CHAPTER XXII
THE NIGHT BATTLE ON CHANAK BAIR
Of the general progress of the battle through the night and indeed until he was wounded, Mac knew little. He heard but vaguely what was going on on other portions of the front and could see little, and gathered only indefinite impressions of happenings elsewhere.
He passed the second night of the battle in alternately trenching and resting, when he occasionally had a few moments of sleep. It was very dark, warm and clear with a glorious showing of stars. The noise of battle increased and seemed to fill the whole sky and earth as it had not in the daytime. Star rockets shot skyward from the enemy lines and burst into dazzling falling lights while the fellows crouched low in the scrub to escape notice. The flash of the artillery and of the bursting shells were here, there and everywhere, but mostly along the ridge tops, and the musketry roared spasmodically in squalls along the ridges, or drifted down from the high summits.
At length the stars slowly faded before the eastern glow, and the hill-tops stood out darker than before. Did dawn find them gained? Mac waited eagerly for more light; but, when it came, found little to discover. The summits seemed to be won, but he could find no trace of the British nearer Anafarta.
Sunday passed much in the same way as Saturday. The Suvla Bay force was still hanging about the landing-place, and there was no indication of a heavy engagement on their front. The New Zealanders had reached the high ridges of Chanak Bair, but no one knew, if they had progressed at all, how far they had gone over on the Dardanelles side. Nearly all the hospital ships had vanished with full cargoes of wounded; but otherwise the whole scene was little different from that of the previous day. The hot hours passed slowly, the battle roared on, and Mac and his mates wondered what might be their next move, for they were not at present opposed to any direct enemy force.
In the middle of the afternoon they received orders to prepare to move, with the exception of one Squadron which was to garrison the positions. They moved off almost immediately, passing down the steep northern slope of the plateau and forcing their way through the dense thicket until they reached the bottom of the hollow. They turned to the right and jostled their way up through the struggling traffic along the narrow, suffocating bed of the ravine. There were places where many fine fellows had been laid low by snipers, places where they hurried, if possible. There were times when they were jammed between mules and the banks, and others when they had to wait many minutes for opportunities of pushing on. After an hour of this sort of thing, they came practically to the head of the ravine, and pushed into the scrub on one side to make temporary bivouacs.
Here all slacked and rested their weary bodies, stretched out full length under the stunted bushes. Weak, most of them, with dysentery when the battle started, they had now had two days of it, and with the heat, the short commons of water, and little sleep, they felt a wee bit tired, and they made the most of the short hours.
The cool of evening came again, and with it orders to prepare for further movements, this time to the firing line in support of their own men on the summit of the hills above. They made the best possible meal from the dry rations, dry enough when there was unlimited water, but quite impossible to more than nibble in these almost waterless days. Mac did not feel very hungry; but he had room inside his thin frame for a tankful of water. He had started on Friday evening with a liberally rum-tinctured bottleful, which had since been restocked with water as strongly tainted with petrol. For the purpose of the advance, sealed petrol tins of water had been brought from Alexandria, but the fillers of the tins seemed to have paid no particular attention as to whether they had first been emptied of petrol. His bottle was almost half-empty, and he did not care for the prospect of going up to those struggling lines without a fresh supply; but, just in time, a mule train came up with full fantassas, and he got a half-bottle.
When dusk had almost deepened to darkness they joined the surging traffic of mules, men and stretchers on the dusty track, and filed laboriously up the steep hill. The din of battle heightened with the deepening night. Indian mountain batteries barked furiously behind them, and the heavier artillery sent shells shrieking up from far below, to burst somewhere up there where the crest stood silhouetted against the stars. From above came the incessant roar of bursting bombs and shells and rattle of musketry. At dawn the summit had been gained, but just how good or bad our position was Mac had not the vaguest idea. He had not heard of, nor had he seen any progress, except the taking of this summit, since Saturday morning, and had no idea as to whether the battle was progressing favourably or otherwise. What was expected of them up there to-night none knew. Each carried a pick or a shovel and two bombs.
