1928 Hesketh Pearson IRON RATIONS Army Service Corps MESOPOTAMIA First World War
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1928 Hesketh Pearson IRON RATIONS Army Service Corps MESOPOTAMIA First World War:
$49.31
Iron Rations
by
Hesketh Pearson
This is the 1928 First Edition
Front cover and spine
Further images of this book are shown below
Full shipping/postage information is provided in a panel at the end of this listing.
Payment options :
- UK buyers: cheque (in GBP), debit card, credit card (Visa, MasterCard but not Amex), PayPal
- International buyers: credit card (Visa, MasterCard but not Amex), PayPal
Full payment information is provided in a panel at the end of this listing.
Iron Rations
Contents
STORIES
I. Wild Oats
II. The Last Inhabitant
III. A Base Barnacle
IV. The Sheikh
V. For King and Country
VI. The Diala Crossing
VII. The Facts of the Case
VIII. Swinging the Lead
IX. Rule Britannia !
X. The Desert
XI. Iron Rations
XII. The Shah Travels
ESSAYS
I. Songs of Araby
II. Two Cities
III. The Glorious Orient
IV. The Penetration of Persia
V. Joy-Riding
VI. Ruins and Relics
VII. Hamlet in Bagdad
VIII. On Killing a Man
IX. Peace—and a Postscript
Iron Rations
Excerpt:
X. The Desert
Heat and disease in Mesopotamia did the work of gun and aeroplane in France. The summer of 1917 broke all records. No one who lived through it will ever forget it. The heat was unparalleled. It blasted and withered. Sixty per cent, of every unit were in hospital. Hale and healthy men were stricken down with appalling suddenness. Neither in tent nor on parade-ground was anyone safe. Under canvas fellows would soak their towels in water, bury their heads in the dripping folds, and in ten minutes the towels were bone-dry again.
All that June and July the infantry had been resting. But the Motor Transport had been working, day in, day out, to feed the others at their distant posts. July was a mortal month. It has already become proverbial, even in the East. The Arabs themselves scarcely stirred abroad in the day-time. For a fortnight the thermometers registered just undei or just over 130 degrees in the shade between noon and 4 o\'clock.
Lieutenant Marston of the Motor Transport was stationed at Baqubah on the Diala river, some thirty miles north-east of Bagdad. He had been lucky. Three days in hospital out of as many months was almost too good to be true. How he had managed to stick it out was a mystery to himself. For he was not a hale and hearty man. He was, on the contrary, anaemic ; he lacked stamina.
Every day for eight weeks he had taken his convoy of Ford vans across the desert to Shahroban or Beled Ruz—the outposts of Empire in those parts, thirty miles east of Baqubah. The convoy would leave camp at five in the morning and return usually between two and three in the afternoon. Sometimes it took as much as twelve hours to do the sixty miles.
On the 27th July, 1917, he left camp at the usual hour in the tail of his convoy. Hope, the driver of the van in which he travelled, was just out of hospital. Marston was getting accustomed to new drivers. He had had sixteen during the last eight weeks. They had all been admitted to hospital with depressing regularity. A few had returned to camp marked for \" light duty.\" Several had been invalided to the Base. The rest had been buried.
The early morning of July 27th was cool and refreshing. There was a kind of \" mystic breathing \" over the desert while the sun was yet invisible. The date-palms along the bank of the Diala looked green and inviting. It would have been pleasant, Marston felt, to wander among them before the delicious fragrance of the morning air was annihilated by the sun.
There were forty vans of provisions for the little post at Beled Ruz that morning ; and as the head of the convoy turned the bend of the road beyond the far bank, the tail dipped down the near bank and disappeared into the cutting that led to the pontoon bridge. Gradually, as the last few cars crossed the river, the rumbling of wheels on the loose boards ceased, and the convoy was hidden from the camp by the belt of trees which fringe the Diala for several miles on the other side.
For a few minutes they ran between palms, cut off from the road by mud walls ; then they turned to the left along a road that had been made to skirt the town, crossed a little stream by \" Cossack \" bridge—so-called to mark the spot where the English met the Russians shortly after the fall of Bagdad—and halted for a moment in the desert beyond to pick up two Lewis guns and an armed guard.
