Part 8
During this month we were not greatly troubled. The men continued to make the trenches impregnable, and were contented. It was in some ways a curiously happy time.
The New Zealanders and the Australians were generally clothed by the sunlight, which fitted them, better than any tailor, with a red-brown skin, and only on ceremonial occasions did they wear their belts and accoutrements.
Our sport was bathing, and the Brotherhood of the Bath was rudely democratic. There was at Anzac a singularly benevolent officer, but for all his geniality a strong disciplinarian, devoted to military observances. He was kind to all the world, not forgetting himself, and he had developed a kindly figure. No insect could resist his contours. Fleas and bugs made passionate love to him, inlaying his white skin with a wonderful red mosaic. One day he undressed and, leaving nothing of his dignity with his uniform, he mingled superbly with the crowd of bathers. Instantly he received a hearty blow upon his tender, red and white shoulder and a cordial greeting from some democrat of Sydney or of Wellington: “Old man, you’ve been amongst the biscuits!” He drew himself up to rebuke this presumption, then dived for the sea, for, as he said, “What’s the good of telling one naked man to salute another naked man, especially when neither have got their caps?”
This month was marked by a feature that is rare in modern warfare. We had an armistice for the burial of the dead, which is described in the diary.
On the Peninsula we were extremely anxious for an armistice for many reasons. We wished, on all occasions, to be able to get our wounded in after a fight, and we believed, or at least the writer was confident, that an arrangement could be come to. We were also very anxious to bury the dead. Rightly or wrongly, we thought that G.H.Q., living on its perfumed island, did not consider how great was the abomination of life upon the cramped and stinking battlefield that was our encampment, though this was not a charge that any man would have dreamed of bringing against Sir Ian Hamilton.
_Diary._ _Wednesday, May 19, 1915._ _Kaba Tepé._ General Birdwood told me to go to Imbros to talk to Sir Ian Hamilton about an armistice, if General Godley would give me leave.
_Thursday, May 20, 1915._ _Kaba Tepé._ Have been waiting for four hours in Colonel Knox’s boat, which was supposed to go to Imbros. Turkish guns very quiet.... Hear that Ock Asquith and Wedgwood are wounded. A liaison officer down south says: “When the Senegalese fly, and the French troops stream forward twenty yards and then stream back twenty-five yards, we know that we are making excellent progress.” There is a Coalition Government at home. We think that we are the reason of that; we think the Government cannot face the blunder of the Dardanelles without asking for support from the Conservatives.
_6 p.m._ “_Arcadian._” Found George Lloyd. Have been talking to Sir Ian Hamilton with regard to the armistice.... Clive Bigham[10] was there. He lent me some Shakespeares.
_Friday, May 21, 1915._ _Kaba Tepé._ Saw Sir Ian Hamilton again this morning. The Turks are said to have put up a white flag and to have massed behind it in their trenches, intending to rush us. Left with four “Arcadians.”
There was a parley yesterday while I was away. The Turks had put up some white flags, but it was not a case of bad faith as the “Arcadians” believed. We are said to have shot one Red Crescent man by mistake. General Walker went out to talk to the Turks, just like that. Both sides had, apparently, been frightened. I walked back to Reserve Gully with the General, to see the new brigade. The evening sun was shining on the myrtles in all the gullies, and the new brigade was singing and whistling up and down the hills, while fires crackled everywhere.
_Saturday, May 22, 1915._ _Kaba Tepé._ S. B. was sent out yesterday to talk to the Turks, but he did not take a white flag with him, and was sniped and bruised.... This morning, suddenly, I was sent for. S. B. and I hurried along the beach and crossed the barbed wire entanglements. We went along by the sea, through heavy showers of rain, and at last met a fierce Arab officer and a wandery-looking Turkish lieutenant. We sat and smoked in fields splendid with poppies, the sea glittering by us.
Then Kemal Bey arrived, and went into Anzac with S. B., while I went off as hostage.
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S. B. and Kemal Bey, as they went, provided the Australian escort with much innocent laughter. Our barbed wire down to the sea consisted only of a few light strands, over which the Turk was helped by having his legs raised high for him. S. B., however, wished him, as he was blindfolded, to believe that this defence went on for at least twenty yards. So the Turk was made to do an enormously high, stiff goose-step over the empty air for that space, as absurd a spectacle to our men as I was to be, later, to the Turks. The Australians were almost sick from internal laughter.
