Forty Days of Musa Dagh (47 page)

 

 

This noise of a battle among the rocks was the signal for the Turkish
firing line, on the edge of the wood along the counter-slope, to advance
in a frontal attack. They came out in extended lines, shooting at nothing,
threw themselves on the ground, shot in the air again, sprang up again,
ran on a few steps, and then ducked down. At just this minute the last of
the routed, would-be envelopers had been driven out from among the rocks.
Therefore their pursuers' fire took the attacking lines in the flank.

 

 

Gabriel stood on a rock, but did not shoot. He watched one of the
Turkish lieutenants intercept a disordered group to rally a defence
around it. The line was already flinging itself down to open fire. But
Chaush Nurhan sprang at the Turkish officer, and felled him with a crack
of his rifle-butt. The Turks threw away their guns, as though they had
just seen the devil, and indeed the old sergeant was not unlike him. He
let them see what a perfect soldier the Turkish infantry had lost. His
face was purple. His huge gray moustache bristled wildly. He had not
even a hoarse crow left in his throat. He did not seem in the least to
realize that he must take cover or be shot down. Sometimes he stopped,
to raise his bugle and force out of it a long, jerky call, whose ferocity
had its effect on both friend and enemy.

 

 

When Bagradian saw that the Turks were trying to turn their front towards
the rocks, he swung his rifle round his head, to give the men in the long
trench the galloping-signal. Their decad commanders had had their work cut
out to hold them. They came rushing with a bellow over the top, spattering
the new Turkish flank with bullets, without throwing themselves down,
or any longer trying to save supplies. So that the company was helplessly
caught between the two blades of a shears. With more presence of mind and
experience, Bagradian might have wiped them out or taken them prisoner. As
it was, by a wild scurry, they could escape, though both flank-protecting
decads blocked their way, and then shot after them. This wild Turkish
scurry down the mountain did not even halt at the foot of the Damlayik,
but only in the church square of Bitias, where at last they rallied.

 

 

Nine soldiers, seven saptiehs, and one young officer had fallen into
the hands of the defenders. These, as a matter of course, and with the
most frigid ferocity, set to work to demonstrate to their prisoners
exactly what it feels like to die in an Armenian massacre. Two of the
saptiehs Gabriel could no longer rescue. But he, Pastor Aram, and a few
more of the elder men threw themselves before the other prisoners --
though Chaush Nurhan, and with him the overwhelming majority, could not
in the least understand such mercy shown to the butchering tyrants of a
hundred thousand of their race. It was very hard for Bagradian to make
the disappointed men see reason.

 

 

"We shan't get anything out of killing them, nor out of keeping them
here as hostages. They'll sacrifice their own without thinking twice
about it. And then we should have to feed them. But it would be to our
advantage to send them with a message to Antakiya."

 

 

He turned to the white-faced lieutenant, who could scarcely manage to
stand upright. "Well, you've seen how easily we can deal with you. And
you can send us regiments instead of companies -- it's all the same to
us. Look up at the sky. The sun's not down yet. And, if we'd really
wanted it to happen, not one of you would still be alive. Go and say
that to your commandant in Antakiya. Tell him how much more mildly than
you deserved we've handled you. Tell him, in my name, he'd better keep
his regiments and companies for war against the enemies of Turkey --
not against her peaceful citizens. We want to be let live up here in
peace. That's all we want. Don't molest us in future, unless you'd like
some even worse experiences."

 

 

The swaggering undertones of this, the certainty with which he seemed
to be threatening, the pitiful fear these prisoners showed of being
slaughtered -- all this assuaged the blood-lust of the decads. They forced
the Turks not only to leave behind their arms, their boots and uniforms,
but to strip to the skin. In this miserable state they were released,
and had besides to drag their dead and wounded down the mule-track of the
Damlayik. That day's booty was considerable: ninety-three Mauser rifles,
abundant munitions, bayonets. Of the sixty-five decads not fully armed,
about ten could now be armed completely. This did most of all to raise
morale. Such success had been gained without one loss -- the Armenians
had only six wounded, and none of them seriously.

