Diary 3 At SUVLA BAY JOHN HARGRAVE [WHITE FOX]
AT SUVLA BAY
PATCHING SICK AND WOUNDED
BY THE BLUE AGEAN SHORE."
PV\ AT SUVLA BAY
.
BEING THE NOTES AND SKETCHES O# (j*^! -.
SCENES, CHARACTERS AND AD VENTURES^,''
OF THE DARDANELLES CAMPAIGN
MADE BY
JOHN V HARGRAVE X
("White Fox")
WHILE SERVING WITH THE 32ND FIELD AMBULANCE,
X DIVISION, MEDITERRANEAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE,
DURING THE GREAT WAR
LONDON
CONSTABLE & COMPANY LTD
1916
Published October 1916.
To
MINOBI
WE played at Ali Baba,
On a green linoleum floor ;
Now we camp near Lala Baba,
By the blue ^Egean shore.
We sailed the good ship Argus,
Behind the studio door ;
Now we try to play at u Heroes "
By the blue Agean shore.
We played at lonely Crusoe,
In a pink print pinafore ;
Now we live like lonely Crusoe,
By the blue ^Egean shore.
We used to call for " Mummy,"
In nursery days of yore ;
And still we dream of Mother,
By the blue ^Egean shore.
While you are having holidays,
With hikes and camps galore ;
We are patching sick and wounded,
By the blue Jfegean shore.
J. H.
Salt Lake Dug-out,
September izth, 1915.
(Under shell-fire.
TURKISH WORDS
Sirt summit.
Dargh mountain.
Balr or bahir spur.
Burnu cape.
Dere valley or stream.
Tepe hill.
Geul lake.
Chesheme spring.
Kuyu well.
Kuchuk small.
Tekke Moslem shrine.
Ova plain.
Liman bay or harbour.
Skala landing-place.
Biyuk great.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I IN WHICH MY KING AND COUNTRY NEED ME . I
II A LONG WAY TO TIPPERARY . . . 7
III SNARED 13
IV CHARACTERS 2O
V I HEAR OF HAWK . . . . . .26
VI ON THE MOVE 32
VII MEDITERRANEAN NIGHTS . * . . . -34
VIII THE CITY OF WONDERFUL COLOUR ... 42
IX MAROONED ON LEMNOS ISLAND .... 49
X THE NEW LANDING ...... 58
XI THE KAPANJA SIRT 66
XII THE SNIPER-HUNT 73
XIII THE ADVENTURE OF, THE WHITE PACK-MULE . 76
XIV THE SNIPER OF PEAR-TREE GULLY . 83
XV KANGAROO BEACH .... . ,1 96
XVI THE ADVENTURE OF THE LOST SQUADS ;-.'-... . 99
xvii "OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND!" : VW, . . . 105
vii
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
XVIII TWO MEN RETURN . . . . . . 113
XIX THE RETREAT . . . . . . 119
xx "JHILL-O! JOHNNIE!" 124
XXI SILVER BAY . 133
XXII DUG-OUT YARNS I/O
XXIII THE WISDOM OF FATHER S .... 146
XXIV THE SHARP-SHOOTERS . . . . . . 151
XXV A SCOUT AT SUVLA BAY . , . . . .157
XXVI THE BUSH-FIRES ^3
XXVII THE DEPARTURE . ^O
XXVIII LOOKING BACK
Vlll
LIST OF FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS,
MAPS AND CHARTS
At Suvla Bay Half-title
" Patching sick and wounded \ Frontispiece
By the blue ^Egean shore " J
Before going out, in Boy Scout uniform . . . Facing p. 4
At Suvla Bay. We dressed as much like Boy Scouts as possible.
Facing p. 4
Voyage of the S.S. Canada from England to the Gallipoli
Peninsula, July 1915 p. 3 6
" Fruitsellers surrounded by melons and beans, tomatoes and
figs and dates a jumble of colour " . . . Facing p. 46
Sketch map of the Gallipoli Peninsula. The various landings
of the British and Australian troops are marked in thick
black outlines p. 5 6
Chart of the New Landing of the Xth Division at Suvla Bay,
August 7, 1915 ' p. 60
" There was the Turk a great heat-swollen figure stinking in
the sunshine" . ...... Facing p. 74
" The first case had been picked up close to the firing-line, and
was a gun-shot wound in the left breast" . . Facing p. 76
"The great searchlight came nearer and nearer, and I slid
backwards and lay on my stomach, looking over. The
nearer it came the lower I moved, so as to get well off the
. sky-line when the beam reached me " '., , . Facing p. 76
IX
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Turkish warplane dropping bombs on British lines, shrapnel
bursting from battleships in the Bay . . Facing p. 78
Pencil sketch of the white pack-mule, dead, in an old Turkish
trench. The pack-mule had been bringing up material
to the Turks when it was killed the sides of the trench
supporting it in a standing position " . . Facing p. 82
The latest game, " Slipping the Sniper," a pocket-book sketch
P- 93
R.A.M.C. at work on the Kapanja Sirt . . p. 102
Sketch of one of the Indian Pack-mule Corps at Suvla Bay
Facing p. 126
Indian pack-mules taking supplies up the rocky ridges of the
Kapanja Sirt . . . Facing p. 130
Sand-tracks of Suvla Bay ...... p. 135
Pencil sketch of the Salt Lake bed, showing Chocolate Hill and
the Sari Bair range, with the field telegraph running from
"A" beach (not shown) to the Divisional Headquarters on
Lala Baba . . . . . . Facing p. 136
Pocket-book study of the ripple-impressions along the sandy
shore of Suvla Bay ..... Facing p. 136
" Oft in the stilly night ^
By yellow candle-light f ' ' Fac S P' W
"All this was desperately interesting to me. It was picturesque
to stand in the sand-bed of the Salt Lake, lit by the broad
flood of the silver moonlight, with the little priest scratching
like an ibis in the sand with his walking-stick ". Facing p. 148
Australian Sharpshooter ..... Facing p. 152
AT SUVLA BAY
CHAPTER I
IN WHICH MY KING AND COUNTRY NEED ME
I LEFT the office of The Scout, 28 Maiden
Lane, W.C., on September 8th, 1914, took leave
of the editor and the staff, said farewell to my
little camp in the beech-woods of Buckingham-
shire and to my woodcraft scouts, bade good-bye
to my father, and went off to enlist in the Royal
Army Medical Corps.
I made my way to the Marylebone recruiting
office, and after waiting about for hours, I went
at last upstairs and " stripped out " with a lot of
other men for the medical examination.
The smell _of human sweat was overpowering
in the little ante-room. Some of the men had
hearts and anchors and ships and dancing-girls
tattooed in blue on their chests and arms. Some
were skinny and others too fat. Very few looked
fit. I remarked upon the shyness they suffered
in walking about naked.
AT SUVLA BAY
" Did yer pass ? '
" No, 'e spotted it," said the dejected rejected.
" Wot ? "
" Rupture."
" Got through, Alf ? "
" No : eyesight ain't good enough."
So it went on for half-an-hour.
Then came my turn.
" Ha ! " said the little doctor, " this is the sort
we want," and he rubbed his gold-rimmed
glasses on his handkerchief. " Chest, thirty-
four thirty-seven," said the doctor, tapping
with his tape-measure, " How did yer do that ? "
" What, sir ? " said I, gasping, for I was
trying to blow my chest out, or burst.
" Had breathing exercises ? "
" No, sir I'm a scout."
" Ha ! " said he, and noticed my knees were
brown with sunburn because I always wore
shorts.
I passed the eyesight test, and they took my
name down, and my address, occupation and age.
" Ever bin in the army before ? "
" No, sir."
" Married ? "
" No, sir."
2
MY KING AND COUNTRY NEED ME
" Ever bin in prison ? "
" No, sir."
" What's yer religion ? "
" Nothing, sir."
" What ? "
" Nothing at all."
" Ah, but you've got to 'ave one in the
army."
" Got to ? "
" Yes, you must. Wot's it to be C. of E. ? "
" What d'you mean ? r
" Church of England. Most of 'em do."
Awful thoughts of church parade flashed
through my mind.
" Right you are Quaker ! " said I.
" Quaker ! Is that a religion ? " he asked
doubtfully.
" Yes."
I watched him write it down.
" Right, that'll do. Report at Munster Road
recruiting station, Fulham, to-morrow."
We were all dressed by this time. After a
lot more waiting about outside in a yard, a
sergeant came and took about eight of us into
a room where there was a table and some papers
and an officer in khaki.
3
AT SUVLA BAY
I spotted a Bible on the table. We had to
stand in a row while he read a long list of
regulations in which we were made to promise to
obey all orders of officers and non-commissioned
officers of His Majesty's Service. After that, he
told us he would swear us in. We had to hold
up the right hand above the head, and say, all
together : " Swhelpmegod ! "
I immediately realised that I had taken an
oath, which was not in accordance with my
regimental religion !
No s'ooner were we let out than I began to
feel the ever-tightening tangle of red tape.
What the dickens had I enlisted for ? I asked
myself. I had lost all my old-time freedom : I
could no longer go on in my old camping and
sketching life. I was now a soldier a
"tommy" -a " private." I loathed the army.
What a fool I was !
The next day I reported at Fulham. More
hours of waiting. I discovered an old postman
who had also enlisted in the R.A.M.C., and as
he "knew the ropes" I stuck to him like a
leech. In the afternoon an old recruiting
sergeant with a husky voice fell us in, and we
4
I. Before going out.
In Boy Scout
uniform.
II. At Suvla Bay. We
dressed as much
like Boy Scouts as
possible.
MY KING AND COUNTRY NEED ME
marched, a mob of civilians, through the London
streets to the railway station. Although this
was quite a short distance, the sergeant fell us
out near a public-house, and he and a lot more
disappeared inside.
What a motley crowd we were : clerks in
bowler hats ; " knuts " in brown suits, brown
ties, brown shoes, and a horse-shoe tie-pin ;
tramp-like looking men in rags and tatters and
smelling of dirt and beer and rank twist.
Old soldiers trying to " chuck a chest " ; lanky
lads from the country gaping at the houses,
shops and people.
Rough, broad-speaking, broad-shouldered men
from the Lancashire cotton-mills ; shop assistants
with polished boots, and some even with kid
gloves and a silver-banded cane. Here and there
was a farm-hand in corduroys and hob-nailed,
cowdung-spattered boots, puffing at a broken
old clay pipe, and speaking in the " Darset "
dialect. At the station they had to have another
" wet " in the refreshment room, and by the
time the train was due to start a good many
were " canned up."
Boozy voices yelled out
" 'S long way . . . Tipper-airy . . ."
5
AT SUVLA BAY
" Good-bye, Bill . . . 'ave . . . 'nother swig ? "
" Don't ferget ter write, Bill . . ."
" Aw-right, Liz . . . Good-bye, Albert . . ."
We were locked in the carriage. There was
much shouting and laughing. . . . And so to
Aldershot.
CHAPTER II
A LONG WAY TO TIPPERARY
ALDERSHOT was a seething swarm of civilians
who had enlisted. Every class and every type
was to be seen. We found out the R.A.M.C.
depot and reported. A man sat at an old soap-
box with a lot of papers, and we had to file past
him. This was in the middle of a field with
row upon row of bell-tents.
" Name ? " he snapped.
I told him.
" Age ? "
" Religion ? "
" Quaker."
" Right ! Quaker Oats ! Section " E," over
there."'
But my old postman knew better, and, having
found out where " Section E " was camped, we
went off up the town to look for lodging for the
night, knowing that in such a crowd of civilians
we could not be missed.
At last we found a pokey little house where
7
AT SUVLA BAY
the woman agreed to let us stay the night and
get some breakfast next day.
That night was fearful. We had to sleep in a
double bed, and it was full of fleas. The moon-
light shone through the window. The shadow
of a barrack-room chimney-pot slid slowly
across my face as the hours dragged on.
We got up about 5.36 A.M., so as to get down
to the parade-ground in time for the "fall in."
We washed in a tiny scullery sink downstairs.
There was a Pears Annual print of an old fisher-
man telling a story to a little girl stuck over the
mantelpiece.
We had eggs and bread-and-butter and tea for
breakfast, and I think the woman only charged
us three shillings all told.
Once down at the parade-ground we looked
about for " Section E " and found their lines in
the hundreds of rows of bell-tents.
Life for the next few days was indeed " hand
to mouth." We had to go on a tent-pitching
fatigue under a sergeant who kept up a continual
flow of astoundingly profane oaths.
Food came down our lines but seldom. When
it did come you had to fetch it in a huge " dixie "
and grope with your hands at the bits of gristle
A LONG WAY TO TIPPERARY
and bone which floated in a lot of greasy water.
Some one bought a box of sardines in the next
tent.
" Coin' ter share 'em round ? " said a hungry
voice.
" Nah blooming fear I ain't wot yer tike me
for eh ? "
Every one was starving. I had managed to
fish a lump of bone with a scrag of tough meat
on it from the lukewarm slosh in our " dixie."
But some one who was very hungry and very
big came along and snatched it away before I
could get my teeth in it.
We had continually to " fall in " in long rows
and answer our names. This was " roll-call,"
and roll-call went on morning, noon, and night.
Even when your own particular roll-call was not
being called you could hear some other corporal
or sergeant shouting
"Jones F. Wiggins, T. Simons, G.
Harrison, I. . . ." and so on all day long.
There were no ground-sheets to the tents.
We squatted in the mud, and we had one
blanket each, which was simply crawling.
We were indeed in a far worse condition than
many savages. Then came the rain. We
9
AT SUVLA BAY
huddled into the tents. There were twenty-two
in mine, and, as a bell-tent is full up with
eighteen, you may imagine how thick the
atmosphere became. One old man would
smoke his clay-pipe with choking twist tobacco.
Most of the others smoked rank and often damp
" woodbines." The language was thick with
grumbling and much swearing. At first it was
not so bad. But some one touched the side of
the tent and the rain began to dribble through.
Then we found a tiny stream of wet slowly
trickling along underneath the tent-walls towards
the tent-pole, and by night time we were lying
and sitting in a pool of mud.
About a week later when the sergeant-major
told us on parade that we were - " going to
Tipperary " we all laughed, and no one believed it.
But the next day they marched us down to
the Government siding and locked us all in a
train, which took us right away to Fishguard.
Some of the men got some bread-and-cheese
before starting, but I, in company with a good
many others, did not.
The boat was waiting when they bundled us
out on the quay.
10
A LONG WAY TO TIPPERARY
It was a cattle-boat and very small and very
smelly. There were no cabins or accommoda-
tion of any sort : only the cattle-stalls down
below. Six hundred of us got aboard. Out of
the six hundred, five hundred were sick. It was
a very rough crossing, and we were all starving
and shivering. I had nothing but what I stood
up in shirt, shorts, and cowboy-hat, and my
old haversack, which contained soap, towel and
razor, and also a sketch-book and a small colour-
box.
The Irish sea-winds whistled up my shorts
but I preferred the icy wind to the stinking
cattle-stalls and insect-infested straw below. We
were packed in like sardines. Men were retch-
ing and groaning, cussing and growling. At
last I found a coil of rope. It was a huge coil
with a hole in the centre something like a
large bird's nest. I got into this hole and curled
up like a dormouse. Here I did not feel the
cold so much, and lying down I didn't feel sick.
The moon glittered on the great gray billows.
The cattle-boat heaved up and slid down the
mountains. She pitched and rolled and slithered
sideways down the wave-slopes. And so to
Waterford.
ii
AT SUVLA BAY
From Waterford by train to Tipperary. It
was early morning. The first thing I noticed
was that the grass in Ireland was very green
and that the fields were very small.
