Intricate and vivid detail leave a more startling imprint on the memory-film than the main purport of any great adventure, whether it be a polar expedition, a new discovery, or such a stupendous undertaking as that in which we were now involved.
The fact of our departure had been carefully kept quiet, and our destination was unknown. It might have been a secret expedition in search of buried treasure. Yet, in spite of all precaution, we might be torpedoed at any moment and go down with all hands, or strike a mine and be blown up. We knew that victory or defeat were hanging in the balance, and perhaps the destiny of nations. But while the magnitude of the venture has left no impression—I cannot recall that we ever spoke about it—commonplace details remain.
The pitch bubbling in the seams under a Mediterranean sun; the queer iridescent shapes of glowing, greenish phosphorus in the nighttime sea; the butter melting into yellow oil on the plate on the saloon table; the sickly smell of steam and grease and oil from the engine-room; the machine gun fixed at the stern with its waterproof hood; the increasing brilliance of the stars, and the rapid descent of evening upon the splendid colour-prism of a Mediterranean sunset—these, and thousands of other intimate commonplaces, are inlaid for ever in my mind.
We went about in our shirts and drill “slacks,” and the scorching boards of the deck blistered our naked feet. In a few days we became sun-tanned. Each one of us had a sunburnt V-shaped triangle on the chest where we left our shirts open.
The voyage was uneventful. The food was poor. There was very little fresh water to drink. It was July. The heat was fatiguing, and the sun-glare blinding.
The coast of Algeria on our right looked bare and terribly forsaken. It had an awfulness about it—a mystery look; it looked like a “juju” country, with its sandy spit running like a narrow ribbon to the blue sea, and its hazy, craggy mountains quivering in the noonday heat.
Hawk and I were in the habit of coming up from our bunks in the evening. We used to lean over the handrail and watch the wonder of a Mediterranean sunset transform in schemes of peacock-blue and beetle-green, down and down, through emerald, pale gold and lemon yellow, and so to the horizon of the inland sea, in bands of deep chrome and orange, scarlet, mauve and purple.
Hawk was the only man I discovered in all those hundreds of apparently commonplace souls who could really appreciate and never tire of watching and discussing these things.
I had often heard of the blue of the Mediterranean. But I must confess that I rather thought it had been exaggerated by authors, artists and poets as a fruitful and beautiful source of inspiration.
I never saw such blues before: electric-blue and deep, seething navy blue, flecked with foam and silver spray; calm lapis-lazuli blue; a sort of greeny, mummy-case blue; flashing, silk-shot blue, like a kingfisher's feathers. Sometimes the sea was as calm as a mill-pond, and you could see down and down and down.
There is a certain milky look in the waters of the Mediterranean which I never saw anywhere else. What it is I do not know, but it hangs in the water like a cloud. Once there was a shoal of porpoises playing round us, and they curled and dived and flopped in the warm blue seas.
At night Hawk and I stood for hours watching first one constellation “light up,” and then another, till the whole purple-velvet of the Mediterranean night sky was pinholed with the old familiar star-designs.
It struck me as most extraordinary, and almost uncanny, to see the same old stars we knew in England, still above us, so many hundred miles from home.
Phosphorescent fragments went floating along beneath us like bits of broken moonlight.
In watching and talking of these things, I quickly perceived in Hawk a man who not only noticed small detail and took a real interest in Nature, but one who had a sound, natural philosophy and a good idea of the reasonable and scientific explanation of things which so many people either ignore or look upon as “atheistic.”
We did not yet know whither we were sailing. We knew we were part of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, and that was all.
One day we put in at Malta.
Here the fruit-boats, all painted green and red and white and blue, came rowing out to meet us. The Maltese who manned them stood upto row their oars-and rowed the right way forwards, instead of facing the wrong way, as we do in England. They were selling tomatoes and pears, apples, chocolate, cigars, cigarettes, Turkish delight, and lace.
Continually they cried their goods—
“Cee-gar-ette!”
“Cee-gar-ette!”
“Tomart! Tomart!”
One man recognised us as the Irish Division, and shouted—
“Irish! Irish! My father Irish—from Dundee!”
Here were diving-boys in their own tiny boats, diving for pennies. They were wonderfully lithe and graceful, with sun-tanned limbs and dripping black hair.
Here, too, was a huge old man, who was also diving for pennies and tins of bully-beef. He was fat and sun-browned, and his muscles and chest were well developed.