 

 

 

 

It is not surprising that so stupendous a victory should have been
very much overrated, both by the decads and the people. A few poor,
exiled villagers, insufficiently clad and scarcely housed, nesting on
the summit of their hill, had -- as it were with their bare fists --
with the certainty of death in their souls, routed a company at war
strength, a hundred Turkish regulars, trained for months and armed
with the very latest rifles. And not only routed, but almost finished
them. This fierce but easy struggle had not lasted four hours. It had all
been accomplished in a hand's turn, without a casualty worth the name,
thanks to a well-considered plan, a magnificent system of defences.

 

 

But Gabriel had no joy in it all, only a kind of weary embarrassment.
Nor did he feel he had rendered any extraordinary service. Any other
officer who knew war could have put the Damlayik in just the same state
of defence. It was not unusual acumen, it was the natural advantage
of the mountain, that had given them their victory. The grey heads
of the mukhtars swayed before his eyes, since even these uncongenial
peasants, who had always behaved so pawkily towards "the foreigner,"
were now clutching at his hand to kiss it as though he had been their
father. This hand-kissing filled him with dismay. His right hand struggled
against it desperately. He longed to thrust it into his pocket. Slowly
he forged a way through the dense crowd. He looked round for help,
for a face that meant something, and at last he discovered Iskuhi. She
had followed him all this time, but always keeping behind his back. Now,
as he drew her hand towards him, he seemed to feel that her fragile body
could give support.

 

 

"Juliette's waiting; she's got everything ready," Iskuhi whispered.

 

 

He did not heed her words; he heeded her touch. Iskuhi walked at his side,
as though leading the blind. Suddenly he felt astonished that all this blood
and death should not have moved her.

 

 

At last, in the tent, he could wash all over, luxuriously, after a village
barber had shaved him. Juhiette waited on him. She had heated up the water
in kettles, poured it into the rubber bath, laid out the towels and the
pyjamas which she knew to be his favorite. She stayed outside the tent
until he had dried himself. Never, in their long married life, had they
lost the last vestige of shame before each other. It took him a long time
to get clean. He scrubbed with a hard brush, till his skin was red. But,
the more attention he gave to this, the more impatiently he strove to
get this day scrubbed well out of him, the farther away he seemed to be
from himself. Into this marvellous cleanness in which he revelled the
"abstract man" refused to return -- the "individual," the man he had
brought with him from Paris. He saw the same face in Juhiette's looking
glass, flanked by its candles. And yet, deep in his soul, there was
something wrong. He could not make it out.

 

 

Her voice outside softly reminded: "Are you ready, Gabriel? . . .
We'll carry the bath water outside," she was saying zealously, not having
called in one of the servants. They bore the rubber tub out between them,
to empty it behind the tent. Gabriel sensed a yielding readiness in
Juliette. She had suffered no other hand to serve, had come more than
half-way to meet him, with deep emotion. Perhaps the hour had arrived
in which the stranger in her would melt away, submit, as he, over there
in Paris, had submitted his to her alien self.

 

 

"How much longer?" he thought. For now, after today's fighting, he had
no more hope that they would survive. He laced up the entrance to the
tent. Gently he drew Juliette to the bed.

 

 

They lay very close, but could say nothing. She displayed a new, and
reverent tenderness. Her eyes made no effort to keep back tears as,
tremulously, she kept repeating: "I've been so terrified about you."

 

 

He stared as absently at her as though her grief was incomprehensible.
Strive as he might, his thoughts were savagely swept away by fierce
powers to his trenches. "If only the sentries weren't slack tonight,
didn't go to sleep, weren't late in relieving each other. . . . Who could
tell that the Turks might not be planning a night attack." Gabriel had
ceased to belong to Juliette -- and to himself. For the first time in
their married life he could not manage to show he loved her.

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. ThE EXPLOITS OF THE BOYS

 

 

This devastating rout of a front-line infantry company on Musa Dagh came
as a painful surprise to the Hükümet in Antioch. It was a lasting stain
on the Turkish escutcheon. The power of any warrior race is dependent on
magic belief in invincibility, and the morale engendered by it. So that,
for those who take the sword, every value totters with a defeat, and
their very foundations seem to crumble when a race of puny intellectuals
succeeds in routing professional soldiers in successful, so to speak,
amateur competition. This had undeniably been the case in the sortie of
August 4.