Off again, across the lines of a narrow-gauge railway that was soon to knit up Baqubah and Shahroban, and out into the seemingly endless plain that within a few hours would be burning and lifeless. But now, in the still freshness of the early morning, doves and larks were flitting to and fro in search of provender, dropped perhaps by yesterday\'s convoy. Large crows, some black, some grey, some almost white, wheeled in the air ; while here and there, hovering above or stalking on the ground, gigantic hawks, the desert\'s chief scavengers, were offering their time—waiting for the next dead donkey or camel in which they could flesh their predatory beaks. Occasionally a jackal, that other great scavenger of the desert, started up from the ground on the right or left of the convoy and slunk off to its hiding place, stopping now and then to look back at the strange machines that had usurped its sovereign right to roam at will.
Sometimes a little group of Arabs would pass, their women and children on donkeys, taking advantage of the lull \'twixt night and full day to cover the ground as fast as they could. They, too, like the jackals, gazed enquiringly at the weird horseless vehicles, distrust in their eyes. These white-faced strangers had entered their kingdom unasked and unwanted, not as travellers craving hospitality, but as potential plunderers. What good thing could they bestow on the children of the sun, who despised their religion and detested their \" modern improvements \" ? So the swarthy desert-dwellers let the white-faces sweep on, regardless of their doom, with a shoulder-shrug—for Allah is merciful, Allah is just, Allah will avenge . . . Praise be to Allah ! . . .
In a wealth of golden glory the sun appeared over the horizon, and the desert gleamed and shimmered under its first rays. Coveys of sand-grouse rose from the scrub and filled the air with their rook-like sounds. Plovers made festive circles high above the tapering line of Ford vans. The whole of nature—or what there was of it—seemed to be trembling with ecstasy, on tip-toe with excitement to greet its Master, full-tongued. For perhaps half-an-hour every scrap of discernible life in that colossal level of dust—little enough in all conscience—appeared to lift its voice in praise of the Life-giver.
For perhaps half-an-hour. . . .
Lieutenant Marston forgot the convoy, forgot the country he was in. Leaning back in his seat he gave himself up to thoughts of home, to thoughts of summer days on the Severn. He closed his eyes and saw the Malvern hills rising in the blue distance, and the tree-covered slopes of Abberley. When he opened them again a breeze had sprung up and several miniature whirlwinds, carrying with them the lighter refuse of the desert, were panicking through the scrub. The plovers were settling on the ground in a chorus of shrill cries, and the sand-grouse were calling to one another in low, bodeful tones from the sparse tufts of sun-dried, dust-blighted vegetation. The larks had ceased to sing, the hawks to circle. A mirage of palm-trees in a vast expanse of water appeared on their right, and a heavy brown pall of dust blotted out the horizon on their left.
In a minute it was upon them, enveloping them in a blanket of thick, choking grit. Sprawling over the plain, mostly off the track, the vans blundered on, each driver utterly cut off from his fellows by a nightmare of moving dirt, nature\'s most hideous and isolating curse, each doing his utmost to reach the little post of Mahrut—a wretched caravanserai half-way between Baqubah and Beled Ruz. Desolate though it was, the wall of the \" khan \" there would afford some protection from this stinging Niagara of dust.
Marston, in the rear of the convoy, did not attempt to go forward. He told Hope to stop the engine. Then they sat tight and waited for the storm to blow over. While they waited every crevice of the vehicle was clogged with dust. Their eyes, ears and mouths were filled with dust. A thick coating of dust covered their hair, their hands, their clothes. Speech was impossible. Thought was impossible. They could hardly see one another. Physically they were merged in dust; mentally they were cloaked in dust. It was like being buried alive. To breathe was to be suffocated. The world was a chaos of flying filth. That was the reality. Everything else was illusive, imaginary, inconceivable. . . .
Bump ! A wandering car had struck them and come to a standstill. It didn\'t seem to matter. No one moved.
\" Buried cities,\" said Marston aloud. The power to think had returned to him at last. \" Don\'t you see ? \" he went on : \" these beastly storms account for all the buried cities in Mesopotamia.\"
\" Yes, sir,\" came dutifully from Hope.
Marston peered through the curtain of gloom between himself and the driver. Apparently Hope was thinking of something else, for his eyes were nearly shut and his hands rested limply on the wheel before him. . . .
Ten minutes went by—twenty—thirty. It seemed an eternity of time. Then the storm began to pass over. A red ball showed through the folds of dirt ahead of them. It was the sun. Marston welcomed it with a shout. Later, he remembered that shout and cursed himself.
