Forty Days of Musa Dagh

by Franz Werfel

  This could only be an attempt at envelopment from the coast side. So much was clear not only to Gabriel, but to Chaush Nurhan and all the rest. Gabriel deputed his command to his most reliable decad commander, and left the trench, taking Nurhan with him. They climbed up to the men posted among the rocks and itching to fight. The natives of Musa Dagh knew every stone, every jutting ledge, every grotto, bush, and aloe of this bare, indented, limestone promontory, below which, three or four hundred feet to the sea, the jagged cliff fell sheer, or in ledges. This knowledge was of incalculable advantage against troops who could not find their way here, no matter how much the stronger these might be. Bagradian left it to his mountaineers to dispose themselves so cunningly in the crevices and behind rocks that communication was kept intact and there would be no danger of one receiving the other's fire. Their task was the same as that of the others -- to lure the enemy on to destruction by means of complete invisibility and absolute quiet.

  But this time the enemy was more alert. He advanced his main force slowly along the counter-slope, facing the Saddle, and opened fire at the very edge of the wood, well protected by trees. It was a fire at once vehement and nervous, directed against the main trench, but, as before, not answered by its defenders. And, during this, announced by scouts, a patrol of four men advanced, very gingerly indeed, among the rocks. It was evident that these were not mountain-dwellers. They came stumbling on across the stones, ducking their way from cover to cover. They reconnoitred very carefully, looked into every hole, behind every ledge. The Armenians saw with relish that they were saptiehs. The soldiers were strangers. But the saptiehs! Now was the moment to pay back in some of its own coin this lowest by-product of militarism, these bestial skunks, valiant in their dealings with old women, scared of a man, until they had disarmed him three times. Gabriel noticed a crazy glint in many eyes.

  The onbashi of the saptiehs must have imagined that he was already past the line of entrenchments, and so in the rear of the Armenians. Noiselessly he sent back one of his men, who began to signal with a red flag. It was still some time before this enveloping force came slowly on, at a stumbling, ever-retreating pace, as though they were advancing through boiling water. This group was half infantrymen, half saptiehs. Urged by its officers, it reached the place to which the onbashi had already reconnoitred the ground. Then, at a moment when most of them were without cover, the Armenians opened fire, from all sides. They leaped about in scurrying confusion. They forgot their rifles. The Turk, the Anatolian especially, is a good soldier. But this attack seemed to come from nowhere. Not even the brave knew how to defend themselves. By the time the Armenians dashed out from their hiding holes and among their rocks, the air was thick with groans and yelps of pain. With Chaush Nurhan at their head they at once drove a wedge between saptiehs and infantry. Of the first a number were cut off, and driven outwards, towards the cliffs. They got lost among the inexorable rocks, and cringed helplessly against the stone waiting for a bullet, or remained desperately caught, clinging to the thorny acanthus plants. Many began to slip, turned head over heels, and bounced from rock to rock, like balls, before they went hurtling into the sea. But the main body of the Turks tried to escape from amid this rocky confusion by the shortest cut, and leapt, stumbled, rushed towards the Saddle, chased by the mountaineers.

  These were no longer sane. Unintelligible, throaty growls came out of them as they tracked this enemy. Gabriel himself had long since lost the clear-headedness of a leader, was the wild prey of some intoxication, a crazy rhythm come suddenly to life in his blood that had slumbered a thousand years. He, too, let out these short, slavering sounds, a savage speech which, if he had been conscious, would have horrified him. Now the world was a hundred times more impalpable. It was nothing! Less solid than the humming of a dragonfly. It was a reddish, skipping ballet, in which the dancer could feel no pain. Pastor Aram Tomasian, who had been one of the fighters among the rocks, was swept along by the same madness. He, like a crusader brandishing a crucifix, howled: "Christ! Christ!" But the warrior-Christ of his battle cry had very little indeed in common with that stern, suffering Lord, by whose Testament the pastor as a rule strove to guide his days. Oddly, these shouts of "Christ" brought Gabriel back to his senses with a jerk. He began to observe the fight, but as though he himself were not engaged in it, much less its commander.

