We used to start long before daylight, when the heavy gloom of early morning swept mountain, sea and sand in an indistinct haze; when the cobwebs hung thick from thorn to thorn like fairy cats'-cradles all dripping and beaded with those heavy dews. The guard would wake us up about 3.30 A.M. We were asleep anywhere, lying about under rocks and in sandy dells, sleeping on our haversacks and water-bottles, and our pith helmets near by. We got an issue of biscuit and jam, or biscuit and bully-beef, to take with us, and each one carried his iron rations in a little bag at his side.
So we set off—a long, straggling, follow-my-leader line of men and stretchers. The officer first, then the stretcher-sergeant—(myself)—and the squads, two men to a stretcher, carrying the stretchers folded up, and last of all a corporal or a “lance-jack” bringing up the rear in case any one should fall out.
Cold, dark, shivery mornings they were; our clothes soaked in dew and our pith helmets reeking wet, with the puggaree all beaded with dew-drops. We toiled up and up the ridges and gullies of the Kislar Dargh and the Kapanja Sirt slowly, like a little column of ants going out to bring in the ant eggs.
Often we had to wait while the Indian transport came down from the hill-track before we could proceed, and we always came upon the Engineers' field-telegraph wires on the ground. I would shout “Wire!” over my shoulder, and the shout “Wire!... Wire!... Wire!” went down the line from squad to squad.
From the old Turkish well I led my stretcher-squads past the gun of the Field Artillery (mounted quite near our hospital tents) along a track which ran past a patch of dry yellow grass and dead thistles—here among the prickly plants and sage-bushes grew a white flower—pure and sweet-scented—something like a flag—a “holy flower” among the dead and scorched-up yellow ochre blades and the khaki and dull grey-greens of thorns. We went along this track, past the dead sniper which Hawk and I had so carefully stalked. Near by, hidden by bushes and rank willow thickets lay a dozen more dead Turks, swollen, fly-blown and stinking in the broiling sun. We hurried on past the Turkish bivouacs—many of the relics had been picked up by the British Tommies since last I saw the place: the tobacco had all gone—many of the shirts and overcoats which had been lying about had disappeared—the place had been thoroughly ransacked. We trudged past the wooden cross of our dead comrade and we were silent.
Indeed, throughout those first three days—Saturday, Sunday and Monday—when the British and Turks grappled to and fro and flung shrapnel at each other incessantly; when the fighting line swayed and bent, sometimes pushing back the Turks, sometimes bending in the British; when the fate of the whole undertaking still hung in the balance; when what became a semi-failure might have been a staggering success: in those days the death-silence fell upon us all.
No one whistled those rag-time tunes; no one tried to make jokes, except the very timid, and they giggled nervously at their own.
No one spoke unless it was quite necessary. Each man you passed asked you the vital question: “Any water?”
For a moment as he asks his eyes glitter with a gleam of hope—when you shake your head he simply trudges on over the rocks and scrub with the same fatigued and sullen dullness which we all suffered.
Often you asked the same question yourself with parched and burning lips.
One after another we came upon the wounded. Here a man dragging a broken leg along with him. Here a man holding his fractured fore-arm and running towards us. Sometimes the pitiful cry, faint and full of agony: “Stretchers! Stretcher-bearers!” away in some densely overgrown defile swept with bullets and shrapnel.
And so at last all my squads had turned back with stretchers loaded with men and pieces of men. I went on alone—a lonely figure wandering about the mountains, looking and listening for the wounded.
I came now upon a party of Engineers at work making a road. They were working with pick-axe and spade—clearing away bush and rocks.
“Any water?” they asked.
I shook my head.
“Any wounded?” I said.
“Some down there, they say,” said a red-faced man.
“Damn rotten job that,” muttered another, as I went on.
“Better keep well over in the bushes,” shouted the red-faced man. “They've got this bit of light-coloured ground marked—you're almost sure ter git plugged.”
