May 4th, 5th, 6th.
Nothing much to record. Have been very busy these last few days forming a Supply depot of my own for the 88th Brigade. I go up to Brigade each day, riding as far as the white pillars, but go bang across country now and not through Sed-el-Bahr. Our line is quite deep and well dug in now. Firing going on steadily at night. Quite heavy rifle fire, but it is mostly Turkish. I learn that at night he gets the “wind up” and blazes away at nothing. One or two parties have made sorties, but our machine guns have made short work of them. The Division is like one big family party; we all know each other so well now, and one can go through the trying vicissitudes of war with greater vigour if with men who have become intimate friends. The horrible part is losing friends; much worse, I think, than having to go oneself. Good friends leave such a large gap. Tommies seem pretty cheerful at night on the beach. After dinner we sit outside our biscuit-box houses and have coffee (not a word! I got some coffee by exchanging jam with a Frenchman the other day—strictly against rules), and looking out to sea, enjoy some excellent cigars of the C.O.’s. “Any more for the Arcadian?” is constantly shouted out by a Naval officer on the beach, calling those who live at G.H.Q. who are billeted on the Arcadian to the pinnace. I often wish I could say “Yes” one night, and go on board and have a good bath and a whisky and soda. Tommies play on mouth-organs and sing Tommy’s tunes. At Lemnos, Tommy was marching round the decks of the transports singing “Who’s your Lady Friend?” A few days after he goes through one of the most sanguinary fights of the war; a week after he is on the beach with a mouth-organ making a horrible execution of “A Little Grey Home in the West.” A unique creation, the British Tommy. If he ever does think of death or getting wounded, he always thinks it will be his pal and not he who will get hit, and goes on with his mouth-organ, washing his shirt, or writing to his latest girl at the last town he was billeted in. Those with girls are the cheeriest.
May 7th.
To-day we are bombarding Turkish positions heavily and the village of Krithia preparatory to advancing our lines to the slopes of Achi Baba in the hope of my Brigade taking the hill. In the morning I issue at my dump, and after lunch ride with Carver and Sergeant Evans to find our respective Brigades. We ride up the west coast across grass and gorse, and arriving at a gully, encounter shell fire, which is now getting more frequent. We leave our horses with an orderly at this gully and proceed on foot, skirting the edge of the coast. Shells are bursting furiously over Krithia, which is again on fire. We reach a very deep and beautiful gully, which appears to run inland some long way, and we climb down its slopes to the shore. There we find an advanced dressing station, to which wounded are continually being brought by stretcher-bearers, or helped along by R.A.M.C. men. Several of the wounded are R.A.M.C. also.
I inquire at a tent, which is a signal station, of the Signal Officer in charge, as to the location of 88th Brigade H.Q., and learn that they are inland. We chat awhile to this officer, who appears strangely familiar to me, and at last I place him. I find that I dined with him four years ago in Edgbaston, and his name is Mowatt, a Birmingham Territorial in business on his own, which through the war has gone to the winds. He tells me he has been here for four days and is often troubled by snipers. They had caught one four days previously in a dugout which, facing the gully, allowed his head and shoulders to appear, giving sufficient room for him to take aim through a screen made by a bush growing in front. The entrance to his dugout was from the cliff side facing the sea, along a passage ten yards in length. He gave himself up, though he had food and water for some days more. As we talk, two wounded limp down the gully through the water, for the bottom of the gully is in parts a foot deep in water, and I question them as to how they were wounded. They reply, “Either spent bullets or snipers,” and that they were hit about a mile further up the gully.