“Me dive for bully-beef!” he shouted. “Me dive for bully-beef!”
Never once did he fail to retrieve these tins when they were chucked overboard.
The tomatoes were very large and ripe, and the tobacco and cigarettes exceedingly cheap and good. Most of the men got a stock.
The next day we put to sea again.
It was a real voyage of adventure, for here we were, on an unknown course, sailing under sealed orders, no one knew whither, nor did we know what would be the climax to this great enterprise.
Would any of us ever return across those blue-green waters?... Or would our bones lie, a few days hence, bleaching on the yellow sands? ... Mystery and adventure sailed with us—and each day the heat increased. The sun blazed from a brazen sky, the shadow of the halyards and the great ventilators were clear-cut black silhouettes upon the baking decks.
The decks were crammed with that same khaki crowd of civilians who had cursed and sworn and drilled and growled for ten long months in the Old Country. You imagine what desperate adventurers they had suddenly become. Some had never been out of Ireland, others had been as far as Portsmouth, and taken a return voyage to the Isle of Wight. And each day we zigzagged across the blue seas towards some unknown Fate... death, perhaps... victory or failure—who could tell?
Until one day a thin, yellowish-white streak appeared upon the sea-line; little groups of palms huddled together, and here and there a white dome or a needle-minaret. And so we warped into harbour, through the boom and past the lightships, to join the crowd of transports and battle cruisers lying off this muddled city—the city of wonderful colour, Alexandria.
Scarlet-orange;Beetle-green,Flashing like a magic screen.Silken garment,'Broidered hood;Richly woven gown;Flashing like a pantomime,In and out Aladdin's town.Fretted lattice;Dancing girl;Drooping lash and ebon curl.Silver tassel;Scented room;Almond “glad”-eye-look.Queersome figures prowling round,From some kiddies' picture-book.Graeco-Serbian Frontier,J. H., October 1915.
The coal-yards and dingy quays looked gray and chill. Here were gray-painted Government sheds, with white numbers on the sliding doors, dull gray trucks, and dirty sidings.
A couple of Egyptian native police in khaki drill, brown belts, side-arms, red fezes, and carrying canes, both smoking cigarettes, swaggered up and down in front of an arc-light.
There were dump-yards and gray tin offices, rusty cranes, and a gray floating quay. Gangs of Egyptian beggars in ragged clothes and a flock of little brown children continually dodged the native police as we sailed slowly through the docks. They were the only touch of colour in a muddle of Government buildings, stores, and transport ships.
We were all crowding to the handrail looking overboard. The Egyptian sunset had just vanished and the deep blue of an Eastern night held the docks in a haze of gloom.
The pipe band of the Inniskillings was playing “The Wearin' o' the Green” in that mournful, gurgling chant which we came to know so well.
One of the little Egyptian beggar-girls was dancing to it on the floating quay down below us by the flicker of the arc-lamp. She was a tiny mite, with a shock of black hair and brown face and arms. She wore a pink dress with some brass buttons hung round her neck. She danced with all the supple gracefulness of the out-door tribes of the desert, never out of step, always true and rhythmic in every motion of arms and body.
When the pipes on board trailed away with a hiss of wind and a choking, gurgling noise into silence the little dancing girl began to sing in a deep, musical voice—the voice of one who has lived out-of-doors in tents—
“Itta long way—Tipple-airy!—Long way to go!—Long way—Tipple-airy!Sweetie girl I know!...”
She sang in broken English, and danced to the tune, which she knew perfectly.
The khaki crowd aboard whistled and cheered and laughed. Some one threw a penny. The whole gang of beggars scrambled after it, and there ensued a scrimmage with much shouting and swearing in Arabic.
We could see the city lit up beyond the dull gray docks.
Next morning we went for a route march through Alexandria. We marched through the dockyards. Gangs of native workmen in native costume-coloured robes and bare feet, turbans and red fezes—were working on the transports, unloading box after box of bully-beef and biscuit and piling them in huge “dumps” on the quays. Rusty chains clanked, steam cranes rattled and puffed out whiffs of white steam.
But they did not hustle or hurry. They worked under the direction of English sergeants and officers, loading and unloading.
At last we got outside the zone of awful ugliness which follows the British wherever they go. The docks were left behind and the change was sudden and startling.
It was like putting down a novel by Arnold Bennett and taking up the Koran.
I did not trouble to keep in step or “cover off.” My eyes were trying to take in the splendid Eastern scenes. Here were figures which had come right out of the Arabian Nights.
