by Phillip Rock
The builders of empire, Martin was thinking as he was being driven through the streets of the city after crossing the Maude Bridge. Making the railways run and drilling for oil in the sands. Young army and RAF officers with pink cheeks strolled through the streets on their way to their clubs, as cool and well dressed as though they were strolling along Piccadilly, barely glancing at the hordes of Kurds, Parsees, turbaned Moslems and Turks, Negro slaves, Armenians, Hebrew women covered from head to toe in silken robes, Chaldeans and Persians. The whole polyglot stew of the Middle East. The red-black-white-and-green flag of the kingdom of Iraq flew over the palace by the river, but the Union Jack hanging limply above the British Residency was the only flag that mattered.
North of the city there was only the desert and the winding river. Standing on the deck of the little river steamer, Martin could see an occasional camel train plodding slowly southward in the dust and a few mud-walled villages along the crest of the riverbank. A machine gun in the bow of the ship, manned by turbaned Marathas, waved lazily back and forth above the sandbags stacked around it. Sniping at the boats was more of a sport than an expression of anger among the Arabs and wandering Buddhoos, but the bullets could kill and the superstructure of the steamer was pockmarked.
At Bani el Abbas the flag of England whipped in the wind over the military cantonment at the edge of the ramshackle town. Martin scanned the shoreline with binoculars. The troops were under canvas, but there were a few corrugated-iron sheds and Nissen huts—a lorry park—a row of armored cars. Belts of barbed wire surrounded the outpost like a thorn fence. Shifting his view toward the town, he spotted Fenton standing on the jetty—a tall, slim, khaki-clad figure, his face shadowed by the broad rim of his topee.
“Well,” he said, standing motionless on the jetty as Martin came down the gangplank, “look what the ruddy wind blew in.”
“Just happened to be in the neighborhood,” Martin said. “Lovely little garden spot you have here.”
“Pure heaven on earth, old boy.” He looked down at Martin’s leather suitcase. “Is that all your luggage?”
“Yes, I’m not planning on staying long.”
“Wise decision.”
Fenton pointed to the suitcase, said something in Hindustani, and an Indian soldier walked over, picked up the suitcase, and carried it off.
“I suppose you were surprised to get my radiogram.”
“Surprised is hardly the word, Martin. For the life of me, I can’t see what brings you here. Nothing happens along the Tigris except the meanest forms of death.”
The town was a warren of mud houses and narrow, twisting streets and alleys. Kurds and Arabs filled the bazaar or sat in small groups under the awnings of the coffeehouses, watching with smoldering eyes the strutting gendarmerie in kaffiyehs and khaki, spurs, bandoliers and pistols.
“They hate everyone,” Fenton said, lounging back in the car. “This bloody country is a real devil of a place. They hated the Turks and they hate us for getting the mandate and putting Emir Faisal on the throne. They don’t want a Hejaz Arab, they just want to be independent and fight it out among themselves. And now Sheikh Mahmud has the Kurds in open revolt. I had to put the town off-limits to the troops. We had a corporal get his throat cut last week. Right in the bazaar.”
“At least the weather’s decent,” Martin said.
“Not bad. The rains are over. In another month or two the heat starts and it comes down on you like a hammer all through September.”
“Maybe you’ll be out of here by then.”
“Not bloody likely. All I’ll get is two weeks’ leave in Baghdad. Have a few drinks at the Sports Club and play some polo.” He stared hopelessly ahead. “I hope to God you brought some mail from Winnie.”
“Mounds of it.”
“Marvelous. I’ll wallow in it before dinner. You’ll dine with us in the mess and then we’ll hole up in my quarters and you can bring me up to date. It’s like living on the far side of the moon here.”
The mess was an open-sided tent with mosquito netting hanging down like tent flaps. The service was suitably civilized with the mess attendants scurrying about in white jackets and serving chilled wines and beer and lukewarm whiskey sodas. The English officers were mostly young and on their first tour abroad, but several had fought in Mesopotamia during the war, as had the three Indian risaldars from the cavalry troop. The atmosphere in the mess was subdued, as a company of Lancashires and the cavalry had just returned to camp that morning after a ten-day search for an RAF plane that had run out of fuel. They had found the plane fifty miles from the river, its pilot and observer spread-eagled on the sand with their throats cut and their severed genitals stuffed in their mouths.
