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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of At Suvla Bay, by John Hargrave
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: At Suvla Bay
+
+Author: John Hargrave
+
+Release Date: July, 2002  [Etext #3306]
+Posting Date: October 30, 2009
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AT SUVLA BAY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+AT SUVLA BAY
+
+Being The Notes And Sketches Of Scenes, Characters
+
+And Adventures Of The Dardanelles Campaign
+
+By John Hargrave
+
+("White Fox" of "The Scout ")
+
+While Serving With The 32nd Field Ambulance, X Division, Mediterranean
+Expeditionary Force, During The Great War
+
+
+
+
+               To
+             MINOBI
+
+     We played at Ali Baba,
+     On a green linoleum floor;
+     Now we camp near Lala Baba,
+     By the blue Aegean shore.
+
+     We sailed the good ship Argus,
+     Behind the studio door;
+     Now we try to play at "Heroes"
+     By the blue Aegean shore.
+
+     We played at lonely Crusoe,
+     In a pink print pinafore;
+     Now we live like lonely Crusoe,
+     By the blue Aegean shore.
+
+     We used to call for "Mummy,"
+     In nursery days of yore;
+     And still we dream of Mother,
+     By the blue Aegean shore.
+
+     While you are having holidays,
+     With hikes and camps galore;
+     We are patching sick and wounded,
+     By the blue Aegean shore.
+
+                            J. H.
+
+
+ Salt Lake Dug-out,
+         September 12th, 1915.
+          (Under shell-fire.)
+
+
+
+
+TURKISH WORDS
+
+     Sirt--summit.
+     Dargh--mountain.
+     Bair 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
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+     I. IN WHICH MY KING AND COUNTRY NEED ME
+
+    II. A LONG WAY TO TIPPERARY
+
+   III. SNARED
+
+    IV. CHARACTERS
+
+     V. I HEAR OF HAWK
+
+    VI. ON THE MOVE
+
+   VII. MEDITERRANEAN NIGHTS
+
+  VIII. THE CITY OF WONDERFUL COLOUR
+
+    IX. MAROONED ON LEMNOS ISLAND
+
+     X. THE NEW LANDING
+
+    XI. THE KAPANJA SIRT
+
+   XII. THE SNIPER-HUNT
+
+  XIII. THE ADVENTURE OF THE WHITE PACK-MULE
+
+   XIV. THE SNIPER OF PEAR-TREE GULLY
+
+    XV. KANGAROO BEACH
+
+   XVI. THE ADVENTURE OF THE LOST SQUADS
+
+  XVII. "OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND!"
+
+ XVIII. TWO MEN RETURN
+
+   XIX. THE RETREAT
+
+    XX. "JHILL-O! JOHNNIE!"
+
+   XXI. SILVER BAY
+
+  XXII. DUG-OUT YARNS
+
+ XXIII. THE WISDOM OF FATHER S----
+
+  XXIV. THE SHARP-SHOOTERS
+
+   XXV. A SCOUT AT SULVA BAY
+
+  XXVI. THE BUSH-FIRES
+
+ XXVII. THE DEPARTUR
+
+XXVIII. LOOKING BACK
+
+
+
+
+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 Buckinghamshire 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.
+
+"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."
+
+"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?"
+
+"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.
+
+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 sooner 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 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..."
+
+"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 soapbox 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 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 moonlight 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 5.30 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 fisherman 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
+and bone which floated in a lot of greasy water. Some one bought a box
+of sardines in the next tent.
+
+"Goin' 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 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.
+
+It was a cattle-boat and very small and very smelly. There were no
+cabins or accommodation 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 retching 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.
+
+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 haversack, and eat it while the others were asleep in the
+carriage.
+
+
+
+
+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 Westmorland, 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 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.
+
+"'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.
+
+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 impossible 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
+cowboy!--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.
+
+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 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 that's 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 "duration"? 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 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 sketchbook 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. CHARACTERS
+
+
+It may be very amusing to read about "Kipps" and those commonplace
+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 of very ordinary, very uninteresting
+people. There was a fair sprinkling of mining engineers and miners,
+and these men were more interesting 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 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' ter do it?'--'E always left
+everythink ter me--and I ses, 'Why, sir, it's thiswise, if sobe all the
+others are afeared, I 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 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 afternoon 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 missionary, 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 about all over the world. These were
+mostly seafaring men. Savage was such a one. He was one of the buccaneer
+type, strong and sunburnt, 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 dismissed 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 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 barrack-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 Secunderabad, 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, 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 grey 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 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 therefore 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."
+
+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 disappear 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.
+
+Some months later, when the A.S.C. ambulance drivers were exercising
+their horses, he showed himself a good rough-rider, and I recalled
+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 peninsula, 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.
+
+
+
+
+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 unspeakably "fed up."
+
+Here at Basingstoke we were inspected by the King, and later by Lord
+Kitchener.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+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
+be blown up. We knew that victory or defeat were hanging in the balance,
+and perhaps the destiny of nations. But while the magnitude of the
+venture has left no impression--I cannot recall that we ever spoke about
+it--commonplace details remain.
+
+The pitch bubbling in the seams under a Mediterranean sun; the queer
+iridescent shapes of glowing, greenish phosphorus in the nighttime sea;
+the butter melting into yellow oil on the plate on the saloon table;
+the sickly smell of steam and grease and oil from the engine-room; the
+machine gun fixed at the stern with its waterproof hood; the increasing
+brilliance of the stars, and the rapid descent of evening upon the
+splendid colour-prism of a Mediterranean sunset--these, and thousands of
+other intimate commonplaces, are inlaid for ever in my mind.
+
+We went about in our shirts and drill "slacks," and the scorching
+boards of the deck blistered our naked feet. In a few days we became
+sun-tanned. Each one of us had a sunburnt V-shaped triangle on the chest
+where we left our shirts open.
+
+The voyage was uneventful. The food was poor. There was very little
+fresh water to drink. It was July. The heat was fatiguing, and the
+sun-glare blinding.
+
+The coast of Algeria on our right looked bare and terribly forsaken.
+It had an awfulness about it--a mystery look; it looked like a "juju"
+country, with its sandy spit running like a narrow ribbon to the blue
+sea, and its hazy, craggy mountains quivering in the noonday heat.
+
+Hawk and I were in the habit of coming up from our bunks in the
+evening. We used to lean over the handrail and watch the wonder of
+a Mediterranean sunset transform in schemes of peacock-blue and
+beetle-green, down and down, through emerald, pale gold and lemon
+yellow, and so to the horizon of the inland sea, in bands of deep chrome
+and orange, scarlet, mauve and purple.
+
+Hawk was the only man I discovered in all those hundreds of apparently
+commonplace souls who could really appreciate and never tire of watching
+and discussing these things.
+
+I had often heard of the blue of the Mediterranean. But I must confess
+that I rather thought it had been exaggerated by authors, artists and
+poets as a fruitful and beautiful source of inspiration.
+
+I never saw such blues before: electric-blue and deep, seething navy
+blue, flecked with foam and silver spray; calm lapis-lazuli blue; a
+sort of greeny, mummy-case blue; flashing, silk-shot blue, like a
+kingfisher's feathers. Sometimes the sea was as calm as a mill-pond, and
+you could see down and down and down.
+
+There is a certain milky look in the waters of the Mediterranean which
+I never saw anywhere else. What it is I do not know, but it hangs in the
+water like a cloud. Once there was a shoal of porpoises playing round
+us, and they curled and dived and flopped in the warm blue seas.
+
+At night Hawk and I stood for hours watching first one constellation
+"light up," and then another, till the whole purple-velvet of the
+Mediterranean night sky was pinholed with the old familiar star-designs.
+
+It struck me as most extraordinary, and almost uncanny, to see the same
+old stars we knew in England, still above us, so many hundred miles from
+home.
+
+Phosphorescent fragments went floating along beneath us like bits of
+broken moonlight.
+
+In watching and talking of these things, I quickly perceived in Hawk
+a man who not only noticed small detail and took a real interest in
+Nature, but one who had a sound, natural philosophy and a good idea of
+the reasonable and scientific explanation of things which so many people
+either ignore or look upon as "atheistic."
+
+We did not yet know whither we were sailing. We knew we were part of the
+Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, and that was all.
+
+One day we put in at Malta.
+
+Here the fruit-boats, all painted green and red and white and blue, came
+rowing out to meet us. The Maltese who manned them stood upto row their
+oars-and rowed the right way forwards, instead of facing the wrong
+way, as we do in England. They were selling tomatoes and pears, apples,
+chocolate, cigars, cigarettes, Turkish delight, and lace.
+
+Continually they cried their goods--
+
+"Cee-gar-ette!"
+
+"Cee-gar-ette!"
+
+"Tomart! Tomart!"
+
+One man recognised us as the Irish Division, and shouted--
+
+"Irish! Irish! My father Irish--from Dundee!"
+
+Here were diving-boys in their own tiny boats, diving for pennies. They
+were wonderfully lithe and graceful, with sun-tanned limbs and dripping
+black hair.
+
+Here, too, was a huge old man, who was also diving for pennies and tins
+of bully-beef. He was fat and sun-browned, and his muscles and chest
+were well developed.
+
+"Me dive for bully-beef!" he shouted. "Me dive for bully-beef!"
