We fortunately manage with difficulty to grab a rope from one of the moored lighters and make fast while the two boats are rowed ashore. There we stick. I dare not leave those seven days’ rations and water for four thousand men, and I shout to seamen on shore to try to push us in and so beach us. The bombardment begins to ease off somewhat. The sun begins to sink behind Imbros, and gradually it turns bitterly cold. I sit and shiver, munching the unexpired portion of my day’s ration. I want a coat badly, but by this time my kit is on shore with my servant. We appear to have been forgotten altogether. On the cliffs in front of us Tommies are limping back wounded. One comes perilously near the edge of the cliff, stumbling and swaying like a drunken man. We shout loudly to him as time after time he all but falls over the edge. Two R.A.M.C. grabbed him eventually and led him safely down. I have a smoke, and view the scenes on shore. Gradually the beach is becoming filled with medical stores and supplies. It is gruesome seeing dozens of dead lying about in all attitudes. It becomes eerie as it gets darker. At this beach at dawn this morning there landed the Lancashire Fusiliers. They were waited for until their boats were beached, when, as the troops stepped out of the boats, they were fired on by the Turks, who subjected them to heavy machine gun fire from two cliffs on either side of the beach. The slaughter was terrible. On the right-hand side of the beach the troops had a check, and terrible fighting took place. Finally, one by one the machine guns were pulled from their positions in the cliff, and the sections working them killed in hand-to-hand struggles. On the left side of the beach the troops found no barbed wire, and so were able to get on shore, and to the cry of “Lads, follow me!” from an officer they swarmed up a 50-feet steep cliff, clearing the upper ridge of Turks, but losing heavily. They fought their way inland, and after a while were able to enfilade the Turks holding up our men on the right of the beach, until at last, by 6 a.m., the whole beach was won and John Turk was driven five hundred yards or more inshore.
Midshipmen and Naval Lieutenants were in charge of the pinnaces towing strings of boats, and as they approached the shore, fired for all they were worth with machine guns mounted forward, protected by shields. Then, swinging round, they cast the boats adrift. Each boat had a few sailors, who rowed for shore like mad, and many in so doing lost their lives, shot in the back. To row an open boat, unprotected, into murderous machine gun and rifle fire requires pluck backed by a discipline which only the British Navy can supply. Some of the sailors grabbed rifles from dead and wounded soldiers and fought as infantrymen. I can see many such dead Naval heroes before my eyes now, lying still on the bloody sand. I am sitting on the boxes now, and “ping” goes something past my head, and then “ping-ping,” with a long ringing sound, follows one after the other. The crackle of musketry begins again, and faster and faster the bullets come. At last I know what bullets are like.
The feeling at first is weird. We get behind the pile of boxes, and bullets hit bully beef and biscuit boxes or pass harmlessly overhead. At last, boats come alongside and we unload the boxes into them, and I go ashore with the first batch, and there I meet 86th and 87th Supply Officers, who landed two hours earlier. My servant meets me and asks where shall I sleep. What a question! What does he expect me to answer—“Room 44, first floor”? I say, “Oh, shove my kit down there,” pointing to some lying figures on the sand. Five minutes after he comes up, and with a scared voice says, “Them is all stiff corpses, sir; you can’t sleep there.” I reply, “Oh, damn it; go and sit down on my kit till I come back.” I start to work to get the stores higher up the cliff. Oh! the sand. It is devilish heavy going, walking up and down with my feet sinking in almost ankle-deep. It is quite dark now, and I stumble at frequent intervals over the dead. Parties are removing them, not for burial, but higher up the beach out of the way of the working parties. I run into the Brigade quartermaster-sergeant and ask him, “How’s the Brigadier?” He replies, “Killed, sir.” I can’t speak for a moment. “And the Brigade Major?” “Killed also, sir.” That finishes me. It is my first experience of the real horrors of war—losing those who had become friends, whom one respected. And I had worked in their headquarters in England every day for two months, knew them almost intimately, and looked forward with pleasure to going through the campaign on their Staff. “How did it happen, Leslie?” I ask. The General was shot in the stomach while in the pinnace, before he could step on to the hopper alongside the River Clyde, and died shortly after. The Brigade Major got it walking along the hopper. The River Clyde was to have been Brigade H.Q., and the Brigade was to have taken “V” Beach that day. So far, “V” Beach was still Turkish. Their machine guns kept our men at bay. I wonder what it is like on the River Clyde at present, and whether those few men are still crouching behind that sand dune.
