War in the Garden of Eden written by Kermit Roosevelt

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WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN

by

KERMIT ROOSEVELT

Captain Motor Machine-Gun Corps, British Expeditionary Forces
Captain Field Artillery, American Expeditionary Forces

Illustrated from Photographs by the Author

New York

1919

[Illustration: Kermit Roosevelt. From the drawing by John S.
Sargent, July 8, 1917]

To

The Memory of My Father

Contents

I. OFF FOR MESOPOTAMIA
II. THE TIGRIS FRONT
III. PATROLLING THE RUINS OF BABYLON
IV. SKIRMISHES AND RECONNAISSANCES ALONG THE KURDISH FRONT
V. THE ADVANCE ON THE EUPHRATES
VI. BAGHDAD SKETCHES
VII. THE ATTACK ON THE PERSIAN FRONT
VIII. BACK THROUGH PALESTINE
IX. WITH THE FIRST DIVISION IN FRANCE AND GERMANY

Illustrations

Kermit Roosevelt
Map of Mesopotamia showing region of the fighting
Ashar Creek at Busra
Golden Dome of Samarra
Rafting down from Tekrit
Captured Turkish camel corps
Towing an armored car across a river
Reconnaissance
The Lion of Babylon
A dragon on the palace wall
Hauling out a badly bogged fighting car
A Mesopotamian garage
A water-wheel on the Euphrates
A "Red Crescent" ambulance
A jeweller's booth in the bazaar
Indian cavalry bringing in prisoners after the charge
The Kurd and his wife
Sheik Muttar and the two Kurds
Kirkuk
A street in Jerusalem
Japanese destroyers passing through the gut at Taranto

I

OFF FOR MESOPOTAMIA

It was at Taranto that we embarked for
Mesopotamia. Reinforcements were sent out
from England in one of two ways--either all
the way round the Cape of Good Hope, or by
train through France and Italy down to the
desolate little seaport of Taranto, and thence
by transport over to Egypt, through the Suez
Canal, and on down the Red Sea to the Indian
Ocean and the Persian Gulf. The latter
method was by far the shorter, but the submarine
situation in the Mediterranean was
such that convoying troops was a matter of
great difficulty. Taranto is an ancient Greek
town, situated at the mouth of a landlocked
harbor, the entrance to which is a narrow
channel, certainly not more than two hundred
yards across. The old part of the town is
built on a hill, and the alleys and runways
winding among the great stone dwellings serve
as streets. As is the case with maritime towns,
it is along the wharfs that the most interest
centres. During one afternoon I wandered
through the old town and listened to the fisherfolk
singing as they overhauled and mended
their nets. Grouped around a stone archway
sat six or seven women and girls. They were
evidently members of one family--a grandmother,
her daughters, and their children.
The old woman, wild, dark, and hawk-featured,
was blind, and as she knitted she chanted
some verses. I could only understand occasional
words and phrases, but it was evidently
a long epic. At intervals her listeners would
break out in comments as they worked, but,
like "Othere, the old sea-captain," she "neither
paused nor stirred."

There are few things more desolate than
even the best situated "rest-camps"--the long
lines of tents set out with military precision,
the trampled grass, and the board walks; but
the one at Taranto where we awaited embarkation
was peculiarly dismal even for a rest-camp.
So it happened that when Admiral Mark
Kerr, the commander of the Mediterranean
fleet, invited me to be his guest aboard H.M.S.
_Queen_ until the transport should sail, it was
in every way an opportunity to be appreciated.
In the British Empire the navy is the "senior
service," and I soon found that the tradition
for the hospitality and cultivation of its officers
was more than justified. The admiral had
travelled, and read, and written, and no more
pleasant evenings could be imagined than
those spent in listening to his stories of the
famous writers, statesmen, and artists who
were numbered among his friends. He had
always been a great enthusiast for the development
of aerial warfare, and he was recently
in Nova Scotia in command of the giant Handley-Page
machine which was awaiting favorable
weather conditions in order to attempt the nonstop
transatlantic flight. Among his poems
stands out the "Prayer of Empire," which,
oddly enough, the former German Emperor
greatly admired, ordering it distributed
throughout the imperial navy! The Kaiser's
feelings toward the admiral have suffered an
abrupt change, but they would have been
even more hostile had England profited by
his warnings:

"There's no menace in preparedness, no threat in being strong,
If the people's brain be healthy and they think no thought of wrong."

