The Long Road to Baghdad (2011) Read online

  Harry was sure that he saw the cap of a Turkish soldier on a mud bank ahead. Whispering an order to beach the bellum, he palmed his handgun and stole out of the boat. Waving his men forward, he led an attack on a ragged stump of palm. Feeling foolish, he motioned the men back. A shell exploded above them. A private stood in a boat to their right, his tunic and hair ablaze. A group on their left were hit by machine gun fire.

  ‘The bastards are behind that ridge.’ Peter splashed, knee deep, through the shallows. Harry guided his bellum around the mound to support Peter’s attack. Shells landed in the mud around them; mercifully few exploding on impact. A massive roar rent the air. The smell of burning hair and flesh permeated the night; screams echoed through the fusillade. The Turks fired from unbroken lines ahead and to the left and right. They’d paddled into the centre of the Turkish defences.

  Harry stood upright in his bellum and urged the men to retreat. The entire area was a madhouse of gun flashes and machine gun fire. Peter rose on the crest of the ridge, his figure thrown into silhouette by the fire raging behind him. Two of his men had turned the Turkish gun they’d taken and were firing on the Turkish lines. Peter laughed and drew his sword.

  Harry turned to see Turks clutching at his bellum. He fired. One fell into the water. His men hammered at the hands that sought to delay them with rifle butts. His sergeant screamed when a bayonet skewered his stomach.

  Harry fired at the shadows closing in on them. Water rose over his boots. His bellum was sinking. Shouting for his men to follow, he leapt out and ran until the ground disappeared from beneath his feet. Kicking upwards, he swam.

  Pausing for breath, he glanced back. The attack had become a massacre. From the opposite bank the retreat sounded. He grabbed a boat, heaved out the dead men inside it, and climbed in. A private from the Punjabis joined him.

  ‘Haul in all the men you can reach.’ Harry reloaded his gun. When he looked up, Peter was still laughing and running through the water brandishing his bloody sabre.

  Peter didn’t stop laughing when he halted in front of a Turk who held up his hands in surrender. He was still laughing when he severed the man’s windpipe.

  The Karun desert

  Mitkhal knew he was being watched. Whenever he left his tent, men found the need to clean their guns, polish their swords, smoke their tobacco, and always within sight of him.

  Exhausted by pregnancy, Gutne had become slow and less observant. Concerned by her lack of strength, Mitkhal bought a black slave girl, Bantu, from Shalan to carry the water and tend to his goats. Gutne gave up her household chores but she continued to make daily visits to Furja. Incarcerated with her daughters in the tent of Ali Mansur, Furja never appeared, not even to watch over Ali’s flocks.

  The summer grew hotter, the thorn withered, and Mitkhal bided his time. Waiting and watching as others watched him, careful not to say an untoward word or make a rash gesture. Not even when he was alone with Gutne. He’d promised Harry he would get the women away, but he was beginning to feel he’d taken on an impossible task.

  Questioning Gutne, he discovered Furja was never alone. Ali Mansur’s mother and sisters shared her harem, her meals, and were at her side even when she washed and fed her daughters. She left them only when Ali summoned her to his bed. Gutne also volunteered the information that Furja was unhappy. Not that she complained, but she never laughed as she used to and there was a sad look in her eyes.

  He’d lifted his eyebrows at the revelation and said it couldn’t be helped. For once, Gutne had shrugged off the torpor she’d fallen into and told him he’d grown heartless.

  At the height of the hot season, the men became restless. There was talk of raiding villages. He was questioned about the movements of the Turks and the British. He answered as best as he could, hoping that, soon, news would reach Shalan of a fight, a skirmish, anything that offered the possibility of loot. If the men left the camp he would have to go with them, but a lame horse could force his return.

  The drought had brought the tribe close to the river and British boats sailed the Karun. He had an authorisation from Harry tucked into his shirt and a bag of sovereigns. If he could get Furja, Gutne, and the twins on board a British vessel they’d be safe. All he’d have to do was reach Basra, purchase an anonymous house, and get word to Harry.

  He continued to attend the coffee circle and evening meal, to smile at his neighbours and speak of goats, horses, and the war everyone knew was drawing to an end. He looked after Gutne, escorted her to Ali’s tent and back, waited and prayed. The chance would present itself eventually. When it did, he’d take it.

