Forty Days of Musa Dagh (46 page)

 

 

About two hundred, armed with the best rifles and, it was to be hoped,
the best of the fighters, manned the front-line trench. Bagradian himself
was to lead them. Nor had he allowed Sarkis Kilikian, or any other deserter,
into this garrison. Men from carefully picked decads were placed under
Chaush Nurhan, in the rock barricades. Another two hundred stood in
the second trench, ready in case things should go badly. Every fighter
received three sets of five cartridges -- only fifteen bullets apiece.

 

 

Bagradian insisted: "Not one unnecessary bullet. Even if the fighting
lasts three days, you've all got to make your three cartridge clips
do. Save -- or we're done for. And -- listen carefully -- this is the
most important thing of all. No one to open fire without my orders. All
keep your eye on me. We must let the Turks, who won't even know we're
there, come on, till they're ten paces off us. And then -- aim steadily
at the head, and fire steadily. And now, keep thinking of all the horrible
things they've done to us. And of nothing else."

 

 

Gabriel's heart, as he said it, beat so hard that his voice shook. He had
to pull himself together to prevent their noticing. It was more than any
excitement of coming battle; it was the clear knowledge of this crazy,
monstrous defiance of the forces of a world-army by a handful of
half-trained men. There was not a trace in him of hatred. He awaited an
impersonal enemy, no longer the Turk, no longer Enver, Talaat, the police
chief, the müdir -- simply "the enemy," whom one slaughters without hate.

 

 

And, as Bagradian felt, so did all the rest. Tension seemed to have
stopped their very heartbeats when the boys came crawling back out of
the thickets and, with wild gestures, announced the near approach of the
Turks. This excitement froze at once to a glacial calm as the sound of
infantry boots came nearer, over crackling twigs, with bursts of most
imprudent noise, without any prescience of danger in it. Little by
little, puffing from the climb, their column of march broken up, the
Turkish soldiers approached the Saddle. The captain in charge seemed
quite persuaded that this was a job for the police. Otherwise he would
surely not have neglected the most obvious precautionary measures,
the basic tactical principles for a force in enemy country. Unshielded
by any patrols, advance guard, flank or rear protection, a disordered
swarm of laughing, gossiping, smoking infantrymen had come straggling up,
to collect on the ridge, and get their breaths after the climb.

 

 

Chaush Nurhan crawled to Bagradian, down the trench, and tried, in a
sharp, loud whisper, to persuade him to attack, surround the Turks,
and cut them off. But Gabriel, clenching his teeth, merely put a
hand over Nurhan's mouth, and pushed him away. Their captain, a stout,
good-looking man, had taken off his lambskin kepi, with the half-moon, and
was dabbing up the sweat that streamed down his forehead. His lieutenants
collected round him. They stood disputing over a sketch-map, all arguing,
in rather unsoldierly fashion, as to the probable hiding-place of the
wasps' nest. Fiery eternities for Bagradian. The puffing captain would
not so much as take the trouble to climb the highest point and survey
the terrain. At last he ordered his bugler to sound the "fall-in,"
in several strident repetitions, no doubt in order to put the fear
of Allah into cringing Armenians. The four lines formed up two deep,
in extended order, as if on a barrack-square. The corporals dashed in
front of the men and reported to the officers. A lieutenant drew his
sword to report to the captain.

 

 

Gabriel took a good look at this captain's face. It was not an unpleasant
one. It was a broad, friendly face, in gold-rimmed pince-nez, planted well
up the nose. Now the captain, too, was drawing his sword and, in a high,
weak voice, giving his order: "Fix bayonets." A clatter of rifles. The
captain twirled his sword once round his head, before thrusting its point
towards the ridge of the Armenian Saddle. "First and second platoons,
in extended order -- follow me." The senior lieutenant pointed his sword
in the opposite direction: "Third and fourth platoons, in extended order --
follow me." So that the Turks were not even certain whether the fugitives
had encamped on the Damlayik or the northern heights of Musa Dagh. The
Armenians stood breast-high in their trenches. The thrown-up escarpe in
front of them, in the slots of which they rested their guns, had been
fully camouflaged, as had also the lines of visibility, hewn out in the
undergrowth and knee-high grass which strewed the incline. In ragged
extended order the unwitting Turks toiled up the height. The first-line
trench was so brilliantly masked that it would have been perceptible
only from a much higher observation point; a point which, however, did
not exist, except in the tallest tree-tops of the counter-slope. Gabriel
raised his hand, and drew all eyes in his direction.

