by John Harris
They carried fuel and water for four hundred miles and didn’t worry about the lines of communication because, if they ran short, supplies could always be dropped to them by aircraft. Their job was to control the rebellious Kurds to the north who wanted to be independent, but they had a free hand to go where they pleased and were used to augment what few British troops were in Irazh and the groups of Assyrian and Arab levies who worked with them.
When the army had departed in 1922 and left the country to the RAF, they had also obligingly left their armoured cars, some of which had seen much service in the Egyptian desert, and everybody in the RAF in Irazh was expected to do some time with them so that they would know the tactics involved. The work had originally been to guard the route across the desert, into Iraq, and as far as Baghdad, and the building of landing areas for aircraft carrying mail. The country was kept in order by what was known as ‘Air Control’, which meant bombing insurgent tribesmen in their villages and towns. But since this occurred only after the inhabitants had been warned to leave and because few lives were lost and the stone-and-mud houses were soon rebuilt, no real ill-feeling was created. Moreover, as the tribesmen no longer had columns of soldiers to ambush and plunder, many of them even lost interest – though occasionally there were serious raids across the desert by fanatical sects who, when chased, disappeared to safety beyond the border of Turkey.
For the most part they were intercepted before much damage was done because they were quickly identified by aircraft whose observers could note that they rode neither with the usual flocks of sheep and camels, nor the pack animals that meant women and children, and that their numbers had been kept to around two hundred, just sufficient for a ghazzu, a quick seizure of someone else’s herd of camels. A short burst from one of Jenno’s Vickers into the ground in front of the leaders always brought the whole body to a confused halt. Told to abandon the raid or risk being mown down by the machine guns, after a protracted altercation they all invariably swung round and set off for home with great reluctance. For the next few hours the cars followed slowly until the radiators began to boil and Jenno had to call a halt.
They had always managed to keep the Kurds under control but never quite as effectively as the Turks who had run the country before them and been utterly ruthless, because the British admired the tribesmen’s independence and self-respect and, while squashing their disorders, even occasionally helped them. Jenno thought them a splendid body of men, despite the fanaticism which helped them believe they would go straight to heaven from a death in battle, and he always felt a twinge of sympathy for them at having to forego their loot after so long a journey. The raids, in fact, were a welcome change from normal patrolling – when there was nothing to do except shoot at an occasional gazelle, bustard or fox – and the established tribes were always so pleased to see the raiders turned back, the car crews were welcomed as saviours in the encampments of low black tents grouped round a water hole with their herds of camel, sheep and goats. The visits invariably ended in coffee with the leader of the tribe and sometimes even a ceremonial meal of steaming rice topped by a sheep’s head, complete with teeth and eyeballs.
Despite the fact that their engines were five years old and in some cases their bodies twenty, the cars could tear effortlessly across the flat Irazhi desert at sixty miles an hour, in a series of manoeuvres designed so that the leader was always covered by the others. Unlike ordinary airmen, the crews didn’t wear topees because they caught on doors and turrets and were difficult to keep on in the wind, and instead, like Boumphrey’s Belles, wore keffiyehs – dyed khaki with coffee – which took up no room in the cars. They didn’t catch the wind, and had a good flap over the neck and back that could be wound round the nose and mouth against the everlasting flying dust. All in all, Jenno had felt, it wasn’t a bad life.
With the entry of the Italians into the war and the arrival of tension in the Middle East, however, things had changed. There was a far more dangerous enemy on the horizon now than raiding tribesmen and the natives were growing increasingly restless, inclined to take sides against the British on behalf of the Germans who – it had to be faced – looked at that moment like world-beaters.
Two
The conference arranged to discuss the somewhat dubious future that had resulted from the disasters at home and in North Africa and the increasing interest in the area by the Axis powers, had been set up by Sir Wilmot Lyon, the ambassador to Irazh at RAF Kubaiyah, because he considered there could well be too many listening ears in his embassy in the capital, Mandadad.