+
+Never once did he fail to retrieve these tins when they were chucked
+overboard.
+
+The tomatoes were very large and ripe, and the tobacco and cigarettes
+exceedingly cheap and good. Most of the men got a stock.
+
+The next day we put to sea again.
+
+It was a real voyage of adventure, for here we were, on an unknown
+course, sailing under sealed orders, no one knew whither, nor did we
+know what would be the climax to this great enterprise.
+
+Would any of us ever return across those blue-green waters?... Or would
+our bones lie, a few days hence, bleaching on the yellow sands? ...
+Mystery and adventure sailed with us--and each day the heat increased.
+The sun blazed from a brazen sky, the shadow of the halyards and the
+great ventilators were clear-cut black silhouettes upon the baking
+decks.
+
+The decks were crammed with that same khaki crowd of civilians who had
+cursed and sworn and drilled and growled for ten long months in the
+Old Country. You imagine what desperate adventurers they had suddenly
+become. Some had never been out of Ireland, others had been as far as
+Portsmouth, and taken a return voyage to the Isle of Wight. And each day
+we zigzagged across the blue seas towards some unknown Fate... death,
+perhaps... victory or failure--who could tell?
+
+Until one day a thin, yellowish-white streak appeared upon the sea-line;
+little groups of palms huddled together, and here and there a white dome
+or a needle-minaret. And so we warped into harbour, through the boom and
+past the lightships, to join the crowd of transports and battle cruisers
+lying off this muddled city--the city of wonderful colour, Alexandria.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. THE CITY OF WONDERFUL COLOUR: ALEXANDRIA
+
+
+                          Scarlet-orange;
+                          Beetle-green,
+                     Flashing like a magic screen.
+                          Silken garment,
+                          'Broidered hood;
+                        Richly woven gown;
+                     Flashing like a pantomime,
+                        In and out Aladdin's town.
+
+                          Fretted lattice;
+                          Dancing girl;
+                     Drooping lash and ebon curl.
+                          Silver tassel;
+                          Scented room;
+                         Almond "glad"-eye-look.
+                     Queersome figures prowling round,
+                         From some kiddies' picture-book.
+
+                                         Graeco-Serbian Frontier,
+                                         J. H., October 1915.
+
+
+The coal-yards and dingy quays looked gray and chill. Here were
+gray-painted Government sheds, with white numbers on the sliding doors,
+dull gray trucks, and dirty sidings.
+
+A couple of Egyptian native police in khaki drill, brown belts,
+side-arms, red fezes, and carrying canes, both smoking cigarettes,
+swaggered up and down in front of an arc-light.
+
+There were dump-yards and gray tin offices, rusty cranes, and a gray
+floating quay. Gangs of Egyptian beggars in ragged clothes and a flock
+of little brown children continually dodged the native police as we
+sailed slowly through the docks. They were the only touch of colour in a
+muddle of Government buildings, stores, and transport ships.
+
+We were all crowding to the handrail looking overboard. The Egyptian
+sunset had just vanished and the deep blue of an Eastern night held the
+docks in a haze of gloom.
+
+The pipe band of the Inniskillings was playing "The Wearin' o' the
+Green" in that mournful, gurgling chant which we came to know so well.
+
+One of the little Egyptian beggar-girls was dancing to it on the
+floating quay down below us by the flicker of the arc-lamp. She was a
+tiny mite, with a shock of black hair and brown face and arms. She wore
+a pink dress with some brass buttons hung round her neck. She danced
+with all the supple gracefulness of the out-door tribes of the desert,
+never out of step, always true and rhythmic in every motion of arms and
+body.
+
+When the pipes on board trailed away with a hiss of wind and a choking,
+gurgling noise into silence the little dancing girl began to sing in
+a deep, musical voice--the voice of one who has lived out-of-doors in
+tents--
+
+     "Itta long way--Tipple-airy!
+     --Long way to go!
+     --Long way--Tipple-airy!
+     Sweetie girl I know!..."
+
+She sang in broken English, and danced to the tune, which she knew
+perfectly.
+
+The khaki crowd aboard whistled and cheered and laughed. Some one threw
+a penny. The whole gang of beggars scrambled after it, and there ensued
+a scrimmage with much shouting and swearing in Arabic.
+
+We could see the city lit up beyond the dull gray docks.
+
+Next morning we went for a route march through Alexandria. We
+marched through the dockyards. Gangs of native workmen in native
+costume-coloured robes and bare feet, turbans and red fezes--were
+working on the transports, unloading box after box of bully-beef and
+biscuit and piling them in huge "dumps" on the quays. Rusty chains
+clanked, steam cranes rattled and puffed out whiffs of white steam.
+
+But they did not hustle or hurry. They worked under the direction of
+English sergeants and officers, loading and unloading.
+
+At last we got outside the zone of awful ugliness which follows the
+British wherever they go. The docks were left behind and the change was
+sudden and startling.
+
+It was like putting down a novel by Arnold Bennett and taking up the
+Koran.
+
+I did not trouble to keep in step or "cover off." My eyes were trying
+to take in the splendid Eastern scenes. Here were figures which had come
+right out of the Arabian Nights.
+
+Was that not Haroun Al Raschid, Commander of the Faithful, disguised
+as a water-carrier, with a goatskin bottle slung over his shoulder, and
+great yellow baggy trousers and a striped cummerbund?
+
+Here were veiled women and old men squatting under their open bazaar
+fronts, with coloured mats and blinds strung across the narrow streets.
+Fruit sellers surrounded by melons, and beans, tomatoes and figs and
+dates--a jumble of colour, orange, scarlet, green, and gold. Pitchers
+and jars and woven carpets; queer Eastern scents; shuttered windows and
+flat roofs, mules and here and there a loaded camel, two Jews in black
+robes, a band of wild-looking desert wanderers in white with hoods and
+veils.
+
+Egyptian women carrying little brown babies; who would believe there
+could be such figures, such colour and picturesque compositions?
+
+It was a short march, but we saw much.
+
+So this was the land of Egypt. It was good. What a pity we could see so
+little of it...
+
+There were very smartly dressed French women with faces powdered and
+painted and scented. Old men with hollow eyes and yellow parchment
+skins all creased and wrinkled squatted on the cobble-stones, smoking
+hubble-bubbles and long ivory-stemmed pipes.
+
+Arab boys selling oranges ran about the streets. The heat was
+stifling--the shadows purple-black, the sunlight glared golden-white on
+the buildings and towers and minarets.
+
+Here were curio-shops with queer oriental carvings and alabaster
+figures.
+
+It was like a chapter of 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 wondered where we were going and what it would be like...
+our minds were thinking of the immediate future. Each one tried to make
+out he didn't care, but each one was thinking upon the same subject--his
+luck, fate, kismet. How many would return to old England--should I be
+one; or would the Eastern sunshine blaze down upon my decomposing body
+on some barren sandy shore?
+
+We passed many of the Greek Islands--some came up pink and mauve out
+of the sea, others were green with vineyards; once or twice a little
+triangular-sailed boat bobbed along the coast.
+
+The uncertainty was a strain, and we felt utterly cut off, until at
+last we sighted a sandy streak, and later a line of volcanic-looking
+peaks--the Isle of Lemnos.
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+The crags were colourless and shimmering in the heat. The harbour was
+calm and greeny-blue. One by one, with our haversacks and water-bottles,
+belts and rolled overcoats, we went down the companion-way into the
+waiting surf-boats. Again and again these boats, roped together and
+tugged by a little launch, went back and forth from the S.S. Canada to
+the "Turk's Head Pier"-a tiny wooden jetty built by the Engineers.
+
+I asked one of the straw-hatted men of the Naval Division, who was
+casting off the painter, what the place was like--
+
+"Sand an' flies, and flies an' sand--nothinkelse!" he replied.
+
+No sooner ashore than the green and black flies came pestering and
+tormenting like a host of wicked jinn. The glare of sunlight on
+the yellow sand hurt the eyes. The deadly silence of the place was
+oppressive--especially when you had strung yourself up to concert pitch
+to face the crash and turmoil of a fearful battle.
+
+The quiet isolation and khaki desolation of jagged peaks and sandy
+slopes was nerve-breaking.
+
+You could see the thin lines of the wireless station and little groups
+of white bell-tents dotted here and there.
+
+Robinson Crusoe wasn't in it. Sand and flies and sun; sun and flies and
+sand.
+
+"Wot 'ave we struck 'ere, Bill?"
+
+"Some d---d desert island, I reckon!"
+
+"A blasted heath..."
+
+"Gordlummy, look at the d---d flies!"
+
+"Curse the ---- sun; sweat's trickling down me back."
+
+"And curse all the d---d issue..."
+
+"What the holy son of Moses did we join for?"
+
+We growled and groaned and cursed our luck. The sweat ran down under our
+pith helmets and soaked in a stream from under our armpits. We trudged
+to our camping-place along the shore. One or two Greek natives followed
+us about with melons to sell. Parched and choked with sand, we were only
+too glad to buy these water-melons for two or three leptas.
+
+The rind was green like a vegetable marrow, but the inside was yellow
+with pink and crimson pips--the colour of a Mediterranean sunset.