  Amara, Thursday 15th July 1915

  ‘Everyone’s sick,’ Amey complained to Charles when they entered the mess. ‘There I was talking to Meakin – he even nodded his head as though he agreed with what I’d said, then keeled over. Dead as a doorpost. Knight said he’d probably been walking around with fever for days. He’s the fifth to go like that this week.’

  Charles mopped his face. ‘The temperature hasn’t dropped a degree from this afternoon.’

  ‘It has. When it gets cooler you just forget how hot it was earlier.’ Amey slumped in a chair and called to the orderly. ‘Mine’s a whisky and soda, and make it a large soda. What’s your poison, Reid?’

  ‘Same.’ Charles continued to mop his face.

  ‘Give Major Reid the same and put it on my chit.’

  ‘You lucky people look as if you’ve been here for hours.’ Knight joined them.

  ‘We’ve only just got here,’ Amey protested. ‘Whisky?’

  ‘Please.’ Knight sat next to Charles.

  ‘Make that three whisky and large sodas,’ Amey shouted to the orderly who was mixing the drinks.

  ‘Heard Mason’s been sent to the Euphrates.’ Knight took out his cigarette case.

  ‘I expected him to be sent to India,’ Charles said sourly.

  ‘Relief doctor told me he volunteered. Beats me why, with his wife in Basra.’

  Charles didn’t answer. The whisky came and he downed half a glass in one gulp.

  ‘Steady.’ Knight put a hand on his arm. ‘I shouldn’t have to warn an old hand like you about the effect of too much cold drink on a warm stomach.’

  ‘I don’t feel so good,’ Charles mumbled. ‘Those bloody Persians know how to spin out evidence. I couldn’t make head nor tail of what was going on today.’

  Knight put a hand to Charles’s forehead. ‘You’re burning up,’ he announced in a resigned voice. ‘It’s bed for you, old man.’

  ‘You’re not getting me into that blasted hospital.’

  ‘That blasted hospital is very well run. However, seeing as it’s you, I’ll leave you in your quarters tonight, but if you’re still running a temperature in the morning I’ll have to admit you. Can you make it upstairs?’

  Charles staggered to the door like a drunk trying to prove his sobriety. Amey and Knight followed him up the stairs. Charles’s bearer, Chatta Ram, was standing in the doorway of his room, the uniform Charles had worn to the courthouse slung over his arm.

  ‘Ram, I feel …’ Charles slumped; Ram swung him into his arms and carried him to his bed.

  ‘Fever?’ Amey asked Knight.

  ‘Heatstroke,’ Chatta Ram diagnosed when he unfastened Charles’s belt. Unbuttoning his fly, he pulled down his trousers. ‘If one of you gentlemen would be kind enough to turn back the cover I’ll get him into bed.’

  Amey waited until the bearer lifted Charles off the bed, then did as Ram asked. When the bearer had covered Charles, Knight walked to the bed and pulled back Charles’s eyelids. The whites had turned pink.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said grudgingly, peeved by the sepoy’s temerity in diagnosing Charles’s illness. ‘Do you know what to do?’

  ‘Sponge with cold water, plenty of liquids, rest.’

  ‘That’s about it. I’ll call back after dinner.’

  ‘Odd chap, that bearer of Charles’s,’ Knight said to Amey when they returned to the
mess.

  ‘Charles swears by him. The man saved Harry’s life at Shaiba, then latched on to Charles when he reached here.’

  ‘There’s something not quite right about him.’

  ‘Like what?’ Amey asked.

  ‘If I knew I’d tell you,’ Knight answered irritably, noticing their drinks had been cleared away. ‘Same again?’

  Charles raved most of the night. He drifted through a nightmare world of bombed-out trenches, cold rain, and freezing mud that he recognised as the Western Front. Everywhere were images of death – grinning skulls surmounted by metal helmets; shreds of flesh clinging to barbed wire; craters filled with corpses – and everywhere he walked, serene, smiling, Maud glided alongside him. First in a shimmering evening gown, then naked, she enticed him onto a chaise longue fashioned from corpses.