They passed the dressing-stations, perched on either side on the steep slope, where hundreds of wounded lay, then over a ridge where the track stopped and out into the pitch black open. The bullets zipped past or thudded into the ground. The troop lay down while they got their bearings. A fellow close by Mac gave a yell and was dead. A few wounded men, limping or crawling back, passed them. Then in extended order they went forward again, guided by a telephone wire, keeping touch with difficulty in the scrub and the darkness. Frequently there would come from the blackness in front of their feet a warning "Keep clear o' me, cobber, I'm wounded," or groans and the gleam of a white bandage, and sometimes they stumbled over prone still forms. Slowly they picked their way forward, making towards the centre of the firing, which was in a semicircle round them, and the whistling bullets came from both sides as well as from in front, and the din grew fiercer. They reached at length a hollow full of wounded, then went slowly up a slope littered with equipment and dead, and, at last, topping the rise, they came upon a scene so weird and infernal that Mac instantly stopped and stared with awe.
Lit fantastically by flickering flames which were licking slowly through the scrub was a small ghastly, battle-rent piece of ground, not one hundred yards in width and rising slightly. Beyond and close on either side, it was bounded by the starry heavens, and seemed a strange, detached dreamland where men had gone mad. The Turks lined the far edge, their ghostly faces appearing and vanishing in the eerie light, as they poured a point-blank fusillade at the shattered series of shallow holes where the remnants of the New Zealanders were fighting gallantly. Sweeping round to the left was the flashing semicircle of the enemy line, bombs exploded with a lurid glare, their murky pall drifting slowly back towards Mac. Shells came whirring up from the black depths behind, and burst beyond the further lip. Above the rending of the bombs, the rattle and burr of the rifles and machine-guns and the crash of shells, sometimes sounded faintly men's voices—the weird "Allah, Allah, Allah" of the enemy in a chanted cadence, and the fierce half-humorous taunts of the attackers.
Everywhere lay dead and dying men—mostly the former, Turkish and British. Equipment and rifles were strewn in the greatest confusion over the torn earth, and all the time the creeping flames cast weird lights upon the passing drama.
"Say, old boy," came a voice from his feet, "you'd better not stand there too long—it's pretty thick."
Mac leaned down to the wounded man, and found him one of the Aucklands.
"It's been simply blanky hell up here all day and now I'm just waiting
for them to give me a hand out. You boys have come up none too soon.
Mind you give the devils hell!"
"You there with the pick," Mac found himself addressed, "get over to those holes up front there and dig in for all you're blanky well worth."
"Good luck, matey, Kia Ora," came the parting blessing from the wounded
Aucklander in the scrub.
So brimming over with good fellowship were the tones, so short, yet so deeply affectionate that Mac instinctively felt much more lighthearted as he stumbled across the shattered battlefield to the thin line of toiling, hard-pressed fighters, close to the rim where the cliff fell away on the Dardanelles side. He found a line of shallow holes, some a foot deep, some eighteen inches, aided a little by a few almost useless sandbags. The cliff brink was six or eight yards away, and under it lay the enemy—whose spectral figures, popping up and disappearing rapidly, blazed point blank into the exposed line. A few yards on the left the Turks poured across from the cliff to a small knob which protruded into the attackers' line, and upon which they bore down constantly and bombed furiously. From the ravine below the enemy, came the constant "Allah, Allah, Allah," of many Turks encouraging themselves for the attack, and occasional yells when shells or bombs fell among them.
Mac knelt on the ground and endeavoured to deepen the hold by steady picking, while two other men kept a steady fire on the agile heads of the enemy. But try his best, he was now beginning to feel severely his decreasing strength and could make but little impression on the trench on this parched, sun-baked hill-top. Another trooper offered to take his place, and he went to the less arduous work of carrying such tattered sandbags as still contained earth from the second line about fifteen feet back and piling them up in some sort of a parapet for the front line. The second line was only half a dozen square holes whose fine garrisons lay dead within them, except a few who raved in delirium for water which was not to be had. They and their arms lay prostrate across each other, many half-buried by flying earth from shells and bombs.
