Time hung very heavy. The monotony of week after week of brigade fatigues, standing gun drill, exercising and walking horses, inspecting the men’s dinners, with nothing to do afterwards except play cards, read, write letters and curse the weather, and the war and all Brass Hats. Hot baths in camp were, as usual, as diamonds in oysters. Salonica was about twelve miles away for a bath, a long weary ride mostly at a walk on account of the going. But it was good to ride in past the village we used to call Peacockville, for obvious reasons, put the horses up in a Turkish stable in a back street in Salonica, and bathe and feed at the “Tour Blanche,” and watch the crowd. It was a change, at least, from the eternal sameness of camp and the cramped discomfort of bell tents, and there was always a touch of mystery and charm in the ride back in the moonlight.
The whole thing seemed so useless, such an utter waste of life. There one sat in the mud doing nothing. The war went on and we weren’t helping. All our civil ambitions and hopes were withering under our very eyes. One hopeless dawn succeeded another. I tried to write, but my brain was like a sponge dipped into khaki dye. One yearned for France, where at least there was fighting and leave, or if not leave then the hourly chance of a “blighty” wound.
About April there came a welcome interlude. The infantry had also chopped and changed, and been moved about and in the intervals had been kept warm and busy in digging a chain of defences in a giant hundred-mile half-circle around Salonica, the hub of our existence. The weather still didn’t seem to know quite what it wanted to do. There was a hint of spring but it varied between blinding snow-storms, bursts of warm sun and torrents of rain.
“Don” battery had been moved to Stavros in the defensive chain, and the Colonel was to go down and do Group Commander. The Adjutant was left to look after the rest of the brigade. I went with the Colonel to do Adjutant in the new group. So we collected a handful of signallers, a cart with our kits and servants, and set out on a two-day trek due east along the line of lakes to the other coast.
The journey started badly in a howling snow-storm. To reach the lake level there was a one-way pass that took an hour to go down, and an hour and a half to climb on the return trip. The Colonel went on ahead to see the General. I stayed with the cart and fought my way through the blizzard. At the top of the pass was a mass of Indian transport. We all waited for two hours, standing still in the storm, the mud belly-deep because some unfortunate wagon had got stuck in the ascent. I remember having words with a Captain who sat hunched on his horse like a sack the whole two hours and refused to give an order or lend a hand when every one of his teams jibbed, when at last the pass was declared open. God knows how he ever got promoted.
However, we got down at last and the sun came out and dried us. I reported to the Colonel, and we went on in a warm golden afternoon along the lake shore with ducks getting up out of the rushes in hundreds, and, later, woodcock flashing over our heads on their way to water. As far as I remember the western lake is some eight miles long and about three wide at its widest part, with fairy villages nestling against the purple mountain background, the sun glistening on the minarets and the faint sound of bells coming across the water. We spent the night as guests of a battery which we found encamped on the shore, and on the following morning trekked along the second lake, which is about ten miles in length, ending at a jagged mass of rock and thick undergrowth which had split open into a wild, wooded ravine with a river winding its way through the narrow neck to the sea, about five miles farther on.
We camped in the narrow neck on a sandy bay by the river, rock shooting up sheer from the back of the tents, the horses hidden under the trees. The Colonel’s command consisted of one 60-pounder—brought round by sea and thrown into the shallows by the Navy, who said to us, “Here you are, George. She’s on terra firma. It’s up to you now”—two naval 6-inch, one eighteen-pounder battery, “Don,” one 4.5 howitzer battery, and a mountain battery, whose commander rode about on a beautiful white mule with a tail trimmed like an hotel bell pull. “AC” battery of ours came along a day or two later to join the merry party, because, to use the vulgar but expressive phrase, the Staff “got the wind up,” and saw Bulgars behind every tree.
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In truth it was a comedy,—though there were elements of tragedy in the utter inefficiency displayed. We rode round to see the line of our zone. It took two days, because, of course, the General had to get back to lunch. Wherever it was possible to cut tracks, tracks had been cut, beautiful wide ones, making an enemy advance easy. They were guarded by isolated machine-gun posts at certain strategic points, and in the nullahs was a little barbed wire driven in on wooden stakes. Against the barbed wire, however, were piled masses of dried thorn,—utterly impassable but about as inflammable as gun-powder. This was all up and down the wildest country. If a massacre had gone on fifty yards to our right or left at any time, we shouldn’t have been able to see it. And the line of infantry was so placed that it was impossible to put guns anywhere to assist them.
It is to be remembered that although I have two eyes, two ears, and a habit of looking and listening, I was only a lieutenant with two pips in those days, and therefore my opinion is not, of course, worth the paper it is written on. Ask any Brass Hat!