May
May 1st
A few shells, but none very terrible, come over; one, however, in our depot. Beautiful weather. Heavy rifle fire heard at night. Now and again a Turkish shell lands over from Achi. The rifle fire last night was Turkish; nothing happened. Probably “wind up” on their part. Letters arrive. While sitting on a box reading, a shell comes beastly near, but bursts in a not very frightening manner twenty yards away. But I and the few near me fall flat to the ground. I have been advised to do this by an officer who is an expert in shelling, and he tells me that by so doing, though a shell may burst ten yards from you, one should be safe. My servant rolls over and over, shouting “Oh!” and I rush to him, asking him if he was hit, but find that a stone had caught him on the forehead, and but for a nasty bruise he was none the worse. This afternoon I have a bathe off “W” Beach. Crowds are bathing. What a contrast to this time last week! Only a week ago we landed, and now “W” Beach is like a seaside resort as far as the bathing is concerned. I felt in holiday mood, and with that delightful refreshed feeling that one has after a dip, I strolled along the sand up to the depot for a cup of tea. But the scream of a shell overhead from Achi, which fell in the water beyond the bathers, brought my holiday mood to an abrupt end. The mouth of the Dardanelles and the sea at the end of the Isthmus is full of warships, from battleships to small destroyers and their necessary small craft, transports, hospital ships, trawlers, and lighters. Engineers, French and English, are working feverishly at the building of piers and finishing those already begun. Stores are being unloaded, and marquees for their storage are being erected.
The scene here is extraordinarily interesting. I have never seen such a motley gathering in my life. The beach is crowded with figures, all working for dear life. The sea is dotted with lighters, out of which are being poured all kinds of military stores—wood, sand-bags, wire-netting, galvanized iron, cooping, and the like; all these things are being conveyed to the piers and from there put ashore. On the shore itself parties are at work erecting tents and marquees, and other parties are hard at work making dugouts, plying picks and shovels with a will. Here they are erecting the signals station, a contraption of beams and sand-bags. Outside, wires are being laid, and so the work of the beach parties goes busily forward. Yet to my untutored gaze the scene is wonderful. The whole beach is a hopeless mix-up of French and English, with a good sprinkling of Naval men—presenting a kaleidoscopic effect, with the afternoon sun shining upon it, such as I have never seen before. It is of course quite an orderly mob really—but this is only recognized when one watches the work of one group at a time. Here is the real business of a military landing on a hostile shore, everybody knowing what to do and how to do it, and so the work goes on without a hitch.
At 7 p.m. I start off with a long convoy of pack-mules with rations for Brigade H.Q. via the Sed-el-Bahr–Krithia road. At present it is impossible to use vehicles, for the first line is served by but two roads, which are nothing but farmers’ tracks. An armed escort of the Essex Regiment accompanies us. The Padre of the 88th Brigade, who is just joining, comes along with me, intending to join the Worcesters in the trenches. Just entering Sed-el-Bahr we are halted by a French officer, and almost immediately my head feels as if it is blown off by four spouts of flame stabbing the darkness just a few yards away, followed almost instantaneously by four deafening reports. A French “75” battery is in action, and that means business. Almost immediately after No. 4 gun had fired, No. 1 fired, then No. 2, No. 3, and No. 4 again, and so on, shell after shell following each other in rapid succession into the night, towards Achi Baba. The gunners, crouching like cats by their guns, were lit up fitfully by each flash, disappearing again in the pause of a fraction of a second between each round. An officer in a dugout behind, with telephone glued to his ear, shouts incessantly directions as to range, elevation, and depression to an officer who is standing nonchalantly smoking a cigarette behind the battery, who in turn shouts orders to the guns. The guns reminded me of two couple of hounds held in leash at a coursing meeting, barking with eagerness to be let loose. Our little pack-mules are greatly concerned at first, but become surprisingly docile as the firing goes on. A sharp order is given by the French officer standing behind the weapons; the gunners relax their tense attitudes and begin attending to parts of the guns. The officer who had first stopped us most charmingly and politely apologizes in English for delaying us, and our convoy proceeds on its track. I chat to the Padre; find he is fifty-five years of age and before the war a peace-loving rector. What circumstances to find one’s self in after fifty-five years of peaceful life! I record him in my mind as a very gallant old gentleman. We pass through the French camp down through the trees to the poplar-grove cemetery, which always now fills me with a curious awe, so ghostly do the graves look in the moonlight, lying peacefully amidst the poplar-trees. It is a most beautiful sight, with the glimmering water of the Dardanelles beyond.
