August 20th
At 1.30 a.m. we get up and go down to the River Clyde. The River Clyde is now supporting a very fine pier that the French have constructed. The French are excellent people at organization. After waiting some time, an M.L.O. tells me that the 88th are not going till the following night, and so I say good-night to Way, who is going off with the 86th, and proceed to walk back the mile and a half to “W” Beach.
I take the wrong turning, inquire the way of a French soldier, who puts me wrong again, and I find myself in a perfect maze of French dugouts. Once in the maze, I have an awful job to get out, and after stumbling and falling about for some time, manage to find the road. Feeling very tired, I stumble along in and out of the shell holes, it being very dark, and at last I arrive at “W” Beach.
I find Major Blackburn, Camp Commandant, still at work in his office in a dugout on the side of the cliff, and he very kindly revives me with a whisky. It is now 3.30 a.m., and after chatting with him, he giving a most dismal and chilling outlook of Suvla Bay (20,000 casualties and only just hanging on to the low land), I go back to the tent. Have no bed, my kit having gone on. I lie down like a dog and sleep soundly till five o’clock, when I am awakened by the cold. I go out to try to get warm, and see the sun rise. The breath of the coming winter seems to be in the air. Phew! In winter we shall be washed off by rain, not driven off by the Turks.
I sleep again, and then have breakfast with Phillips. Heavy artillery duels all day and the Gully people get it badly—twelve men wounded.
I rest during the day, as I shall be up all night again to-night.
I wonder how many other people are keeping diaries on Gallipoli besides me. It would be interesting for me to read them, for they must all be told from far different points of view.
The impression the Gallipoli campaign has on the minds of the men in the trenches, by far the most important men in the machine of the Dardanelles Army, must be widely foreign to the impression made on the mind, for instance, of a lighterman. The man in the trenches, probably, if he has been to France, and many here have, sees no great difference from life in the trenches in the Ypres salient.
The A.S.C. baker views life here through quite differently coloured spectacles from the A.S.C. driver, the A.S.C. driver from the signal operator, the officer in the observation balloon from the M.O. of a regiment, the platoon commander from the M.L.O., the aviator to the gunner officer, the commander of a submarine from the veterinary officer; and yet each respective outlook on life, to each officer or man, is one of far more vital and of greater importance than all the views, opinions, thoughts, and actions of any of his comrades or neighbours, of any newspaper, or public opinion. It is for him his destiny. The carrying out of orders given to his particular self, though of seemingly little importance in comparison to the working of the large Army machine, is to him perhaps a matter of life or death. Death or grievous wounds may prevent him carrying out an order; in that event he will be excused, but while alive and effective, he must carry out that order to the letter.
The position that Destiny has placed him in, as part of the huge machine, controls his thoughts, actions, character and outlook on life. His daily work may bring him in a constant danger of sudden death, and he naturally views his life from the point of view of the probability of leaving it suddenly, and possibly in an awful manner. That constant thought usually makes a man braver than we would expect, for his will forces him to carry out to the letter his orders and rules his mind, which is fully aware of the danger he incurs in doing so. As well as making him braver, the thought decides his will to make the most of the pleasures of life that may pass his way, and as a result he is usually to be found of a cheery, optimistic nature, easily pleased and hard to depress. For optimists, go to the front-line trenches—or the Navy—and for pessimists, go to overworked administrative officers.
If it were possible for all ranks, from O.C. to private, in an army fighting in any certain campaign to keep an accurate diary of all they do and see, then there could be published a perfectly true record of the development and history of that campaign, so it is not possible, and never will be, for the truth of all happenings in that campaign to be known. And it never will be in any campaign. Hundreds of deeds, gallant, tragic, cowardly, and foolish, occur which are never, and can never be, recorded. When the daily Press, arm-chair critics in clubs, etc., criticize any statesman or Army Staff, they are simply talking hot air, for how is it possible for them to judge, when their source of information is as unreliable as a “W” Beach rumour? So why waste words? Much better go and do something useful, or shut up and go and hide. War is like a big game. This war we must win—or we shall lose.
If we lose, it is on too huge a scale to be through any man’s fault—it will be Destiny.
At 9.30 p.m. I walk over to “V” Beach again and find much more order there than last night. Our Brigade is moving off systematically from the pier alongside the River Clyde. I embark with the Essex on to a small trawler. Algy Wood is with me. We are a merry party. We cast off and steam out to a paddle-boat, which we come alongside, and make fast to tranship. We are packed very closely together. The skipper makes all the Tommies laugh by shouting through a megaphone, in a deep Naval drawl, to a small tug in the offing, “Finished with you, Jessie!” and off we steam north, for our unknown fate at Suvla Bay.
A Tommy expresses his feelings by the remark, “I don’t know where I am going to, but I shall be glad when I get there.”
So shall I. I take a farewell glance at the River Clyde and Sed-el-Bahr, and express the prayer that I shall not see either again during this war, and lie down on deck to sleep.