We had had no food for twenty-seven hours.
I found a very hard crust of bread in my haver-
sack, and eat it while the others were asleep in
the carriage.
12
CHAPTER III
SNARED
"CRIMED"
"Off with his head," said the Queen. Alice in Wonderland.
" Charge against 31963
Failing to drink some oniony tea ;
Ha ! Ha !
What ! What !
I can have you shot !
D'you realise that
I can have you lashed
To a wheel and smashed ?
What ?
Rot!
Yes shot!
D'you realise this ?
Right turn !
Dismiss ! "
Lemnos : October 1915.
BORN and bred in a studio, and brought up
among the cloud-swept mountains of West-
morland, amid the purple heather and the
sunset in the peat-moss puddles, barrack-life
soon became like penal servitude. I was like a
caged wild animal. I knew now why the tigers
'3
AT SUVLA BAY
and leopards pace up and down, up and down,
behind their bars at the Zoo.
We only stayed a week in the great, gray,
prison-like barracks at Tipperary. We looked
about for the " sweetest girl " of the song but
the " colleens " were disappointing. My heart
was not " right there." We moved to Limerick ;
and in Limerick we stopped for seven solid
months.
For seven months we did the same old squad-
drill every day, at the same time, on the same
old square, until at last we all began to be
unbearably " fed up." The sections became
slack at drill because they were over-drilled and
sickened by the awful monotony of it all.
During those seven dreary months, in that
dismal slum-grown town, we learnt all the
tricks of barrack-life. We knew how to " come
the old soldier " ; we knew how and when to
" wangle out " of doing this or that fatigue ;
we practised the ancient art of " going sick "
when we knew a long route march was coming
off next day.
We knew how to " square " the guard if we
came in late, and the others learnt how to dodge
church parade.
SNARED
" '.E never goes to church parade."
" No ; 'e was a fly one 'e was."
" Wotchermean ? "
" Put 'isself down as Quaker."
" Lummy that's me next time I 'list
Quaker Oats ! "
By this time I had been promoted to the rank
of corporal.
Next to .the regimental sergeant-major, I had
the loudest drill voice on the square, and
shouting at squad-drill and stretcher-
drill was about the only thing I ever
did well in the army except that,
having been a scout, I was able to
instruct the signalling squad.
Route marches and field-days were a
relief from the drill square. For five
months we got no issue of khaki.
Many of the men were through at
the knees, and tattered at the elbows.
Some were buttonless and patched. I
had to put a patch in my shorts. Our
civilian boots were wearing out some
were right through. Heels came off
when they " right turned/' others had
their soles flapping as they marched. -
15
Kelly" Sergeant's
" Batman."
AT SUVLA BAY
My "batman," who cleaned my boots and swept
out the bunk, had his trousers held together
with a huge safety-pin. The people called us
" Kitchener's Rag-time Army." We became so
torn, and worn, and ragged, that it was impos-
sible to go out in the town. Being the only
one in scout rig-out I drew much attention.
" 'Ere 'e comes, Moik-ell ! "
" Kitchener's cowboy ! Isn't he lovely ! "
" Bejazus ! so-it-is ! "
" Come an' see Path-rick Kitchener's cow-
boy ! by-the-holy-sufferin'-jazus ! "
I found an old curio-shop down near the
docks, and here I used to rummage among the
gilded Siamese idols, and the painted African
gods and drums. I discovered some odd parts
of A Thousand-and-One Arabian Nights, which
I bought for a penny or two, and took back
to my barrack-room to read. By this means
I forgot the gray square, and the gray line
of the barracks outside, and the bare boards
and yellow-washed walls within.
I used to practise " slipping " the guard at
the guard-room gate. This form of amusement
became quite exciting, and I was never caught
at it.
16
SNARED
Next I got a very old and worn copy of the
Koran.
By this time I was a full-blown sergeant.
I made a mistake in walking into the sergeants'
mess with the Koran under my arm. It was
difficult to explain what sort of book it was.
One day the regimental sergeant-major said
"You know, Hargrave, I can't make you
out."
" No, sir ? "
" No ; you're not a soldier, you never will
be you act the part pretty well. But you
don't take things seriously enough."
We were often out on the Clare Mountains
for field-days with the stretcher-squads. Coming
back one day, I spotted two herons wading among
some yellow-ochre sedges in a swampy field. I
determined there and then to come back and
stalk them. The following Saturday I set out
with a fellow we called " Cherry Blossom,"
because he never cleaned his boots. I took a
pair of field-glasses, and " Cherry " had a bag of
pastries, which we bought on the way. We
stalked those herons for hours and hours. We
crept through the reeds, hid behind trees, and
crawled into bushes, but the herons were better
c 17
AT SUVLA BAY
scouts. We only got about fifty yards up to
one. For all that, it was like my old scout
life and we had had a break from the
gray walls and the everlasting saluting
of officers.
There were rumours of war, and thsfs
all we knew of it. There were fresh
rumours each day. We were going to
Egypt. We were to be sent to the
East Coast for "home defence." That
offended our martial ardour. When were
we going out? Should we ever get out?
Had we got to do squad drill for " dura-
tion " ? Had Kitchener forgotten the
Xth Division ?
Now and then a batch of men were
put into khaki which arrived at the
quartermaster's stores in driblets. Some had
greeny puttees and sandy slacks, a " civvy " coat
and a khaki cap. Others were rigged out in
'' Kitchener's workhouse blue," with little forage
caps on one side. The sprinkling of khaki and
khaki-browns and greens increased every time
we came on parade : until one day the whole of
the three field ambulances were fitted out.
The drill went on like clockwork. It was as
18
SNARED
if some curse had fallen upon us. The officers
were " fed up " you could see.
And now, just a word as to army methods.
Immediately opposite the barracks was a
cloth factory, which was turning out khaki
uniforms for the Government every day.
For five months we went about in
civilian clothes. We were a disgrace as
we marched along. Yet because no order
had been given to that factory to supply
us with uniforms, we had to wait till the
uniforms had been shipped to England, and
then sent back to Ireland for us to wear !
The spark of patriotism which was in
each man when he enlisted was dead. We
detested the army, we hated the routine, we
were sickened and dulled and crushed by drill.
The old habit of being always on the alert
for anything picturesque saved me from idiotcy.
Whenever opportunity offered, or whenever I
could take French leave, I went off with sketch-
book and pencil, and forgot for a time the
horror of barrack-room life, with its unending
flow of filthy language, and its barren desolation
of yellow-washed walls and broken windows.
And then we moved to Dublin.
The Major.
of
CHAPTER IV
CHARACTERS
IT may be very amusing to read
about " Kipps " and those common-
place people whom Mr. H. G. Wells
describes so cleverly, but to have to
live with them in barracks is far from
pleasant.
There were shop-assistants, dental
mechanics, city clerks, office boys,
medical students, and a whole mass
ordinary, very uninteresting people.
There was a fair sprinkling of mining engineers
and miners, and these men were more interest-
ing and of a far stronger mental and physical
development. They were huge, full-chested,
strong-armed men who swore and drank heavily,
but were honest and straight.
There were characters here from the docks
and from the merchant service, some of whom
had surely been created for W. W. Jacobs.
One in particular Joe Smith, a sailor-man (an
engine-greaser, I think) was full of queer
20
very
CHARACTERS
yarns and seafaring talk. He was a little man
with beady eyes and a huge curled moustache.
He walked about quickly, with the seamen's
lurch, as I have noticed most seagoing men of
the merchant service do.
This man "came up" in bell-bottomed
trousers and a pea jacket. He was fond
of telling a yarn about a vessel which
was carrying a snake in a crate from the
West Indies. This snake got into the
boiler when they were cleaning out the
engine-room.
"The capt'in ses to me, 'Joe.' I ses,
'Yes-sir.' 'Joe,' says 'e, * wot's to be
done ? '
" ' Why,' ses I, ' thing is ter git this
'ere snake out ag'in ! '
"'Jistso,' says the capt'in ; 'but 'oo's
ter do it ? ' 'E always left every-
think ter me and I ses, ' Why, sir,
it's thiswise, if sobe all the others are
afeared, / ain't, or my name's Double
Dutch.'"
" ' Very good, melad,' ses the capt'in, ' I
relies on you, Joe.' 'E always did and would
you believe it, I upped an' 'ooked that there
21
Joe Smith the
Sailorman.
AT SUVLA BAY
great rattlesnake out of the boiler with an old
hum-brella ! "
There was a clerk who stood six-foot eight
who was something of a " knut." He told me
that at home he belonged to a " Lit'ry Society,"
and I asked him what books they had and
which he liked.
" Books ? " he asked. " 'Ow d'yow mean ? "
" You said a Literary Society, didn't you ? "
" Oh yes, we 'ave got books. But, you know,
we go down there and 'ave a concert, or read
the papers, and 'ave a social, perhaps, you
know ; sometimes ask the girls round to after-
noon tea."
I had a barrack-room full of these people to
look after. Most of them got drunk. Once a
young medical student tried to knife me with
a Chinese jack-knife which his uncle, a mis-
sionary, had given him. He had "downed"
too much whisky. Just as boys do at school,
so these men formed into cliques, and " hung
together" in twos and threes.
Some of them, like the " lit'ry society " clerk,
had never seen much of life or people ; had
lived in a little suburban villa and pretended
to be "City men." Others had knocked
22
CHARACTERS
Three of us shared a bunk two clerks, one short
and the other very tall, and myself.
about all over the world. These were mostly
seafaring men. Savage was such a one. He
23
AT SUVLA BAY
was one of the buccaneer type, strong and sun-
burnt, with tattooed arms. Often he sang an
old sea-song, which always ended, " Forty-five
fadom, and a clear sandy bottom ! " He knew
most of the sea chanties of the old days, one of
which went something in this way
" Heave away Rio ! Heave away Rio !
So fare thee well, my sweet pretty maid !
Heave away Rio ! Heave away Rio !
For there's plenty of gold so we've been told
On the banks of the Sacrament o ! "
An old Irish apple-woman used to come into
the barracks, and sit by the side of the parade
ground with two baskets of apples and a box
of chocolate.
She did a roaring trade when we were dis-
missed from drill.
We always addressed her as " Mother/' She
looked so witch-like that one day I asked
" Can you tell a fortune, Mother ? "
' Lord-love-ye, no ! Wad ye have the Cuss
o' Jazus upon us all ? Ye shud see the priest,
sor."
And can he ? "
No, Son ! All witch-craftin' is forbid in
24
CHARACTERS
the Book by the Holy Mother o' Gord, so they
do be tellin' me."
" Can no one in all Ireland read a fortune
now, Mother ? "
" Ach, Son, 'tis died out, sure. Only in the
old out-an'-away parts 'tis done ; but 'tis terrible
wicked ! "
She was a good bit of colour. I have her
still in my pocket-book. Her black shawl with
her apples will always remind me of early bar-
rack-days at Limerick if I live to be ninety.
CHAPTER V
I HEAR OF HAWK
SELDOM are we lucky enough to meet in real
life a character so strong and vivid, so full of
subtle characteristics, that his appearance in a
novel would make the author's name. Such a
character was Hawk.
When you consider, you find that many an
author of note has made a lasting reputation
by evolving some such character; and in most
cases this character has been "founded on
fact.'' For example, Stevenson's " Long John
Silver," Kipling's " Kim," and Rider Haggard's
" Alan Quatermain."
Had Kipling met Hawk he would have worked
him into a book of Indian soldier life ; for Hawk
was full of jungle adventures and stories of the
Indian Survey Department and the Khyber Pass ;
while his descriptions of Kashmir and Secunder-
abad, with its fakirs and jugglers, monkey temples
and sacred bulls, were superb.
On the other hand, Haggard would have
placed him "somewhere in Africa," a strong,
26
I HEAR OF HAWK
hard man trekking across the African veldt he
knew so well ; for Hawk had been in the Boer
War.
Little did I realise when I met him on the
barrack-square at Limerick how fate would
throw us together upon the scorching sands and
rocky ridges of Gallipoli, nor could either of
us foresee the hairbreadth escapes and queer
corners in which we found ourselves at Suvla
Bay and on the Serbian frontier.
I spotted him in the crowd as the only man
on parade with a strong, clear-cut face. I noted
his drooping moustache, and especially his keen
grey eyes, which glittered and looked through
and through. Somewhere, I told myself, there
was good blood at the back of beyond on his
line of descent. I was right, for, as he told me
later, when I had come to know him as a trusty
friend, he came from a Norseman stock. The
jaw was too square and heavy, but the high-
built chiselled nose and the deep-set clear gray
eyes were a " throw-back " on the old Viking
trail. Although dressed in ragged civilian clothes
he looked a huge, full-grown, muscular man ;
active and well developed, with the arms of a
miner and the chest of a gorilla. On one arm
27
AT SUVLA BAY
I remember he had a heart with a dagger
through it tattooed in blue and red.
I heard of him first as one to be shunned and
feared. For it was said that " when in drink "
he would pick up the barrack-room fender with
one hand and hurl it across the room. I was
told that he was a master of the art of swearing
that he could pour forth a continual flow of
oaths for a full five minutes without repeating
one single " cuss."
My interest was immediately aroused. I smelt
adventure, and I was on the adventure trail.
Hawk was not in my barrack-room, and there-
fore I knew but little of him while in the old
country. I heard that he had been galloper-
dispatch-rider to Lord Kitchener in South
Africa, and I tried to get him to talk about it.
As an "artist's model," for a canvas to be
called " The Buccaneer," Hawk was perfect. I
never saw a man so splendidly developed.
And Hawk was fifty years old ! You would
take him for thirty-nine or so.
But "drink and the devil had done for the
rest " -Hawk himself acknowledged it. His
vices were the vices of a strong man, and when
he was drunk he was " the very devil."
28
I HEAR OF HAWK
He was " the old soldier," and knew all the
ins and outs of army life. I quickly became
entangled in the interest of unravelling his
complex nature. On the one hand he was said
to be a desperado and double-dyed liar. On
the other hand, if he respected you, he would
always tell you the naked truth, and would
never " let you down." He knew drink was
his ruin, but he could not and would not stop
it. Yet his advice to me was always good.
Indeed, although he had the reputation of a
bold, bad blackguard, he never led any one else
on the " wrong trail," and his advice to young
soldiers in the barrack-rooms was wonderfully
clear and useful.
If he respected you, you could trust your life
with him. If he didn't, you could " look up "
for trouble. He was honest and " square " if
he liked you but he could make things dis-
appear by " sleight of hand " in a manner
worthy of a West End conjurer.
He was a miner, and had a sound knowledge
of mining and practical geology which many a
science-master might have been proud of. He
had the eyes of a trained observer, and I
afterwards discovered he was a crack shot.
29
AT SUVLA BAY
Some months later, when the A.S.C. ambu-
lance drivers were exercising their horses, he
showed himself a good rough-rider, and I re-
called his " galloper " days. And again at
Lemnos and Suvla he was a splendid swimmer.
He was an all-round man. Unlike the other
men in barracks the shop assistants and clerks
Hawk never missed noticing small things, and
it was this which first drew my attention to him.
I remember one night hearing a woman's
voice wailing a queer Hindoo chant. It came
from the barrack-room door. Afterwards I
discovered it was Hawk sitting on his trestle bed
cross-legged, with a bit of sacking and ashes on
his head imitating the death-wail of an Indian
woman for her dead husband.
Hawk knew all the rites and ceremonies of
the various Hindoo castes, and could act the part
of a fakir or a bazaar-wullah with wonderful
realism.
By turns Hawk was a heavy drinker and a
clear-brained man of action, calm in danger.
