December 21st
I am awakened by a few shells bursting on the beach. After breakfast I meet our new C.O., Colonel Huskisson. I dined with him in Ritchie’s dugout in May last, when he was O.C. Main Supply depot. I learn that the beaches get shelled now heavier than they were ever shelled before. During the morning I walk inland with Bell along the light railway system, which runs from the beaches and branches in several directions over the Helles Plateau, for a distance of about a mile. Mules pull small trucks up from the beach to the high ground behind the beach, where the mules are unhitched and the trucks, with their own momentum, run down the plateau, which is on a gentle slope. Bell’s idea is to have a Supply depot at the end of the railway on the plateau, and to issue from there to Horse Transport, which will come up one wagon at a time. Should transport collect in any spot on this plateau it immediately draws shell fire. I am struck by the way transport goes about in daylight and under observation from the enemy, certainly not in long convoys, but in single wagons or two or three together. Achi Baba looks more formidable than ever, and bleaker. In fact, the whole tip of the Peninsula looks far more cheerless than when I was here last.
A strong southerly wind is blowing this morning. This afternoon we have rain, and as night falls our “rest trenches” are sloughs of mud, for hardly any work appears to have been done on a system of drainage and the men have no roofing whatever. In fact, at Helles corrugated iron is practically nil, although at Suvla we did have a small supply. Do they honestly believe that they can hang on this tiny tip of land during the winter?
Just beyond the end of the railway, the ground is thickly lined with camps, consisting of rest trenches. These now lead right up to the system of deep trenches forming our front line. Behind where I am standing at the end of the railway, at a distance of three hundred yards, there stands a very large hospital of tents and huts. This could be destroyed utterly by Turkish shell fire in half an hour, yet it stands untouched. No large bodies of troops or transport are allowed to collect or pass near, of course, but small parties of two or three may pass by. D.H.Q. is about two hundred yards behind, dug in, in trenches. On their left is the West Coast road, overlooking the sea. The 87th are in the line, and a part of the 86th, the remainder being in rest camp trenches. The 88th have of course not yet arrived. Our artillery are practically in the same positions that they were six months ago.