“Thanks!” I called back, and broke off to my left among the sage and thistle and thorn.
I went now downhill into an overgrown water-course (very much like the one in which I used to sleep and eat away back by the artillery big gun). Here were willows and brambles with ripe blackberries, and wild-rose bushes with scarlet hips. “Just like England!” I thought.
And then, as I crossed the little dry-bed stream and came out upon a sandy spit of rising ground: “Z-z-ipp! Ping!”—just by my left arm. The bullet struck a ledge of white rock with the now familiar metallic “tink!”
I went on moving quickly to get behind a thorn-bush—the only cover near at hand. Here, at any rate, I should be out of sight.
“Ping!”
“Crack—ping!”
I could hear the report of the rifle. I lay flat on my stomach, grovelled my face into the sandy soil and lay like a snake and as still as a tortoise.
I waited for about ten minutes. It seemed an hour, at least, to me. The sniper did not shoot again. In front of my thorn-bush was an open space of pale yellow grass, with no cover at all. I crawled towards the left flank and tried to creep slowly away. I moved like the hands of a clock—so slowly; about an inch at a time, pushing forward like a reptile on my stomach, propelling myself only by digging my toes into the earth. My arms I kept stiff by my side, my head well down.
But the sniper away behind that little pear-tree (which stood at the far end of the open space) had an eagle eye.
“Ping! z-z-pp! ping!”
I lay very still for a long time and then crept slowly back to my thorn-bush.
I tried the right flank, but with the same effect. And now he began shooting through my thorn-bush on the chance of hitting me.
Behind me was a dense undergrowth of thorn, wild-rose bramble, thistle, willow and sage.
I turned about and crawled through this tangle, until at last I came out, scratched and dishevelled and sweating, into the old water-course.
The firing-line was only a few hundred yards away, and the bullets from a Turkish maxim went wailing over my head, dropping far over by the Engineers whom I had passed.
I wanted to find those wounded, and I wanted to get past that open space, and I wanted above all to dodge that sniper. The old scouting instincts of the primitive man came calling me to try my skill against the skill of the Turk. I sat there wiping away blood from the scratches and sweat from my forehead and trying to think of a way through.
I looked at the mountains on my left—the lower ridge of the Kapanja Sirt—and saw how the water-course went up and up and in and out, and I thought if I kept low and crawled round in this ditch I should come out at last close behind the firing-line, and then I could get in touch with the trenches. I could hear the machine-gun of the M—'s rattling and spitting.
I began crawling along the water-course. I had only gone three yards or so, and turned a bend, when I came suddenly upon two wounded men. Both quite young—one merely a boy. He had a bad shrapnel wound through his boot, crushing the toes of his right foot. The other lay groaning upon his back—with a very bad shrapnel wound in his left arm. The arm was broken.
The boy sat up and grinned when he saw me.
“What's up?” asked his pal.
“Red Cross man,” says the boy; and then: “Any water?”
“Not a drop, mate,” said I. “Been wounded long?”
“Since yesterday evening,” says the boy.
“Been here all that time?” I asked. (It was now mid-afternoon.)
“Yes: couldn't get away”—and he pointed to his foot.
“'E carn't move—it's 'is arm. We crawled 'ere.”
“I'll be back soon with stretchers and bandages,” I said, and went quickly back along the water-course and then past the Engineers.
“Found 'em?” they asked.
“Yes: getting stretchers up now,” said I. “Awful stink here! Found any dead?” I asked.
“Yes, there's one or two round here. We buried one over there yesterday: 'e fell ter bits when we moved 'im.”
I went on. Soon I was back in the ditch beside the wounded men. I had successfully dodged the sniper by following along the bottom of the bed of the stream. With me I brought two stretcher-squads, and they had a haversack containing, as I thought, splints and bandages. But when I opened it, it had only some field dressings in it and some iodine ampoules.
I soon found that the man's arm was not only septic, but broken and splintered.
