The Beauty and the Sorrow (34 page)

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The generals on both sides detested this sort of behaviour. And it is worth noting that certain types of unit—Guards units, for instance—were immune to it, as were certain nationalities (such as Hungarians and Serbs) when they were facing one another.

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The great importance of oil at that stage was not, however, to power aeroplanes and cars, since these were relatively few in number, but as fuel for the British fleet. The British Admiralty had discovered that oil had a number of advantages over coal, not the least of which was that it was much easier to load.

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The day after this the evacuation of the Allied forces from Gallipoli began and the Ottoman Empire achieved its greatest military success of the modern age.

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Well-known before the war for his daring, indeed dangerous, stunt flying.

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Probably on the same day, though possibly 16 December.

1916

This is the war. It is not the risk of dying, not the red firework display of a bursting shell that blinds us as it comes whizzing down …, but the feeling of being a puppet in the hands of an unknown puppeteer—and that feeling sometimes chills the heart as if death itself had taken hold of it.

PAOLO MONELLI

Chronology 1916

SATURDAY
, 1
JANUARY
1916
Edward Mousley sees the sun rise over Kut al-Amara

It is called The Stack. It is a pile of sacks of flour some fourteen feet high and topped with an observation post. The view from the top is excellent. It is possible to see the horizon in almost every direction and to follow most of what the besieging Ottoman force is getting up to north of the town. The Stack stands in the middle of what they call The Fort, a large, walled enclosure at the north-eastern end of the British lines of defence around Kut al-Amara.

Edward Mousley has been in the Fort since yesterday, when he was sent there to replace a forward observer who had been wounded. The way there is long and dangerous: he had to navigate almost two miles of trenches to reach the position and enemy snipers are everywhere, shooting at anything that moves. Because of the Fort’s isolated situation, the food served is unusually bad even by Kut standards. They have started slaughtering their draught animals and mounts (though Mousley’s beloved Don Juan has been spared so far) and the soldiers closer to the town often dine on horsemeat. That is less common out here because of the distance.

Mousley has been awake since half an hour before dawn. He and the other forward observer in the Fort take breakfast in turns and on this particular early morning they have the same old stuff to eat: rice and tinned meat, washed down with tea—butter and sugar have already run out. Mousley likes watching the dawn and seeing the shadows of the night lift from the flat plain of the desert. The sky this morning is
stunningly beautiful as it grows light, with shades of dark green, lilac and violet playing across an archipelago of fast-moving clouds driven by a south wind. Since this is New Year’s Day he would like to think he is observing an omen and that the fate of the army, like that of the racing clouds, is to sweep rapidly on to Baghdad. Everyone in Kut al-Amara is calmly waiting for the relief force which, according to the optimists, is just a few days away, though the pessimists prefer to measure the time in weeks. They have been laying bets on it. Sometimes they play football, though the heat is deadening.

There is another reason he likes the dawn: it is the easiest time to register gunfire because later in the day mirages begin to form. It is also easier for the simple reason that enemy fire is not so heavy at that time. The enemy has worked out that British artillery fire is directed from the Stack, which means that as soon as the British guns open fire enemy projectiles begin to rattle against the walls. (He describes the sound of a salvo hitting the walls as
r-r-r-rip
.) They have to reinforce the double layer of sacks at regular intervals since the stream of bullets eventually gnaws through the outer layer and shots begin to penetrate into the protected area.

Later in the day Mousley notices through his binoculars that Ottoman soldiers are starting to set up an artillery position. He warns one of his batteries, gives them the coordinates, and soon the guns open up. The enemy soldiers, however, prove to be not so easily frightened. With his binoculars he can see them leaping for cover when a shell comes whistling over but immediately returning to the task of digging and picking even before the cloud from the shell-burst has dispersed. Fearless fellows. So Mousley changes the barrage pattern. His battery begins to fire its guns one by one so that there are fewer shells but they land more frequently. That seems to have an effect and after a while he sees stretcher-bearers and medical orderlies with carts arriving at the Turkish position.

The Fort is one of the cornerstones of the defence of Kut al-Amara and like the Stack it is almost continuously under fire. (When Mousley walks along the wall there are bullets smacking in through the low loopholes and he has to rush past one after the other.) So the infantrymen holding the Fort spend most of their time underground and the whole place is a maze of connecting trenches and bunkers, along with deep pits used for the storage of provisions and ammunition.