+
+One day ashore on this accursed island and the diarrhoea set in. I never
+saw men suffer such awful stomach-pains before. The continual eating of
+melons to allay the blistering thirst helped the disease. Many men slept
+close to the latrines, too weak to crawl to and fro all night long. The
+sun blazed, and the flies in thousands of millions swarmed and irritated
+from early morning till sundown.
+
+At night it was cold. The stars burned white-hot--a calm, fierce
+glitter.
+
+Hawk and I "kipped down" (slept) together on a sandy stretch overlooking
+the bay. We could see the green-and-red electric lights of the hospital
+ships waiting in the harbour--for us, perhaps...
+
+The "graft" (work) was fearful. All day long we were at it: hauling up
+our equipment from the beach where it had been dumped ashore. Medical
+panniers, operating marquee, tents and tent-poles, cook-house dixies,
+picks and shovels, bully and biscuit boxes and a hundred-and-one
+articles necessary to the work of the Medical Corps in the field: all
+this had to be man-handled through the sand up to our camp about a mile
+away. And the sun blazed, and the flies pestered and stung and buzzed
+and fought with each other for the drops of sweat streaming down your
+face. How long should we be here? When were we going into action?... The
+suspense was brain-racking. The diarrhoea increased: everyone went down
+with it. Some got the ague shivers and some a touch of dysentery.
+
+We became gloomy and bodily sick. We wanted to get into it--into
+action...
+
+Anything would be better than this God-forsaken island. Why the dickens
+did they leave us moping here: working in the blazing heat, and crawling
+to the latrines in the chilly nights? For goodness' sake, let's get out
+of it! Let's get to work!... So the days dragged on.
+
+The natives wore baggy trousers and coloured head-bands. They sat all
+day near our camp selling melons, tomatoes, very cheap and tasteless
+chocolates, raisins, figs and dates.
+
+We used to go down to swim in the little bay-like semicircle of the
+harbour. The water was always warm and very salt. Here were tiny
+shoals of tiny fish. The water was clear and glassy. There were pinky
+sea-urchins with spikey spines which jabbed your feet. The sandy bed of
+the bay was all ribbed with ripples.
+
+The island was humming and ticking like a watch with insect-noises:
+otherwise the deadly silence held. There were red-winged grasshoppers
+and great green-gray locust-looking crickets which whistled and
+"cricked" all night.
+
+We had to fetch our water from the water-tank boats, about a mile and a
+half distant, and haul it up in a water-cart.
+
+Gangs of natives were working under the military authorities. There
+were Greeks and Greek-Armenians, Turks and Ethiopians, Egyptians and
+half-breeds of all kinds from Malta and Gib. They were employed in
+making roads and clearing the ground for huts and camps.
+
+And all the time we had no letters from home. We were actually marooned
+on Lemnos Island: as literally marooned on a barren desert isle as any
+buccaneer of the old Spanish galleon days. We went suddenly back to a
+savage life. We went down to bathe stark naked, with the sunset glowing
+orange on our sunburnt limbs. Here it was that Hawk proved himself a
+wonderfully good swimmer. He was lithe and supple and well-made--an
+extraordinary specimen of virile manhood--and he spent his fiftieth
+birthday on Lemnos!
+
+One day came the order to pack up and man-handle all our stuff down
+to the beach ready for re-embarkation. At last we were on the move. We
+worked with a will now. The great day would soon dawn. Some of us would
+get "put out of mess," no doubt, but this waiting about to get killed
+was much worse than plunging into the thick of it.
+
+August the 6th saw us steaming out at night towards the great unknown
+climax--the New Landing.
+
+
+
+
+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."
+
+We could hear the rattle of machine-guns in the distant gloom beyond
+the streak of sandy shore. The decks were crowded with that same khaki
+crowd. We all stood eagerly watching and listening. The death-silence
+had come upon us. No one spoke. No one whistled.
+
+We could see the lighters and small boats towing troops ashore. We saw
+the men scramble out, only to be blown to pieces by land mines as
+they waded to the beach. On the Lala Baba side we watched platoons and
+companies form up and march along in fours, all in step, as if they were
+on parade.
+
+"In fours!" I exclaimed to Hawk, who was peering through my
+field-glasses.
+
+"Sheer murder," said Hawk.
+
+No sooner had he spoken than a high explosive from the Turkish
+positions on the Sari Bair range came screaming over the Salt Lake:
+"Z-z-z-e-e-e-o-o-o-p--Crash!"
+
+They lay there like a little group of dead beetles, and the wounded were
+crawling away like ants into the dead yellow grass and the sage bushes
+to die. A whole platoon was smashed.
+
+It was not yet daylight. We could see the flicker of rifle-fire, and the
+crackle sounded first on one part of the bay, and then another. Among
+the dark rocks and bushes it looked as if people were striking thousands
+of matches.
+
+Mechanical Death went steadily on. Four Turkish batteries on the Kislar
+Dargh were blown up one after the other by our battleships. We watched
+the thick rolling smoke of the explosions, and saw bits of wheels, and
+the arms and legs of gunners blown up in little black fragments against
+that pearl-pink sunrise.
+
+The noise of Mechanical Battle went surging from one side of the bay to
+the other--it swept round suddenly with an angry rattle of maxims and
+the hard echoing crackle of rifle-fire.
+
+Now and then our battle-ships crashed forth, and their shells went
+hurtling and screaming over the mountains to burst with a muffled roar
+somewhere out of sight.
+
+Mechanical Death moved back and forth. It whistled and screamed and
+crashed. It spat fire, and unfolded puffs of grey and white and black
+smoke. It flashed tongues of livid flame, like some devilish ant-eater
+lapping up its insects... and the insects were the sons of men.
+
+Mechanical Death, as we saw him at work, was hard and metallic,
+steel-studded and shrapnel-toothed. Now and then he bristled with
+bayonets, and they glittered here and there in tiny groups, and charged
+up the rocks and through the bushes.
+
+The noise increased. Mechanical Death worked first on our side, and then
+with the Turks. He led forward a squad, and the next instant mowed them
+down with a hail of lead. He galloped up a battery, unlimbered--and
+before the first shell could be rammed home Mechanical Death blew the
+whole lot up with a high explosive from a Turkish battery in the hills.
+
+And so it went on hour after hour. Crackle, rattle and roar; scream,
+whistle and crash. We stood there on the deck watching men get killed.
+Now and then a shell came wailing and moaning across the bay, and
+dropped into the water with a great column of spray glittering in the
+early morning sunshine. A German Taube buzzed overhead; the hum-hum-hum
+of the engine was very loud. She dropped several bombs, but none of them
+did much damage. The little yellow-skinned observation balloon floated
+above one of our battleships like a penny toy. The Turks had several
+shots at it, but missed it every time.
+
+The incessant noise of battle grew more distant as our troops on shore
+advanced. It broke out like a bush-fire, and spread from one section
+to another. Mechanical Death pressed forward across the Salt Lake. It
+stormed the heights of the Kapanja Sirt on the one side, and took Lala
+Baba on the other. Puffs of smoke hung on the hills, and the shore
+was all wreathed in the smoke of rifle and machine-gun fire. A deadly
+conflict this--for one Turk on the hills was worth ten British down
+below on the Salt Lake.
+
+There was no glory. Here was Death, sure enough--Mechanical Death run
+amok--but where was the glory?
+
+Here was organised murder--but it was steel-cold! There was no
+hand-to-hand glory. A mine dispersed you before you had set foot on dry
+land; or a high explosive removed your stomach, and left you a mangled
+heap of human flesh, instead of a medically certified, healthy human
+being.
+
+Mechanical Death wavered and fluctuated--but it kept going. If it
+slackened its murderous fire at one side of the bay, it was only to
+burst forth afresh upon the other.
+
+We wondered how it was that we were still alive, when so many lay dead.
+Some were killed on the decks of the transports by shrapnel.
+
+Our monitors crept close to the sandy shore, and poured out a deadly
+brood of Death.
+
+The crack and crash was deafening, and it literally shook the air... it
+quivered like a jelly after each shot.
+
+The fighting got more and more inland, and the rattle and crackle
+fainter and farther away. But we still watched, fascinated.
+
+The little groups of men lay in exactly the same positions on the beach.
+That platoon by the side of Lala Baba lay in a black bunch--stone
+dead. We could see our artillery teams galloping along like a team of
+performing fleas, taking up new positions behind Lala Baba. So this is
+war? Well, it's pretty awful! Wholesale murder... what's it all for?
+Wonder how long we shall last alive before Mechanical Death blows our
+brains out, or a leg off...
+
+Queer thing, war! Didn't think it was quite like this! So mechanical and
+senseless.
+
+And now came the time for us to land. A lighter came alongside, with a
+little red-bearded man in command--
+
+"Remind you of any one?" I said to Hawk.
+
+"Cap'n Kettle!"
+
+"Yes!"
+
+He was exactly like Cutcliffe Hyne's famous "Kettle," except that he
+smoked a pipe. We huddled into the lighter, and hauled our stores down
+below. Some of us were "green about the gills," and some were trying to
+pretend we didn't care.
+
+We watched the boat which landed just before us strike a mine and be
+blown to pieces. Encouraging sight... At last we reached the tiny cove,
+and the lighter let down a sort of tail-board on the sand.
+
+
+
+
+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 vertebrae of some great antediluvian reptile--dropping sheer down
+on the Gulf of Saros side, and, in varying slopes, to the plains and the
+Salt Lake on the other.
