June 2nd.
After issue, go down on beach to our Train office, which is now dug in the side of the cliff. It has twice been moved, each time farther and farther round the cliff on the right of the beach looking seawards. When shelling is on, our Train office soon becomes full of passing officers, reminding me of a crowded pavilion at a cricket match when rain stops the play. Just as the pavilion empties as the rain stops, so does our Train office when the shelling stops. Then all the morning there calls a continual stream of officers—R.E., Ordnance, Supply, Artillery, and regimental—presenting their respective indents for transport, which the Adjutant has difficulty with, in mathematically fitting in the detailing of transport to satisfy their demands with available wagons. It is a job that requires tact and organization. Officers also call who come just to pass the time of day and exchange rumours, or beach gossip as we call it. The circulation of rumours is the best entertainment that we have, and though 95 per cent. of them are estranged from truth by a large margin, yet life would be doubly as dull as it is without them. They are always listened to with great interest, though, before they are heard, listeners know they are going to be miles off the target of truth. And if a man who has achieved a reputation for carrying with him the latest and most interesting “beach gossip” fails any morning in producing any, he causes really keen disappointment.
This morning we hear that the Turks are starved, have no clothes, are almost at the last gasp for ammunition, and only require one more hard knock before they retreat precipitously to lines which they have prepared well beyond the slopes on the other side of Achi Baba. The Navy then tell us that once Achi is in our hands we command the Narrows; Chanak Fort will be shelled to a pile of bricks and stones, the Fleet will make a dash up the Straits into the Marmora, and will arrive before Constantinople in three days. After a heavy bombardment of this city, the goal of our ambitions, we will attack the Turkish Army, now starved and demoralized beyond recovery. They will be beaten and will make unconditional surrender; the Peninsula will be ours, the Dardanelles will be open, Russia and the Allies will link hands, and the war will end six months after in glorious victory for our cause and confusion to our enemies.
We drink in minor rumours day by day that are given as irrefutable evidence in support of these prophecies; we are buoyed up in hope and spirits thereby, and ourselves spread the rumours to those of our friends who still remain pessimistic.
I go up to the Main Supply depot, and there, having by now been given a reputation for carrying good and juicy rumours, I cheer them up by the news that Achi will be ours by June 30th. Smart, one of the officers there, who was in the retreat from Mons, makes me a bet, and the stake is a nice ruler that he has on his desk. I promptly book the bet. I go up to Brigade and have tea, and supply them with the latest rumours.
June 3rd.
It is very windy to-day, and is blowing nearly a gale, and wind on the tip of this peninsula is an unpleasant element to be up against. In consequence, the beach is smothered with dust, and clouds of it fly in all directions, covering everybody and everything.
While issuing, shells burst on the crest of the high ground at the back of the beach steadily all the time, and nearer inland puffs of shrapnel are visible. They cannot reach us here with shrapnel, thank goodness! Shrapnel is so comprehensive. A lucky shell comes to within ten yards of our depot, kills a man, a passer-by, outright, wounds a sailor, and slightly wounds my butcher in the knee.
I ride up to Brigade with Phillips. General Doran shows us map of our objective, and carefully marks thereon where rations are to be dumped to-morrow night, for to-morrow is to be the day of an attack upon our part to take Achi. If successful, then the beginning of the end of the show will be in sight. No news from outside world, and a great scarcity of papers. Reading a paper about a month old is now a great luxury.
In the evening, Williams and Phillips and myself borrow a boat from an M.L.O. and have a short row round. It makes splendid exercise, and the scenes on shore are very interesting. Why did not we think of it before? When they shell the beach, all we have to do is to get into a boat and row out to sea, and then watch the fun. Surely a submarine would not trouble to torpedo us, and it would be a shell with our name and address on that would hit us. We pass a submarine—British—marked B9, a very small one. An officer is in the conning tower and says “Good evening” to us. We chat, and he invites us on board. Two sailors hold our little boat while we clumsily climb on to the submarine’s slippery back. We climb down a perpendicular iron ladder through a hole not much larger than a coal-shoot to a cellar under a street. Inside we find only one chamber, awfully cramped and small. At one end of this sleep the men, and at the other two officers. The chamber provides quarters for men and officers alike, and engine-room, ward-room, and ante-room, all in one, like Dan Leno’s one-roomed house. In Dan Leno’s words, “If you want to go into the drawing-room—you stay where you are!” I am shown the working of the engines, and try to look wisely at the intricate host of levers and brass things, but really can understand nothing at all of what the officer is talking about. I am shown how a torpedo is fired. You pull a thing out and she shoots. Phillips appears to know all about it though, but he doesn’t really. I look through the periscope, turn the lens round, and suddenly before my eyes I see “V” Beach and Sed-el-Bahr in vivid detail. What joy it must be to spot a Hun battleship and see her effectively hit!