Monday, May 17th. I walked out to the left with S. B., and bathed in a warm, quiet sea. Many men bathing too, and occasionally shrapnel also. There was a scent of thyme, and also the other smell from the graves on the beach, which are very shallow. I got a touch of the sun, and had to lie down. When I got back I heard that Villiers Stuart had been killed this morning, instantaneously. He was a very good fellow, and very good to me.
Tuesday, May 18th. Last night Villiers Stuart was buried. The funeral was to have been at sunset, but at that time we were savagely shelled and had to wait. We formed up in as decent a kit as we could muster, and after the sun had set in a storm of red, while the young moon was rising, the procession started. We stumbled over boulders, and met stretcher-bearers with dead and wounded, we passed Indians driving mules, and shadowy Australians standing at attention, till we came to the graves by the sea. The prayers were very short and good, interrupted by the boom of our guns and the whining of Turkish bullets overhead. His salute was fired above his head from both the trenches....
We shelled the village of Anafarta yesterday, which I don’t much care about. A good many here want to destroy the minaret of the mosque. I can see no difference in principle between this and the destruction of Rheims Cathedral. Kyriakidis told me a Greek cure for sunstroke. You fill the ears of the afflicted one with salt water; it makes a noise like thunder in his head, but the sunstroke passes. Christo thereupon got me salt water in a jug without telling me, and several thirsty people tried to drink it....
A German submarine seen here.... A day of almost perfect peace; rifle fire ceased sometimes for several minutes together, but 8-inch shells were fired into the trenches.... Men are singing on the beach for the first time, and there is something cheerful in the air. The enfilading gun has been, as usual, reported to be knocked out, but gunners are great optimists. No news from Helles.... Turkish reinforcements just coming up. Attack expected at 3 a.m. We stand to arms here.
Wednesday, May 19th. Work under heavy shell fire. This grew worse about 6.30. Several heavy shells hit within a few yards of this dugout and the neighbouring ones, but did not burst. A little farther off they did explode, or striking the sea, raised tall columns and high fountains of white water. Colonel Chaytor badly wounded in the shoulder. A great loss to us. He talked very cheerfully. I have got leave to send away Ashjian.... This, after all, is a quarrel for those directly concerned. The Germans have brought up about twelve more field-guns and four or five Jack Johnsons, and the shelling is very heavy. Saw a horrid sight: a barge full of wounded was being towed out to the hospital ship. Two great Jack Johnsons came, one just in front of them; then when they turned with a wriggle, one just behind them, sending up towers of water, and leaving two great white roses in the sea that turned muddy as the stuff from the bottom rose. They had shells round them again, and a miraculous escape. It’s cruel hard on the nerves of wounded men, but of course that was bad luck, not wicked intentions, because the enemy couldn’t see them.
If the Turks had attacked us fiercely on the top and shelled us as badly down here earlier, they might have had us out. Now we ought to be all right, and they can hardly go on using ammunition like this. Their losses are said to be very great. New Turkish reinforcements said to be at Helles. They have done what we ought to have done. Now they are throwing 11-inch at us. It’s too bad.... I saw Colonel Skeen. He said to me: “You had better be ready to go out this afternoon. We have just shot a Turk with a white flag. That will give us an excuse for apologizing”; quite so: it will also give the Turk an excuse for retaliating. A Turkish officer just brought in says that the real attack is to be this afternoon, now at 1.30. I spent an hour in the hospital, interpreting for the Turkish wounded. The Australians are very good to them. On returning I found the General’s dugout hit hard. Nothing to be done but to dig deeper in.
From the third week in May to the third week in June was the kernel of our time at Anzac. We had grown accustomed to think of the place as home, and of the conditions of our life as natural and permanent. The monotony of the details of shelling and the worry of the flies are of interest only to those who endured them, and have been eliminated, here and there, from this diary.
During this month we were not greatly troubled. The men continued to make the trenches impregnable, and were contented. It was in some ways a curiously happy time.
The New Zealanders and the Australians were generally clothed by the sunlight, which fitted them, better than any tailor, with a red-brown skin, and only on ceremonial occasions did they wear their belts and accoutrements.
Our sport was bathing, and the Brotherhood of the Bath was rudely democratic. There was at Anzac a singularly benevolent officer, but for all his geniality a strong disciplinarian, devoted to military observances. He was kind to all the world, not forgetting himself, and he had developed a kindly figure. No insect could resist his contours. Fleas and bugs made passionate love to him, inlaying his white skin with a wonderful red mosaic. One day he undressed and, leaving nothing of his dignity with his uniform, he mingled superbly with the crowd of bathers. Instantly he received a hearty blow upon his tender, red and white shoulder and a cordial greeting from some democrat of Sydney or of Wellington: “Old man, you’ve been amongst the biscuits!” He drew himself up to rebuke this presumption, then dived for the sea, for, as he said, “What’s the good of telling one naked man to salute another naked man, especially when neither have got their caps?”