 

 

The Turks were making slow progress through the undergrowth. The captain
had lit a fresh cigarette. Suddenly he started and stopped. What was the
meaning of that turned-up soil, over there? It was still a few seconds
before it flashed upon him -- that's a trench. And it still seemed to him
so incredible that again he delayed, before he shouted: "Get down! Take
cover!" Too late. The first shot was already fired, and indeed before
Bagradian's hand had dropped for it. The Armenians fired reflectively,
one after another, without excitement. They had time to aim. Each of
them knew that not one cartridge must be wasted. And since their victims,
rigid with surprise, were still only a few paces off them, not one bullet
missed its mark. The stout captain with the good-natured face shouted
again: "Down! Take cover." Then he looked up in amazement at the sky,
and sat on the ground. His glasses tumbled off, before he sank over
on his side. Discipline suddenly broke in the Turkish ranks. The men,
shouting wildly, ran down the slope again, leaving dead and wounded,
among whom were the captain, a corporal, and three onbashis. Gabriel
did not fire. Suddenly he felt raised above the earth. Reality around
him had grown as unreal as it always is, in its truest essence.

 

 

The Turks took a long time to collect themselves. Their officers and
non-coms had a hard job to hold up the retreat. They had to chivvy
back their protesting men with blows from the flats of their swords
and rifle-butts. Meanwhile, the two ranks which had taken no fire were
advanced. But, instead of first discovering a practical line of attack,
these riflemen sought their cover haphazard, behind bushes and blocks of
stone, without the vaguest inkling of an Armenian trench almost under
their rifles. A mad shower of spattering bullets was released from
behind bushes and dwarf shrubs, which did the trench not the slightest
damage. Only now and again did a stray shot ping over the heads of
the defenders.

 

 

Gabriel sent an order down the trench: "Don't shoot. Take good cover.
Wait till they come back."

 

 

At the same time he sent word to his flank positions; anyone daring to
fire a shot, or even so much as show his face, would be punished as a
traitor. No Turk must have the smallest suspicion of the presence of
any flank protection. The Armenian slope seemed as dead and empty as
ever. It looked as though all its defenders had succumbed to the fierce
peppering of the Turks. After an hour of this savage wasting of munitions,
the company, four madly daring extended lines of it, attempted a fresh
assault. The Armenians, now surer than ever of themselves, again allowed
them to come up close before they again opened fire: a fire far worse,
far bloodier, than the last. Now the non-commissioned officers found it
impossible to keep control of a wild retreat. In an instant the whole
Saddle was swept clear. Only the cursing of wounded came out of the
bushes. A few Armenians were about to climb out of their trenches when
Gabriel shouted to them that no one had had orders to leave his post.

 

 

After a while some Turkish stretcher-bearers gingerly advanced between
the trees and began to wave a red-moon flag. Gabriel sent Chaush Nurhan
a few steps out to them. He beckoned them nearer; then he bellowed:
"You can take away your dead and wounded. Rifles, munitions, packs,
cartridge belts, bread rations, uniforms, and boots to be left here."

 

 

Upon which, under the threat of barrels turned on them, the stretcher-bearers
were forced to undress each corpse, and leave all this, in untidy heaps.
Then, when they had cleared away these victims -- it took a long time,
because they had always to keep coming back -- all the fighters, including
Chaush Nurhan, were of opinion that the attack had been routed, and that
no further attempt need be feared. Gabriel did not heed these deceptive
voices. He ordered Avakian to collect the nimblest lads among the scouts
and some of his own group of orderlies. These were sent out to collect the
plundered stores and scramble back behind the line with them. He picked
out the slipperiest of his spies. They were to follow the companies and
watch their movements very closely. Even before the orderlies finished
collecting, Haik, a youngster not much older than Stephan, was already
back with his report. Some of the Turks were climbing the mountain,
farther north, at a place where there was nothing for them to find.