Way comes up and says it is going to be a devil of a job getting those stores ashore, and that he can’t get enough men. I have a few seamen, Cooper, Whitbourn, and my servant, so put them on to it, and I myself help. Thus we struggle on over the sand and up to the grass on the slope of the cliff. Phew! it is work, and I am getting dead tired. We work till eleven o’clock and then Foley and I have a rest behind a pile of boxes on the sand. Bullets steadily “ping” overhead, and now and again a man gives a little sigh of pain and falls helplessly to the sand. The strange part is that I do not feel sick at the sight of the dead and wounded. I think it is because of the excitement, and because I am dead tired. I get a bit cold sitting still, and can’t find my coat, so I huddle against Foley behind the boxes. A philosophical Naval officer sits alongside, smoking a huge pipe. Crack-crack-crack goes the desultory fire of the rifles. The ships cease firing. It is awfully quiet and uncanny. Suddenly the musketry and rifle fire breaks out with a burst which develops into a steady roar. The beach becomes alive with people once more. All seems confusion. The Naval officer goes on steadily smoking, and we sit still, wondering how things are going to develop. The Fleet is silent. But I can just see the outline of the warships, with a few lights showing.
Then I hear an officer shouting angrily, “Now then, fall in, you men! Who are you? Well, fall in. Get a rifle. Find one then, and damn quick!” Then another officer shouts, “All but R.A.M.C. fall in. Who are you? Fall in. Into file, right turn, quick march.” About a dozen or two march off into the night up the cliff—officers’ servants, A.S.C., seamen, R.N.D.—every man who was not either R.A.M.C. or working on the dozen or so lighters that had been beached. I pause a bit. I feel a worm skulking behind these boxes while these events are happening. I express my feelings to Foley, and he says he feels the same. I say, “We must do something,” and he replies, “Let’s get rifles,” and off we go searching for rifles, but can find none in the dark. I lose my temper—why, Heaven only knows. I see some men falling in, and I go up to them and say, “Fall in, you men; why aren’t you falling in?”—although I know they are, and I find an officer in charge and feel an ass. They move up to man the third-line trench just running along the edge of the cliff. All the beach parties have moved up to this trench. I have lost Foley, and so I follow up with no rifle and no revolver, and shivering with cold. But I feel much better, although I am still in a temper. Extraordinary this! I am annoyed with everybody I see. Nerves, I suppose. Then a petty officer comes along and shouts, “Now then, you men, where the —— is the —— ammunition?” and in the darkness I discern some seamen carrying boxes of S.A.A. I go to the first pair, carrying a box between them, and take one side of the box from one of the seamen, and immediately feel delighted with myself, the sailor, and everybody. I have got a definite job. Up we pant; half-way up the cliff, I find Foley on the same job. A voice shouts, “Have you got the ammunition, Foley?” It is O’Hara’s voice, our D.A.Q.M.G., and he comes running down to us.
Suddenly the Fleet open fire, and the infernal din begins all over again, the flashes lighting up the beach, silhouetting men on shore and ships lying off, and all the time the song of bullets. Red Hell and a Sunday night! And this is war at last! I never thought I should ever get as near it as this, when I was a civilian. O’Hara says, “Who’s that?” to me, and I answer my name, and he says, “Righto! give us a hand with this little lot, lad.” He bends down, and he and a sailor lift a box. Foley and I lift another, and six seamen (I find they are off the Implacable) lift the others, and off we pant up the cliff over that third-line trench, lined with men of the beach parties with fixed bayonets. It’s a devil of a walk to the second line, and it reminds me of hurrying to the railway station with a heavy portmanteau to catch a train. Foley and I constantly change hands.
The seamen too find it heavy going. We arrive at the second line and run into the Adjutant of the Lancashire Fusiliers, calmly walking up and down his trench with a stick. We halt, open the boxes, and hang the strings of ammunition around our necks and over our shoulders. I am almost weighed down with the load. We have a rest, taking cover in the trench now and again as bullets come rather thicker than usual. The firing is frightful—now a roar of musketry, and now desultory firing—while the ships’ guns boom away in the same spasmodic way. O’Hara then says, “Come along; follow me,” and we go, headed by the Adjutant of the Lancashire Fusiliers to show us the way, and on over the grass and gorse into the blackness beyond. We are lucky, for it is a quiet moment and we have only to go three or four hundred yards, but just as we approach the first line, out bursts a spell of machine gun and rifle fire—rapid—and I fall headlong into what I think is space, but which proves to be our front-line trench. I fall clean on top of a Tommy, who is the opposite of polite, for my ammunition slings had tapped his nose painfully. I apologize, and feeling a bit done, lie down in the mud like a frog, the coolness of the mud soon reviving me. We pass the ammunition along, each man keeping two or three slings. O’Hara wanders along the trench, having to keep his head low, for it is none too deep and bullets are pretty free overhead, while I remain and chat to the Tommy, another Lancashire Fusilier, who is shivering, with teeth chattering and wet through, for it is raining. A Tommy on the other side of me is fast asleep and snoring loudly. The one awake describes to me the landing of the previous early morning, the machine gun fire and the venomous barbed wire, with the sea just lapping over it, and the exciting bayonet work that followed.