+
+Here again small things left a vivid impression--the crack of a rifle
+from the top of the ridge, and a party of British climbing up the rocks
+and scrub in search of the hidden Turk.
+
+The smell of human blood soaking its way into the sand from those two
+"stiffies" on the beach. The sullen silence, except for the distant
+crackle and the occasional moan of a shell. The rain which came pelting
+down in great cold blobs, splashing and soaking our thin drill clothes
+till we were wet to the skin and shivering with cold.
+
+We were all thinking: "Who will be the first to get plugged?" We moved
+slowly along the ridge, searching every bush and rock for signs of
+wounded men.
+
+We wondered what the first case would be--and which squad would come
+across it.
+
+I worked up and down the line of squads trying to keep them in touch
+with each other. We were carrying stretchers, haversacks, iron rations,
+medical haversacks, medical water-bottles, our own private water-bottles
+(filled on Lemnos Island), and three "monkey-boxes" or field medical
+companions.
+
+Those we had left on the beach were busy putting up the operating
+marquee and other tents, and the cooks in getting a fire going and
+making tea.
+
+The stretcher-squads worked slowly forward. We passed an old Turkish
+well with a stone-flagged front and a stone trough. Later on we came
+upon the trenches and bivouacs of a Turkish sniping headquarters. There
+were all kinds of articles lying about which had evidently belonged to
+Turkish officers: tobacco in a heap on the ground near a bent willow and
+thorn bivouac; part of a field telephone with the wires running
+towards the upper ridges of Sirt; the remains of some dried fish and
+an earthenware jar or "chattie" which had held some kind of wine; a few
+very hard biscuits, and a mass of brand-new clothing, striped shirts and
+white shirts, grey military overcoats, yellow leather shoes with pointed
+toes, a red fez, a great padded body-belt with tapes to tie it, a pair
+of boots, and some richly coloured handkerchiefs and waistbands all
+striped and worked and fringed.
+
+It was near here that our first man was killed later in the day. He was
+looking into one of these bivouacs, and was about to crawl out when a
+bullet went through his brain. It was a sniper's shot. We buried him
+in an old Turkish trench close by, and put a cross made of a wooden
+bully-beef crate over him.
+
+The sun now blazed upon us, and our rain-soaked clothes were steaming
+in the heat. The open fan-like formation in which we moved was not a
+success. We lost the officers, and continually got out of touch with
+each other.
+
+At last we reached the zone of spent bullets.
+"Z-z-z-z-e-e-e-e-e-pp!--zing!" "S-s-s-ippp!"
+
+"That one was jist by me left ear!" said Sergeant Joe Smith, although
+as a matter of fact it was yards above his head. Here, among a hail of
+moaning spent shots, our officers called a halt, made us fall in, in
+close formation, and we retired--what for I do not know.
+
+We went back as far as the old Turkish well. Here Hawk had something to
+say.
+
+"Our place is advancing," said he, "not retiring because of a few spent
+bullets. There's men there dying for want of medical attention--bleeding
+to death."
+
+The next time we went forward that day was in Indian file, each
+stretcher-squad following the one in front.
+
+A parson came with us. I marched just behind the adjutant, and the
+parson walked with me. He was a big man and a fair age. We went past the
+well and the bivouacs. I could see he was very nervous.
+
+"Do you think we are out of danger here?" he asked.
+
+"I think so, sir" (we were three miles from the firing-line). A few
+paces further on--
+
+"I wonder how far the firing-line is?"
+
+"Couldn't say, sir."
+
+A yard or so, and then--
+
+"D'you suppose the British are advancing?"
+
+"I hope so." And after a minute or two--
+
+"I wonder if there are any Turks near here...?"
+
+I made no answer, and marvelled greatly that the "man of God" should
+not be better prepared to meet "his Maker," of Whom in civil life he had
+talked so much.
+
+It was just then that I spotted it--a little black figure, motionless,
+away beyond the bushes on the right.
+
+
+
+
+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 by the side of the rock under which the sniper
+hid.
+
+Now we caught a glimpse of the little dark figure--then we plunged
+deeper into the rank willow-growth and bore round to the right.
+
+Hawk unslung the great jack-knife which hung round his waist and
+silently opened the gleaming blade. I did the same.
+
+"I'll surprise him; you can leave it to me to get in a good slash," said
+Hawk, and I saw the great muscles of his miner's arms tighten. "But if
+he gets one in on me," he whispered, "be ready with your knife at the
+back of his neck."
+
+A few steps farther brought us suddenly upon the rock and the sniper.
+Hawk was immediately in front of me, and his arm was held back ready
+for a mighty blow. He stood perfectly still looking at the rock, and I
+watched his muscles relax.
+
+"See it?" he said.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Dead."
+
+There was the Turk--a great heat-swollen figure stinking in the
+sunshine. As I moved forward a swarm of green and black flies, which
+had been feeding on his face and crawling up his nostrils, went up in a
+humming, buzzing cloud.
+
+A bit of wood lying near had looked like his rifle from a distance; and
+now we saw that, instead of lying on his stomach, he was lying on his
+back, and looked as if he had been killed by shrapnel.
+
+"Putrid stink," said I; "come on--let's clear out."
+
+And so our sniper-hunt led to nothing but a dead Turk stewing in the
+glaring sunshine. We rejoined the squads. No one had missed us. This
+first day was destined to be one of many adventures.
+
+
+
+
+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 when I came
+to a halt and once more tried to get my bearings. I peered at the gloomy
+sky, but there was no star. I listened for the lap-lap of water on the
+beach of Suvla Bay, but I must have been too far up the ridges to hear
+anything. There was dead silence. When I moved a little green lizard
+scutted over a white rock and vanished among the dead scrub.
+
+I was past feeling hungry, although I had eaten one army biscuit in the
+early morning and had had nothing since.
+
+It was extraordinarily lonely. You may imagine how queer it was, for
+here was I, trying to get back to my ambulance headquarters at night on
+the first day of landing--and I was hopelessly lost. It was impossible
+to tell where the firing-line began. I reckoned I was outside the
+British outposts and not far from the Turkish lines. Once, as I went
+blundering along over some rocks, a dark figure bolted out of a bush and
+ran away up the ridge in a panic.
+
+"Halt!" I shouted, trying to make believe I was a British armed sentry.
+But the figure ran on, and I began to stride after it. This led me
+up and up the ridge over very broken ground. Whoever it was (it was
+probably a Turkish sniper, for there were many out night-scouting) I
+lost sight and sound of him.
+
+I went climbing steadily up till at last I found myself looking into
+darkness. I got down on my hands and knees and peered over the edge of a
+ridge of rock. I could see a tiny beam of light away down, and this
+beam grew and grew as it slowly moved up and up till it became a great
+triangular ray. It swept slowly along the top of what I now saw was
+a steep precipice sloping sheer down into blackness below. One step
+further and I should have gone hurtling into the sea. For, although I
+did not then know it, this was the topmost ridge of the Kapanja Sirt.
+
+The great searchlight came nearer and nearer, and I slid backwards and
+lay on my stomach looking over. The nearer it came the lower I moved,
+so as to get well off the skyline when the beam reached me. It may have
+been a Turkish searchlight. It swept slowly, slowly, till at last it was
+turned off and everything was deadly black.
+
+I started off again in another direction, keeping my back to the ridge,
+as I reckoned that to be a Turkish searchlight, and, therefore, our own
+lines would be somewhere down the ridge. Here, high up, I could just see
+a grey streak, which I took to be the bay.
+
+I tried to make for this streak. I scrambled down a very steep stratum
+of the mountain-side and landed at last in a little patch of dead grass
+and tall dried-up thistles.
+
+By this time, having come down from my high position on the Sirt, I
+could no longer see the bay; but I judged the direction as best I could,
+and without waiting I tramped on.
+
+I began to wonder how long I had been trudging about, and I put it at
+about two hours.
+
+"Halt!--who are you?" called a voice down below.
+
+"Friend! stretcher-bearer!" I shouted.
+
+"Come here--this way!" answered the voice.
+
+I went down to a clump of bushes, and a man with a rifle slung over his
+shoulder stepped forward, and we both glared at each other for a second.
+
+"Do yer know where the 45th Company is?"
+
+"No idea," said I.
+
+"Any water?"
+
+"Not a drop left."
+
+"We're trying to get back to the firing-line but we're all lost--there's
+eight of us."
+
+"I'm trying to get to the 32nd Field Ambulance--d'you know the way?"
+
+"Yes; go right ahead there," he pointed, "and keep well down off the
+hills--you'll see the beach when you've gone for a mile or so--"
+
+"How far is it?"
+
+"'Bout four miles;" and then, "Got a match?"
+
+"Yes--but it's dangerous to light up."
+
+"Must 'ave a smoke--nothink to eat or drink."
+
+"Well, here you are; light up inside my helmet."
+
+He did; this hid the lighted match from any sniper's eye. The other
+seven men came crawling out of the bushes to light up their "woodbines"
+and fag-ends.
+
+"Well, I'm off," said I, and once more went forward in the direction
+pointed out by the corporal and his lost squad.
+
+"So long, mate--good luck!" he shouted.
+
+"Same to you!" I called back.