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_Diary._ Kemal Bey asked for a hostage, and I went out. They bandaged my eyes, and I mounted a horse and rode off with Sahib Bey. We went along by the sea for some time, for I could hear the waves. Then we went round and round--to puzzle me, I suppose--and ended up in a tent in a grove of olives, where they took the handkerchief off, and Sahib Bey said: “This is the beginning of a life-long friendship.”
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At one moment, as I was riding along, the soldier who was supposed to be leading my horse had apparently let go and had fallen behind to light a cigarette or pick flowers. I heard Sahib Bey call out: “You old fool! Can’t you see he’s riding straight over the cliff?” I protested loudly as I rode on, blind as fate.
We had cheese and tea and coffee, Sahib Bey offering to eat first to show me that it was all right, which I said was nonsense. He said: “It may not be political economy, but there are some great advantages in war. It’s very comfortable when there are no exports, because it means that all the things stay at home and are very cheap.” He tried to impress me with their well-being. He said he hated all politicians and had sworn never to read the papers. The Turks had come sadly into the war against us, otherwise gladly. They wanted to regain the prestige that they had lost in the Balkans.... He said, after I had talked to him: “There are many of us who think like you, but we must obey. We know that you are just and that Moslems thrive under you, but you have made cruel mistakes by us, the taking of those two ships and the way in which they were taken.” He asked me a few questions, which I put aside. He had had a conversation with Dash the day before, when we parleyed. Dash is a most innocent creature. He had apparently told him that G.H.Q. was an awful bore, and also the number of Turkish prisoners we had taken....
_Sunday, May 23, 1915._ _Kaba Tepé._ We landed a month ago to-day. We now hold a smaller front than then. Also the _Albion_ has gone ashore. The rest of the fleet has left; she remains a fixture. All the boats are rushing up to tow her off. The Turks are sending in a hail of shrapnel.... It will be a bad business if they don’t get her off.... They have got her off, thank the Lord, and every one is breathing more freely.
We wonder if all the places with queer, accidental names will one day be historical: Johnson’s Jolly, Dead Man’s Ridge, Quinn’s Post, The Valley of Death, The Sphinx, Anzac--by the way, that’s not a name of good omen, as “anjak” in Turkish means barely, only just--Plugge’s Plateau. Plugge is a grand man, wounded for the second time. The New Zealanders are all most gallant fellows....
The big fight ought to come off, after the armistice. Two more divisions have come up against us. All quiet last night, but a shell came into the New Zealand hospital on the beach and killed four wounded men and a dresser and some more outside. It’s these new guns whose position we still do not know.
_Tuesday, May 25, 1915._ _Kaba Tepé._ We had the truce yesterday. I was afraid something might go wrong, but it all went off all right. Skeen, Blamey,[11] Howse, V.C.,[12] Hough and I started early. Skeen offered me breakfast but, like a fool, I refused. He put some creosote on my handkerchief. We were at the rendezvous on the beach at 6.30. Heavy rain soaked us to the skin. At 7.30 we met the Turks, Miralai Izzedin, a pleasant, rather sharp, little man; Arif, the son of Achmet Pasha, who gave me a card, “Sculpteur et Peintre,” and “Etudiant de Poésie.” I saw Sahib and had a few words with him, but he did not come with us. Fahreddin Bey came later. We walked from the sea and passed immediately up the hill, through a field of tall corn filled with poppies, then another cornfield; then the fearful smell of death began as we came upon scattered bodies. We mounted over a plateau and down through gullies filled with thyme, where there lay about 4,000 Turkish dead. It was indescribable. One was grateful for the rain and the grey sky. A Turkish Red Crescent man came and gave me some antiseptic wool with scent on it, and this they renewed frequently. There were two wounded crying in that multitude of silence. The Turks were distressed, and Skeen strained a point to let them send water to the first wounded man, who must have been a sniper crawling home. I walked over to the second, who lay with a high circle of dead that made a mound round him, and gave him a drink from my water-bottle, but Skeen called me to come on and I had to leave the bottle. Later a Turk gave it back to me. The Turkish Captain with me said: “At this spectacle even the most gentle must feel savage, and the most savage must weep.” The dead fill acres of ground, mostly killed in the one big attack, but some recently. They fill the myrtle-grown gullies. One saw the result of machine-gun fire very clearly; entire companies annihilated--not wounded, but killed, their heads doubled under them with the impetus of their rush and both hands clasping their bayonets. It was as if God had breathed in their faces, as “the Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold.”
