A violent gale blowing to-day. Carver, Petro, and Phillips are now here as transport officers.
Work on the beaches now goes on feverishly, night and day. Each day a new sand-bagged dugout appears. Additions are made to the piers. Two off West Beach are complete. One further up, towards the end of the promontory, is being built rapidly and skilfully by a bridging party of regular Australian Army Engineers. I am told by their warrant officer that there is a regular Australian Army, but that it is being jealously guarded in Australia, and that really it is only a framework of an army. The bridging section, however, at Suvla is part of this. The fighting army of Australia and New Zealand is voluntary since the war, yet is superior in fighting qualities to the Prussian Guard.
Further up, towards the end of the promontory, two small beaches or coves are rapidly being turned into fitting order to receive the steady requirements of food, ammunition, S.A.A. stores, ordnance, etc., and piers there are rapidly being thrown out. At night, long convoys of A.T. carts and pack-mules form up loaded with rations, A.S.C. and Ordnance stores and ammunition, and proceed along the promontory towards the mainland. On arrival there they branch off in various directions to their respective destinations, just behind the line. Early on their journey they encounter the song of bullets flying from the Turkish line continually all night. I think that the Turks in the front line must be given so many rounds of ammunition and told to loose off in the air in our direction, not aiming at anybody, but firing blindly in the hope of a victim. Now and again a bullet does find a victim, but on going up regularly each night one gets so accustomed to the sound of their flight, that one walks on, taking no notice; although, if by any chance a rifle is pointing directly your way, even at a thousand yards’ range, it sounds as if it is fired close to your head, and almost simultaneously, “whizz-ping,” goes past you very near, and then unconsciously you duck.
The drivers on the A.T. carts, however, worry about the bullets less than anybody, remaining sitting on their carts and chanting away contentedly.
To-night, trouble with water occurs, and I am up with O’Hara and Hadow, our Staff Captain, at Brigade H.Q. on the job. Our H.Q. now are at Lone Tree Gully, about four hundred yards behind our front line. One is quite safe there unless they choose to shrapnel it, but a gully in front was badly shrapnelled the other day, and the Royal Scots, being caught in it, were severely mauled. Further back on the road, though, for some distance one has to walk along through a zone of “overs,” and two found a target to-night in a sergeant and corporal on transport duty. As I walk along that road, I am always ready waiting for the sledge-hammer blow from the unseen hand, always hoping that it will be a Blighty one, through the soft part of the arm or leg.
A large proportion of our water has to be brought ashore by water-lighters, pipes leading from them to the shore. Tanks are filled from the pipes, and all kinds of receptacles filled from the tanks, such as petrol-cans, milkcans, fantasies, and goat-skins. The cans can be loaded on to the A.T. carts, while the fantasies and goat-skins are loaded on to mules, in each case two on a mule, one hanging on either side. The A.T. cart form of transport is much preferable to the pack-mule, for the latter is fond of bucking and throwing off his load, which on a dark night on convoy means great trouble.
The Engineers are hard at work finding wells, but such wells as we have cannot by any means supply even half of the requirements of water.
After we have turned in to-night we hear a heavy roar of musketry from Anzac, and soon the battleships and shore batteries join in. It is a clear night, and the roar of the musketry echoes over the bay remarkably loudly. I have never heard such concentrated rifle fire so loudly before.
It lasts for about two hours, and then dies suddenly away to the incessant crack-crack-crack of the regular nightly rifle fire.