It took the best part of an hour to collect the cars and do the necessary repairs after the storm had blown over. Some had sunk into sand-drifts at the side of the track. Others had fallen into \" nullahs \" and had to be lifted out. Others had collided. Others had tried to scale \" bunds\" and had nearly been wrecked in the process.
Mahrut was reached and passed. The sand-hills beyond were successfully negotiated, and by nine-thirty the convoy was running easily over the flat stretch of desert that has to be crossed before one comes to the \" bund,\" the road and the rice-fields of Beled Ruz. The \" bund \" and the road were both constructed by a French engineer ; the former protects the canal from which the rice-fields draw their water, the latter simplifies the transport of local produce.
Now, indeed, the sun began to assert itself. Already it was hotter than in the middle of the hottest day an Englishman could ever experience if he stayed at home. The wan men in their pith-helmets knew what was before them. They sat motionless, with grim, set faces, in the shade of their matting-covered hoods. The deathly silence of the desert was closing in upon them. Some whistled, to shake off the memory of fifty yesterdays ; others sang; the majority made no effort to forget, but clutched the steering-wheels before them and summed up their chances of another day\'s survival.
Stealthily the sun crept upwards. This was merely a day, an ordinary summer\'s day, in Mesopotamia ; but each dawn for these men heralded a day of doom. Would they, could they, see it through ?
Yes, assuredly. For now the convoy was through the \" bund \" and a cool breeze across the rice-fields renewed them and gave them confidence.
What a wonderful, life-giving air-current that was ! Every day the miracle had happened and every day this wind over the waters, this light fanning of heavenly breath across the swamp of irrigated mud, had quickened them and obliterated for an hour all memory of the hideous aftermath. Obliterated ? No, not quite that. But dulled—dulled for perhaps five minutes—and then the contrast between this hour and the following ones would rise up in their minds and strike the brightness from their eyes. . . .
By the time Lieutenant Marston arrived at the Beled Ruz Supply depot, half the convoy had offloaded and the drivers were busy filling their radiators. Little time was lost in completing the business, and shortly after n o\'clock the men were ready for the return-journey.
After instructing the Sergeant who led the convoy to wait for the tail at Mahrut, Marston watched the vans leave their \" parking \" ground. Most of the men, he noticed, looked as fit as could be expected. He spoke to several whose physical unfitness for the job struck him and who, he knew, ought still to be in hospital, asking them if they had enough chlorinated drinking-water in their \" chagals \" for the journey, and telling them to fall out of the convoy and stop their cars instantly if they felt unwell. Very often, he knew from bitter experience, a man would drive on until he fainted, with disastrous results, when a little water in time might have saved him.
Every car except his own and Sergeant Messiter\'s \" break-down \" van had now left.
\" That dust-storm has made us an hour late to-day, Sergeant,\" he said; \"I\'m afraid we\'ll have a bad run back.\"
But Messiter was an optimist. \" I\'ve got enough spare tubes for as many punctures as there are cars,\" he replied, jerking his thumb towards the back of his van. The appalling heat from the ground made punctures their first consideration. Everything else, from breakage to engine-trouble, was child\'s play to Messiter. If he had a sufficiency of spare tubes, he was happy.
But the 27th July was an exceptional day even for the summer of 1917. And because of the dust-storm that morning, the sun had already stolen an hour\'s run of them. Messiter\'s optimism was not quite so well-founded as it might have been. . . .
Everything went well until the convoy had passed the \" bund \" and was panting along in the desert beyond. Then a wind sprang up behind them and followed them all the way to Baqubah.
A following-wind in the open desert, on a day when the thermometers in the tents about Bagdad registered 133 degrees, is a thing that cannot be described. When, in addition, there is the heat of an engine that converts all the water in its radiator to steam every twenty minutes, the poverty of mere words to do justice to the situation will at once be perceived.
The vans began to fall out of their positions in the convoy with appalling persistence. The inner tubes seemed to have no greater resistance than paper. Even the outer covers couldn\'t withstand the heat, and Sergeant Messiter\'s stock of \"spares\" was nearly depleted before the convoy reached Mahrut. Worse still the men had to use their own too-slender supply of drinking-water for the radiators.
At last it became well-nigh impossible to touch the wheel-rims. Messiter, fortunately, had a pair of gloves, but this meant that only one man at a time could do the work. The tyre levers were so hot that the slightest grip of one blistered the hand that pressed it. The sun streamed down pitilessly on the backs of men engaged in repair-work and drove them back fainting to their seats. The wind scorched; the ground threw off sweltering fumes ; the men\'s throats became parched and they were seized with a fearful giddiness.