In the afternoon Mousley visits one of the Fort’s outer defences. The
Ottoman infantry tried to storm it on Christmas Eve and after the British machine guns were knocked out and the Ottomans had broken into the bastion ferocious hand-to-hand fighting ensued. The attackers were eventually put to flight, by which time the bastion was full of dead bodies. The same soldiers who drove off the attack a week ago are still in the position and are pleased at their achievement. They show Mousley the large numbers of Ottoman dead still lying around—the bodies are in an advanced state of decay and the stench is horrendous in places. In spite of the smell and the danger from enemy snipers some of the men have risked venturing onto the carpet of bodies to look for souvenirs. One Indian soldier shows Mousley his trophies: three Ottoman tropical helmets and an officer’s sword.

Dinner is really enjoyable—a small portion of potatoes, a fillet of horsemeat, dates and bread. The meal is rounded off nicely, too, since an officer offers him a Burmese cheroot and around seven o’clock Mousley retires to his bunker to smoke it reverently.
^*

The bunker he shares with another forward observing officer, a captain, is big for two people—about sixteen feet by ten—but unfortunately its ceiling is so low that it is impossible to stand upright. Mousley lies in bed, smoking and staring up at a ceiling constructed of a layer of beams with a diameter of six to eight inches, on top of which there is a three-foot layer of sand. He notes that the weight of the covering is making the beams bend. While looking at the sagging ceiling he tries to remember an axiom from Aristotle—something like, “just as some planks are stronger than others, so all will break if sufficient weight be applied.”

On that day Paolo Monelli writes in his diary:

Isn’t this what you wanted? To be sitting by a fire, part of the war, one evening after a successful reconnaissance, waiting for more
serious missions. Thoughtlessly happy songs, the feeling that this is the best time of your life. And all your most morbid misgivings have been dispelled.

SUNDAY
, 2
JANUARY
1916
Vincenzo D’Aquila emerges from his delirium in Udine

No one thought he was going to survive but an injection of something—opium, perhaps?—in some unfathomable way reversed his spinning descent down into the abyss. The first thing he can remember is one of the nurses shouting in amazement: “
Tu sei renato!
” You have been reborn! But for what?

It is only slowly that D’Aquila remembers fully what has happened.

From the calendar in the ward he can see that today’s date is 2 January 1916. He is confused and lies with his head on the white pillow trying to understand. The war is still going on, that much he realises. But what actually happened when he was rescued from the expectation of death in the trenches? Was it his intelligence or his cunning that he had to thank for his salvation? No, it was his faith. He cannot let go of what the nurse said about him being reborn and a grandiose idea takes hold of him—if his own faith saved him from the war, could it not do the same for all the other soldiers?

A nurse comes up to his bed and gives him some thin slices of sponge cake and a glass of warm milk. After eating, he lies back and falls into a deep and tranquil sleep.

MONDAY
, 10
JANUARY
1916
Pál Kelemen visits the scene of the assassination in Sarajevo

The last few months have involved little more than patrols and the other duties of an occupying force. The mountainous landscape is blanketed in snow but it is not particularly cold. The remnants of the shattered Serbian army have disappeared over the Albanian mountains in the south and Allied vessels are said to have shipped them out to exile in Corfu.
The major battles in Serbia are over and what remains to be done is to finish off the guerrilla war. Some parts of the country have been completely emptied of their male population. Time after time Kelemen has seen columns of men of all ages passing by:

Shrivelled old men, crippled by hard labor, shuffle helplessly along, resigned to their fate like doomed animals. At the back are driven the cripples, the halfwits, and the children.

He is familiar with the snail tracks left behind by these pitiful processions—emaciated corpses lying in the ditch every mile or so, or the heavy, sour smell given off by their unwashed bodies, which hangs in the air even after they have passed round the next bend in the road.

For those who have no scruples there are numerous opportunities for exploitation. The Serbian towns have plenty of women prepared to offer their bodies in exchange for provisions, perhaps for a little chocolate or even just for salt. He has been unable to bring himself to participate in the shabby, unrestrained sex which now goes on almost openly in the occupied towns. Perhaps he is too respectable. Or is he quite simply too vain? For what would be proved by something won so cheaply?

His unit has been stationed in Bosnia since the end of December and Kelemen is in Sarajevo today. He notes in his journal: