CHAPTER I
THE START OF THE "HUSH-HUSH" BRIGADE
A mystery expedition--Tower of London conference--From Flanders mud to Eastern dust--An Imperial forlorn hope--Some fine fighting types--The amphibious purser--In the submarine zone--Our Japanese escort.
Scarcely had dawn tinged the sky of a February day in 1918 when there crept out of the inner harbour of Taranto a big transport bound for Alexandria. It was laden with British and Dominion troops.
All were for service overseas. There were units for India and Egypt, a contingent of Nursing Sisters for East Africa, and a detachment of Sappers for Aden. The transport stealing noiselessly towards the open sea was the P. and O. liner _Malwa_, and, as a precaution against submarine attack, she had been so extensively and grotesquely camouflaged by dockyard artists in black and white that some of her own crew coming alongside on a dark night had difficulty in recognizing her.
The _Malwa_, too, had on board the members of a military expedition, surely one of the most {2} extraordinary that ever crossed the sea to fight the battles of the Empire in distant lands. Our official designation was the "Dunsterville" or "Bagdad Party"; but War Office cynics, and the damsel who sold us our patent filters and Tommy Cookers at the military equipment stores in London, knew us as the "Hush-hush" Brigade. And the "Hush-hush" Brigade we were privileged to remain. This nickname met us in Alexandria, followed us to Cairo and distant Basra, and preceded us to the City of the Caliphs on the shores of the muddy-brown Tigris.
On the eve of the departure from England of the main body for the Italian port of embarkation, a heart-to-heart talk between General Sir William Robertson and the members of the Bagdad Party had taken place at the Tower of London. The veil of official secrecy was drawn ever so little aside, and, allowed a peep behind, we beheld a field of military activity with a distinctly Eastern setting. Men who had been "over the top" in Flanders heard with a joyous throb of expectation that the next time they went into the line would be probably somewhere in Persia or the Caucasus. They were as happy as children at the prospect, finding it a welcome relief from muddy tramps through the low-lying lands of the Western Front, the dull grey skies, the monotony of life in flooded trenches under incessant bombardment, varied only by an occasional rush across No-Man's Land to get at the Hun throat. We were going from mud to dust, but hurrah! anyway.
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On that February morning, as the _Malwa_ slipped past Taranto town and into the roadstead where lay her Japanese destroyer escort, the roll-call of the Bagdad Party showed a strength of 70 officers and 140 N.C.O's. This was to be the nucleus of a force which we hoped would combat and overthrow Bolshevism, make common cause with Armenians, Georgians, and Tartars, raise and train local levies, and bar with a line of bayonets the further progress of Turk and German by way of the Caspian Sea and Russian Turkestan towards the Gates of India.
With few exceptions our party consisted of Dominion soldiers gathered from the remote corners of the Empire. There were Anzacs and Springboks, Canadians from the far North-West, men who had charged up the deadly shell-swept slopes of Gallipoli, and those who had won through at Vimy Ridge. They were, in fact, a hardened band of adventurous soldiers, fit to go anywhere and do anything, men who had lived on the brink of the pit for three years and had come back from the Valley of the Shadow of Death.
The War Office needed the raw material for a desperate enterprise. It was found by Brigadier-General Byron, himself an able and experienced soldier with a brilliant South African fighting reputation. He went across to Flanders and picked out the cream of the fighting men from the South African contingent and from the magnificent Australian and Canadian Divisions. I do not recall a single officer {4} or N.C.O. who had not won at least one decoration for bravery. We had with us, too, a small party of Russian officers who, fleeing from the Red Terror when their army broke and melted away, remained loyal to the Entente, and volunteered for the Caucasus, where they hoped to prove to the Bolsheviks that the cause of Russian national and military honour was not entirely lost.
Our Russian allies for the Caucasus were mostly young men, enthusiastic and keen soldiers, endowed with the splendid fighting spirit of the old Russian Army such as I knew it in the early spring campaign of 1915 in Bukovina, when it fought with empty rifles and stood up to the encircling Austrians in those terrible February days that preceded and followed the evacuation of Czernowitch.
