Milward says that it is wise, however, to be ready for a winter. Winter? Lord! what a long time ahead it seems!
This afternoon I ride with Carver, Woodbridge, Foley, and Tull, with orderlies, to Morto Bay, and on the way have a delightful cross-country canter. I have difficulty, though, in making my mare jump trenches. She jumped hurdles at Warwick race-course like a bird. Had a delightful bathe while the French Senegalese were doing likewise. Absolutely coal-black figures, laughing and playing like children. No firing from Asiatic side; their guns evidently silenced by us. Only three miles across; most beautiful view, with mountains and plains of Troy in the background. This place will make a fine watering-place after the war for some enterprising capitalist.
In the background beautiful wooded country, with the stately white pillars standing up, the whole place this side of the pillars a large French camp. I like the French. They are charming. What a difference this place is now to what it was in those first few days, when we had to toil up at night through the Turkish cemetery, past the croaking frogs, with fears of snipers.
May 31st.
A perfect day. I ride up with Foley to my Brigade in the morning, and there meet Captain Wood, the Adjutant of the Essex, and dear old Ruby Revel, of the same regiment. The messroom at Brigade H.Q., though dug in the side of a small hill, is like a country summer-house, and this morning it is very hard to realize that we are at war. Crickets are chirping in the bushes, and pretty little chaffinches with bright-coloured feathers hop about amongst the trees.
I look through a powerful telescope at the Turkish trenches, and it seems almost as though I could throw a stone at them. The precipitous slopes of Achi Baba appear in vivid detail. As for the Turkish first line, I feel that if I put my foot out I shall tread on its parapet. Yet I see not a sign of life. And all is perfectly quiet. I think that a big attack is coming off in a few days now, and great preparations appear to be going on. Many reinforcements have arrived, and we are almost up to full strength again. In fact, several of those who were slightly wounded on the first day have actually returned fit and sound to the firing-line.
Riding back, Foley and I call at his Brigade H.Q. and see Major Lucas, the Brigade Major, and later Brigadier-General Marshall comes in. Their H.Q., situated some three hundred yards behind Pink Farm, but to the right, looking towards Achi, is built in an even more beautiful spot than the H.Q. of the 88th. In fact, it can only be described as a most beautiful natural garden, and the quarters are composed simply of summer-houses nestling under trees, with flowers and meadow grass growing in beautiful confusion all around. Bullets just fall short of this spot, and shells do not drop near, for it is away from any target.
I call at the R.N.D. armoured car camp afterwards, just half-way back between Pink Farm and the beach, off the West Krithia road, to look up a friend that I hear is with them, but learn that he has not yet landed. Four armoured cars are dug in to what look like deep horse stalls of earth—beautiful Rolls-Royce cars, and I hear that they are to go into action in the battle which is thought to be coming off in a few days.
2 p.m.
This afternoon it is so hot that I strip to the waist and write on the cliff. A few transports are in. Mine-sweepers in pairs, with little sails aft, are on duty at the entrance, cruising slowly and methodically to and fro, joined to each other by a sunken torpedo-net; and woe unto a submarine that should run into that net! It will quickly meet with an untimely end; its base will hear no more news of it, and its destruction will be kept secret by the Navy. Destroyers are on patrol right out to sea. One battleship can just be seen far away towards Lemnos. Work on the beach goes on steadily. Engineers are hard at work constructing a new pier, which will serve as a breakwater as well. Stones for this purpose are being quarried from the side of the cliff. A light railway is in course of construction round the beach and along the road at the foot of this cliff and up to the depot.