In those early days of my " military career "
I looked upon him only as an author looks upon
an interesting character.
Months afterwards, on the death-swept penin-
30
I HEAR OF HAWK
sula, Hawk and I became fast friends. The
" bad man " of the ambulance became the most
useful, most faithful, in my section. We went
everywhere together like " Horace and Holly "
of Rider Haggard fame : he the great, strong
man, and I the young artist scout.
If HawK was out of camp, you could bet I
was also and vice-versa,
# # # # #
Of Hawk more anon.
3 1 *.?>
CHAPTER VI
ON THE MOVE
WE moved to Dublin after seven months of
drill and medical lectures in barracks at
Limerick.
After about a fortnight in the Portobello
Barracks we crossed to England and pitched our
camp at Basingstoke. Here we had two or
three months' divisional training. The whole of
the Xth Division about 25,000 men used to
turn out for long route-marches.
We were out in all weathers. We took no
tents, and " slept out." This was nothing to
me, as I had done it on my own when scouting
hundreds of times. It amused me to hear the
men grumbling about the hard ground, and to
see them rubbing their hips when they got up.
It was a hard training. Still we didn't seem to
be going out, and once again, the novelty of a
new place having worn off, we became unspeak-
ably " fed up."
Here at Basingstoke we were inspected by the
King, and later by Lord Kitchener.
ON THE MOVE
Then came the issue of pith helmets and
khaki drill uniforms, and the Red Cross brassards
on the left arm.
Rumour ran riot. We were going to India ;
we were going to East Africa . . . some one
even mentioned Japan ! There was a new
rumour each day.
Then one day, at brief notice, we were
quietly entrained at Basingstoke and taken down
to the docks at Devonport before anyone had
wind of the matter.
All our ambulance wagons, and field medical
equipment in wickerwork panniers, went with
us, and it would astonish a civilian to see the
amount of stores and Red Cross materials with
which a field ambulance moves. And so, after
much waiting about, aboard the Canada.
33
CHAPTER VII
MEDITERRANEAN NIGHTS
INTRICATE and vivid detail leave a more
startling imprint on the memory-film than the
main purport of any great adventure, whether it
be a polar expedition, a new discovery, or such
a stupendous undertaking as that in which we
were now involved.
The fact of our departure had been carefully
kept quiet, and our destination was unknown.
It might have been a secret expedition in search
of buried treasure. Yet, in spite of all precaution,
we might be torpedoed at any moment and go
down with all hands, or strike a mine and b
blown up. We knew that victory or defeat
were hanging in the balance, and perhaps the
destiny of nations. But while the magnitude of
the venture has left no impression I cannot
recall that we ever spoke about it common-
place details remain.
The pitch bubbling in the seams under a
Mediterranean sun ; the queer iridescent shapes
of glowing, greenish phosphorus in the night-
34
MEDITERRANEAN NIGHTS
time sea ; the butter melting into yellow oil on
the plate on the saloon table ; the sickly smell
of steam and grease and oil from the engine-
room ; the machine-gun fixed at the stern with
its waterproof hood ; the increasing brilliance of
the stars, and the rapid descent of evening upon
the splendid colour-prism of a Mediterranean
sunset these, and thousands of other intimate
commonplaces, are inlaid for ever in my mind.
We went about in our shirts and drill
"slacks/* and the scorching boards of the deck
blistered our naked feet. In a few days we
became sun-tanned. Each one of us had a sun-
burnt V-shaped triangle on the chest where we
left our shirts open.
The voyage was uneventful. The food was
poor. There was very little fresh water to
drink. It was July. The heat was fatiguing,
and the sun-glare blinding.
The coast of Algeria on our right looked bare
and terribly forsaken. It had an awfulness about
it a mystery look ; it looked like a " ju-ju "
country, with its sandy spit running like a
narrow ribbon to the blue sea, and its hazy,
craggy mountains quivering in the noonday
heat.
35
AT SUVLA BAY
Hawk and I were in the habit of coming up
from our bunks in the evening. We used to
^/
c
*)
lean over the handrail and watch the wonder of
a Mediterranean sunset transform in schemes of
peacock-blue and beetle-green, down and down,
36
MEDITERRANEAN NIGHTS
through emerald, pale gold and lemon yellow,
and so to the horizon of the inland sea, in bands
of deep chrome and orange, scarlet, mauve and
purple.
Hawk was the only man I discovered in all
those hundreds of apparently commonplace souls
who could really appreciate and never tire of
watching and discussing these things.
I had often heard of the blue of the Mediter-
ranean. But I must confess that I rather
thought it had been exaggerated by authors,
artists and poets as a fruitful and beautiful
source of inspiration.
I never saw such blues before: electric-blue
and deep, seething navy blue, flecked with foam
and silver spray ; calm lapis-lazuli blue ; a sort
of greeny, mummy-case blue ; flashing, silk-shot
blue, like a kingfisher's feathers. Sometimes the
sea was as calm as a mill-pond, and you could
see down and down and down.
There is a certain milky look in the waters of
the Mediterranean which I never saw anywhere
else. What it is I do not know, but it hangs in
the water like a cloud. Once there was a shoal
of porpoises playing round us, and they curled
and dived and flopped in the warm blue seas.
37 -
AT SUVLA BAY
At night Hawk and I stood for hours watch-
ing first one constellation " light up," and then
another, till the whole purple-velvet of the
Mediterranean night sky was pinholed with the
old familiar star-designs.
It struck me as most extraordinary, and almost
uncanny, to see the same old stars we knew in
England, still above us, so many hundred miles
from home.
Phosphorescent fragments went floating along
beneath us like bits of broken moonlight.
In watching and talking of these things, I
quickly perceived in Hawk a man who not only
noticed small detail and took a real interest in
Nature, but one who had a sound, natural
philosophy and a good idea of the reasonable
and scientific explanation of things which so
many people either ignore or look upon as
" atheistic."
We did not yet know whither we were
sailing. We knew we were part of the Mediter-
ranean Expeditionary Force, and that was all.
One day we put in at Malta.
Here the fruit-boats, all painted green and red
and white and blue, came rowing out to meet
us. The Maltese who manned them stood up
38
MEDITERRANEAN NIGHTS
to row their oars and rowed the right way :
forwards, instead of facing the wrong way, as
we do in England. They were selling tomatoes
and pears, apples, chocolate, cigars, cigarettes,
Turkish delight, and lace.
Continually they cried their goods
" Cee-gar-ette ! "
" Cee-gar-ette ! "
" Tomart ! Tomart ! "
One man recognised us as the Irish Division,
and shouted
"Irish! Irish! My father Irish --from
Dundee ! "
Here were diving-boys in their own tiny
boats, diving for pennies. They were wonder-
fully lithe and graceful, with sun-tanned limbs
and dripping black hair.
Here, too, was a huge old man, who was
also diving for pennies and tins of bully-beef.
He was fat and sun-browned, and his muscles
and chest were well developed.
" Me dive for bully-beef ! " he shouted. " Me
dive for bully-beef ! "
Never once did he fail to retrieve these tins
when they were chucked overboard.
The tomatoes were very large and ripe, and
39
AT SUVLA BAY
the tobacco and cigarettes exceedingly cheap
and good. Most of the men got a stock.
The next day we put to sea again.
It was a real voyage of adventure, for here we
were, on an unknown course, sailing under sealed
orders, no one knew whither, nor did we know
what would be the climax to this great enterprise.
Would any of us ever return across those
blue-green waters ? ... Or would our bones
lie, a few days hence, bleaching on the yellow
sands ? . . . Mystery and adventure sailed with
us and each day the heat increased. The sun
blazed from a brazen sky, the shadow of the
halyards and the great ventilators were clear-cut
black silhouettes upon the baking decks.
The decks were crammed with that same
khaki crowd of civilians who had cursed and
sworn and drilled and growled for ten long
months in the Old Country. You imagine what
desperate adventurers they had suddenly become.
Some had never been out of Ireland, others had
been as far as Portsmouth, and taken a return
voyage to the Isle of Wight. And each day
we zigzagged across the blue seas towards some
unknown Fate . . . death, perhaps . . . victory
or failure who could tell ?
40
MEDITERRANEAN NIGHTS
Until one day a thin, yellowish-white streak
appeared upon the sea-line ; little groups of
palms huddled together, and here and there a
white dome or a needle-minaret. And so we
warped into harbour, through the boom and
past the lightships, to join the crowd of trans-
ports and battle cruisers lying off this muddled
city the city of wonderful colour, Alexandria.
CHAPTER VIII
THE CITY OF WONDERFUL COLOUR I
ALEXANDRIA
Scarlet-orange ;
Beetle-green,
Flashing like a magic screen.
Silken garment,
'Broidered hood ;
Richly woven gown ;
Flashing like a pantomime,
In and out Aladdin's town.
Fretted lattice ;
Dancing girl ;
Drooping lash and ebon curl.
Silver tassel ;
Scented room ;
Almond " glad "-eye-look.
Queersome figures prowling round,
From some kiddies' picture-book.
Graeco-Serbian Frontier,
J. H., October 1915.
THE coal-yards and dingy quays looked gray
and chill. Here were gray-painted Government
sheds, with white numbers on the sliding doors,
dull gray trucks, and dirty sidings.
42
THE CITY OF ALEXANDRIA
A couple of Egyptian native police in khaki
drill, brown belts, side-arms, red fezes, and
carrying canes, both smoking cigarettes, swag-
gered up and down in front of an arc-light.
There were dump-yards and gray tin offices,
rusty cranes, and a gray floating quay. Gangs
of Egyptian beggars in ragged clothes and a
flock of little brown children continually dodged
the native police as we sailed slowly through
the docks. They were the only touch of colour
in a muddle of Government buildings, stores,
and transport ships.
We were all crowding to the handrail look-
ing overboard. The Egyptian sunset had just
vanished and the deep blue of an Eastern night
held the docks in a haze of gloom.
The pipe band of the Inniskillings was playing
" The Wearin' o' the Green " in that mournful,
gurgling chant which we came to know so well.
One of the little Egyptian beggar-girls was
dancing to it on the floating quay down below
us by the flicker of the arc-lamp. She was a
tiny mite, with a shock of black hair and brown
face and arms. She wore a pink dress with
some brass buttons hung round her neck. She
danced with all the supple gracefulness of the
43
AT SUVLA BAY
out-door tribes of the desert, never out of step,
always true and rhythmic in every motion of
arms and body.
When the pipes on board trailed away with a
hiss of wind and a choking, gurgling noise into
silence the little dancing girl began to sing in a
deep, musical voice the voice of one who has
lived out-of-doors in tents
u Itta long way Tipple-airy !
Long way to go !
Long way Tipple-airy !
Sweetie girl I know ! . . ."
She sang in broken English, and danced to the
tune, which she knew perfectly.
The khaki crowd aboard whistled and cheered
and laughed. Some one threw a penny. The
whole gang of beggars scrambled after it, and
there ensued a scrimmage with much shouting
and swearing in Arabic.
We could see the city lit up beyond the dull
gray docks.
Next morning we went for a route march
through Alexandria. We marched through the
dockyards. Gangs of native workmen in native
costume coloured robes and bare feet, turbans
44
THE CITY OF ALEXANDRIA
and red fezes were working on the transports,
unloading box after box of bully-beef and biscuit
and piling them in huge " dumps " on the quays.
Rusty chains clanked, steam cranes rattled and
puffed out whiffs of white steam.
But they did not hustle or hurry. They
worked under the direction of English sergeants
and officers, loading and unloading.
At last we got outside the zone of awful
ugliness which follows the British wherever
they go. The docks were left behind and the
change was sudden and startling.
It was like putting down a novel by Arnold
Bennett and taking up the Koran.
I did not trouble to keep in step or " cover
off." My eyes were trying to take in the
splendid Eastern scenes. Here were figures
which had come right out of the Arabian
Nights.
Was that not Haroun Al Raschid, Commander
of the Faithful, disguised as a water-carrier, with
a goatskin bottle slung over his shoulder, and
great yellow baggy trousers and a striped
cummerbund ?
Here were veiled women and old men
quatting under their open bazaar fronts, with
45
AT SUVLA BAY
coloured mats and blinds strung across the
narrow streets. Fruitsellers surrounded by
melons, and beans, tomatoes and figs and dates
a jumble of colour, orange, scarlet, green, and
gold. Pitchers and jars and woven carpets ;
queer Eastern scents ; shuttered windows and
flat roofs, mules and here and there a loaded
camel, two Jews in black robes, a band of wild-
looking desert wanderers in white with hoods
and veils.
Egyptian women carrying little brown babies ;
who would believe there could be such figures,
such colour and picturesque compositions ?
It was a short march, but we saw much.
So this was the land of Egypt. It was good.
What a pity we could see so little of it ...
There were very smartly dressed French
women with faces powdered and painted and
scented. Old men with hollow eyes and yellow
parchment skins all creased and wrinkled squatted
on the cobble-stones, smoking hubble-bubbles
and long ivory-stemmed pipes.
Arab boys selling oranges ran about the
streets. The heat was stifling the shadows
purple-black, the sunlight glared golden-white
on the buildings and towers and minarets.
46
" Fruitsellers surrounded by melons, and beans,
tomatoes and figs and dates a jumble of colour."
THE CITY OF ALEXANDRIA
Here were , curio-shops with queer oriental
carvings and alabaster figures.
It was like a chapter of my Thousand-and-One
Nights come true, and I remembered the gray
barracks at Limerick and the incessant drill.
At last we marched back through the docks
and aboard the Canada. Next morning we
were sailing far away upon a blue sea. Just a
glimpse of the city of wonderful colour and we
were once more creeping closer and closer to
the mystery of our unknown venture.
Many of us would never pass that way again
and each one wondered sometimes if he
would be claimed by that Mechanical Death
which none of us fully realised.
Only a few short hours a day or two longer
and we should be plunged into battle. A
bullet for one, shrapnel for another, dysentery
for a third, a bayonet or death from weakness
and starvation.
The great game of luck was gathering faster
and faster. We loafed about on deck and won-
dered where we were going and what it would
be like . . . our minds were thinking of the
immediate future. Each one tried to make out
he didn't care, but each one was thinking upon
47
AT SUVLA BAY
the same subject his luck, fate, kismet. How
many would return to old England should I be
one ; or would the Eastern sunshine blaze down
upon my decomposing body on some barren
sandy shore ?
We passed many of the Greek Islands some
came up pink and mauve out of the sea, others
were green with vineyards ; once or twice a
little triangular- sailed boat bobbed along the
coast.
The uncertainty was a strain, and we felt
utterly cut off, until at last we sighted a sandy
streak, and later a line of volcanic-looking peaks
the Isle of Lemnos.
48
CHAPTER IX
MAROONED ON LEMNOS ISLAND
LEMNOS HARBOUR
Within the outer anchorage
The ancient Argonauts lay to ;
Little they dreamt that dauntless crew
That here to-day in the sheltered bay.
Where the seas are still and blue,
Great battle-ships should froth and hum,
And mighty transport-vessels come
Serenely floating through.
With magic sail the Argonauts
Stood by to go about ;
Little they thought that hero band
As they made once more for an unknown land
In a world of terror and doubt,
That here in the wake of the magical bough
Should come the all-terrible ironclad now
Serenely floating out.
Written on Mudros Beach : Oct. 7, 1915.
JULY the twenty-seventh.
The deadly silence . . .
The tenderfoot on an expedition of this sort
naturally expects to find himself plunged into a
whirl of noise and tumult.
