January 1916
January 1st
To-day is New Year’s Day. At this time last year this Peninsula was as peaceful a part of the world as one could find in any neutral country, though its rulers were allies of our chief enemies. To-day, a year after, we are nearing the fall of the curtain on the final act of one of the greatest tragedies of history. The curtain of the first act was rung up on a scene beautiful and romantic in its setting eight months ago, which changed, as the play developed, to scenes of gallant endeavour and Death in all his nakedness. The final act, the tragic last scene of defeat without disgrace, is full of sadness, and the great audience, although held spellbound watching and waiting, will be full of relief when the curtain drops for good.
It is strange to think, as I walk about once more on “W” Beach, that Suvla and Anzac no longer harbour British ships or house British troops, and that Turks now walk about unmolested in our late trenches and shelter themselves at night in our late dugouts. In a few days now Turks will be sitting in the place in which I am writing these notes. They are welcome, for our attempts to open their gates have failed. We have lost the game, but we have not been beaten by the Turks. They are no match for our troops. We have been beaten by Nature, or the geographical fastnesses of this impregnable Peninsula and the storms of winter. The new year is heralded in on “W” Beach by the shells of a big howitzer on the left shoulder of Achi Baba bursting with a deafening crash on the high ground of the beach, throwing large jagged splinters within a radius of two hundred yards. When such a shell bursts, all within that radius drop flat to earth or dive into a dugout. I am sure that people living further inland or in the trenches, if they have not lived on the beach, do not realize the great strain on the nerves that work under steady, effective shell fire is on this beach, cooped up as we are in such a small space, which is all a target, not to say the chief target, of the Turkish gunners.
The 29th A.S.C. men are sticking it well. I think they guess that we are evacuating, and are therefore cheery. Issuing by day, as in the early days, is now out of the question. We issue at dusk, and even then in danger of a shell in our depot. But the A.S.C., or the “Army Safety Corps” as it is termed by many in France, must never cease doing its job, for a man in the front line is hungry three times a day. As S.S.O., my job now is to see that the four Supply Officers’ indents are satisfied in full, namely the Supply Officers of the 86th, 87th, 88th Brigades and the Divisional Artillery. I must get the food ready at our depot for the night’s issue for each group, out of which the four S.O.’s must see that their troops and animals get their full ration. Their respective jobs are far more trying than is mine now, for the difficulties of getting the supplies from the beach to the troops have increased a hundredfold.
The Main Supply depot is still in the same spot as in the days of May, and there they must see that my indents are satisfied. Now they are drawing on their reserve, and, as in the case of the evacuation of Suvla, they are issuing from the inside of the large stacks of supplies, for to the Turk these stacks must not appear to grow smaller. The outside walls must be kept standing, and when the time comes the depot officers will set them ablaze with hay and petrol, and long before the Turk can reach the beaches they should be raging furnaces. The Main Supply depot office is still in the same place as of old, built out of supply boxes. Several times it has been blown down by a Turkish shell, and why it has not been shifted I cannot think. More shells are bursting daily round this depot during these days than burst in a week of June on the whole of “W” Beach. If the Turks then had had half the artillery that they have now, I do not think that we would be here to-day. Smart, the depot Supply Officer, who was wounded in August and who is now back sitting in the same old place, holds up his ruler to me this morning, the same ruler which was the stakes of the bet I had with him in the early days, that Achi Baba would be taken by June 30th, and says with a smile, “This ruler is still mine, and Achi Baba still belongs to Turkey.” Outside, Achi Baba looks more forbidding than ever, like the head of a huge vulture waiting to spring.
Howitzer shells are dropping along the road, and as I want to go up to 86th and 88th Brigade H.Q. with Horne, we go along the cliff’s edge by the Greek camp, still in the same place. The two Brigade H.Q. are in a delightful spot, dug in on the side of the cliff just this side of “X” Beach. I have a chat with General Williams and Sinclair Thompson. I enjoy going there. It is absolutely off the target, though, as things are now, one would think that there could be no spot on this tiny tip of land where one could live at all for long. Back for lunch. At three o’clock we are shelled badly in our quarter by howitzers from the hill and by Asia’s “Quick Dick,” which is on you before one can duck almost.
General Birdwood has been here and had a look round. As before mentioned, the 29th are to be last. It is rather a lot to ask of the 86th and 88th after that storm and the strain of one evacuation, but it shows G.H.Q. put a great value on us. Up to midnight I am at the Main Supply depot drawing the remainder of reserve supplies for six days for the Division, which are being put up in Leith Walk and Clapham Junction respectively for the 87th and 88th Brigades. As in the case of the evacuation at Suvla, the 86th Brigade leave shortly. Officers and men on “W” Beach are falling sick fast, with the continual strain of shelling, and in view of the evacuation are being sent off at once. There are one or two cases of men losing their reason.