Scorpion Sunset

by Catrin Collier

  ‘Around twenty a day for the last week and the Turks don’t give a damn. We’ve two medics with us but they have nothing. No drugs, no dressings, nothing.’ Crabbe buckled the belt Mitkhal had given him around his waist. ‘Only this morning I sent six men down to the gate to wait for a cart to take them to hospital. Two died before it arrived.’ Crabbe finished fastening the belt and closed his hands into fists. ‘Damn the bloody Turks. Doesn’t anyone in the Indian Office or War Office know what’s happening to us? Or don’t they care?’

  ‘They know,’ Mitkhal assured him. ‘Mr Brissel has sent telegrams to Washington with instructions to pass the information on to London and the War Office and the Indian Office.’

  ‘Too damned late for some men,’ Crabbe cursed.

  ‘Mr Brissel is also filling the carts I told you about with blankets, disinfectant, food, and clothing to be sent into Turkey with you, but,’ Mitkhal glanced around. ‘Even if he persuades the Turks to allow you to take them, the supplies won’t be enough once they’re divided among so many.’

  ‘But they’ll help.’ Crabbe’s anger had been short lived. Weariness and resignation had again taken control.

  Mitkhal didn’t blame Crabbe. The more he gazed at the surroundings the more he found it difficult to believe that men could live in such foul conditions and remain sane.

  The cart arrived to take away the dead and the guard was looking back into the camp, probably for him. A fistful of silver didn’t buy more than a few minutes.

  ‘I have to go.’

  Crabbe nodded.

  ‘I’ll follow you after you march out and bring you more food and money if I can. Don’t look for me. I’ll turn up when you least expect me, and always with the natives so as not to arouse your guards’ suspicions.’

  Crabbe clasped Mitkhal’s arm. ‘Don’t risk your life on our account. We’re all dead men, Mitkhal.’

  ‘Not if I have a say in the matter. Besides, I’m an Arab, I risk nothing.’

  ‘Harry could pass as an Arab, and the Turks killed him,’ Crabbe reminded him.

  ‘I could still get you and perhaps one or two others out of here and back to Basra.’

  Crabbe gave Mitkhal the same reply he’d given him the first time Mitkhal had made the offer. ‘I can’t leave the men. Coming up through the ranks I understand them better than any other officer.’ He lifted the bundle and beckoned to his sergeants. ‘Thank you again, Mitkhal. If any of us live to see the end of this war it will be because of your bravery and kindness. We won’t forget it.’

  Chapter Five

  Military HQ, Basra

  June 1916

  Charles limped into his office, propped his stick in the corner behind his chair, and sat behind his desk. Ignoring the pile of files in his in tray he took a clean sheet of paper, opened his ink bottle and picked up a pen.

  Dear Maud,

  Please believe me, I’m not writing this note to you to begin yet another argument. I need to talk to you urgently about your son – and other matters. Please meet me. The Basra Club would probably be best. I can book a private room where we can have coffee or lunch and talk in privacy without risk of disturbance.

  I can’t leave things the way they are between us, so please can we meet within the next day or two? With the push upstream likely to start at any moment, I could be transferred out of Basra at short notice.

  I appreciate friendship between us is out of the question, but I hope we can manage civility, for Robin’s sake.

  Yours sincerely,

  Charles Reid

  Charles blotted what he’d written, folded the paper, and placed it in an envelope. He sealed it and wrote Maud’s name on the outside, then realised he didn’t know which bungalow Colonel Perry had been allocated. There were only two orderlies on duty at that time of day and he could hardly send one round knocking on doors in search of Maud.

  He left the envelope on top of his out tray and headed back to his quarters to bathe and change before picking up Kitty.

  Bungalow, British Military Quarters, Basra

  June 1916

  Maud Mason straightened the chairs in the dining room and checked the dining table. She’d moved into the officer’s bungalow her father had been allocated that morning, and had spent the day directing the servants to make the quarters as comfortable as possible given the limitations of the solid, inelegant military furniture. She’d taken her parents’ personal possessions from storage, polished the family silver, cleaned the Royal Doulton china, and arranged the framed photographs of family and friends on the sideboard. The new cook had concocted the colonel’s favourite curry to Maud’s stringent specifications, but if her father didn’t turn up soon, the meal and evening she’d planned would be spoiled.