The line was not easy to settle. Neither side wanted to give its position or its trenches away. At the end Skeen agreed that the Turks had been fair. We had not been going very long when we had a message to say that the Turks were entrenching at Johnson’s Jolly. Skeen had, however, just been there and seen that they were doing nothing at all. He left me at Quinn’s Post, looking at the communication trench through which I had spoken to the Turks. Corpses and dead men blown to bits everywhere. Richards was with me part of the time: easy to get on with; also a gentleman called indifferently by the men Mr. or Major Tibbs. A good deal of friction at first. The trenches were 10 to 15 yards apart. Each side was on the _qui vive_ for treachery. In one gully the dead had got to be left unburied. It was impossible to bury them without one side seeing the position of the other. In the Turkish parapet there were many bodies buried. Fahreddin told Skeen he wanted to bury them, “but,” he said, “we cannot take them out without putting something in their place.” Skeen agreed, but said that this concession was not to be taken advantage of to repair the trench. This was a difficult business.
When our people complained that the Turks were making loopholes, they invited me into their trench to look. Then the Turks said that we were stealing their rifles; this came from the dead land where we could not let them go. I went down, and when I got back, very hot, they took my word for it that we were not. There was some trouble because we were always crossing each other’s lines. I talked to the Turks, one of whom pointed to the graves. “That’s politics,” he said. Then he pointed to the dead bodies and said: “That’s diplomacy. God pity all of us poor soldiers.”
Much of this business was ghastly to the point of nightmare. I found a hardened old Albanian chaoush and got him to do anything I wanted. Then a lot of other Albanians came up, and I said: “Tunya tyeta.”[13] I had met some of them in Janina. They began clapping me on the back and cheering while half a dozen funeral services were going on all round, conducted by the chaplains. I had to stop them. I asked them if they did not want an Imam for a service over their own dead, but the old Albanian pagan roared with laughter and said that their souls were all right. They could look after themselves. Not many signs of fanaticism. One huge, savage-looking Anatolian looked curses at me. Greeks came up and tried to surrender to me, but were ordered back by the Turks pretty roughly.
Considering the number of their men we had killed, they remained extraordinarily unmoved and polite. They wouldn’t have, if we had been Russians. Blamey came to say that Skeen had lost H. and wanted me, so he, Arif and I walked to the sea. The burying had not been well done. It was sometimes impossible to do it.... As we went, we took our rifles from the Turkish side, minus their bolts, and gave the Turks their rifles in the same way....
Our men gave cigarettes to the Turks, and beyond the storm-centre at Quinn’s Post the feeling was all right. We sat down and sent men to look for Skeen. Arif was nervous and almost rude. Then Skeen came. He told me to get back as quickly as possible to Quinn’s Post, as I said I was nervous at being away, and to retire the troops at 4 and the white-flag men at 4.15. I said to Arif: “Everybody’s behaved very well. Now we must take care that nobody loses his head. Your men won’t shoot you and my men won’t shoot me, so we must walk about, otherwise a gun will go off and everybody will get shot.” But Arif faded away. I got back as quickly as possible. Blamey went away on the left. I then found that the Turks’ time was eight minutes ahead of ours, and put on our watches. The Turks asked me to witness their taking the money from their dead, as they had no officer there. They were very worried by having no officer, and asked me if any one were coming. I, of course, had no idea, but I told them I would see that they were all right. They were very patient....
The burying was finished some time before the end. There were certain tricks on both sides.