Was that not Haroun Al Raschid, Commander of the Faithful, disguised as a water-carrier, with a goatskin bottle slung over his shoulder, and great yellow baggy trousers and a striped cummerbund?
Here were veiled women and old men squatting under their open bazaar fronts, with coloured mats and blinds strung across the narrow streets. Fruit sellers surrounded by melons, and beans, tomatoes and figs and dates—a jumble of colour, orange, scarlet, green, and gold. Pitchers and jars and woven carpets; queer Eastern scents; shuttered windows and flat roofs, mules and here and there a loaded camel, two Jews in black robes, a band of wild-looking desert wanderers in white with hoods and veils.
Egyptian women carrying little brown babies; who would believe there could be such figures, such colour and picturesque compositions?
It was a short march, but we saw much.
So this was the land of Egypt. It was good. What a pity we could see so little of it...
There were very smartly dressed French women with faces powdered and painted and scented. Old men with hollow eyes and yellow parchment skins all creased and wrinkled squatted on the cobble-stones, smoking hubble-bubbles and long ivory-stemmed pipes.
Arab boys selling oranges ran about the streets. The heat was stifling—the shadows purple-black, the sunlight glared golden-white on the buildings and towers and minarets.
Here were curio-shops with queer oriental carvings and alabaster figures.
It was like a chapter of myThousand-and-One Nightscome true, and I remembered the gray barracks at Limerick and the incessant drill.
At last we marched back through the docks and aboard the Canada. Next morning we were sailing far away upon a blue sea. Just a glimpse of the city of wonderful colour and we were once more creeping closer and closer to the mystery of our unknown venture.
Many of us would never pass that way again—and each one wondered sometimes if he would be claimed by that Mechanical Death which none of us fully realised.
Only a few short hours—a day or two longer—and we should be plunged into battle. A bullet for one, shrapnel for another, dysentery for a third, a bayonet or death from weakness and starvation.
The great game of luck was gathering faster and faster. We loafed about on deck and wondered where we were going and what it would be like... our minds were thinking of the immediate future. Each one tried to make out he didn't care, but each one was thinking upon the same subject—his luck, fate, kismet. How many would return to old England—should I be one; or would the Eastern sunshine blaze down upon my decomposing body on some barren sandy shore?
We passed many of the Greek Islands—some came up pink and mauve out of the sea, others were green with vineyards; once or twice a little triangular-sailed boat bobbed along the coast.
The uncertainty was a strain, and we felt utterly cut off, until at last we sighted a sandy streak, and later a line of volcanic-looking peaks—the Isle of Lemnos.
LEMNOS HARBOURWithin the outer anchorageThe ancient Argonauts lay to;Little they dreamt—that dauntless crew—That here to-day in the sheltered bayWhere the seas are still and blue,Great battle-ships should froth andhum, And mighty transport-vessels comeSerenely floating through.With magic sail the ArgonautsStood by to go about;Little they thought—that hero band—As they made once more for an unknown landIn a world of terror and doubt,That here in the wake of the magical boughShould come the all-terrible ironclad nowSerenely floating out.Written on Mudros Beach: Oct. 7, 1915.
July the twenty-seventh.
The deadly silence...
The tenderfoot on an expedition of this sort naturally expects to find himself plunged into a whirl of noise and tumult.
The crags were colourless and shimmering in the heat. The harbour was calm and greeny-blue. One by one, with our haversacks and water-bottles, belts and rolled overcoats, we went down the companion-way into the waiting surf-boats. Again and again these boats, roped together and tugged by a little launch, went back and forth from the S.S. Canada to the “Turk's Head Pier'—a tiny wooden jetty built by the Engineers.
I asked one of the straw-hatted men of the Naval Division, who was casting off the painter, what the place was like—
“Sand an' flies, and flies an' sand—nothinkelse!” he replied.
No sooner ashore than the green and black flies came pestering and tormenting like a host of wicked jinn. The glare of sunlight on the yellow sand hurt the eyes. The deadly silence of the place was oppressive—especially when you had strung yourself up to concert pitch to face the crash and turmoil of a fearful battle.
The quiet isolation and khaki desolation of jagged peaks and sandy slopes was nerve-breaking.
You could see the thin lines of the wireless station and little groups of white bell-tents dotted here and there.
Robinson Crusoe wasn't in it. Sand and flies and sun; sun and flies and sand.
“Wot 'ave we struck 'ere, Bill?”