We go back, climbing up the cliff, and walk along the cliff’s edge to where we had left our horses. A detachment of New Zealanders, I should say about a thousand, are moving slowly in several single files across the gorse to take their place on the left of our line to relieve some Gurkhas, and I have a good opportunity of studying them at close quarters. I am struck by the wonderful physique of the men, all of them in splendid condition. I am rather surprised to see them, for I thought that they were up country with the Australians. I leave Carver at this point, and Sergeant Evans and I cut across country, and trotting up the track which is now called the West Krithia road, reach Pink Farm. We go beyond there, find H.Q. in a trench, and learn that rations are to be dumped at Pink Farm. We are warned that we should not be riding about there, as we might draw shell fire. Krithia is getting it terribly hot from our shells, and is well on fire now. We learn that the French have had a check, and that we in consequence have been unable to advance. We come back and have a delightful canter all the way back to “W” Beach. I have a meal, and then, with Williams, at dusk escort rations, this time in limber-wagons as well as on pack-mules, up the West Krithia road to Pink Farm, where I find Leslie waiting, and we come back on a limber, I squatting on the rear half and Williams in front; quite an enjoyable ride. Star shells are now in use, and they go up at odd intervals, poising in the air for a second and then sailing gracefully to earth, illuminating the immediate vicinity. It was fairly quiet all night; just an odd shell or two fired by our Fleet at intervals.
May 8th.
Before breakfast this morning I am ordered to take two hundred rations up to some Lancashire Fusiliers (Territorials) who have found themselves in our part of the line. Arriving at Pink Farm, shrapnel begins to come over, and I get the mules under cover of the farm as best I can and go on to H.Q. I continue to walk along the road, and then cut across the open country to the trench where the Brigade are. They are sitting in the trench having breakfast, and tell me that the Lancashire Fusiliers have now gone to the beach. Festin, of the Border Regiment, is now our Brigade Major, and he asks me to take a message to the Field Company of Engineers attached to the Brigade, just behind Pink Farm, off the road. As we talk, shrapnel bursts over Pink Farm and to its left, probably trying to get at a battery which is in position there. I take my leave, and on getting back to Pink Farm I find that one of the Syrian mule-drivers has been hit in the stomach by a shrapnel bullet. He is lying on the ground behind the walls of the farm groaning, and on seeing me cries piteously to me in Russian. I send over to an Indian Field Ambulance close by, and in a few minutes two native orderlies come running over noiselessly with a stretcher. They stoop down, and with the tenderness of women lift the wounded boy on to the stretcher and carry him away. We trek back, and on the way I deliver the message to the Field Company.
For transport we now have little A.T. two-wheeled carts, known in the Indian Army as ammunition transport, drawn by two little Indian mules. These are in camp near the lighthouse, between “W” Beach and “V” Beach. Delightful place this, and most interesting. The orderliness of everything is astonishing; the quaint little tents—oblong, with sloping sides—are arranged in neat rows. The inhabitants are surely the most cleanly people on earth. Here I see groups of them, stripped except for a loin-cloth, busy washing their shining, dusky bodies. After this, little brass jars are produced, from which oil is poured over them and rubbed in. Others, having finished this, are industriously combing their long black locks and bushy beards. Others, again, are making chupatty, a species of pancake, in broad, shallow metal bowls—I taste one and find it excellent. Other groups of these dark warriors are sitting outside their little tents smoking hookahs; all the men we meet salute punctiliously. Near by are the white officers’ tents, quite luxurious affairs. The whole place is delightful and looks almost like a riverside picnic, only everything is very orderly. As to the carts before mentioned, these are most ingenious. They are little two-wheeled affairs with a pole, like the old-fashioned curricle; each is drawn by two small mules, not larger than ponies. Wonderful little fellows they are, bred in Northern India—Kashmere and Thibet, I believe. Lord! how they work—they can pull almost anything, and they are so surefooted and the little carts so evenly balanced that they can go about anywhere. It is a very interesting sight to see a convoy of these carts on the move, with their dusky, turbaned drivers sitting crouched up like monkeys on them, chanting some weird Oriental ballad as they go, to the accompaniment of jingling harness. They are well looked after, too, these little mules—the drivers have had the care of them for years, perhaps—and their training is perfect. They look as fat as butter, and their coats shine like satin—very different from the hulking, ugly brutes that we have brought—American. They appear to be quite docile, and it is not necessary to have eyes in the back of your head when walking through their lines.
I hear to-day that Major Barlow, to whom I was talking a few days ago in the trenches, has been badly wounded.