CHAPTER IV
The Ghastly Landing
There was a swift, sharp lightening of the sky back of the gaunt, black cliffs and our boats seemed thrown out of the water, thrown up into the air by the rocking thunder of the heavy guns of the Turkish batteries behind those cliffs. The water that had been so smooth an instant before, that was, in fact, so treacherously smooth, as had been the silence, was stabbed and chopped and sent into wild spume by a great rain of shells. Blinding blasts flared as suddenly as here and there a boat with its living load was struck and shattered. Screams and hoarse, impulsive cries began to mingle with the explosions.
Then the cliffs and the sand dunes spat deadly fire at us. In the darkness I could not, of course, see it all. But it would seem from what afterward I was able to learn that not one of the pilots of the steam tugs thought of turning back. I could not see it all and had no time to think of much other than myself and my platoon, a very few seconds after the bombardment from the big guns of the forts began dropping their big shells and the hail of the machine guns sang among us.
Surprise?
They had our range as surely as if we stood ten feet away from them. The water was cluttered with the accurate assemblage of their shots. Our battleships had begun an angry, heavy retort but whether their great guns were finding the marks, of course, we couldn’t know. It would have been a mighty comfort to us then to feel that these shots were smashing the Turks.
There was no indication of it. Their fire became more and more and more intense. Boat after boat was being smashed. In not more than three minutes after the enemy began his bombardment against our landing, my own boat went to smash. A shell struck it at the bow. It shattered the boat and must have killed at least a dozen men. I, fortunately, was in the stern. With my comrades I was hurled into the air and the next realization was that I was far over my head in water and that the first thing I must do if I was not to drown was to get rid of my heavy knapsack.
Thank the Lord, I had been a sturdy swimmer since childhood. I can’t begin to picture to you how many scores of my comrades, unable to swim or weak swimmers, died then and there—how many of them with knapsacks on their backs and guns and bayonets in their hands yet remain at the bottom of the Ægean Sea, a curious spectacle for the fish.
I fought my way to the surface. And I clung to my gun and bayonet. I clung to them as frantically as any drowning man is supposed to clutch at a straw. For the only escape from drowning was to get ashore and ashore I knew there would be small hope for me without my bayonet.
When I got to the surface other chaps were struggling all around me.