+
+And now came sleep upon me. Even as I walked an awful weariness fell
+upon every limb. My legs became heavy and slow. That short rest had
+stiffened me, and my eyelids closed as I trudged on. I lifted them with
+an effort and dragged one foot after the other. I knew I must get back
+to my unit, and that here it was very dangerous. I wanted to lie down
+on the dead grass and sleep and sleep and sleep. I urged my muscles to
+swing my legs--for I knew if once I sat down to rest I should never keep
+awake.
+
+It was while I was thus trying to jerk my sleepy nerves on to action
+that I came upon a zigzagged trench. It was fully six feet deep and
+about a yard wide. It was of course an old Turkish defence running
+crosswise along the great backbone of the Sirt. I knew now that I was
+nearing the bay, for most of these trenches overlooked the beach.
+
+There was a white object about ten yards from me. What it was I could
+not tell, and a quiver of fear ran through me and threw off the awful
+sleepiness of fatigue.
+
+Was it a Turkish sniper's shirt? Or was it a piece of white cloth, or a
+sheet of paper? In the gloom of night I could not discover.
+
+However, I determined to go steady, and I crept up to a dark thorn-bush
+and stood still. It did not move. Still standing against the dark bush to
+hide the fact that I was unarmed, I shouted--
+
+"Halt! who are you?" in as gruff and threatening a tone as I could
+command.
+
+Silence. It did not move. I ran forward along the trench and there
+found a white pack-mule all loaded up with baggage; I could make out
+the queerly worked trappings, with brass-coins on the fringed bridle
+and coloured fly-tassels over the eyes. It was stone dead and stiff. Its
+eyes glared at me--a glassy glare full of fear. The Turkish pack-mule
+had been bringing up material to the Turks in the trench when it had
+been killed--and now the deep sides of the trench were holding it
+upright.
+
+I trudged away towards the beach and lay down to sleep at last among the
+other men of the ambulance, who were lying scattered about behind tufts
+of bush or against ledges of rock.
+
+When weighed down with sleep any bed will serve.
+
+And this was the end of our first day's work on the field.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV. THE SNIPER OF THE PEAR-TREE GULLY
+
+
+We used to start long before daylight, when the heavy gloom of early
+morning swept mountain, sea and sand in an indistinct haze; when the
+cobwebs hung thick from thorn to thorn like fairy cats'-cradles all
+dripping and beaded with those heavy dews. The guard would wake us up
+about 3.30 A.M. We were asleep anywhere, lying about under rocks and in
+sandy dells, sleeping on our haversacks and water-bottles, and our pith
+helmets near by. We got an issue of biscuit and jam, or biscuit and
+bully-beef, to take with us, and each one carried his iron rations in a
+little bag at his side.
+
+So we set off--a long, straggling, follow-my-leader line
+of men and stretchers. The officer first, then the
+stretcher-sergeant--(myself)--and the squads, two men to a stretcher,
+carrying the stretchers folded up, and last of all a corporal or a
+"lance-jack" bringing up the rear in case any one should fall out.
+
+Cold, dark, shivery mornings they were; our clothes soaked in dew
+and our pith helmets reeking wet, with the puggaree all beaded with
+dew-drops. We toiled up and up the ridges and gullies of the Kislar
+Dargh and the Kapanja Sirt slowly, like a little column of ants going
+out to bring in the ant eggs.
+
+Often we had to wait while the Indian transport came down from the
+hill-track before we could proceed, and we always came upon the
+Engineers' field-telegraph wires on the ground. I would shout "Wire!"
+over my shoulder, and the shout "Wire!... Wire!... Wire!" went down the
+line from squad to squad.
+
+From the old Turkish well I led my stretcher-squads past the gun of the
+Field Artillery (mounted quite near our hospital tents) along a track
+which ran past a patch of dry yellow grass and dead thistles--here
+among the prickly plants and sage-bushes grew a white flower--pure and
+sweet-scented--something like a flag--a "holy flower" among the dead and
+scorched-up yellow ochre blades and the khaki and dull grey-greens of
+thorns. We went along this track, past the dead sniper which Hawk and
+I had so carefully stalked. Near by, hidden by bushes and rank willow
+thickets lay a dozen more dead Turks, swollen, fly-blown and stinking in
+the broiling sun. We hurried on past the Turkish bivouacs--many of the
+relics had been picked up by the British Tommies since last I saw the
+place: the tobacco had all gone--many of the shirts and overcoats which
+had been lying about had disappeared--the place had been thoroughly
+ransacked. We trudged past the wooden cross of our dead comrade and we
+were silent.
+
+Indeed, throughout those first three days--Saturday, Sunday and
+Monday--when the British and Turks grappled to and fro and flung
+shrapnel at each other incessantly; when the fighting line swayed
+and bent, sometimes pushing back the Turks, sometimes bending in the
+British; when the fate of the whole undertaking still hung in the
+balance; when what became a semi-failure might have been a staggering
+success: in those days the death-silence fell upon us all.
+
+No one whistled those rag-time tunes; no one tried to make jokes, except
+the very timid, and they giggled nervously at their own.
+
+No one spoke unless it was quite necessary. Each man you passed asked
+you the vital question: "Any water?"
+
+For a moment as he asks his eyes glitter with a gleam of hope--when you
+shake your head he simply trudges on over the rocks and scrub with the
+same fatigued and sullen dullness which we all suffered.
+
+Often you asked the same question yourself with parched and burning
+lips.
+
+One after another we came upon the wounded. Here a man dragging a
+broken leg along with him. Here a man holding his fractured fore-arm and
+running towards us. Sometimes the pitiful cry, faint and full of agony:
+"Stretchers! Stretcher-bearers!" away in some densely overgrown defile
+swept with bullets and shrapnel.
+
+And so at last all my squads had turned back with stretchers loaded with
+men and pieces of men. I went on alone--a lonely figure wandering about
+the mountains, looking and listening for the wounded.
+
+I came now upon a party of Engineers at work making a road. They were
+working with pick-axe and spade--clearing away bush and rocks.
+
+"Any water?" they asked.
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"Any wounded?" I said.
+
+"Some down there, they say," said a red-faced man.
+
+"Damn rotten job that," muttered another, as I went on.
+
+"Better keep well over in the bushes," shouted the red-faced man.
+"They've got this bit of light-coloured ground marked--you're almost
+sure ter git plugged."
+
+"Thanks!" I called back, and broke off to my left among the sage and
+thistle and thorn.
+
+I went now downhill into an overgrown water-course (very much like the
+one in which I used to sleep and eat away back by the artillery big
+gun). Here were willows and brambles with ripe blackberries, and
+wild-rose bushes with scarlet hips. "Just like England!" I thought.
+
+And then, as I crossed the little dry-bed stream and came out upon a
+sandy spit of rising ground: "Z-z-ipp! Ping!"--just by my left arm.
+The bullet struck a ledge of white rock with the now familiar metallic
+"tink!"
+
+I went on moving quickly to get behind a thorn-bush--the only cover near
+at hand. Here, at any rate, I should be out of sight.
+
+"Ping!"
+
+"Crack--ping!"
+
+I could hear the report of the rifle. I lay flat on my stomach,
+grovelled my face into the sandy soil and lay like a snake and as still
+as a tortoise.
+
+I waited for about ten minutes. It seemed an hour, at least, to me. The
+sniper did not shoot again. In front of my thorn-bush was an open space
+of pale yellow grass, with no cover at all. I crawled towards the
+left flank and tried to creep slowly away. I moved like the hands of
+a clock--so slowly; about an inch at a time, pushing forward like a
+reptile on my stomach, propelling myself only by digging my toes into
+the earth. My arms I kept stiff by my side, my head well down.
+
+But the sniper away behind that little pear-tree (which stood at the far
+end of the open space) had an eagle eye.
+
+"Ping! z-z-pp! ping!"
+
+I lay very still for a long time and then crept slowly back to my
+thorn-bush.
+
+I tried the right flank, but with the same effect. And now he began
+shooting through my thorn-bush on the chance of hitting me.
+
+Behind me was a dense undergrowth of thorn, wild-rose bramble, thistle,
+willow and sage.
+
+I turned about and crawled through this tangle, until at last I came
+out, scratched and dishevelled and sweating, into the old water-course.
+
+The firing-line was only a few hundred yards away, and the bullets from
+a Turkish maxim went wailing over my head, dropping far over by the
+Engineers whom I had passed.
+
+I wanted to find those wounded, and I wanted to get past that open
+space, and I wanted above all to dodge that sniper. The old scouting
+instincts of the primitive man came calling me to try my skill against
+the skill of the Turk. I sat there wiping away blood from the scratches
+and sweat from my forehead and trying to think of a way through.
+
+I looked at the mountains on my left--the lower ridge of the Kapanja
+Sirt--and saw how the water-course went up and up and in and out, and I
+thought if I kept low and crawled round in this ditch I should come out
+at last close behind the firing-line, and then I could get in touch with
+the trenches. I could hear the machine-gun of the M--'s rattling and
+spitting.
+
+I began crawling along the water-course. I had only gone three yards or
+so, and turned a bend, when I came suddenly upon two wounded men. Both
+quite young--one merely a boy. He had a bad shrapnel wound through his
+boot, crushing the toes of his right foot. The other lay groaning upon
+his back--with a very bad shrapnel wound in his left arm. The arm was
+broken.