E 49
AT SUVLA BAY
The crags were colourless and shimmering in
the heat. The harbour was calm and greeny-
blue. One by one, with our haversacks and
water-bottles, belts and rolled overcoats, we
went down the companion-way into the waiting
surf-boats. Again and again these boats, roped
together and tugged by a little launch, went
back and forth from the s.s. Canada to the
'Turk's Head Pier" -a tiny wooden jetty built
by the Engineers.
5
MAROONED ON LEMNOS ISLAND
I asked one of the straw-hatted men of the
Naval Division, who was casting off the painter,
what the place was like
" Sand an' flies, and flies an' sand nothink-
else ! " he replied.
No sooner ashore than the green and black
flies came pestering and tormenting like a host
of wicked jinn. The glare of sunlight on the
yellow sand hurt the eyes. The deadly silence
of the place was oppressive especially when
you had strung yourself up to concert pitch
to face the crash and turmoil of a fearful battle.
The quiet isolation and khaki desolation of
jagged peaks and sandy slopes was nerve-
breaking.
You could see the thin lines of the wireless
station and little groups of white bell-tents
dotted here and there.
Robinson Crusoe wasn't in it. Sand and
flies and sun ; sun and flies and sand.
" Wot 'ave we struck 'ere, Bill ? "
" Some d d desert island, I reckon ! "
" A blasted heath . . ."
" Gordlummy, look at the d d flies ! "
" Curse the sun ; sweat's trickling down
me back."
AT SUVLA BAY
" And curse all the d d issue . . ."
" What the holy son of Moses did we join for ? "
We growled and groaned and cursed our
luck. The sweat ran down under our pith
helmets and soaked in a stream from under
our armpits. We trudged to our camping-
place along the shore. One or two Greek
natives followed us about with melons to sell.
Parched and choked with sand, we were only
too glad to buy these water-melons for two or
three leptas.
The rind was green like a vegetable marrow,
but the inside was yellow with pink and
crimson pips the colour of a Mediterranean
sunset.
One day ashore on this accursed island and
the diarrhoea set in. I never saw men suffer
such awful stomach-pains before. The con-
tinual eating of melons to allay the blistering
thirst helped the disease. Many men slept
close to the latrines, too weak to crawl to and
fro all night long. The sun blazed, and the
flies in thousands of millions swarmed and
irritated from early morning till sundown.
At night it was cold. The stars burned
white-hot a calm, fierce glitter.
5 2
MAROONED ON LEMNOS ISLAND
Hawk and I " kipped down " (slept) together
on a sandy stretch overlooking the bay. We
could see the green-and-red electric lights of
the hospital ships waiting in the harbour
for us, perhaps . . .
The "graft" (work) was fearful. All day
long we were at it : hauling up our equipment
from the beach where it had been dumped
ashore. Medical panniers, operating marquee,
tents and tent-poles, cook-house dixies, picks
and shovels, bully and biscuit boxes and a
hundred-and-one articles necessary to the work
of the Medical Corps in the field : all this had
to be man-handled through the sand up to our
camp about a mile away. And the sun blazed,
and the flies pestered and stung and buzzed and
fought with each other for the drops of sweat
streaming down your face. How long should
we be here ? When were we going into
action ? . . . The suspense was brain-racking.
The diarrhoea increased : everyone went down
with it. Some got the ague shivers and some
a touch of dysentery.
We became gloomy and bodily sick. We
wanted to get into it into action . . .
Anything would be better than this God-
53
AT SUVLA BAY
forsaken island. Why the dickens did they
leave us moping here . working in the blaz-
ing heat, and crawling to the latrines in the
chilly nights ? For goodness' sake, let's get out
of it ! Let's get to work ! ... So the days
dragged on.
The natives wore baggy trousers and coloured
head-bands. They sat all day near our camp
selling melons, tomatoes, very cheap and tasteless
chocolates, raisins, figs and dates.
We used to go down to swim in the little
bay-like semicircle of the harbour. The water
was always warm and very salt. Here were
tiny shoals of tiny fish. The water was clear
and glassy. There were pinky sea-urchins with
spikey spines which jabbed your feet. The sandy
bed of the bay was all ribbed with ripples.
The island was humming and ticking like a
watch with insect-noises : otherwise the deadly
silence held. There were red-winged grass-
hoppers and great green-gray locust-looking
crickets which whistled and " cricked " all
night.
We had to fetch our water from the water-
tank boats, about a mile and a half distant, and
haul it up in a water-cart.
54
MAROONED ON LEMNOS ISLAND
Gangs of natives were working under the
military authorities. There were Greeks and
Greek-Armenians, Turks and Ethiopians,
Egyptians and half-breeds of all kinds from
Malta and Gib. They were employed in
making roads and clearing the ground for
huts and camps.
And all the time we had no letters
from home. We were actually marooned
on Lemnos Island : as literally marooned on
a barren desert isle as any buccaneer of the
old Spanish galleon days. We went suddenly
back to a savage life. We went down to
bathe stark naked, with the sunset glowing
orange on our sunburnt limbs. Here it was
that Hawk proved himself a wonderfully good
swimmer. He was lithe and supple and well-
made an extraordinary specimen of virile man-
hood and he spent his fiftieth birthday on
Lemnos !
One day came the order to pack up and
man-handle all our stuff down to the beach
ready for re-embarkation. At last we were on
the move. We worked with a will now. The
great day would soon dawn. Some of us would
get " put out of mess," no doubt, but this
55
Sketch map of the Gallipoli Peninsula. The various
landings of the British and Australian troops are
marked -in thick black outlines.
MAROONED ON LEMNOS ISLAND
waitirfg about to get killed was much worse
than plunging into the thick of it.
August the 6th saw us steaming out at night
towards the great unknown climax the New
Landing.
57
CHAPTER X
THE NEW LANDING
A PALE pink sunrise burst across the eastern
sky as our transport came steaming into the bay.
The haze of early morning dusk still held,
blurring the mainland and water in misty
outlines.
Hawk and I had slept upon the deck. Now
we got up and stretched our cramped limbs.
Slowly we warped through the quiet seas.
You must understand that we knew not
where we were. We had never heard of Suvla
Bay we didn't know what part of the Peninsula
we had reached. The mystery of the adventure
made it all the more exciting. It was to be
" a new landing by the Xth Division " that
was all we knew.
Some of us had slept, and some had lain
awake all night. Rapidly the pink sunrise swept
behind the rugged mountains to the left, and was
reflected in wobbling ripples in the bay.
We joined the host of battleships, monitors,
and troopships standing out, and " stood by."
58
THE NEW LANDING
We could hear the rattle of machine-guns in
the distant gloom beyond the streak of sandy
shore. The decks were crowded with that same
khaki crowd. We all stood eagerly watching
and listening. The death-silence had come upon
us. No one spoke. No one whistled.
We could see the lighters and small boats
towing troops ashore. We saw the men scramble
out, only to be blown to pieces by land mines as
they waded to the beach. On the Lala Baba
side we watched platoons and companies form
up and march along in fours, all in step, as if
they were on parade.
" In fours ! " I exclaimed to Hawk, who was
peering through my field-glasses.
" Sheer murder," said Hawk.
No sooner had he spoken than a high explo-
sive from the Turkish positions on the Sari Bair
range came screaming over the Salt Lake :
" Z-z-z-e-e-e-o-o-o-p Crash ! "
They lay there like a little group of dead
beetles, and the wounded were crawling away
like ants into the dead yellow grass and the sage
bushes to die. A whole platoon was smashed.
It was not yet daylight. We could see the
flicker of rifle-fire, and the crackle sounded first
59
AT SUVLA BAY
on one part of the bay, and then another.
Among the dark rocks and bushes it looked as
if people were striking thousands of matches.
^ Mechanical Death went steadily on. Four
Turkish batteries on the Kislar Dargh were
blown up one after the other by our battle-
60
THE NEW LANDING
ships. We watched the thick rolling smoke of
the explosions, and saw bits of wheels, and the
arms and legs of gunners blown up in little black
fragments against that pearl-pink sunrise.
The noise of Mechanical Battle went surging
from one side of the bay to the other it swept
round suddenly with an angry rattle of maxims
and the hard echoing crackle of rifle-fire.
Now and then our battle-ships crashed forth,
and their shells went hurtling and screaming
over the mountains to burst with a muffled roar
somewhere out of sight.
Mechanical Death moved back and forth. It
whistled and screamed and crashed. It spat fire,
and unfolded puffs of gray and white and black
smoke. It flashed tongues of livid flame, like
some devilish ant-eater lapping up its insects . . .
and the insects were the sons of men.
Mechanical Death, as we saw him at work,
was hard and metallic, steel-studded and shrapnel-
toothed. Now and then he bristled with
bayonets, and they glittered here and there in
tiny groups, and charged up the rocks and
through the bushes.
The noise increased. Mechanical Death
worked first on our side, and then with the
61
AT SUVLA BAY
Turks. He led forward a squad, and the next
instant mowed them down with a hail of lead.
He galloped up a battery, unlimbered and
before the first shell could be rammed home
Mechanical Death blew the whole lot up with
a high explosive from a Turkish battery in the
hills.
And so it went on hour after hour. Crackle,
rattle and roar ; scream, whistle and crash.
We stood there on the deck watching men get
killed. Now and then a shell came wailing and
moaning across the bay, and dropped into the
water with a great column of spray glittering
in the early morning sunshine. A German
Taube buzzed overhead ; the hum-hum-hum of
the engine was very loud. She dropped several
bombs, but none of them did much damage.
The little yellow-skinned observation balloon
floated above one of our battleships like a penny
toy. The Turks had several shots at it, but
missed it every time.
The incessant noise of battle grew more
distant as our troops on shore advanced. It
broke out like a bush- fire, and spread from one
section to another. Mechanical Death pressed
forward across the Salt Lake. It stormed the
62
THE NEW LANDING
heights of the Kapanja Sirt on the one side, and
took Lala Baba on the other. Puffs of smoke
hung on the hills, and the shore was all wreathed
in the smoke of rifle and machine-gun fire. A
deadly conflict this for one Turk on the hills
was worth ten British down below on the Salt
Lake.
There was no glory. Here was Death, sure
enough Mechanical Death run amok but
where was the glory ?
Here was organised murder but it was steel-
cold ! There was no hand-to-hand glory. A
mine dispersed you before you had set foot
on dry land; or a high explosive removed your
stomach, and left you a mangled heap of human
flesh, instead of a medically certified, healthy
human being.
Mechanical Death wavered and fluctuated
but it kept going. If it slackened its murderous
fire at one side of the bay, it was only to burst
forth afresh upon the other.
We wondered how it was that we were still
alive, when so many lay dead. Some were
killed on the decks of the transports by shrapnel.
Our monitors crept close to the sandy shore,
and poured out a deadly brood of Death.
63
AT SUVLA BAY
The crack and crash was deafening, and it
literally shook the air ... it quivered like a
jelly after each shot.
The fighting got more and more inland, and
the rattle and crackle fainter and farther away.
But we still watched, fascinated.
The little groups of men lay in exactly the
same positions on the beach. That platoon by
the side of Lala Baba lay in a black bunch-
stone dead. We could see our artillery teams
galloping along like a team of performing fleas,
taking up new positions behind Lala Baba. So
this is war ? Well, it's pretty awful ! Whole-
sale murder . . . what's it all for ? Wonder
how long we shall last alive before Mechanical
Death blows our brains out, or a leg off ...
Queer thing, war ! Didn't think it was quite
like this ! So mechanical and senseless.
And now came the time for us to land. A
lighter came alongside, with a little red-bearded
man in command
" Remind you of any one ? " I said to Hawk.
" Cap'n Kettle ! "
"Yes!"
He was exactly like Catcliffe Hyne's famous
" Kettle," except that he smoked a pipe. We
64
THE NEW LANDING
huddled into the lighter, and hauled our stores
down below. Some of us were " green about
the gills," and some were trying to pretend
we didn't care.
We watched the boat which landed just
before us strike a mine and be blown to pieces.
Encouraging sight ... At last we reached
the tiny cove, and the lighter let down a sort of
tail-board on the sand.
CHAPTER XI
THE KAPANJA SIRT
ONE had his stomach blown out, and the
other his chest blown in. The two bodies lay
upon the sand as we stepped down.
The metallic rattle of the firing-line sounded
far away. We man-handled all our medical
equipment and stores from the hold of the
lighter to the beach.
We had orders to " fall in " the stretcher-
bearers, and work in open formation to the
firing-line.
The Kapanja Sirt runs right along one side
of Suvla Bay. It is one wing of that horse-shoe
formation of rugged mountains which hems in
the Anafarta Ova and the Salt Lake.
Our searching zone for wounded lay along
this ridge, which rises like the vertebra? of some
great antediluvian reptile dropping sheer down
on the Gulf of Saros side, and, in varying
slopes, to the plains and the Salt Lake on the
other.
Here again small things left a vivid impres-
66
THE KAPANJA SIRT
sion the crack of a rifle from the top of the
ridge, and a party of British climbing up the
rocks and scrub in search of the hidden Turk.
The smell of human blood soaking its way
into the sand from those two " stiffies " on the
beach. The sullen silence, except for the distant
crackle and the occasional moan of a shell.
The rain which came pelting down in great
cold blobs, splashing and soaking our thin
drill clothes till we were wet to the skin and
shivering with cold.
We were all thinking: " Who will be the first
to get plugged ? " We moved slowly along the
ridge, searching every bush and rock for signs of
wounded men.
We wondered what the first case would be
and which squad would come across it.
I worked up and down the line of squads
trying to keep them in touch with each other.
67
AT SUVLA BAY
We were carrying stretchers, haversacks, iron
rations, medical haversacks, medical water-
bottles, our own private water-bottles (filled on
Lemnos Island), and three "monkey-boxes" or
field medical companions.
Those we had left on the beach were busy
putting up the operating marquee and other
tents, and the cooks in getting a fire going and
making tea.
The stretcher-squads worked slowly forward.
We passed an old Turkish well with a stone-
flagged front and a stone trough. Later on
we came upon the trenches and bivouacs of a
Turkish sniping headquarters. There were all
kinds of articles lying about which had evidently
belonged to Turkish officers : tobacco in a
heap on the ground near a bent willow and
thorn bivouac ; part of a field telephone with
the wires running towards the upper ridges of
Sirt ; the remains of some dried fish and an
earthenware jar or " chattie " which had held
some kind of wine ; a few very hard biscuits,
and a mass of brand-new clothing, striped shirts
and white shirts, gray military overcoats, yellow
leather shoes with pointed toes, a red fez, a
great padded body-belt with tapes to tie it,
68
THE KAPANJA SIRT
a pair of boots, and some richly coloured hand-
kerchiefs and waistbands all striped and worked
and fringed.
\MTELUCENCE
n> \VOUAC ,
It was near here that our first man was killed
later in the day. He was looking into one of
these bivouacs, and was about to crawl out when
a bullet went through his brain. It was a
sniper's shot. We buried him in an old Turkish
'
J **
AT SUVLA BAY
trench close by, and put a cross made of a
wooden bully-beef crate over him.
The sun now blazed upon us, and our rain-
soaked clothes were steaming in the heat. The
open fan-like formation in which we moved
was not a success. We lost the officers, and
continually got out of touch with .each other.
70
THE KAPANJA SIRT
At last we reached the zone of spent bullets.
" Z-z-z-z-e-e-e-e-e-pp ! zing ! " " S-s-s-ippp ! "
" That one was jist by me left ear ! " said
Sergeant Joe Smith, although as a matter of
fact it was yards above his head. Here, among
a hail of moaning spent shots, our officers called
a halt, made us fall in, in close formation, and
we retired what for I do not know.
We went back as far as the old Turkish well.
Here Hawk had something to say.
