The tendency is to retire late, and thus abridge the period of persecution. There is the balm of weariness, too, against which no louse is altogether proof. One's friends "drop in" for a yarn and a smoke after tea, and the dreaded hour of turning in is postponed by reminiscent chit-chat and the late preparation of supper. One renews here a surprising bulk of old acquaintance, and the changes are nightly rung upon its personnel. All this makes against the plagues of vermin; and against the monotony that kills, too. Old college chums are dug out, and one talks back and lives a couple of hours in the glory of days that have passed and in the brighter glory of a potential re-entry to the old life. Believe it not that there is no deliverance possible from the hardness of active service, even in its midst. The retrospect, and the prospect, and the ever-present faculty of visualisation, are ministering angels sent to minister.
Rude interruptions come in upon such attempts at self-deliverance. Enemy aircraft make nocturnal bomb-dropping raids and rudely dissipate prospect and retrospect. One harbours a sneaking regard for the pluckily low elevation at which these night flights are made. Happily, they have yet made few casualties.... On a ridge above us stands a factory for the manufacture of bombs and hand grenades. Every night mules are laden there for the trenches. One evening a restive mule, ramping about, thrust his heel through a case of bombs adjacent. They responded with a roar that shook the hill-side. Three other cases were set going. At once the slopes and gullies were peopled by thinly clad figures from the dug-outs rushing to and fro in astonishment. The immediate inference was of enemy missiles: no one suspected our own bomb factory. The most curious conjectures were abroad. One fellow bawled that the Turks had broken our line and were bombing us from the ridge above; another shouted that Zeppelins had crept over; one man cried that the cruiser, at that moment working under her searchlight on enemy positions, had "messed up" the angle of elevation and was pouring high-explosive into us. Shouting and lanterns and the call for stretcher-bearers about the bomb factory soon disclosed the truth. The festive mule, with three companions, had been literally blown to pieces; next morning chunks of mule were lying about our depôt. The worst was that our own men were killed and shattered. This was ghastly. Is it not enough to be laid low by enemy shell?
Yet the work of enemy shell on this beach is peculiarly horrible. Men are struck down suddenly and unmercifully where there is no heat of battle. A man dies more easily in the charge; here he is wounded mortally unloading a barge, mending a pier, drawing water for his unit, directing a mule-convoy. He may even lose a limb or his life off duty—merely returning from a bathe or washing a shirt on the shingle.
One of our men was struck by shrapnel pellet retiring to his dug-out to read his just-delivered mail. He was off duty—was, in fact, far up the ridge above the beach. The wound gaped in his back. There was no stanching it. Every thump of the aorta pumped out his life. Practically he was a dead man when struck; he lived but a few minutes, with his pipe, still steaming, clenched in his teeth. They laid him aside in the hospital. That night we stood about the grave in which he lay beneath his ground-sheet. Over that wind-swept headland the moon shone fitfully through driving cloud. A monitor bombarded offshore. Under her friendly-screaming shell and the singing bullets of the Turk the worn, big-hearted Padré intoned the beautiful Catholic intercession for the soul of the dead, in his cracked voice. At the burial of Sir John Moore was heard the distant and random gun. Here the shell do sometimes burst in the midst of the burial-party. Bearers are laid low. There is indecent running for cover. The grave is hastily filled in by a couple of shovelmen; the hideous desecration is over; and fresh graves are to be dug immediately for stricken members of the party. To die violently and be laid in this shell-swept area is to die lonely indeed. The day is far off (but it will come) when splendid mausolea will be raised over these heroic dead. And one foresees the time when steamers will bear up the Ægean pilgrims come to do honour at the resting-places of friends and kindred, and to move over the charred battle-grounds of Turkey.
There is more than shrapnel to be contended with on the beach, though shrapnel takes far the heaviest toll. Taube flights over the position are frequent by day, and bombs are dropped. The intermittent sobbing shriek of a descending bomb is unmistakable and heart-shaking. You know the direction of shrapnel; you know in which direction the hellish shower will spread; there is time for lightning calculation and action. But a bomb gives little indication of its degree of proximity, and with it there is no "direction" of burst; a circle of death hurtles forth from the missile. No calculation is possible as to a way of escape.
Taube bombs and machine-gun bullets are not the only missiles from above of which it behoves Anzac denizens to beware. Men are struck by pellets and shell-case from the shrapnel discharged at our 'planes from Turkish anti-aircraft guns. Our aircraft is fired at very consistently. There is a temptation to stand gaping there, face to the sky, watching their fortunes. Such temptation comes from below, and should not be yielded to—unless our 'planes are vertically overhead or on our west. If they are circling over the Turkish position, take cover; for "what goes up must come down," according to the formula accompanying a schoolboy trick; and shrapnel discharged at 'planes on your eastern elevation may as well come down on your altruistically-inquisitive head as bury in the earth beside you.
To all such onslaughts from aloft and around most men show an indifference that is fairly consistent. The impression is left with you that there is quite a large number of them who have "come to terms with themselves" on the subject of an eventuality of whatever nature, and this is abundantly clear when you see them after their tragedy has eventuated. There is little visible panic in the victims in any dressing station, little evidence of astonishment, little restlessness. Men lie there quiet under the thrusts and turns of the sword of pain, steadfast in the attitude of no-compromise with suffering. To this exceptions will be found; all men have not reckoned up squarely and accurately beforehand the cost of all emergencies that are possible. But most of them have.