The aerodrome lay alongside a tributary of the Euphrates where hangars gave way to the red roofs of bungalows and you arrived between pink flowering oleanders along a smooth metalled road that commenced with a whitewashed concrete block of stone on which someone with a sense of humour had placed a signpost. The eastward arm said ‘Mandadad 55 miles’, the westward arm ‘London 3287 miles’.
In addition to workshops, an aircraft depot and a training school, RAF Kubaiyah, also supported Air Headquarters for the area and as the ambassador arrived at the entrance to the building, a sentry of the Assyrian levies in a blue uniform shirt, bush hat and highly polished boots, the sling of his rifle blancoed dazzlingly white, slammed to attention and presented arms.
The ambassador was a career diplomat, a tall man with grey hair and intense intelligent eyes, and he acknowledged the sentry’s salute with a nod and a flick of his hand. He was met just inside by an officer who led him through a courtyard with white verandas that opened into cool shadowed offices filled with wall maps and filing cabinets. The air officer commanding, Air Vice-Marshal Henry D’Alton, crossed to him at once. D’Alton was a dark suave man who had been an Oxford scholar in 1914 but had never taken up the scholarship because he had joined the army instead. Disliking the trenches, he had transferred to the Royal Flying Corps and, while he was not considered to be anything special as a flyer, he was acknowledged to be a man of great intelligence and ability and was considered to be in exactly the right place with the difficulties that lay ahead in Irazh.
The walls of the mess were hung with silky carpets from Shirhaz and Kirmanshah, and it was full of soft leather armchairs. There was an improvised bar with cool drinks, but most of the men gathered there were sipping coffee and nibbling Marie biscuits. Among them was Jenno, satanic-looking with his hawk nose and fierce dark eyes under heavy eyebrows, and Vizard, the group captain, thickset, fair-haired and pale-skinned because he had a complexion that burned easily and he kept out of the sun. He had been a famous fighter pilot in the earlier war and everybody credited him with the courage and the initiative to act decisively if anything happened.
Talking to the group captain was Colonel Craddock, of the Dragoons, whose headquarters had recently been moved from near the aerodrome to just outside the capital, in case it became necessary to protect the British residents there. Craddock was a man of medium height who liked to boast that he had the perfect build for a cavalryman, though it was a pointless boast these days because his men did most of their duties on foot or in lorries. He was a brisk man who always seemed to be playing the part of a brisk man. He had done well in the earlier war when he had won a DSO against the Turks in Egypt before being part of Allenby’s great advance to Damascus, in which he had won considerable praise for his meticulous planning in an independent command which had led to a final tremendous charge. This had swept the Turks out of Assoum, opened the way north for the main army, and earned him a second DSO and the nickname ‘Crasher’.
He had worked with Lawrence and his Arabs, and because he had never been able really to control them, he detested Lawrence, considered that all Arabs stank, had little time for Boumphrey and even less for his Bedou Legion. He had bitterly resisted the move to mount cavalry on wheels, arguing that it would turn them into lorried infantry and cause them to lose their cavalry panache. And now that, despite his protestations, his men had finally been given vehicles, he had somehow managed to retain the splend
id hunters they had brought out from England and had taught them to regard their lorries merely as ‘led horses’.
Sipping an iced drink at the bar was the chief flying instructor, Squadron Leader William Augustus Xavier Fogarty. He was an Irishman full of the joys of life who looked down on Craddock as a toy soldier and was detested in turn by the envious Craddock because he had once ridden in the Grand National and very nearly won it. He was a breezy man with a great love of life who somehow pushed his pupils through all their exercises and made them pilots, observers or air gunners without seeming to try.
