General Godley and Tahu Rhodes got up to the Turkish trenches, quite close to them. The Turks attacked, threw hand-grenades, and our supports broke. The General rallied the men, but a good many were killed, amongst them the General’s orderly, a gentleman ranker and a first-rate fellow.
Wednesday, May 5th.Kaba Tepé.The other day, when our attack below failed, the Turks allowed us to bring off our wounded. This was after that unfortunate landing.
Went on board theLutzowto-day, and got some of my things off. Coming back the tow rope parted, and we thought that we should drift into captivity. It was rough and unpleasant.
Thursday, May 6th.Very cold night. The dead are unburied and the wounded crying for water between the trenches. Talked to General Birdwood about the possibility of an armistice for burying the dead and bringing in the wounded. He thinks that the Germans would not allow the Turks to accept.
Colonel Esson3landed this morning. He brought the rumour that 8,000 Turks had been killed lower down on the Peninsula. We attacked Achi Baba at 10 a.m. There was an intermittent fire all night.
This morning I went up to the trenches with General Godley by Walker’s Ridge. The view was magnificent. The plain was covered with friendly olives.... General Birdwood and General Mercer,commanding the Naval Brigade were also there. The trenches have become a perfect maze. As we went along the snipers followed us, seeing Onslow’s helmet above the parapet, and stinging us with dirt. Many dead. I saw no wounded between the lines. On the beach the shrapnel has opened from a new direction. The Turks were supposed to be making light railways to bring up their howitzers and then rub us off this part of the Peninsula. This last shell that has just struck the beach has killed and wounded several men and a good many mules....
Friday, May 7th.A bitter night and morning.... This morning a shell burst overhead, when I heard maniac peals of laughter and found the cook flying up, hit in the boot and his kitchen upset; he was laughing like a madman. It’s a nuisance one has to sit in the shade in our dining place and not in the sun. They have got our exact range, and are pounding in one shell after another. A shell has just burst over our heads, and hit a lighter and set her on fire.
The mules, most admirable animals, had now begun to give a good deal of trouble, alive and dead. There were hundreds of them on the beach and in the gullies. Alive, they bit precisely and kicked accurately; dead, they were towed out to sea, but returned to us faithfully on the beach, making bathing unpleasant and cleanliness difficult. The dead mule was not only offensive to the Army; he became a source of supreme irritation to the Navy, as he floated on his back, with his legs sticking stiffly up in the air. These legs were constantly mistaken for periscopes of submarines, causing excitement,exhaustive naval manœuvres and sometimes recriminations.
My special duties now began to take an unusual form. Every one was naturally anxious for Turkish troops to surrender, in order to get information, and also that we might have fewer men to fight. Those Turks who had been captured had said that the general belief was that we took no prisoners, but killed all who fell into our hands, ruthlessly. I said that I believed that this impression, which did us much harm, could be corrected. The problem was how to disabuse the Turks of this belief. I was ordered to make speeches to them from those of our trenches which were closest to theirs, to explain to them that they would be well treated and that our quarrel lay with the Germans, and not with them.
Diary.Friday, May 7th.At 1.30 I went up Monash Valley, which the men now call the “Valley of Death,” passing a stream of haggard men, wounded and unwounded, coming down in the brilliant sunlight. I saw Colonel Monash4at his headquarters, and General Godley with him, and received instructions. The shelling overhead was terrific, but did no damage, as the shells threw forward, but the smoke made a shadow between us and the sun. It was like the continuous crashing of a train going over the sleepers of a railway bridge.
Monash, whom I had last seen at the review in the desert, said: “We laugh at this shrapnel.” He tried to speak on the telephone to say I was coming, but it was difficult, and the noise made it impossible. Finally I went up the slope toQuinn’s Post, with an escort, running and taking cover, and panting up the very steep hill. It felt as if bullets rained, but the fact is that they came from three sides and have each got about five echoes. There’s adécolletéplace in the hill that they pass over. I got into the trench, and found Quinn, tall and openfaced, swearing like a trooper, much respected by his men. The trenches in Quinn’s Post were narrow and low, full of exhausted men sleeping. I crawled over them and through tiny holes. There was the smell of death everywhere. I spoke in three places.
In conversations with the Turks across the trenches I generally said the same thing: that we took prisoners and treated them well; that the essential quarrel was between us and the Germans and not between England and the Turks; that the Turks had been our friends in the Crimea; and I ended by quoting the Turkish proverb “Eski dost dushman olmaz” (An old friend cannot be an enemy). These speeches probably caused more excitement amongst our men than in the ranks of the Turks, though the Constantinople Press declared that a low attempt to copy the muezzin’s call to prayer had been made from our lines. There were many pictures drawn of the speech-maker and the shower of hand-grenades that answered his kindly words. It must be admitted that there was some reason for these caricatures. Upon this first occasion nothing very much happened—to me, at any rate. Our lines were very close to the Turkish lines, and I was able to speak clearly with and without a megaphone, and the Turks were good enough to show some interest, and in that neighbourhood to keep quietfor a time. I got through my business quickly, and went back to the beach. It was then that the consequences of these blandishments developed, for the places from which I had spoken were made the object of a very heavy strafe, of which I had been the innocent cause, and for which others suffered. When I returned two days later to make another effort at exhortation, I heard a groan go up from the trench. “Oh, Lord, here he comes again. Now for the bally bombs.” On the first occasion when not much had happened it had been: “Law, I’d like to be able to do that meself.”
Diary.Friday, May 7th.On getting back here we had a very heavy fire, which broke up our dinner party, wounded Jack Anderson, stung Jack (my servant), hit me. Jack is sick.... Here are three unpleasant possibilities:—
1. Any strong attack on the height. The Navy could not help then. We should be too mixed in the fighting.
2. The expected blessed big guns to lollop over howitzers.
3. Disease. The Turks have dysentery already.
There is an uncanny whistling overhead. It must come from the bullets and machine-guns or Maxims a long way off. It sounds eldritch. T. very sick after seeing some wounded on the beach, and yet his nerves are very good. Eastwood told me that he was sure to get through. I told him not to say such things. He had three bullets through his tunic the other day. I went on theLutzowto get the rest of my stuff off, and found Colonel Ryan (“Turkish Charlie”)5full of awful descriptionsof operations. Many wounded on the boat, all very quiet.... Had a drink with a sailor, the gloomiest man that ever I met. He comes from Southampton, and thinks we cannot possibly win the war. It’s become very cold.
Most of the diary of May 9th is too indiscreet for publication, but here are some incidents of the day:—
Worsley6says it’s very hard to get work done on the beach; in fact its almost impossible. It was said that the gun which had been enfilading us was knocked out, but it is enfilading us now, and it looks as if we shall have a pretty heavy bill to pay to-day. The beach is holding its breath, and between the sound of the shrapnel and the hiss there is only the noise of the waves and a few low voices.... Harrison, who was slightly wounded a few days ago, was yesterday resting in his dugout when he was blown out of it by a shell. To-day he was sent to theLutzow, and we watched him being shelled the whole way, his boat wriggling. It seems as if the shells know and love him. I am glad he won’t be dining with us any more; a magnet like that is a bore, though he is a very good fellow. The land between us and the 29th is reported to be full of barbed wire entanglements.
Monday, May 10th.Raining and cold. Jack better.