“It’s rough on the new lads,” Fenton said as he poured whiskey in his quarters—one of the Nissen huts. “They’ve never seen violent death before, only read about it in books. They can accept a clean bullet hole in a chap’s head, but to find chaps their own age tortured and mutilated just shakes them to the ruddy core.”
“Does that sort of thing happen often?” Martin asked, his notebook beside him on the seat.
“Not every day in the week, no. But once is too often.” He handed Martin a whiskey. “And the terrible fact is it will keep on happening every time a plane goes down unless troops can get to the crew in time. Poor blighters don’t get much time, though. The Buddhoos always get to them first.”
“What the hell are Buddhoos?”
“Any roaming group of Persian or Arab bandits. The country’s infested with them. They like to capture the air crews alive, strip them, and then turn them over to the women for torture. If the lads knew what they were in for, they’d shoot themselves first, but the English are not a suicidal race.”
He took a hefty swallow of whiskey and began to pace the narrow room. “I’ve tried to discuss the folly of these air strikes against remote villages with the RAF brass in Baghdad and Mosul, but they only half-listen. Polite, you know, but they really want me to shut up and mind my own bloody business. I have more luck with the local boys, the squadron leaders who have to do the nasty work. They fly these missions in squadron strength and stick together to keep from straying, but they still have chaps crash-landing in the desert or the hills. Not shot up, you understand; the poor bloody sods of Arabs never do get the satisfaction of bringing down a Brisfit with a rifle. It’s mechanical problems—engines conk out from sand and dust in the air intakes, or there’s too much grit in the oil and the bearings burn out. A thousand and one things can happen to a piece of machinery in this climate.
“Anyway, down they go, with nine out of ten men surviving the crash—and there’s not a damn thing the men in the air can do for their pals on the ground. Bloody nothing. Just circle them for a while and wave goodbye. As soon as the planes have flown off, the Buddhoos close in. If not right away, soon enough. And then the butchering begins.”
“It sounds pretty grim.”
“It is grim. The Buddhoo women know what to do to a man with their goat-skinning knives. But enough gruesome stories. The point is that it shouldn’t happen. Planes should only go out in conjunction with either motorized infantry or the cavalry, with the entire operation controlled and coordinated via radiotelegraph. The ruddy equipment is here, tons of it. Shiploads of American supplies were dumped in this country during the last year of the war. There must be ten thousand Ford trucks, and warehouses in Basra filled with radio sets. I grabbed half a dozen of the radios—U.S. Army Signal Corps-type SCR-49s. Lovely, compact little beauties—work off storage batteries for ground use and off the plane’s generator, with some rewiring.”
“You’re in trouble over that, aren’t you, Fenton?”
“Yes, but I don’t give a damn. What more can they do to me? Besides, HQ in Baghdad thought it amusing that RAF command was in a tizzy, so that was one up for my side. The jealousy—no, outright animosity between the services is highly obvious here among the brass. It doesn’t filter down to the men in the field, thank G
od. Number Fourteen Squadron at Tikrit has three radio-equipped planes and they won’t fly a mission without informing me. Before they take off, I send out some cavalry and a company in Ford lorries, with a radio and two signalmen in one of them. If anything goes wrong during the flight, we can be on the scene pretty damn quickly. The plane the chaps found the other day was from Number Six Squadron in Samarrah. They have an ass of a commander who thinks radiotelegraph is a toy. If he thought differently, two fine chaps would still have their balls.” He rubbed the back of his hand across his brow. “Jesus, let’s talk about England and get quietly sloshed. Did you see Winnie up in Suffolk?”
“Yes—Jacob and I drove up there just before I left.”
“Bloody awful about old Crewe. Heard about it, and then Jacob sent me a long letter. How’s he bearing up as head of a newspaper empire?”
“Quite well.”
“Well, he’s adaptable, isn’t he?”
“Yes—and more competent than he realizes.”
