Every day as regularly as clockwork, between half-past ten and eleven, we had an Austrian aeroplane raid, and occasionally in the afternoon as well, and we got so used to them that if we did not hear the first bomb in time we used to gaze up into the sky and wonder why they were so late, but the worst raid was when we were actually embarking.
Embarking is always a tedious business, and is always inseparably connected in my mind with hours of standing about on your own weary feet, like a flock of tired sheep, in weather that is always either too hot or too cold, or else raining, patiently waiting for orders.
We were embarked on large flat barges, and sent off to two or three small Italian steamers in the harbour. The one that I was on was crammed with men, and we had just got alongside the steamer when an aeroplane came exactly overhead. We made a fairly big mark with the large crowded barge alongside the steamer, and it passed over us three times, dropping bombs all around as if they were shelling peas. Backwards and forwards it came, columns of water shooting up, now 50 yards to the right, now a little to the left, showing where the bombs hit the water harmlessly, one of them barely clearing a hospital ship at anchor. Every moment it seemed as if the next one must drop in the middle of our barge, but we were pretty well seasoned to anything by now, and, whatever may have been our inside feelings, we sat still and stolidly watched sudden death hovering over our heads in the blue sky, but it didn’t seem somehow like playing the game when we couldn’t retaliate at all.
The Captain of the Italian steamer got so exasperated that he shouted that he was not going to have his steamer sunk on our account, and that we were to sheer off, as he would not take us on board at all; so our tug towed us back to the pier for further orders, and we were eventually sent off to another steamer.
I and the two officers I was with in the end found ourselves embarked on one steamer, with most of the men from our own regiment on another, and our servants and all our luggage on a third. By that time it was about 1 o’clock, and, as we had been standing about in the hot sun since 5 a.m. and had had nothing to eat, we began to feel as if we should like some breakfast; so we were anything but pleased to be told upon enquiry that nobody could get anything to eat on that ship, neither officers nor men.
“Now then, Corporal,” said my company Commander to me,“you talk French; go and see what you can do.” So I obediently went off to hunt up the Military Commander of the ship. He first informed me that there was no food on the boat, and that nobody could get anything until 8 o’clock that evening, and seemed to be inclined to let the matter go at that, but I was not going to take that answer back if I could help it; so told him that I didn’t think much of his way of treating his English Allies, whereupon, having turned that over in his mind, he said I could have something alone. Of course that was no use; so after a little more persuasion I finally got him to order the steward to serve dinner to the two officers and myself in the saloon in about an hour as soon as it could be got ready, and while waiting for it we could have some coffee, if I could get anybody to make it for me. I accordingly went round to the galley and interviewed the cook, who informed me that the man who made the coffee was asleep in his bunk and I couldn’t wake him.
“Oh, can’t I?” I said (in the words of the man when told by the steward that he could not be sick in the saloon), “you’ll see if I can’t.”
“Are you an officer?” he inquired, with that sort of veiled impertinence that the lower class Italians and Greeks are such past-masters of.
“No, I am not,” I snapped, “I am a corporal; now which is that coffee-man’s cabin?” and, on it being pointed out to me, I beat such a devil’s tattoo on the door with my riding-whip that in half a minute a very tousled and sleepy head appeared, and enquired what on earth was the matter. I told him I wanted three cups of coffee in the saloon at once, and he was so astonished that he got up forthwith and made them, and I went back in triumph to report, and felt rewarded on being told that I had done very well.
The next morning we were transferred in Vallona harbour on to a big Italian steamer, a fine boat, where they treated us very well. We reached Corfu about 1 a.m., and disembarking began there and then. We hung on till the last, as we had nowhere to spend the night, our tents, blankets, etc., being on another boat, and I had not even an overcoat with me and it was very cold, but at 3 a.m. we also had to go.