May 8th
Before breakfast this morning I am ordered to take two hundred rations up to some Lancashire Fusiliers (Territorials) who have found themselves in our part of the line. Arriving at Pink Farm, shrapnel begins to come over, and I get the mules under cover of the farm as best I can and go on to H.Q. I continue to walk along the road, and then cut across the open country to the trench where the Brigade are. They are sitting in the trench having breakfast, and tell me that the Lancashire Fusiliers have now gone to the beach. Festin, of the Border Regiment, is now our Brigade Major, and he asks me to take a message to the Field Company of Engineers attached to the Brigade, just behind Pink Farm, off the road. As we talk, shrapnel bursts over Pink Farm and to its left, probably trying to get at a battery which is in position there. I take my leave, and on getting back to Pink Farm I find that one of the Syrian mule-drivers has been hit in the stomach by a shrapnel bullet. He is lying on the ground behind the walls of the farm groaning, and on seeing me cries piteously to me in Russian. I send over to an Indian Field Ambulance close by, and in a few minutes two native orderlies come running over noiselessly with a stretcher. They stoop down, and with the tenderness of women lift the wounded boy on to the stretcher and carry him away. We trek back, and on the way I deliver the message to the Field Company.
For transport we now have little A.T. two-wheeled carts, known in the Indian Army as ammunition transport, drawn by two little Indian mules. These are in camp near the lighthouse, between “W” Beach and “V” Beach. Delightful place this, and most interesting. The orderliness of everything is astonishing; the quaint little tents—oblong, with sloping sides—are arranged in neat rows. The inhabitants are surely the most cleanly people on earth. Here I see groups of them, stripped except for a loin-cloth, busy washing their shining, dusky bodies. After this, little brass jars are produced, from which oil is poured over them and rubbed in. Others, having finished this, are industriously combing their long black locks and bushy beards. Others, again, are making chupatty, a species of pancake, in broad, shallow metal bowls—I taste one and find it excellent. Other groups of these dark warriors are sitting outside their little tents smoking hookahs; all the men we meet salute punctiliously. Near by are the white officers’ tents, quite luxurious affairs. The whole place is delightful and looks almost like a riverside picnic, only everything is very orderly. As to the carts before mentioned, these are most ingenious. They are little two-wheeled affairs with a pole, like the old-fashioned curricle; each is drawn by two small mules, not larger than ponies. Wonderful little fellows they are, bred in Northern India—Kashmere and Thibet, I believe. Lord! how they work—they can pull almost anything, and they are so surefooted and the little carts so evenly balanced that they can go about anywhere. It is a very interesting sight to see a convoy of these carts on the move, with their dusky, turbaned drivers sitting crouched up like monkeys on them, chanting some weird Oriental ballad as they go, to the accompaniment of jingling harness. They are well looked after, too, these little mules—the drivers have had the care of them for years, perhaps—and their training is perfect. They look as fat as butter, and their coats shine like satin—very different from the hulking, ugly brutes that we have brought—American. They appear to be quite docile, and it is not necessary to have eyes in the back of your head when walking through their lines.
I hear to-day that Major Barlow, to whom I was talking a few days ago in the trenches, has been badly wounded.
One aeroplane has been very busy going out and coming back after short trips over the enemy’s positions, followed by little puffs of bursting shrapnel when over their lines. The weather is perfect.
Swiftsure and Queen Bess are now up the coast off the gully, and are giving the left slope of Achi Baba and Krithia something to write home about. Torpedo destroyers are also joining in, and later the shore batteries take up the tune, and a bombardment similar to yesterday’s starts, preparatory to another battle.
French “75’s” are barking away incessantly, and the bombardment is increasing in ferocity.
New Zealanders are on the extreme left, then the 87th Brigade, next the 88th and 86th, or what is left of it, with the new Territorial Lancashire Fusiliers. Next come Australians, up on the hill by the White House; and on the extreme right down to the edge of the Straits, the French. The line forms the shape of a concave section, the extremes resting on ground on either side of the Peninsula.
Through glasses at six o’clock I can see little figures running here and there on the high ground to the extreme right beyond the White House—now taking cover, now running forward, now disappearing on the other side; ugly black shells rain amongst them and make a sickening sight. Turkish artillery appears to have increased considerably. Their shells rain all along our line, but none come on the beaches. All their artillery seems concentrated on our trenches. Again and again I see shells fall right in the middle of men who seem to be running. It is difficult to discern whether they are Turks or our men.
I watch till the sight sickens me, and then I come away and arrange the rations to go up to-night, seeing the boxes roped up on to the pack-mules or loaded on to the A.T. carts. Two shells come near the beach, bursting with a black explosion in the air. Rifle fire goes on all night, but artillery dies down to fitful shelling. I hear that the net result of to-day’s work is a gain of five hundred yards, but that we have had great casualties.