“Got a pair of scissors?” I asked.
One man had a pair of nail-scissors, and with this very awkward instrument I proceeded to operate. It was a terrible gash. His sleeve was soaked in blood. I cut it away, and his shirt also.
I broke an iodine phial and poured the yellow chemical into his great gaping wound. Actually his flesh stunk: it was going bad.
“Is it broke?” he asked.
“Be all right in a few minutes; nothing much.” I lied to him.
“Not broke then?”
“Bit bent; be all right.”
With the nail-scissors I cut great chunks of his arm out, and all this flesh was gangrenous, and mortification was rapidly spreading. My fingers were soaked in blood and iodine.
I cut away a piece of muscle which stunk like bad meat.
“Can you feel that?” I asked.
“Feel what?” he murmured.
“I thought that might hurt. I was cutting your sleeve away, that's all.”
I cut out all the bad flesh, almost to the broken bones. I filled up the jagged hole with another iodine ampoule. I plugged the opening with double-cyanide gauze, and put on an antiseptic pad.
“Splints?” I asked.
“Haven't any.”
So I used the helve of an entrenching-tool and the stalks of the willow undergrowth.
I set his arm straight and bandaged it tightly and fixed it absolutely immovably. Then we got him on a stretcher, and they carried him three and a half miles to our ambulance tents. But I'm afraid that arm had to come off. I never heard of him again.
The other fellow was cheerful enough, and only set his teeth and drew his breath when I cut off his boot with a jack-knife. Wonderful endurance some of these young fellows have. There's hope for England yet.
“COMMUNICATIONS”The native only needs a drum,On which to thump his dusky thumb—But WE—the Royal Engineers,Must needs have carts and pontoon-piers;Hundreds of miles of copper-wire,Fitted on poles to make it higher.Hundreds of sappers lay it down,And stick the poles up like a town.By a wonderful system of dashes and dots,Safe from the Turkish sniper's shots—We have, as you see, a marvellous trick,Of sending messages double-quick.You can't deny it's a great erection,Done by the 3rd Field Telegraph Section;But somewhere—THERE'S A DISCONNECTION!The native merely thumps his drum,He thumps it boldly, thus—“Tum! Tum!”J. H.(Sailing for Salonika.)
Kangaroo Beach was where the Australian bridge-building section had their stores and dug-outs.
It was one muddle and confusion of water-tanks, pier-planks, pontoons, huge piles of bully-beef, biscuit and jam boxes. Here we came each evening with the water-cart to get our supply of water, and here the water-carts of every unit came down each evening and stood in a row and waited their turn. The water was pumped from the water-tank boats to the tank on shore.
The water-tank boats brought it from Alexandria. It was filthy water, full of dirt, and very brackish to taste. Also it was warm. During the two months at Suvla Bay I never tasted a drop of cold water—it was always sickly lukewarm, sun-stewed.
All day long high explosives used to sing and burst—sometimes killing and wounding men, sometimes blowing up the bully-beef and biscuits, sometimes falling with a hiss and a column of white spray into the sea. It was here that the field-telegraph of the Royal Engineers became a tangled spider's web of wires and cross wires. They added wires and branch wires every day, and stuck them up on thin poles. Here you could see the Engineers in shirt and shorts trying to find a disconnection, or carrying a huge reel of wire. Wooden shanties sprang up where dug-outs had been a day or so before. Piers began to crawl out into the bay, adding a leg and trestle and pontoon every hour. Near Kangaroo Beach was the camp of the Indians, and here you could see the dusky ones praying on prayer mats and cooking rice and “chupatties” (sort of oatcake-pancakes).
Here they were laying a light rail from the beach up with trucks for carrying shells and parts of big guns.
