It is by way of Shrapnel Gully we regain the beach. The Australian hospital stands on the right extremity—by no means out of danger. A sparse line of stretchers is moving down almost continuously. This is a hospital for mere hasty dressing to enable wounded to go aboard the pinnace to the Hospital ship standing out. Collins Street doctors who have left behind surgeries "replete with every convenience" find themselves in others that are mere hastily run up marquées. Half the attendants hop or limp. They have been peppered. The dentist's outfit is elaborate, and plagued men may have teeth "stopped" or extracted. There is a mechanical department, too, where artificial teeth are repaired—teeth that have been wrecked on the Army biscuit, which is not just angels'-food. Dentists' kit is almost complete; lacks little, in fact, but an electric current.
The beach is animated. There are A.S.C. depôts almost innumerable, wireless stations, ordnance stores, medical supply stores, and what-not. This is not the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war, but the hard facts and hard graft and dirt, sweat and peril, of righteous war. It is by these mundane means the clash of ideals is proceeding, and by which a decision will come....
Only when the masked enemy batteries of the flanks are firing (which is many times in the day) is the beach cleared and quiet. At one stage a couple of Lieutenants-Colonel limited the adminitory patrolling to themselves during fire. They walked up and down unconcernedly with an heroic and nonchalant self-possession, swearing hard at the men who showed themselves. The hidden battery cannot be located. The cruisers are doing their best with searching fire; their bluejackets are climbing the masts to observe; the balloon is aloft; the seaplanes are vigilant; our own outposts never relax. There is no clue. It is concealed with devilish ingenuity. Every day it is costing us dearly.
All's fair in war. Their sniping is awfully successful. They have picked off our officers at a deadly rate. Lance-corporals have become Lieutenants in a single night. Transport of supplies to the flanks is done by mule-carts manned by Sikhs. The route is sniped at close intervals, by night as well as by day, and by machine-gun as well as by the rifle; beside, it is swept by shrapnel. Only under the most urgent necessity are supplies taken to the flanks by day. Then the loss in men and mules is heavier than we can bear. The Turkish sniper is almost unequalled—certainly unexcelled—as an unerring shot. At night the rattle of the mule-carts directs the fire. At certain more exposed intervals of the route the carts move at the gallop, the drivers lying full-stretch in the bottom of the carts and flogging on to safety. Is not this worse than trench-fighting? The Sikhs are doing a deadly dangerous work unflinchingly well.
It was reported unofficially that two Turkish women were captured sniping. Rumours are persistent enough as to the presence of women in and behind the Turkish lines. Our outposts claim to have seen them, and victorious attacking parties that have captured Turkish camps have been said to declare they have found hanging there garments of the most significant lace-frilled sort. The unbelieving diagnose these as the highly-embellished pyjamas of Turkish officers. The whole thing is probably to be disbelieved. The Turk is too seriously busy to be distracted by the blandishments of his women. Harems doubtless are left well at home, to be revelled in when the British have ultimately been driven into the sea.
The men bathe, but often pay too dearly for the bath. The bathing beach is a place notorious for good-humoured but successful "lifting." In the early stages there was mixed bathing of Colonels and lance-corporals, Majors and full privates. The Colonel leaves his boots on the sand; a private is sneaking off—"Hey! those —— boots are mine!" ... All ranks go about ashore dressed alike, with the rank shown symbolically; distinguishing marks of rank become distinguishing marks for sharp-shooters too: you must know a Captain by his bearing rather than his clothes. Curious dialogues arise. The officers are in a garb which differs in many ways from their dress of the promenade at Shepheard's Hotel.
There is little damping of spirits. Most men are happy. Pettiness is snubbed. All are bound by the common danger into the spirit of amity. There is growling day and night—the legitimate growling of the overwrought man, which means nothing. Little outbursts of the liver there are, but of a different quality from those civilian ventings of the spleen.