Ahead on our right the reflection of the bright beam of Chanak searchlight, swinging round from east to west across the Narrows, can be seen in the sky, searching for any of our ships, should they make a dart up the Straits. Past my friends the loudly croaking bull-frogs, past the stately white pillars, on up the white road that leads to Krithia and towards our dumping-ground—Brigade H.Q.—the little mules pad carefully and surely along, led by the Syrian mule-drivers, who chatter confidentially to each other in Russian, for they now are at home in their new life, and delight in the thought that they are doing their bit in the great cause.
We arrive at our destination, and lo and behold! no one is there. Phillips and I confer. I decide to go on with Smith, Q.M. of the Hants, to find H.Q. We take an orderly each from the armed guard. I take an Essex man. We follow the white road, and arriving at the front-line trenches are pulled up short by the “’Alt, who are you?” “Supply Officer.” “Advance to be recognized.” We advance. Smith asks where Battalion H.Q. are, and learns they are a hundred yards to our left. We find, a hundred yards along, a part of the trench dug back a bit to serve as Battalion H.Q. The trenches are deeper now; one can stand up in safety, but only just. Smith asks for Captain Reid, the Adjutant; he steps out to us. We express surprise at the quietness of things. There is absolutely no firing on our front, but we can hear desultory firing on our right from the French line. Reid offers us cigarettes and lights one himself. I remark to him that it is unwise to light a cigarette standing in the open, to which he replies that the enemy are a long way away. He directs me to Brigade H.Q., further along the line. I wish him “Good-night,” and with my orderly proceed cautiously in the direction he had pointed, for it is now pitch dark. I am challenged again and again, and find myself after a bit among the Royal Scots, and one of their officers kindly lends me an orderly, who takes me to Brigade H.Q., dug in a dry brook, some two hundred yards behind the front line. Thomson is asleep, and it is with regret that I have to wake him. He tells me to dump rations in the same place as the last night’s. I start to go back, steer my way by the front line once more and in the dark miss the direction, and find myself about to walk across a track which runs through our front line towards the enemy’s and an alert sentry bringing me to the halt with a sharp challenge, I find my mistake. I then leave myself in my orderly’s hands, who takes the lead and guides me back to the Brigade dump, when I find that Phillips had met Q.M.S. Leslie and had nearly finished the unloading of the pack-mules. I really believe that if I had not been challenged and had passed through our lines towards the enemy’s, my orderly, one of the “doesn’t reason why” breed, would have calmly followed me. Some one taps me on the shoulder, and a Tommy asks me, “Where’s your rifle, mate?” I reply that I haven’t one. He then says, “Ain’t you one of the ’Ants?” and wonderingly I reply that I am the Supply Officer, and the man brings himself erect with a sharp click, begging my pardon. The reason of his mistake then dawned on me; I have on a private’s tunic.
Our goods delivered, we trek back, and on arrival at Sed-el-Bahr the sound of heavy rifle fire breaks out, but by the sound it is from our own rifles. We wonder what is happening, and think ourselves fortunate that we had finished our job before this activity started. I am in rear of the column, walking with my orderly about fifty yards behind the last mule, when I have a bad nerve shock. I have had many during the past week, but this one takes the biscuit. Out of a hole in the side of a broken-down house there leaps a French soldier. He shouts something to me in French and points a rifle, with gleaming bayonet fixed, at my chest. In days long gone past, it has sometimes happened that one of my young sisters or a brother with a warped sense of humour would leap round from the corner of the landing in our early home, just as I might be passing along, and shout “Boo-h!” I used to go hot and cold with fright, and appeared to cause intense amusement by my state of nerves. When this boy sentry, who by his looks could not have been more than nineteen, jumps out from his hole in the wall, my heart seems to stand still, until it feels that it is never going to start its job again, and then with a bound it carries on its job at about ten times its normal speed. My mouth feels like dry blotting-paper, and all I say is, “Oh, hell!” at the same time throwing my hands well over my head. My orderly, who appears most unconcerned, comes to my rescue and says with a Cockney accent “Ongley,” and our gallant ally brings his rifle to the order and allows us to pass.
Previous to this incident I had been chatting to my orderly about his life in the Army in peace days, but now walk on in silence until we have overtaken the convoy, finding the mules halted. Suddenly the French battery that we had passed earlier in the evening opens a terrible fire. I go along to its position and find that half our convoy had passed earlier, but that, the battery being suddenly called into action, the rear half of our column had been ordered to stop. In the excitement two of the mules get adrift, and with good instinct trot off to their own lines, ignoring the cries in Russian from their drivers and the angry bark of the little “75’s.” A halt of ten minutes, and, again with polite apologies, the pleasant French gunner officers, wishing us “Bon soir,” allow us to proceed. Home to bed and a good night’s rest.