Colonel Braithwaite woke me last night with the news of the sinking of theLusitania. Last night we took three trenches, but lost them again this morning. S. B. came last night; I was glad to see him.
S. B. had been a great friend of mine in Egypt and brought me and others letters, of which we were badly in need, and stores, which were very welcome. We met upon the beach, and decided to celebrate the occasion in the Intelligence dugout, for my friend had actually got some soda and a bottle of whisky, two very rare luxuries on the beach.
Diary.We went into the Intelligence dugout and sat there. Then a shell hit the top of the dugout. The next one buzzed a lot of bullets in through the door. The third ricochetted all over the place and one bullet grazed my head. I then said: “We’d better put up a blanket to save us from the ricochets.” At the same time J. was shot next door and Onslow’s war diary was destroyed. A pot of jam was shot in General Cunliffe Owen’s hand, which made him very angry. V., the beachmaster, dashed into our Intelligence dugout gasping while we held blankets in front of him. Two days ago a man was killed in his dugout next door, and another man again yesterday. Now two fuses had come straight through his roof and spun like a whipping-top on the floor, dancing a sort of sarabande before the hypnotized eyes of the sailors....
Also S. B.’s whisky was destroyed in the luncheon basket. He broke into furious swearing in Arabic.
Wednesday, May 12th.Rain, mud, grease, temper all night, but we shall long for this coolness when it really gets hot. No bombardment this morning, but the Greek cook, Christopher of the Black Lamp, came and gave two hours’ notice, with the rain and tears running down his face. I am not surprisedat his giving notice, but why he should be meticulous about the time I can’t think. Conversation about the shelling is getting very boring.
Had a picturesque walk through the dark last night, past Greeks, Indians, Australians, across a rain-swept, wind-swept, bullet-swept hillside. Many of the Colonels here are business men, who never in their wildest dreams contemplated being in such a position, and they have risen to the occasion finely. The Generals have at last been prevailed upon not to walk about the beach in the daytime.... Two German and one Austrian submarine expected here. The transports have been ordered to Mudros.
Thursday, May 13th.Very calm morning, the echoes of rifle fire on the sea. I went with C. to take General Russell7up from Reserve Gully to Walker’s Ridge. It was a beautiful morning, with the sky flaming softly, not a cloud anywhere, and the sea perfectly still. The scrub was full of wild flowers; not even the dead mules could spoil it. Guns thundered far off.... After breakfast examined an intelligent Greek prisoner, Nikolas, the miller from Ali Kenì. Then I was telephoned for by Colonel Monash in great haste, and went off up his valley with a megaphone as quickly as possible. In the valley the men were in a state of nerves along the road because of the snipers. The Turks had put up a white flag above their trenches opposite Quinn’s Post. I think this was an artillery flag and that they hoped to avoid the fire of the fleet by this means.... The people at Helles aren’t making headway, and it seems unlikely, except at tremendous cost, and probably not then, thatthey will. We are pretty well hung up except on our left; why not try there? The Turks are not yet entrenched or dug in there as in other places.... I had to bully Yanni of Ayo Strati till he sobbed on the cliff. I then threatened to dismiss him, after which he grew cheerful, for it was what he wanted....
The Turks have again got white flags out. Have been ordered to go up at dawn.
Friday, May 14th. 4 a.m.Walked up the valley. The crickets were singing in the bushes at the opening of the valley and the place was cool with the faint light of coming dawn. Then a line of stretcher-bearers with the wounded, some quiet, some groaning. Then came the dawn and the smell of death that infects one’s hands and clothes and haunts one.
They weren’t over-pleased to see me at first, as after my speech the other day they had had an awful time from hand-grenades, and their faces fell when I appeared. I spoke from the same place. Then I went to another, and lastly to a trench that communicated with the Turkish trench. The Greek who had surrendered last night came down this trench and the Turks were said to be five to ten yards off. It was partly roofed, and there were some sandbags, between two and three feet high, that separated us from them. Leading into this was a big circular dugout, open to heaven. I got the men cleared out of this before speaking. In the small trench there were two men facing the Turks and lying on the ground with revolvers pointed at the Turks. I moved one man back out of the way and lay on the other—there wasn’t anything else to be done—and spoke for five minuteswith some intervals. Once a couple of hand-grenades fell outside and the ground quivered, but that was all. I then got the guard changed....
The loss of theGoliathis confirmed and the fleet has gone, leaving a considerable blank on the horizon and a depression on the sunlit beach. Four interpreters were arrested to-day and handed over to me.
I put them on to dig me a new dugout, round which a colony of interpreters is growing: Kyriakidis, who is a fine man and a gentleman; Ashjian, a young Armenian boy, aristocratic-looking, but very soft, whom I want to send away as soon as possible; and others. My dugout is in the middle of wild flowers, with the sea splashing round. Since the ships have all gone we are, as a consequence, short of water.... The Turks have been shelling our barges hard for an hour. We are to make an attack to-night and destroy their trenches.
Saturday, May 15th.The attack has failed. There are many of our wounded outside our lines. Have been told to go out with a white flag. Was sent for by Skeen8to see General Birdwood in half an hour. While Colonel Skeen and I were talking a shell hit one man in the lungs and knocked Colonel Knox on the back without hurting him. General Birdwood was hit yesterday in the head, but won’t lie up, General Trottman the day before. While we talked water arrived. A message came from Colonel Chauvel to say there were only two wounded lying out.... In a few minutes a telephone message arrived from the doctor in the trenches that the two wounded had died.... I came back to Headquarters, and heard General Bridges9asking theGeneral if he might go up Monash Valley. In a few minutes we heard that he was shot in the thigh. The snipers are getting many of our men. If the Germans were running this show they would have had 200,000 men for it.
Last night Kyriakidis heard a nightingale. I notice that the cuckoo has changed his note, worried by the shrapnel. I don’t blame the bird. My new dugout is built. It has a corridor and a patio, and is sort of Louis Quinze. The food is good, but we are always hungry.
Went out with Colonel N. He is a very great man for his luxuries, and looks on cover as the first of these. He is very funny about shelling, and is huffy, like a man who has received an insult, if he gets hit by a spent bullet or covered with earth. They have got the range of our new Headquarters beautifully—two shells before lunch, one on either side of the kitchen range. The men and the mess table covered with dust and stones. The fact is our ships have gone; they can now do pretty much as they like.
Most people here agree that the position is hopeless, unless we drive the Turks back on our left and get reinforcements from Helles, where they could quite well spare them.
Sunday, May 16th.A day fit for Trojan heroes to fight on. As a matter of fact, there is a good deal of Trojan friction. Went into the Intelligence dugout, as five men were hit below it. They have just hit another interpreter, and are pounding away at us again. I was warned to go out with a flag of truce and a bugler this afternoon.
Monday, May 17th.I walked out to the left with S. B., and bathed in a warm, quiet sea. Manymen bathing too, and occasionally shrapnel also. There was a scent of thyme, and also the other smell from the graves on the beach, which are very shallow. I got a touch of the sun, and had to lie down. When I got back I heard that Villiers Stuart had been killed this morning, instantaneously. He was a very good fellow, and very good to me.