Fenton sat on the edge of his desk and nursed his whiskey. “So you went up to my little corner of the world. Did you take my boat out?”
“God, no. It was blowing up a storm.”
“Bosh, dear chap. I’ve sailed the Deben in raging January gales.” He stared down into his glass for a moment. “And the twins—and little Kate?”
“Three beautiful girls. You’ll be proud of them, Fenton.”
“Will? I am now. Bloody army. They were smarter in Victoria’s time. No officer below the rank of brigadier general got married. It’s too damn hard on a man—and a woman, if it comes to that.”
“Still not ready to cash in your chips?”
“No. I won’t be bluffed out of the game. They can keep me here until it hurts like hell, but they can’t keep me here forever.”
MARTIN GOT LITTLE sleep. He sat up in his bed in the visiting officers’ quarters—a fancy name for a wood-and-canvas hut—writing in his journal until well past midnight. Then, when he did turn out the kerosene lamp, the sounds of the big camp disturbed him. He could hear the braying of mules and the whinnying of horses, the moan of the wind and the flapping of canvas, the crunch of boots in the sandy ground. He thought of lean, wolfish Buddhoos, their womenfolk trailing them like mad cats. And then the darkness was rent by a Stokes gun firing star shell, followed by the distant crack of a rifle. Sentries getting nervous, he reasoned. Driving off the darkness and firing at shadows. It reminded him of Gallipoli—the British and French lines at Cape Helles. He drifted in and out of an uneasy sleep and was grateful for the dawn and the bugle blowing reveille.
“Sleep well, sir?” a young second lieutenant asked as Martin sat down for breakfast in the mess tent.
“No. All that shooting last night.”
“Oh, that’s quite normal, sir. Just keeps the Buddhoos honest. They’re sneaky little buggers. Some of them slipped under the wire one night to steal a horse. Tied all four legs and were dragging it out under the wire when a sentry spotted them.”
“I hate to think what they planned for the poor beast.”
The lieutenant looked shocked. “Oh, no, sir. They’re very kind to animals.”
There was a morning parade, as much in Martin’s honor as to keep the men on their toes and feeling “regimental.” There was a band of sorts—two drummers and three men with fifes—and they played “The Bonnie English Rose” and “The British Grenadiers” as the Lancashires and the Punjabis lined up in ordered ranks and the troop of lancers rode slowly across the parade ground in front of the armored cars. Fenton looked every inch a Coldstream Guards’ officer reviewing his men at Buckingham Palace, until he shoved his right hand into his pocket. The nonchalance seemed perfectly in keeping with his ragtag battalion stationed on the edge of nowhere. When the battalion was dismissed, a corporal of the Lancs stepped out of the line, raised his sun helmet high above his head, and shouted: “Three cheers for ol’ Hawk! Hip, hip …” The cheering was loud—and genuine.
“It’s what keeps you in, isn’t it?” Martin said quietly as he had a midmorning whiskey with Fenton in the mess. “The whole bull, brass, and comrade part of it. Old Hawk being cheered by his men.”
Fenton frowned slightly and reached for the bottle of scotch. “It must be part of the reason, Martin. I’ve often asked myself that. I know it’s deeply personal. Nothing to do with patriotism or King and Country. I suppose it’s all tied in with my childhood, when Uncle Julian dropped by on his rare leaves. My father was such an ordered man—an architect and builder. One brick carefully laid on another. Uncle Julian had seen the other side of man’s nature and was a part of it. The sword-bearers as distinct from the trowel-bearers. His tales—Christ, his tales: Chinese Gordon and the Sudan, crushing the Ashanti at Coomassie, high deeds and perils on the northwest frontier. Heady brew. When I left Sandhurst I expected to die in six months leading a forlorn hope in some exotic part of the world. Instead I was a subaltern in the Coldstreams banging debutantes all over Mayfair. It was a bit of a shock, but I took it in stride. I take everything in stride, Martin, even seventy-percent casualties on the Somme. I never broke down. Never turned into a two-bottle-a-day man. I’m a professional.”