With him was Verity, the major in command of the Assyrian levies, short, thickset and strong-looking, with a skin burned black by years in the Middle East. Like many other British officers, he had originally been attached to the army of some Middle East royalty to make sure their troops were properly trained and remained loyal to Britain; also like Jenno enjoying an independent command, he had remained there ever since. Alongside him was a thin-faced flying officer, who until eight months before, had been a civilian living in Mandadad with his French wife. He had never flown a plane in his life and never would because he had been a businessman before the war and was now responsible for Intelligence at headquarters. His name was the unlikely one of Osanna and the ambassador nodded warmly to him because Osanna knew the country inside-out and possessed all the right contacts, often coming up with information the ambassador’s own intelligence machine failed to produce. So far he had never been wrong, and, with the approval of both the ambassador and the air vice-marshal, was now being fed information from Middle East Headquarters in Cairo and from London.
The last man to arrive was Boumphrey, who was there solely as commander of the Mounted Legion. To the mess he was known as ‘Ratter’ because the splendid riding breeches he wore from time to time were known as his ratting suit. He was often ragged in a good-natured way since he was always a little detached. In the old days it had been because he was trying to work out why he was a failure as an airman. These days, he was trying to work out why he was such a success as a cavalryman. He arrived in a hurry, apologising for being late, tripped over the edge of the carpet, blushed, and brought up in front of the air vice-marshal with another apology for his stumble.
‘Hello there, Ratter,’ Craddock said in his breezy booming voice. ‘How’re your dusky maidens and their donkeys today?’
Boumphrey’s blush, which was just beginning to fade, flared up again. The AVM tried to make light of Craddock’s scorn by making sure Boumphrey was given coffee and by taking him aside for a moment for a quick chat about his regiment. In the end Boumphrey finished up between Jenno and Verity, who he felt appreciated him because they, too, held the same strange sort of command he did.
‘Donkeys!’ he muttered angrily. ‘Donkeys!’
There had always been a faint hostility between Craddock and Boumphrey. Craddock regarded Boumphrey’s command as a Fred Karno outfit, while Boumphrey considered that if it came to an emergency, Craddock’s great hunters would let the Dragoons down, if Craddock didn’t let them down first by getting them all killed in a half-baked charge, which seemed to be his idea of how cavalry should be used.
‘I think, gentlemen–’ the AVM’s voice cut across the chatter ‘–that we should perhaps get down to business.’
A room alongside the AVM’s office had been set aside. There was a sentry outside the door – an RAF man, not an Assyrian – and as they approached, an officer wearing canvas webbing and revolver saluted.
‘There’s another man on the window at the other side,’ the AVM said to the ambassador. ‘There are a lot of natives here as mess servants et cetera and they’ve been warned to keep away. We’ll not be overheard.’
The room had a large map of the area spread out on the table and, with the AVM’s personal assistant to take notes, everybody stood facing it. The ambassador was the first to speak.
‘We’re here,’ he said, ‘to assess the situation and discuss what means we have of influencing the events that have arisen. I’ll try to fill you in with what’s happened, though I suppose you all already know most of it.’ He paused, thinking, before continuing.
‘This country,’ he said, ‘was formed from three former Turkish provinces after the last war and within its borders are many racial minorities and nomad tribes which have never been brought under control. It’s filled with dynastic rivalries, local border disputes, political chess-players and unattached bandit chiefs who are always available to the highest bidder. Because there are no rivers or mountains to make natural barriers, boundaries are only lines on a map and are effective only in a legal sense.’
The ambassador paused. ‘Neither the British, the French nor the Turks,’ he went on, ‘wanted the Germans or their jackals, the Italians, to disturb the equilibrium into which the Arab states in the Middle East had settled. Previously they had all been broadly in step and able to withstand all the intriguing of the German and Italian legations and the rebellion-mongering among the Arabs, but with the fall of France and the recent events in the Balkans things have changed.’
‘Economically,’ he continued, ‘Irazh is in a feeble state of health, cursed by its geography, its climate and its reach-me-down communications. When we were given the mandate to run it, however, we were quite willing because we have an interest in the oilfields at Zuka. Since the Irazhis are drawing a large income from the oil subsidies, it was considered the advantages were equal.’