Tuesday, May 18th.Last night Villiers Stuart was buried. The funeral was to have been at sunset, but at that time we were savagely shelled and had to wait. We formed up in as decent a kit as we could muster, and after the sun had set in a storm of red, while the young moon was rising, the procession started. We stumbled over boulders, and met stretcher-bearers with dead and wounded, we passed Indians driving mules, and shadowy Australians standing at attention, till we came to the graves by the sea. The prayers were very short and good, interrupted by the boom of our guns and the whining of Turkish bullets overhead. His salute was fired above his head from both the trenches....
We shelled the village of Anafarta yesterday, which I don’t much care about. A good many here want to destroy the minaret of the mosque. I can see no difference in principle between this and the destruction of Rheims Cathedral. Kyriakidis told me a Greek cure for sunstroke. You fill the ears of the afflicted one with salt water; it makes a noise like thunder in his head, but the sunstroke passes. Christo thereupon got me salt water in a jug without telling me, and several thirsty people tried to drink it....
A German submarine seen here.... A day of almost perfect peace; rifle fire ceased sometimesfor several minutes together, but 8-inch shells were fired into the trenches.... Men are singing on the beach for the first time, and there is something cheerful in the air. The enfilading gun has been, as usual, reported to be knocked out, but gunners are great optimists. No news from Helles.... Turkish reinforcements just coming up. Attack expected at 3 a.m. We stand to arms here.
Wednesday, May 19th.Work under heavy shell fire. This grew worse about 6.30. Several heavy shells hit within a few yards of this dugout and the neighbouring ones, but did not burst. A little farther off they did explode, or striking the sea, raised tall columns and high fountains of white water. Colonel Chaytor badly wounded in the shoulder. A great loss to us. He talked very cheerfully. I have got leave to send away Ashjian.... This, after all, is a quarrel for those directly concerned. The Germans have brought up about twelve more field-guns and four or five Jack Johnsons, and the shelling is very heavy. Saw a horrid sight: a barge full of wounded was being towed out to the hospital ship. Two great Jack Johnsons came, one just in front of them; then when they turned with a wriggle, one just behind them, sending up towers of water, and leaving two great white roses in the sea that turned muddy as the stuff from the bottom rose. They had shells round them again, and a miraculous escape. It’s cruel hard on the nerves of wounded men, but of course that was bad luck, not wicked intentions, because the enemy couldn’t see them.
If the Turks had attacked us fiercely on the top and shelled us as badly down here earlier, they might have had us out. Now we ought to be allright, and they can hardly go on using ammunition like this. Their losses are said to be very great. New Turkish reinforcements said to be at Helles. They have done what we ought to have done. Now they are throwing 11-inch at us. It’s too bad.... I saw Colonel Skeen. He said to me: “You had better be ready to go out this afternoon. We have just shot a Turk with a white flag. That will give us an excuse for apologizing”; quite so: it will also give the Turk an excuse for retaliating. A Turkish officer just brought in says that the real attack is to be this afternoon, now at 1.30. I spent an hour in the hospital, interpreting for the Turkish wounded. The Australians are very good to them. On returning I found the General’s dugout hit hard. Nothing to be done but to dig deeper in.
From the third week in May to the third week in June was the kernel of our time at Anzac. We had grown accustomed to think of the place as home, and of the conditions of our life as natural and permanent. The monotony of the details of shelling and the worry of the flies are of interest only to those who endured them, and have been eliminated, here and there, from this diary.
During this month we were not greatly troubled. The men continued to make the trenches impregnable, and were contented. It was in some ways a curiously happy time.
The New Zealanders and the Australians were generally clothed by the sunlight, which fitted them, better than any tailor, with a red-brown skin, and only on ceremonial occasions did they wear their belts and accoutrements.
Our sport was bathing, and the Brotherhood ofthe Bath was rudely democratic. There was at Anzac a singularly benevolent officer, but for all his geniality a strong disciplinarian, devoted to military observances. He was kind to all the world, not forgetting himself, and he had developed a kindly figure. No insect could resist his contours. Fleas and bugs made passionate love to him, inlaying his white skin with a wonderful red mosaic. One day he undressed and, leaving nothing of his dignity with his uniform, he mingled superbly with the crowd of bathers. Instantly he received a hearty blow upon his tender, red and white shoulder and a cordial greeting from some democrat of Sydney or of Wellington: “Old man, you’ve been amongst the biscuits!” He drew himself up to rebuke this presumption, then dived for the sea, for, as he said, “What’s the good of telling one naked man to salute another naked man, especially when neither have got their caps?”
This month was marked by a feature that is rare in modern warfare. We had an armistice for the burial of the dead, which is described in the diary.
On the Peninsula we were extremely anxious for an armistice for many reasons. We wished, on all occasions, to be able to get our wounded in after a fight, and we believed, or at least the writer was confident, that an arrangement could be come to. We were also very anxious to bury the dead. Rightly or wrongly, we thought that G.H.Q., living on its perfumed island, did not consider how great was the abomination of life upon the cramped and stinking battlefield that was our encampment, though this was not a charge that any man would have dreamed of bringing against Sir Ian Hamilton.
Diary.Wednesday, May 19, 1915.Kaba Tepé.General Birdwood told me to go to Imbros to talk to Sir Ian Hamilton about an armistice, if General Godley would give me leave.
Thursday, May 20, 1915.Kaba Tepé.Have been waiting for four hours in Colonel Knox’s boat, which was supposed to go to Imbros. Turkish guns very quiet.... Hear that Ock Asquith and Wedgwood are wounded. A liaison officer down south says: “When the Senegalese fly, and the French troops stream forward twenty yards and then stream back twenty-five yards, we know that we are making excellent progress.” There is a Coalition Government at home. We think that we are the reason of that; we think the Government cannot face the blunder of the Dardanelles without asking for support from the Conservatives.
6 p.m.“Arcadian.” Found George Lloyd. Have been talking to Sir Ian Hamilton with regard to the armistice.... Clive Bigham10was there. He lent me some Shakespeares.
Friday, May 21, 1915.Kaba Tepé.Saw Sir Ian Hamilton again this morning. The Turks are said to have put up a white flag and to have massed behind it in their trenches, intending to rush us. Left with four “Arcadians.”
There was a parley yesterday while I was away. The Turks had put up some white flags, but it was not a case of bad faith as the “Arcadians” believed. We are said to have shot one Red Crescent man by mistake. General Walker went out to talk to the Turks, just like that. Both sides had, apparently, been frightened. I walked back to Reserve Gully with the General, to see the new brigade. Theevening sun was shining on the myrtles in all the gullies, and the new brigade was singing and whistling up and down the hills, while fires crackled everywhere.
Saturday, May 22, 1915.Kaba Tepé.S. B. was sent out yesterday to talk to the Turks, but he did not take a white flag with him, and was sniped and bruised.... This morning, suddenly, I was sent for. S. B. and I hurried along the beach and crossed the barbed wire entanglements. We went along by the sea, through heavy showers of rain, and at last met a fierce Arab officer and a wandery-looking Turkish lieutenant. We sat and smoked in fields splendid with poppies, the sea glittering by us.
Then Kemal Bey arrived, and went into Anzac with S. B., while I went off as hostage.
S. B. and Kemal Bey, as they went, provided the Australian escort with much innocent laughter. Our barbed wire down to the sea consisted only of a few light strands, over which the Turk was helped by having his legs raised high for him. S. B., however, wished him, as he was blindfolded, to believe that this defence went on for at least twenty yards. So the Turk was made to do an enormously high, stiff goose-step over the empty air for that space, as absurd a spectacle to our men as I was to be, later, to the Turks. The Australians were almost sick from internal laughter.