The situation at Mahrut was serious indeed. Six men were incapable of facing the remaining fifteen miles. Luckily there were six spare drivers, so the vans of those who were left in the tiny tent-hospital could continue the journey to Baqubah. Every drop of water the post-commandant could spare was swallowed up, lukewarm though it was, by the gasping men. Sergeant Messiter shook his head and \" doubted the advisability\" of proceeding. But Lieutenant Marston had no alternative. It was necessary to reach camp in time for the men to load the cars and have a rest. To-morrow, he told Messiter, food would be wanted for the troops at Shahroban. Duty had to take precedence of desire.
During a Mesopotamian summer humour is at a premium between the hours of ten in the morning and five in the afternoon . . .
Biographical Information
Edward Hesketh Gibbons Pearson (20 February 1887 – 9 April 1964) was a British actor, theatre director and writer. He is known mainly for his popular biographies which made him the leading British biographer of his time, in terms of commercial success.
Pearson was born in Hawford, Claines, Worcestershire, to a family with a large number of members in Holy Orders. His parents were Thomas Henry Gibbons Pearson, a farmer, and the former Amy Mary Constance Biggs. He was a great-great-great nephew of Francis Galton, whom he described in Modern Men and Mummers. After the family moved to Bedford in 1896, he was educated at Orkney House School for five years, a period he later described as the only unhappy episode in his life, for the compulsive flogging beloved of its headmaster. At 14, he was sent to Bedford School, where he proved an indifferent student. Rebelling against his father\'s desire that he study Classics in order to prepare himself for a career in Holy Orders, on graduation he entered commerce, but happily accepted his dismissal as a troublemaker when he inherited £1,000 from a deceased aunt. He employed the funds to travel widely, and on his return joined his brother\'s car business.
Conservative by temperament, he was a passionate reader of Shakespeare\'s plays, and a frequent theatre-goer. When his brother\'s business faced bankruptcy, he applied for a job with Herbert Beerbohm Tree, and began acting with that theatrical entrepreneur\'s company in 1911. A year later, he married Gladys Gardner, one of the company\'s actresses.
At the outbreak of World War I, Pearson enlisted immediately in the British Army but was soon invalided out when it was discovered that he suffered from tuberculosis. He volunteered for the Army Service Corps and was sent to Mesopotamia, whose climate was conducive to treatment for tuberculosis. He recovered from that malady while there, but contracted several other diseases, septic sores, dysentery and malaria and was close to death on three occasions. He attributed his survival to his practice of reciting long passages of Shakespeare while critically ill. He distinguished himself under fire, and on one occasion received a severe head wound from shrapnel. He was subsequently awarded the Military Cross.
After the war, Pearson returned to the stage and, in 1921, met Hugh Kingsmill, an encounter which, thanks to Kingsmill\'s charismatic friendship and influence, changed his life.
In 1926 the anonymously-published Whispering Gallery, purporting to be diary pages from leading political figures, caused him to be prosecuted for attempted fraud. He won the case.
Please note: to avoid opening the book out, with the risk of damaging the spine, some of the pages were slightly raised on the inner edge when being scanned, which has resulted in some blurring to the text and a shadow on the inside edge of the final images. Colour reproduction is shown as accurately as possible but please be aware that some colours are difficult to scan and may result in a slight variation from the colour shown below to the actual colour.
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To estimate the “packed weight” each book is first weighed and then an additional amount of 150 grams is added to allow for the packaging material (all books are securely wrapped and posted in a cardboard book-mailer). The weight of the book and packaging is then rounded up to the nearest hundred grams to arrive at the shipping figure. I make no charge for packaging materials and do not seek to profit from shipping and handling.
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Packed weight of this item : approximately 550 grams
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Please contact me with your name and address and payment details within seven days of the end of the sale; otherwise I reserve the right to cancel the sale and re-list the item.
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Finally, this should be an enjoyable experience for both the buyer and seller and I hope you will find me very easy to deal with. If you have a question or query about any aspect (shipping, payment, delivery options and so on), please do not hesitate to contact me, using the contact details provided at the end of this listing.
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1928 Hesketh Pearson IRON RATIONS Army Service Corps MESOPOTAMIA First World War:
$49.31