  He wanted her so much he couldn’t help himself. He kissed her, then saw the skull-like features of John behind them. He tried to move away, but she hooked her legs over his thighs, pinning him fast. Her mouth closed over his, sucking the breath from his body.

  Exhausted, he fell back. Her limbs caressed his, tormenting, teasing. He tried to resist when she made love to him, never once losing sight of John’s sad, reproachful eyes while Maud coaxed and stroked him to a climax. He shouted, begged her to stop …

  ‘Charles! Wake up, Charles!’

  When he opened his eyes, tears of relief flooded onto the pillow. Ram was wiping his face with a cool flannel. He was in his room at the Amara barracks. Daylight was shining through the window. ‘I must get to the courthouse.’

  Chatta Ram pressed him down. ‘You’re not going anywhere, Sahib. You are ill.’

  Charles sank back, recalling his nightmare. ‘Did I say anything in my sleep?’

  ‘You said many things, Sahib, but I do not hear your private words.’ Chatta Ram picked up Charles’s hairbrush from the table and brushed his hair away from his face.

  Charles nodded, grateful for Chatta Ram’s tact and ashamed of the sickness that had made him lose control.

  ‘I will wash you, Sahib.’

  It wasn’t until Chatta Ram went into the bathroom that Charles realised. When Ram had woken him, he’d called him Charles.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  The Shushan, Saturday 17th July 1915

  ‘This is getting to be monotonous,’ John complained when he walked into the cabin on board the Shushan.

  ‘What?’ Harry asked.

  ‘One or the other of us laid up.’

  Harry tried to sit up without straining his left shoulder. ‘I’ve a clean bullet hole. Given the odds of the last show, that doesn’t give me much to complain about.’

  ‘I saw the report, 150 dead. What went wrong?’

  ‘Everything. I had a bad feeling from the start.’

  ‘I suggest the next time you have a bad feeling you keep your head and shoulder down.’

  ‘Like you? What the hell are you doing here?’

  ‘Working, there’s a shortage of doctors.’

  ‘A severe case of fever rates three months’ convalescence.’

  ‘Not when there’s a war on.’

  ‘You might be able to lie to everyone else, but not me. Leave is one thing I do know about. Still –’ Harry relented ‘– it’s good to see your ugly face. Drink in the mess tonight?’

  ‘I’m relieving the duty doctor in half an hour.’ It wasn’t just work. John had woken on the river launch in Qurna to be told that he’d shown his travel orders to his companions in the mess in Basra before he began drinking. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have made it out of the town, let alone to the Euphrates.

  ‘Any news of reinforcements?’ Harry asked.

  ‘A thousand today and a thousand more on their way.’

  Harry pushed the flat of his feet onto the deck and levered himself up.

  ‘Novel way of getting up.’

  ‘I’d like to see you do as well with half a hand and a shoulder like a colander. I’m going to vet the reinforcements. If we’re going to take this bloody town they’d better be good.’

  John followed Harry on deck. The West Kents were offloading their gear onto the bank.

  ‘Good men?’ John asked.

  ‘They’ll do.’ Harry noted their raw, sunburned skin. ‘They could have done with a couple more weeks to get acclimatised.’

  ‘Time seems to be in shorter supply than anything else.’

  ‘How’s Maud?’ Harry ventured.

  ‘I saw her. I’ll divorce her as soon as this show is over.’

  ‘Is that what you want?’

  ‘She’s pregnant.’

  ‘Brooke?’

  ‘No, I checked with Theo Wallace; the dates are wrong. I asked, but she wouldn’t tell me who the father was.’ John pulled his topee over his eyes so Harry couldn’t read his expression. ‘Actually, I couldn’t give a damn.’

  Harry laid his hand on his cousin’s shoulder. He knew exactly how much John’s damn was worth. He’d been hurting the same way ever since Shalan had told him Furja was married. They stood in silence for a few minutes watching the men, guns, and supplies offload down the gangplanks.

  ‘Last town,’ Harry declared. ‘Then we can go home.’

  ‘To start again on the Western Front?’

  ‘Can’t be any worse than this place.’

  ‘Nowhere can be worse than this place,’ John echoed.

  The battle of Nasiriyeh, Saturday 24th July 1915

  Peter had been in a trench for 36 hours. He was sick of the latrine stench, booming guns, crashing shells, and, above all, the sense of fear that hung in the air, crippling initiative and tainting the atmosphere with foreboding.

