Part 12

At 11.30 an exceptionally heavy shell came over from Asia (a high explosive) and fairly shook the earth. Two minutes after, two more came, and every living soul rushed for cover. Then for three hours they pasted us: over they came, one after the other, with terrific shrieks and deafening explosions, throwing chunks of hot jagged-edged metal whizzing in all directions. All the mules and horses, as far as possible, were got under cover, and men rushed to their dugouts. Carver, Way, Davy, Foley, Phillips, and I were under cover of the cliff in our “bivvy,” which cannot be called a dugout, as it is simply a wide platform cut in and built up on the side of the cliff and in the line of fire, between the 60-pounder battery, twenty-five yards to our west, and the Asiatic battery. The 60-pounders soon opened fire, and then a duel began; and after one or two have pitched first over our “bivvy” into the sea, and one or two just short, we get nervy and decide to quit. Phillips and Davy made the first dash down the cliff, and the others said they would wait for the next shell. It came shrieking along, burst, and I got up and made a dart down the slope. I was down to the bottom of that cliff in thirty seconds, and found myself with the Divisional Ammunition Column people, and all amongst boxes of high explosive. Ammunition Column Officers are there, but I begin to think it would have been safer up in the “bivvy,” where the others still were, for they did not follow me. After a lull in the firing, I went up to the cliff, and half-way up they popped off again, and I was fortunate in finding a very safe dugout belonging to Major Horton, and he invited me in with Major Huskisson, Major Shorto, Poole, and Weatherall. And while shells still come over, first bursting on the beach, then in the sea, then on the top of our cliff, and then on the high ground on the back of the beach, we have lunch.

_7.30 p.m._

I am writing this in our “bivvy” once more, and aeroplanes are up spotting for the 60-pounders. They have just pooped off. One almost shakes the cliff when she fires. Asia has answered, but the shell has pitched on the east side of “W” Beach. The suspense of waiting for these shells is getting on the nerves of us all. What gets on my nerves more than shells is the losing of the “pukka” regular officers of this splendid Division, who are so cheery and manly, so reassuring to one and to each other. When they are killed, the stuffing and grit are almost knocked out of you. We four Supply Officers have now been under fire almost every day since April 25th, night and day, and a rest away from it all would be awfully welcome. Yet we pull ourselves together when we realize what the infantry have gone through and are still going through; I hate talking like this, it makes me think I am getting “wind up.” Fish is plentiful to-day, killed by Asia’s shells, brought in by enterprising Greeks and sold to Tommies. Excellent eating.

_June 20th._

Last night one Asiatic gun fired over to our camp one high explosive shell every half an hour, but everybody was well dug in, and no harm was done. I was sound asleep.

This morning Turkish artillery is very active, but Asia’s guns are not doing much. We are improving our “bivvy,” making it possible to do our work without much interruption. It is almost impossible to keep books and organize the feeding of an army with high explosive and other shells dropping around, Lord knows where next. At the Supply depot, however, we are very exposed, and it is very trying to stand there issuing day’s food and loading up the wagons with shells flying overhead, and therefore I am having a proper dugout made. We have had many casualties there now, and the Supply and Transport men have absolutely no chance to save themselves when standing in the open, with high explosives bursting near. We try and treat it humorously, but it is always a relief when the job is done.

This morning my staff-sergeant came to me and said, “The R.A. —— have taken ——” (shriek of a shell and a bang, during which we both looked over our shoulders) “them supplies to the gully, sir.” I reply, “All right,” and then we both duck behind a biscuit-box as another shell comes nearer. Not much use really getting behind a box, but it looks safer than nothing at all.

As Hyslop, our Canadian Vet., said, “Any hole looks good when Asia gets busy.”

This afternoon I walked along under the cliff to Gully Beach to see my Brigade, who have now gone into reserve for a rest. On the way we pass a Padre holding evening prayer and preaching a sermon. As I come back I learn that several shrapnel had burst over the cliff, two officers, one man, and a horse being wounded. A piece had hit the heel of the boot of the Padre as he was conducting the service.

