June 3rd
It is very windy to-day, and is blowing nearly a gale, and wind on the tip of this peninsula is an unpleasant element to be up against. In consequence, the beach is smothered with dust, and clouds of it fly in all directions, covering everybody and everything.
While issuing, shells burst on the crest of the high ground at the back of the beach steadily all the time, and nearer inland puffs of shrapnel are visible. They cannot reach us here with shrapnel, thank goodness! Shrapnel is so comprehensive. A lucky shell comes to within ten yards of our depot, kills a man, a passer-by, outright, wounds a sailor, and slightly wounds my butcher in the knee.
I ride up to Brigade with Phillips. General Doran shows us map of our objective, and carefully marks thereon where rations are to be dumped to-morrow night, for to-morrow is to be the day of an attack upon our part to take Achi. If successful, then the beginning of the end of the show will be in sight. No news from outside world, and a great scarcity of papers. Reading a paper about a month old is now a great luxury.
In the evening, Williams and Phillips and myself borrow a boat from an M.L.O. and have a short row round. It makes splendid exercise, and the scenes on shore are very interesting. Why did not we think of it before? When they shell the beach, all we have to do is to get into a boat and row out to sea, and then watch the fun. Surely a submarine would not trouble to torpedo us, and it would be a shell with our name and address on that would hit us. We pass a submarine—British—marked B9, a very small one. An officer is in the conning tower and says “Good evening” to us. We chat, and he invites us on board. Two sailors hold our little boat while we clumsily climb on to the submarine’s slippery back. We climb down a perpendicular iron ladder through a hole not much larger than a coal-shoot to a cellar under a street. Inside we find only one chamber, awfully cramped and small. At one end of this sleep the men, and at the other two officers. The chamber provides quarters for men and officers alike, and engine-room, ward-room, and ante-room, all in one, like Dan Leno’s one-roomed house. In Dan Leno’s words, “If you want to go into the drawing-room—you stay where you are!” I am shown the working of the engines, and try to look wisely at the intricate host of levers and brass things, but really can understand nothing at all of what the officer is talking about. I am shown how a torpedo is fired. You pull a thing out and she shoots. Phillips appears to know all about it though, but he doesn’t really. I look through the periscope, turn the lens round, and suddenly before my eyes I see “V” Beach and Sed-el-Bahr in vivid detail. What joy it must be to spot a Hun battleship and see her effectively hit!
The officer then invites us to sit down and call for drinks. I gasp; we never heard of such things on shore. An attentive A.B., smiling benevolently, brings along about half a dozen bottles and glasses. The officer apologizes for not having much choice. Is he pulling our legs? What perfectly charming beings these Naval fellows are! I choose sherry. Williams gets chatty about the Middlesex Yeomanry. The Middlesex Yeomanry always comes into Williams’s conversation when he gets chatty, but I can’t connect this regiment with submarines at the moment. I have two glasses, and we rise to go. Our perfectly delightful host expresses regret that we must go, and invites us again in the near future. Up the perpendicular iron steps we climb. Phillips, leading, puts his heavy boot in my face. It seems a long way up those steps. Up in the cool air, with the breeze blowing in my face, the deck of the submarine seems much narrower than when we first came on board. I look at the little boat gently heaving in the water alongside, and take one cautious step on to one of its seats, and with one foot in the boat and one on the submarine I turn to thank my host again. The little boat falls with the swell of the sea, and I promptly sit down very hard into her. All aboard, we row back merrily. Hear that two shells have arrived on the beach during our absence. Shells! Pugh! that’s nothing. We don’t worry about shells, now!
I swear that I had only two sherries; but I am very empty inside, and the cool air, after a stuffy atmosphere—— Yes! even a Padre might feel like that.