Here was the field post-office with sacks and sacks of letters and parcels. Some of the parcels were burst and unaddressed; a pair of socks or a mouldy home-made cake squashed in a cardboard box—sometimes nothing but the brown paper, card box and string, an empty shell—the contents having disappeared. What happened to all the parcels which never got to the Dardanelles no one knows, but those which did arrive were rifled and lost and stolen. Parcels containing cigarettes had a way of not getting delivered, and cakes and sweets often fell out mysteriously on the way from England.
Things became jumbled.
The continual working up to the firing-line and the awful labour of carrying heavy men back to our dressing station: it went on. We got used to being always tired, and having only an hour or two of sleep. It was log-heavy, dreamless sleep... sheer nothingness. Just as tired when you were wakened in the early hours by a sleepy, grumbling guard. And then going round finding the men and wakening them up and getting them on parade. Every day the same... late into the night.
Then came the disappearance of a certain section of our ambulance and the loss of an officer.
This particular young lieutenant was left on Lemnos sick. He really was very sick indeed. He recovered to some extent of the fever, and joined us one day at Suvla. This was in the Old Dry Water-course period, when Hawk and I lived in the bush-grown ditch.
Officers, N.C.O.'s, and men were tired out with overwork. This young officer came up to the Kapanja Sirt to take over the next spell of duty.
I remember him now, pale and sickly, with the fever still hanging on him, and dark, sunken eyes. He spoke in a dull, lifeless way.
“Do you think you'll be all right?” asked the adjutant.
“Yes, I think so,” he answered.
“Well, just stick here and send down the wounded as you find them. Don't go any farther along; it's too dangerous up there—you understand?”
“All right, sir.”
It was only a stroke of luck that I didn't stay with him and his stretcher-squads.
“You'd better come down with me, sergeant,” says the adjutant.
Next day the news spread in that mysterious way which has always puzzled me. It spread as news does spread in the wild and desolate regions of the earth.
“... lost... all the lot...”
“Who is?”
“Up there... Lieutenant S—- and the squads...”
“How-joo-know?”
“Just heard—that wounded fellow over there on the stretcher... they went out early this morning, and they've gone—no sign, never came back at all—”
“'E warn't fit ter take charge... 'e was ill, you could see.”
“Nice thing ter do. The old man'll go ravin' mad.”
“It was a ravin' mad thing to put the poor feller in charge... ”
“Don't criticise yer officers,” said some wit, quoting the Army Regulations.
The adjutant and a string of squads turned out, and we went back again to the spot where we had left the young officer the evening before.
The cook and an orderly man remained, and we heard from them the details of the mystery.
Early that morning they had formed up, and gone off under Lieutenant S—- along the mule track overlooking the Gulf of Saros. That was all. There was still hope, of course... but there wasn't a sign of them to be seen. The machine-gun section had seen them pass right along. Some officers had warned them not to go up, but they went and they never came back.
There were rumours that one of the N.C.O.'s of the party, a sergeant, had been seen lying on some rocks.
“Just riddled with bullets—riddled!”
The hours dragged on. I begged of the adjutant to let me go off along the ridge on my own to see if I could find any trace.
“It's too dangerous,” he said. “If I thought there was half a chance I'd go with you, but we don't want to lose any more.”
Those ten or twelve men went out of our lives completely. Days passed. There was no news. It was queer. It was queer when I called the roll next day—
“Briggs!”—“Sar'nt!”
“Boots!”—“Sarn't!”
“Cudworth!”—“Here, Sar'nt!”
“Dean!”—“Sar'nt!”
“Desmond!”—“Sar'nt!”
“D—-.”
I couldn't remember not to call his name out. It seemed queer that he was missing. It seemed quite hopeless now. Three or four days dragged on. Everything continued as usual. We went up past the place where we had left them, and there was no news, no sign. They just vanished. No one saw them again, and except for the “riddled” rumour of the poor old sergeant the whole thing was a blank.
We supposed that the young officer, coming fresh to the place, did not know where the British lines ended and the Turks' began, and he marched his squads into that bit of No Man's Land beyond the machine-gun near “Jefferson's Post,” and was either shot or taken prisoner.
