imaginative genius had at last borne fruit, and that tanks had been in action, both on the Somme and in the latest battles. They had caused consternation among the Germans, but it had been the same old story. The High Command had not expected the tanks to have any such effect, had sent them into action piecemeal and without adequate reserves, and had squandered their potential. But that tanks were the land weapon of the future could not be doubted.
On the encouraging side, and an event which sent Lee into raptures of joy, was the decision of the United States to enter the war following the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare by the Germans. This happened in April, and it seemed likely to be just in time, as the submarines were now claiming an impossibly large number of British ships every month — the island was under intensive rationing. ‘But with our navy alongside yours, not to mention the doughboys in France, we have just got to win,’ Lee wrote enthusiastically. ‘Harry has at last got into uniform. He’s on General Pershing’s staff. Oh, boy, is he over the moon.’
There was another reason for welcoming American intervention. That spring and summer there came disconcerting news from immediately north of the army in Baghdad, that the Russian front had collapsed in revolution. All manner of rumours about what was going to happen filtered through, but the only certain fact was that the Tsar had been forced to abdicate and that Russia, no matter what the provisional government of Mr Kerensky managed to achieve, was never going to be the same again.
General Maude therefore determined to move north as soon as the hot weather ended, and strike for the oilfields of Mosul, in effect securing all of Mesopotamia for the British before any possibly hostile Russian intervention could take effect. Murdoch was now officially healed, and was exercising Jupiter daily in an effort to regain full fitness in time for the coming campaign. He was therefore taken aback to be summoned to Maude’s headquarters and told to nominate a replacement brevet lieutenant-colonel for the regiment.
‘Sir?’ he asked.
‘You are being relieved of your command, Murdoch. Orders from England. As of this moment you are a brigadier-general. There is a cavalry brigade awaiting you in France.’
Chapter Five: France, 1917-18
‘You are brevetted lieutenant-colonel, Billy,’ Murdoch told Prendergast. ‘The rank will be confirmed in due course.’ But would it? He had had no choice, in his report to Maude, but to write that while Major William Prendergast was a fine officer, and the most senior in the regiment, he had time and again revealed a tendency to indecision and uncertainty when under pressure. He knew how the army worked. They would not promote Peter Ramage, a far more suitable choice, over Billy; they would bring in an outsider as lieutenant-colonel, until they could shunt Billy aside as painlessly as possible, and then Ramage would eventually succeed to the position. It had happened during his own youthful years in the dragoons...to ease his own way past an insufficient officer.
But on the other hand, with a war on...things might be different.
‘Gosh,’ Billy said. ‘I really hadn’t expected this, well, not so soon. But you...congratulations, Murdoch. Oh, best congratulations.’
‘I wish to God it hadn’t happened,’ Murdoch said, truthfully enough. ‘To leave you chaps...’
‘But the fighting’s just about done, out here,’ Billy said hopefully.
‘Don’t you believe it.’ Murdoch knew Maude’s plans for an advance on Mosul in the near future. And he was going back to the mud and filth and futility that was France. As a brigadier-general he might expect to avoid some of the first two — but the last would be even greater after the free-riding campaign in the desert.
His men seemed as sorry as himself to be parting. Only two of them, Corporal Reynolds and RSM Yeald, had served as long as he, and with the regiment. Reynolds, of course, would be accompanying him; Yeald would remain. ‘Maybe one day we’ll be part of your command again, sir,’ the sergeant-major said.
‘If I can possibly manage it, Yeald, you will be.’ Murdoch felt close to tears. For eighteen years this regiment had been his entire life.
‘Good hunting.’ Peter Ramage squeezed his hand. ‘May your next charge be right up the Unter den Linden.’
Men like Manly-Smith, Collier, Destry and Bryan, who had known no other commanding officer, looked as distressed as he felt.
Then it was the comfortable, boring ride back down the river to Basra in one of the gunboats, with only Reynolds for company; Jupiter and Reynolds’ horse, Chinaman, were corralled on the foredeck.
‘Mrs Mackinder will be glad to have you back, sir,’ Reynolds reminded him as Murdoch brooded at the desert drifting by.
‘Yes,’ Murdoch said, and attempted to square his shoulders; it was still a painful business. ‘And I will be glad to be back.’ It was a case of reminding himself of that.
*
‘Oh, Murdoch!’ Lee turned him round to look at his back the moment they were alone in their bedroom. ‘Oh, my God!’
‘It’s not really very deep. Just nasty-looking,’ Murdoch assured her.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It is nasty-looking. How on earth did you get that?’
‘You mean the charge wasn’t reported?’
‘Not that I saw. There’s so much going on...’
‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ he commented. Then took her in his arms. ‘First time I’ve ever been small beer. But then, I suppose Mesopotamia is small beer compared with what is going on in France.’
‘It earned you promotion. Brigadier general, at thirty-six.’ She touched the crossed sword and baton on his shoulder strap. ‘Oh, Murdoch, I am so proud of you.’ She clung to him. ‘How long have you got?’
‘Four days.’
‘Four days? Oh, hell...’
He kissed her on the mouth. ‘And four nights, my dearest girl.’
Chand Bibi might have been out of a different existence. As she was. The passions aroused by the heat of the desert had no place amongst the passions to be aroused in the warmth of an English bedroom. Now at last she could be forgotten.
*
‘You will command what in effect is the Light Brigade, General Mackinder.’ General Sir William Robertson was a tall, spare man of fifty-seven, with a thin moustache and a grim expression. Murdoch had been acquainted with him for a long time — he had been quartermaster-general of the original BEF in 1914 — and was well aware that he had risen from the ranks to his present exalted position as Chief of the Imperial General Staff, in effect, overall supremo of the British army, a post he had taken over from Kitchener even before the latter’s death. His career was therefore unique, and had been a difficult one, both socially and in service. He was not a man who made friends easily, or who forgave fools, either.
But now he allowed himself a brief smile. ‘With your penchant for leading desperate charges, you would seem to be the right man for the job. So you will have a regiment of lancers, a regiment of hussars, and a regiment of light dragoons under your command. You will be attached to the Cavalry Corps, Lieutenant-General Kavanagh. Have you served with him before?’
‘Yes, sir. I was with him in South Africa.’
‘Then you’ll know him to be a most determined officer. There is every possibility that, with the arrival of more and more American troops, things will begin to turn our way in the near future. Of course the Americans are very raw, and very stubborn...they are quite refusing to amalgamate their forces with any of our armies or the French, seem determined to fight on their own, but their very numbers must make a difference. Equally, however, there is a good deal of hard fighting ahead. The Bolsheviks seem to have definitely ousted Kerensky and are suing for a separate peace, which means the Germans will be able to release a considerable number of men for service on the western front. Still, things are coming along. I have every hope that you will discover further opportunities for distinction, Mackinder. But I would strongly advise that you exercise patience and self-control wherever possible. You are one of our youngest brigadiers.’ He paused reflectively, as if wondering whether or not Murdoch might be too young for such responsibility, then added, ‘Good day to you and good fortune.’
*
Mr Churchill also wanted to see him again. Churchill had served in France for a spell in 1916 as a colonel, but had been recalled following the reshuffle of the Government to be Minister of Munitions, and apply his enormous energy to ensuring that at last the British army had all the shells and bullets it required. But he wanted to talk about tanks, after the usual brief congratulations.
‘I heard about them on the Somme, last year,’ Murdoch said. ‘Without any endorsement from me.’
‘Wasn’t necessary, as it turned out.’
‘Pity there weren’t more of them.’
‘They were used prematurely,’ Churchill growled. ‘That’s the trouble with the army. Show them something worthwhile and they immediately ruin it. The fact was that the top brass didn’t believe in them, and were only too happy to point up their shortcomings. We always knew they were slow, and short-ranged, and liable to mechanical failure. Tanks have to be used in massed, sharp attacks, then regrouped and repaired, and thrust forward again. Well,’ he grinned. ‘They are beginning to see the light. They have ordered quite a few of them, and have even had some officers training in how to get the best use out of them. I’ll tell you this, Mackinder: I am half American, just like your kids, and I am proud of it. I can’t wait to see a full American army on French soil. But it is the tank which is going to win this war for us...not all the doughboys in the world. Bear that in mind. Good luck with your command.’
*
Churchill was proved right sooner than Murdoch had expected. Or perhaps the minister had advance knowledge of British plans. Murdoch’s return had been delayed by the necessity of waiting for a ship in Basra, and then he had been allowed a brief leave, so that it was mid-November 1917 before he got back to France, a time when campaigning might have been expected to be over for a few months. He had barely joined Lieutenant-General Sir Charles Kavanagh’s corps, however, when the Third Army, commanded by General Sir Julian Byng, launched a unique attack upon the German position in front of Cambrai. It was unique because there was no preliminary bombardment, and because the assault was led, in complete surprise, by two hundred tanks. The Germans were devastated, and a five-mile-deep gap was torn in their line. Then the old story reasserted itself; the tanks began to fail, the infantry were not in close enough support to consolidate, and there were insufficient reserves to follow up. The Germans recovered their nerves and the gap was plugged.