  She paced through the French doors out on to the veranda. The sound of ribald songs resounded from the officers’ mess and the evening air was warm, too warm to linger outside. She returned to the dining room, slammed the French doors, and waved the servants back into the kitchen with a curt, ‘Keep the meal hot.’

  The air was oppressive, adding to her sense of foreboding. Maud poured herself a brandy and added ice from the bucket before carrying her glass into the drawing room. She placed it on a table next to a chair she’d earmarked as ‘hers’. Needing to do something, she walked down the corridor that led to the bedrooms and looked in on the nursery. Her six-month-old son, Robin, was asleep in his cot. The native nursemaid, who she’d brought from the mission to look after him, sat beside him in a chair angled in front of the window so she could watch the sunset.

  Maud closed the door. She checked her father’s room. His Indian orderly was unpacking the kit left in Basra when the Colonel had joined Townshend’s campaign.

  She went into her own bedroom and saw that the girl she’d engaged as her lady’s maid had hung her clothes away as ordered. Finding no fault with the maid’s work she opened the bureau and removed her account book. Whichever way she calculated the figures, she was hopelessly in debt with no prospect of receiving any income to repay what she owed for months.

  She had been granted an officer’s widow’s pension and an allowance for her child when she’d received notification of John’s death last Christmas. She’d also been paid the first instalments of an annuity John had purchased to give her additional security. Unfortunately she’d spent more of the money she’d received than she could repay from her wife’s allowance, which was all she’d been left with since John had been reported alive by the sick troops sent downstream after Townshend’s surrender.

  Both the army and insurance company had pressed for repayment. By emptying her bank account she’d managed to reimburse the insurance company, but not the army. The clerks had retaliated by freezing her wife’s allowance, until such time as they reclaimed the over payment. She’d appealed, but the officer who’d interviewed her had tersely dismissed her suggestion that small amounts be taken from her allowance over a longer period. She’d walked away wondering if John had notified the military that he intended to divorce her, in which case she’d soon be entitled to no money whatsoever from the army.

  She picked up the silver framed photograph of John that her maid had set next to her jewellery case. She looked at it – really looked at it for the first time since he’d left her to join the Expeditionary Force.

  They’d met in India before the war. Her father had sent her and her mother from Basra, where he was ranking officer, to visit friends at his regiment’s HQ. Ostensibly they went to escape the heat of a Mesopotamian summer, but she knew her father expected her to find a husband among the senior officers. He’d been concerned about her friendship with a young subaltern, Harry Downe, who’d been sent to Basra as punishment for bedding a senior officer’s wife in India. To her disappointment, despite her father’s concerns she’d been far more infatuated with Harry than he with her.

  After John had asked her to marry him she’d told him she’d fallen in love with him at first sight. Had she? Or had she merely been attrac
ted to his good looks? Tall, well-built, with dark auburn hair and deep brown eyes, women turned their heads whenever he entered a room – but unlike most of the other handsome officers she’d met, John had been unaware of his good looks.

  Her father hadn’t been enamoured of her choice when he’d discovered John Mason was an army medic, not a career officer. John had intended to return to England after their marriage, a plan that had been set aside like so many others when war broke out. Her father had been even more disappointed when he’d discovered John and Harry were not only close friends but cousins.

  Harry! She smiled as an image of him came to mind. His fair hair tousled, his grey eyes glittering with mischief. How he’d loved shocking people, particularly the pompous. When her father sent Harry to negotiate a treaty with a Bedouin tribe, Harry had sealed the bargain by marrying a sheikh’s daughter. She’d been as appalled as the rest of military society by Harry’s native ‘marriage’, but that didn’t stop her from admiring Harry’s complete disregard of anyone’s opinion other than his own.

  The last time she’d found herself in financial difficulties was shortly before Robin’s birth. Everyone knew John couldn’t possibly be the father of her child as he’d been on active service for over a year. To make matters even worse, the Gulf was awash with well-founded rumours of her infidelity and scandalous behaviour in India. Instead of judging or ostracising her, as all John’s other friends had, Harry had visited her in the American mission she’d taken refuge in and given her money.

