Part 9

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.

_May 25th._

Woke up in our new “bivvy” this morning. It is very nice up here now, overlooking Imbros. From my bed I see the _Swiftsure_ fire a shot into the water. I get up at once, and looking through my glasses, see her fire another, this time between the _Agamemnon_, which is moored close by, and herself. Torpedo destroyer comes dashing up, and immediately makes big circles round the two ships. A tiny little pinnace slips out with only four sailors on it, and rushes round and round the _Swiftsure_ like a little pup defending its mother. A bugle sounds several times, and men in white swarm out from all kinds of places and stand to stations on the decks.

A submarine has been sighted right among our shipping; it had darted like an evil fish between the _Swiftsure_ and the _Agamemnon_, and the _Swiftsure_ had kept it off.

At one o’clock news arrives that H.M.S. _Triumph_ has been torpedoed off the Australian landing at Gabe Tepe, and it is a terrible shock to us all, coming as it has so soon after the sinking of the _Goliath_. A good many lives were saved—nearly all the crew. No doubt it was hit by the same submarine that attempted to finish off the _Swiftsure_ and _Agamemnon_ this morning. We are all naturally anxious at further developments.

A Turkish battery is shelling the aerodrome on the east side of “W” Beach. Some very good practice is made and one machine is damaged.

This afternoon the same thing starts, and one shell pitches into the sea. If they move their gun five degrees right, they have the range of our “bivvy” nicely.

_May 26th._

It is another perfect day, and it is absolutely ideal at our “bivvy” on the cliffs overlooking the south-west tip of the Peninsula. The sea is perfect, yet while admiring the view we hear the old familiar whistle of a shell, and one comes right over us, “plonk” into the sea. Another soon follows, and we have to go beneath the cliffs, and our aspect of the peaceful view is immediately changed. Shelling lasts half an hour, and after lunch we can come back.

Go up to Brigade H.Q. this morning, and find that South Lancashire Division have been merged with the 29th Division. Laird, quite fit and chirpy as usual, in a topping little dugout near by. Reinforcements arrive to-day, and I show them the way up. One chap asks if there is a chance of his getting into the firing-line. I answer that he will be in the firing-line in half an hour, and, poor chap! he looks queerly at me. He will get used to it, though, in a day. He asked the question as if to show that he was longing, after months of training and waiting, to get there, but had rather a shock when he found it was so near.

Flies, ordinary houseflies, are beginning to be awful pests here, simply myriads of them. People in England do not know what a fly pest is. They make a continual hum as they fly round, there are so many of them. One of our officers named Jennings gets very annoyed with them, and when trying to get a sleep in his dugout of an afternoon, has a few minutes’ indulgence in Hate, not against Germany, but against the flies, murmuring to himself “Gott strafe the flies!” over and over again.

Ritchie, my old H.A.C. pal of the Goring days, who was on the _Arcadian_, turns up at Supply depot and invites me to dinner in the near future. It does not seem so very long ago that we were having a pigeon-pie dinner in our barn at Stoke-on-Thames, when we were both gunners in the H.A.C.

Late in the afternoon shells come whistling over our bivouac once more, well overhead, and burst in the sea near to Supply ships. About fifteen come over, and the transports weigh anchor and clear out of the way, taking up moorings again behind the _Majestic_, which is lying about a thousand yards off the centre of “W” Beach. Evidently the Turks are being “spotted” for at Yen-i-Shehr, where no doubt they have many observation posts which are in telephonic communication with Chanak, further up the Straits, which in turn is in telephonic communication with Turkish H.Q. on Achi. What more ideal conditions for laying their guns could be wished for? It is fortunate for us that their artillery and ammunition are scarce. Were the full complement of artillery against us that the Germans would provide to an army of the same strength as that of the Turks, I think that we should, as things have developed now, pack up and be off within one week, and not even the dear little “75’s” could save us.

The field bakery is in working order now, in a little gully further up the coast, and we are having most excellent bread each day—not a full ration, about 40 per cent. being made up by the biscuits.

It consists of three Bakery Detachments of six Bakery Sections each, a total of twenty-four ovens, and is capable of making bread for sixty thousand men. The ovens are made of curved metal; the troughs are in a large marquee, where all the mixing of the flour and ferments is done. The bread supplied on the whole is good, but of course, under the conditions in which the men are working it is difficult to turn out bread of the quality that one expects in London. Baking goes on practically the whole of the twenty-four hours. The whole bakery is under cover, and cannot be seen in any way by the Turk, though the gully in which it has been placed can be shelled, should the Turk become aware of its presence.