“Some d—-d desert island, I reckon!”
“A blasted heath...”
“Gordlummy, look at the d—-d flies!”
“Curse the —— sun; sweat's trickling down me back.”
“And curse all the d—-d issue...”
“What the holy son of Moses did we join for?”
We growled and groaned and cursed our luck. The sweat ran down under our pith helmets and soaked in a stream from under our armpits. We trudged to our camping-place along the shore. One or two Greek natives followed us about with melons to sell. Parched and choked with sand, we were only too glad to buy these water-melons for two or three leptas.
The rind was green like a vegetable marrow, but the inside was yellow with pink and crimson pips—the colour of a Mediterranean sunset.
One day ashore on this accursed island and the diarrhoea set in. I never saw men suffer such awful stomach-pains before. The continual eating of melons to allay the blistering thirst helped the disease. Many men slept close to the latrines, too weak to crawl to and fro all night long. The sun blazed, and the flies in thousands of millions swarmed and irritated from early morning till sundown.
At night it was cold. The stars burned white-hot—a calm, fierce glitter.
Hawk and I “kipped down” (slept) together on a sandy stretch overlooking the bay. We could see the green-and-red electric lights of the hospital ships waiting in the harbour—for us, perhaps...
The “graft” (work) was fearful. All day long we were at it: hauling up our equipment from the beach where it had been dumped ashore. Medical panniers, operating marquee, tents and tent-poles, cook-house dixies, picks and shovels, bully and biscuit boxes and a hundred-and-one articles necessary to the work of the Medical Corps in the field: all this had to be man-handled through the sand up to our camp about a mile away. And the sun blazed, and the flies pestered and stung and buzzed and fought with each other for the drops of sweat streaming down your face. How long should we be here? When were we going into action?... The suspense was brain-racking. The diarrhoea increased: everyone went down with it. Some got the ague shivers and some a touch of dysentery.
We became gloomy and bodily sick. We wanted to get into it—into action...
Anything would be better than this God-forsaken island. Why the dickens did they leave us moping here: working in the blazing heat, and crawling to the latrines in the chilly nights? For goodness' sake, let's get out of it! Let's get to work!... So the days dragged on.
The natives wore baggy trousers and coloured head-bands. They sat all day near our camp selling melons, tomatoes, very cheap and tasteless chocolates, raisins, figs and dates.
We used to go down to swim in the little bay-like semicircle of the harbour. The water was always warm and very salt. Here were tiny shoals of tiny fish. The water was clear and glassy. There were pinky sea-urchins with spikey spines which jabbed your feet. The sandy bed of the bay was all ribbed with ripples.
The island was humming and ticking like a watch with insect-noises: otherwise the deadly silence held. There were red-winged grasshoppers and great green-gray locust-looking crickets which whistled and “cricked” all night.
We had to fetch our water from the water-tank boats, about a mile and a half distant, and haul it up in a water-cart.
Gangs of natives were working under the military authorities. There were Greeks and Greek-Armenians, Turks and Ethiopians, Egyptians and half-breeds of all kinds from Malta and Gib. They were employed in making roads and clearing the ground for huts and camps.
And all the time we had no letters from home. We were actually marooned on Lemnos Island: as literally marooned on a barren desert isle as any buccaneer of the old Spanish galleon days. We went suddenly back to a savage life. We went down to bathe stark naked, with the sunset glowing orange on our sunburnt limbs. Here it was that Hawk proved himself a wonderfully good swimmer. He was lithe and supple and well-made—an extraordinary specimen of virile manhood—and he spent his fiftieth birthday on Lemnos!
One day came the order to pack up and man-handle all our stuff down to the beach ready for re-embarkation. At last we were on the move. We worked with a will now. The great day would soon dawn. Some of us would get “put out of mess,” no doubt, but this waiting about to get killed was much worse than plunging into the thick of it.
August the 6th saw us steaming out at night towards the great unknown climax—the New Landing.
A pale pink sunrise burst across the eastern sky as our transport came steaming into the bay. The haze of early morning dusk still held, blurring the mainland and water in misty outlines.
Hawk and I had slept upon the deck. Now we got up and stretched our cramped limbs. Slowly we warped through the quiet seas.
You must understand that we knew not where we were. We had never heard of Suvla Bay—we didn't know what part of the Peninsula we had reached. The mystery of the adventure made it all the more exciting. It was to be “a new landing by the Xth Division”—that was all we knew.