I spoke to several officers of the Royal Scots who had been in the fighting two nights ago, during which the Manchester Territorials retired, evacuating two trenches, which the Royal Scots and one company of the Worcesters took back twenty minutes after. Colonel Wilson, O.C. Royal Scots, has been awarded the D.S.O. for this piece of work.

Bombs were used freely, and when the Royal Scots had got to the foremost trench, at one time Turks and British both occupied the same trench, the Turks hastily erecting a barricade in the trench itself to protect them from the Royal Scots, who, however, quickly drove them out by bombs. Steel assured me that the Turks were using explosive bullets, but I doubt this; but I do think that they reverse their bullets now and again. I notice that his face is pitted with little cuts, and I learn that he has suffered this through being in the front line with his regiment in the battle of June 4th, and on reaching their objective—the Turkish trench in front—while hastily helping in the work of building a parapet with sand-bags, was struck full in the face by a sand-bag bursting through being struck by machine gun fire. He is acting Adjutant to the regiment.

I hear that there is to be a French bombardment to-night, followed by an infantry attack.

_June 21st, 6 a.m._

There is a fearful bombardment going on; every battery on shore is concentrating its gunfire on a Turkish redoubt on the Turkish left, called the Haricot Redoubt, and also on the trenches. The Turkish batteries are replying furiously, but without effect, though “Asiatic Annie” is rather nasty, her shells falling around the French batteries. One cannot see the effect, because of the dust that the shells are kicking up, which is blowing right down to the beach. The 60-pounders on our right, twenty-five yards away, are joining in with a deafening report; only one is in this action. The echo of her voice plays ducks and drakes around the coast and the few transports about, getting fainter as the sound dies away. French battleship at mouth of Straits firing heavily. Destroyers continually patrolling around her.

_11 a.m._

The infantry attack by the French has started, and there is a report of heavy musketry all along their line.

_12 noon._

I can see the French advancing under a perfect hail of shrapnel over the ridge behind De Tott’s Battery. They are lost to view, and now I can only see hundreds of shells bursting and hear an undertone of musketry. I can see nothing now but dust and smoke.

_4 p.m._

On duty at depot. Fighting died down. Howitzer from Asia firing our way, but cannot reach us. Shells bursting about Hill 138.

News that the French have done well and advanced quite a good way.

_6 p.m._

Asia fires on submarines off “W” Beach and nearly hits one. They clear off for half an hour and then come back.

Perfect weather, and fine day for flying. Aeroplanes doing good work, whirring about over Achi Baba and Asia.

_7.45 p.m._

The Turks are counter-attacking our right in force, but the French, with the support of the “75’s,” are holding the ground which they have won to-day. Roar of guns growing louder and louder.

If the French manage to hold their own, it will considerably lessen the morale of the enemy, and the hill should be taken in the near future, and our own job will be half over.

_8.30 p.m._

Battle still going on. On beach Tommies singing “There’s a Little Grey Home in the West.” Sun just going down behind Imbros, making most lovely colouring. Sea dead calm: most peaceful scene, looking out to sea, but when one turns one’s back one sees a great battle raging three miles inland. Extraordinary contrast.

_June 22nd._

Very hot, but perfect day. French attack successful yesterday. They took two lines of trenches, and so have shortened and strengthened our front. Walked with Phillips and Birch (second in command of another submarine that has just arrived) to Gully Beach, overland. All quiet on front. Turkish artillery dead quiet, but French “75’s” now and again popping off. See Brigade H.Q., now in rest on the side of cliffs, and also Essex Regiment. Hear that Revel, of the Essex, has died of wounds. Ripping young chap. Had a cheery chat with him up at Brigade H.Q. two weeks ago. The 29th Division officers are falling fast now, and we feel their loss terribly. A Taube came over this morning and dropped three bombs, but only hit one man, wounding him slightly, but killed nine horses. I thought I saw the bombs drop quite clearly, as I was watching through glasses, and it was surprising the time that they took to drop. I may have been mistaken—the Taube was about over me—but I thought I saw a pencil line, as it were, drawn against the sky. Nasty suspense waiting for the things to reach the ground.