  If only she could talk to him now – he would understand her plight and lend her money. But Harry was dead, killed by the Turks, and she was left with a father she’d never really known. An officer and a gentleman who’d made no secret of preferring the masculine confines of the officers’ mess to domesticity and family.

  She glanced at the clock, then headed for the kitchen to check if the curry was still edible.

  Officers’ Mess, Basra

  June 1916

  The moment Colonel George Perry stepped through the door, an orderly materialised before him.

  ‘Good to see you back in Basra, Colonel Perry, sir.’

  Perry knew he’d seen the man before but if he ever knew his name, he’d forgotten it. ‘Good to be back.’

  ‘Can I get you a drink, Colonel Perry, sir? Your usual?’

  Perry looked at him blankly.

  ‘Large whisky with ice, Colonel Perry, sir?’

  ‘Just the ticket.’ Perry headed for the table where his immediate subordinate and fellow Kut survivor, Major Cleck-Heaton, was holding court with a group of younger officers. From the immaculate state of the junior officers’ uniforms he assumed they were stationed in HQ.

  Cleck-Heaton and the officers rose from their chairs as he approached.

  ‘Colonel Perry,’ Cleck-Heaton effected the introductions. ‘May I introduce my godson, Major Reginald Brooke.’

  ‘Good to meet you, sir.’ Reggie Brooke saluted.

  ‘Informal, captain. We’re in the mess.’

  ‘Saluting a survivor of Kut, sir. A hero.’

  Cleck-Heaton continued. ‘Lieutenant William Bowditch, Royal Navy …’

  Perry peered at the young man. ‘We had a Bowditch in Kut.’

  ‘My brother, sir. I was hoping he’d be sent downstream when Townshend surrendered.’

  ‘As I explained, Bowditch, only the most severe cases of wounds and sickness were repatriated. Unlike Colonel Perry and I, your brother was fit to march,’ Cleck-Heaton countered. ‘He’s better off than us. Able to sit on his rear end and take his ease in a prison camp for the duration, while we continue to campaign.’ He continued. ‘Colonel Perry, I present Captain Grace.’

  ‘Related to the naval officer who was also with us in Kut?’ Perry enquired.

  ‘Yes, sir. The Grace and Bowditch families tend to do everything together, sir,’ Grace replied. ‘We live in the same town and when our elder brothers joined the navy we decided to follow suit.’

  ‘All four of you opted for the navy?’ Perry stated the obvious.

  ‘As did our fathers, Colonel Perry. How was my brother when you last saw him, sir?’

  ‘As Major Cleck-Heaton said, well enough to march. Your brothers will be sitting out the rest of the war in comfort in a Turkish camp, Bowditch, Grace.’ Perry turned to the orderly and took his drink.

  ‘Shall we sit, sir?’ Cleck-Heaton pulled out a chair for Perry. ‘I’ve been telling Reggie and the others of the hell that was Kut.’

  ‘I’m grateful to be out of the hospital and eating something other than mule and horseflesh. In any other circumstances, ninety per cent of our strength in Kut would have been regarded medically unfit for active service,’ Perry added thoughtlessly.

  ‘Yet the Turks sent so few downstream,’ Grace couldn’t resist the comment after the ‘well enough to march’ remark.

  ‘As I said, only the most severe cases,’ Cleck-Heaton glanced at Perry. ‘Colonel Perry and I weren’t discharged from Basra hospital until this morning. Fourteen died after admission and that was just on our ward.’

  ‘They were in addition to those who died on the journey,’ Perry added. ‘More than fifty per cent of the medically unfit who were exchanged for our Turkish prisoners didn’t live long enough to see Basra.’

  ‘Can we trust the Turks to provide medical care for our sick and wounded, Colonel Perry?’ Bowditch enquired.

  ‘Absolutely!’ the colonel was emphatic. ‘I’m certain the care they’ll provide will be comparable to our own once the POWs reach Baghdad. Until then they’ll be no worse off than Major Cleck-Heaton and I were, along with the rest of our sick on the journey downstream.’

  ‘I’m billeted with a medic. He said most of the men who were sent downstream from Kut, the survivors that is, will be discharged back to Blighty as unfit to return to active service,’ Reggie Brooke observed.