It made the men heavy and sad-minded.
“Poor old Mellor—'e warn't a bad sort, was he!”
“Ah!—an' Bell, Sergeant Bell... riddled they say... some one seen 'm—artillery or some one!”
It hung over them like a cloud. The men talked of nothing else.
“Somebody's blundered,” said one.
“It's a pity any'ow.”
“It's a disgrace to the ambulance—losin' men like that.”
And, also, it made the men nervous and unreliable. It was a shock.
It may be that I have never grown up properly. I'm a very poor hand at pretending I'm a “grown man.”
Impressions of small queer things still stamp themselves with a clear kodak-click on my mind—an ivory-white mule's skull lying in the sand with green beetles running through the eye-holes... anything—trivial, childlike details.
I remember reading an article in a magazine which stated that under fire, and more especially in a charge, a man moves in a whirl of excitement which blots out all the small realities around him, all the “local colour.” He remembers nothing but a wild, mad rush, or the tense intensity of the danger he is in.
It is not so. The greater the danger and the more exciting the position the more intensely does the mind receive the imprint of tiny commonplace objects.
Memories of Egypt and the Mediterranean are far more a jumble of general effects of colour, sound and smell.
The closer we crept to the shores of Suvla Bay, and the deathbed of the Salt Lake, the more exact and vivid are the impressions; the one is like an impressionist sketch—blobs and dabs and great sloshy washes; but the memories of Pear-tree Gully, of the Kapanja Sirt, and Chocolate Hill are drawn in with a fine mapping pen and Indian ink—like a Rackham fairy-book illustration—every blade of dead grass, every ripple of blue, every pink pebble; and towards the firing-line I could draw it now, every inch of the way up the hills with every stone and jagged rock in the right place.
Before sailing from England I had bought a little colour-box, one good sable brush, and a few H.B. pencils—these and a sketch-book which my father gave me I carried everywhere in my haversack. The pocket-book was specially made with paper which would take pencil, colour, crayon, ink or charcoal. I was always on the look out for sketches and notes. The cover bore the strange device—
JOHN HARGRAVE,R.A.M.C.32ND FIELD AMBULANCE.
printed in gilt which gradually wore off as time went on. Inside on the fly-leaf I had written—
“IF FOUND, please return toSgt. J. HARGRAVE, 32819, R.A.M.C.32nd Field Ambulance,X Division, Med. Exp. Force.”
And on the opposite page I wrote—
“IN CASE OF DEATH please post as soon as possible toGORDON HARGRAVE,Cinderbarrow Cottage,Levens,Westmorland.”
I remember printing the word “DEATH,” and wondering if the book would some day lie with my own dead body “somewhere in the Dardanelles.” Printing that word in England before we started made the whole thing seem very real. Somehow up to then I hadn't realised that I might get killed quite easily. I hadn't troubled to think about it.
We moved our camp from “A” Beach farther along towards the Salt Lake. We moved several times. Always Hawk and I “hung together.” Once he was very ill in the old dried-up water-course which wriggled down from the Kislar Dargh. He ate nothing for three days. I never saw anything like it before. He was as weak as a rat, and I know he came very near “pegging out.” He felt it himself. I was sitting on the ground near by.
“I may not pull through this, old fellow,” says Hawk, with just a tear-glint under one eyelid. He lay under a shelf of rock, safe from shrapnel.
“Come now, Fred,” says I, “you're not going to snuff it yet.”
“Weak as a rat—can't eat nothink, PRACtically... nothink; but see here, John,”—he seldom called me John—“if I do slip off the map, an' I feel PRACtically done for this time—if I SHOULD—you see that ration-bag”—he pointed to a little white bag bulging and tied up and knotted.
“Yes?”
“It's got some little things in it—for the kiddies at home—a little teapot I found up by the Turkish bivouac over there, and one or two more relics—I want 'em to have 'em—will you take care of it and send it home for me if you get out of this alive?”