After four or five most agreeable days aboard the _Queen_ the word came to
embark, and I was duly transferred to the _Saxon_, an old Union Castle
liner that was to run us straight through to Busra.

As we steamed out of the harbor we were joined by two diminutive Japanese
destroyers which were to convoy us. The menace of the submarine being
particularly felt in the Adriatic, the transports travelled only by night
during the first part of the voyage. To a landsman it was incomprehensible
how it was possible for us to pursue our zigzag course in the inky
blackness and avoid collisions, particularly when it was borne in mind
that our ship was English and our convoyers were Japanese. During the
afternoon we were drilled in the method of abandoning ship, and I was put
in charge of a lifeboat and a certain section of the ropes that were to be
used in our descent over the side into the water. Between twelve and one
o'clock that night we were awakened by three blasts, the preconcerted
danger-signal. Slipping into my life-jacket, I groped my way to my station
on deck. The men were filing up in perfect order and with no show of
excitement. A ship's officer passed and said he had heard that we had
been torpedoed and were taking in water. For fifteen or twenty minutes we
knew nothing further. A Scotch captain who had charge of the next boat to
me came over and whispered: "It looks as if we'd go down. I have just seen
a rat run out along the ropes into my boat!" That particular rat had not
been properly brought up, for shortly afterward we were told that we were
not sinking. We had been rammed amidships by one of the escorting
destroyers, but the breach was above the water-line. We heard later that
the destroyer, though badly smashed up, managed to make land in safety.

We laid up two days in a harbor on the Albanian coast, spending the time
pleasantly enough in swimming and sailing, while we waited for a new
escort. Another night's run put us in Navarino Bay. The grandfather of
Lieutenant Finch Hatton, one of the officers on board, commanded the
Allied forces in the famous battle fought here in 1827, when the Turkish
fleet was vanquished and the independence of Greece assured.

Several days more brought us to Port Said, and after a short delay we
pushed on through the canal and into the Red Sea. It was August, and when
one talks of the Red Sea in August there is no further need for comment.
The _Saxon_ had not been built for the tropics. She had no fans, nor
ventilating system such as we have on the United Fruit boats. Some
unusually intelligent stokers had deserted at Port Said, and as we were in
consequence short-handed, it was suggested that any volunteers would be
given a try. Finch Hatton and I felt that our years in the tropics should
qualify us, and that the exercise would improve our dispositions. We got
the exercise. Never have I felt anything as hot, and I have spent August
in Yuma, Arizona, and been in Italian Somaliland and the Amazon Valley.
The shovels and the handles of the wheelbarrows blistered our hands.

[Illustration: Map of Mesopotamia showing region of the fighting. Inset,
showing relative position of Mesopotamia and other countries.]

We had a number of cases of heat-stroke, and the hospital facilities on a
crowded transport can never be all that might be desired. The first
military burial at sea was deeply impressive. There was a lane of Tommies
drawn up with their rifles reversed and heads bowed; the short, classic
burial service was read, and the body, wrapped in the Union Jack, slid
down over the stern of the ship. Then the bugles rang out in the haunting,
mournful strains of the "Last Post," and the service ended with all
singing "Abide With Me."

We sweltered along down the Red Sea and around into the Indian Ocean. We
wished to call at Aden in order to disembark some of our sick, but were
ordered to continue on without touching. Our duties were light, and we
spent the time playing cards and reading. The Tommies played "house" from
dawn till dark. It is a game of the lotto variety. Each man has a paper
with numbers written on squares; one of them draws from a bag slips of
paper also marked with numbers, calls them out, and those having the
number he calls cover it, until all the numbers on their paper have been
covered. The first one to finish wins, and collects a penny from each of
the losers. The caller drones out the numbers with a monotony only
equalled by the brain-fever bird, and quite as disastrous to the nerves.
There are certain conventional nicknames: number one is always "Kelley's
eye," eleven is "legs eleven," sixty-six is "clickety click," and the
highest number is "top o' the 'ouse." There is another game that would be
much in vogue were it not for the vigilance of the officers. It is known
as "crown and anchor," and the advantage lies so strongly in favor of the
banker that he cannot fail to make a good income, and therefore the game
is forbidden under the severest penalties.

