We rode to the gully, and then down on to the beach; there a priest was preparing an altar on biscuit-boxes, and about four hundred troops were waiting to take Holy Communion. We rode up the bed of the gully, and it was the first time that I had been right up. The Engineers had made a good road up, winding in and out between high, irregular cliffs, covered with gorse, and passing little gullies running out of the main one, to right and left. All up, for about a mile and a half, the sides are honeycombed with dugouts for troops to rest after a spell in the trenches, for Battery H.Q., and signal posts, etc. We passed the H.Q. of the 86th Brigade, the latter being dug-in in a charming spot a mile up from the beach. Thompson, my late Staff Captain, was seated on a terrace high up the cliff, shaving, and shouted “Good-morning” to me. Arriving at the head of the gully, we dismount and hand over horses to a groom, with instructions to him to take them across country to Pink Farm. We meet Harding, the Q.M. of the Royal Fusiliers.
We climb up the right side of the gully—a most beautiful spot, which would delight artists—and enter into a trench, over which bullets whiz, and now and again shrapnel. Passing along the trench for some way, we turn to the left, and go for quite a hundred yards along the communication trench, leading into a maze of trenches, but we are enabled to find our way by directing sign-boards, such as “To Reserve Trenches,” “To Support Trenches,” “To Fire Trench,” and names of units marked on as well.
We at last find ourselves in the Reserve, and have a chat with the Essex. Then we wend our way and pass along an uninhabited trench, an evidently disused communication trench, and come on what is literally the emblem of death grinning at us. We see a grinning skull, with almost all the flesh rotted off it, a bundle of rags, a hand, and two lower parts of legs with boots and puttees intact. Such a sight in earlier life would have filled me with horror. But I look upon such sights now as one would look upon a ruined house.
We come to a dugout in the support trenches, and are asked to wait, as two men have just been hit by shrapnel. Two R.H.A. men tell us that at the end of the next communication trench there is a Naval 12-pounder gun that had opened fire that morning on what was thought to be a poisonous-gas factory in a nullah in the Turkish lines, and that a Turkish battery had found our gun out and was shelling it. The two men who happened to be here had been hit. Shelling seems to have ceased, and one R.H.A. man said to the other, “Come on, Bill; if we are going to get ’it, we are going to get ’it!” This sounded good philosophy, and so we followed them. One of them shouldered a sack of food, and the other two jars of rum. Round the corner we passed the two wounded men—one wounded in the arm and the other badly in the shoulder; but both seemed quite cheerful about it.
We went along the communication trench, on and on, until I really thought that the damn trench would lead into the Turkish lines, and then it gradually got shallower and shallower, until we found ourselves in the open, but under cover of a rise, which was more or less protected from Turkish fire. Then, suddenly, we came on this 12-pounder gun and saw three gunners crouching in a dugout. The two gunners who were leading the way went off down another trench hastily, pointing the way for us to follow to the fire-trenches, and we nipped over that open space in double-quick time, I taking a heap of used cartridges in my stride, and at last we found ourselves in the well dug-out front-line fire-trenches, where we found the Worcesters. We had a chat with the officers.
Shortly after our arrival, shelling began again with that 12-pounder for a target; they put salvo after salvo over at the place we had passed. It was rather interesting watching the shelling from our part of the trench, and the sergeant-major seemed to be thoroughly enjoying it.
We have a look at the front trenches, which are very well made, with high parapets of sand-bags, iron loopholes, and periscopes, and nice little dugouts for officers’ messes and for men to sleep in, and kitchens, larders, stores, etc. All the time bullets whiz over or thud against the sand-bags, but one feels quite safe there, although only a hundred yards away from the Turks. It is a bit dangerous going along the communication trenches by day, as in places one can be seen, and from there can see the enemy, they being so shallow. We soon got back along the beastly long communicating trench to the Reserve, another one farther along to the one we came. Then to the support line, and up out into a nullah, and following that along we came to the open place into which several nullahs ran, known as “Clapham Junction,” which often gets shelled pretty badly, and always under fire from “overs.” Thence on to the main Krithia road, and across country to the Pink Farm, where we found our horses waiting. They were shelling the West Krithia road, and so we cut across country to the West Coast road, and cantered home in fine style, arriving back to breakfast at 9.30 a.m.
Not much artillery fire came from the Turks during the day, but the “75’s” were steadily plugging them in.
June 27th.
The attack is to take place to-morrow. I rode up to Brigade H.Q. this morning. They were shelling a bit, but not much.