Thursday, May 6th. Very cold night. The dead are unburied and the wounded crying for water between the trenches. Talked to General Birdwood about the possibility of an armistice for burying the dead and bringing in the wounded. He thinks that the Germans would not allow the Turks to accept.
Colonel Esson[3] landed this morning. He brought the rumour that 8,000 Turks had been killed lower down on the Peninsula. We attacked Achi Baba at 10 a.m. There was an intermittent fire all night.
This morning I went up to the trenches with General Godley by Walker’s Ridge. The view was magnificent. The plain was covered with friendly olives.... General Birdwood and General Mercer, commanding the Naval Brigade were also there. The trenches have become a perfect maze. As we went along the snipers followed us, seeing Onslow’s helmet above the parapet, and stinging us with dirt. Many dead. I saw no wounded between the lines. On the beach the shrapnel has opened from a new direction. The Turks were supposed to be making light railways to bring up their howitzers and then rub us off this part of the Peninsula. This last shell that has just struck the beach has killed and wounded several men and a good many mules....
Friday, May 7th. A bitter night and morning.... This morning a shell burst overhead, when I heard maniac peals of laughter and found the cook flying up, hit in the boot and his kitchen upset; he was laughing like a madman. It’s a nuisance one has to sit in the shade in our dining place and not in the sun. They have got our exact range, and are pounding in one shell after another. A shell has just burst over our heads, and hit a lighter and set her on fire.
The mules, most admirable animals, had now begun to give a good deal of trouble, alive and dead. There were hundreds of them on the beach and in the gullies. Alive, they bit precisely and kicked accurately; dead, they were towed out to sea, but returned to us faithfully on the beach, making bathing unpleasant and cleanliness difficult. The dead mule was not only offensive to the Army; he became a source of supreme irritation to the Navy, as he floated on his back, with his legs sticking stiffly up in the air. These legs were constantly mistaken for periscopes of submarines, causing excitement, exhaustive naval manœuvres and sometimes recriminations.
My special duties now began to take an unusual form. Every one was naturally anxious for Turkish troops to surrender, in order to get information, and also that we might have fewer men to fight. Those Turks who had been captured had said that the general belief was that we took no prisoners, but killed all who fell into our hands, ruthlessly. I said that I believed that this impression, which did us much harm, could be corrected. The problem was how to disabuse the Turks of this belief. I was ordered to make speeches to them from those of our trenches which were closest to theirs, to explain to them that they would be well treated and that our quarrel lay with the Germans, and not with them.
Diary. Friday, May 7th. At 1.30 I went up Monash Valley, which the men now call the “Valley of Death,” passing a stream of haggard men, wounded and unwounded, coming down in the brilliant sunlight. I saw Colonel Monash[4] at his headquarters, and General Godley with him, and received instructions. The shelling overhead was terrific, but did no damage, as the shells threw forward, but the smoke made a shadow between us and the sun. It was like the continuous crashing of a train going over the sleepers of a railway bridge.
Monash, whom I had last seen at the review in the desert, said: “We laugh at this shrapnel.” He tried to speak on the telephone to say I was coming, but it was difficult, and the noise made it impossible. Finally I went up the slope to Quinn’s Post, with an escort, running and taking cover, and panting up the very steep hill. It felt as if bullets rained, but the fact is that they came from three sides and have each got about five echoes. There’s a décolleté place in the hill that they pass over. I got into the trench, and found Quinn, tall and openfaced, swearing like a trooper, much respected by his men. The trenches in Quinn’s Post were narrow and low, full of exhausted men sleeping. I crawled over them and through tiny holes. There was the smell of death everywhere. I spoke in three places.