As we passed through the Strait of Ormuz memories of the early days of
European supremacy in the East crowded back, for I had read many a
vellum-covered volume in Portuguese about the early struggles for
supremacy in the gulf. One in particular interested me. The Portuguese
were hemmed in at Ormuz by a greatly superior English force. The expected
reinforcements never arrived, and at length their resources sank so low,
and they suffered in addition, or in consequence, so greatly from disease
that they decided to sail forth and give battle. This they did, but before
they joined in fight the ships of the two admirals sailed up near each
other--the Portuguese commander sent the British a gorgeous scarlet
ceremonial cloak, the British responded by sending him a handsomely
embossed sword. The British admiral donned the cloak, the Portuguese
grasped the sword; a page brought each a cup of wine; they pledged each
other, threw the goblets into the sea, and fell to. The British were
victorious. Times indeed have sadly changed in the last three hundred
years!

I was much struck with the accuracy of the geographical descriptions in
Camoens' letters and odes. He is the greatest of the Portuguese poets and
wrote the larger part of his master-epic, "The Lusiad," while exiled in
India. For seventeen years he led an adventurous life in the East; and it
is easy to recognize many harbors and stretches of coast line from his
inimitable portrayal.

Busra, our destination, lies about sixty miles from the mouth of the Shatt
el Arab, which is the name given to the combined Tigris and Euphrates
after their junction at Kurna, another fifty or sixty miles above. At the
entrance to the river lies a sand-bar, effectively blocking access to
boats of as great draft as the _Saxon_. We therefore transshipped to some
British India vessels, and exceedingly comfortable we found them, designed
as they were for tropic runs. We steamed up past the Island of Abadan,
where stand the refineries of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. It is hard to
overestimate the important part that company has played in the conduct of
the Mesopotamian campaign. Motor transport was nowhere else a greater
necessity. There was no possibility of living on the country; at first,
at all events. General Dickson, the director of local resources, later set
in to so build up and encourage agriculture that the army should
eventually be supported, in the staples of life, by local produce.
Transportation was ever a hard nut to crack. Railroads were built, but
though the nature of the country called for little grading, obtaining
rails, except in small quantities, was impossible. The ones brought were
chiefly secured by taking up the double track of Indian railways. This
process naturally had a limit, and only lines of prime importance could be
laid down. Thus you could go by rail from Busra to Amara, and from Kut to
Baghdad, but the stretch between Amara and Kut had never been built, up to
the time I left the country. General Maude once told me that pressure was
being continually brought by the high command in England or India to have
that connecting-link built, but that he was convinced that the rails would
be far more essential elsewhere, and had no intention of yielding.

I don't know the total number of motor vehicles, but there were more than
five thousand Fords alone. On several occasions small columns of infantry
were transported in Fords, five men and the driver to a car. Indians of
every caste and religion were turned into drivers, and although it seemed
sufficiently out of place to come across wizened, khaki-clad Indo-Chinese
driving lorries in France, the incongruity was even more marked when one
beheld a great bearded Sikh with his turbaned head bent over the
steering-wheel of a Ford.

Modern Busra stands on the banks of Ashar Creek. The ancient city whence
Sinbad the sailor set forth is now seven or eight miles inland, buried
under the shifting sands of the desert. Busra was a seaport not so many
hundreds of years ago. Before that again, Kurna was a seaport, and the two
rivers probably only joined in the ocean, but they have gradually enlarged
the continent and forced back the sea. The present rate of encroachment
amounts, I was told, to nearly twelve feet a year.

The modern town has increased many fold with the advent of the
Expeditionary Force, and much of the improvement is of a necessarily
permanent nature; in particular the wharfs and roads. Indeed, one of the
most striking features of the Mesopotamian campaign is the permanency of
the improvements made by the British. In order to conquer the country it
was necessary to develop it,--build railways and bridges and roads and
telegraph systems,--and it has all been done in a substantial manner. It
is impossible to contemplate with equanimity the possibility of the
country reverting to a rule where all this progress would soon disappear
and the former stagnancy and injustice again hold sway.