Of course I promised to do this, but tried to cheer him up, and assured him he would soon pull round.
In a few days he threw off the fever and was about again.
Hawk and I had lived for some weeks in this overgrown water-course. It was a natural trench, and at one place Hawk had made a dug-out. He picked and shovelled right into the hard, sandy rock until there was quite a good-sized little cave about eight feet long and five deep.
The same sickness got me. It came over me quite suddenly. I was fearfully tired. Every limb ached, and, like all the others, I began to develop what I call the “stretcher-stoop.” I just lay down in the ditch with a blanket and went to sleep. Hawk sat over me and brought me bovril, which we had “pinched” on Lemnos Island.
I felt absolutely dying, and I really wondered whether I should have enough strength to throw the sickness off as Hawk had. I gave him just the same sort of instructions about my notes and sketches as he had given me about his little ration-bag.
“Get 'em back to England if you can,” I said; “you're the man I'd soonest trust here.”
If Hawk hadn't looked after me and made me eat, I don't believe I should have lived. I used to lie there looking at the wild-rose tangles and the red hips; there were brambles, too, with poor, dried-up blackberries. It reminded me of England. Little green lizards scuttled about, and great black centipedes crawled under my blanket. The sun was blazing at mid-day. Hawk used to rig me up an awning over the ditch with willow-stems and a waterproof ground-sheet.
Somehow you always thought yourself back to England. No matter what train of thought you went upon, it always worked its way by one thread or another to England. Mine did, anyway.
It was better to be up with the stretcher-squads in the firing line than lying there sick, and thinking those long, long thoughts.
This is how I would think—
“What a waste of life; what a waste... Christianity this; all part of civilisation; what's it all for? Queer thing this civilised Christianity... very queer. So this really IS war; see now: how does it feel? not much different to usual... But why? It's getting awfully sickening... plenty of excitement, too—plenty... too much, in fact; very easy to get killed any time here; plenty of men getting killed every minute over there; but it isn't really very exciting... not like I thought war was in England... England? Long way off, England; thousands of miles; they don't know I'm sick in England; wonder what they'd think to see me now; not a bad place, England, green trees and green grass... much better place than I thought it was; wonder how long this will hang on... I'd like to get back after it's finished here; I expect it's all going on just the same in England; people going about to offices in London; women dressing themselves up and shopping; and all that... This is a d——place, this beastly peninsula—no green anywhere... just yellow sand and grey rocks and sage-coloured bushes, dead grass—even the thistles are all bleached and dead and rustling in the breeze like paper flowers...
“And we WANTED to get out here... Just eating our hearts out to get into it all, to get to work—and now... we're all sick of it... it's rotten, absolutely rotten; everything. It's a rotten war. Wonder what they are doing now at home...”
I shall never forget those two little figures coming into camp.
They were both trembling like aspen leaves. One had ginger hair, and a crop of ginger beard bristled on his chin. Their eyes were hollow and sunken, and glittered and roamed unmeaningly with the glare of insanity. They glanced with a horrible suspicion at their pals, and knew them not. The one with the ginger stubble muttered to himself. Their clothes were torn with brambles, and prickles from thorn-bushes still clung round their puttees. A pitiful sight. They tottered along, keeping close together and avoiding the others. An awful tiredness weighed upon them; they dragged themselves along. Their lips were cracked and swollen and dry. They had lost their helmets, and the sun had scorched and peeled the back of their necks. Their hair was matted and full of sand. But the fear which looked out of those glinting eyes was terrible to behold.
We gave them “Oxo,” and the medical officer came and looked at them. They came down to our dried-up water-course and tried to sleep; but they were past sleep. They kept dozing off and waking up with a start and muttering—
“... All gone... killed... where? where? No, no... No!.. . don't move... (mumble-mumble)... keep still... idiot! you'll get shot... can you see them? Eh? where?... he's dying, dying... stop the bleeding, man! He's dying... we're all dying... no water... drink...”