I dine with Ritchie at 7.30 p.m. in his dugout under our cliff, between our position and the bakery. Five other officers are there; amongst them is Major Huskisson a charming “Gypy” Army A.S.C. man, who is in charge of the Main Supply depot here, and also a man who was in the _River Clyde_ at the landing and who saw Colonel Carrington-Smith killed. Ritchie is O.C. a Labour Corps, camped on the side of the cliff around his dugout. We play bridge after dinner, and I actually have a whisky. First game of bridge I have had since we landed, and it is weird playing in such surroundings. Outside, a perfect moonlight night.

Elsewhere I have mentioned the Isle of Imbros by night. But really it is next to impossible to describe the beauty of these Greek islands, unless one is a poet or a painter. To my mind, Imbros is the most beautiful of any of the isles in reach of the Peninsula. But to-night, as it seemed, she surpassed herself in beauty. The sea lies like a sheet of liquid silver under the rays of the moon. There, like a precious gem, lies Imbros, sleeping on the face of the waters; her deep valleys and gorges, running down to the sea, are aswim with purple shadows, and her rugged mountain crests stand out violet and clear-cut against the star-spangled velvet of the skies. Her feet are wrapt about as with a snowy drapery, woven of the little foaming crests of lazy wavelets lapping around her. From behind her the feathery night clouds appear to swathe themselves about her, and her mountain peaks seem like a coronet set upon the dusky brow of some beautiful goddess of the night. All is silent, and she sleeps peacefully upon the waters, awaiting the coming of the fiery god of the morning, who, dashing across the sky in his chariot of flame, will awaken her with a burning kiss—driving the purple shadows from her valleys and filling them with a swimming golden glory which shall make her seem even more lovely by day than by night. Truly is she a goddess upon the waters, a rival almost of Aphrodite herself.

As I go back to bed, walking back along the foot of the cliff, rifle fire is rattling away on our left. I climb up to our “bivvy,” being challenged several times, and turn into bed.

_May 27th._

Woke at 6.30 this morning, feeling very refreshed, and find it is a beautiful morning. The view is perfect from our biscuit-box “bivvy.”

I am just drowsily thinking about getting up, when a gun from H.M.S. _Majestic_ fires. This is followed immediately by the report of an explosion, and Carver says, “Good Lord, she is torpedoed!” We rush out, and see the green smooth wake of a torpedo in a straight line horizontal with our “bivvy,” starting from a point immediately in front of us. H.M.S. _Majestic_ is about eight hundred yards to our left, immediately in front of “W” Beach, and I see her, massive and strong, bristling with guns, and crowded with men in white, slowly tilting over with a list to her port side. Men are doubling on deck to their places in perfect order, with no shouting or panic. Then, evidently, the order “Every man for himself!” is given, for I see a figure leap into the water, making a big splash; then another and another—it is like jumping off the side of a house—until the sea around is dotted by bobbing heads of men swimming. Slowly she tilts over, and men clamber on to the side above the torpedo nets, which are out. As many as possible get away from the nets, for they make a trap. By this time, after only four minutes, she is surrounded by destroyers, trawlers, pinnaces, and small boats, and with perfectly wonderful and amazing efficiency they systematically pick up the struggling figures in the water.

One after the other men continue to leap, while the big ship lists; yet there are some, amongst whom are several officers, who stand on the side calmly waiting, and some still on the platform above the torpedo-nets. My glasses are glued on these men. I see them plainly in every detail, and almost the expression on their faces, as they stand on this platform with their hands behind them, holding on to the side of the ship. I see an officer in the centre looking anxiously to the right and the left, shouting directions. A man at the end manages to clamber to his left and slides painfully over pipe-stays and the usual fittings on the side of a battleship, falling with an awkward thud in the water, and another and another follow him. Then, after six minutes she begins to list quicker and quicker, and the remaining men on the torpedo-net platform still hang on. The nets curl up into themselves. These men are now horizontal to the ship, for she is now well on her side. The nets fling themselves into the air with a horrid curl, and disappear from view with these brave officers and men underneath. Can they dive and get free? The emerald green of the keel-plates appears, and in two minutes she turns turtle, her bows remaining highest and her stern beneath water. As she turns, men run, slip, and slide into the water, and at the finish, eight minutes after, her bows are showing and about fifty feet of the bottom of the ship above water at an angle.

Finally, one man is left on the green, slippery keel, and he, evidently not being able to swim, calmly takes his jacket off, sits down, and, if you please, takes off his boots, and walking slowly into the water, plunges in, having the good fortune to grab a lifebuoy, and is hauled to a tug.

