"Well," he said, "you've got your wish. In a few minutes you'll be ashore. Let me know how you like it when you're there a little while."
"Yes, sir," I said. But I never had a chance to tell him. The first shrapnel shell fired at the Newfoundlanders burst near him, and he had scarcely landed when he was taken off the Peninsula, seriously wounded.
In a short time we had all filed into the boats. There was no noise, no excitement; just now and then a whispered command. I was in a tug with about twenty others who formed the rear guard. The wind had freshened considerably, and was now blowing so hard that our unwieldy tug dared not risk a landing. We came in near enough to watch the other boats. About twenty yards from shore they grounded. We could see the boys jump over the side and wade ashore. Through the half darkness we could barely distinguish them forming up on the beach. Soon they were lost to sight.
During the Turkish summer, dawn comes early. We transhipped from our tug to a lighter. When it grounded on the beach, day was just breaking. Daylight disclosed a steeply sloping beach, scarred with ravines. The place where we landed ran between sheer cliffs. A short distance up the hill we could see our battalion digging themselves in. To the left I could see the boats of another battalion. Even as I watched, the enemy's artillery located them. It was the first shell I had ever heard. It came over the hill close to me, screeching through the air like an express train going over a bridge at night. Just over the boat I was watching it exploded. A few of the soldiers slipped quietly from their seats to the bottom of the boat. At first I did not realize that anybody had been hit. There was no sign of anything having happened out of the ordinary, no confusion. As soon as the boat touched the beach, the wounded men were carried by their mates up the hill to a temporary dressing station. The first shell was the beginning of a bombardment. "Beachy Bill," a battery that we were to become better acquainted with, was in excellent shape. Every few minutes a shell burst close to us. Shrapnel bullets and fragments of shell casing forced us to huddle under the baggage for protection. A little to the left, some Australians were severely punished. Shell after shell burst among them. A regiment of Sikh troops, mule drivers, and transport men were caught half way up the beach. Above the din of falling shrapnel and the shriek of flying shells rose the piercing scream of wounded mules. The Newfoundlanders did not escape. That morning "Beachy Bill's" gunners played no favorites. On all sides the shrapnel came in a shower. Less often a cloud of thick black smoke, and a hole twenty feet deep showed the landing place of a high explosive shell. The most amazing thing was the coolness of the men. The Newfoundlanders might have been practising trench digging in camp in Scotland. When a man was hit, some one gave him first aid, directed the stretcher bearers where to find him, and resumed digging.
About nine, I was told off to go to the beach with one man to guard the baggage. We picked our way carefully, taking advantage of every bit of cover. About half way down, we heard the warning shriek of a shell, and threw ourselves on our faces. Almost instantly we were in the center of a perfect whirlwind of shells. "Beachy Bill" had just located a lot of Australians, digging themselves in about fifty yards away from us. The first few shells fell short, but only the first few. After that, the Turkish gunners got the range, and the Australians had to move, followed by the shells. As soon as we were sure that the danger was over, we continued to the beach, and aboard the lighter that contained our baggage. We had not had a chance to get any breakfast before we started, but the sergeant of our platoon had promised to send a corporal and another man to relieve us in two hours. About twelve o'clock the sergeant appeared, to tell me to wait until one o'clock, when I should be relieved. He brought the news that the adjutant had been wounded seriously in the arm and leg. At the very beginning of the bombardment, a shell had hit him. About forty of our men had been hit, the sergeant said, and the regiment was preparing to change its position. He showed us the new position, and told us to rejoin there as soon as relieved.
About a hundred yards to the right of us rose a cliff that prevented our boat being seen by the enemy. The Turks were devoting their attention to some boats landing well to the left of us. The officer in charge of landing was taking advantage of this and had a gang near us working on dugouts for stores and supplies. Right under the cliffs a detachment of engineers were building a landing as coolly as if they were at home. Every fifteen or twenty minutes, to show us that he was still doing business, "Beachy Bill" sent over a few shells in our direction. The gunners could not see us, but they wanted to warn us not to presume too much. As soon as the first shell landed near us, the officer in charge shouted nonchalantly, "Take cover, everybody." He waited until he was certain every man had found a hiding place, then effaced himself. The courage of the officers of the English army amounts almost to foolhardiness. The men to relieve us did not arrive at once, as promised. The hot afternoon passed slowly. Each hour was a repetition of the preceding one. "Beachy Bill" was surpassing himself. From far out in the bay our warships replied.