Some of us had slept, and some had lain awake all night. Rapidly the pink sunrise swept behind the rugged mountains to the left, and was reflected in wobbling ripples in the bay.
We joined the host of battleships, monitors, and troopships standing out, and “stood by.”
We could hear the rattle of machine-guns in the distant gloom beyond the streak of sandy shore. The decks were crowded with that same khaki crowd. We all stood eagerly watching and listening. The death-silence had come upon us. No one spoke. No one whistled.
We could see the lighters and small boats towing troops ashore. We saw the men scramble out, only to be blown to pieces by land mines as they waded to the beach. On the Lala Baba side we watched platoons and companies form up and march along in fours, all in step, as if they were on parade.
“In fours!” I exclaimed to Hawk, who was peering through my field-glasses.
“Sheer murder,” said Hawk.
No sooner had he spoken than a high explosive from the Turkish positions on the Sari Bair range came screaming over the Salt Lake: “Z-z-z-e-e-e-o-o-o-p—Crash!”
They lay there like a little group of dead beetles, and the wounded were crawling away like ants into the dead yellow grass and the sage bushes to die. A whole platoon was smashed.
It was not yet daylight. We could see the flicker of rifle-fire, and the crackle sounded first on one part of the bay, and then another. Among the dark rocks and bushes it looked as if people were striking thousands of matches.
Mechanical Death went steadily on. Four Turkish batteries on the Kislar Dargh were blown up one after the other by our battleships. We watched the thick rolling smoke of the explosions, and saw bits of wheels, and the arms and legs of gunners blown up in little black fragments against that pearl-pink sunrise.
The noise of Mechanical Battle went surging from one side of the bay to the other—it swept round suddenly with an angry rattle of maxims and the hard echoing crackle of rifle-fire.
Now and then our battle-ships crashed forth, and their shells went hurtling and screaming over the mountains to burst with a muffled roar somewhere out of sight.
Mechanical Death moved back and forth. It whistled and screamed and crashed. It spat fire, and unfolded puffs of grey and white and black smoke. It flashed tongues of livid flame, like some devilish ant-eater lapping up its insects... and the insects were the sons of men.
Mechanical Death, as we saw him at work, was hard and metallic, steel-studded and shrapnel-toothed. Now and then he bristled with bayonets, and they glittered here and there in tiny groups, and charged up the rocks and through the bushes.
The noise increased. Mechanical Death worked first on our side, and then with the Turks. He led forward a squad, and the next instant mowed them down with a hail of lead. He galloped up a battery, unlimbered—and before the first shell could be rammed home Mechanical Death blew the whole lot up with a high explosive from a Turkish battery in the hills.
And so it went on hour after hour. Crackle, rattle and roar; scream, whistle and crash. We stood there on the deck watching men get killed. Now and then a shell came wailing and moaning across the bay, and dropped into the water with a great column of spray glittering in the early morning sunshine. A German Taube buzzed overhead; the hum-hum-hum of the engine was very loud. She dropped several bombs, but none of them did much damage. The little yellow-skinned observation balloon floated above one of our battleships like a penny toy. The Turks had several shots at it, but missed it every time.
The incessant noise of battle grew more distant as our troops on shore advanced. It broke out like a bush-fire, and spread from one section to another. Mechanical Death pressed forward across the Salt Lake. It stormed the heights of the Kapanja Sirt on the one side, and took Lala Baba on the other. Puffs of smoke hung on the hills, and the shore was all wreathed in the smoke of rifle and machine-gun fire. A deadly conflict this—for one Turk on the hills was worth ten British down below on the Salt Lake.
There was no glory. Here was Death, sure enough—Mechanical Death run amok—but where was the glory?
Here was organised murder—but it was steel-cold! There was no hand-to-hand glory. A mine dispersed you before you had set foot on dry land; or a high explosive removed your stomach, and left you a mangled heap of human flesh, instead of a medically certified, healthy human being.
Mechanical Death wavered and fluctuated—but it kept going. If it slackened its murderous fire at one side of the bay, it was only to burst forth afresh upon the other.
We wondered how it was that we were still alive, when so many lay dead. Some were killed on the decks of the transports by shrapnel.
Our monitors crept close to the sandy shore, and poured out a deadly brood of Death.
The crack and crash was deafening, and it literally shook the air... it quivered like a jelly after each shot.
The fighting got more and more inland, and the rattle and crackle fainter and farther away. But we still watched, fascinated.