" Our place is advancing," said he, " not
retiring because of a few spent bullets. There's
men there dying for want of medical attention
bleeding to death."
The next time we went forward that day was
in Indian file, each stretcher-squad following the
one in front.
A parson came with us. I marched just
behind the adjutant, and the parson walked
with me. He was a big man and a fair age.
We went past the well and the bivouacs. I
could see he was very nervous.
" Do you think we are out of danger here ? "
he asked.
" I think so, sir " (we were three miles from
the firing-line). A few paces further on
AT SUVLA BAY
" I wonder how far the firing-line is ? "
" Couldn't say, sir."
A yard or so, and then
" D'you suppose the British are advancing ? "
" I hope so." And after a minute or two
" I wonder if there are any Turks near
here . . . ? "
I made no answer, and marvelled greatly that
the " man of God " should not be better pre-
pared to meet " his Maker," of Whom in civil
life he had talked so much.
It was just then that I spotted it a little
black figure, motionless, away beyond the bushes
on the right.
72
CHAPTER XII
THE SNIPER-HUNT
HE lay flat under a huge rock. I left the
stretcher-squads, and, crawling behind a bush,
looked through the glasses. It certainly was a
Turk, and his position was one of hiding. He
kept perfectly motionless on his stomach and his
rifle lay by his side.
I sent a message to pass the word up to the
leading squads for Hawk. Quickly he came
down to me and took the glasses. He had
wonderful sight. After looking for a few
seconds he agreed that it looked like a Turkish
sniper lying in wait.
" Let's go and see, anyway," said I.
" Chance it ? "
" Yes."
" Righto."
Hawk led the way down into the thorn-bushes
and dried-up plants. I followed close at his
heels. We crouched as we went and kept well
under cover. Hawk took a semicircular route,
which I could see would ultimately bring us out
73
AT SUVLA BAY
by the side of the rock under which the sniper
hid.
'Now we caught a glimpse of the little dark
figure then we plunged deeper into the rank
willow-growth and bore round to the right.
Hawk unslung the great jack-knife which
hung round his waist and silently opened the
gleaming blade. I did the same.
" I'll surprise him ; you can leave it to me to
get in a good slash," said Hawk, and I saw the
great muscles of his miner's arms tighten. " But
if he gets one in on me," he whispered, " be
ready with your knife at the back of his neck."
A few steps farther brought us suddenly upon
the rock and the sniper. Hawk was immediately
in front of me, and his arm was held back ready
for a mighty blow, He stood perfectly still
looking at the rock, and I watched his muscles
relax.
" See it ? " he said.
" What ? "
" Dead."
There was the Turk a great heat-swollen
figure stinking in the sunshine. As I moved
forward a swarm of green and black flies, which
had been feeding on his face and crawling up
74
There was the Turk a great heat-swollen figure,
stinking in the sunshine."
THE SNIPER-HUNT
his nostrils, went up in a humming, buzzing
cloud.
A bit of wood lying near had looked like his
rifle from a distance ; and now we saw that,
instead of lying on his stomach, he was lying on
his back, and looked as if he had been killed by
shrapnel.
" Putrid stink," said I ; " come on let's clear
out."
And so our sniper-hunt led to nothing but a
dead Turk stewing in the glaring sunshine. We
rejoined the squads. No one had missed us.
This first day was destined to be one of many
adventures.
75
CHAPTER XIII
THE ADVENTURE OF THE WHITE PACK-MULE
THAT night was dark, with no stars. I didn't
know what part of Gallipoli we were in, and the
maps issued were useless.
The first cases had been picked up close to the
firing-line, and were mostly gun-shot wounds,
and now late in the evening all my squads
having worked four miles to the beach, I was
trying to get my own direction back to the
ambulance.
The Turks seldom fired at night, so that it was
only the occasional shot of a British rifle, or the
sudden " pop-pop-pop-pop-pop ! " of a machine-
gun which told me the direction of the firing-
line.
I trudged on and on in the dark, stumbling
over rocks and slithering down steep crags,
tearing my way through thorns and brambles,
and sometimes rustling among high dry grass.
Queer scents, pepperminty and sage-like
smells, came in whiffs. It was cold. I must
have gone several miles along the Kapanja Sirt
The first case had been picked up close to the firing-line,
and was a gun-shot wound in the left breast.
ADVENTURE OF THE PACK-MULE
when I came to a halt and once more tried to
get my bearings. I peered at the gloomy sky,
but there was no star. I listened for the lap-lap
of water on the beach of Suvla Bay, but I must
have been too far up the ridges to hear anything.
There was dead silence. When I moved a little
green lizard scutted over a white rock and
vanished among the dead scrub.
I was past feeling hungry, although I had
eaten one army biscuit in the early morning
and had had nothing since.
It was extraordinarily lonely. You may
imagine how queer it was, for here was I,
trying to get back to my ambulance headquarters
at night on the first day of landing and I was
hopelessly lost. It was impossible to tell where
the firing-line began. I reckoned I was outside
the British outposts and not far from the Turkish
lines. Once, as I went blundering along over
some^ rocks, a dark figure bolted out of a bush
and ran away up the ridge in a panic.
" Halt ! " I shouted, trying to make believe I
was a British armed sentry. But the figure ran
on, and I began to stride after it. This led me
up and up the ridge over very broken ground.
Whoever it was (it was probably a Turkish
77
AT SUVLA BAY
sniper, for there were many out night-scouting)
I lost sight and sound of him.
I went climbing steadily up till at last I found
myself looking into darkness. I got down on
my hands and knees and peered over the edge
of a ridge of rock. I could see a tiny beam of
light away down, and this beam grew and grew
as it slowly moved up and up till it became a
great triangular ray. It swept slowly along the
top of what I now saw was a steep precipice
sloping sheer down into blackness below. One
step further and I should have gone hurtling
into the sea. For, although I did not then
know it, this was the topmost ridge of the
Kapanja Sirt.
The great searchlight came nearer and nearer,
and I slid backwards and lay on my stomach
looking over. The nearer it came the lower I
moved, so as to get well off the skyline when
the beam reached me. It may have been a
Turkish searchlight. It swept slowly, slowly,
till at last it was turned off and everything was
deadly black.
I started off again in another direction, keeping
my back to the ridge, as I reckoned that to be
a Turkish searchlight, and, therefore, our own
78
"The great search-light came nearer
and nearer, and I slid backwards and
lay on my stomach looking over. The
nearer it came the lower I moved, so
as to get well off the sky-line when
the beam reached me."
\)
C
ADVENTURE OF THE PACK-MULE
lines would be somewhere down the ridge.
Here, high up, I could just see a gray streak,
which I took to be the bay.
I tried to make for this streak. I scrambled
down a very steep stratum of the mountain-side
and landed at last in a little patch of dead grass
and tall dried-up thistles.
By this time, having come down from my
high position on the Sirt, I could no longer see
the bay; but I judged the direction as best I
could, and without waiting I tramped on.
I began to wonder how long I had been
trudging about, and I put it at about two
hours.
" Halt ! who are you ? " called a voice down
below.
" Friend ! stretcher-bearer ! " I shouted.
" Come here this way ! " answered the voice.
I went down to a clump of bushes, and a man
with a rifle slung over his shoulder stepped
forward, and we both glared at each other for a
second.
" Do yer know where the 45th Company is ? "
" No idea," said I.
" Any water ? "
" Not a drop left."
79
AT SUVLA BAY
" We're trying to get back to the firing-line,
but we're all lost there's eight of us."
"I'm trying to get to the 32nd Field Ambu-
lance d'you know the way ? "
" Yes ; go right ahead there," he pointed,
" and keep well down off the hills you'll see
the beach when you've gone for a mile or
so "
" How far is it ? "
" 'Bout four miles ; " and then, " Got a match ? "
" Yes but it's dangerous to light up."
"Must 'ave a smoke nothink to eat or
drink."
" Well, here you are ; light up inside my
helmet."
He did ; this hid the lighted match from
any sniper's eye. The other seven men came
crawling out of the bushes to light up their
" woodbines " and fag-ends.
" Well, I'm off," said I, and once more went
forward in the direction pointed out by the
corporal and his lost squad.
" So long, mate good luck ! " he shauted.
" Same to you ! " I called back.
And now came sleep upon me. Even as I
walked an awful weariness fell upon every limb.
80
ADVENTURE OF THE PACK-MULE
My legs became heavy and slow. That short
rest had stiffened me, and my eyelids closed as I
trudged on. I lifted them with an effort and
dragged one foot after the other. I knew I must
get back to my unit, and that here it was very
dangerous. I wanted to lie down on the dead
grass and sleep and sleep and sleep. I urged my
muscles to swing my legs for I knew if once I
sat down to rest I should never keep awake.
It was while I was thus trying to jerk my
sleepy nerves on to action that I came upon a
zigzagged trench. It was fully six feet deep
and about a yard wide. It was of course an old
Turkish defence running crosswise along the
great backbone of the Sirt. I knew now that
I was nearing the bay, for most of these trenches
overlooked the beach.
There was a white object about ten yards
from me. What it was I could not tell, and a
quiver of fear ran through me and threw off the
awful sleepiness of fatigue.
Was it a Turkish sniper's shirt ? Or was it a
piece of white cloth, or a sheet of paper ? In
the gloom of night I could not discover.
However, I determined to go steady, and I
crept up to a dark thorn-bush and stood still.
AT SUVLA BAY
It did not move. Still standing against the dark
bush to hide the fact that I was unarmed, I
shouted
" Halt ! who are you ? " in as gruff and
threatening a tone as I could command.
Silence. It did not move. I ran forward
along the trench and there found a white pack-
mule all loaded up with baggage ; I could make
out the queerly worked trappings, with brass-
coins on the fringed bridle and coloured fly-tassels
over the eyes. It was stone dead and stiff. Its
eyes glared at me a glassy glare full of fear.
The Turkish pack-mule had been bringing up
material to the Turks in the trench when it had
been killed and now the deep sides of the
trench were holding it upright.
.1 trudged away towards the beach and lay
down to sleep at last among the other men of
the ambulance, who were lying scattered about
behind tufts of bush or against ledges of rock.
When weighed down with sleep any bed will
serve.
And this was the end of our first day's work
on the field.
82
m
Pencil sketch of the white pack-mule, dead, in
an old Turkish trench. The pack-mule had been
bringing up material to the Turks when it was
killed the sides of the trench supporting it in a
standing position.
CHAPTER XIV
THE SNIPER OF PEAR-TREE GULLY
WE used to start long before daylight, when
the heavy gloom of early morning swept moun-
tain, 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 any-
where, 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 r -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
83
J
AT SUVLA BAY
clothes soaked in dew and our pith helmets reek-
ing 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 trans-
port 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 gray-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,
84
THE SNIPER OF PEAR-TREE GULLY
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 disap-
peared 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
8s
AT SUVLA BAY
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 !
86
THE SNIPER OF PEAR-TREE GULLY
Stretcher-bearers ! " away in some densely over-
grown 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 wander-
ing 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.
87
AT SUVLA BAY
" 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 oft
to my left among the sage and thistle and
thorn.
I went now downhill into an over-
grown 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
Sand 7 s P Jt of rising ground : " Z-z-ipp !
Ping ! " just by my left arm. The
88
THE SNIPER OF PEAR-TREE GULLY
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
/B
AT SUVLA BAY
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
90
THE SNIPER OF PEAR-TREE GULLY
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.
AT SUVLA BAY
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
92
A pocket-book sketch.
93 $,
AT SUVLA BAY
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.
94
THE SNIPER OF PEAR-TREE GULLY
" 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 rilled 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 1 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.
95
CHAPTER XV
KANGAROO BEACH
" 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 " Turn ! Turn ! "
. J- H -
( Sailing for Sa lonika . )
KANGAROO BEACH was where the
Australian bridge-building section had
their stores and dug-outs. (See Chart,
Chapter X.)
96
KANGAROO BEACH
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 Alex-
andria. 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 luke-
warm, 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 Engi-
neers 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,
H 97
AT SUVLA BAY
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 card-
board -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 Darda-
nelles no one knows, but those which did arrive
were rifled and lost and stolen. Parcels con-
taining cigarettes had a way of not getting
delivered, and cakes and sweets often fell out
mysteriously on the way from England.
98
CHAPTER XVI
THE ADVENTURE OF THE LOST SQUADS
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.
99
AT SUVLA BAY
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 . . . "
100
ADVENTURE OF THE LOST 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
101
AT SUVLA BAY
c^
j ~'\jS?>
mjm^.
.V^MM. H
.* <*& 9 n
~^^s~ f t IS^ >. >
r&( r v /<^
ij o, <-/AJ^
not to go up, but they went and they never
came back.
There were rumours that one of the N.C.O.'s
1 02
ADVENTURE OF THE LOST SQUADS
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,
103
AT SUVLA BAY
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.
u 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.
104
CHAPTER XVII
" OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND ! "
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 "Percy," the
through the eye-holes . . . anything tortoise who
i ii -111-1 i -i lived with us
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 in-
tensely does the mind receive the imprint of
tiny commonplace objects.
105
in the dried-
up water-
course.
AT SUVLA BAY
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 map-
ping 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
106
"OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND!"
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 to
Sgt. 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 to
GORDON 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.
107
AT SUVLA BAY
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 />nz<:tically 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
108
"OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND!"
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
109
AT SUVLA BAY
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
no
OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND!
" 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 excite-
ment, 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 excit-
ing . . . 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 ;
in -
AT SUVLA BAY
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 . ."
112
CHAPTER XVIII
TWO MEN RETURN
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 unmean-
ingly 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,
i 113
AT SUVLA BAY
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.
114
TWO MEN RETURN
" 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 ." . .
"5
AT SUVLA BAY
crawling, creeping and crawling ... an' they
kep' firing at us ..."
" No food ... we chewed grass . . . sucked
dead grass to get some spittle . . . an' some-
times 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
116
TWO MEN RETURN
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 land-
117
AT SUVLA BAY
ing 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.
118
CHAPTER XIX
THE RETREAT
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 shim-
mered a silver-white streak with gray battleships
lying out.
In front the fighting broke out in fierce gusts.
" Pop-pop-pop-pop ! Pop-pop ! J: went the
machine-gun. We could see one man getting
another belt of ammunition ready to " feed."
Bullets from the Turkish quick-firers went sing-
119
AT SUVLA BAY
ing 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 ? "
120
THE RETREAT
" 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 any-
thing ? ' :
" 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.
121
AT SUVLA BAY
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 pain-
lessly 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
122
THE RETREAT
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.
123
CHAPTER XX
" JHILL-O ! JOHNNIE ! "
A " BEACH
SUVLA BAY
There's a lot of senseless " doing "
And a fearful lot of work ;
There are gangs of men with " gangers,"
To see they do not shirk.
There's the usual waste of power
In the usual Western way,
There's a tangle in the transport,
And a blockage every day.
The sergeants do the swearing,
The corporals " carry on " ;
The private cusses openly,
And hopes he'll soon be gone.
ONE evening the colonel sent >( me from our
dug-out near the Salt Lake to " A " Beach to
make a report on the water supply which was
pumped ashore from the tank-boats. I trudged
along the sandy shore. At one spot I remember
the carcase of a mule washed up by the tide, the
flesh rotted and sodden, and here and there a
yellow rib bursting through the skin. Its head
124
JHILL-O ! JOHNNIE ! "
floated in the water and nodded to and fro with
a most uncanny motion with every ripple of the
bay.
The wet season was coming on, and the chill
winds went through my khaki drill uniform.
The sky was overcast, and the bay, generally a
O fe>
kaleidoscope of Eastern blues and greens, was
dull and gray.
