We see that the stores are O.K., and then run into Carver, who has just landed. Afterwards I find my friend Major Gibbon, of the howitzer battery, busy getting his guns ashore. Foley and I then go back to the boxes, and we lie down like dogs, falling to sleep at once on the soft, comfortable sand. Dawn breaks over the hills of Asia.
Monday, April 26th.
I awake about seven and find myself nestling up close against Foley, who is still asleep. I wake him, and he promptly falls asleep again, murmuring something about “that —— machine gun.”
The beach quickly becomes alive with men all working for dear life, and we get to our feet, go down to the water’s edge and bathe our faces, and start to finish the work of making a small Supply depot which we left last night. My servant comes to tell me that breakfast is ready, and we go up the cliff and join Way and Carver at a repast of biscuits, jam, bacon, and tea. But the tea tastes strong of sea water. All water had been carried with us in tins, and we had struck a bad batch, for most of them leaked. And then our day’s work begins in all seriousness.
By night O’Hara wishes us to have a proper Supply depot working, the Quartermasters coming with fatigue parties, presenting their B55’s, and rations to the full are promptly issued and accounted for in our books. At frequent intervals the Fleet bombard, but we are quite used to the roar of the guns now. I am covered and coated with clayey mud and have no time to clean myself properly. We have to take cover continually from snipers—unknown enemies who fire at us from Lord knows where. One open part of the beach is especially dangerous, and I cross that part about six times during a day—not a very wide space, but I feel each time I go across that I am taking a long journey. The dead are still lying about, and as there is no time to bury them, we pass to and fro by their bodies unheedingly. In addition to these snipers who pick off one of our number now and again, we have spent bullets flying in all directions, for our firing-line is but a few hundred yards away. The Turk, however, does not appear to have a proper firing-line; he only seems to have advanced posts strongly held, and must have retreated well inshore.
It is a blessing for us that no shells come along, only these spent bullets and the deadly shots from the unseen snipers. Heavy firing sounds, however, from “V” Beach, a rattle of musketry and a roar of the battleships and torpedo-boat destroyers lying at the mouth. Colonel Beadon and Major Streidinger are getting a proper system of supply and transport working.
We become venturesome in the late afternoon, and many of us, quite two to three hundred, go up on the high land on the right and left of the beach and make a tour of the lately captured trenches. Turkish dead are lying about in grotesque attitudes; the trenches are full of equipment, and I notice particularly bundles of remarkably clean linen, and many loaves of bread, one loaf sticking out of a dead Turk’s pocket. Several of the dead are dressed in a navy-blue uniform with brass buttons, but most are in khaki with grey overcoats and cloth hats. Suddenly a whistle blows, and several cry “Get off the skyline!” and we all run helter-skelter for the safety of the beach. When darkness arrives we have a proper Supply depot working, and strings of pack-mules are hard at work carrying stores. Guns, ammunition, and men are everywhere. The Engineers have run out a pier already. Every one is in the best of spirits, for we have tasted a brilliant victory, and organizing brains are still at work in preparation for further ventures. I go to sleep behind boxes with the sound of a heavy rifle fire disturbing the night.
Tuesday, April 27.
I am ordered to make a small advanced depot just behind the firing line, using pack-mules under Colonel Patterson, of the Zion Mule Corps. The drivers are Syrian refugees from Syria, and curiously enough speak Russian as their common language. While up there, but a very short walk from the beach, I sit down on the layer’s seat of one of the 18-pounders of one of the batteries in position just behind our line. The battery is not dug in at all. I look through a telescopic sight, but can only see a lovely view of grass, barley, gorse and flowers, hillocks, nullahs, and the great hill of Achi Baba in the background, looking like Polyphemus in Dido and Æneas, with an ugly head and arms outstretched from the Straits to the Ægean.
I ask where the Turks are, and they point to a line some two thousand yards away, marked by newly turned earth, which is just distinguishable through strong glasses. I can see no sign of life, but away up on the ridges of Achi Baba columns of earth and smoke suddenly burst from the ground, caused by the shells of our Fleet.