+
+The boy sat up and grinned when he saw me.
+
+"What's up?" asked his pal.
+
+"Red Cross man," says the boy; and then: "Any water?"
+
+"Not a drop, mate," said I. "Been wounded long?"
+
+"Since yesterday evening," says the boy.
+
+"Been here all that time?" I asked. (It was now mid-afternoon.)
+
+"Yes: couldn't get away"--and he pointed to his foot.
+
+"'E carn't move--it's 'is arm. We crawled 'ere."
+
+"I'll be back soon with stretchers and bandages," I said, and went
+quickly back along the water-course and then past the Engineers.
+
+"Found 'em?" they asked.
+
+"Yes: getting stretchers up now," said I. "Awful stink here! Found any
+dead?" I asked.
+
+"Yes, there's one or two round here. We buried one over there yesterday:
+'e fell ter bits when we moved 'im."
+
+I went on. Soon I was back in the ditch beside the wounded men. I had
+successfully dodged the sniper by following along the bottom of the bed
+of the stream. With me I brought two stretcher-squads, and they had a
+haversack containing, as I thought, splints and bandages. But when
+I opened it, it had only some field dressings in it and some iodine
+ampoules.
+
+I soon found that the man's arm was not only septic, but broken and
+splintered.
+
+"Got a pair of scissors?" I asked.
+
+One man had a pair of nail-scissors, and with this very awkward
+instrument I proceeded to operate. It was a terrible gash. His sleeve
+was soaked in blood. I cut it away, and his shirt also.
+
+I broke an iodine phial and poured the yellow chemical into his great
+gaping wound. Actually his flesh stunk: it was going bad.
+
+"Is it broke?" he asked.
+
+"Be all right in a few minutes; nothing much." I lied to him.
+
+"Not broke then?"
+
+"Bit bent; be all right."
+
+With the nail-scissors I cut great chunks of his arm out, and all
+this flesh was gangrenous, and mortification was rapidly spreading. My
+fingers were soaked in blood and iodine.
+
+I cut away a piece of muscle which stunk like bad meat.
+
+"Can you feel that?" I asked.
+
+"Feel what?" he murmured.
+
+"I thought that might hurt. I was cutting your sleeve away, that's all."
+
+I cut out all the bad flesh, almost to the broken bones. I filled up
+the jagged hole with another iodine ampoule. I plugged the opening with
+double-cyanide gauze, and put on an antiseptic pad.
+
+"Splints?" I asked.
+
+"Haven't any."
+
+So I used the helve of an entrenching-tool and the stalks of the willow
+undergrowth.
+
+I set his arm straight and bandaged it tightly and fixed it absolutely
+immovably. Then we got him on a stretcher, and they carried him three
+and a half miles to our ambulance tents. But I'm afraid that arm had to
+come off. I never heard of him again.
+
+The other fellow was cheerful enough, and only set his teeth and
+drew his breath when I cut off his boot with a jack-knife. Wonderful
+endurance some of these young fellows have. There's hope for England
+yet.
+
+
+
+
+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--"Tum! Tum!"
+
+                        J. H.
+                (Sailing for Salonika.)
+
+
+Kangaroo Beach was where the Australian bridge-building section had
+their stores and dug-outs.
+
+It was one muddle and confusion of water-tanks, pier-planks, pontoons,
+huge piles of bully-beef, biscuit and jam boxes. Here we came each
+evening with the water-cart to get our supply of water, and here the
+water-carts of every unit came down each evening and stood in a row and
+waited their turn. The water was pumped from the water-tank boats to the
+tank on shore.
+
+The water-tank boats brought it from Alexandria. It was filthy water,
+full of dirt, and very brackish to taste. Also it was warm. During the
+two months at Suvla Bay I never tasted a drop of cold water--it was
+always sickly lukewarm, sun-stewed.
+
+All day long high explosives used to sing and burst--sometimes killing
+and wounding men, sometimes blowing up the bully-beef and biscuits,
+sometimes falling with a hiss and a column of white spray into the sea.
+It was here that the field-telegraph of the Royal Engineers became a
+tangled spider's web of wires and cross wires. They added wires and
+branch wires every day, and stuck them up on thin poles. Here you could
+see the Engineers in shirt and shorts trying to find a disconnection, or
+carrying a huge reel of wire. Wooden shanties sprang up where dug-outs
+had been a day or so before. Piers began to crawl out into the bay,
+adding a leg and trestle and pontoon every hour. Near Kangaroo Beach was
+the camp of the Indians, and here you could see the dusky ones
+praying on prayer mats and cooking rice and "chupatties" (sort of
+oatcake-pancakes).
+
+Here they were laying a light rail from the beach up with trucks for
+carrying shells and parts of big guns.
+
+Here was the field post-office with sacks and sacks of letters and
+parcels. Some of the parcels were burst and unaddressed; a pair of
+socks or a mouldy home-made cake squashed in a cardboard box--sometimes
+nothing but the brown paper, card box and string, an empty shell--the
+contents having disappeared. What happened to all the parcels which
+never got to the Dardanelles no one knows, but those which did arrive
+were rifled and lost and stolen. Parcels containing cigarettes had a
+way of not getting delivered, and cakes and sweets often fell out
+mysteriously on the way from England.
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+Officers, N.C.O.'s, and men were tired out with overwork. This young
+officer came up to the Kapanja Sirt to take over the next spell of duty.
+
+I remember him now, pale and sickly, with the fever still hanging on
+him, and dark, sunken eyes. He spoke in a dull, lifeless way.
+
+"Do you think you'll be all right?" asked the adjutant.
+
+"Yes, I think so," he answered.
+
+"Well, just stick here and send down the wounded as you find them. Don't
+go any farther along; it's too dangerous up there--you understand?"
+
+"All right, sir."
+
+It was only a stroke of luck that I didn't stay with him and his
+stretcher-squads.
+
+"You'd better come down with me, sergeant," says the adjutant.
+
+Next day the news spread in that mysterious way which has always puzzled
+me. It spread as news does spread in the wild and desolate regions of
+the earth.
+
+"... lost... all the lot..."
+
+"Who is?"
+
+"Up there... Lieutenant S--- and the squads..."
+
+"How-joo-know?"
+
+"Just heard--that wounded fellow over there on the stretcher... they
+went out early this morning, and they've gone--no sign, never came back
+at all--"
+
+"'E warn't fit ter take charge... 'e was ill, you could see."
+
+"Nice thing ter do. The old man'll go ravin' mad."
+
+"It was a ravin' mad thing to put the poor feller in charge... "
+
+"Don't criticise yer officers," said some wit, quoting the Army
+Regulations.
+
+The adjutant and a string of squads turned out, and we went back again
+to the spot where we had left the young officer the evening before.
+
+The cook and an orderly man remained, and we heard from them the details
+of the mystery.
+
+Early that morning they had formed up, and gone off under Lieutenant
+S--- along the mule track overlooking the Gulf of Saros. That was all.
+There was still hope, of course... but there wasn't a sign of them to
+be seen. The machine-gun section had seen them pass right along. Some
+officers had warned them not to go up, but they went and they never came
+back.
+
+There were rumours that one of the N.C.O.'s of the party, a sergeant,
+had been seen lying on some rocks.
+
+"Just riddled with bullets--riddled!"
+
+The hours dragged on. I begged of the adjutant to let me go off along
+the ridge on my own to see if I could find any trace.
+
+"It's too dangerous," he said. "If I thought there was half a chance I'd
+go with you, but we don't want to lose any more."
+
+Those ten or twelve men went out of our lives completely. Days passed.
+There was no news. It was queer. It was queer when I called the roll
+next day--
+
+"Briggs!"--"Sar'nt!"
+
+"Boots!"--"Sarn't!"
+
+"Cudworth!"--"Here, Sar'nt!"
+
+"Dean!"--"Sar'nt!"
+
+"Desmond!"--"Sar'nt!"
+
+"D---."
+
+I couldn't remember not to call his name out. It seemed queer that he
+was missing. It seemed quite hopeless now. Three or four days dragged
+on. Everything continued as usual. We went up past the place where we
+had left them, and there was no news, no sign. They just vanished. No
+one saw them again, and except for the "riddled" rumour of the poor old
+sergeant the whole thing was a blank.
+
+We supposed that the young officer, coming fresh to the place, did not
+know where the British lines ended and the Turks' began, and he marched
+his squads into that bit of No Man's Land beyond the machine-gun near
+"Jefferson's Post," and was either shot or taken prisoner.
+
+It made the men heavy and sad-minded.
+
+"Poor old Mellor--'e warn't a bad sort, was he!"
+
+"Ah!--an' Bell, Sergeant Bell... riddled they say... some one seen
+'m--artillery or some one!"
+
+It hung over them like a cloud. The men talked of nothing else.
+
+"Somebody's blundered," said one.
+
+"It's a pity any'ow."
+
+"It's a disgrace to the ambulance--losin' men like that."
+
+And, also, it made the men nervous and unreliable. It was a shock.
+
+
+
+
+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 through the eye-holes... anything--trivial,
+childlike details.
+
+I remember reading an article in a magazine which stated that under
+fire, and more especially in a charge, a man moves in a whirl of
+excitement which blots out all the small realities around him, all the
+"local colour." He remembers nothing but a wild, mad rush, or the tense
+intensity of the danger he is in.