On the _Malwa_, I remember, we had with us Captain Bray, an Anglo-Russian who had been a liaison officer in London, and spoke English like an Englishman. Then there was a Colonel who had been earmarked for death when his regiment mutinied and went "Red" at Viborg in Finland. Scantily clad, he had escaped his would-be assassins, fleeing bare-footed into the darkness of the Finnish winter night. After many hairbreadth escapes he had gained Swedish territory and safety.
There was also Captain George Eve, an Anglo-Russian mining engineer, who came from South America to enlist, and who, because of his accent and foreign appearance, had been arrested more than {5} once in the front line in Flanders on suspicion of being a German spy dressed in British uniform.
Colonel Smiles of the Armoured Car Section was another interesting figure. A descendant of Smiles of "Self-Help" fame, he had won the D.S.O. and the Cross of St. George while fighting with the Locker-Lampson unit in Russia.
Where practically every second man had a record of thrilling deeds behind him it is difficult to individualize, but a word must be given to Colonel Warden, D.S.O., of the Canadian Contingent. "Honest John" was the affectionate nickname bestowed upon him by the ship's company, who found a special fascination in his childlike simplicity of character combined with exceptional soldierly qualities.
Another refreshingly original type was Colonel Donnan, the C.O. of the party. Apart from other things, his physical qualities seemed to mark him out for the important post he occupied. They were calculated to strike terror into any Hun or other heart. A veritable Sandow, his burly thick-set figure, black bristling moustache, and dark piercing eyes were valuable assets for the man whose task was to discipline such a mixed company as ours, and the nurses affected an exaggerated terror of them, well knowing (the minxes!) that they were but the outworks of the fortress behind which was entrenched the Colonel's kind heart--outworks apt to go down like ninepins when assailed by a woman's tearful pleadings.
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Colonel Donnan is one of the strong, silent Englishmen who have done so much in an unostentatious way to push the interests of the British Empire in the far-off places of the earth. A great Orientalist, he has passed through many Eastern lands in disguise, bringing back precious fruits of his labours in a store of information, both military and political, gathered in his journeyings.
The _Malwa_ boasted an amphibious purser named Milman. For three and a half years, ever since the war began, he had been sailing up and down the seas from London to Rio, and from Bombay to Liverpool, and he knew from personal contact the summer and winter temperature of the Mediterranean Sea better than did any meteorologist from collected data. In fact, he had been torpedoed so many times that he had begun to look upon it as part of the routine of his daily life. He possessed a life-saving suit, his own improved design, which was at once the wonder and admiration of all who inspected it. It was of rubber, in form not unlike a diving dress, with a hood which came over the head of the wearer and was made fast under the chin. In front were two pockets, which always remained ready rationed with a spirit-flask, some sandwiches, and a pack of patience cards. It was the purser's travelling outfit when he was overboard in the Mediterranean or elsewhere and waiting to be hauled on board a rescue boat.
Occasionally when, in harbour, time hung heavily on his hands, this amphibious purser would clothe {7} himself in his rubber suit, slip over the ship's side, and go off for an outing. Once in Port Said, while gently floating off on one of these aquatic excursions, he was sighted by the port guardship, and a picket-boat was sent to fish him out under the impression that he was dead. "This bloke is a gonner all right!" said one of the crew, as he reached for him with a boathook. Then the "corpse" sat up and said things. So did the spokesman of the astonished crew when, having recovered from the shock, he found his voice again.
Milman was a cheery optimist. Nothing ever perturbed him. He was a recognized authority on "silver fish" (_i.e._, torpedoes) and cocktails, was an excellent raconteur, and possessed all the suavity and tact of a finished diplomat. When nervous ladies worried the doctor and cross-examined him as to the habits and hunting methods of Hun submarines, he invariably passed them on to the purser, and always with the happiest results; for, under the spell of Milman's racy talk, they soon forgot their fears.
The second day out from Taranto brought us well within the submarine danger zone. We changed course repeatedly, for wireless had warned us of the proximity of the dreaded sea pirate. The _Tagus_, our fellow transport, proved herself a laggard; she was falling behind and keeping station badly, and the Commodore of our Japanese escort was busy hurling remonstrances at her in the Morse code. {8} Our three Japanese destroyers made diligent and efficient scouts. They gambolled over the blue waters of the Mediterranean like so many sheepdogs protecting a moorland flock. Now one or another raced away to starboard, then to port, then circled round and round us, took station amidships, or dropped astern.