The little groups of men lay in exactly the same positions on the beach. That platoon by the side of Lala Baba lay in a black bunch—stone dead. We could see our artillery teams galloping along like a team of performing fleas, taking up new positions behind Lala Baba. So this is war? Well, it's pretty awful! Wholesale murder... what's it all for? Wonder how long we shall last alive before Mechanical Death blows our brains out, or a leg off...
Queer thing, war! Didn't think it was quite like this! So mechanical and senseless.
And now came the time for us to land. A lighter came alongside, with a little red-bearded man in command—
“Remind you of any one?” I said to Hawk.
“Cap'n Kettle!”
“Yes!”
He was exactly like Cutcliffe Hyne's famous “Kettle,” except that he smoked a pipe. We huddled into the lighter, and hauled our stores down below. Some of us were “green about the gills,” and some were trying to pretend we didn't care.
We watched the boat which landed just before us strike a mine and be blown to pieces. Encouraging sight... At last we reached the tiny cove, and the lighter let down a sort of tail-board on the sand.
One had his stomach blown out, and the other his chest blown in. The two bodies lay upon the sand as we stepped down.
The metallic rattle of the firing-line sounded far away. We man-handled all our medical equipment and stores from the hold of the lighter to the beach.
We had orders to “fall in” the stretcher-bearers, and work in open formation to the firing-line.
The Kapanja Sirt runs right along one side of Suvla Bay. It is one wing of that horse-shoe formation of rugged mountains which hems in the Anafarta Ova and the Salt Lake.
Our searching zone for wounded lay along this ridge, which rises like the vertebrae of some great antediluvian reptile—dropping sheer down on the Gulf of Saros side, and, in varying slopes, to the plains and the Salt Lake on the other.
Here again small things left a vivid impression—the crack of a rifle from the top of the ridge, and a party of British climbing up the rocks and scrub in search of the hidden Turk.
The smell of human blood soaking its way into the sand from those two “stiffies” on the beach. The sullen silence, except for the distant crackle and the occasional moan of a shell. The rain which came pelting down in great cold blobs, splashing and soaking our thin drill clothes till we were wet to the skin and shivering with cold.
We were all thinking: “Who will be the first to get plugged?” We moved slowly along the ridge, searching every bush and rock for signs of wounded men.
We wondered what the first case would be—and which squad would come across it.
I worked up and down the line of squads trying to keep them in touch with each other. We were carrying stretchers, haversacks, iron rations, medical haversacks, medical water-bottles, our own private water-bottles (filled on Lemnos Island), and three “monkey-boxes” or field medical companions.
Those we had left on the beach were busy putting up the operating marquee and other tents, and the cooks in getting a fire going and making tea.
The stretcher-squads worked slowly forward. We passed an old Turkish well with a stone-flagged front and a stone trough. Later on we came upon the trenches and bivouacs of a Turkish sniping headquarters. There were all kinds of articles lying about which had evidently belonged to Turkish officers: tobacco in a heap on the ground near a bent willow and thorn bivouac; part of a field telephone with the wires running towards the upper ridges of Sirt; the remains of some dried fish and an earthenware jar or “chattie” which had held some kind of wine; a few very hard biscuits, and a mass of brand-new clothing, striped shirts and white shirts, grey military overcoats, yellow leather shoes with pointed toes, a red fez, a great padded body-belt with tapes to tie it, a pair of boots, and some richly coloured handkerchiefs and waistbands all striped and worked and fringed.
It was near here that our first man was killed later in the day. He was looking into one of these bivouacs, and was about to crawl out when a bullet went through his brain. It was a sniper's shot. We buried him in an old Turkish trench close by, and put a cross made of a wooden bully-beef crate over him.
The sun now blazed upon us, and our rain-soaked clothes were steaming in the heat. The open fan-like formation in which we moved was not a success. We lost the officers, and continually got out of touch with each other.
At last we reached the zone of spent bullets. “Z-z-z-z-e-e-e-e-e-pp!—zing!” “S-s-s-ippp!”
“That one was jist by me left ear!” said Sergeant Joe Smith, although as a matter of fact it was yards above his head. Here, among a hail of moaning spent shots, our officers called a halt, made us fall in, in close formation, and we retired—what for I do not know.
We went back as far as the old Turkish well. Here Hawk had something to say.
“Our place is advancing,” said he, “not retiring because of a few spent bullets. There's men there dying for want of medical attention—bleeding to death.”
The next time we went forward that day was in Indian file, each stretcher-squad following the one in front.