Diary.Kemal Bey asked for a hostage, and I went out. They bandaged my eyes, and I mounted a horse and rode off with Sahib Bey. We went along by the sea for some time, for I could hearthe waves. Then we went round and round—to puzzle me, I suppose—and ended up in a tent in a grove of olives, where they took the handkerchief off, and Sahib Bey said: “This is the beginning of a life-long friendship.”
At one moment, as I was riding along, the soldier who was supposed to be leading my horse had apparently let go and had fallen behind to light a cigarette or pick flowers. I heard Sahib Bey call out: “You old fool! Can’t you see he’s riding straight over the cliff?” I protested loudly as I rode on, blind as fate.
We had cheese and tea and coffee, Sahib Bey offering to eat first to show me that it was all right, which I said was nonsense. He said: “It may not be political economy, but there are some great advantages in war. It’s very comfortable when there are no exports, because it means that all the things stay at home and are very cheap.” He tried to impress me with their well-being. He said he hated all politicians and had sworn never to read the papers. The Turks had come sadly into the war against us, otherwise gladly. They wanted to regain the prestige that they had lost in the Balkans.... He said, after I had talked to him: “There are many of us who think like you, but we must obey. We know that you are just and that Moslems thrive under you, but you have made cruel mistakes by us, the taking of those two ships and the way in which they were taken.” He asked me a few questions, which I put aside. He had had a conversation with Dash the day before, when we parleyed. Dash is a most innocent creature. He had apparently told him that G.H.Q.was an awful bore, and also the number of Turkish prisoners we had taken....
Sunday, May 23, 1915.Kaba Tepé.We landed a month ago to-day. We now hold a smaller front than then. Also theAlbionhas gone ashore. The rest of the fleet has left; she remains a fixture. All the boats are rushing up to tow her off. The Turks are sending in a hail of shrapnel.... It will be a bad business if they don’t get her off.... They have got her off, thank the Lord, and every one is breathing more freely.
We wonder if all the places with queer, accidental names will one day be historical: Johnson’s Jolly, Dead Man’s Ridge, Quinn’s Post, The Valley of Death, The Sphinx, Anzac—by the way, that’s not a name of good omen, as “anjak” in Turkish means barely, only just—Plugge’s Plateau. Plugge is a grand man, wounded for the second time. The New Zealanders are all most gallant fellows....
The big fight ought to come off, after the armistice. Two more divisions have come up against us. All quiet last night, but a shell came into the New Zealand hospital on the beach and killed four wounded men and a dresser and some more outside. It’s these new guns whose position we still do not know.
Tuesday, May 25, 1915.Kaba Tepé.We had the truce yesterday. I was afraid something might go wrong, but it all went off all right. Skeen, Blamey,11Howse, V.C.,12Hough and I started early.Skeen offered me breakfast but, like a fool, I refused. He put some creosote on my handkerchief. We were at the rendezvous on the beach at 6.30. Heavy rain soaked us to the skin. At 7.30 we met the Turks, Miralai Izzedin, a pleasant, rather sharp, little man; Arif, the son of Achmet Pasha, who gave me a card, “Sculpteur et Peintre,” and “Etudiant de Poésie.” I saw Sahib and had a few words with him, but he did not come with us. Fahreddin Bey came later. We walked from the sea and passed immediately up the hill, through a field of tall corn filled with poppies, then another cornfield; then the fearful smell of death began as we came upon scattered bodies. We mounted over a plateau and down through gullies filled with thyme, where there lay about 4,000 Turkish dead. It was indescribable. One was grateful for the rain and the grey sky. A Turkish Red Crescent man came and gave me some antiseptic wool with scent on it, and this they renewed frequently. There were two wounded crying in that multitude of silence. The Turks were distressed, and Skeen strained a point to let them send water to the first wounded man, who must have been a sniper crawling home. I walked over to the second, who lay with a high circle of dead that made a mound round him, and gave him a drink from my water-bottle, but Skeen called me to come on and I had to leave the bottle. Later a Turk gave it back to me. The Turkish Captain with me said: “At this spectacle even the most gentle must feel savage, and the most savage must weep.” The dead fill acres of ground, mostly killed in the one big attack, but some recently. They fill the myrtle-grown gullies. One saw the result of machine-gun fire very clearly;entire companies annihilated—not wounded, but killed, their heads doubled under them with the impetus of their rush and both hands clasping their bayonets. It was as if God had breathed in their faces, as “the Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold.”
The line was not easy to settle. Neither side wanted to give its position or its trenches away. At the end Skeen agreed that the Turks had been fair. We had not been going very long when we had a message to say that the Turks were entrenching at Johnson’s Jolly. Skeen had, however, just been there and seen that they were doing nothing at all. He left me at Quinn’s Post, looking at the communication trench through which I had spoken to the Turks. Corpses and dead men blown to bits everywhere. Richards was with me part of the time: easy to get on with; also a gentleman called indifferently by the men Mr. or Major Tibbs. A good deal of friction at first. The trenches were 10 to 15 yards apart. Each side was on thequi vivefor treachery. In one gully the dead had got to be left unburied. It was impossible to bury them without one side seeing the position of the other. In the Turkish parapet there were many bodies buried. Fahreddin told Skeen he wanted to bury them, “but,” he said, “we cannot take them out without putting something in their place.” Skeen agreed, but said that this concession was not to be taken advantage of to repair the trench. This was a difficult business.
When our people complained that the Turks were making loopholes, they invited me into their trench to look. Then the Turks said that we were stealing their rifles; this came from the deadland where we could not let them go. I went down, and when I got back, very hot, they took my word for it that we were not. There was some trouble because we were always crossing each other’s lines. I talked to the Turks, one of whom pointed to the graves. “That’s politics,” he said. Then he pointed to the dead bodies and said: “That’s diplomacy. God pity all of us poor soldiers.”
Much of this business was ghastly to the point of nightmare. I found a hardened old Albanian chaoush and got him to do anything I wanted. Then a lot of other Albanians came up, and I said: “Tunya tyeta.”13I had met some of them in Janina. They began clapping me on the back and cheering while half a dozen funeral services were going on all round, conducted by the chaplains. I had to stop them. I asked them if they did not want an Imam for a service over their own dead, but the old Albanian pagan roared with laughter and said that their souls were all right. They could look after themselves. Not many signs of fanaticism. One huge, savage-looking Anatolian looked curses at me. Greeks came up and tried to surrender to me, but were ordered back by the Turks pretty roughly.
Considering the number of their men we had killed, they remained extraordinarily unmoved and polite. They wouldn’t have, if we had been Russians. Blamey came to say that Skeen had lost H. and wanted me, so he, Arif and I walked to the sea. The burying had not been well done. It was sometimes impossible to do it.... As we went, we took our rifles from the Turkish side,minus their bolts, and gave the Turks their rifles in the same way....