O.C. of the West Lowland Territorial Engineers killed by shell at gully yesterday. Very fine chap.

_8 p.m._

A quiet day. Rumour that we are to expect asphyxiating gas dodge, and that we are going to have respirators served out. Unfortunately, the prevailing wind is down the Peninsula and in our faces, and we are barely four miles from the Turkish trenches. Beautiful evening, and the sun setting behind Imbros is making most exquisite colouring.

_June 23rd, 10.30 a.m._

Turks very quiet. French “75’s” now and again firing. Very hot, fine day. Rode last night to Gully Beach with Carver, round by road on cliffs on “W” coast. Beautiful moonlight night. Wagons trekking up and down, and now and again a sentry challenges with his bayonet pointed to the breasts of our horses, which we rein in, at the same time shouting “Friend,” answered by “Pass, friend; all’s well.” I should like to feel that it really was “all well.”

Enemy aircraft brought down yesterday, falling in Turkish lines.

French losses in recent battle, 2,000.

To-night I ride again with Carver to Gully Beach, which is now the home of the 29th Division H.Q.

The steep cliffs on either side of the gully are honeycombed with dugouts, each with a little light shining, and in the declining light, with the moon hanging overhead, shining on the sea, it is a very beautiful sight. We had a topping ride back along the road on the edge of the cliff overlooking the calm sea, lit up by silver moonlight. We could see quite plainly enough to canter, and cantering by moonlight in such beautiful surroundings is a unique pleasure.

_June 24th._

To-day has been very hot and arid, very fine, and the sea dead calm, but artillery duels have been going on all day.

As the French were so successful in their last battle, having captured those trenches and the Haricot Redoubt on their left, thereby straightening and shortening our line, I think there is going to be another general attack for the hill to-morrow, preceded by an exceptionally heavy bombardment. If successful, then the danger of asphyxiating gas attack for the present is over.

Went up to Brigade H.Q. with Phillips. Beautiful moonlight, and all quiet on front. Had a nice gallop back on West Krithia road, but my mare nearly ran away with me; a bit dangerous going, as there were so many shell-holes about. Pink Farm and West Krithia road get so badly dusted with shrapnel all day and every day now, that I usually go up by night or early morning to H.Q.

_June 25th._

It is now exactly two months since we landed. Turkish artillery has been fairly active to-day. It has been very hot, but a beautiful day, and is now a most beautiful night, with the sea dead calm. We are having some nice bathing. The fly pest is worse than ever, and is frightfully worrying. The attack is not to come off to-morrow, after all, but Sunday.

To-day the _Lord Nelson_, escorted by destroyers, went up the West Coast and bombarded some target behind Achi Baba. Shortly after, a column of smoke arose behind the hill, and evidently the _Lord Nelson_ has made good practice. She was shelled by a Turkish field battery, but only two shells burst immediately over her, and hardly did any damage.

_June 26th._

I rose at 5.30 a.m. and, getting my mare saddled, rode over to the other side of the beach and woke up Butler, the Quartermaster of the Worcesters, who had promised to give me what he called “a personally conducted Cook’s Tour to the first-line trenches.” We had some hot tea and biscuits and a tot of rum, and then we mounted and started off. My mare was full of the joy of life and very fresh.

As we went over the crest on to the West Coast road, mist was hanging low on the cliffs and at the foot of Achi Baba. Above, the sky was cloudless. The words of Omar came to mind—

Awake, for Morning in the bowl of Night Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to flight.

I wish the stone would put the Turks to flight.

We rode to the gully, and then down on to the beach; there a priest was preparing an altar on biscuit-boxes, and about four hundred troops were waiting to take Holy Communion. We rode up the bed of the gully, and it was the first time that I had been right up. The Engineers had made a good road up, winding in and out between high, irregular cliffs, covered with gorse, and passing little gullies running out of the main one, to right and left. All up, for about a mile and a half, the sides are honeycombed with dugouts for troops to rest after a spell in the trenches, for Battery H.Q., and signal posts, etc. We passed the H.Q. of the 86th Brigade, the latter being dug-in in a charming spot a mile up from the beach. Thompson, my late Staff Captain, was seated on a terrace high up the cliff, shaving, and shouted “Good-morning” to me. Arriving at the head of the gully, we dismount and hand over horses to a groom, with instructions to him to take them across country to Pink Farm. We meet Harding, the Q.M. of the Royal Fusiliers.