I've seen men, healthy, strong, hard-faced Irishmen, blown to shreds. I've helped to clear up the mess. I've trod on dead men's chests in the sand, and the ribs have bent in and the putrid gases of decay have burst through with a whhh-h-ff-f.
But I'd rather have to deal with the dead and dying than a case of “sniper-madness.”
I was just recovering from that attack of fever and dysentery, and these two were lying beside me; the one mumbling and the other panting in a fitful sleep.
When they were questioned they could give very little information.
“Where's Lieutenant S—-?”
“... Gone... they're all gone...”
“How far did you go with him?”
No answer.
“Where are the others?”
“... Gone... they're all gone...”
“Are they killed?”
“... Gone.”
“Are any of the others alive?”
“We got away... they're lost... dead, I think.”
“Did you come straight back—it's a week since you were lost?”
“It's days and days and long nights... couldn't move; couldn't move an inch, and poor old George dying under a rock... no cover; and they shot at us if we moved... we waved the stretchers when we found we'd got too far... too far we got... too far... much too far; shot at us...”
“What about the sergeant?”
“We got cut off... cut off... we tried to crawl away at night by rolling over and over down the hill, and creeping round bushes... always creeping an' crawling... but it took us two days and two nights to get away... crawling, creeping and crawling... an' they kep' firing at us...”
“No food... we chewed grass... sucked dead grass to get some spittle... an' sometimes we tried to eat grass to fill up a bit.. . no food... no water...”
They were complete wrecks. They couldn't keep their limbs still. They trembled and shook as they lay there.
Their ribs were standing out like skeletons, and their stomachs had sunken in. They were black with sunburn, and filthily dirty.
Gradually they got better. The glare of insanity became less obvious, but a certain haunted look never left them. They were broken men. Months afterwards they mumbled to themselves in the night-time.
Nolan, one of the seafaring men of my section who was with the lost squads, also returned, but he had not suffered so badly, or at any rate he had been able to stand the strain better.
It was about this time that we began to realise that the new landing had been a failure. It was becoming a stale-mate. It was like a clock with its hands stuck. The whole thing went ticking on every day, but there was no progress—nothing gained. And while we waited there the Turks brought up heavy guns and fresh troops on the hills. They consolidated their positions in a great semicircle all round us—and we just held the bay and the Salt Lake and the Kapanja Sirt.
So all this seemed sheer waste. Thousands of lives wasted—thousands of armless and legless cripples sent back—for nothing. The troops soon realised that it was now hopeless. You can't “kid” a great body of men for long. It became utterly sickening—the inactivity—the waiting—for nothing. And every day we lost men. Men were killed by snipers as they went up to the trenches. The Turkish snipers killed them when they went down to the wells for water.
The whole thing had lost impetus. It came to a standstill. It kept on “marking time,” and nothing appeared to move it.
In the first three days of the landing it wanted but one thing to have marched us right through to Constantinople—it wanted, dash!
It didn't want a careful, thoughtful man in command—it wanted dash and bluff. It could have been done in those early days. The landing WAS a success—a brilliant, blinding success—but it stuck at the very moment when it should have rushed forward. It was no one's fault if you understand. It was sheer luck. It just didn't “come off”—and only just. But a man with dash, a devil-may-care sort of leader, could have cut right across on Sunday, August the 8th, and brought off a staggering victory.
It happened on the left of Pear-tree Gully.
Pear-tree Gully was a piece of ground which neither we nor the Turks could hold. It was a gap in both lines, swept by machine-gun fire and haunted by snipers and sharp-shooters.
We had advanced right up behind the machine-gun section, which was hidden in a dense clump of bushes on the top of a steep rise.
The sun was blazing hot and the sweat was dripping from our faces. We were continually on the look-out for wounded, and always alert for the agonised cry of “Stretcher-bearers!” away on some distant knoll or down below in the thickets. Looking back the bay shimmered a silver-white streak with grey battleships lying out.