  ‘Says something for our stamina, Colonel Perry,’ Cleck-Heaton enthused. ‘Can’t keep a good man down, or from doing his duty. Someone has to go upstream to teach the Turks our surrender at Kut was down to chance, not superior soldiering.’

  ‘It was down to the abysmal leadership of the Force sent to extricate us, Cleck-Heaton,’ Perry was vehement. ‘If the Relief Force had a general worthy of the name, the Expeditionary Force would have been spirited out of Kut in January and we would never have been forced to surrender to the infidel.’

  ‘Things will be different when we go upstream. Next objective Baghdad, and once we take that the bloody Turk will have to leave Mesopotamia and the Anglo-Persian Oil Company in peace and keep their noses out of British business,’ Cleck-Heaton added.

  ‘You think the Turks will surrender when we take Baghdad, Colonel Perry?’ Grace asked hopefully.

  ‘The Turks will surrender all right – in Mesopotamia, but even when we overcome them here, they’ll carry on fighting this sideshow elsewhere in the Middle East. Bloody as it is, it is a sideshow. I attended a debriefing in HQ this afternoon, and we all agreed that whatever we accomplish here will be minor in the scheme of a world war. The Turks won’t surrender until the Germans capitulate. When the Germans surrender it will have a skittle effect and the Ottoman Empire and all its Johnny Turk soldiers will follow suit but until then the infidel will fight on, even after we drive them back into Turkey.’

  ‘And our POWs, sir?’ Bowditch asked. ‘Can we trust the Turks to treat them well, even when we’re pushing them back into Turkey?’

  ‘No doubt about it,’ Cleck-Heaton signalled to the waiter to refill his glass. ‘The Turks have agreed to abide by the Hague Convention. Our men will remain prisoners but in the best of oriental tradition they will be treated as honoured guests. The enemy make poor soldiers but they are gentlemen. They not only gave every one of our officers but also our ranks cigarettes when we surrendered. There’s no need to concern ourselves about the men who were marched into captivity. They’ll be feather bedded.’

  Perry wondered if Cleck-Heaton hadn’t se
en, or had simply chosen not to see, the Turkish rank and file inflicting blows on the men who’d been forced to surrender, looting their pitifully few possessions and stealing their shirts, underclothes, and boots.

  Grace and Bowditch exchanged glances. ‘If you’ll excuse us, sir, sir, we’re dining with ladies in the Basra club.’

  ‘A gentleman never keeps a lady waiting,’ Cleck-Heaton agreed. ‘Nurses?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Grace smiled. ‘An influx of new blood came in on the boat last week. Some of them are quite presentable.’

  ‘No lady for you, Brooke?’ Cleck-Heaton asked as Brooke raised a finger to the waiter.

  ‘No, sir. I’ve drawn night duty in the wireless office tonight.’ He turned to the orderly. ‘Another round of drinks, for the colonel, the major, and myself, on my tab.’

  The orderly looked to Perry and Cleck-Heaton. ‘Whisky, sir, sir?’

  Perry and Cleck-Heaton nodded.

  ‘During your debriefing did you receive any inkling as to when we’ll begin the advance on Baghdad, sir?’ Cleck-Heaton asked Perry.

  ‘Only “soon”. Do you have better information, Brooke?’

  ‘Everyone’s waiting on Gorringe. They’re expecting better things of him than they did Aylmer …’

  ‘You mean General Faylmer, don’t you?’ Cleck-Heaton laughed loudly at his own well-worn joke. The General had been rechristened by the troops of both Relief and Expeditionary forces after his disastrous failure to relieve Kut.

  ‘There’s talk of a new commander being appointed, but no one is certain who it will be. Although my money’s on Maude.’ Brooke placed his empty glass on the orderly’s tray.

  ‘Good man,’ Perry agreed, ‘but all urgency appears to have left the Relief Force now Kut has fallen. From what I’ve heard the directive is still the same. Take Baghdad and consolidate our position in Mesopotamia.’

  ‘To quote my CO, “Time is all that’s needed to bring success to our endeavours”.’ Reggie changed the subject. ‘I trust you have been allocated suitable quarters, Colonel Perry, Major Cleck-Heaton?’