I am enjoying myself now, for I am in the front-line trench with a regiment which has just added a few more laurels to its glorious collection. It is curious, but no shells are coming from the Turks, and bullets are such gentlemanly little things that they do not worry me. It is funny, but everybody up here appears very cool and confident, while on the beach they all are inclined to be jumpy. O’Hara comes back with the two sailors. Foley has disappeared, and the other four sailors also have gone. We push along to the end of the trench, and the firing having died down somewhat, we climb out into the open and wend our way back. We seem to miss our bearing and go wandering off a devil of a way, when another burst of firing from a few machine guns forces us to dive promptly into a hole which by Providence we find in our path. The two sailors have disappeared somewhere. We find two men crouching in the hole, and on asking who they are, find that they are Lancashire Fusiliers, separated from their regiment. I can hear the swish of the machine gun bullets sweeping nearer and nearer, farther and farther from me, and then nearer as the guns are traversed. We are evidently lying in a hole which was dug to begin a trench, but which was abandoned. It is practically only a ditch the shape of a small right angle. O’Hara and I fall one side, and the two Lancashire Fusiliers the other, and we crouch for three-quarters of an hour. If we kneel, our heads are above the parapet. After a while O’Hara says to me, “I am awfully sorry for getting you in this fix, Gillam,” and I reply automatically, just as one might in ordinary life, “Not at all; a pleasure, sir.” Really though, I don’t like it much, but I am much happier here than I would be on the beach. The firing dies down again. The ships’ guns are still banging away steadily. O’Hara disappears somewhere. I follow where I think he has gone, but I hear his voice after a minute talking to an officer, and I therefore lie down. But for a while I can’t make out the situation. Firing starts again and I can almost feel the flight of some bullets, and I lie flat. It dawns on me that I am lying in front of a trench. I wriggle like a snake over the heap of earth in front of me, into the trench behind, and find it not nearly so deep as the one I have just left, nor so roomy. The firing gets so hot that I try to wriggle in beside a form of a man which is perfectly still. An extra burst of firing sends me struggling for room into the trench, and the man whom I thought was dead moves, which sends a shiver down my spine. I apologize, and he makes room for me. A little later, the firing dies down again; two figures run past our trench shouting “All correct, sir,” and an officer shouts “All correct.” They are runners sent up from the beach. I can hear O’Hara talking to some officer the other side of a traverse; then he calls me, and joining him, I follow him down towards the masts of the ships that we can just see silhouetted against the brightening sky. Suddenly an advanced sentry cries, “’Alt, who are you?” “Friend.” “Who are you?” “Friend—friend—friend!” shouts O’Hara. “Hands up; advance one,” and for some stupid reason I think he means advance one pace, which I solemnly do. O’Hara catches me a blow in the “tummy” and nearly winds me, saying, “Stand still, you —— fool,” and I stand stock-still, gasping for breath, with my hands above my head, while he walks slowly forward with hands up, and I can just see the sentry covering him with his rifle the while. I can hear them talking, and after a few sentences O’Hara calls me and I follow, still with my hands up, until I reach the sentry.
I think this frightened me more than all the events of this night. We continue our way. It is not so dark as it was, and it has ceased raining. Then a horrid thing happens. I fall headlong over a dead Turk, with face staring up into the sky and glazed eyes wide open. He wears a blue uniform, and I think he must have been a sailor from Sed-el-Bahr fort. Ugh! I almost touched his face with mine. Shortly after this mishap we arrive at the third-line trench, crowded with troops of all kinds, made up from the parties on the beaches, and get challenged again by some Engineers. Safely passing these, we stumble down the slope to the beach. O’Hara sends me off to look for the stores, and I last see him going back once more with a rifle and bayonet.
I run into Foley, who I find has had an adventurous time. Having had the ammunition taken off him, he tried to find us, but turned the wrong way up the trench. He got out into the open after a bit and wandered apparently just behind our front line towards “V” Beach, well the other side of “W.” The rifle fire was so hot there that he crawled like a caterpillar back to the second line, and from there doubled back to the beach, steering himself by the mast-lights of the ships.