In front the fighting broke out in fierce gusts.
“Pop-pop-pop-pop!—Pop-pop!” went the machine-gun. We could see one man getting another belt of ammunition ready to “feed.” Bullets from the Turkish quick-firers went singing with an angry “ssss-ooooo! zzz-z-eeee!... whheee-ooo-o-o! zz-ing!”
“D'you know where Brigade Headquarters is?” asked the adjutant.
“I'll find it, sir.”
“Very well, go up with this message, and I shall be here when you come back.”
I took the message, saluted and went off, plunging down into the thickets, and at last along my old water-course where I had crawled away from the sniper some days before.
I made a big detour to avoid showing myself on the sky-line. I knew the general direction of our Brigade Headquarters, and after half-an-hour's steady trudging with various creepings and crawlings I arrived and delivered my message. I returned quickly towards Pear-tree Gully. I stopped once to listen for the “Pop-pop-pop!” of our machine-gun but I could not hear it. I hurried on. It was downhill most of the way going back. I crept up through the bushes and looked about for signs of our men and the officer.
I saw a man of the machine-gun section carrying the tripod-stand, followed by another with the ammunition-belt-box.
“Seen any Medical Corps here?”
“They've gone down—'ooked it... you'd better get out o' this quick yourself—we're retreating—can't 'old this place no'ow—too 'ot!”
“Did the officer leave any message?”
“No—they've bin gone some time—come on, Sammy.”
Well, I thought to myself, this IS nice. So I went down with the machine-gunners and in the dead grass just below the gully I found a wounded man: he was shot through the thigh and it had gone clean through both legs.
He was bleeding to death quickly, for it had ripped both arteries. Looking round I saw another man coming down, hopping along but very cheerful.
“In the ankle,” he said; “can you do anything?”
“I'll have a look in a minute.”
I examined the man who was hit in the thigh and discovered two tourniquets had been applied made out of a handkerchief and bits of stick to twist them up. But the blood was now pumping steadily from both wounds and soaking its way into the sandy soil. I tightened them up, but it was useless. There was no stopping the loss of blood.
All the time little groups of British went straggling past—hurrying back towards the bay—retreating.
It was impossible to leave my wounded. I helped the cheerful man to hop near a willow thicket, and there I took off his boot and found a clean bullet wound right through the ankle-bone of the left foot. It was bleeding slowly and the man was very pale.
“Been bleeding long?” I asked.
“About half an hour I reckon. Is it all right, mate?”
“Yes. It's a clean wound.”
I plugged each hole, padded it and bound it up tightly. I had a look at the other man, who was still bleeding and had lost consciousness altogether.
It was a race for life. Which to attend to? Both men were still bleeding, and both would bleed to death within half an hour or so. I reckoned it was almost hopeless with the tourniquet-man and I left him passing painlessly from life to death. But the ankle-man's wound was still bleeding when I turned again to him. It trickled through my plugging. It's a difficult thing to stop the bleeding from such a place. Seeing the plug was useless I tried another way. I rolled up one of his puttees, put it under his knee, braced his knee up and tied it in position with the other puttee. This brought pressure on the artery itself and stopped the loss of blood from his ankle. I could hear the Turkish machine-gun much closer now. It sputtered out a leaden rain with a hard metallic clatter.
“Thanks, mate,” said the man; “'ow's the other bloke?”
“He's all right,” I answered, and I could see him lying a little way up the hill, calm and still and stiffening.
I found two regimental stretcher-bearers coming down with the rest in this little retreat, and I got them to take my ankle-man on to their dressing station about two miles further back.
It's no fun attending to wounded when the troops are retiring.
Next day they regained the lost position, and I trudged past the poor dead body of the man who had bled to death. The tourniquets were still gripping his lifeless limbs and the blood on the handkerchiefs had dried a rich red-brown.