About five o'clock I espied one of the Newfoundland lieutenants a little way up the beach in charge of a party of twenty men. I signaled to him and he came down to our boat. The party had come to unload the baggage. When I asked the lieutenant about being relieved, he told me that he had sent a corporal and one man down about one o'clock, and ordered me back to the regiment to report to Lieutenant Steele. Half way up the beach we found Lieutenant Steele. The corporal sent down to relieve me, he told me, had been hit by a shell just after he left his dugout. The man with him had not been heard from. I went back to the beach, and found the man perched up on top of the cliff to the right of the lighter. He had been waiting there all the afternoon for the corporal to join him.
Having solved the mystery of the failure of the relief party, I returned to my platoon. Their first stopping place had proved untenable. All day they had been subjected to a merciless and devastating shelling, and their first day of war had cost them sixty-five men. They were now dug in in a new and safer position. They were only waiting for darkness to advance to reinforce the firing line that was now about four miles ahead. Since to get to our firing line we had to cross the dried-up bed of a salt lake, no move could be made in daylight. That evening we received our ration of rum, and formed up silently in a long line two deep, beside our dugouts. I fell in with my section, beside Art Pratt, the sandy-haired chap I had met in Aldershot. He had been cleaning his rifle that afternoon when a shell landed right in his dugout, wounded the man next him, knocked the bolt of the rifle out of his hand, but left him unhurt. He accepted it as an omen that he would come out all right, and was grinning delightedly while he confided to me his narrow escape, and was as happy as a schoolboy at the thought of getting into action.
Under cover of darkness we moved away silently, until we came to the border of the Salt Lake. Here we extended, and crossed it in open order, then through three miles of knee high, prickly underbrush, to where our division was entrenched. Our orders were to reinforce the Irish. The Irish sadly needed reinforcing. Some of them had been on the Peninsula for months. Many of them are still there. From the beach to the firing line is not over four miles, but it is a ghastly four miles of graveyard. Everywhere along the route are small wooden crosses, mute record of advances. Where the crosses are thickest, there the fighting was fiercest; and where the fighting was fiercest, there were the Irish. On every cross, besides a man's name and the date of his death, is the name of his regiment. No other regiments have so many crosses as the Dublins and the Munsters. And where the shrapnel flew so fast that bodies mangled beyond hope of identity were buried in a common grave, there also are the Dublins and the Munsters; and the cross over them reads, "In Memory of Unknown Comrades."
The line on the left was held by the Twenty-ninth Division; the Dublins, the Munsters, the King's Own Scottish Borderers, and the Newfoundlanders made up the Eighty-eighth Brigade. The Newfoundlanders were reinforcements. From the very first day of the Gallipoli campaign, the other three regiments had formed part of what General Sir Ian Hamilton in his report calls "The incomparable Twenty-ninth Division." When the first landing was made, this division, with the New Zealanders, penetrated to the top of Achi Baba, the hill that commanded the Narrows. For forty-eight hours the result was in doubt. The British attacked with bayonet and bombs, were driven back, and repeatedly reattacked. The New Zealanders finally succeeded in reaching the top, followed by the Eighty-eighth Brigade. The Irish fought on the tracks of a railroad that leads into Constantinople. At the end of forty-eight hours of attacks and counter attacks, the position was considered secure. The worn-out soldiers were relieved and went into dugouts. Then the relieving troops were attacked by an overwhelming hostile force, and the hill was lost. A battery placed on that hill could have shelled the Narrows and opened to our ships the way to Constantinople. The hill was never retaken. When reinforcements came up it was too late. The reinforcements lost their way. In his report, General Hamilton attributes our defeat to "fatal inertia." Just how fatal was that inertia was known only to those who formed some of the burial parties.