[Illustration: Ashar Creek at Busra]

As soon as we landed I wandered off to the bazaar--"suq" is what the Arab
calls it. In Busra there are a number of excellent ones. By that I don't
mean that there are art treasures of the East to be found in them, for
almost everything could be duplicated at a better price in New York. It is
the grouping of wares, the mode of sale, and, above all, the salesmen and
buyers that make a bazaar--the old bearded Persian sitting cross-legged in
his booth, the motley crowd jostling through the narrow, vaulted
passageway, the veiled women, the hawk-featured, turbaned men, the Jews,
the Chaldeans, the Arabs, the Armenians, the stalwart Kurds, and through
it all a leaven of khaki-clad Indians, purchasing for the regimental mess.
All these and an ever-present exotic, intangible something are what the
bazaar means. Close by the entrance stood a booth festooned with lamps and
lanterns of every sort, with above it scrawled "Aladdin-Ibn-Said." My
Arabic was not at that time sufficient to enable me to discover from the
owner whether he claimed illustrious ancestry or had merely been named
after a patron saint.

A few days after landing at Busra we embarked on a paddle-wheel boat to
pursue our way up-stream the five hundred intervening miles to Baghdad.
Along the banks of the river stretched endless miles of date-palms. We
watched the Arabs at their work of fertilizing them, for in this country
these palms have to depend on human agency to transfer the pollen. At
Kurna we entered the Garden of Eden, and one could quite appreciate the
feelings of the disgusted Tommy who exclaimed: "If this is the Garden, it
wouldn't take no bloody angel with a flaming sword to turn me back." The
direct descendant of the Tree is pointed out; whether its properties are
inherited I never heard, but certainly the native would have little to
learn by eating the fruit.

Above Kurna the river is no longer lined with continuous palm-groves;
desert and swamps take their place--the abode of the amphibious, nomadic,
marsh Arab. An unruly customer he is apt to prove himself, and when he is
"wanted" by the officials, he retires to his watery fastnesses, where he
can remain in complete safety unless betrayed by his comrades. On the
banks of the Tigris stands Ezra's tomb. It is kept in good repair through
every vicissitude of rule, for it is a holy place to Moslem and Jew and
Christian alike.

The third night brought us to Amara. The evening was cool and pleasant
after the scorching heat of the day, and Finch Hatton and I thought that
we would go ashore for a stroll through the town. As we proceeded down the
bank toward the bridge, I caught sight of a sentry walking his post. His
appearance was so very important and efficient that I slipped behind my
companion to give him a chance to explain us. "Halt! Who goes there?"
"Friend," replied Finch Hatton. "Advance, friend, and give the
countersign." F.H. started to advance, followed by a still suspicious me,
and rightly so, for the Tommy, evidently member of a recent draft, came
forward to meet us with lowered bayonet, remarking in a businesslike
manner: "There isn't any countersign."

Except for the gunboats and monitors, all river traffic is controlled by
the Inland Water Transport Service. The officers are recruited from all
the world over. I firmly believe that no river of any importance could be
mentioned but what an officer of the I.W.T. could be found who had
navigated it. The great requisite for transports on the Tigris was a very
light draft, and to fill the requirements boats were requisitioned ranging
from penny steamers of the Thames to river-craft of the Irrawaddy. Now in
bringing a penny steamer from London to Busra the submarine is one of the
lesser perils, and in supplying the wants of the Expeditionary Force more
than eighty vessels were lost at sea, frequently with all aboard.

As was the custom, we had a barge lashed to either side. These barges are
laden with troops, or horses, or supplies. In our case we had the first
Bengal regiment--a new experiment, undertaken for political reasons. The
Bengali is the Indian who most readily takes to European learning.
Rabindranath Tagore is probably the most widely known member of the race.
They go to Calcutta University and learn a smattering of English and
absorb a certain amount of undigested general knowledge and theory. These
partially educated Bengalis form the Babu class, and many are employed in
the railways. They delight in complicated phraseology, and this coupled
with their accent and seesaw manner of speaking supply the English a
constant source of caricature. As a race they are inclined to be vain and
boastful, and are ever ready to nurse a grievance against the British
Government, feeling that they have been provided with an education but no
means of support. The government felt that it might help to calm them if a
regiment were recruited and sent to Mesopotamia. How they would do in
actual fighting had never been demonstrated up to the time I left the
country, but they take readily to drill, and it was amusing to hear them
ordering each other about in their clipped English. They were used for
garrisoning Baghdad.

