When I tell them at home that if they will give me munitions enough to let me advance two miles I will give them Constantinople, that is the truth. On paper, the Turks no doubt might assert with equal force that if they got forces enough together to drive the Australians back a short two hundred yards they could give the Sultan the resounding prestige of a Peninsula freed from the Giaour. But that would require more Turks than the Turks could feed, whereas we know we could do it now, as we are—given the wherewithal—trench mortars, hand grenades and bombs, for example.
A message from Hanbury Williams, who is with the Grand Duke Nicholas, to say that all idea of sending me a Russian Army Corps to land at the Bosphorus has been abandoned!!!
30th May, 1915. H.M.T. "Arcadian." Went to Anzac in a destroyer. The Cove was being heavily shelled, and the troops near the beach together with the fatigue parties handling stores and ammunition, had dashed into their dugouts like marmots at the shadow of an eagle. Birdwood came out to meet me on this very unhealthy spot; indeed, in spite of my waving him back, he walked right on to the end of the deserted pier. Just as we were getting near his quarters, a couple of shrapnel burst at an angle and height which, by the laws of gravity, momentum and velocity ought to have put a fullstop to this chronicle. Actually, we walked on—through the "Valley of Death"—past the spot where the brave Bridges bit the dust, to the Headquarters of the 4th Australian Infantry Brigade. Thence I could see the enemy trenches in front of Quinn's Post, and also a very brisk bomb combat in full flame where the New Zealand Mounted Rifles were making good the Turkish communicating post they had seized earlier in the day. Nothing more strange than this inspection. Along the path at the bottom of the valley warning notices were stuck up. The wayfarer has to be as punctilious about each footstep as Christian in the "Pilgrim's Progress." Should he disregard the placards directing him to keep to the right or to the left of the track, he is almost certainly shot. Half of the pathway may be as safe as Piccadilly, whilst he who treads the other had far better be up yonder at hand grips with the Turks. Presumably some feature of the ground defilades one part, for the enemy cannot see into the valley, although, were they only 20 yards nearer the edge of the cliff, they would command its whole extent. The spirit of the men is invincible. Only lately have we been able to give them blankets: as to square meals and soft sleeps, these are dreams of the past, they belonged to another state of being. Yet I never struck a more jovial crew. Men staggering under huge sides of frozen beef; men struggling up cliffs with kerosine tins full of water; men digging; men cooking; men card-playing in small dens scooped out from the banks of yellow clay—everyone wore a Bank Holiday air;—evidently the ranklings and worry of mankind—miseries and concerns of the spirit—had fled the precincts of this valley. The Boss—the bill—the girl—envy, malice, hunger, hatred—had scooted far away to the Antipodes. All the time, overhead, the shell and rifle bullets groaned and whined, touching just the same note of violent energy as was in evidence everywhere else. To understand that awful din, raise the eyes 25 degrees to the top of the cliff which closes in the tail end of the valley and you can see the Turkish hand grenades bursting along the crest, just where an occasional bayonet flashes and figures hardly distinguishable from Mother earth crouch in an irregular line. Or else they rise to fire and are silhouetted a moment against the sky and then you recognize the naked athletes from the Antipodes and your heart goes into your mouth as a whole bunch of them dart forward suddenly, and as suddenly disappear. And the bomb shower stops dead—for the moment; but, all the time, from that fiery crest line which is Quinn's, there comes a slow constant trickle of wounded—some dragging themselves painfully along; others being carried along on stretchers. Bomb wounds all; a ceaseless, silent stream of bandages and blood. Yet three out of four of "the boys" have grit left for a gay smile or a cheery little nod to their comrades waiting for their turn as they pass, pass, pass, down on their way to the sea.
There are poets and writers who see naught in war but carrion, filth, savagery and horror. The heroism of the rank and file makes no appeal. They refuse war the credit of being the only exercise in devotion on the large scale existing in this world. The superb moral victory over death leaves them cold. Each one to his taste. To me this is no valley of death—it is a valley brim full of life at its highest power. Men live through more in five minutes on that crest than they do in five years of Bendigo or Ballarat. Ask the brothers of these very fighters—Calgoorlie or Coolgardie miners—to do one quarter the work and to run one hundredth the risk on a wages basis—instanter there would be a riot. But here,—not a murmur, not a question; only a radiant force of camaraderie in action.
The Turks have heaps of cartridges and more shells, anyway, than we have. They have as many grenades as they can throw; we have—a dozen per Company. There is a very bitter feeling amongst all the troops, but especially the Australians, at this lack of elementary weapons like grenades. Our overseas men are very intelligent. They are prepared to make allowances for lack of shell; lack of guns; lack of high explosives. But they know there must be something wrong when the Turks carry ten good bombs to our one bad one; and they think, some of them, that this must be my fault. Far from it. Directly after the naval battle of the 18th March—i.e., over two months ago, I wrote out a cable asking for bombs. I sent this on my own happy thought, and I had hoped for a million by the date of landing five weeks later. But I got, practically, none; nor any promise for the future. In default of help from home, we have tried to manufacture these primitive but very effective projectiles for ourselves with jam pots, meat tins and any old rubbish we can scrape together. De Lothbinière has shown ingenuity in thus making bricks without straw. The Fleet, too, has played up and de Robeck has guaranteed me two thousand to be made by the artificers on the battleships. Maxwell in Egypt has been improvising a few; Methuen at Malta says they can't make them there. But what a shame that the sons of a manufacturing country like Great Britain should be in straits for engines so simple.
Yesterday and to-day we have fired, for us, a terrible lot of shells (1,800 shrapnel) but never was shot better spent. We reckon the enemy's casualties between 1,000 and 2,000 mainly caused by our guns playing on the columns which came up trying to improve upon their lodgment in Quinn's Post. Add this to the 3,000 killed, and, say, 12,000 wounded on the 18th instant, and it is clear no troops in the world can stand it very long. But we are literally at the end of our shrapnel; and as to high explosive, according to the standards of the gunners, we have never had any!
Left on a picket boat with Birdie to board my destroyer to an accompaniment of various denominations of projectiles. One or two shells burst hard by just as we were scrambling up her side.
Vice-Admiral Nicholls called after my return. Courtauld Thomson, the Red Cross man, dined; very helpful; very well stocked with comforts and everyone likes him, even the R.A.M.C.
31st May, 1915. H.M.T. "Arcadian." Worked in the forenoon. Gouraud, Girodon and Hunter-Weston lunched and we spent the afternoon at the scheme for our next fight. Each of us agreed that Fortune had not been over kind. By one month's hard, close hammering we had at last made the tough moral of the Turks more pliant, when lo and behold, in broad daylight, thousands of their common soldiery see with their own eyes two great battleships sink beneath the waves and all the others make an exit more dramatic than dignified. Most of the Armada of store ships had already cleared out and now the last of the battleships has offed it over the offing; a move which the whole of the German Grand Fleet could not have forced them to make! What better pick-me-up could Providence have provided for the badly-shaken Turks? No more inquisitive cruisers ready to let fly a salvo at anything that stirs. No more searchlights by night; no more big explosives flying from the Aegean into the Dardanelles!
1st June, 1915. Imbros. Came ashore and stuck up my 80-lb. tent in the middle of a sandbank whereon some sanguine Greek agriculturalist has been trying to plant wheat.