Our men gave cigarettes to the Turks, and beyond the storm-centre at Quinn’s Post the feeling was all right. We sat down and sent men to look for Skeen. Arif was nervous and almost rude. Then Skeen came. He told me to get back as quickly as possible to Quinn’s Post, as I said I was nervous at being away, and to retire the troops at 4 and the white-flag men at 4.15. I said to Arif: “Everybody’s behaved very well. Now we must take care that nobody loses his head. Your men won’t shoot you and my men won’t shoot me, so we must walk about, otherwise a gun will go off and everybody will get shot.” But Arif faded away. I got back as quickly as possible. Blamey went away on the left. I then found that the Turks’ time was eight minutes ahead of ours, and put on our watches. The Turks asked me to witness their taking the money from their dead, as they had no officer there. They were very worried by having no officer, and asked me if any one were coming. I, of course, had no idea, but I told them I would see that they were all right. They were very patient....
The burying was finished some time before the end. There were certain tricks on both sides.
Our men and the Turks began fraternizing, exchanging badges, etc. I had to keep them apart. At 4 o’clock the Turks came to me for orders. I do not believe this could have happened anywhere else. I retired their troops and ours, walking along the line. At 4.7 I retired the white-flag men, making them shake hands with our men. Then I came to the upper end. About a dozenTurks came out. I chaffed them, and said that they would shoot me next day. They said, in a horrified chorus: “God forbid!” The Albanians laughed and cheered, and said: “We will never shoot you.” Then the Australians began coming up, and said: “Good-bye, old chap; good luck!” And the Turks said: “Oghur Ola gule gule gedejekseniz, gule gule gelejekseniz” (Smiling may you go and smiling come again). Then I told them all to get into their trenches, and unthinkingly went up to the Turkish trench and got a deep salaam from it. I told them that neither side would fire for twenty-five minutes after they had got into the trenches. One Turk was seen out away on our left, but there was nothing to be done, and I think he was all right. A couple of rifles had gone off about twenty minutes before the end, but Potts and I went hurriedly to and fro seeing it was all right. At last we dropped into our trenches, glad that the strain was over. I walked back with Temperley. I got some raw whisky for the infection in my throat, and iodine for where the barbed wire had torn my feet. There was a hush over the Peninsula....
Wednesday, May 26, 1915.Kaba Tepé.This morning I was talking to Dix, asking him if he believed there were submarines. “Yes,” he said, and then swore and added: “There’s theTriumphsinking.” Every picket-boat dashed off to pick up the survivors. The Turks behaved well in not shelling. There was fury, panic and rage on the beach and on the hill. I heard Uncle Bill, half off his head, saying: “You should kill all enemies. Like a wounded bird, she is. Give them cigarettes. Swine! Like a wounded bird. The swine!” Hewas shaking his fist. Men were crying and cursing. Very different from yesterday’s temper.
This afternoon I went round past Monash Gully, towards Kaba Tepé, and bathed. I got shelled, and came back over the ridges having a beastly time from the shrapnel which hunted me.
We have now got a sap under Quinn’s Post. The flies and ants are past endurance.
Thursday, May 27, 1915.Kaba Tepé.A very wet night. I wish the Turks would forget how to shoot. Here we are for an indefinite period without the power of replying effectively and with the knowledge that we are firmly locked outside the back door of a side-show....
Went with the General to General Russell’s trenches. They are very much improved. The men call an ideal trench a Godley-Braithwaite trench; that is, tall enough for General Godley and broad enough for Colonel Braithwaite. Bathed. Charlie Bentinck arrived. His destroyer lay just off the beach and was shelled. Some sailors and five soldiers killed. Forty-five wounded. Very unfortunate. If they had come yesterday, it would have been all right—a quiet day, though we had thirty men sniped. TheMajesticreported sunk off Helles. Off to Mudros to get stores.
Friday, May 28, 1915.Mudros.Left after many delays, and slept on deck. Very cold. It’s a pretty tall order for the French to put black Senegalese cannibals into Red Cross uniform....
Saturday, May 29, 1915.Lemnos.Drove across the island to Castro. There was a delightful spring half a mile from Castro and a café kept by a Greek. His wife had been killed by the Turks. Great fig-trees and gardens. I met two naval officers,who told me Wedgwood had died of wounds. I am very sorry; he was a very fine man. I admired him a lot. Castro is beautiful, with balconies over the narrow streets, half Turk and half Greek, and shady gardens. I bathed in a transparent sea, facing Athos, which was gleaming like a diamond. I watched its shadow come across the eighty miles of sea at sunset, as Homer said it did. I found a Greek, who had been Cromer’s cook. He said he would come back and cook for me, if there was no danger. He said he knew that G.H.Q. cooks were safe, but his wife would not let him go on to the Peninsula. He said her idea of warfare was wrong. She always thought of men and bullets skipping about together on a hillside.
Sunday, May 30, 1915.Mudros.I bathed before dawn and went back to Mudros with masses of mosquito-netting, etc. Turkish prisoners of the French were being guarded by Greeks. It was rather like monkeys looking after bears. They wore uniforms that were a cross between Ali Pasha of Janina and Little Lord Fauntleroy. I saw H., who had been on the River Clyde. He looked as if he were still watching the sea turn red with blood, as he described the landing on Gallipoli. Jack was sick, and I had to leave him with my coat. Went and saw my friend the Papas of the little Greek church on the hill.
Monday, May 31, 1915.Anzac.I saw Hutton this morning, slightly wounded. Bathed at the farthest point towards Kaba Tepé, but had to fly with my clothes in my hand, leaving my cigarettes....
Wednesday, June 2, 1915.Kaba Tepé.Had a picturesque examination of a Greek peasant thismorning. It was a fine picture, with the setting of the blue sea and the mountains. The man himself was patriarchal and biblical, surrounded by tall English officers and half-naked soldiers. Last night we sent up bombs from Japanese mortars by Quinn’s. It sounded beastly. This morning I went to Reserve Gully with the General. Monash’s Brigade is resting there for the first time for five weeks. The General, looking like a Trojan hero, made them a fine speech from a sort of natural throne in the middle of the sunlit amphitheatre, in which they all sat, tier after tier of magnificent-looking fellows, brown as Indians. Bullets swept over all the time, sometimes drowning the General’s voice.... Have just heard that Quinn is killed. I am very sorry. He was a fine, jolly, gallant fellow.
Friday, June 4, 1915.Anzac.Nothing doing. George Lloyd came over. Very glad to see him. This morning I went with Shaw to the extreme left, through fields of poppies, thyme and lavender. We saw a vulture high overhead, and the air was full of the song of larks. At Helles there was a savage attack going on. There was very bad sniping. In some places the trenches are only knee-high; in other places there are no trenches and the Turks are anything from four to eight hundred yards off. Yesterday seventeen men were hit at one place, they said, by one sniper. At one place on the way, we ran like deer, dodging. The General, when he had had a number of bullets at him, also ran. Sniping is better fun than shrapnel; it’s more human. You pit your wits against the enemy in a rather friendly sort of way. A lot of vultures collecting.
Saturday, June 5, 1915.Anzac.Examined sixteen prisoners. Food good, munitions plentiful, morale all right. The individuals fed up with the war, but the mass obedient and pretty willing. No idea of surrendering. They think they are going to win. There was one Greek, a Karamanly, who only talked Turkish. He did not say until to-night that he was wounded. The flies are bad.
Sunday, June 6, 1915.Anzac.Went to the service this morning with the General, in the amphitheatre. The sermon was mainly against America for not coming into the war, and also against bad language. The chaplain said he could not understand the meaning of it. The men laughed. So did I.