  This noise of a battle among the rocks was the signal for the Turkish firing line, on the edge of the wood along the counter-slope, to advance in a frontal attack. They came out in extended lines, shooting at nothing, threw themselves on the ground, shot in the air again, sprang up again, ran on a few steps, and then ducked down. At just this minute the last of the routed, would-be envelopers had been driven out from among the rocks. Therefore their pursuers' fire took the attacking lines in the flank.

  Gabriel stood on a rock, but did not shoot. He watched one of the Turkish lieutenants intercept a disordered group to rally a defence around it. The line was already flinging itself down to open fire. But Chaush Nurhan sprang at the Turkish officer, and felled him with a crack of his rifle-butt. The Turks threw away their guns, as though they had just seen the devil, and indeed the old sergeant was not unlike him. He let them see what a perfect soldier the Turkish infantry had lost. His face was purple. His huge gray moustache bristled wildly. He had not even a hoarse crow left in his throat. He did not seem in the least to realize that he must take cover or be shot down. Sometimes he stopped, to raise his bugle and force out of it a long, jerky call, whose ferocity had its effect on both friend and enemy.

  When Bagradian saw that the Turks were trying to turn their front towards the rocks, he swung his rifle round his head, to give the men in the long trench the galloping-signal. Their decad commanders had had their work cut out to hold them. They came rushing with a bellow over the top, spattering the new Turkish flank with bullets, without throwing themselves down, or any longer trying to save supplies. So that the company was helplessly caught between the two blades of a shears. With more presence of mind and experience, Bagradian might have wiped them out or taken them prisoner. As it was, by a wild scurry, they could escape, though both flank-protecting decads blocked their way, and then shot after them. This wild Turkish scurry down the mountain did not even halt at the foot of the Damlayik, but only in the church square of Bitias, where at last they rallied.

  Nine soldiers, seven saptiehs, and one young officer had fallen into the hands of the defenders. These, as a matter of course, and with the most frigid ferocity, set to work to demonstrate to their prisoners exactly what it feels like to die in an Armenian massacre. Two of the saptiehs Gabriel could no longer rescue. But he, Pastor Aram, and a few more of the elder men threw themselves before the other prisoners -- though Chaush Nurhan, and with him the overwhelming majority, could not in the least understand such mercy shown to the butchering tyrants of a hundred thousand of their race. It was very hard for Bagradian to make the disappointed men see reason.

  "We shan't get anything out of killing them, nor out of keeping them here as hostages. They'll sacrifice their own without thinking twice about it. And then we should have to feed them. But it would be to our advantage to send them with a message to Antakiya."

  He turned to the white-faced lieutenant, who could scarcely manage to stand upright. "Well, you've seen how easily we can deal with you. And you can send us regiments instead of companies -- it's all the same to us. Look up at the sky. The sun's not down yet. And, if we'd really wanted it to happen, not one of you would still be alive. Go and say that to your commandant in Antakiya. Tell him how much more mildly than you deserved we've handled you. Tell him, in my name, he'd better keep his regiments and companies for war against the enemies of Turkey -- not against her peaceful citizens. We want to be let live up here in peace. That's all we want. Don't molest us in future, unless you'd like some even worse experiences."

  The swaggering undertones of this, the certainty with which he seemed to be threatening, the pitiful fear these priso
ners showed of being slaughtered -- all this assuaged the blood-lust of the decads. They forced the Turks not only to leave behind their arms, their boots and uniforms, but to strip to the skin. In this miserable state they were released, and had besides to drag their dead and wounded down the mule-track of the Damlayik. That day's booty was considerable: ninety-three Mauser rifles, abundant munitions, bayonets. Of the sixty-five decads not fully armed, about ten could now be armed completely. This did most of all to raise morale. Such success had been gained without one loss -- the Armenians had only six wounded, and none of them seriously.

