May 24th
Perfect day after ten; very heavy rain earlier. My job to draw supplies from Main Supply depot for Division. Rotten job, which starts at six. Brigade not moved.
Hear that Italy has definitely come in. This closes a channel of supplies into Austria and Germany, and is bound to tell in a few months.
Japanese bomb shells experimented with in Australian trenches at Gaba Tepe. They are fired by a trench mortar and have a range of four hundred yards. They have a small propeller to keep them straight, and explode with great violence, blowing trench to bits.
The first one tried fell beautifully in a Turkish trench at two hundred yards’ range, and exploded with great violence. Turks started kicking up a fearful row, and about fifty rushed out like a lot of hornets. Machine gun turned on them and scotched the lot. Great request now on our part for Japanese bomb shells.
News now arrives that two submarines from Germany have got into the Mediterranean through the Straits of Gibraltar, and that they are making for this part of the world as hard as they can go. Most of the Fleet and transports in consequence move off at nightfall for Lemnos Harbour, off the village of Mudros, where our transports concentrated before the landing. Looking out to sea from the beach, the feeling of loneliness engendered by the departure of the shipping is curious—yesterday I looked seawards and the ocean was dotted with warships, transports, etc., pinnaces darted to and fro, all was hurry and bustle, during which one had a comfortable feeling that at our backs were our Naval comrades, ready to help at a moment’s notice; now, less than half the shipping lies off the coast than did a week ago, and a feeling of loneliness, almost of fear, comes over me.
Hindu as well as Sudanese labourers now working on the beach. All the time that they are carrying anything on a cart, with six pushing, one of them, evidently in authority, walks alongside laughing and gesticulating, singing something in a Gregorian chant, to which the others answer by singing three words in a monotone. This goes on all the time and causes much amusement to the Tommies, who of course imitate, whereupon the coolies laugh and sing all the louder.
We have now built a bivouac of boxes on the cliff edge, the right side of the beach looking towards the sea, and from there we obtain a fine view of the scenes on the beach and the road below at the foot of the cliff, which is gradually being widened, built up, and extended round to “X” Beach.