Monday, June 7, 1915.Kaba Tepé.This morning the land was sweet as Eden and there was the calm of the first creation. H. has been made a new Uriah the Hittite, but not because of Mrs. H. Last night I was invaded by mice. There is tremendous shelling going on now. This afternoon S. B., Onslow and I climbed a hill and had a beautiful view. Every one is rather ill and feverish. I have no news about Jack. The Intelligence office has been moved to a higher and safer place. Pirie Gordon, poor chap, has gone sick a long time ago. I rather liked the stuffy old place, which was called “The Mountain Path to the Jackal’s Cave.”
The attack last night failed, but the drone of the rifles went on unceasingly, like the drone of a dry waterfall. We shall not get to Constantinople unless the flat-faced Bulgars come in.
Yesterday I lunched with Temperley at the H.Q. of Monash Valley. Times have changed: it’s fairlysafe going there through a long sap they have dug, and the noise is less bad.
Colonel —— had seen a lot of the Crown Prince in India, and said he was a very good fellow. Dined with Woods, Dix, S. B. and Edwards. Lots of champagne for once; a very good dinner.
I went to No. 2 Outpost with the General. There is a sap all the way now. Only one sniper the whole way. The Turkish birds were singing beautifully as we went. There was also a Turkish snake, which I believed was quite harmless, but Tahu killed it. The men are getting pretty tired. They are not as resigned as their ten thousand brother-monks over the way at Mount Athos.
Friday, June 11, 1915.Kaba Tepé.The Australians and New Zealanders have given up wearing clothes. They lie about and bathe and become darker than Indians. The General objects to this. “I suppose,” he says, “we shall have our servants waiting on us like that.” The flies are very bad, so are the mice, and so is the shelling....
Sunday, June 13, 1915.Kaba Tepé.A lot of mules and several men hit yesterday. Last night, S. B. and I were on the beach, when a man on a stretcher went by, groaning rhythmically. I thought he had been shot through the brain. Later on I went into the hospital to find a wounded Turk, and found that this man had never been hit at all. He had been doing very good work till a shell exploded near him and gave him a shock. Then he went on imitating a machine-gun. Some men in a sap up at Quinn’s have been going off their heads.
Awful accounts of Mudros: flies, heat, sand, no water, typhoid. To-day are the Greek elections.
Am dining with H. Woods. “The beach” now says that Ot has been poisoned by the Greek guides, whom he illtreats and uses as cooks. I shouldn’t wonder. The shelling is bad. I am going to make a new dugout to get away from the flies and mice. The Turkish prisoners will do this. I pay them a small sum.
Tuesday, June 15, 1915.Kaba Tepé.Colonel Chauvel14has pleurisy, Colonel Johnston15enteric. The sea’s high and the Navy depressed.... One man and two mules killed in our gully this morning; the body of one mule blown about 50 yards both ways.
Wednesday, June 16, 1915.Kaba Tepé.Rain. I was to have gone to Helles with Woods to see Dedez, but no boats went; it was too rough. I was going to talk about spies to S. B., when General Cunliffe Owen said to me: “Wait a bit. The shelling is too bad. We will go along together.” But I was in too much of a hurry. A shell fell in the gully as I crossed, and Woods came out to see where it had hit. It went into Machonochie’s dugout, where H. was, and blew him out of his dugout, black and shaken. It destroyed his furniture. I felt sorry for him. Ot tried to turn him out of the Intelligence dugout, but we protested.
The General has come back with the latest casualty lists from France....
Thursday, June 17, 1915.Helles.Thirty men killed and wounded on the beach to-day. This morning I came to Helles with Woods. As wegot there a submarine had two shots at one of our transports by us. I was to have seen Dedez, but he had gone off to see Gouraud. George Peel walked in and took me round the beach, two miles on. We climbed on to the headland, in what he called “the quiet track of the Black Marias.” He talked of every mortal thing—the future Liberal and Socialist, the possibility of touching the heart of the people, the collapse of Christianity, our past and our policy. I left him and walked back across thyme and asphodel, Asia glowing like a jewel across the Dardanelles in the sunset. At night I talked late and long with Dash. Every Department is jealous, every one is at cross-purposes, no co-operation between the War Office and the Foreign Office.
Walked in the morning to the H.Q. of the R.N.D. with Whittall. We were shelled most of the way in the open landscape. There was no cover anywhere. It felt unfamiliar. I was unfavourably impressed with the insecurity of life in this part of the world, and wished for Anzac. In the evening we drank mavrodaphne and tried to get rid of——
Friday, June 18, 1915.Kaba Tepé.I left Helles in the middle of very heavy shelling, a star performance. A lot of horses killed this morning. A submarine popped up last night. As we came back to Anzac the Turks shelled our trawler and hit her twice, but without doing any damage.
Shelling grew worse at Anzac, and sickness began to make itself felt. Men were sent across to Imbros when it was possible to rest.
Diary.On June 25th I went across to Imbros with H. Woods and the Greek miller, Nikolas.Hawker was there, and E. of Macedonia. E. is very unpopular. If he takes a dislike to a man he digs around his dugout, until it falls in on him. The chief R.A.M.C. officer, an Irishman, was mourning over the ruins of his home. We slept uncomfortably on the ground, with flies to keep us warm.
As I was writing this a shell burst outside my dugout, a lot of shrapnel coming through, and one bullet glancing off the typewriter, which has just come. At the same time Jack was hit across the gully going from my dugout to his. Conolly, the escort, and I carried him down, after binding his leg up, under heavy fire. Then I nipped back to get some of his stuff to take off, but on going back to the beach found that he had gone. Many men hit on the beach. Thousands of flies on the wounded. The General’s blankets riddled with bullets. They have our range, pat. Two days ago Colonel Parker had his chair and table smashed while he was in his dugout. He left it to have tea with Wagstaffe. There he was reading when another bullet tore his paper in two. I have been covered with dirt several times in the last days. L. S. Amery came with K. I only saw him for a minute, worse luck, but he is coming back to-morrow, I hope, when we can have a talk. G.H.Q. turned up in force, and walked about like wooden images.
We have a clerk here, Venables. He has got tired of writing, and, wanting to change the pen for the sword, borrowed a rifle and walked up to the front line at Quinn’s Post. There he popped his head in and said: “Excuse me, is this a private trench, or may any one fire out of it?”
The sound of battle has ended. Men are bathing. The clouds that the cannonade had called up are gone, and the sea is still and crimson in the sunset to Imbros and Samothrace.
Tuesday, June 29, 1915.Anzac.We have advanced 1,000 yards down at Helles, but no details yet. Many men shot here yesterday by the Anafarta gun. I should think this gun had as good a tale of killed and wounded as any gun in the war. Every day it gets its twenty odd on the beach. The Australians attacked on the right yesterday. Fifty killed and wounded; they think the Turks suffered more heavily. I went with the General to the extreme left. Terrific heat. We came to a valley filled with thyme and lavender, which the Maoris are to inhabit. The men were bathing beyond Shrapnel Point. They say the Turks let them. I had two letters—one two months old, a curious one to receive here, from an Englishwoman, wife of the ex-Grand Vizier of Afghanistan. He was a progressive man, and is therefore in an Afghan prison. She wants work for her son. Wants him to be a saddler, a job a lot of men here would like. All my stuff looted coming from Egypt.
Men are practising bomb-throwing, all over the place. They are mostly half-naked, and darker than Red Indians. It’s a day of blessed peace, but there’s a lot of feeling about the Anafarta gun, and bathing is stopped on the beach till night.