+
+It is not so. The greater the danger and the more exciting the position
+the more intensely does the mind receive the imprint of tiny commonplace
+objects.
+
+Memories of Egypt and the Mediterranean are far more a jumble of general
+effects of colour, sound and smell.
+
+The closer we crept to the shores of Suvla Bay, and the deathbed of the
+Salt Lake, the more exact and vivid are the impressions; the one is like
+an impressionist sketch--blobs and dabs and great sloshy washes; but the
+memories of Pear-tree Gully, of the Kapanja Sirt, and Chocolate Hill
+are drawn in with a fine mapping pen and Indian ink--like a Rackham
+fairy-book illustration--every blade of dead grass, every ripple of
+blue, every pink pebble; and towards the firing-line I could draw it
+now, every inch of the way up the hills with every stone and jagged rock
+in the right place.
+
+Before sailing from England I had bought a little colour-box, one good
+sable brush, and a few H.B. pencils--these and a sketch-book which my
+father gave me I carried everywhere in my haversack. The pocket-book was
+specially made with paper which would take pencil, colour, crayon, ink
+or charcoal. I was always on the look out for sketches and notes. The
+cover bore the strange device--
+
+                           JOHN HARGRAVE,
+                              R.A.M.C.
+                        32ND FIELD AMBULANCE.
+
+printed in gilt which gradually wore off as time went on. Inside on the
+fly-leaf I had written--
+
+     "IF FOUND, please return 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.
+
+We moved our camp from "A" Beach farther along towards the Salt Lake. We
+moved several times. Always Hawk and I "hung together." Once he was very
+ill in the old dried-up water-course which wriggled down from the Kislar
+Dargh. He ate nothing for three days. I never saw anything like it
+before. He was as weak as a rat, and I know he came very near "pegging
+out." He felt it himself. I was sitting on the ground near by.
+
+"I may not pull through this, old fellow," says Hawk, with just a
+tear-glint under one eyelid. He lay under a shelf of rock, safe from
+shrapnel.
+
+"Come now, Fred," says I, "you're not going to snuff it yet."
+
+"Weak as a rat--can't eat nothink, PRACtically... nothink; but see here,
+John,"--he seldom called me John--"if I do slip off the map, an' I
+feel PRACtically done for this time--if I SHOULD--you see that
+ration-bag"--he pointed to a little white bag bulging and tied up and
+knotted.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"It's got some little things in it--for the kiddies at home--a little
+teapot I found up by the Turkish bivouac over there, and one or two more
+relics--I want 'em to have 'em--will you take care of it and send it
+home for me if you get out of this alive?"
+
+Of course I promised to do this, but tried to cheer him up, and assured
+him he would soon pull round.
+
+In a few days he threw off the fever and was about again.
+
+Hawk and I had lived for some weeks in this overgrown water-course.
+It was a natural trench, and at one place Hawk had made a dug-out. He
+picked and shovelled right into the hard, sandy rock until there was
+quite a good-sized little cave about eight feet long and five deep.
+
+The same sickness got me. It came over me quite suddenly. I was
+fearfully tired. Every limb ached, and, like all the others, I began to
+develop what I call the "stretcher-stoop." I just lay down in the
+ditch with a blanket and went to sleep. Hawk sat over me and brought me
+bovril, which we had "pinched" on Lemnos Island.
+
+I felt absolutely dying, and I really wondered whether I should have
+enough strength to throw the sickness off as Hawk had. I gave him just
+the same sort of instructions about my notes and sketches as he had
+given me about his little ration-bag.
+
+"Get 'em back to England if you can," I said; "you're the man I'd
+soonest trust here."
+
+If Hawk hadn't looked after me and made me eat, I don't believe I should
+have lived. I used to lie there looking at the wild-rose tangles and the
+red hips; there were brambles, too, with poor, dried-up blackberries. It
+reminded me of England. Little green lizards scuttled about, and great
+black centipedes crawled under my blanket. The sun was blazing
+at mid-day. Hawk used to rig me up an awning over the ditch with
+willow-stems and a waterproof ground-sheet.
+
+Somehow you always thought yourself back to England. No matter what
+train of thought you went upon, it always worked its way by one thread
+or another to England. Mine did, anyway.
+
+It was better to be up with the stretcher-squads in the firing line than
+lying there sick, and thinking those long, long thoughts.
+
+This is how I would think--
+
+"What a waste of life; what a waste... Christianity this; all part
+of civilisation; what's it all for? Queer thing this civilised
+Christianity... very queer. So this really IS war; see now: how does
+it feel? not much different to usual... But why? It's getting awfully
+sickening... plenty of excitement, too--plenty... too much, in fact;
+very easy to get killed any time here; plenty of men getting killed
+every minute over there; but it isn't really very exciting... not like I
+thought war was in England... England? Long way off, England; thousands
+of miles; they don't know I'm sick in England; wonder what they'd think
+to see me now; not a bad place, England, green trees and green grass...
+much better place than I thought it was; wonder how long this will hang
+on... I'd like to get back after it's finished here; I expect it's all
+going on just the same in England; people going about to offices in
+London; women dressing themselves up and shopping; and all that...
+This is a d----place, this beastly peninsula--no green anywhere... just
+yellow sand and grey rocks and sage-coloured bushes, dead grass--even
+the thistles are all bleached and dead and rustling in the breeze like
+paper flowers...
+
+"And we WANTED to get out here... Just eating our hearts out to get into
+it all, to get to work--and now... we're all sick of it... it's rotten,
+absolutely rotten; everything. It's a rotten war. Wonder what they are
+doing now at home..."
+
+
+
+
+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 unmeaningly with the glare of insanity.
+They glanced with a horrible suspicion at their pals, and knew them not.
+The one with the ginger stubble muttered to himself. Their clothes were
+torn with brambles, and prickles from thorn-bushes still clung round
+their puttees. A pitiful sight. They tottered along, keeping close
+together and avoiding the others. An awful tiredness weighed upon them;
+they dragged themselves along. Their lips were cracked and swollen and
+dry. They had lost their helmets, and the sun had scorched and peeled
+the back of their necks. Their hair was matted and full of sand. But the
+fear which looked out of those glinting eyes was terrible to behold.
+
+We gave them "Oxo," and the medical officer came and looked at them.
+They came down to our dried-up water-course and tried to sleep; but they
+were past sleep. They kept dozing off and waking up with a start and
+muttering--
+
+"... All gone... killed... where? where? No, no... No!.. . don't move...
+(mumble-mumble)... keep still... idiot! you'll get shot... can you see
+them? Eh? where?... he's dying, dying... stop the bleeding, man! He's
+dying... we're all dying... no water... drink..."
+
+I've seen men, healthy, strong, hard-faced Irishmen, blown to shreds.
+I've helped to clear up the mess. I've trod on dead men's chests in the
+sand, and the ribs have bent in and the putrid gases of decay have burst
+through with a whhh-h-ff-f.
+
+But I'd rather have to deal with the dead and dying than a case of
+"sniper-madness."
+
+I was just recovering from that attack of fever and dysentery, and these
+two were lying beside me; the one mumbling and the other panting in a
+fitful sleep.
+
+When they were questioned they could give very little information.
+
+"Where's Lieutenant S---?"
+
+"... Gone... they're all gone..."
+
+"How far did you go with him?"
+
+No answer.
+
+"Where are the others?"
+
+"... Gone... they're all gone..."
+
+"Are they killed?"
+
+"... Gone."
+
+"Are any of the others alive?"
+
+"We got away... they're lost... dead, I think."
+
+"Did you come straight back--it's a week since you were lost?"
+
+"It's days and days and long nights... couldn't move; couldn't move an
+inch, and poor old George dying under a rock... no cover; and they shot
+at us if we moved... we waved the stretchers when we found we'd got too
+far... too far we got... too far... much too far; shot at us..."
+
+"What about the sergeant?"
+
+"We got cut off... cut off... we tried to crawl away at night by
+rolling over and over down the hill, and creeping round bushes... always
+creeping an' crawling... but it took us two days and two nights to
+get away... crawling, creeping and crawling... an' they kep' firing at
+us..."
+
+"No food... we chewed grass... sucked dead grass to get some spittle...
+an' sometimes we tried to eat grass to fill up a bit.. . no food... no
+water..."
+
+They were complete wrecks. They couldn't keep their limbs still. They
+trembled and shook as they lay there.
+
+Their ribs were standing out like skeletons, and their stomachs had
+sunken in. They were black with sunburn, and filthily dirty.
+
+Gradually they got better. The glare of insanity became less obvious,
+but a certain haunted look never left them. They were broken men. Months
+afterwards they mumbled to themselves in the night-time.
+
+Nolan, one of the seafaring men of my section who was with the lost
+squads, also returned, but he had not suffered so badly, or at any rate
+he had been able to stand the strain better.
+
+It was about this time that we began to realise that the new landing had
+been a failure. It was becoming a stale-mate. It was like a clock with
+its hands stuck. The whole thing went ticking on every day, but there
+was no progress--nothing gained. And while we waited there the Turks
+brought up heavy guns and fresh troops on the hills. They consolidated
+their positions in a great semicircle all round us--and we just held the
+bay and the Salt Lake and the Kapanja Sirt.