Our men and the Turks began fraternizing, exchanging badges, etc. I had to keep them apart. At 4 o’clock the Turks came to me for orders. I do not believe this could have happened anywhere else. I retired their troops and ours, walking along the line. At 4.7 I retired the white-flag men, making them shake hands with our men. Then I came to the upper end. About a dozen Turks came out. I chaffed them, and said that they would shoot me next day. They said, in a horrified chorus: “God forbid!” The Albanians laughed and cheered, and said: “We will never shoot you.” Then the Australians began coming up, and said: “Good-bye, old chap; good luck!” And the Turks said: “Oghur Ola gule gule gedejekseniz, gule gule gelejekseniz” (Smiling may you go and smiling come again). Then I told them all to get into their trenches, and unthinkingly went up to the Turkish trench and got a deep salaam from it. I told them that neither side would fire for twenty-five minutes after they had got into the trenches. One Turk was seen out away on our left, but there was nothing to be done, and I think he was all right. A couple of rifles had gone off about twenty minutes before the end, but Potts and I went hurriedly to and fro seeing it was all right. At last we dropped into our trenches, glad that the strain was over. I walked back with Temperley. I got some raw whisky for the infection in my throat, and iodine for where the barbed wire had torn my feet. There was a hush over the Peninsula....
_Wednesday, May 26, 1915._ _Kaba Tepé._ This morning I was talking to Dix, asking him if he believed there were submarines. “Yes,” he said, and then swore and added: “There’s the _Triumph_ sinking.” Every picket-boat dashed off to pick up the survivors. The Turks behaved well in not shelling. There was fury, panic and rage on the beach and on the hill. I heard Uncle Bill, half off his head, saying: “You should kill all enemies. Like a wounded bird, she is. Give them cigarettes. Swine! Like a wounded bird. The swine!” He was shaking his fist. Men were crying and cursing. Very different from yesterday’s temper.
This afternoon I went round past Monash Gully, towards Kaba Tepé, and bathed. I got shelled, and came back over the ridges having a beastly time from the shrapnel which hunted me.
We have now got a sap under Quinn’s Post. The flies and ants are past endurance.
_Thursday, May 27, 1915._ _Kaba Tepé._ A very wet night. I wish the Turks would forget how to shoot. Here we are for an indefinite period without the power of replying effectively and with the knowledge that we are firmly locked outside the back door of a side-show....
Went with the General to General Russell’s trenches. They are very much improved. The men call an ideal trench a Godley-Braithwaite trench; that is, tall enough for General Godley and broad enough for Colonel Braithwaite. Bathed. Charlie Bentinck arrived. His destroyer lay just off the beach and was shelled. Some sailors and five soldiers killed. Forty-five wounded. Very unfortunate. If they had come yesterday, it would have been all right--a quiet day, though we had thirty men sniped. The _Majestic_ reported sunk off Helles. Off to Mudros to get stores.
_Friday, May 28, 1915._ _Mudros._ Left after many delays, and slept on deck. Very cold. It’s a pretty tall order for the French to put black Senegalese cannibals into Red Cross uniform....
_Saturday, May 29, 1915._ _Lemnos._ Drove across the island to Castro. There was a delightful spring half a mile from Castro and a café kept by a Greek. His wife had been killed by the Turks. Great fig-trees and gardens. I met two naval officers, who told me Wedgwood had died of wounds. I am very sorry; he was a very fine man. I admired him a lot. Castro is beautiful, with balconies over the narrow streets, half Turk and half Greek, and shady gardens. I bathed in a transparent sea, facing Athos, which was gleaming like a diamond. I watched its shadow come across the eighty miles of sea at sunset, as Homer said it did. I found a Greek, who had been Cromer’s cook. He said he would come back and cook for me, if there was no danger. He said he knew that G.H.Q. cooks were safe, but his wife would not let him go on to the Peninsula. He said her idea of warfare was wrong. She always thought of men and bullets skipping about together on a hillside.
_Sunday, May 30, 1915._ _Mudros._ I bathed before dawn and went back to Mudros with masses of mosquito-netting, etc. Turkish prisoners of the French were being guarded by Greeks. It was rather like monkeys looking after bears. They wore uniforms that were a cross between Ali Pasha of Janina and Little Lord Fauntleroy. I saw H., who had been on the River Clyde. He looked as if he were still watching the sea turn red with blood, as he described the landing on Gallipoli. Jack was sick, and I had to leave him with my coat. Went and saw my friend the Papas of the little Greek church on the hill.