The submarine has been spotted, and torpedo destroyers give chase, circling round and round, but all signs of her have disappeared. The destroyers, six in all, make bigger and bigger sweeps, when the sound of firing is heard out at sea, and about four miles to the east of Imbros I can see a big French battleship going hell for leather towards the island. She is firing astern, and immediately all six destroyers put out to sea as fast as they can steam; the French ship then fires an extra big shell astern, which explodes with great violence in the water; the destroyers coming up, she gives up firing and makes off to safety. Later: No news as yet of the submarine, and we await with a little anxiety further developments.

The survivors coming ashore were looked after by the Tommies, given new clothes, breakfast, and rum, and seemed none the worse for their adventure. One said, “This is the third —— time I have been sunk, and I’m getting a bit fed-up.” One quickly becomes a philosopher and fatalist on this Peninsula, and the fact that we are all a tonic to each other keeps our spirits up.

I hear that most of the crew are saved, including the Admiral and the Captain. About forty have lost their lives, and I feel sure amongst this number are those unfortunate brave men who stood calmly waiting for almost certain and immediate death, or the bare chance of continuing to live longer, on that trap of a torpedo-net platform.

I stroll down on the beach and talk to Naval officers about the loss, but they appear as optimistic as ever—tell me she was an old boat, of not much value nowadays, built as long ago as 1894, and that when once Achi Baba is taken the Fleet will get to work and make a dash up the Straits.

The scene is just the same this beautiful evening, but instead of a dignified, strong battleship in our midst, there remains her green bows, like the head of an enormous whale, peeping out of the water.

_7 a.m._

Taube flies over, drops bomb; two men killed.

_May 28th._

Go up to Brigade H.Q. this morning. Delightful canter along West Krithia road. I pass many camps, or rather lines of trenches on either side of the road serving as camps. Just at this time of the year crickets are very numerous. It is difficult to spot them, but they make a sound with their chirping not unlike the concerted song of a host of sparrows. I notice it more particularly at Pink Farm in the early morning, and sometimes at night on the cliffs by the sea. I find that Brigade H.Q. have moved forward a little to the left, and have dug nice quarters into the side of a small hill. They were flooded out of their previous Headquarters by a cloud burst—a curious phenomenon. We did not feel it at all on the beaches, and yet a few miles inland they experienced a veritable flood.

_5 p.m._

I ride to Morto Bay across country through the white pillars, and have a ripping bathe. It is a beautiful spot, just up the Straits, three miles from the shores of Asia, flanked on its left by high ground, on which is De Tott’s Battery, and on its right by the high wooded ground behind Sed-el-Bahr. Perfect bathing, all sand, and gently sloping until one wades out of one’s depth. Plenty of French troops bathing as well. All this side of the Peninsula is in the hands of the French. As we are bathing, one shell comes over from Achi and bursts near the white pillars.

_7 p.m._

Arriving back at “W” Beach, I can see about half a dozen destroyers bombarding a few villages on Imbros for all they are worth. Lord! are we at war with Greece now?

_May 29th._

A beautiful day, but there are no battleships lying off, and but one or two Supply ships. The absence of shipping makes a great contrast to the busy scenes amongst the Fleet and transports of a week ago, and their absence has a depressing effect on us all.

Several destroyers are patrolling up and down the coast, and from Asia to Imbros. All is quiet on the front. But reinforcements steadily arrive, and a continued steady stream of ordnance stores and supplies is unloaded from the Supply ships into lighters, which are then towed by small tugs to the piers, alongside which they are made fast. There the stores are taken over by R.E., Ordnance, or Supply Officers, who with groups of labourers unload them from the lighters on to the piers. Greek labour then handles the stores along the piers to the beach, where they are dumped on the sand. Then officers with clerks check the stores with the figures stated on their vouchers, and Greeks load on to wagons and mule-carts, which then drive off up the newly made steep roads of the beach to the R.E. park, just half-way up the beach, to the Ordnance depot on the cliff to the right of the beach looking inland, or to the rapidly growing Main Supply depot, which will soon make a splendid target for the Turkish gunners, on the high ground at the back of the beach. At times we find that the Main Supply depot is unable to satisfy all our indents, and in consequence we have to go down on to the beach and draw from the piles of supplies which have accumulated there faster than it has been found possible to cart them away. But never on any occasion do we find that our indents have to be refused from both the Main Supply depot and the beach. For the A.S.C. out here, where there are difficulties that have never been experienced before in previous campaigns—such as transporting by sea from Southampton or Alexandria, over a sea rapidly becoming infested with submarines; unloading into lighters off shore in a rough sea, with the lighters bumping and tossing roughly against the ships’ sides; towing the lighters alongside flimsy piers, always under a constant work of construction or repair; and finally the arduous work of man-handling from the lighters to the beach, carting from the beach to the Main depot and thence to trenches, guns, and camps, with a daily ration of Turkish shells to dodge—are organizing the feeding of the men in the trenches, the man at the gun, and we behind, punctiliously as our troops are fed in France. Whatever unforeseen difficulty arises, breakfast and the succeeding daily meals are always ready at the scheduled hours for General and private, officers’ chargers and mules. One hitch, and our Army here may have to go on half rations or no food at all.