At " A " Beach I examined the pipes and
tanks of the water-supply system and had a chat
with the Australians who were in charge. ( : :; lj
drew a small plan, showing how the water was
pumped from the tanks afloat to the standing
tank ashore, and suggested the probable cause of
the sand and dirt of which the C.O. complained.
125 -
AT SUVLA BAY
This done I found our own ambulance water-
cart just ready to return to our camp with its
nightly supply. Evening was giving place to
darkness, and soon the misty hills and the bay
were enveloped in starless gloom.
The traffic about " A " Beach was always con-
gested. It reminded you of the Bank and the
Mansion House crush far away in London town.
Here were clanking water-carts, dozens of
them waiting in their turn, stamping mules
and snorting horses ; here were motor-transport
wagons with " W.D." in white on their gray
sides ; ambulance wagons jolting slowly back
to their respective units, sometimes full of
wounded, sometimes empty. Here all was
bustle and noise. Sergeants shouting and cor-
porals cursing; transport-officers giving directions;
a party of New Zealand sharp-shooters in scout
hats and leggings laughing and yarning ; a patrol
of the R.E.'s Telegraph Section coming in after
repairing the wires along the beach ; or a new
batch of men, just arrived, falling in with new-
looking kit-bags.
It was through this throng of seething khaki
and transport traffic that our water-cart iostled
and pushed.
126
/
Sketch of one of the Indian .Pack Mule Corps
at Suvla Bay.
JHILL-0 ! JOHNNIE !
Often we had to pull up to let the Indian
Pack-mule Corps pass, and it was at one of
these halts that I happened to come close to one
of these dusky soldiers waiting calmly by the
side of his mules.
I wished I had some knowledge of Hindustani,
and began to think over any words he might
recognise.
" You ever hear of Rabindranarth Tagore,
Johnnie ? " I asked him. The name of the
great writer came to mind.
He shook his head. " No, sergeant," he
answered.
" Buddha, Johnnie ? " His face gleamed and
he showed his great white teeth.
" No, Buddie."
" Mahomet, Johnnie ? "
" Yes me, Mahommedie," he said proudly.
" Gunga, Johnnie ? >: I asked, remembering
the name of the sacred river Ganges from
Kipling's Kim.
" No Gunga, sa'b Mahommedie, me."
" You go Benares, Johnnie ? "
" No Benares."
" Mecca ? "
" Mokka, yes ; afterwards me go Mokka."
127
AT SUVLA BAY
" After the war you going to Mokka,
Johnnie ? "
" Yes ; Indee, France here Indee back
again then Mokka."
" You been to France, Johnnie ? "
"Yes, sa'b."
" You know Kashmir, Johnnie ? "
" Kashmir my house," he replied.
" You live in Kashmir ? "
" Yes ; you go Indee, sergeant ? ' :
" No, I've never been."
" No go Indee ? "
cc Not yet."
" Indee very good English very good
-Turk, finish ! "
With a sudden jerk and a rattle of
chains our water-cart mules pulled out
on the trail again and the ghostly figure
with its well-folded turban and gleaming
white teeth was left behind.
A beautifully calm race, the Hindus.
They did wonderful work at Suvla Bay.
Up and down, up and down, hour after
hour they worked steadily on ; taking up
biscuits, bully-beef and ammunition to
the firing-line, and returning for more
128
JHILL-O! JOHNNIE!
and still more. Day and night these splendidly
built Easterns kept up the supply.
I remember one man who had had his left leg
blown off by shrapnel sitting on a rock smoking
a cigarette and great tears rolling down his
K 129
AT SUVLA BAY
cheeks. But he said no word. Not a groan or
a cry of pain.
They ate little, and said little. But they were
always extraordinarily polite and courteous to
each other. They never neglected their prayers,
even under heavy shell fire.
Once, when we were moving from the Salt
Lake to " C " Beach, Lala Baba, the Indians
moved all our equipment in their little two-
wheeled carts.
They were much amused and interested in
our sergeant clerk, who stood 6 feet 8 inches.
130
V
Indian pack-mules taking supplies up the rocky ridges of the
Kapanja Sirt.
JHILL-0! JOHNNIE!
They were joking and pointing to him in a little
bunch.
Going up to them, I pointed up to the sky,
and then to the Sergeant, saying : " Himalayas,
Johnnie ! "
They roared with laughter, and ever afterwards
called him " Himalayas."
THE INDIAN TRANSPORT TRAIN
(Across the bed of the Salt Lake every night from the Supply
Depot at Kangaroo Beach to the firing-line beyond Chocolate
Hill, September 1915.)
The Indian whallahs go up to the hills ;
"Jhill-o! Johnnie, Jhill-o I" 1
They pass by the spot where the gun-cotton kills ;
They shiver and huddle they feel the night chills j
"Jhill-o! Johnnie, Jhill-o !"
With creaking and jingle of harness and pack ;
"Jhill-o! Johnnie, Jhill-o !"
Where the moonlight is white and the shadows are black,
They are climbing the winding and rocky mule-track ;
"Jhill-o! Johnnie, Jhill-o!"
1 "Jhill-o!" Hindustani for "Gee-up"; used by the
drivers of the Indian Pack-mule Corps.
AT SUVLA BAY
By the blessing of Allah he's more than one wife ;
Jhill-o! Johnnie, Jhill-o !"
He's forbidden the wine which encourages strife,
But you don't like the look of his dangerous knife ;
Jhill-o! Johnnie, Jhill-o !"
The picturesque whallah is dusky and spare ;
Jhill-o! Johnnie, Jhill-o !"
A turban he wears with magnificent air,
But he chucks down his pack when it's time for his prayer ;-
" Jhill-o! Johnnie, Jhill-o !"
When his moment arrives he'll be dropped in a hole ;
"Jhill-o! Johnnie, Jhill-o !"
'Tis Kismet, he says, and beyond his control ;
But the dear little houris will comfort his soul ;
Jhill-o! Johnnie, Jhill-o !"
The Indian whallahs go up to the hills ;
"Jhill-o! Johnnie, Jhill-o !"
They pass by the spot where the gun-cotton kills ;
But those who come down carry something that chills ;
"Jhill-o! Johnnie, Jhill-o !"
132
CHAPTER XXI
SILVER BAY
ON the edge of the Salt Lake, by the blue
shore, Hawk and I dug a little under-
ground home into the sandy hillock upon which
our ambulance was now encamped.
" I'm going deep into this," said Hawk he
was a very skilful miner, and he knew his
work.
" None of your dead heroes for me," he said ;
" I don't hold with 'em we'll make it prac-
tically shell-proof." We did. Each day we
burrowed into the soft sandy layers, he swinging
the pick, and I filling up sand-bags. At last we
made a sort of cave, a snug little Peter Pan
home, sand-bagged all round and safe from shells
when you crawled in.
I often thought what a fine thing Stevenson
would have written from the local colour of the
bay.
Its changing colours were intense and wonder-
ful. In the early morning the waves were a
rich royal blue, with splashing lines of white
133
AT SUVLA BAY
breakers rolling in and in upon the pale gray
sand, and the sea-birds skimming and wheeling
overhead.
At mid-day it was colourless, glaring, steel-
flashing, with the sunlight blazing and every-
thing shimmering in the heat haze.
In the early afternoon, when Hawk and I used
to go down to the shore and strip naked like
savages, and plunge into the warm water, the
bay had changed to pale blue with green ripples,
and the outline of Imbros Island, on the horizon,
was a long jagged strip of mauve.
Later, when the sunset sky turned lemon-
yellow, orange, and deep crimson, the bay went
into peacock blues and purples, with here and
there a current of bottle-glass green, and Imbros
Island stood clear cut against the sunset-colour
a violet-black silhouette.
Queer creatures crept across the sands and
into the old Turkish snipers' trenches ; long black
centipedes, sand-birds very much resembling
our martin, but 'with something of the canary in
their colour. Horned beetles, baby tortoises,
mice, and green-gray lizards all left their tiny
footprints on the shore.
' If this silver sand was only in England a
134
'he Crescent and the
Jtar " made in the sand
)y a bird scratching for
nsects. The "star"
s the bird's footprint.
The "crescent" was
nade by the beak.
Trail of
centipede
Trail of mouse,
AT SUVLA BAY
man could make his fortune/' said Hawk.
(" We wept like anything to see ! ")
I never saw such white sand before. One
had to misquote : " Come unto these siher
sands." It glittered white in a- great horse-shoe
round the bay, and the bed of the Salt Lake
(which is really an overflow from the sea) was
a barren patch of this silver-sand, with here and
there a dead mule or a sniper's body lying out,
a little black blot, the haunt of vultures.
I made some careful drawings of the sand-
tracks of the bay ; noting down tracks being a
habit with the scout.
In these things Hawk was always interested,
and often a great help ; for, in spite of his fifty
years and his buccaneerish-habits, he was at
heart a boy a boy-scout, in fact, and a fine
tracker.
One of the most picturesque sights I ever
saw was an Indian officer mounted on a white
Arab horse with a long flowing mane, and a tail
which swept in a splendid curve and trailed in
the sands. The Hindu wore a khaki turban,
with a long end floating behind. He sat his
horse bolt upright, and rode in the proper
military style.
Sari Bai
Chocolate Hi
Salt
Lake
Anzac
Suvls
Bay
Pencil sketch of the Salt Lake bed showing Chocolate Hill and the Sari"! Bair
range, with the field telegraph running from "A" beach (not shown) to the
Divisional Headquarters on Lala Baba.
Pocket-book study of the ripple-impressions
along the sandy shore of Suvla Bav.
SILVER BAY
The Arab steed pranced, and arched its great
neck. With the blue of the bay as a back-
ground it made a magnificent picture, worthy of
the Thousand-and-One Nights.
Day by day we improved our dug-out, going
deeper into the solid rock, and putting up an
awning in front made of two army blankets,
with a wooden cross-beam roped to an old rusty
bayonet driven into the sand.
We lived a truly Robinson Crusoe life, with
the addition of Turkish high-explosives, and
bully-beef-and-biscuit stew.
Our dug-out was back to the firing line, and
at night we looked out upon the bay. We lay
in our blankets watching the white moonlight
on the waves, and the black shadows of our
ambulance wagons on the silver sand.
It was in this dug-out that Hawk used to
cook the most wonderful dishes on a Primus
stove.
The language was thick and terrible when
that stove refused to work, and Hawk would
squat there cursing and cleaning it, and sticking
bits of wire down the gas-tube.
He cooked chocolate-pudding, and rice-and-
milk, and arrowroot-blancmange, stewed prunes,
AT SUVLA BAY
fried bread in bacon fat, and many other tasty
morsels.
" The proof of a good cook," said Hawk, " is
whether he can make a meal worth eating out
of frantically nothink," and he could.
There were very few wounds now to attend
to in the hospital dug-out. Mostly we got men
with sandfly-fever and dysentery ; men with
scabies and lice ; men utterly and unspeakably
exhausted, with hollow, black-rimmed eyes,
cracked lips and foot-sores ; men who limped
across the sandy bed, dragging their rifles and
equipment in their hands ; men who were
desperately hungry, whose eyes held the glint of
sniper-madness ; men whose bodies were wasting
away, the skin taut and dry like a drum, with
every rib showing like the beams of a wreck,
or the rafters of an old roof.
Always we were in the midst of pain and
misery, hunger and death. We do not get
much of the rush and glory of battle in the
" Linseed Lancers." We deal with the wreckage
thrown up by the tide of battle, and wreckage
is always a sad sight human wreckage most
of all.
But the bay was always full of interest for
138
SILVER BAY
me, with its ever-changing colour, and the
imprint of the ripples in the gleaming silver-
sand.
And the silver moonlight silvers the silver-
sand, while the skeletons of the Xth sink deeper
and deeper, to be rediscovered perhaps at some
future geological period, and recognised as a
type of primitive man.
139
CHAPTER XXII
DUG-OUT YARNS
Oft in the stilly night,
By yellow candle-light,
With finger in the sand
We mapped and planned.
" This is the Turkish well, O
That's where the Captain fell, X,
There's the great Salt Lake bed,
Here's where the Munsters led."
Primitive man arose,
With prehistoric pose,
Like Dug-out Men of old,
By signs our thoughts were told.
I HAVE slept and lived in every kind of
camp and bivouac. I have dug and helped to
dig dug-outs. I have lain full length in the
dry, dead grass " under the wide and starry
sky." I have crept behind a ledge of rock,
and gone to sleep with the ants crawling over
me. I have slept with a pair of boots for a
pillow. I have lived and snoozed in the dried-
up bed of a mountain torrent for weeks. A
ground-sheet tied to a bough has been my bed-
140
DUG-OUT YARNS
room. I have slumbered curled in a coil of
rope on the deck of a cattle-boat, in an
ambulance wagon, on a stretcher, in farm-
house barns and under hedges and haystacks.
I have slept in the sand by the blue Mediter-
ranean Sea, with the crickets and grasshoppers
" zipping " and " zinging " all night long.
But our dug-out nights on the edge of
the bay at Buccaneer Bivouac were the most
enjoyable.
It was here of a night-time that Hawk and
I sometimes alone, sometimes with Brockley,
or " Cherry Blossom," or " Corporal Mush," or
Sergeant Joe Smith, the sailormen as onlookers
and listeners it was here we drew diagrams
in the sand with our fingers, and talked on
politics and women's rights, marriage and im-
morality, drink and religion, customs and habits ;
of life and death, peace and war.
Sometimes Hawk burst into a rare phrase of
splendid composition well-balanced rhetoric,
not unworthy of a Prime Minister.
At other times he is the buccaneer, the
flinger of foul oaths, and terrible damning
curses. But as a rule they are not vindictive,
they have no sting for Hawk is a forgiving
141
AT SUVLA BAY
and humble man in reality, in spite of his mask
of arrogance.
A remarkable character in every way, he fell
unknowingly into the old north-country Quaker
talk of " thee and thou."
Another minute he gives an order in those
hard, calm, commanding words which, had he
had the chance, would have made him, in spite
of his lack of schooling, one of the finest
Generals the world could ever know.
On these occasional gleams of pure leadership
he finds the finest King's English ready to his
lips, while at other times he is ungrammatical,
ordinary, but never uninteresting or slow of
intuition.
He was a master of slang, and like all strong
and vivid characters had his own peculiar
sayings.
He never thought of looking over my
shoulder when I was sketching. He was a
gentleman of Nature. But when he saw I had
finished, his clear, deep-set eyes (handed down
to him from those old Norseman ancestors)
would glint with interest
" Dekko the drawing," he would say, using
the old Romany word for "let's see."
142
"Oft in the stilly night.
By yellow candle-light."
Buccaneer Bivouac,
Salt Lake.
DUG-OUT YARNS
" Practically, " was a favourite word.
"Practically the 'ole Peninsula "
" Practically every one of 'em
" It weren't that," he would say ; or, " I
weren't bothering "
" I'm not bothered "
" Thee needn't bother, but it's a misfortunate
thing "
" Hates me like the divil 'ates Holy Water."
" Like enough ! "
" A pound to a penny ! "
" As like as not ! "
" Ah ; very like."
These were all typical Hawkish expressions.
His yarns of India out-Rudyard Kipling.
They were superb, full of barrack-room touches,
and the smells and sounds of the jungle. He
told of the time when a soldier could get
"jungling leave"; when he could go off with
a Winchester and a pal and a native guide for
two or three months ; when the Government
paid so many rupees for a tiger skin, so many
for a cobra a scale of rewards for bringing
back the trophies of the jungle wilds.