  It is not surprising that so stupendous a victory should have been very much overrated, both by the decads and the people. A few poor, exiled villagers, insufficiently clad and scarcely housed, nesting on the summit of their hill, had -- as it were with their bare fists -- with the certainty of death in their souls, routed a company at war strength, a hundred Turkish regulars, trained for months and armed with the very latest rifles. And not only routed, but almost finished them. This fierce but easy struggle had not lasted four hours. It had all been accomplished in a hand's turn, without a casualty worth the name, thanks to a well-considered plan, a magnificent system of defences.

  But Gabriel had no joy in it all, only a kind of weary embarrassment. Nor did he feel he had rendered any extraordinary service. Any other officer who knew war could have put the Damlayik in just the same state of defence. It was not unusual acumen, it was the natural advantage of the mountain, that had given them their victory. The grey heads of the mukhtars swayed before his eyes, since even these uncongenial peasants, who had always behaved so pawkily towards "the foreigner," were now clutching at his hand to kiss it as though he had been their father. This hand-kissing filled him with dismay. His right hand struggled against it desperately. He longed to thrust it into his pocket. Slowly he forged a way through the dense crowd. He looked round for help, for a face that meant something, and at last he discovered Iskuhi. She had followed him all this time, but always keeping behind his back. Now, as he drew her hand towards him, he seemed to feel that her fragile body could give support.

  "Juliette's waiting; she's got everything ready," Iskuhi whispered.

  He did not heed her words; he heeded her touch. Iskuhi walked at his side, as though leading the blind. Suddenly he felt astonished that all this blood and death should not have moved her.

  At last, in the tent, he could wash all over, luxuriously, after a village barber had shaved him. Juhiette waited on him. She had heated up the water in kettles, poured it into the rubber bath, laid out the towels and the pyjamas which she knew to be his favorite. She stayed outside the tent until he had dried himself. Never, in their long married life, had they lost the last vestige of shame before each other. It took him a long time to get clean. He scrubbed with a hard brush, till his skin was red. But, the more attention he gave to this, the more impatiently he strove to get this day scrubbed well out of him, the farther away he seemed to be from himself. Into this marvellous cleanness in which he revelled the "abstract man" refused to return -- the "individual," the man he had brought with him from Paris. He saw the same face in Juhiette's looking glass, flanked by its candles. And yet, deep in his soul, there was something wrong. He could not make it out.

  Her voice outside softly reminded: "Are you ready, Gabriel? . . . We'll carry the bath water outside," she was saying zealously, not having called in one of the servants. They bore the rubber tub out between them, to empty it behind the tent. Gabriel sensed a yielding readiness in Juliette. She had suffered no other hand to serve, had come more than half-way to meet him, with deep emotion. Perhaps the hour had arrived in which the stranger in her would melt away, submit, as he, over there in Paris, had submitted his to her alien self.

  "How much longer?" he thought. For now, after today's fighting, he had no more hope that they would survive. He laced up the entrance to the tent. Gently he drew Juliette to the bed.

  They lay very close, but could say nothing. She displayed a new, and reverent tenderness. Her eyes made no effort to keep back tears as, tremulously, she kept repeating: "I've been so terrified about you."

  He stared as absently at her as though her grief was incomprehensible. Strive as he might, his thoughts were savagely swept away by fierce powers to his trenches. "If only the sentries weren't slack tonight, didn't go to sleep, weren't late in relieving each other. . . . Who could tell that the Turks might not be planning a night attack." Gabriel had ceased to belong to Juliette -- and to himself. For the first time in their married life he could not manage to show he loved her.

  2. ThE EXPLOITS OF THE BOYS

  This devastating rout of a front-line infantry company on Musa Dagh came as a painful surprise to the Hükümet in Antioch. It was a lasting stain on the Turkish escutcheon. The power of any warrior race is dependent on magic belief in invincibility, and the morale engendered by it. So that, for those who take the sword, every value totters with a defeat, and their very foundations seem to crumble when a race of puny intellectuals succeeds in routing professional soldiers in successful, so to speak, amateur competition. This had undeniably been the case in the sortie of August 4.