“An army moves on its stomach.” True, we are not moving; but if our stomachs are not regularly and wisely fed, we shall rapidly have to move, and then in the opposite way to our objective.

The A.S.C. officer who was at dinner at Ritchie’s the other night is with me on the beach, and, as I walk with him to the Main Supply depot, he contrasts the circumstances here with those in France under which the A.S.C works. Pointing to the pier and the stacks of supplies on the beach, he says, “There you have your Havre and base.” The wagons, limbers, and mule-carts are, he tells me, the equivalent of the railway Supply pack-trains running every day from Havre to the various railheads behind the lines. We arrive at the Main Supply depot, and he says: “We are now at one of these railheads, but hardly ever does a railhead in France get shelled, and never one of them regularly and continually, as this one will be when these stacks of biscuits grow a bit higher.” Pointing to our Divisional depot of four little dumps, one for each of our groups, just three hundred yards away from us, he says: “There is your refilling point, usually two miles or more from railhead, and then seldom under shell fire.” In our case we are actually behind railhead. An officer on duty at the Main Supply depot who has been up to Anzac, as the landing of the Australians up the coast is now called, joins in our conversation, and tells us that actually on the beach at Anzac spent bullets continually fly over from the enemy trenches, adding, “Fancy spent bullets flying round the depot at Havre!”

I ride up to Brigade H.Q. in the afternoon and have tea, and am called on to supply them with the latest beach rumours, which I glean each morning from our dump and from our Naval officers on shore.

Coming back, just in front of Pink Farm I stop at the mess of the Royal Scots, who are in a trench camp. Their mess is very well dug in, and I am surprised how comfortable it has been made. They are very hospitable, and have an overflowing larder of unheard-of luxuries in this land of bare necessity. Old Steel, the Q.M., is there, and presses “Turkish delight” on to me. As we sit talking, shrapnel whizzes over and bursts behind us fifty yards to our left, trying to get “L” Battery. I hear the account of the part the Royal Scots had taken in the last little scrap, and am told that one of their sergeants, who was a man of good position in Edinburgh in civil life, was found dead, lying with a semicircle of five dead Turks around him, their heads smashed in with the butt-end of his rifle. He must have come of a fighting stock, yet never anticipated he would end his life on the battlefield.

_May 30th._

I am on duty at 6 a.m. at the Main Supply depot drawing the day’s supplies to our Divisional dump. Each of the four Supply Officers takes it in turn, so that the duty falls to me once in four days. It is a lovely fresh morning, and after signing for the supplies I light a cigarette and stroll back to my “bivvy” feeling ready for breakfast.

I meet Milward on the way, who now lives in a tent near the depot. He was our Naval Landing Officer on the _Dongola_ on April 25th, and is now one of the Naval Landing Officers on the beach. He tells me that he is about to go back to join his original ship, somewhere in the North Sea; that he does not want to go a bit, and this side of the war is far more interesting. He also says that the piers are going to be constructed so as to be proof against the bad weather that will come in the winter. Ships will be sunk to form breakwaters. “The winter?” I exclaim. “Heavens! we shall be in Constantinople long before then; Achi will be ours by June 30th, and then we have them at our mercy.”

Milward says that it is wise, however, to be ready for a winter. Winter? Lord! what a long time ahead it seems!

This afternoon I ride with Carver, Woodbridge, Foley, and Tull, with orderlies, to Morto Bay, and on the way have a delightful cross-country canter. I have difficulty, though, in making my mare jump trenches. She jumped hurdles at Warwick race-course like a bird. Had a delightful bathe while the French Senegalese were doing likewise. Absolutely coal-black figures, laughing and playing like children. No firing from Asiatic side; their guns evidently silenced by us. Only three miles across; most beautiful view, with mountains and plains of Troy in the background. This place will make a fine watering-place after the war for some enterprising capitalist.

In the background beautiful wooded country, with the stately white pillars standing up, the whole place this side of the pillars a large French camp. I like the French. They are charming. What a difference this place is now to what it was in those first few days, when we had to toil up at night through the Turkish cemetery, past the croaking frogs, with fears of snipers.

_May 31st._