  Since the last attack, he’d been riding high. He’d killed and remained alive. That proved he wasn’t a coward. But could he do it again? A shot landed short of the trench, causing a landslide of earth over the sandbagged wall.

  ‘Christ, that was close.’ His sergeant shivered.

  Peter jumped to his feet. He had to do something before his nerve broke. ‘Reconnaissance!’ He yelled above the shellfire. ‘Supporting rifles!’ When the men were in position, he pulled out his field glasses and stepped up on to the sandbags. Sticking his head cautiously over the top, he scanned the terrain. The Shushan was pushing upstream towards the Turkish trenches, the guns strapped to her deck blazing shot into enemy lines. To the left, the artillery was shelling the Turkish flank. Ahead he could see rifle pits in the Turkish trenches and, behind them, a mound topped by a machine gun. A shot exploded on the wall behind him. He threw himself to the ground. When he lifted his head, he saw his sergeant covered with a layer of sandy earth. Clean earth. No blood. Lower down the trench, a tangle of broken limbs moved beneath a shattered sandbag. He shouted for stretcher-bearers. Another shot fell. A stretcher-bearer slid to the ground, clutching his leg.

  ‘Snipers, sir. They’re in no man’s land,’ a corporal yelled. ‘Do you want me to take a party up top to see if we can winkle the bastards out?’

  Peter spat dirt from his mouth. ‘Not you, corporal, me. Volunteers!’

  Peter had his volunteers, 20 of them. Nerves stretched by the fusillade, like him they preferred to risk action than being hit like a sitting duck in the trench.

  Peter surveyed the terrain again. In another five minutes, the Shushan would be alongside the Turkish flank. Once it fired down the trench, there’d be panic in the line. Aiming to time his attack to coincide with the next blast, he unbuttoned his handgun.

  ‘One – two – three.’

  He blew his whistle and mounted the sandbags. His men followed. The shots kept coming but they were intermittent, desultory. The Turks were running in a thick khaki line, more concerned with evading the Shushan’s guns than the attack only a few had spotted heading for their front line.

  Throwing himself over a barrier of thorns, Peter dived in front of a Turkish trench. He peered into it and found himself staring at a petrified private. Firing at point blank range, he blew the ma
n’s face away. His sergeant and two privates dropped beside him.

  The sergeant pulled a pin from a grenade and lobbed it further up the trench. ‘Do you want to drop into the trench, sir?’ he asked above the screams.

  ‘We’re doing well enough where we are.’ Peter crawled forward. He could see no movement in the trench, only bodies. The skin over his stomach was being torn to shreds by camel thorn, but he didn’t give a damn. He’d discovered the secret of war. Terrifying the enemy more than yourself.

  While he was on the attack, he was invincible. He believed it. And he had to keep on believing it if he wanted to survive.

  On board the Shushan, Harry rammed plugs of cotton wool into his ears but they offered little protection against the deck-splitting cannonade that threatened to tear the vessel apart every time the guns were fired. The sight of the Shushan and its sister ship, the Medjidieh, had terrified the Turks. They’d run down the trenches, away from the river, even before Captain Nunn ordered the guns to fire. Through the smoke of shot and shellfire, Harry could make out the wharves of Nasiriyeh.

  A subaltern ran along the deck. ‘Captain Nunn’s compliments, sir, there are white flags on the rooftops in Nasiriyeh. Could they be flags of truce?’

  Harry peered through the smoke. The lieutenant was right. There was a profusion of white flags, just as there was a profusion of bullets flying from the Turkish barracks on the bank.

  ‘I don’t see any signs of a truce, lieutenant. Do you?’

  ‘No, sir.’ The lieutenant scuttled back. Harry pulled his gun from his holster with his injured right hand. It lay heavy in his palm. He’d been practising. He could fire it if he had to. The way Nunn was pushing ahead, they weren’t an advance guard; they were on their own.

  John’s hands were shaking. He hadn’t had a drink in three days and for two of those the battle had pounded around him. A non-stop torrent of wounded poured through the field hospital he’d set up in a second line trench. There were more Turks than British, but the injuries were as horrific on both sides.