TIGRIS GRAVES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16205, 15 April 1916, Page 4 (Supplement)

TIGRIS GRAVES.

WHERE.. OUR HEROES LIE; " ; - We are moving on to attack a-new' position, and it' is not the moment yH 'for a detailed' account" of ':> v he action and ' the part taken in it by individual regiments; in the meanwhile friends at home may care to have a picture of the - ground' where our dead'"' .writes •' Edmund Chandler, , from Sheikh Saad,. on /''the Tigris:,— • _ ■ ■'* '"...' '••"'• . "'*-'.

On the afternoon of January,B/a*littlej regimental cemetery had been- pegged out in the camp. Picture' a narrow apace between kicking mules and gurgling camels and.' ammunition limbers on the Tigris bank. In the' distance, seen through the slanting masts of. th? river boats: and tho smoke of the transport v . steamers and monitors, the' anew'of -the Pusht-i-Kuh Hills, a, low-lying range on the Persian frontier, 'is taking .oh a faint rose. from tho setting sun. ■'.-, ■ ■ • .', ',' . |

The dead lie still and peaceful in their narrow graven, each in the-dark, blanket wound _ tightly round . him like ,a mummy, with his name scribbled on. 'tho page of a notebook and fixed to the fold with a pin. Soon the padre will come'and ..read the service over them. Eor verdure there- are the agoon (a fast-rooted ..stingy plant) and the kharnoog (a prickly shrub), . and kr a tombstone a wooden cross cut out of a packing-case. "Private Andrew, of the --—shires," " Captain Thomas, of the shires," lie here. Born' in a smiling grass country; buried in the hard, inhos-' pitable clay of Sheikh, Saad. As the fatigue .party dig and prepare the bivouac for the dead, the wounded iof yesterday, swathed' in their bloody bandages,, stand on the .bank, a few feet apart,. smoking, and chatting and watching the shells, which i burst with the clearness of magnesium wire against tho opal and violet naze in the west. ' There is ' a baneful beauty in these shrapnel flashes, and one forgets. that they are making more dead. It takes about two days to get used to these things. The crowd on the bank might be watching" a football match;' ' across tho river there is an. actual football, rising .and falling.to desultory kicks. '• It is now almost dark, but a serious, scholarly-looking Scot ■ leans . against the bank straining his ■ eyes oyer a'' Times broadsheet. A few hours ago •he was fighting, as his bandages attest; for.the moment he is far away in-other climes, going rurfll rides with Cobbett, or reading Walton's ■ account ...of .the marriage of Richard Hooker in or about the year 1583, or listening to the voice of George Herbert, who tells s him ; that , '•'

Man is all symmetric, , Full of proportions, one limb to another. Life and death have their true proportions here. Life is a gift that is rendered back carelessly or earnestly to the Giver. Death is no more than a turn 'at the corner of the dark road wo have been treading blindly. Still, one wonders. Will there ever be an end of killing or maiming as a legalised form of human endeavour? War, as my. subaltern friend says, is a much over-rated pastime. Meanwhile the wounded still' pour in. Darkness falls, and lamps reveal their pale, stark faces. Out on the field there are dead still lying where they fell. One man I think of, his, rifle and .bayonet •sticking upright in front of him, driven into the earth by the force of his forward plunge. And all night One hears the even, • monotonous, unbroken ! thud of musketry like the tread of mules on hard clay.