A parson came with us. I marched just behind the adjutant, and the parson walked with me. He was a big man and a fair age. We went past the well and the bivouacs. I could see he was very nervous.
“Do you think we are out of danger here?” he asked.
“I think so, sir” (we were three miles from the firing-line). A few paces further on—
“I wonder how far the firing-line is?”
“Couldn't say, sir.”
A yard or so, and then—
“D'you suppose the British are advancing?”
“I hope so.” And after a minute or two—
“I wonder if there are any Turks near here...?”
I made no answer, and marvelled greatly that the “man of God” should not be better prepared to meet “his Maker,” of Whom in civil life he had talked so much.
It was just then that I spotted it—a little black figure, motionless, away beyond the bushes on the right.
He lay flat under a huge rock. I left the stretcher-squads, and, crawling behind a bush, looked through the glasses. It certainly was a Turk, and his position was one of hiding. He kept perfectly motionless on his stomach and his rifle lay by his side.
I sent a message to pass the word up to the leading squads for Hawk. Quickly he came down to me and took the glasses. He had wonderful sight. After looking for a few seconds he agreed that it looked like a Turkish sniper lying in wait.
“Let's go and see, anyway,” said I.
“Chance it?”
“Yes.”
“Righto.”
Hawk led the way down into the thorn-bushes and dried-up plants. I followed close at his heels. We crouched as we went and kept well under cover. Hawk took a semicircular route, which I could see would ultimately bring us out by the side of the rock under which the sniper hid.
Now we caught a glimpse of the little dark figure—then we plunged deeper into the rank willow-growth and bore round to the right.
Hawk unslung the great jack-knife which hung round his waist and silently opened the gleaming blade. I did the same.
“I'll surprise him; you can leave it to me to get in a good slash,” said Hawk, and I saw the great muscles of his miner's arms tighten. “But if he gets one in on me,” he whispered, “be ready with your knife at the back of his neck.”
A few steps farther brought us suddenly upon the rock and the sniper. Hawk was immediately in front of me, and his arm was held back ready for a mighty blow. He stood perfectly still looking at the rock, and I watched his muscles relax.
“See it?” he said.
“What?”
“Dead.”
There was the Turk—a great heat-swollen figure stinking in the sunshine. As I moved forward a swarm of green and black flies, which had been feeding on his face and crawling up his nostrils, went up in a humming, buzzing cloud.
A bit of wood lying near had looked like his rifle from a distance; and now we saw that, instead of lying on his stomach, he was lying on his back, and looked as if he had been killed by shrapnel.
“Putrid stink,” said I; “come on—let's clear out.”
And so our sniper-hunt led to nothing but a dead Turk stewing in the glaring sunshine. We rejoined the squads. No one had missed us. This first day was destined to be one of many adventures.
That night was dark, with no stars. I didn't know what part of Gallipoli we were in, and the maps issued were useless.
The first cases had been picked up close to the firing-line, and were mostly gun-shot wounds, and now—late in the evening—all my squads having worked four miles to the beach, I was trying to get my own direction back to the ambulance.
The Turks seldom fired at night, so that it was only the occasional shot of a British rifle, or the sudden “pop-pop-pop-pop-pop!” of a machine-gun which told me the direction of the firing-line.
I trudged on and on in the dark, stumbling over rocks and slithering down steep crags, tearing my way through thorns and brambles, and sometimes rustling among high dry grass.
Queer scents, pepperminty and sage-like smells, came in whiffs. It was cold. I must have gone several miles along the Kapanja Sirt when I came to a halt and once more tried to get my bearings. I peered at the gloomy sky, but there was no star. I listened for the lap-lap of water on the beach of Suvla Bay, but I must have been too far up the ridges to hear anything. There was dead silence. When I moved a little green lizard scutted over a white rock and vanished among the dead scrub.
I was past feeling hungry, although I had eaten one army biscuit in the early morning and had had nothing since.
It was extraordinarily lonely. You may imagine how queer it was, for here was I, trying to get back to my ambulance headquarters at night on the first day of landing—and I was hopelessly lost. It was impossible to tell where the firing-line began. I reckoned I was outside the British outposts and not far from the Turkish lines. Once, as I went blundering along over some rocks, a dark figure bolted out of a bush and ran away up the ridge in a panic.
“Halt!” I shouted, trying to make believe I was a British armed sentry. But the figure ran on, and I began to stride after it. This led me up and up the ridge over very broken ground. Whoever it was (it was probably a Turkish sniper, for there were many out night-scouting) I lost sight and sound of him.
