It was given to few on the Peninsula to be buried thus. Many still lie where they fell on those Gallipoli hills; some are graced with shallow graves, scratched hastily under fire, among the torn and tattered scrub, while others, with fire-bars and blanket and with a few parting words, have been plunged into the blue AEgean.
On the little sandy point on the north of Anzac Cove is one small graveyard, where, when Mac knew it, were fifty or sixty graves. In the daytime it was shell swept and subject to direct rifle fire, but at night came shadowy figures which passed to and fro from the beach bringing neat stones and round boulders for picturesque and permanent adornment of a cobber's grave. Or maybe there would be some diggers at work, or a burying-party.
To-night, in the peaceful calm of that summer evening, when not a ripple lapped on the stony beach, when the only indication of war was the music of the firing high above and the occasional whistle of a spent bullet overhead, the good old padre, in clear, low tones, went through the sergeant's burial service. The rites were finished, and the silent troopers moved away into the darkness as quietly as they had come, while the padre started the service anew among another group of silent, waiting figures. And so the summer passed over that little burial-ground. In the daytime, the scorching sun blazed over the crude crosses and whitened stones, and the shells shrieked by, while in the dark coolness of the night shadowy figures brought the day's toll silently and reverently to its resting place.
CHAPTER XVII
AN OUTPOST AFFAIR
Fortunately for the regiment, most of the daylight hours during the short stay in the present bivouac were spent away on working-parties or in support to some section of the front line. They usually returned in the evening to find fresh holes in their oil-sheets and shrapnel pellets on their floors. Still, they often had a good night's sleep, and always a fine bathe in the morning.
While lodged on this slope, Mac and his squadron became involved in an engagement which kept them fully occupied for three days. One Friday evening at dusk they moved northwards along the beach to the farthest outpost. Inland from here about half a mile on a high ridge the Turks had commenced the formation of an outpost. About nine o'clock this was attacked and easily captured. Then the squadron commenced digging in, and, by dawn, with small loss, had dug a fairly satisfactory semicircular position, facing over ravines, beyond which were higher hills.
The Turks were expected to counterattack, but contented themselves by sniping from all sides, which considerably impeded the work of consolidation. Mac and his section toiled and sweated all day, and, in the late afternoon, connected their section of trench with those on the right and left. Water had run dry, no communication could be had with the rear, the sun blazed down, with withering heat, and altogether Mac had known of pleasanter spots to spend a summer's day. In the afternoon, too, the Turks added shrapnel to their missiles.
About ten o'clock at night another squadron appeared for their relief, and Mac, with keen anticipations of a drink, a bathe and a sleep, speedily stumbled off through the scrub after his cobbers. Their line of march lay the length of a long ridge through enemy country, and on this ridge one of the destroyers protecting the flank chose this inopportune moment to cast her attention and her searchlight. Each time it caught him in its brilliant glare on the sky-line, Mac crashed down into the nearest shrub, prickly holly, arbutus or stunted oak, and cursed lowly to himself till the beam lifted. Progressing spasmodically when the beam was directed elsewhere, they reached the outpost, then stumbled wearily back along the beach, ate and bathed and turned in for a real long sleep.
They were to have no such luck. They had only just settled down when word came back that the enemy had closed over the ridge along which they had returned, and that the squadron in the new outpost was cut off. The only remaining squadron was sent out at once to their relief, but, the Turks being in too great strength, it could do nothing. So Mac's squadron, tired as they were, dodged away out again to another hard day's work in the blazing sun. It was now daylight, and certain spots had to be crossed by each man singly at a run, while the close attention of a Turkish machine-gun at long range lent wings to their feet. With his head down and his teeth clenched, Mac would bolt full-speed across these open spaces. Tut—tut—tut would echo from the hills, then a whinging past his ears or a spurt of dust in too close proximity, and he would redouble his pace. The shelter of the bank on the farther side gained, he would turn to laugh at the expressions, whimsical, serious as death, or thoroughly amused, of his cobbers as they rapidly paced their hundred yards.