Their tactics, perhaps one should say their antics, must have been extremely baffling, even exasperating, to any enemy submarine commander lying low in the hope of bagging the _Malwa_ or the _Tagus_. Nothing seemed to escape the keen-eyed sailors of the Mikado's navy. Experience had taught them the value of seagulls as submarine spotters. Endowed with extraordinary instinct and eyes that see far below the surface of the sea, the resting gulls detect a submarine coming up anywhere in their vicinity, take fright, and hurriedly fly away. Whenever the gulls gave the signal--and there were many false alarms--a Japanese destroyer would race to the spot in readiness for Herr Pirate; but he never appeared.
However, the Hun was not always so cautious. There was great rejoicing on board the _Malwa_ when the wireless told us that west of us, in the Malta Channel, Japanese vigilance had been rewarded, transports saved from destruction, and two enemy submarines sent to the bottom. It was all the work of a few minutes. Whether the enemy failed to sight the destroyers, or whether they intended to chance their luck and fight them, is not quite clear. At all {9} events, Submarine No. 1 popped up dead ahead of one destroyer and was promptly rammed and sunk. Submarine No. 2 met with an equally unmistakable end. It had already singled out a transport for attack, when a second Japanese destroyer engaged it at seven hundred yards' range and blew its hull to pieces.
Nevertheless it was an anxious time for us on the _Malwa_ living in hourly dread of being torpedoed. The Nursing Sisters professed to treat the danger with scorn; they were courageous and cheery souls, and would unhesitatingly have faced death with the equanimity of the bravest man.
Ten in the forenoon and five in the afternoon were the hours of greatest peril, when submarine attacks might be specially expected. Everyone "stood to" at these hours, wearing the regulation lifebelt, and ready to take to the boats if the ship were hit and in danger of sinking. Colonel Donnan, C.O. ship, was a strict disciplinarian. He enhanced the somewhat piratical ferocity of mien with which nature had gifted him by always carrying his service revolver buckled on and ready for any emergency, and the Nursing Sisters professed to be in great trepidation each time at inspection parade when he ran his critical eye over their life-saving equipment. Of course knots sometimes went wrong, and the strings of the life-belt were tied the incorrect way; but volunteers were never lacking to adjust the erring straps and to see that they sat on a pretty pair of {10} shoulders in the manner laid down in Regulations, while the ferociously tender-hearted C.O. smiled approval.
On the fourth day after leaving Taranto the _Malwa_ steamed into Alexandria Harbour. Everyone was in the highest spirits. We had escaped the submarine peril, and the period of nervous tension while waiting in expectancy of a bolt from the deep was happily over. It was a glorious spring day; the warm, radiant sun of Egypt gave us a fitting welcome.
The stay in Alexandria of the Bagdad Party was short. Orders came through from headquarters that we were to proceed to Suez by rail as soon as possible to join a waiting troopship there. That night there were many tender leave-takings in quiet secluded nooks on the upper deck of the _Malwa_. During our four days' journey from Taranto the Australians on board had proved themselves to be as deadly effective in love as they are in war. But now had come the parting of the ways, with the pain and bitterness of separation. Perhaps a kindly Fate may reunite some of these sundered ones, but for many that can never be. At least three of those bright, cheery Australian lads sleep in soldiers' graves beneath the soil of Persia, far from their own South Land and from the girls to whom they plighted their troth that last night in the harbour of Alexandria beneath the starry Egyptian sky.
General Byron, his orderly officer, and myself left the same evening for Cairo en route for Suez. Next {11} day we had time to obtain a fleeting glimpse of the Pyramids, take tea at Shepheards', and be held to ransom by an energetic British matron who ordered us to "stand and deliver" in the name of some philanthropic institution which had not the remotest connection with the War or any suffering arising out of the War. The General furnished the soft answer that turneth away wrath, and with that, plus a small contribution for supplying wholly unnecessary blankets to the aboriginal inhabitants of some tropical country, we were allowed to retain the remainder of our spare cash and to continue our journey in the Land of Egypt.
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