Wednesday, June 30, 1915.Anzac.Last night I went down to the hospital and was inoculated for cholera by C., a witty man. A trench had been blown in, and men were lying groaning onthe floor, most of them suffering from shell-shock, not wounds, but some of the wounds horrible.... I asked C. why the wounded were not sent to Cyprus instead of Mudros. He said: “Because it’s a splendid climate and there is heaps of water.” The chief doctor at Mudros is useless, the second —— (With regard to the second doctor I regret that the diary is libellous.) Anyway, what is certain is that the condition of the sick and wounded is awful. This morning it’s very rough, and I can’t get out to Jack at the hospital ship, as prisoners are coming in....
July 1, 1915.Anzac.I examined the prisoners, amongst them a tall Armenian lawyer, who talked some English. I asked him how he had surrendered. He said: “I saw two gentlemen with their looking-glasses, and came over to them.” By this he meant two officers with periscopes. He said that the psychology of the Turks is a curious thing. They do not fear death, yet are not brave....
No water came in yesterday. The storm wrecked the barges and the beach is covered with lighters. We got brackish water from the hill. I could not get to Jack for work.
At lunch I heard there were wounded crying on Walker’s Ridge, and went up there with Zachariades. We found a first-rate Australian, Major Reynell. We went through the trenches, dripping with sweat; it was a boiling day, and my head reeled from inoculation. We had to crawl through a secret sap over a number of dead Turks, some of whom were in a ghastly condition, headless and covered with flies. Then out from the darkness into another sap, with a dead Turk to walkover. The Turkish trenches were 30 yards off, and the dead lay between the two lines.
When I called I was answered at once by a Turk. He said he could not move.... I gave him a drink, and Reynell and I carried him in, stumbling over the dead among whom he lay. I went back for my water-bottle, but the Turks began shooting as a warning, and I had to go back into the trench.
An awful time getting the Turk through the very narrow trench. I got one other, unwounded, shamming dead. We threw him a rope, and in he came.
The taking of the second Turk was a curious episode that perhaps deserves a little more description than is given by the diary. The process of catching Turks fascinated the Australians, and amongst them an R.A.M.C. doctor who came round on that occasion. This officer prided himself upon neatness and a smart appearance, when the dust and heat of the Dardanelles had turned every one else into scallywags. After he had attended to the first wounded man, he pointed out the second Turk lying between our trenches and the Turks’ and only a few yards from either. “You go out again, sir,” said the Australians; “it’s as good as a show.” I, however, took another view. I called out to the Turk: “Do you want any water?” “By God,” he whispered back, “I do, but I am afraid of my people.” We then threw him a rope and pulled him in. He told us that the night before he had lost direction in the attack. Fire seemed to be coming every way, and it had seemed to him the best plan to fall and lie still amongst his dead comrades. The doctor gave him some water,with which he rinsed his mouth, and I left him under the charge of the R.A.M.C. doctor. This is what happened subsequently. They had to crawl back through the secret sap, from which the bodies of the dead Turks had by that time been removed and left at the entrance. The Turk was blindfolded, but he was able to see under the handkerchief, and when he saw his dead comrades, over whose bodies he had to step, he leapt to the conclusion that it was our habit to bring our prisoners to one place and there to kill them. He gave one panic-stricken yell; he threw his arms round the neck of the well-dressed officer; they fell and rolled upon the corpses together, the Turk in convulsions of fear clinging to the neck of the doctor, pressing his face to the faces of the dead till he was covered with blood and dust and the ghastly remains of death, while the soldiers stood round saying to the Turk: “Now, don’t you carry on so.”
Diary.Friday, July 2.Anzac.This morning I had a magnificent bathe with General Birdwood. At night a great storm blew up. The lightning played in splendid glares over Imbros and Samothrace. The sea roared, the thunder crashed and rain spouted down. After a time that stopped and a cloud, black as ink, came down upon us like a pall.
Yesterday mourning met the two Whittalls going to Helles with General de Lotbiniere and his periscopes.
I went off to theSiciliato see Jack, and had a lot of trouble about a pass. I saw Jack. He said they had re-bound his leg on the beach, but that it had not been looked at for eighteen hours onthe boat. It had swelled to double its size. Then a doctor came and said the bandage had been done too tight, and there was a chance of his losing his leg. I felt absolutely savage.... Saw General House,16V.C., on shore and got him to promise to do what he could. We had a bad time going home. We were slung off the ship in wooden cases. It was very rough indeed, and when the wooden case hit the flat barge it bounced like anything. Then we were towed out on this flat barge, open to the great waves and shrapnel, to a lighter, and left off Anzac for a couple of hours. The Turks sent a few shells, absent-mindedly. Finally, a trawler brought us off, very angry.
S. dined, a scholarly fanatic, interesting about the next war, which he thinks will be with Russia, in fifteen years. A lot of people going sick.
I saw Cox to-night, who said that this is the worst storm we have had. We have only one day’s water supply. We could have had as much as we had wanted, but many of the cans stored on the beach are useless, as they have had holes knocked in them by the shrapnel. We are not as abstemious as the Turks, who had been lying for so many hours under the sun, and shall suffer from thirst badly.
Saturday, July 3, 1915.Anzac.Macaulay has come as our artillery officer. I dined with him and H. Woods last night. Yesterday it rained. Jack’s boat has gone. We are being badly shelled here. I shall have to change my dugout, if this goes on. The guide Katzangaris has been hit in the mouth.
Sunday, July 4.Saw the Maoris, who had just landed. General Godley made them a first-class speech. They danced a very fine Haka with tremendous enthusiasm in his honour when he had finished. They liked digging their dugouts, and seemed to like it when they came to human remains.... More people going sick. Doctor F. told me that he and another doctor had asked to be allowed to help on board the hospital ships where they have more wounded than they can deal with, short-handed as they are, but have been refused permission by the R.A.M.C.
There has been a great explosion at Achi Baba. Macaulay saw a transport of ours sunk this afternoon.... G. L. came ashore with depressing accounts of Russia. He is probably going to come on this beach. Hope he does. Went off and bathed with Macaulay. Saw Colonel Bauchop, who promised me a present of some fresh drinking-water to-morrow.
Monday, July 5, 1915.Kaba Tepé.A breathless, panting morning, still and blue and fiery hot, with not a ripple on the sea. Colonel Bauchop, commanding the Otago Mounted Rifles, was shot in the shoulder last night. This morning we have had an exhibition of “frightfulness” in the shape of vast shells. They burst with a tremendous roar that echoes to the sky and across the sea for more than a minute. Their case or bullets fall over the sea in a great area. They started by striking the sea and raising great columns of water. Now they burst and fall on land and sea.
It has had the great result of getting rid of Mr. Lock, the Socialist Czech, from the doorway of my dugout. He was an undergraduate at ——and afterwards a Labour candidate. Now he is Colonel P.’s cook.
The transport that Macaulay saw go down was French. Six lives lost. The explosion down south was a French ammunition store. This shelling makes one’s head ache.
