Before dawn, each of the two chaplains attached to the Brigade held a service. The Church of England Chaplain, the Rev. J. W. Crozier, celebrated Holy Communion in the operating tent of the 30th Field Ambulance, while Father O’Connor said Mass in the open air just outside the camp. It had been decided that the Chaplains were not to come with the Brigade, but were to remain with the Field Ambulance. This decision caused much regret, not only to the Chaplains themselves, but to all ranks in the Brigade. The Roman Catholics in particular disliked losing Father O’Connor even temporarily, for he was personally loved by the men, and in addition the Irish soldier faces death twice as cheerfully when fortified by the ministrations of his Church. Never were more reverent and solemn worshippers seen than at those two short services at Mudros, as the well remembered words were murmured, and the grey twilight shone faintly on the faces of many who were soon to die.
As the last prayers were uttered, the dawn was breaking, a grey dawn fretted with many clouds. The congregations dispersed and took up the burden of work and war again. A hasty breakfast was swallowed, valises were strapped up and carried by fatigue parties down to the pier, while the men rolled up their blankets and ground sheets and fastened them to their packs. In the deserted lines, officers were endeavouring to prevent improvident soldiers from eating or leaving behind them part of the three days’ rations with which they had just been issued, while bands of predatory Greek children, who were on the look-out for anything that they could pick up, were driven away with threats and sometimes with blows. Then between eight and nine o’clock the battalions fell in, ready at last for the great adventure.
It is often difficult for the historian, writing years after the event, to ascertain the exact dress worn by those who took part in the events portrayed in his page, and so it may be well to put on record the outward aspect of the Irish Division when it left for Gallipoli. Officers and men were dressed alike in thin, sand-coloured khaki drill. Shorts were forbidden, and the men wore their trousers tucked into putties of the darker khaki shade that is worn in England. Except for the metal shoulder titles, there were not many marks to distinguish the different units, since England had been left at such short notice that there had been little time to procure badges of coloured cloth to sew on the big mushroom-shaped helmets. The Royal Irish Rifles had improvised a green and black patch, however, and the officers of the Hampshires had mounted a claret and yellow one. The Colonel of the Leinsters had with infinite ingenuity procured ink, and stencilled an enormous black “L” on the side of each helmet. The Connaught Rangers had ordered shamrock badges with the device “5 C.R.,” but their ambition was their undoing, since these elaborate decorations took so long to make that they did not reach the Peninsula until most of those who were to wear them had been killed or invalided. The 7th Munsters were more fortunate, and went into action with a green shamrock on each arm just below the shoulder. A few Fusilier officers sported a hackle of the regimental colour, but this conspicuous ornament drew too much attention to the wearer to make it safe in Gallipoli. It mattered less what the men wore on their bodies, since it was almost impossible to see it, so heavily were they laden.
They hardly looked like fighting, and would have run a poor chance if they had had to swim. On their backs they had their great-coats, rolled in their packs, on top of which they carried two blankets and a waterproof sheet. Their haversacks contained three days’ rations; in their pouches, and festooned round their necks, were two hundred rounds of ammunition, and in addition to rifle, bayonet, entrenching implement and water-bottle, every man carried either a pick, shovel, or camp-kettle. The signallers and machine-gunners were loaded up with their technical equipment, and the effect of the whole parade, topped as it was by broad-brimmed sun-helmets, suggested strength rather than mobility. Heavily the columns swung down to the beach, and there waited, for embarkation proved a slow process. The sun was hot, and there was no shade, so that many of the men emptied their water-bottles before they had been there long, though fortunately it was possible to refill them at a neighbouring well. Many more bought watermelons, and the far-seeing laid in a stock of as many eggs and lemons as they could carry, to take to the Peninsula. The loads that the naval pinnaces could carry were small, and it was only after repeated journeys that at 3.30 p.m. the whole Brigade embarked. The infantry were not accompanied by either the Field Company Royal Engineers, or the Field Ambulance, which were usually attached to the Brigade. They were to accompany the remainder of the Division.
