SACRED TO WHITE
§1
On a certain morning Doe and I in our dug-out on Fusilier Bluff felt the pull and the fascination, coming over five miles of scrub, of the magical Cape Helles. It was but a score of weeks since the first invaders had stormed its beaches: and we wanted to drink again of the romance that charged the air. So, being free for a time, we walked to the brow overlooking V Beach, and stood there, letting the breeze blow on our faces, and thinking of the British Army that blew in one day like a gale from the sea.
The damage wrought by that tornado was everywhere visible. Near us were the ruins of a lighthouse. In old days it had glimmered for distant mariners, who pointed to it as the Dardanelles light. But, at the outbreak of war, the Turk had closed his Dardanelles and put out the lamp. He would never kindle it again, for the Queen Elizabeth, or a warship of her kidney, had lain off shore and reduced the lighthouse to these white stones. Across the amphitheatre of the bay were the village and broken forts of Seddel Bahr; and, aground at this point, the famous old hulk, the River Clyde. You remember—who could forget?—how they turned this vessel into a modern Horse of Troy, cramming its belly with armed men, running it ashore, and then opening square doors in its hull-sides and letting loose the invaders—while the plains of Old Troy looked down from over the Hellespont. What a litter old Mother Clyde carried in her womb that day! From where we stood we could see those square doors, cut in her sides, through which the troops and rushed into the bullet-hail: we could see, too, the semicircular beach, where they had attempted to land, and the ribbon of blue water in which so many, weighted with their equipment, had sunk and died.
And what was that thing a few cable lengths out, a rusty iron something, rising from the water, and being lapped by the incoming ripples? It was the keel of the old Majestic, which lay there, deck downwards, on the ocean bed.
"It's too pathetic!" exclaimed the sensitive Doe. "Let's go and visit the Clyde. Fancy, old Moles White was in that boat."
We dropped down from the headland into V Beach Bay, and, in doing so, passed the limit of the British zone and trespassed upon French territory. The slope, from the beach upward, was as alive with French and Senegalese as a cloven ant-hill is alive with ants. The stores of the whole French army seemed accumulated in the neighbourhood. There was an atmosphere of French excitability, very different from the stillness of the British Zone. Stepping from the British Zone into the French was like turning suddenly from the quiet of Rotten Row into the bustle of the Boulevard des Italiens. It was prenez-garde and attention là! depeches-vous and pardon, m'sieu, and sacré nom de dieu! before we got through all these hearty busy-bodies and drew near the hull of the Clyde.
With unwitting reverence we approached. I'll swear I was within an ace of removing my hat, and that, had I talked to Doe, I should have spoken in a whisper. It was like visiting a church. Look, there by the square doors were the endless marks of machine-gun bullets that had swept the men who tried to leave the boat for the shore. God! they hadn't a dog's chance. If those bullet indentations meant anything, they meant that the man who left the square door was lucky if he got ashore with less than a dozen bullets in his flesh.
We stepped on to the gangway that led to the nearest of the doors and hurried up to it, catching something of the "Get back—get back!" sensation of those who had been forced by the bullets to withdraw into the hold. A huge hold it showed itself to be when we bowed our heads and stepped into it through the square door. Yes, they could cram battalions here. What a hive the Clyde was when they hurled it ashore! And what a swarm of bees it housed! In this hold, now so silent and empty, what emotions throbbed that day!
"Poor old White!" murmured Doe. "He got ashore well enough, and wasn't killed till the fighting on the high ground. By Jove, Rupert! we'll search the Peninsula from here to Fusilier Bluff for his grave. Come on."
We left the comparative darkness of the hold, and stepped through the square door, that had been so deadly an exit for hundreds, into the bright daylight. At once there was given us a full view of V Beach, with the sea sparkling as it broke upon the shingle. The air all about was strangely opalescent. Seddel Bahr shone in the sun, as only a white Eastern village can. The hills rising from the beach looked steep and difficult, but sunlit and shimmering. Everything shimmered as a result of the sudden contrast from the darkness of the hold. Even so must the scene have flashed upon the eyes of the invaders as they issued from the sides of the Clyde. For many of them, how quickly the bright light went out!
We had hardly entered the ruined streets of Seddel Bahr before a shell screamed into the village and burst with a deafening explosion in a house, whose walls went up in a volcano of dust and stones.
"Asiatic Annie!" we both said, at once and in unison.
For all of us knew the evil reputation of Asiatic Annie—that large gun, safely tucked away in the blue hills of Asia, who lobbed her shells—a seven-mile throw—over the Straits on to the shores of Cape Helles—a mischievous old lady, who delighted in being the plague of the Beaches.
"If Asiatic Annie is going to begin," said Doe, "we'll have important business elsewhere. Hurry on. We're going to find White's grave."
To get from Seddel Bahr to Fusilier Bluff it was necessary to cross diagonally the whole of the Helles sector. There lay before us a long walk over a dusty, scrub-covered plateau, every yard of which was a yard of battlefield and overspread with the litter of battles. This red earth, which, when the Army first arrived, was garnished with grass and flowers, groves, and vineyards, was now beaten by thousands of feet into a hard, dry drill-ground, where, here and there, blasted trees stood like calvaries against the sky. The grass resembled patches of fur on a mangy skin. The birds, which seemed to revel in the excitements of war, soared and swept over the devastated tableland. Northward from our feet stretched this plateau of scarecrow trees, till it began to incline in a gentle rise, and finally met the sky in the summit of Achi Baba. That was the whole landscape—a plateau overlooked by a gentle hill.
And here on this sea-girt headland the land-fight had been fought. No wonder the region was covered with the scars and waste of war. Our journey took us past old trenches and gun-positions; disused telephone lines and rusting, barbed wire; dead mules, scattered cemeteries, and solitary graves.
And not a grave did we pass without examining it to see if it bore the name of White. Our progress, therefore, was very slow, for, like highwaymen, these graves held us up and bade us stand and inquire if they housed our friend. Whenever we saw an isolated cross some distance away, we left our tracks to approach it, anxious not to pass, lest this were he. And then, quite unexpectedly, we came upon twenty graves side by side under one over-arching tree, which bore the legend: "Pink Farm Cemetery." And Doe said:
"There it is, Rupert."
He said it with deliberate carelessness, as if to show that he was one not easily excited by sudden surprises.
"Where—where?" I asked.
"There—'Lieutenant R. White, Royal Dublin Fusiliers.'"
"Good Lord!" I muttered: for it was true. We had walked right on to the grave of our friend. His name stood on a cross with those of six other officers, and beneath was written in pencil the famous epitaph:
"Tell England, ye who pass this monument,
We died for her, and here we rest content."
The perfect words went straight to Doe's heart.
"Roop," he said, "if I'm killed you can put those lines over me."
I fear I could not think of anything very helpful to reply.
"They are rather swish," I murmured.