Tuesday, July 6th.Kaba Tepé.Yesterday I went to Quinn’s Post with General Godley in the morning. There was a fair amount of shelling. They had just hit thirteen men in Courtney’s before we got there. We went into a mine that was being dug towards and under the Turkish trenches. At the end of the sap the Turks were only six to eight feet away. We could hear them picking. The time for blowing in had very nearly come. These underground people take it all as a matter of course. I should hate fighting on my stomach in a passage two feet high, yards under the ground. The Turks were throwing bombs from the trenches, and these hit the ground over us, three of them, making it shudder. Down below they talk in whispers. We went round the trenches. Saw none so fine as last time, when we came to the Millionaires’ Sap, so called because it was made by six Australians, each the son of a millionaire.
In the afternoon I tried to sleep, but there was too much shelling. Kyumjiyan was hit, and has gone; S. B. was grazed. It was 11.2 shells filled with all kinds of stuff. We answered with a monitor whose terrific percussions shook my dugout, bringing down dust and stones. A submarine appeared, and all the destroyers were after her. Then two aeroplanes started a fight as the sun set down towards Helles, appearing and vanishing behind crimson clouds. Captain Buck, the Maori doctorand M.P., dined with us, to wind up an exciting day.
This morning is like yesterday. No breath of air, but the day is more clear, and Samothrace and Imbros look very peaceful. Early again the shelling began. As I was shaving outside three shells hit the beach just in front. I wasn’t watching the third, but suddenly heard a great burst of laughter. At the first shell a bather had rushed back to his dugout; the shell had come and knocked it in on the top of him, and he was dug out, naked and black, but smiling and none the worse. “Another blasted sniper,” he said, which made the men laugh.
Active preparations are being made to fight the gas, as the Intelligence says it is going to be used. Am going out with the General at 9.30. Was sent to get Colonel Parker, but found him sick, and under pretty heavy fire, having a new dugout built. Came back and stood with the General, Thoms and others outside Headquarters. A shell burst just by us, bruised the General in the ribs, and filled his eyes with dirt. Went out with Colonel Anthill and Poles. Talked of arranging a truce to bury the Turkish dead on our parapet. They said that otherwise our men must get cholera; the heat and sand and flies and smell is awful. We met Colonel Bauchop with his arm in a sling, but the bullet out of his shoulder, and Colonel White with his head still bandaged. The Australians very cheerful.
Wednesday, July 7, 1915.Kaba Tepé.A fierce, expectant dawn. We shelled furiously at 4.30 a.m. Now absolute peace on a glassy sea. Last night Bentinck, Jack Anderson and I bathed. I wasat the end of the pier; as I was beginning to dress a shell burst very close, the smoke and powder in my face. I fled half dressed; Colonel P. rose like Venus from the sea and followed with nothing. A calm marine gave me my cigarette-holder.
One of the prisoners reported that on the occasion of the armistice Turkish Staff officers had put on Red Crescent clothes in order to have a look at our trenches.... No news of Jack.
The Turks put up five crosses yesterday, all of which we shot down. I first thought it was probably Greeks or Armenians who wanted to show they were Christians, wishing to surrender, and telephoned to Courtney’s to see if I could get into touch with them, but now I think it’s probably Turks who were anxious to make us shoot at the sign of our own religion. In this they succeeded.
Colonel Johnson, Commanding the New Zealand Infantry Brigade, gone sick. I persuaded the mess to get inoculated for cholera. Last night I dined with Woods and Macaulay. They told Eastern stories, and we had a very contented time, drinking mavrodaphne and looking at the sea.
The Turks shelled a little after eight, in answer to our tiresome provocative monitor fire. This morning Tahu arrived from Egypt with letters. The Turks are bombing something cruel from Kaba Tepé.... It’s a beautiful sight—a sea like lapis-lazuli and a burning sun, with columns of water like geysers where the shells hit. A good many men hit here to-day.
Saturday, July 10, 1915.Kaba Tepé.I went with General Godley to theTriad, and dined with Admiral de Robeck. Took the General’s things to put them on board the picket-boat, but as Igot there a shell struck her and knocked a hole in her. There was another one, and we sat and waited uncomfortably in this till he came.... Found Alec Ramsay on board. Slept in Commodore Roger Keyes’ cabin. Very comfortable. He was very kind. Went to G.H.Q. and had lunch with L. and Bob Graves.
Sunday, July 11th.Felt much better. Went ashore and saw Colonel Hawker and the Turkish prisoners.... Came back late at night, after some very jolly days. Best week-end I ever spent. The Turks have asked for another armistice in the south. This has been refused. If they attack, they will have to do it across their dead, piled high, and this is not good for morale.
By this time the persecutions of the interpreters had greatly diminished. They were still badly treated by a man called Ot, but to a large extent they had won the respect of the troops by their behaviour. The chief interpreter was an old Greek of some sixty-two or sixty-three years, Mr. Kyriakidis, who was given a medal for conspicuous gallantry at the bombardment of Alexandria and had served with General Stuart’s unfortunate expedition. He was a gentleman, and one of the straightest men I have met. His simplicity, courtesy and unfailing courage had gained him many friends. He was also endowed with considerable humour.
A relation had sent me a gas mask, at that time a rarity at Anzac. I did not believe that I should need it, and made a present of it to the first man I met, who happened to be Mr. Kyriakidis. He went down and played poker with the other interpreterson the beach. He put on my respirator as a poker mask, with much swagger. This put the fear of death into the interpreters, who sent a deputation to G.H.Q. Intelligence, insisting that they should also be provided with masks.
Monday, July 12, 1915.Kaba Tepé.By the way, an unhappy shadow was shot yesterday, an interpreter of whom we none of us knew anything, and who was on no list. Things are not very comfortable. The fire is increasingly heavy. All the air is full of thudding and broken echoes. No one minds anything much, but high explosive.... The hospitals are being moved. They had too many casualties where they were before.
Tuesday, July 13th.Kaba Tepé.Tremendous fire round Achi Baba yesterday. French advanced 150 and we 200 yards. Don’t know what the losses were. I went with Macaulay and Woods to No. 3 Post, to Bauchop’s Fountain. They can snipe there very close, and killed a man a couple of days ago, two yards off under the olives, and wounded his mate, who crawled back into the sandy way. On both sides there is tall wild lavender and what M. calls pig’s parsley.
We crawled down a sandy path to the sea, M. rather sick. Met the General going back, who told us not to bathe. In the evening Tahu got out his gramophone and we had some good songs when the shooting was not too much.
Ramadan began to-day. George Lloyd arrived this afternoon and said they wanted to send me to Tenedos for a special job.
Yesterday evening General Godley went to Courtney’s Post. As he got there the Turks shelledwith heavy stuff, killing and wounding about twenty men. Reynell came to see me. I like him very much indeed.
Diary. Sunday, July 18, 1915. Kaba Tepé.They are now shelling the pier, and killed a doctor, cutting off both his legs, and several other people, when I was bathing from the pier. Everybody is again going sick. The situation is changing. Every night we are landing guns. The moon is young now and growing. It seems, therefore, reasonable to expect that we cannot land forces of men that take time before the nights are moonless; that is, in about a month’s time the preparations ought to be ready.
A few days ago we had an attack on Achi Baba, won about 400 yards and lost about 5,000 men. Two battalions got out of touch and were lost for a considerable time. The “Imbros Journal,” “Dardanelles Driveller,” or whatever it’s called, said “their return was as surprising as that of Jonah from the belly of the whale.” Good, happy author!
A German Taube over us throwing bombs and also heavy stuff, but not much damage lately. George Lloyd17was here this afternoon, and while we talked a shell burst and hit four men.