The Turks were now much more lively in their cannonading, and began once more their hateful tactics of loosing off shells at mounted men.
About a fortnight before I left the Peninsula, I was riding up from Gully Ravine, and, having got to the top of what is called Artillery Road, I met a gun team, and one of the drivers told me to be careful going along the next couple of hundred yards, as the Turks were shelling the short strip of road just ahead. I was walking my horse at the time, and continued to do so, as I felt I was just as safe walking as galloping. In a few moments I heard the report of a gun from behind Krithia, then I heard the scream of a shell coming nearer and nearer, and as I bent my head down to the horse's mane I said to myself: "This is going to be a near thing." The shell whizzed close above my head and exploded a yard or two beyond me, plastering some twenty or thirty yards of ground with shrapnel. My horse took no notice of the explosion, and continued walking on as if nothing had happened. Although I was anxiously on the look-out for another salute from the enemy, I thought, if I just walked on, I would bluff the Turkish observing officer into thinking that, as I took the matter so unconcernedly, he must have the wrong range and it would be useless to go on shooting. It was either that or else he was a sportsman and thought that, as I had taken my escape so calmly, he would not shoot again, for at any rate not another round was fired.
Although I did not know it at the time, Gye had been watching the whole of this episode from a little distance. He had seen the gun team being shelled as it galloped for shelter down to the Gully, and when he saw me emerge he felt pretty sure that I would be fired on as soon as I was spotted by the Turkish gunners. He told me it was most exciting to watch me as I came to the dangerous bit of road, hear the report of the Turkish gun, hear the shriek of the shell as it came along, and then see it go bang, apparently on my head!
As was to be expected, where cannonading and battles were the order of the day, there was little to be seen on the Peninsula in the way of animal or bird life. The cranes which Homer sings of somewhere or other, flew in great flocks down to Egypt, flying almost in the arrow formation of geese when in flight, but with the arrow not quite so regular. I have put up some partridges out of the gorse, between the Gully Ravine and the Ægean, within a hundred yards of where the guns were blazing away for all they were worth. There were a few other small birds about, but very few, if any, warblers. I came across one dead hare, shot by a stray bullet, and I had a glimpse of one live one as it scuttled away in the gorse. The only other four-footed wild thing that I saw in the Peninsula was what appeared to be a cross between the merecat and the mongoose, but slightly larger than the mongoose. It was of a dark reddish-brown colour, thickly dotted over with grey spots. I saw one or two small snakes, but whether they were venomous or not I cannot say, for they glided off into their holes before I could secure a specimen.
A night or two before I left Gallipoli we had a sudden downpour of rain which made the trenches raging torrents, and turned the dug-outs into diving baths; but still our men remained cheery throughout it all; nothing can depress them. The men of L Battery, R. H. A., like all others, were flooded out in the twinkling of an eye, and I watched them, standing in their shirts on the edge of their dug-outs, endeavoring with a hooked stick to fish up their equipment and the remainder of their attire from a murky flood of water four feet deep—all the time singing gaily: "It's a long way to Tipperary."
My escape on Artillery Road was the last serious little bit of adventure I had on the Peninsula, for towards the end of November I got ill, and Captain Blandy, R. A. M. C., packed me off to hospital. My faithful orderly, Corporal Yorish, came with me to the hospital and saw that I was comfortably fixed up for the night. I cannot speak too highly of this man's behaviour during the whole time he was with me in Egypt and Gallipoli. In Palestine he was a dental student, but he could turn his hand to anything, and was never happy unless he was at work.
I spent that night in the clearing station close to Lancashire Landing, on a bed having a big side tilt, with a dozen other officers all round, some sick, some wounded. We had a dim light from a hurricane lamp suspended to a rope, which was tied to the tent poles, and we got a little warmth and a lot of smell from an oil stove, for the weather was now very cold.
At about 4 A. M. I dozed off, and the next thing I remember was a Turk leaning over me, trying, as I thought, to prod me in the face with a bayonet. I made a vicious kick at him which woke me up, and then I discovered that my Turk was no Turk at all but merely the hospital orderly, who was attempting to jab a thermometer into my mouth in an effort to take my temperature. It was 5 A. M. and the hospital machine had begun to work, and whether you are well, or whether you are ill, or whether you are asleep, or whether you are awake, temperatures and medicines must be taken according to rule and regulation.
This same clearing station had seen some very lively times, because it is close to the ordnance stores, and in a line from Asia to W Beach, so that shells used to fall into it both from Achi Baba and from across the Dardanelles. Orderlies and patients had been killed there, and many others had had marvellous escapes. Scores and scores of times have I witnessed the departure of the sick and wounded, which generally took place in the evening, and the clock-like precision with which everything worked reflected the greatest credit on Colonel Humphreys, R. A. M. C., who was in charge of it from the beginning to the end, and on the members of the R. A. M. C. Corps who assisted him. From what I saw of the R. A. M. C. men in Gallipoli, this Corps has every reason to be proud of itself. Of course, at the first landing there was a lamentable medical break-down, and there is no doubt that hundreds of lives were lost because there were not enough doctors, attendants, and stores to go round. Hundreds and hundreds of badly wounded men had to be stuffed anywhere on board transports and sent down to the hospitals at Alexandria with practically no one to look after them, excepting their lesser wounded comrades; but this was an administrative blunder, which does not reflect on the pluck, energy and skill shown by all those R. A. M. C. officers and men with whom I came in contact in Gallipoli.
Colonel Humphreys saw me off on the morning of the 29th of November, and I went down in an ambulance full of officers and soldiers to the French pier at V Beach, the same at which I had landed in April, because our own pier at W Beach had been washed away and could not be used. While we were getting on board the trawler which was to take us to the hospital ship, the Turks put a few shells close round us in their efforts to damage the French works on V Beach. This was their last salute so far as I was concerned, for I never heard another shot fired. They were very good about our hospital ships, and never attempted to do any shooting which would endanger them in any way.