  And what -- Allah is great! -- was to be written and read about Musa Dagh! Politically it was far less significant than the news of it was likely to prove dangerous. It would need only a few more Bagradians here and there to get Turkey into serious difficulties. Since every Armenian was in actual fact condemned to death, since some still had weapons at their disposal, such complications would have to be reckoned with.

  The worthy citizens of Antioch, from whom this humiliation was being provisionally withheld, saw lights at a very late hour in the windows of their Kaimakam's council-chamber and feared the worst. That district councillor presided over the major provincial assembly, usually composed of fourteen members. At the moment his bloated body seemed to long, with every breath it drew, to shove away the conference table. The Kaimakam's liverish face, with its dark-brown pouches under the eyes, looked sallower than ever in the discreet illumination of an oil lamp. Councillors became more and more verbose. He, however, sat silent and full of cares. His loose, well-shaven cheeks sagged over the wide stick-up collar; the fez had been pushed askew on his left temple, a sign of evil-tempered drowsiness. On his right the commandant of Antioch, a grey-bearded colonel, with small eyes and rosy, innocent cheeks, a bimbashi of the good old school, who would, it was obvious, stand out to the last drop of heroic blood in defence of his own peace and quiet. His deputy sat beside him, a younger yüs-bashi, a major of barely forty-two, his antithesis, as so frequently happens in military double harness. This major was wiry, hatchet-faced, with very determined features; his deep-set eyes glinted with suppressed ire. They seemed to proclaim to all and sundry: "It's my misfortune to be yoked to this unconscionable old dug-out. You all of you know me, you know I'm keen enough for anything, and always do whatever I set out to do. I belong to the Ittihad generation!"

  A lieutenant of the routed company, the sole commissioned survivor of August 4, he who had been sent naked to Antakiya with Gabriel Bagradian's message, stood giving his report to these superiors. He could scarcely be blamed for doing his best to make disaster seem more palatable by the wildest exaggerations of Armenian strength. There must be quite ten -- or even twenty -- thousand of them on Musa Dagh, hidden within the strongest defences. And there could be no doubt that for years they had been collecting munitions and supplies, enough to hold out, up there, indefinitely. He, the mülasim, with his own eyes had seen two machine-gun emplacements. It was machine guns which, apart from their ten-fold outnumbering, had decided the unfortunate event.

  The Kaimakam said nothing. He rested his heavy head on his right hand and stared down at the map of the Ottoman empire spread over the table. Though such high matters concerned none of them, the Hükümet officials found it delightful to stick in little flag-pins along the fronts. But, for all their loyal manipulations, the future of the war seemed not of the ro
siest. The little pins kept pricking further and further back, into Turkish flesh. These fronts perhaps scarcely justified Enver Pasha's glittering reputation. His Caucasus army, his best material, strewed, as a field of unburied skeletons, the passes and slopes of those pitiless highlands. And already the Russians stood on the boundaries of Persia, their faces set towards Mosul, driving Djevded Pasha, Enver's cousin and a general renowned for his massacres, further and further into retreat. The English, with their Gurkhas and Hindus, threatened Mesopotamia. Jemal's grandiose Suez expedition had literally melted away in sand. Men and stores lay covered by the desert. All this time, on the Gallipoli peninsula, the Allies with their big naval guns had been battering on the gates of Istanbul. Huge stores of arms and war material had already been wasted on all these occasions. And Turkey had no, or next to no, war industry. She depended on the bounty of Krupp in Essen, Skoda in Pilsen. These production centers of destruction could scarcely keep pace with the huge demands of immediate clients. Only a small percentage of that huge output of new cannon, howitzers, mortars, machine guns, hand and gas grenades came through to Turkey, and had to be hurried straight to the various fronts.