+
+So all this seemed sheer waste. Thousands of lives wasted--thousands
+of armless and legless cripples sent back--for nothing. The troops soon
+realised that it was now hopeless. You can't "kid" a great body of men
+for long. It became utterly sickening--the inactivity--the waiting--for
+nothing. And every day we lost men. Men were killed by snipers as they
+went up to the trenches. The Turkish snipers killed them when they went
+down to the wells for water.
+
+The whole thing had lost impetus. It came to a standstill. It kept on
+"marking time," and nothing appeared to move it.
+
+In the first three days of the landing it wanted but one thing to have
+marched us right through to Constantinople--it wanted, dash!
+
+It didn't want a careful, thoughtful man in command--it wanted dash and
+bluff. It could have been done in those early days. The landing WAS a
+success--a brilliant, blinding success--but it stuck at the very
+moment when it should have rushed forward. It was no one's fault if you
+understand. It was sheer luck. It just didn't "come off"--and only just.
+But a man with dash, a devil-may-care sort of leader, could have cut
+right across on Sunday, August the 8th, and brought off a staggering
+victory.
+
+
+
+
+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 shimmered a silver-white
+streak with grey battleships lying out.
+
+In front the fighting broke out in fierce gusts.
+
+"Pop-pop-pop-pop!--Pop-pop!" went the machine-gun. We could see one man
+getting another belt of ammunition ready to "feed." Bullets from
+the Turkish quick-firers went singing with an angry "ssss-ooooo!
+zzz-z-eeee!... whheee-ooo-o-o! zz-ing!"
+
+"D'you know where Brigade Headquarters is?" asked the adjutant.
+
+"I'll find it, sir."
+
+"Very well, go up with this message, and I shall be here when you come
+back."
+
+I took the message, saluted and went off, plunging down into the
+thickets, and at last along my old water-course where I had crawled away
+from the sniper some days before.
+
+I made a big detour to avoid showing myself on the sky-line. I knew the
+general direction of our Brigade Headquarters, and after half-an-hour's
+steady trudging with various creepings and crawlings I arrived and
+delivered my message. I returned quickly towards Pear-tree Gully. I
+stopped once to listen for the "Pop-pop-pop!" of our machine-gun but I
+could not hear it. I hurried on. It was downhill most of the way going
+back. I crept up through the bushes and looked about for signs of our
+men and the officer.
+
+I saw a man of the machine-gun section carrying the tripod-stand,
+followed by another with the ammunition-belt-box.
+
+"Seen any Medical Corps here?"
+
+"They've gone down--'ooked it... you'd better get out o' this quick
+yourself--we're retreating--can't 'old this place no'ow--too 'ot!"
+
+"Did the officer leave any message?"
+
+"No--they've bin gone some time--come on, Sammy."
+
+Well, I thought to myself, this IS nice. So I went down with the
+machine-gunners and in the dead grass just below the gully I found a
+wounded man: he was shot through the thigh and it had gone clean through
+both legs.
+
+He was bleeding to death quickly, for it had ripped both arteries.
+Looking round I saw another man coming down, hopping along but very
+cheerful.
+
+"In the ankle," he said; "can you do anything?"
+
+"I'll have a look in a minute."
+
+I examined the man who was hit in the thigh and discovered two
+tourniquets had been applied made out of a handkerchief and bits of
+stick to twist them up. But the blood was now pumping steadily from both
+wounds and soaking its way into the sandy soil. I tightened them up, but
+it was useless. There was no stopping the loss of blood.
+
+All the time little groups of British went straggling past--hurrying
+back towards the bay--retreating.
+
+It was impossible to leave my wounded. I helped the cheerful man to hop
+near a willow thicket, and there I took off his boot and found a clean
+bullet wound right through the ankle-bone of the left foot. It was
+bleeding slowly and the man was very pale.
+
+"Been bleeding long?" I asked.
+
+"About half an hour I reckon. Is it all right, mate?"
+
+"Yes. It's a clean wound."
+
+I plugged each hole, padded it and bound it up tightly. I had a look
+at the other man, who was still bleeding and had lost consciousness
+altogether.
+
+It was a race for life. Which to attend to? Both men were still
+bleeding, and both would bleed to death within half an hour or so. I
+reckoned it was almost hopeless with the tourniquet-man and I left him
+passing painlessly from life to death. But the ankle-man's wound was
+still bleeding when I turned again to him. It trickled through my
+plugging. It's a difficult thing to stop the bleeding from such a place.
+Seeing the plug was useless I tried another way. I rolled up one of
+his puttees, put it under his knee, braced his knee up and tied it in
+position with the other puttee. This brought pressure on the artery
+itself and stopped the loss of blood from his ankle. I could hear the
+Turkish machine-gun much closer now. It sputtered out a leaden rain with
+a hard metallic clatter.
+
+"Thanks, mate," said the man; "'ow's the other bloke?"
+
+"He's all right," I answered, and I could see him lying a little way up
+the hill, calm and still and stiffening.
+
+I found two regimental stretcher-bearers coming down with the rest in
+this little retreat, and I got them to take my ankle-man on to their
+dressing station about two miles further back.
+
+It's no fun attending to wounded when the troops are retiring.
+
+Next day they regained the lost position, and I trudged past the poor
+dead body of the man who had bled to death. The tourniquets were still
+gripping his lifeless limbs and the blood on the handkerchiefs had dried
+a rich red-brown.
+
+
+
+
+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 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
+kaleidoscope of Eastern blues and greens, was dull and grey.
+
+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. I 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.
+
+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 congested. 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 grey 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
+corporals 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 jostled and pushed.
+
+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."
+
+"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?"
+
+"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 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
+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. 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.)
+
+     (footnote: "Jhill-o!"--Hindustani for "Gee-up"; used by the
+     drivers of the Indian Pack-mule Corps.)
+
+
+     The Indian whallahs go up to the hills--
+       "Jhill-o! Johnnie, Jhill-o!"
+     They pass by the spot where the gun-cotton kills;
+     They shiver and huddle--they feel the night chills--
+       "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!"
+
+     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!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI. SILVER BAY
+
+
+On the edge of the Salt Lake, by the blue Aegean shore, Hawk and I dug a
+little underground 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 PRACtically 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 wonderful. In the early morning
+the waves were a rich royal blue, with splashing lines of white breakers
+rolling in and in upon the pale grey sand, and the sea-birds skimming
+and wheeling overhead.
+
+At mid-day it was colourless, glaring, steel-flashing, with the sunlight
+blazing and everything 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-grey lizards all left their
+tiny footprints on the shore.
+
+"If this silver sand was only in England a 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 SILVER 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.
+
+The Arab steed pranced, and arched its great neck. With the blue of
+the bay as a background 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, 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 PRACtically 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 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.
+
+
+
+
+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,
+     That's where the Captain fell,
+     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 bedroom. I have slumbered curled in a coil of rope on the deck of a
+cattle-boat, in an ambulance wagon, on a stretcher, in farmhouse barns
+and under hedges and haystacks. I have slept in the sand by the blue
+Mediterranean 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 immorality, 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 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."
+
+"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 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."
+
+One night Hawk told me of a Hindu fakir who sat by the roadside
+performing the mango-trick for one anna. I illustrated it in the sand as
+he told it.
+
+_caption: Dug-out, September 9, 1915._
+
+1. The fakir puts a pinch of dust from the ground 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.
+
+"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.
+
+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 soundless 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.
+
+"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--Lemnos 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,
+Clytaemnestra, at Argos--"
+
+Here the little priest, as pleased as a school-boy, scratched a rough
+sketch map in the sand--
+
+"All the islands round here are full of historical interest, you know;
+`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
+moonlight, 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 Illustrated
+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.
+
+A splendid little man, always cheerful, always looking after his
+"flock." Praying with those who were about to give up the ghost;
+administering 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
+sandbagged 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.
+
+
+
+
+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 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.
+
+"Awstralians!" said some one.
+
+"An' the corporal!"
+
+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' 32nd 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--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 bridge-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' all that sort o' thing if it gits
+known down at 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.
+
+"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 were 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 starvation 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 habitually 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 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 XIth Divisions are simply a myth
+accordin' to the papers!"
+
+
+
+
+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 couldn't see the 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 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.
+
+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 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 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."
+
+
+
+
+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 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 thousands
+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
+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 vertebrae
+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 complete "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 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."
+
+"Then what's the good of starting to dig a big permanent hospital here
+when----?"
+
+"Yours 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 "woodbine," 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 together, we bin noticing too
+much, we know the workin' o' things too well, must break up the combine,
+dangerous to 'ave people about '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 completely 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 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.
+
+
+
+
+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 "Jefferson'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 28th"--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" Beach, Lala Baba, with the remainder of the ambulance. I had lost
+all my officers by sickness 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!"
+
+But it was too good to believe. Every one 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 wondering. At last towards the
+last minutes of midnight 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.
+
+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 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 everything 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 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."
+
+"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 Aegean 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 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 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 decomposing 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 exploding; 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 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 cannot 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 impresssion of the
+Dardanelles.
+
+There was adventure wild and queer enough in the Dardanelles campaign to
+fill a volume of 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; which would have rekindled war-weary enthusiasm
+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 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.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of At Suvla Bay, by John Hargrave
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