The Bristol fighter came low over the camp shortly before noon, circled the flagpole to check which way the wind was blowing, and then landed on a stretch of flat ground and taxied toward the barbed wire and the gate. A thin, gangly man in his late twenties climbed out of the front cockpit, the two thick stripes and one thin one on his sleeves proclaiming him a squadron leader in the Royal Air Force. He came cheerily into the mess and downed a cool bottle of beer without pausing for breath. Fenton introduced him to Martin as F.A.M. Weedlock.
“I’ve known old Fam here since the retreat from Mons.”
“Before the glorious retreat,” Weedlock corrected. “I was flying reconnaissance and spotted the Boche pouring through Belgium. Flying a rickety old Avro. What a bloody lark!” He signaled the mess attendant for another beer and then grinned at Fenton. “Well, you old cock sparrow, got orders today from Wing to pay a visit to Sheikh Ali Gharbi. Intelligence—if one can call it that with a straight face—says the old bastard’s been running guns down from Kurdistan and has them stockpiled in those villages of his along the Shatt el Adhaim.
“When are you to take off?”
“In three days—dawn on the twenty-first.”
“There’ll be more than guns in those villages,” Fenton said grimly. “Your bloody bombs can’t tell the difference between a crate of rifles and a tent full of kids.”
“I have noticed that,” Weedlock said dryly.
Fenton glanced at his wristwatch. “I’ll see if I can get through to Baghdad on the blower—if the Buddhoos haven’t cut the wires again.”
The flying officer watched him stride out of the mess and then smiled at Martin. “Bloody fucking genius that man. You known him long?”
“Since before the war.”
“And what do you do?”
“I’m a journalist.”
“Right. Of course you are. Rilke. The name sinks home now. Have you read the paper Hawk’s written?”
“What paper?”
“Have him show it to you. As a war correspondent you’d be interested. Two hundred pages entitled The Integration of Divisional Striking Forces in Combined Operations—with aircraft data courtesy of F.A.M. Weedlock.”
“What is it about?”
“Just about everything the army and air force is against at the moment. Left to the belly and right to the jaw, as the pugilist chaps would say. The old one-two. Hawk’s theory is that every division in the field would be highly mobile and totally integrated—planes, tanks or armored cars, motorized infantry and artillery. One general in charge of the whole kit and caboodle. Radios in every plane, tank, and lorry. It’s complex and technical, but I think you’d enjoy it.”
“What does he intend doing with it?”
“Christ knows. I don’t think it’s the sort of thing the War Office would
go for these days. Too bloody expensive, for one thing, and steps on too many toes, for another. Can’t see the chaps at the Air Ministry putting any of their precious planes back under army control—and the Tank Corps has the quaint notion it’s above any control at all. Oh, well, so it goes.”
Fenton came back into the mess and leaned against the bar. “Bloody line’s been cut somewhere below Kasarin. Some Iraqi cavalry are looking for the break now. Anyway, what Baghdad doesn’t know can’t upset them. We’ll follow plan B, Fam—same sort of operation as Sharaban. Grab a beer and come over to the office. We’ll study the maps and work out the timetable.”
“Can I witness this show?” Martin asked.
“By all means,” Fenton replied. “You might as well earn your keep.”
THERE WAS A road of sorts, graded by the Turks a long time ago, running from Bani el Abbas eastward toward the cliff faces and high plateau of the Persian frontier. The motorized force made fast progress for sixty miles, the armored cars roaring along in front and the Ford trucks following along in their dust, the troops they contained holding on as best they could as the trucks bounced and swayed over the ruts and potholes. The road finally ended, sliced by wadis, and Fenton, riding in the lead armored car, turned the column off the road across the flat, hard, windswept desert.
Nightfall found them on the edge of a plain strewn with boulders and fragments of rock, as though some violent explosion in eons past had destroyed a mountain and scattered its pieces across the sand. The column pulled up and the troops climbed out of the trucks and sprawled wearily on the ground until the British NCO’s and the Punjabi havildars brought their men to their feet and set them to pitching shelter tents and digging latrines. Martin, wearing clothes lent to him by a captain in the Lancs, and a sun helmet and quilted spine pad supplied by the quartermaster, walked stiffly to the armored car where Fenton was standing, studying a map by the glow of an electric torch.