We climb up the right side of the gully—a most beautiful spot, which would delight artists—and enter into a trench, over which bullets whiz, and now and again shrapnel. Passing along the trench for some way, we turn to the left, and go for quite a hundred yards along the communication trench, leading into a maze of trenches, but we are enabled to find our way by directing sign-boards, such as “To Reserve Trenches,” “To Support Trenches,” “To Fire Trench,” and names of units marked on as well.

We at last find ourselves in the Reserve, and have a chat with the Essex. Then we wend our way and pass along an uninhabited trench, an evidently disused communication trench, and come on what is literally the emblem of death grinning at us. We see a grinning skull, with almost all the flesh rotted off it, a bundle of rags, a hand, and two lower parts of legs with boots and puttees intact. Such a sight in earlier life would have filled me with horror. But I look upon such sights now as one would look upon a ruined house.

We come to a dugout in the support trenches, and are asked to wait, as two men have just been hit by shrapnel. Two R.H.A. men tell us that at the end of the next communication trench there is a Naval 12-pounder gun that had opened fire that morning on what was thought to be a poisonous-gas factory in a nullah in the Turkish lines, and that a Turkish battery had found our gun out and was shelling it. The two men who happened to be here had been hit. Shelling seems to have ceased, and one R.H.A. man said to the other, “Come on, Bill; if we are going to get ’it, we are going to get ’it!” This sounded good philosophy, and so we followed them. One of them shouldered a sack of food, and the other two jars of rum. Round the corner we passed the two wounded men—one wounded in the arm and the other badly in the shoulder; but both seemed quite cheerful about it.

We went along the communication trench, on and on, until I really thought that the damn trench would lead into the Turkish lines, and then it gradually got shallower and shallower, until we found ourselves in the open, but under cover of a rise, which was more or less protected from Turkish fire. Then, suddenly, we came on this 12-pounder gun and saw three gunners crouching in a dugout. The two gunners who were leading the way went off down another trench hastily, pointing the way for us to follow to the fire-trenches, and we nipped over that open space in double-quick time, I taking a heap of used cartridges in my stride, and at last we found ourselves in the well dug-out front-line fire-trenches, where we found the Worcesters. We had a chat with the officers.

Shortly after our arrival, shelling began again with that 12-pounder for a target; they put salvo after salvo over at the place we had passed. It was rather interesting watching the shelling from our part of the trench, and the sergeant-major seemed to be thoroughly enjoying it.

We have a look at the front trenches, which are very well made, with high parapets of sand-bags, iron loopholes, and periscopes, and nice little dugouts for officers’ messes and for men to sleep in, and kitchens, larders, stores, etc. All the time bullets whiz over or thud against the sand-bags, but one feels quite safe there, although only a hundred yards away from the Turks. It is a bit dangerous going along the communication trenches by day, as in places one can be seen, and from there can see the enemy, they being so shallow. We soon got back along the beastly long communicating trench to the Reserve, another one farther along to the one we came. Then to the support line, and up out into a nullah, and following that along we came to the open place into which several nullahs ran, known as “Clapham Junction,” which often gets shelled pretty badly, and always under fire from “overs.” Thence on to the main Krithia road, and across country to the Pink Farm, where we found our horses waiting. They were shelling the West Krithia road, and so we cut across country to the West Coast road, and cantered home in fine style, arriving back to breakfast at 9.30 a.m.

Not much artillery fire came from the Turks during the day, but the “75’s” were steadily plugging them in.

_June 27th._

The attack is to take place to-morrow. I rode up to Brigade H.Q. this morning. They were shelling a bit, but not much.

To-day is very quiet, but we are steadily sending shells over. Asiatic battery seems to have been withdrawn, but there is a very big gun somewhere that sends a 6-inch over now and again to the neighbourhood of Pink Farm, but it does not reach the beaches.