The ambassador paused again. ‘As you know, under the 1930 treaty, the British are permitted one under-strength regiment to guard the embassy and British installations in the capital, and three RAF bases, one here, one in Iraq and one on the coast at Shaibah. Now–’ he drew a deep breath ‘–as we all know, the Irazhi army leaders are fiercely nationalistic and anti-British, and at the moment the prime minister is a man who is opposed to the treaty and is, in fact, in touch with the Axis Powers, Germany and Italy, through the Italian minister here. For what follows I’ll pass you over to Flying Officer Osanna.’
Osanna waited for a while in silence before speaking. It was as if he wanted to make sure they were all listening, and he gave them time to light cigarettes and clear their throats.
‘We have definite information–’ his accent was vaguely North of England ‘–that, although most Middle East countries have decided to declare their neutrality in the major conflict that involves us, in the case of Irazh a general uprising is to be started, supplied with arms by the Italians. It’s believed this will tie down thirty to forty thousand British troops and relieve Italy’s military position which, as you know, after the defeats in the Western Desert, is precarious.’
Osanna glanced up over his spectacles. He looked like a professor explaining a point to students. ‘We have, of course, cracked the Italian code, so we knew about this in good time and decided to take a firm line. However, we have no troops to spare and strong diplomatic action and economic sanctions were relied on to do the trick.’
‘Which,’ the ambassador interrupted, ‘is why I was sent to make these points clear to the regent, Prince Abdullah Illah, who is, as you know, the brother of the late king, who was killed in 1939 in a motor accident.’
‘We were accused of assassinating him,’ Osanna said and the ambassador agreed with a nod.
‘The regent,’ Osanna went on, ‘runs the country and considers his best bet is to back Britain, though–’ a faint smile seemed to crack his solemn face like old plaster ‘–since the defeats in the Western Desert he may be having second thoughts. Quite naturally, the Irazhis complain of interference in their affairs.’
There was a long silence. It was a complicated situation and they’d all been aware of the facts if not the details for some time.
‘In Syria next door,’ Osanna continued, ‘the Vichy French commander is also having trouble with the Axis. But Vichy – have no doubt about it – is prepared to defend Syria against any British attempt to take the place over.’
There was another
long pause. ‘Now, as you know–’ Osanna was at his most avuncular ‘–despite the regent the real power here is in the hands of one Ghaffer al Jesairi and two of his friends, enticingly known to us as the Golden Triangle. It’s a group, formed with German help, of anti-British officers, and Ghaffer has asked the Italian minister – this we know – for immediate military aid in the form of four hundred light machine guns and ammunition, fifty light tanks, ten anti-aircraft batteries, with ammunition, high explosive, anti-tank weapons and – can you believe it? – 100,000 gas masks.’ Osanna paused to let his words sink in. ‘To say nothing of an Axis declaration of support for the Arab world against the British.’
Nobody spoke. Boumphrey was watching Osanna like a schoolboy attending a maths lesson he didn’t really understand. Craddock looked bored. Verity and Jenno were listening with the earnestness of men who had known what was happening all along and were itching to say ‘I told you so.’
Craddock lit a cigarette and the scrape of the match was loud in the stillness as Osanna continued.
‘With the Italian defeats in the desert, of course,’ he went on, ‘Germany became the dominant partner and we know they’ve explored the possibility of supplying the arms the Irazhis want, to say nothing of money to Haj Amin, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and the leader of the Muslims in the Middle East, who’s also believed to be here.’
Osanna smiled. ‘The thought of power here must be intoxicating to Hitler. A German army in Asia, unlimited labour, food, oil, new bases for armies, new landing grounds. It would grip the windpipe of the British route to India. And it’s not impracticable either, because there’s been considerable penetration by German and Italian agents.’