 

 

And what -- Allah is great! -- was to be written and read about Musa Dagh!
Politically it was far less significant than the news of it was likely
to prove dangerous. It would need only a few more Bagradians here and
there to get Turkey into serious difficulties. Since every Armenian was
in actual fact condemned to death, since some still had weapons at their
disposal, such complications would have to be reckoned with.

 

 

The worthy citizens of Antioch, from whom this humiliation was being
provisionally withheld, saw lights at a very late hour in the windows
of their Kaimakam's council-chamber and feared the worst. That district
councillor presided over the major provincial assembly, usually composed
of fourteen members. At the moment his bloated body seemed to long, with
every breath it drew, to shove away the conference table. The Kaimakam's
liverish face, with its dark-brown pouches under the eyes, looked sallower
than ever in the discreet illumination of an oil lamp. Councillors became
more and more verbose. He, however, sat silent and full of cares. His loose,
well-shaven cheeks sagged over the wide stick-up collar; the fez had been
pushed askew on his left temple, a sign of evil-tempered drowsiness. On his
right the commandant of Antioch, a grey-bearded colonel, with small eyes
and rosy, innocent cheeks, a bimbashi of the good old school, who would,
it was obvious, stand out to the last drop of heroic blood in defence of
his own peace and quiet. His deputy sat beside him, a younger yüs-bashi,
a major of barely forty-two, his antithesis, as so frequently happens
in military double harness. This major was wiry, hatchet-faced, with
very determined features; his deep-set eyes glinted with suppressed
ire. They seemed to proclaim to all and sundry: "It's my misfortune to
be yoked to this unconscionable old dug-out. You all of you know me,
you know I'm keen enough for anything, and always do whatever I set out
to do. I belong to the Ittihad generation!"

 

 

A lieutenant of the routed company, the sole commissioned survivor of
August 4, he who had been sent naked to Antakiya with Gabriel Bagradian's
message, stood giving his report to these superiors. He could scarcely
be blamed for doing his best to make disaster seem more palatable by
the wildest exaggerations of Armenian strength. There must be quite
ten -- or even twenty -- thousand of them on Musa Dagh, hidden within
the strongest defences. And there could be no doubt that for years
they had been collecting munitions and supplies, enough to hold out,
up there, indefinitely. He, the mülasim, with his own eyes had seen two
machine-gun emplacements. It was machine guns which, apart from their
ten-fold outnumbering, had decided the unfortunate event.

 

 

The Kaimakam said nothing. He rested his heavy head on his right hand and
stared down at the map of the Ottoman empire spread over the table. Though
such high matters concerned none of them, the Hükümet officials found it
delightful to stick in little flag-pins along the fronts. But, for all
their loyal manipulations, the future of the war seemed not of the rosiest.
The little pins kept pricking further and further back, into Turkish flesh.
These fronts perhaps scarcely justified Enver Pasha's glittering reputation.
His Caucasus army, his best material, strewed, as a field of unburied
skeletons, the passes and slopes of those pitiless highlands. And already
the Russians stood on the boundaries of Persia, their faces set towards
Mosul, driving Djevded Pasha, Enver's cousin and a general renowned
for his massacres, further and further into retreat. The English, with
their Gurkhas and Hindus, threatened Mesopotamia. Jemal's grandiose Suez
expedition had literally melted away in sand. Men and stores lay covered
by the desert. All this time, on the Gallipoli peninsula, the Allies with
their big naval guns had been battering on the gates of Istanbul. Huge
stores of arms and war material had already been wasted on all these
occasions. And Turkey had no, or next to no, war industry. She depended on
the bounty of Krupp in Essen, Skoda in Pilsen. These production centers of
destruction could scarcely keep pace with the huge demands of immediate
clients. Only a small percentage of that huge output of new cannon,
howitzers, mortars, machine guns, hand and gas grenades came through to
Turkey, and had to be hurried straight to the various fronts.