In coming back from H.Q. this morning, shrapnel began to burst over Pink Farm and behind, and I made my mare do her best gallop away, and, in order to keep off the road, cut to the right across country. We got amongst a maze of disused trenches, which she absolutely refused to jump; and to top it all, she kept getting her legs entangled in telephone wires laid along the ground, causing me to continually get off to disentangle her. She is an awful fool over these things, and those damned shells seemed to come nearer and nearer every minute. When I _did_ get on the road, I made her gallop as she has never galloped before.

_June 28th._

A beautiful summer morning. This morning is the morning of a battle. We are going to try to take a Turkish redoubt on our extreme left, and to push our line forward on the left, so as to curl somewhat round Krithia. We call the redoubt “The Boomerang Fort.”

H.M.S. _Talbot_ comes in with destroyers and mine-sweepers, and a Monitor—the _Abercrombie_, I think—and they take up positions off Gully and “Y” Beaches on the West Coast.

A bombardment begins at 9 a.m., as I am issuing rations, the _Talbot_ and two or three destroyers hurling over their large shells in an enfilading fire on to the Turkish trenches and the redoubt, while all our guns on shore, with the help of the French heavies and the now invaluable little “75’s,” join in the concert.

At 10 a.m., issuing finished, I take my glasses and walk along the cliff, taking up a position on the side of an extra piece of high ground, and sit comfortably there with my back to it. Two 60-pounders behind me are firing away at the same target, at which all the guns on land and sea are concentrating their awful fire, a target of not more than fifteen hundred yards of the Turkish line, with the little redoubt at the back. Shells—large, small, black, yellow, and white—burst in hellish confusion and awful chaos, while Turkish batteries, raised to fury, reply, first on to one battery, then another. But their fire seems controlled by a flurried brain, for the shells burst harmlessly, high in the air, or, except over our first line, of which they have the range, accurately on no targets at all.

Destroyers pour in broadsides, then swoop round, making a circle, and take up a new position, letting forth viperous rounds of broadside once more. A captive sausage-balloon on a tramp ship sails high in the air, well out to sea, spotting for the _Talbot_ and the destroyers. It is by far the most terrific and mighty bombardment that I have seen, and, I think, appears to be so because of the large amount of artillery concentrated on to so small a target.

_11 a.m._

The bombardment in no way seems to slacken, but I clearly see the range increased, and hear the officer behind me commanding the two 60-pounders, which are in action just near, to increase the range. I watch carefully, and as the smoke and dust quickly clear away from the redoubt and Turkish front line, which had been subjected to this terrible ordeal for two solid hours, I hear a roar of musketry, mingled with the excited, rapid reports of machine-guns. I actually see, in one part, a line of blue spurts of flame, a curious effect, caused by the dark background of gorse and trees. And then the sun reflects on hundreds of small metal discs, and I see leap as one man from our trenches rows and rows of khaki figures, each equipped with a small shining disc fastened on to his back. On they run, and swarm up the redoubt like packs of hounds, and strangely—though perhaps I am too far away—I see none fall.

The scene has passed: I have seen a gallant charge, made in the old style. In five minutes it is over and become glorious history. The bombardment continues, and the scene goes back to one of bursting flame, yellow, green, white, and black smoke drifting away in the strong breeze to the sea. The 60-pounders behind me steadily plunge and recover as their charges are hurled forth on their destructive journeys, with an ear-splitting roar. Suddenly over the din I hear a familiar and fear-striking sound: it is the deep boom-_s-h-r-i-e-k_ of “Asiatic Annie,” and her sister follows quickly after, and they are endeavouring to get at the 60-pounders just behind and silence their efforts. The 60-pounders take no heed, but go steadily on. They are hard to hit, and are well dug in. I am directly in the line of fire, and what missed them might get me, and so, after one shell bursts damnably close, I abruptly slither down the slopes of the cliff into the arms of two smelly Greeks, who have been sitting below me, shouting now and again gleefully, “Turkey finished!”

Our camp gets a bad shelling. Two passers-by are killed, and one of our transport men is buried in his dugout, and when dug out is found dead.

_4.30 p.m._