_Monday, May 31, 1915._ _Anzac._ I saw Hutton this morning, slightly wounded. Bathed at the farthest point towards Kaba Tepé, but had to fly with my clothes in my hand, leaving my cigarettes....
_Wednesday, June 2, 1915._ _Kaba Tepé._ Had a picturesque examination of a Greek peasant this morning. It was a fine picture, with the setting of the blue sea and the mountains. The man himself was patriarchal and biblical, surrounded by tall English officers and half-naked soldiers. Last night we sent up bombs from Japanese mortars by Quinn’s. It sounded beastly. This morning I went to Reserve Gully with the General. Monash’s Brigade is resting there for the first time for five weeks. The General, looking like a Trojan hero, made them a fine speech from a sort of natural throne in the middle of the sunlit amphitheatre, in which they all sat, tier after tier of magnificent-looking fellows, brown as Indians. Bullets swept over all the time, sometimes drowning the General’s voice.... Have just heard that Quinn is killed. I am very sorry. He was a fine, jolly, gallant fellow.
_Friday, June 4, 1915._ _Anzac._ Nothing doing. George Lloyd came over. Very glad to see him. This morning I went with Shaw to the extreme left, through fields of poppies, thyme and lavender. We saw a vulture high overhead, and the air was full of the song of larks. At Helles there was a savage attack going on. There was very bad sniping. In some places the trenches are only knee-high; in other places there are no trenches and the Turks are anything from four to eight hundred yards off. Yesterday seventeen men were hit at one place, they said, by one sniper. At one place on the way, we ran like deer, dodging. The General, when he had had a number of bullets at him, also ran. Sniping is better fun than shrapnel; it’s more human. You pit your wits against the enemy in a rather friendly sort of way. A lot of vultures collecting.
_Saturday, June 5, 1915._ _Anzac._ Examined sixteen prisoners. Food good, munitions plentiful, morale all right. The individuals fed up with the war, but the mass obedient and pretty willing. No idea of surrendering. They think they are going to win. There was one Greek, a Karamanly, who only talked Turkish. He did not say until to-night that he was wounded. The flies are bad.
_Sunday, June 6, 1915._ _Anzac._ Went to the service this morning with the General, in the amphitheatre. The sermon was mainly against America for not coming into the war, and also against bad language. The chaplain said he could not understand the meaning of it. The men laughed. So did I.
_Monday, June 7, 1915._ _Kaba Tepé._ This morning the land was sweet as Eden and there was the calm of the first creation. H. has been made a new Uriah the Hittite, but not because of Mrs. H. Last night I was invaded by mice. There is tremendous shelling going on now. This afternoon S. B., Onslow and I climbed a hill and had a beautiful view. Every one is rather ill and feverish. I have no news about Jack. The Intelligence office has been moved to a higher and safer place. Pirie Gordon, poor chap, has gone sick a long time ago. I rather liked the stuffy old place, which was called “The Mountain Path to the Jackal’s Cave.”
The attack last night failed, but the drone of the rifles went on unceasingly, like the drone of a dry waterfall. We shall not get to Constantinople unless the flat-faced Bulgars come in.
Yesterday I lunched with Temperley at the H.Q. of Monash Valley. Times have changed: it’s fairly safe going there through a long sap they have dug, and the noise is less bad.
Colonel ---- had seen a lot of the Crown Prince in India, and said he was a very good fellow. Dined with Woods, Dix, S. B. and Edwards. Lots of champagne for once; a very good dinner.
I went to No. 2 Outpost with the General. There is a sap all the way now. Only one sniper the whole way. The Turkish birds were singing beautifully as we went. There was also a Turkish snake, which I believed was quite harmless, but Tahu killed it. The men are getting pretty tired. They are not as resigned as their ten thousand brother-monks over the way at Mount Athos.
_Friday, June 11, 1915._ _Kaba Tepé._ The Australians and New Zealanders have given up wearing clothes. They lie about and bathe and become darker than Indians. The General objects to this. “I suppose,” he says, “we shall have our servants waiting on us like that.” The flies are very bad, so are the mice, and so is the shelling....