He finished this work and then responded to an oft-repeated call from farther along, "Reinforcements for the right. Reinforcements for the right. Enemy getting round behind!" Here was a shallow bit of a hole with three or four men, the right flank of this part of the line, while the cliff edge was only four or five yards distant, and the enemy was thought to be crawling back and gathering for a heavy assault. Mac set about improving the trench and forming a small right angle to prevent enfilade and to protect the flank. The sap had been deeper earlier in the day, for the first foot he shovelled out consisted of a sticky muddy mass of blood, soil, ammunition and gear of all sorts. He sifted it carefully for good ammunition and bombs, and formed the rest into a parapet with the assistance of sandbags. Sometimes when he was tired he took a turn at keeping the enemy from becoming too venturesome on the cliff brink. Queer shapes stood out against the stars, but whether they were always Turks he could not tell, as from long sleeplessness and strain his sight was inclined to play him tricks. Anyhow he ran no risks. Somehow or other the troops farther on the left were constantly shouting warnings concerning figures passing back to the right, but these he could not see; while, curiously enough, he could plainly follow Turkish figures flitting across the sky-line on the left from the cliff to the small knob which could enfilade the trench from the left. His rifle jammed from heat and dust. He took two from dead men and kept them both on the parapet ready for instant action. The others did much the same sort of thing, helping each other, sticking grimly to the job and not worrying much, apparently, about their future.
The battle raged on through hour after hour with unabated fierceness; and the din of it all, the whirring and crashing of the shells, the furious rattle of musketry, the yells of men and the cries of the wounded, became almost an unnoticed monotone in Mac's ears. The Turks threw bombs steadily, but fortunately only in ones and twos. They were fairly slow to explode, and, if they landed on the parapet, the troops crouched in the bottom of the trench, or, if into the trench, they got out until the explosion and the fumes had cleared away. The enemy was almost safe from bombing, for grenades which were thrown at him found no resting-place until far down into the ravine, where their explosion sounded only as a dull unsatisfactory thud. Sometimes big shells whirring up from the warships or the heavy land batteries burst short and caught some of the already too sparse attackers, or brought the sufferings of the wounded to an end. Mac's line lost men who went bleeding to the rear. Sometimes their places were taken—more often they were not.
He wondered vaguely what would happen, but all were too busy with affairs of immediate importance, and somehow it did not seem to matter in the least—the outlook was not bright. The Turkish mound on the left could enfilade the trench at short range when daylight came, the enemy was in great force in front and was creeping back to the rear—already a fire-swept zone impossible to cross. Where was that great force from Suvla Bay? They had landed three miles away at midnight on Friday and it was now just before dawn on Monday.
The night came in time near to its end. He could not describe it as having gone quickly, nor yet slowly—it had simply passed. Dawn brought no particular pleasure, only the transition from the unearthly phantasmagoria of bitter night fighting to the practical fierce hand-to-hand struggling of day. The paling sky figured the sky-line and the Turkish heads in definite silhouette, and many of the large shrubs of the night where Turks might lurk revealed themselves as small tufts of grass. Vigilance increased. If rifles did not sweep that crest continually the old Turk would leave his head and shoulders above the edge long enough to take aim, instead of blazing away rather at random.
It was now definitely seen that the Turks had got well round the right flank during the darkness, in spite of a machine-gun which had been said to sweep this zone; but of it Mac saw no sign. Some Turks were creeping through a hollow immediately to the right, and he being the tallest man at this point directed his attention at the wriggling backs with some success. One wounded Turk there signalled by waving his rifle to some of the advanced party, but was soon after lifted by a mate who ran with him to safety.