CHAPTER XX
ANZAC AWAKES
Mac set off for his Regiment, which was holding the front trenches of Russell's Top. Knowing it was a hopeless business poking about trenches among sentries in the dark looking for his unit, he lay down at the base of the Top, and slept there on the ground till daylight.
He found his Squadron in the most uncomfortable of trenches, and not particularly enjoying itself. It was holding the portion of the Top nearest the enemy, who were between twenty and thirty yards away and well within range of hand grenades. But two could play at the same game, and the Turks had a better supply of bombs.
Two halves of the Squadron took in turn the holding of the front saps and the main line. The former were narrow, shallow twisting ditches between piles of loose earth and rotting bodies. Parts were covered in as bomb-proof shelters, and in places sloping shafts led steeply down to mine galleries before the enemy's front line. Between those two series of drab mounds of earth which marked the opposing lines, lay as terrible an acre as ever was. The hasty burying during the armistice three months ago had been inadequate, and the saps had cut through many of the hastily-scratched graves. Since then many men had fallen, to rot unburied in the sun and to be again and again torn by shells and bombs and bullets.
A few shattered sticks were the forlorn remnants of the luxurious scrub. Wire twined in untidy coils here and there, but there was nothing to hide the blackened bodies. Sometimes at night low fires licked among the corpses, apparently started by the Turks by throwing over their parapet paraffin or petrol, and there would be spasmodic explosions for an hour or more of the ammunition in the equipment round the dead forms, sounding like the burning of a Guy Fawkes effigy.
Mac had never more than swiftly surveyed the scene direct—for there was a deadly accuracy in the practice of the snipers at twenty yards range—but viewed its details and the Turkish parapets through a periscope. These, too, the snipers shattered with annoying frequency, though the Turks themselves had no rest whatever in the matter of being sniped at. And in these wretched saps amid a horror of desolation Mac and his cobbers passed every second twenty-four hours. In the day-time the sun beat into them with unrelieved violence, and many troopers squeezed into the bomb-proof shelters and tunnel entrances to seek shade. There was no where to cook food, and bully beef, biscuits and water formed the fare. But they had small appetite for anything, as the stench of the dead and the flies which swarmed left few men hungry. At one corner hung a blanket. Some time a sapper in his work had come to a body, and had turned the sap to the right to avoid it, and the blanket had been tacked up as a screen to the body in the recess.
One hard case found this recess a shady spot and with more room for his cramped legs, and declared that it was no worse alongside the several months old corpse than anywhere else in the saps. In one place the lower leg and boot of a dead Turk stuck out from the corner of a trench, and at another a bony hand protruded. Grim humorists shook it as they passed.
The warm nights dragged drowsily by. In these trenches the troops were not supposed to sleep because of the bombs thrown so frequently by the Turks. If one were awake, they could be easily dodged, but, if a bomb caught a man asleep, there was little chance of escape. Every second twenty-four hours were passed in the main firing line, a few yards farther back than the saps, or close up in reserve. Sometimes, during these second days, it was possible to get a bathe when on a journey for rations or water, and a little cooking could be attempted on a ledge in the side of a communication trench. But altogether everything was most uncomfortable, and with the cramped life Mac's rheumatism was returning. There was little sleep too, rarely exceeding two hours a day as the fortnight passed. Strong enemy reinforcements had been reported by aerial reconnaissance within easy march of Anzac, and an attack was expected any night. The Regiments were very much under strength from disease, and the burden of watching fell heavily on the remaining men. Mac was disappointed too that, in their present limited quarters, they could make no use of the provisions he had brought from Lemnos.
Relief came at last, without the enemy having made an attack, and the Mounted Rifles again handed Russell's Top over to the Australian Light Horse. They thankfully trundled away down the hill with all their gear to a pleasant bivouac near the sea, and proceeded without delay to make themselves as clean and as comfortable as could be. Mac went off for the provisions, and soon the section had a small awninged dug-out in excellent domestic order. Here, terminated by a stone wall, the main Anzac left flank met the sea. The trench line here was but thinly held, as it did not directly oppose Turkish trenches. Beyond it, at the seaward end of the sharp ridges which ran up to the main broken mass of Sari Bair, Chanak Bair and Battleship Hill, were No. 1 and No. 2 Outposts, faced by the formidable Turkish outposts on the forbidding crags above. So, separated by some distance from the enemy, the regiment proceeded to enjoy itself.