After we left Amara we continued our winding course up-stream. A boat
several hours ahead may be seen only a few hundred yards distant across
the desert. The banks are so flat and level that it looks as if the other
vessels were steaming along on land. The Arab river-craft was most
picturesque. At sunset a mahela, bearing down with filled sail, might
have been the model for Maxfield Parrish's _Pirate Ship_. The Arab women
ran along the bank beside us, carrying baskets of eggs and chickens, and
occasionally melons. They were possessed of surprising endurance, and
would accompany us indefinitely, heavily laden as they were. Their robes
trailed in the wind as they jumped ditches, screaming out their wares
without a moment's pause. An Indian of the boat's crew was haggling with a
woman about a chicken. He threw her an eight-anna piece. She picked up the
money but would not hand him the chicken, holding out for her original
price. He jumped ashore, intending to take the chicken. She had a few
yards' start and made the most of it. In and out they chased, over hedge
and ditch, down the bank and up again. Several times he almost had her.
She never for a moment ceased screeching--an operation which seemed to
affect her wind not a particle. At the end of fifteen minutes the Indian
gave up amid the delighted jeers of his comrades, and returned shamefaced
and breathless to jump aboard the boat as we bumped against the bank on
rounding a curve.

One evening we halted where, not many months before, the last of the
battles of Sunnaiyat had been fought. There for months the British had
been held back, while their beleaguered comrades in Kut could hear the
roar of the artillery and hope against hope for the relief that never
reached them. It was one phase of the campaign that closely approximated
the gruelling trench warfare in France. The last unsuccessful attack was
launched a week before the capitulation of the garrison, and it was almost
a year later before the position was eventually taken. The front-line
trenches were but a short distance apart, and each side had developed a
strong and elaborate system of defense. One flank was protected by an
impassable marsh and the other by the river. When we passed, the field
presented an unusually gruesome appearance even for a battle-field, for
the wandering desert Arabs had been at work, and they do not clean up as
thoroughly as the African hyena. A number had paid the penalty through
tampering with unexploded grenades and "dud" shells, and left their own
bones to be scattered around among the dead they had been looting. The
trenches were a veritable Golgotha with skulls everywhere and dismembered
legs still clad with puttees and boots.

At Kut we disembarked to do the remaining hundred miles to Baghdad by rail
instead of winding along for double the distance by river, with a good
chance of being hung up for hours, or even days, on some shifting
sand-bar. At first sight Kut is as unpromising a spot as can well be
imagined, with its scorching heat and its sand and the desolate
mud-houses, but in spite of appearances it is an important and thriving
little town, and daily becoming of more consequence.

The railroad runs across the desert, following approximately the old
caravan route to Baghdad. A little over half-way the line passes the
remaining arch of the great hall of Ctesiphon. This hall is one hundred
and forty-eight feet long by seventy-six broad. The arch stands
eighty-five feet high. Around it, beneath the mounds of desert sand, lies
all that remains of the ancient city. As a matter of fact the city is by
no means ancient as such things go in Mesopotamia, dating as it does from
the third century B.C., when it was founded by the successors of Alexander
the Great.

My first night in Baghdad I spent in General Maude's house, on the
river-bank. The general was a striking soldierly figure of a man, standing
well over six feet. His military career was long and brilliant. His first
service was in the Coldstream Guards. He distinguished himself in South
Africa. Early in the present war he was severely wounded in France. Upon
recovering he took over the Thirteenth Division, which he commanded in the
disastrous Gallipoli campaign, and later brought out to Mesopotamia. When
he reached the East the situation was by no means a happy one for the
British. General Townshend was surrounded in Kut, and the morale of the
Turk was excellent after the successes he had met with in Gallipoli. In
the end of August, 1916, four months after the fall of Kut, General Maude
took over the command of the Mesopotamian forces. On the 11th of March of
the following year he occupied Baghdad, thereby re-establishing completely
the British prestige in the Orient. One of Germany's most serious
miscalculations was with regard to the Indian situation. She felt
confident that, working through Persia and Afghanistan, she could stir up
sufficient trouble, possibly to completely overthrow British rule, but
certainly to keep the English so occupied with uprisings as to force them
to send troops to India rather than withdraw them thence for use
elsewhere. The utter miscarriage of Germany's plans is, indeed, a fine
tribute to Great Britain. The Emir of Afghanistan did probably more than
any single native to thwart German treachery and intrigue, and every
friend of the Allied cause must have read of his recent assassination with
a very real regret.

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