‘But it’s a sign of what can be done,’ General Kavanagh told him. ‘Of what will be done, Mackinder. And then our fellows can be let loose.’
Murdoch was inclined to take that with a pinch of salt; apparently two cavalry divisions had been waiting to utilize the breakthrough at Cambrai, but the gap had been closed too quickly. And conditions in France were as he remembered them, only worse. The Cavalry Corps was spread out behind the line of four British armies holding the front north-west of Paris. Of these, Sir Henry Rawlinson’s Fourth Army lay just north of the Somme River, within indeed a very few miles of the coast; where Murdoch and Harry Caspar had ridden into St Omer for a French meal, now it was necessary to visit Abbeville.
General Plumer’s Second Army was on their left, holding Ypres and the area between the Lys and the Yser; General Byng’s Third Army, still flushed with their Cambrai success, however disappointed they were at the eventual outcome, lay on the right, and beyond that was General Hubert Gough’s Fifth Army. Both Byng and Gough were cavalrymen under whom Murdoch had served previously. His new commander, Kavanagh, was, like Gough, an Irishman, and like Murdoch and every other cavalryman, feeling extremely frustrated. ‘If only they’d give us a chance,’ he grumbled.
Murdoch didn’t see what they were going to do even with a chance. He took the first opportunity he could to go up to the line and see for himself the tangled, shell-cratered, muddy wilderness that extended for several miles to the north and east. Presumably if they could cross that they would find open, rolling country, the country across which Wellington and Marlborough had manoeuvred their armies in the past. But they had to cross the slough first, and having watched the horsemen under his command slither-ing and sliding, their mounts whinnying in discomfort, some having to be shot after breaking legs in unsuspected potholes, he for the first time began to feel pessimistic about the future.
The quality of both men and horses was, however, high. His three lieutenants-colonel, Moore of the Lancers, Cawdray of the Hussars, and Bright of the Dragoons, were experienced soldiers, as was Major John Proud, his adjutant. He had met all four of them before the war, on the Curragh, but had never actually been brigaded with them, much less been in command of them. For their part, they, and their men, were delighted to have been given such a famous cavalryman as their commander, and undoubtedly looked forward to achieving great things under his leadership. They were somewhat dashed when he immediately inaugurated his vigorous training methods, having the men learning to sh
oot at the canter, and performing all other manner of intricate exercises in the winter snow. ‘Preparation is what wins battles,’ he kept telling them. ‘Being in the best shape to take advantage of whatever situation crops up.’
They couldn’t argue with his experience, but they groaned with each new exercise he devised, and the more so when he talked the local tank corps commander — for the tanks were refitting behind the lines — into joint exercises, so that at least the horses would cease to be terrified of the huge, smelly, noisy creatures.
He himself was aware for the first time of being lonely. His staff were the best of fellows, and Proud soon became a friend, but it was not the same thing as being part of the huge family which was the regiment. There were no personal problems to be listened to — and, hopefully, solved — no quarrels to be settled, no health or kit problems to be tackled, merely the business of planning and training men who were in every way strangers — it was quite impossible to know the name of every man in a brigade. He was also disturbed by the news which arrived from Mesopotamia, which was where his heart really lay. General Maude had duly launched his advance to the north in September, had won another battle over the Turks at Ramadi, and had continued to force his way up the Euphrates towards Mosul. And then had died, on 18 November, of cholera. This ghastly disease was making its presence felt throughout the Middle Eastern army, and Murdoch could only wonder, and worry, about the state of his beloved Westerns. More encouraging was the news from Palestine where General Allenby was steadily forging ahead, and at Christmas word was received that he had taken Jerusalem.
*
With the new year, the Americans began to make themselves felt. Not only by arriving in France in increasing numbers, but on the diplomatic front as well, and it was in January that President Wilson put forward his Fourteen Points on the basis of which he felt a just and honourable peace could be achieved. The points were the sole topic of conversation in the various messes, and the actual war suddenly seemed less important, especially with the wintry snow lying on the ground and the armies quiescent. The British officers also had a new topic of conversation in the sudden replacement of General Robertson as CIGS by General Sir Henry Wilson. Another Irishman, Wilson was regarded with mixed feelings by the normal serving officer, in that he had spent most of his senior career either as commandant of the Staff College or, more recently, as chief liaison officer between the British and French armies — he spoke French fluently. Murdoch surmised that this was the principal reason for his appointment, as relations between Field Marshal Haig and the new French commander-in-chief, Pétain, had grown somewhat strained over the past year as offensive after offensive had gone astray. And there could be no doubt of Wilson’s efficiency; he had been responsible for the trans-shipment of the BEF to France in 1914, and had carried out his mission without losing a man or a horse.
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