With the Zionists in Gallipoli

by J. H. Patterson

CHAPTER X

A NIGHT UP THE GULLY RAVINE

Feeling greatly refreshed after my breakfast with O'Hara, I went to select a suitable place for our camp, or rather bivouac, for, of course, we had no tents. Finding a snug little valley which stood back a couple of hundred yards from W Beach and which ran up under the protection of a rise in the ground, which gave us some slight cover from the Turks, I put all hands on to prepare and level the ground for the horse and mule lines.

We had been rushed to the trenches in such haste with the ammunition and supplies that we had been unable to bring any rope with which to tether the mules, so, seeing some ship's rope lying on the beach, I asked the naval officer in charge to let me have it for my lines. He not only did this, but lent me some of his men as well to carry it up to my little camp, where they helped me to fix it in the ground. I am sorry to say I forget this officer's name, as he was most helpful to me in many ways, and I never had to appeal in vain to him, or, as a matter of fact, to any other naval officer for assistance.

Throughout the day there was more than enough to do. The ground had to be levelled off, so as to make comfortable the mule and horse lines. Ropes had to be pegged down and the ends of them buried in the ground, tied round sacks filled with clay, drains trenched out, and the larger stones thrown out of the way. Then the mules had to be fed and watered, and I feared the latter was going to be a difficult and dangerous business, for the only water discovered so far came under Turkish fire. Luckily for me, however, one of my men, Schoub, my farrier sergeant, discovered a deep well carefully hidden at the corner of a demolished building, standing at the head of the little valley where we were camped. I feared that it might have been poisoned, so to solve my doubts I went to the Provost Marshal, and borrowed from him one of the captured Turkish prisoners. I felt sure that a Turk coming from these parts would know the natural taste of the water, so I took him with me to the well and asked him to drink. He was rather loth to do this at first, but at last, with a little persuasion, he took a sip in his mouth, rolled it for a moment on his tongue, then, nodding approval, drank freely of the water. As he survived the ordeal, I thought it was all right to go ahead with the mules, and later on we used the well ourselves, for it was excellent water.

All day long parties were coming and going between V and W Beaches; forage, water tins, supplies, etc.—everything had to be brought to us on our pack mules, and the day was all too short to do the many things that landing in a new country in time of warfare makes necessary. Not much time was wasted over the cooking of food; biscuits, jam, cheese, tinned beef, required no fires; only a little tea was boiled in our hastily-made camp kitchens. The only fuel to be had was obtained by breaking up some of our old packing-cases; the Turks had cleared off everything—not a man, woman, child or beast was left on the place—but this did not worry us, as we were always able to rustle for ourselves.

Before dark that night we began to load up another big convoy of munitions and supplies for the trenches.

This proved to be one of the most weird nights of many that we have spent tramping up and down the peninsula.

Of course, we had to move off after dark, otherwise the Turks would have concentrated their artillery on us and we should all have been destroyed. We went from W to X Beach, along the Ægean shore, falling into trenches and dug-outs on the way, for the night was very dark, while every now and again we were caught up in Turkish wire entanglements. Then from X Beach we slowly pioneered our way through the trackless scrub and undergrowth until we came to the cliff which overlooks Gully Beach, at the mouth of a huge ravine which here opened into the Ægean Sea, some miles northwest of W Beach.

On the way we had to go through some of our own guns, which were in action on this side of the Peninsula, and I had to request the Battery Commander to cease fire while we were filing past, as I feared the roar and flash of the guns might stampede the mules. He let us through in silence, but we had scarcely got fifty yards from the muzzles when out belched the guns again, the roar of which at such close range, to my surprise, did not in the least upset the mules. I shall never forget our struggling down to the sea from the cliffs above the Gully. Of course there was no road then and we had to reconnoitre ahead in the dark every yard of the way. Often I had to turn back and call out to the men to halt as I found myself dangling on the edge of the cliff, holding on to the roots of the gorse, which fortunately grew there in profusion. After many mishaps, mules and supplies falling about among the ravines which scored the face of the cliff, we eventually reached the beach.

Then began our march up the bed of the ravine, and although the Gully was very wide and there was ample room to march either to right or left of the stream, yet we knew nothing of this, for the ground was new to us and everything was pitch dark, so the only sure way of getting up the ravine in safety was to walk in the river bed. I led the way, expecting all the time either to fall into a waterhole or be shot by an ambuscade of Turks. Cliffs loomed up on either side of us to a height of a hundred or more feet, and there was nothing to be seen but the faint twinkle of the stars overhead.

Now and again I called a halt to reconnoitre and listen for any suspicious movements ahead, as it was a most likely spot in which to be ambushed by the enemy. So far as I knew the Turks were in possession of the bank to my left, and all that part of the country right up to Anzac, where the Australians had landed. For a time everything was quiet as we splashed our way along, there being a lull just then in the fighting; all of a sudden it broke out again with feverish intensity. The Gully Ravine made a turn at one part of its course which took us right between the line of fire of the two opposing forces. Shells from our own guns screamed and passed safely over the ravine, but the shells from the Turkish batteries often burst exactly overhead, scattering shrapnel all round, at other times plunking into the cliff on our right and smothering us with clay and gravel. The rattle of musketry was like the continuous roll of kettledrums, and considering all our surroundings, and the fierce fight that was going on, it was altogether a night to be remembered.

At last we reached the troops holding the front line; there were no supports or reserves, so far as I could see; every man had been put into the firing line, owing to the terrible losses that had been sustained.

Here in the dark, with shot and shell flying all round, we unpacked our mules and handed over the ammunition and food to the brigade.

I was right glad to be able to turn back and get my convoy safely away from the gloomy depths of this uncanny ravine.

We had again to climb the cliffs when we got back to the sea at the gully-mouth, and at the top again to negotiate our guns, which were still blazing away for all they were worth. However, by dint of much shouting when I had crawled close enough to be heard, the gunners ceased fire just long enough to enable us to slip through.

These two nights are fair examples of the work done in those early days by the Zion Mule Corps, at that time the only transport corps on the Peninsula at Helles.

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