He pictured the Himalayas and the Hindu
Kush, describing the everlasting snows where
H3
AT SUVLA BAY
you look up and up at the sheer
rocks and glaciers ; " you feel like
a baby tortoise away down there,
so small, as like as not you get
. giddy and drunk-like."
^^^S^ ) One night Hawk told me of a
' \^P*W^_ + Hindu fakir who sat by the road-
ViMv*w^ side performing the mango-trick
2 for one anna. I illustrated it in
the sand as he told it
Dug-out, September 9, 1915.
puts a pinch of
Around in a little
pile on a glass plate on a tripod.
2. He covers it up with a
handkerchief or a cloth.
3. He plays the bagpipes, or a
wooden flute, while you can see
the heap of dust under the cloth
a-growing and a-growing up and
up, bigger and bigger.
4. At last he lifts up the cloth
and shows you the green mango-
tree growing on the piece of
glass.
144
DUG-OUT YARNS
" He covers it again plays. Lifts the cloth,
shows you the mango tree in leaf. Covers it
again plays again. Takes away the cloth, and
shows you the mango-tree in fruit, real fruit ;
but they never let you have the fruit for love or
money. Rather than let any one have it, they
pluck it and squash it between their fingers."
CHAPTER XXIII
THE WISDOM OF FATHER S
ONE day, while I was making some sketch-
book drawings of bursting shells down in the old
water-course, the Roman Catholic padre came
along.
" Sketching, Hargrave ? "
" Yes, sir."
And then : " I suppose you're Church of
England, aren't you ? "
" No, sir ; I'm down as Quaker."
" Quaker, eh ? that's interesting ; I know
quite a lot of Quakers in Dublin and Belfast/'
Who would expect to find " Father Brown ''
of G. K. Chesterton fame in a khaki drill uniform
and a pith helmet ?
A small, energetic man, with a round face and
a habit of putting his hands deep into the patch
pockets of his tunic. Here was a priest who
knew his people, who was a real " father " to
his khaki followers. I quickly discovered him
to be a man of learning, and one who noticed
small signs and commonplace details.
146
THE WISDOM OF FATHER S
His eyes twinkled and glittered when he was
amused, and his little round face wrinkled into
wreaths of smiles.
When we moved to the Salt Lake dug-outs
he came with us, and here he had a dug-out of
his own.
When the day's work was finished, and the
moonlight glittered white across the Salt Lake, I
used to stroll away for a time by myself before
turning in.
It was a good time to think. Everything was
so silent. Even my own footsteps were sound-
less in the soft sand. It was on one of these
night-prowls that I spotted the tiny figure of
Father S jerking across the sands, with that
well-known energetic walk, stick in hand.
" Stars, Hargrave ?" said the little priest.
" Very clear to-night, sir."
" Queer, you know, Hargrave, to think that
those same old stars have looked down all these
ages ; same old stars which looked down on
Darius and his Persians."
He prodded the sand with his walking stick,
stuck his cap on one side (I don't think he cared
for his helmet), and peered up to the star-
spangled sky.
H7
AT SUVLA BAY
"Wonderful country, all this," said the padre;
" it may be across this very Salt Lake that the
armies of the ancients fought with sling and
stone and spear ; St. Paul may have put in here,
he was well acquainted with these parts Lem-
nos and all round about preaching and teaching
on his travels, you know."
" Talking about Lemnos Island," he went on,
" did you notice the series of peaks which run
across it in a line ? "
" Yes."
" Well, it was on those promontories that
Agamemnon, King of Mycenae, lit a chain of
fire-beacons to announce the taking of Troy to
his Queen, Clytasmnestra, at Argos
Here the little priest, as pleased as a school-
boy, scratched a rough sketch map in the
sand
"All this was desperately interesting to me. It was
picturesque to stand in the sand-bed of the Salt
Lake, lit by the broad flood of the silver moonlight,
with the little priest scratching like an ibis in the
sand with his walking-stick."
THE WISDOM OF FATHER S
"All the islands round here are full of histori-
cal interest, you know ; c far-famed Samothrace,'
for instance." Father S talked much of
classical history, connecting these islands with
Greek and Roman heroes.
All this was desperately interesting to me. It
was picturesque to stand in the sand-bed of the
Salt Lake, lit by the broad flood of silver moon-
light, with the little priest eagerly scratching
like an ibis in the sand with his walking-stick.
I learnt more about the Near East in those few
minutes than I had ever done at school.
But besides the interest in this novel history
lesson, I was more than delighted to find the
padre so correct in his sketch of the island and
the coast, and I took down what he told me in
a note-book afterwards, and copied his sand-maps
also.
After this I came to know him better than I
had. I visited his dug-out, and he let me look
at his books and Punch and a month-old Illus-
trated London News, or so. I came to admire
him for his simplicity and for his devotion to
his men. Every Sunday he held Mass in the
trenches of the firing-line, and he never had the
least fear of going up.
149
AT SUVLA BAY
A splendid little man, always cheerful, always
looking after his " flock." Praying with those
who were about to give up the ghost ; adminis-
tering the last rites of the Church to those
who, in awful agony, were fluttering like singed
moths at the edge of the great flame, the Great
Life-Mystery of Death.
He wrote beautifully sad letters of comfort to
the mothers of boy-officers who were killed.
Father S knew every man : every man
knew Father S and admired him.
His dug-out was made in a slope overlooking
the bay, and was really a deep square pit in the
sand-bank, roofed with corrugated iron and sand-
bagged all round. Here we talked. I found he
knew G. K. C. and Hilaire Belloc. Always he
wanted to look at any new drawings in my
sketch-books.
It is a relief to speak with some intelligent
person sometimes.
Such was Father S , a very 'cute little man,
knowing most of the troubles of the men about
him, noticing their ways and keeping in touch
with them all.
150
CHAPTER XXIV
THE SHARP-SHOOTERS
JUST after the episode of the lost squads we
were working our stretcher-bearers as far as
Brigade Headquarters which were situated on
a steep backbone-like spur of the Kapanja Sirt.
One of my " lance-jacks " (lance-corporals)
had been missing for a good long time, and
we began to fear he was either shot or taken
prisoner with the others who had gone too far
up the Sirt.
One afternoon we were resting among the
rocks, waiting for wounded to be sent back
to us ; for since the loss of the others we were
not allowed to pass the Brigade Headquarters.
There was a lull in the fighting, with only
a few bursting shrapnel now and then.
This particular lance-jack was quite a young
lad of the middle-class, with a fairly good
education.
But he was a weedy specimen physically, and
I doubted whether he could pull through if
AT SUVLA BAY
escape should mean a fight with Nature for
food and water and life itself.
Fairly late in the day as we all lay sprawling
on the rocks or under the thorn-bushes, I saw
a little party staggering along the defile which
led up to the Sirt at this point.
There were two men with cow-boy hats,
and between them they helped another very
thin and very exhausted-looking fellow, who
tottered along holding one arm which had been
wounded.
As they came closer I recognised my lost
lance-jack, very pale and shaky, a little thinner
than usual, and with a hint of that gleam of
sniper-madness which I have noticed before in
the jumpy, unsteady eyes of hunted men.
The other two, one each side, were sturdy
enough. Well-built men, one short and the
other tall, with great rough hands, sunburnt
faces, and bare arms. They wore brown leggings
and riding-breeches and khaki shirts. They
carried their rifles at the trail and strode up to
us with the graceful gait of those accustomed
to the outdoor life.
" ^wstralians ! " said some one
" An' the corporal ! "
152
Australian Sharpshooter.
THE SHARP-SHOOTERS
Immediately our men roused up and gathered
round.
" Where's yer boss ? " asked the tall Colonial.
" The adjutant is over here," I answered.
" We'd like a word with him," continued the
man. I took them up to the officer, and they
both saluted in an easy-going sort of way.
" We found 'im up there," the Australian
jerked his head,' " being sniped and couldn't git
away says 'e belongs t' th' 3 2nd Ambulance--
so here he is."
The two Australians were just about to slouch
off again when the adjutant called them back.
" Where did you find him ? " he asked.
" Up beyond Jefferson's Post ; there was five
snipers pottin' at 'im, an' it looked mighty like
as if 'is number was up. We killed four o' the
snipers, and got him out."
" That was very good of you. Did you see
any more Medical Corps up there ? We've
lost some others, and an officer and sergeant."
" No, I didn't spot any did you, Bill ? "
The tall man turned to his pal leaning on his
rifle.
" No," answered the short sharp-shooter ; " he's
the only one. It was a good afternoon's sport
153
AT SUVLA BAY
very good. We saw 'e'd got no rifle, and was
in a tight clove-'itch, so we took the job on
right there an' finished four of 'em ; but it took
some creepin' and crawlin'."
" Well, we'll be quittin' this now," said the
tall one. " There's only one thing we'd ask of
you, sir : don't let our people know anything
about this."
" But why ? " asked the adjutant, astonished.
" You've saved his life, and it ought to be
known."
" Ya-as, that may be, sir ; but we're not
supposed to be up here sharp-shootin' we jist
done it fer a bit of sport. Rightly we don't
carry a rifle; we belong to the briJge-buildin'
section. We've only borrowed these rifles from
the Cycle Corps, an* we shall be charged with
bein' out o' bounds without leave, an' a\j[ that
sort o' thing if it gits known down ai\ our
headquarters."
" Very well, I'll tell no one ; all the same it
was good work, and we thank you for getting
-him back to us," the adjutant smiled.
The two Australians gave him a friendly nod,
and said, " So long, you chaps ! " to us and
lurched off down the defile.
'54
THE SHARP-SHOOTERS
" We'll chuck it fer to-day done enough,"
said the tall man.
"Ya-as, we'd better git back. It was good
sport very good," said the short one.
Certainly the Australians we met w r ere a
cheerful, happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care crew.
They were the most picturesque set of men
on the peninsula.
Rough travelling, little or no food, no water,
sleepless nights and thrilling escapes made them
look queerly primitive and Robinson Crusoeish.
I wrote in my pocket-book : " September 8,
1915. The Australians have the keen eye,
quick ear and silent tongue which evolves in
the bushman and those who have faced star-
vation and the constant risk of sudden death,
who have lived a hard life on the hard ground,
like the animals of the wild, and come through.
" Fine fellows these, with good chests and
arms, well-knit and gracefully poised by habitu-
ally having to creep and crouch, and run and
fight. Sunburnt to a deep bronze, one and
all.
" Their khaki shorts flap and ripple in the
sea-wind like a troop of Boy Scouts. Some
wear green shirts, and they all wear stone-gray
'55 '
AT SUVLA BAY
wide-awake hats with pinched crown and broad
flat brims."
When at last the mails brought us month-old
papers from England, we read that " The gallant
Australians " at Suvla " took " Lala Baba and
Chocolate Hill ; indeed, as Hawk read out in our
dug-out one mail-day
" The Australians have took everythink, or
practically everythink worth takin'. They
stormed Lala Baba and captured Chocolate 'ill
in fac' they made the landin' ; and the Xth and
Xlth Divisions are simply a myth accordin' to
the papers ! "
156
CHAPTER XXV
A SCOUT AT SUVLA BAY
MANY times have I seen the value of the
Scout training, but never was it demonstrated
so clearly as at Suvla Bay. Here, owing to the
rugged nature of the country devoid of all
signs of civilisation a barren, sandy waste it
was necessary to practise all the cunning and
craft of the savage scout. Therefore those who
had from boyhood been trained in scouting and
scoutcraft came out top-dog.
And why ? because here we were working
against men who were born scouts.
It became necessary to be able to find your
way at night by the stars. You were not allowed
to strike a light to look at a map, and anyhow
the maps we had were on too small a scale to be
of any real use locally.
Now, a great many officers were unable to find
even the North Star ! Perhaps in civil life they
had been men who laughed at the boy scout in
his shirt and shorts because they couldrit see the
AT SUVLA BAY
good of It ! But when we came face to face with
bare Nature we had to return to the methods of
primitive man.
More than once I found it very useful to be
able to judge the time by the swing of the
star-sky.
Then again, many and many a young officer
or army-scout on outpost duty was shot and
killed because, instead of keeping still, he jerked
his head up above the rocks and finding himself
spotted jerked down again. The consequence
was, that when he raised himself the next time
the Turks had the spot "taped'* and "his
number was up."
This means unnecessary loss of men, owing
entirely to lack of training in scoutcraft and
stalking.
Finding your way was another point. How
many companies got " cut up " simply because
the officer or sergeant in charge had no bump of
location. As most men came from our big cities
and towns, they knew nothing of spotting the
trail or of guessing the right direction. Indeed,
I see Sir Ian Hamilton states that owing to one
battalion " losing its way " a most important
position was lost and this happened again and
158
A SCOUT AT SUVLA BAY
again simply because the leaders were not
scouts.
Then there were many young officers who
when it came to the test could not read a map
quickly as they went. (Boy scouts, please note.)
This became a very serious thing when taking
up fresh men into the firing-line.
Those men who went out with a lot of " la-di-
da swank " soon found that they were nowhere
in the game with the man who cut his drill
trousers into shorts went about with his shirt
sleeves rolled up and didn't mind getting himself
dirty.
There were very few " knuts " and they soon
got cracked !
Shouting and talking was another point in
scouting at Suvla Bay. Brought up in towns
and-streets, many men found it extremely difficult
to keep quiet. Slowly they learnt that silence was
the only protection against the hidden sniper.
I remember a lot of fresh men landing in high
spirits and keen to get up to the fighting zone.
They marched along in fours and whistled and
sang ; but the Turks in the hills soon spotted
them and landed a shell in the middle of them.
Silence is the scout's shield in war-time.
AT SUVLA BAY
It fell to my lot to make crosses to mark the
graves of the dead. These crosses were made
out of bully-beef packing-cases, and on most of
them I was asked to inscribe the name, number
and regiment of the slain. I did this in purple
copying pencil, as I had nothing more lasting :
and generally it read :
" In Memory of 19673,
Pte.
Royal Irish Fus.
R.I. P."
I had to be tombstone maker and engraver
and sometimes even sexton a scout turns his
hand to anything.
We had our advanced dressing station on the
1 60
A SCOUT AT SUVLA BAY
left of Chocolate Hill the proper name of which
is Bakka Baba.
Our ambulance wagons had to cross the Salt
Lake, and often the wheels sank and we had to
take another team of mules to pull them out.
The Turks had a tower a gleaming white
minaret just beyond Chocolate Hill, near the
Moslem cemetery in the village of Anafarta.
It was supposed to be a sacred tower, but as they
used it as an observation post, our battle-ships
in the bay blew it down.
Flies swarmed everywhere, and were a great
cause of disease, as, after visiting the dead and the
latrines they used to come and have a meal on
our jam and biscuits !
During the whole of August and September
M 161
AT SUVLA BAY
we were under heavy shell-fire ; but we got quite
used to it and hardly turned to look at a bursting
shell.
I must say khaki drill uniform is not a good
hiding colour. In the sunlight it showed up too
light. I believe a parti-coloured uniform, say
of green, khaki and gray would be much better.
Therefore the Scout who wears a khaki hat, green
shirt, khaki shorts and gray stockings is really
wearing the best uniform for colour-protection
in stalking.
The more scouting we can introduce the
better.
Carry on, Boy Scouts ! Bad scoutcraft was
one of the chief drawbacks in what has been
dubbed "The Glorious Failure."
162
CHAPTER XXVI
THE BUSH-FIRES
THERE are some things you never forget . . .
That little Welshman, for instance, lying on
a ledge of rock above our Brigade Headquarters
with a great gaping shrapnel wound in his
abdomen imploring the Medical Officer in the
Gaelic tongue to " put him out," and how he
died, with a morphia tablet in his mouth,
singing at the top of his high-pitched voice
"When the midnight chu-chu leaves for Alabam !