The ships used as ferries between Mudros and the Peninsula were not large, and the men found themselves tightly packed fore and aft, with only just enough room to squat or lie on the decks. The boats had, however, seen plenty of service, and their officers and men were able to supply abundance of good advice. As soon as night fell, no lights of any kind were permitted, and consequently it was necessary for every man to remain close to his kit, or fearful confusion would follow at disembarkation. It was evident that landing was likely to be somewhat of a trial, as even the numbers of changes of station that the Brigade had had at home had given them no practice in disembarking in pitch darkness. No food was obtainable on board, but there was plenty of hot water, so that the men were able to make tea in their mess-tins to wash down the bully and biscuit taken from their iron ration.
All ranks had settled down pretty comfortably by the time the boats approached Imbros, and the sun sank in a dark bank of clouds behind the Lemnos hills. A few slept, but most were too excited to do so; for as the ship approached the invisible coast the flashes of the guns became visible, and a broad searchlight beam stabbed the sky from the summit of Achi Baba. A little further up the coast a destroyer had focussed her searchlight on a path down the face of a cliff, and the round circle of light looked for all the world like a magic lantern in a village entertainment at home. On they steamed, leaving all this behind, and most dozed off, only to be awakened by the stoppage of the boat. By straining one’s eyes one could see a few more ships anchored close by, but the only other sign of life was a couple of dim lights, which seemed to be high overhead. This was Anzac.
The Brigade was soon, however, to discover that the Turks were vigilant, for a sniper, hearing the rattle of the anchor-chain of one of the boats, fired at a venture and wounded a man of the Leinster Regiment in the chest. A Connaught Ranger was also wounded in the hand. Clearly the warnings against lights and noise were justified. However, nothing could be done but to get the men into their equipment and wait. At last the lighters grunted up alongside and disembarkation began. The darkness was intense, and it was impossible to speak above a whisper. Men of all companies were crowded together; N.C.O.’s were quite unrecognisable, and no previous rehearsal had been possible. However, good will triumphed over these obstacles. One by one the men and their burdens were hurried into the lighters, the specialists unloaded their technical equipment, and disembarkation proceeded smoothly, if not quickly.
By the time the last ship began to unload her troops the first traces of the dawn were appearing in the sky, and the sailors on the lighters became very anxious. Not only was it undesirable that the Turks should learn that large reinforcements were being sent to Anzac, but the whole of the harbour was exposed to the fire of the enemy’s guns, and if the slow-moving lighters were detected by daylight, they would have to pass through a storm of shrapnel, and would have suffered many casualties. Most of the men did not realise this, and were inclined to be deliberate in their movements, but, bustled by sailors and officers, they got ashore safely. They found themselves in the grey dawn standing on the shores of a little bay. Above them towered broken sandy slopes, at the foot of which stood a narrow strip of beach, covered with sandbagged dug-outs and piles of forage and rations. They massed under cover of these; officers and company-sergeant-majors hurriedly checked their numbers as far as it was possible to do so, and then they were led away by New Zealand guides to a dangerous position.
A certain amount of cover had already been prepared by Australian and New Zealand digging parties, in what was very rightly known as Shrapnel Gully. Battalions followed the guides up a low ridge of sandhills, through a short sap, and past a row of water-tanks, on to a path which wound up between two high hills. It was, as we discovered later, wider than most gullies in Gallipoli, and if anything the slopes were gentler; but it was a fair specimen of its kind. On the southern side the formation was regular; to the north a smaller gully running into it formed a sort of bay about two hundred yards in circumference. Both slopes were covered with low prickly scrub, rising at its highest to about four feet; in between were patches of sand and the dug-outs prepared for the brigade. To the south these were arranged regularly in rows, something like the galleries of the model coal-mine in the South Kensington Museum, and these were allotted to the Hampshires, Rifles, and Leinsters. On the northern slope they were arranged irregularly on the side of the small bay, and were occupied by the Connaught Rangers. Brigade Headquarters were established in a sandbagged dug-out close to the road that ran down the bottom of the gully.
The men were distributed among their dug-outs, and the officers sat down to take stock of the situation. We had arrived, but that was all that we knew. There was any amount of noise, but nothing to look at, and as the noise of firing seemed to come from every point of the compass, including the sea, it hardly enlightened us as to where in particular the fighting was going on. It was impossible to try and see anything, as all ranks had been warned that to go up to the top of any of the hills would probably be fatal. Standing orders, however, had been issued to company commanders, who sat down in their dug-outs to study them. No fires or lights of any kind were allowed after dark, and green wood was never to be used for fires. These were obvious precautions, as light or smoke would be certain to cause heavy shelling.