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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.12.12.00*END* + + + + + +This etext was 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 + + MADE 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 se 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 Iightships, 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 witha 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 burstiing 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 Mycenx, +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 Etext of At Suvla Bay, by John Hargrave + |