 

 

This could only be an attempt at envelopment from the coast side.
So much was clear not only to Gabriel, but to Chaush Nurhan and all the
rest. Gabriel deputed his command to his most reliable decad commander,
and left the trench, taking Nurhan with him. They climbed up to the men
posted among the rocks and itching to fight. The natives of Musa Dagh
knew every stone, every jutting ledge, every grotto, bush, and aloe of
this bare, indented, limestone promontory, below which, three or four
hundred feet to the sea, the jagged cliff fell sheer, or in ledges. This
knowledge was of incalculable advantage against troops who could not find
their way here, no matter how much the stronger these might be. Bagradian
left it to his mountaineers to dispose themselves so cunningly in the
crevices and behind rocks that communication was kept intact and there
would be no danger of one receiving the other's fire. Their task was
the same as that of the others -- to lure the enemy on to destruction
by means of complete invisibility and absolute quiet.

 

 

But this time the enemy was more alert. He advanced his main force
slowly along the counter-slope, facing the Saddle, and opened fire
at the very edge of the wood, well protected by trees. It was a fire
at once vehement and nervous, directed against the main trench, but,
as before, not answered by its defenders. And, during this, announced
by scouts, a patrol of four men advanced, very gingerly indeed, among
the rocks. It was evident that these were not mountain-dwellers. They
came stumbling on across the stones, ducking their way from cover to
cover. They reconnoitred very carefully, looked into every hole, behind
every ledge. The Armenians saw with relish that they were saptiehs. The
soldiers were strangers. But the saptiehs! Now was the moment to pay
back in some of its own coin this lowest by-product of militarism, these
bestial skunks, valiant in their dealings with old women, scared of a
man, until they had disarmed him three times. Gabriel noticed a crazy
glint in many eyes.

 

 

The onbashi of the saptiehs must have imagined that he was already past
the line of entrenchments, and so in the rear of the Armenians.
Noiselessly he sent back one of his men, who began to signal with a red
flag. It was still some time before this enveloping force came slowly
on, at a stumbling, ever-retreating pace, as though they were advancing
through boiling water. This group was half infantrymen, half saptiehs.
Urged by its officers, it reached the place to which the onbashi had
already reconnoitred the ground. Then, at a moment when most of them were
without cover, the Armenians opened fire, from all sides. They leaped
about in scurrying confusion. They forgot their rifles. The Turk, the
Anatolian especially, is a good soldier. But this attack seemed to come
from nowhere. Not even the brave knew how to defend themselves. By the
time the Armenians dashed out from their hiding holes and among their
rocks, the air was thick with groans and yelps of pain. With Chaush
Nurhan at their head they at once drove a wedge between saptiehs and
infantry. Of the first a number were cut off, and driven outwards,
towards the cliffs. They got lost among the inexorable rocks, and cringed
helplessly against the stone waiting for a bullet, or remained desperately
caught, clinging to the thorny acanthus plants. Many began to slip,
turned head over heels, and bounced from rock to rock, like balls,
before they went hurtling into the sea. But the main body of the Turks
tried to escape from amid this rocky confusion by the shortest cut, and
leapt, stumbled, rushed towards the Saddle, chased by the mountaineers.

 

 

These were no longer sane. Unintelligible, throaty growls came out of
them as they tracked this enemy. Gabriel himself had long since lost the
clear-headedness of a leader, was the wild prey of some intoxication,
a crazy rhythm come suddenly to life in his blood that had slumbered a
thousand years. He, too, let out these short, slavering sounds, a savage
speech which, if he had been conscious, would have horrified him. Now the
world was a hundred times more impalpable. It was nothing! Less solid than
the humming of a dragonfly. It was a reddish, skipping ballet, in which
the dancer could feel no pain. Pastor Aram Tomasian, who had been one of
the fighters among the rocks, was swept along by the same madness. He,
like a crusader brandishing a crucifix, howled: "Christ! Christ!" But
the warrior-Christ of his battle cry had very little indeed in common
with that stern, suffering Lord, by whose Testament the pastor as a
rule strove to guide his days. Oddly, these shouts of "Christ" brought
Gabriel back to his senses with a jerk. He began to observe the fight,
but as though he himself were not engaged in it, much less its commander.