I'll be right there !
I've got my fare . . .
All aboard !
All aboard !
All aboard for Alla-BAM !
. . . Midnight . . . chu-chu . . . chu-chu . . ."
And so, slowly his soul steamed out of the
wrecked station of his body and left for
" Alabam ! "
One evening, the 25th of August, bush-fires
-broke out on the right of Chocolate Hill.
The shells from the Turks set light to the
AT SUVLA BAY
dried sage, and thistle and thorn, and soon the
whole place was blazing. It was a fearful
sight. Many wounded tried to crawl away,
dragging their broken arms and legs out of the
burning bushes and were cremated alive.
It was impossible to rescue them. Boxes of
ammunition caught fire and exploded with
terrific noise in thick bunches of murky smoke.
A bombing section tried to throw off their
equipment before the explosives burst, but
many were blown to pieces by their own
bombs. Puffs of white smoke rose up in little
clouds and floated slowly across the Salt Lake.
The flames ran along the ridges in long
lapping lines with a canopy of blue and gray
smoke. We could hear the crackle of the
burning thickets, and the sharp " bang ! " of
bullets. The sand round Suvla Bay hid thou-
sands of bullets and ammunition pouches, some
flung away by wounded men, some belonging
to the dead. As the bush-fires licked from the
lower slopes of the Sari Bair towards Chocolate
Hill this lost ammunition exploded, and it
sounded like erratic rifle-fire. The fires glowed
and spluttered all night, and went on smoking
in the morning. I had to go up to Chocolate
164
THE BUSH-FIRES
Hill about some sand-bags for our hospital dug-
outs next day, and on the way up I noticed a
human pelvis and a chunk of charred human
vertebras under a scorched and charcoaled
thorn-bush.
Hawk and I kept a very good look-out every
day. We noted the arrival of reinforcements,
and the putting up of new telegraph lines ; we
spotted incoming transports, and the departure
of our battle-ships in the bay.
In fact, between us, we worked a very com-
plete " Intelligence Department " of our own.
We made a rough chart showing the main
lines of communications, and the position of
snipers and wells, telegraph wires to the artillery,
and the main observation posts and listening
saps.
" It's just as well," said I, " to know as much
as we can how things are going, and to keep
account of details it's safer, and might be
very useful."
" Very true," said Hawk ; " 'ave you noticed
'ow that little cruiser comes in every morning
at the same time, and goes out again in the late
afternoon ? Also, two brigades of Territorials
came in last night and went round by the
AT SUVLA BAY
beach early this morning towards Lala Baba ;
I see the footprints when I went down for a
wash."
The colonel had camped us on the edge of the
Salt Lake on this side of an incline which led
up to a flat plateau. Into this incline we had
made our dug-outs, and he was now planning
the digging out of a square-shaped place which
would hold all our stretchers on which the
sick and wounded lay, and would be protected
from the Turkish shell-fire by being dug into
the solid sandstone.
I was looking about for sand-tracks and shells,
and I noticed that the grass had grown much
more luxuriously at one level than it did lower
down. This grass was last year's and was now
yellow and dead and rustling like paper flowers.
" This," said I to Hawk, " was last year's
water-mark in the rainy season/'
" That's gospel," said Hawk ; " and what would
you make out o' that observation ? "
He smiled his queer whimsical smile.
" Why, I guess we shall be swamped out of
this camp in a month's time."
" Yes ; practically the 'ole of this, up to this
level, will be under water."
166
THE BUSH-FIRES
"Then what's the good of starting to dig a
big permanent hospital here when ? "
" Tours not to reason why," said Hawk ; " it's
a way they have in the army ; but I'm not
bothering."
Each section dug in shifts day after day until
the men were worn out with digging.
Then the long, flat rain-clouds appeared one
morning over the distant range of mountains.
" You see them" said Hawk, lighting a " wood-
bine," and pointing across the Salt Lake ; " that's
the first sign of the wet season coming up."
Sure enough in a few days the colonel had
orders to shift his ambulance to " C " Beach,
near Lala Baba, as our present position was
unfavourable for the construction of a permanent
field hospital, owing to the rise of water in the
wet season.
Soon after this, Hawk was moved to the
advanced dressing station on Chocolate Hill,
and I had to remain with my section near the
Salt Lake. Thus we were separated.
" It's to break up our click, too thick to-
gether, we bin noticing too much, we know
the workin' o' things too well, must break up
the combine, dangerous to 'ave people about
AT SUVLA BAY
J oo spot things and keep their jaws tight. Git
rid o' Hawk see th' ideeah ? Very clever,
ain't it ? Practically we're the only two 'oo
do feel which way the wind blows, an' that's
inconvenient sometimes."
I asked Hawk while he was on Chocolate
Hill to note down in his head the various
snipers' posts, and the general positions of the
British and Turkish trenches.
There came a time when I wanted to send
him a note. But it was a dangerous thing to
send notes about. They might fall into the
hands of some sniper and give away information.
Therefore I got a bar of yellow soap from
our stores, cut it in two, bored out a small
hole in one half, wrapped up my note, put it
inside the soap, clapped the two halves together,
stuck them together by wetting it, and com-
pletely concealed the cut by rubbing it with
water.
I then asked one of the A.S.C. drivers who
was going up with the ambulance wagon in
the morning to give the piece of soap to
Hawk.
" He hasn't got any soap," I explained, " and
he asked me to send him a bit. Tell him it's
168
THE BUSH-FIRES
from me, and that I hope he'll find it all right
it's the best we have ! "
Hawk got the soap, guessed there was a reason
for sending it, broke it open and found the
note. So a simple boy-scout trick came in
useful on active service.
169
CHAPTER XXVII
THE DEPARTURE
Now came a period of utter stagnation.
It was a deadlock.
We held the bay, the plain of Anafarta, the
Salt Lake, the Kislar Dagh and Kapanja Sirt in
a horse-shoe.
The Turks held the heights of Sari Bair,
Anafarta village, and the hills beyond "Jeffer-
son's Post" in a semicircle enclosing us.
Nothing happened. We shelled and they
shelled every day. Snipers sniped and men
got killed ; but there was no further advance.
Things had remained at a standstill since the
first week of the landing.
Rumours floated from one unit to another :
" We were going to make a great attack on the
a8th " always a fixed date ; "the Italians were
landing troops to help the Australians at Anzac"
every possible absurdity was noised abroad.
Hawk was on Chocolate Hill with our
advanced dressing station. I was on " C '
170
THE DEPARTURE
Beach, Lala Baba, with the remainder of the
ambulance. I had lost all my officers by sick-
ness and wounds, and I was now the last of the
original N.C.O.'s of " A " Section. Except for
the swimming and my own observations of
tracks and birds and natural history generally,
this was a desperately uninteresting period.
Orders to pack up ready for a move came
suddenly. It was now late in September. The
wet season was just beginning. The storm-
clouds were coming up over the hills in great
masses of rolling banks, black and forbidding.
It grew colder at night, and a cold wind sprang
up during the day.
Every one was bustling about, packing the
operating tent and equipment, operating table,
instruments, bottles, pans, stretchers, " monkey-
boxes," bandages, splints, cooking dixies, bully-
beef crates, biscuit tins everything was being
packed up and sorted out ready for moving.
But where ? No one knew. We were going
to move . . . soon, very soon, it was rumoured.
Within every mind a small voice asked
" Blighty ? " And then came another whiff
of rumour : " The Xth Division are going
England perhaps ! "
171
AT SUVLA BAY
But it was too good to believe. Everyone
wanted to believe it ... each man in his
inmost soul hoped it might be true . . . but it
couldn't be England . . . and yet it might !
One night the Indian Pack-mule Corps came
trailing down with their little two-wheeled, two-
muled carts and transported all our medical
panniers away into the gloom, and they 'went
towards Lala Baba. It was a good sign.
Everything was gone now except our own
packs and kit, and we had orders to " stand by "
for the command to " Fall in."
We lay about in the sand waiting and won-
dering. At last towards the last minutes of mid-
night we got the orders to "Fall in." The
N.C.O.'s called the " Roll," "numbered off" their
sections and reported " All present and correct,
sir ! "
In a long straggling column we marched
from our last encampment towards Lala Baba.
The night was very dark and the sand gave
under our feet. It was hard going, but every
man had a gleam of hope, and trudged along
heavy-laden with rolled overcoat, haversack and
water-bottle and stretcher, but with a light
heart.
172
THE DEPARTURE
The advanced party from Chocolate Hill met
us at Lala Baba. Here everything was bustle
and hurry.
Every unit of the Xth Division was packed up
and ready for embarkation. Lighters and tugs
puffed and grated by the shore. Horses stamped
and snorted ; sergeants swore continually ; officers
nagged and shouted.
Men got mixed up and lost their units, sections
lost their way in the great crowd of companies
assembled.
Once Hawk loomed out of the darkness and a
strong whiff of rum came with him ... he
disappeared again : " See you later, Sar'nt
lookin' after things important practically
everythink "
He was full of drink, and in his hurry to
look after "things" (mostly bottles) he lost some
of his own kit and my field-glasses. He worked
hard at getting the equipment into the lighters,
notwithstanding the fact that he was "three
parts canned."
Every now and then he loomed up like some
great khaki-clad gorilla, only to fade away again
to the secret hiding-place of a bottle.
And so at last we got aboard. It was still a
AT SUVLA BAY
profound secret. No one knew whither we
were going, or why we were leaving the desolation
of Suvla Bay.
But every one was glad. Anything would be
better than this barren waste of sand and flies
and dead men.
That was the last we saw of the bay. A sheet
of gray water, a moving mob on the slope of
Lala Baba, the trailing smoke of the tug, and
a pitch-black sky and Hawk lurching round
and swearing at the loss of his bottle and his
kit.
An old sea-song was running in my mind :
" But two men of her crew alive
What put to sea with seventy-five ! "
Only three months ago we had landed 25,000
strong ; and now we numbered about 6000. A
fearful loss a smashed Division.
We transferred to a troop-ship standing out
in the bay with all possible speed.
Still with the gloom hanging over every-
thing we steamed out and every man was dead
tired.
However, I found Hawk, and we decided not
to sleep down below with the others, all crowded
174
THE DEPARTURE
together and stinking in the dirty interior of the
ship.
We took our hammocks up on deck and slung
them forward from the handrail near one of the
great anchors.
I had a purpose in doing this. I had no
intention of going to sleep. By taking note
of a certain star which had appeared just to
the right of a cross-spar, and by noticing its
change of position, I was enabled to guess
with some exactitude the course we were
laying.
For the first two or three hours the star
and the mast kept a perfectly unchangeable
position.
I woke up after dozing for some minutes, and
taking up my old stand near the companion-way
again took my star observation. But this time
the star had swept right round and was the other
side of the mast. We had changed our course
from south-west to north. Just then Hawk came
up the companion-way, no doubt from a bottle-
hunt down below.
It's Salonika ! " said he.
" We've turned almost due north in the last
quarter of an hour.
AT SUVLA BAY
" I know it, been down to the stokers' bunks
it's Salonika another new landing."
" They keep the Xth for making new landings."
And so to the Graeco-Serbian frontier and a
fresh series of adventures, including sickness, life
in an Egyptian hospital and then England.
CHAPTER XXVIII
LOOKING BACK
THE queer thing is, that when I look back
upon that " Great Failure " it is not the danger
or the importance of the undertaking which
is strongly impressed so much as a jumble of
smells and sounds and small things.
It is just these small things which no author
can make up in his study at home.
The glitter of some one carrying an army
biscuit-tin along the mule track ; the imprinted
tracks of sand-birds by the blue ./Egean shore ;
the stink of the dead ; a dead man's hand sticking
up through the sand ; the blankets soaked each
morning by the heavy dew ; the incessant rattle
of a machine-gun behind Pear-tree Gully ; the
distant ridges of the Sari Bahir range shimmering
in the heat of noon-day ; the angry " buzz " of
the green and black flies disturbed from a jam-pot
lid ; the grit of sand in the mouth with every bite
of food ; the sullen dullness of the overworked,
death-wearied troops ; the hoarse dried-up and
N 177
AT SUVLA BAY
everlasting question : " Any water ? "; the silence
of the Hindus of the Pack-mule Corps ; the
" S-s-s-e-e-e-e-o-o-o-op ! Crash ! " of the high
explosives bursting in a bunch of densely solid
smoke on the Kislar Dargh, and the slow
unfolding of these masses of smoke and sand in
black and khaki rolls ; the snort and stampede
of a couple of mules bolting along the beach
178
LOOKING BACK
with their trappings swinging and rattling under
their panting bellies ; the steady burning of the
star-lit night skies ; the regular morning shelling
from the Turkish batteries on the break of dawn
over the gloom-shrouded hills ; the far-away
call of some wounded man for " Stretchers !
Stretchers ! " ; the naked white men splashing
and swimming in the bay ; the swoop of a couple
of skinny vultures over the burning white sand
of the Salt Lake bed to the stinking and decom-
posing body of a shrapnel-slaughtered mule hidden
in the willow-thickets at the bottom of Chocolate
Hill ; a torn and bullet-pierced French warplane
stranded on the other side of Lala Baba lying
over at an angle like a wounded white seabird ;
the rush for the little figure bringing in " the
mails " in a sack over his shoulder ; the smell of
iodine and iodoform round the hospital-tents ;
the long wobbling moan of the Turkish long-
distance shells, and the harmless " Z-z-z-eee-e-
e-o-ooop!" of their "dud" shells which buried
themselves so often in the sand without ex-
ploding ; the tattered, begrimed and sunken-eyed
appearance of men who had been in the
trenches for three weeks at a stretch ; the
bristling unshaven chins, and the craving desire
N2 I
AT SUVLA BAY
for " woodbines " ; the ingrained stale blood
on my hands and arms from those fearful gaping
wounds, and the red-brown blood-stain patches
on my khaki drill clothes ; the pestering curse of
those damnable Suvla Bay flies and the lice with
which every officer and man swarmed.
The awful cut-off, Robinson Crusoe feeling
no letters from home, no newspapers, no
books . . . sand, biscuits and flies ; flies, bully
and sand . . .
Stay-at-home critics and prophets of war can-
not strike just that tiny spark of reality which
makes the whole thing "live."
However many diagrams and wonderful ideas
these remarkable amateur experts publish they
won't "go down" with the man who has humped
his pack and has " been out.''
Mention the word "Blighty" or "Tickler's
plum-and-apple," "Kangaroo Beach" or "Jhill-o !
Johnnie ! >: or " Up yer go an' the best o'
luck ! " to any man of the Mediterranean
Expeditionary Force and in each case you will
have touched upon a vividly imprinted impres-
sion of the Dardanelles.
There was adventure wild and queer enough
in the Dardanelles campaign to fill a volume of
180
LOOKING BACK
Turkish Nights Entertainments, but the people at
home know nothing of it.
This is the very type of adventure and incident
which would have aroused a war-sickened people ;
Identity disc worn round the
neck by all British soldiers.
which would have rekindled war-weary enthusi-
asm and patriotism in the land. Maybe most of
these accounts of marvellous escapes and 'cute
encounters, secret scoutings and extraordinary
expeditions will lie now for ever with the silent
181
AT SUVLA BAY
dead and the thousands of rounds of ammunition
in the silver sand of Suvla Bay.
The stars still burn above the Salt Lake bed ;
the white breakers roll in each morning along the
blue sea-shore, sometimes washing up the bodies
of the slain just as they did when we camped
near Lala Baba.
But the guns are gone and there the heavy
silence of the waste places reigns supreme.
THE END.
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