I went climbing steadily up till at last I found myself looking into darkness. I got down on my hands and knees and peered over the edge of a ridge of rock. I could see a tiny beam of light away down, and this beam grew and grew as it slowly moved up and up till it became a great triangular ray. It swept slowly along the top of what I now saw was a steep precipice sloping sheer down into blackness below. One step further and I should have gone hurtling into the sea. For, although I did not then know it, this was the topmost ridge of the Kapanja Sirt.
The great searchlight came nearer and nearer, and I slid backwards and lay on my stomach looking over. The nearer it came the lower I moved, so as to get well off the skyline when the beam reached me. It may have been a Turkish searchlight. It swept slowly, slowly, till at last it was turned off and everything was deadly black.
I started off again in another direction, keeping my back to the ridge, as I reckoned that to be a Turkish searchlight, and, therefore, our own lines would be somewhere down the ridge. Here, high up, I could just see a grey streak, which I took to be the bay.
I tried to make for this streak. I scrambled down a very steep stratum of the mountain-side and landed at last in a little patch of dead grass and tall dried-up thistles.
By this time, having come down from my high position on the Sirt, I could no longer see the bay; but I judged the direction as best I could, and without waiting I tramped on.
I began to wonder how long I had been trudging about, and I put it at about two hours.
“Halt!—who are you?” called a voice down below.
“Friend! stretcher-bearer!” I shouted.
“Come here—this way!” answered the voice.
I went down to a clump of bushes, and a man with a rifle slung over his shoulder stepped forward, and we both glared at each other for a second.
“Do yer know where the 45th Company is?”
“No idea,” said I.
“Any water?”
“Not a drop left.”
“We're trying to get back to the firing-line but we're all lost—there's eight of us.”
“I'm trying to get to the 32nd Field Ambulance—d'you know the way?”
“Yes; go right ahead there,” he pointed, “and keep well down off the hills—you'll see the beach when you've gone for a mile or so—”
“How far is it?”
“'Bout four miles;” and then, “Got a match?”
“Yes—but it's dangerous to light up.”
“Must 'ave a smoke—nothink to eat or drink.”
“Well, here you are; light up inside my helmet.”
He did; this hid the lighted match from any sniper's eye. The other seven men came crawling out of the bushes to light up their “woodbines” and fag-ends.
“Well, I'm off,” said I, and once more went forward in the direction pointed out by the corporal and his lost squad.
“So long, mate—good luck!” he shouted.
“Same to you!” I called back.
And now came sleep upon me. Even as I walked an awful weariness fell upon every limb. My legs became heavy and slow. That short rest had stiffened me, and my eyelids closed as I trudged on. I lifted them with an effort and dragged one foot after the other. I knew I must get back to my unit, and that here it was very dangerous. I wanted to lie down on the dead grass and sleep and sleep and sleep. I urged my muscles to swing my legs—for I knew if once I sat down to rest I should never keep awake.
It was while I was thus trying to jerk my sleepy nerves on to action that I came upon a zigzagged trench. It was fully six feet deep and about a yard wide. It was of course an old Turkish defence running crosswise along the great backbone of the Sirt. I knew now that I was nearing the bay, for most of these trenches overlooked the beach.
There was a white object about ten yards from me. What it was I could not tell, and a quiver of fear ran through me and threw off the awful sleepiness of fatigue.
Was it a Turkish sniper's shirt? Or was it a piece of white cloth, or a sheet of paper? In the gloom of night I could not discover.
However, I determined to go steady, and I crept up to a dark thorn-bush and stood still. It did not move. Still standing against the dark bush to hide the fact that I was unarmed, I shouted—
“Halt! who are you?” in as gruff and threatening a tone as I could command.
Silence. It did not move. I ran forward along the trench and there found a white pack-mule all loaded up with baggage; I could make out the queerly worked trappings, with brass-coins on the fringed bridle and coloured fly-tassels over the eyes. It was stone dead and stiff. Its eyes glared at me—a glassy glare full of fear. The Turkish pack-mule had been bringing up material to the Turks in the trench when it had been killed—and now the deep sides of the trench were holding it upright.
I trudged away towards the beach and lay down to sleep at last among the other men of the ambulance, who were lying scattered about behind tufts of bush or against ledges of rock.
When weighed down with sleep any bed will serve.
And this was the end of our first day's work on the field.