Gallipoli Diary

by John Graham Gillam

The doctor says I have to catch the 2.30 boat for Lemnos. I tell him that I have decided not to go. He replies that in the Army you are under two forms of discipline—one when on the Active List, and one when on the Sick List; that I am on the Sick List, and that until an M.O. certifies that I am fit for active service my O.C. will be an M.O., whose orders I am bound to obey; that he has certified me as sick, for the Army cannot have men on the Peninsula who feel faint when they walk ten yards. This eases my conscience; I was beginning to feel like a man who was getting “cold feet,” and I tell him so. He tells me that a sick man always gets “cold feet” from shelling, and that it is due to his being a sick man more than to the shells.

So I proceed to catch the 2.30 boat. What are my honest feelings? I do want to stay and stick it out, and yet I want to go. There, I am quite honest about it—the two thoughts are equally blended. I go down to the beach along the Red Cross Pier, on to a lighter bobbing about in a rough sea, and then I wait. Sick officers and men dribble down steadily, each with a label attached to his tunic; my label has written on it “Syncopal attacks.” I look enviously at the labels on which are inscribed different kinds of wounds. By comparison with their inscriptions, mine reads like another title for “cold feet,” and I long to get up and walk back up to the beach.

We are towed away out to a little steamer called the Whitby Abbey, in charge of a good fellow, a “pukkah” Naval Lieutenant. I sit on deck and watch the land gradually get further and further away. Krithia looks but a short walk from “W” Beach, yet it is well within the Turkish lines. Never before did I realize what a little insignificant bight of land do we hold on the Gallipoli Peninsula, and Achi Baba looks impregnable. Tommies on board are telling each other how they came by their respective wounds. A few Punjabis, wounded, sit apart philosophically and say nothing. Officers in wardroom, mostly wounded, have tea and chat shop. I, not wounded, and A.S.C., sit in a corner by myself.

We arrive at Lemnos about 8 p.m. and enter the harbour that I was in last April. What a lot has happened since those days, and what ages it seems ago! We go alongside a hospital ship, the Sicilia, and our stretcher cases are taken off on to the ship. Have a look through the port-hole and see a very big saloon full of beds and doctors, orderlies and very smart and efficient nurses busily in attendance. Then we go nearer into the shore and get on to a pinnace, and go to a pier. Here three of us—namely Weatherall, Williams, of the Royal Scots, and myself—get into an ambulance motor and are driven inland, and arrive at the Australian hospital. Then we go into the orderly tent, and a sergeant takes down our names, etc., and religion. Religion! Let us talk of religion when all Huns are exterminated. Then a pleasant-looking Australian Captain comes in, diagnoses my case, and says “Milk diet,” which is entered in a book.

We are then taken to another group of three marquees joined together, full of wounded Tommies in bed. Then a Major Newlands, one of the leading surgeons of Australia, comes in and sees me, and after a cup of tea we go to sleep—at least, we are supposed to. Several of the Australians are chatting, and it is interesting listening to them. Suddenly one of the wounded stirs in his sleep and says “One, two, three, four; one, two, three, four,” several times, and finishing by “One, two, three, four,” and then a pause, and then “Five,” said with a sigh of relief. He sits up in bed, and making the row that one makes with one’s mouth when urging on a horse, he says, “Go on.” One of the orderlies goes over and gently puts his head back on to the pillow. He was fast asleep, and was going over in his dreams the taking up of ammunition to the trenches.

July 4th.

I and three other officers are in a ward with Tommies, for the hospital is overflowing. Orderlies bring around basins of water to wash, and then breakfast of bread and milk. Then the Major comes round and sounds me pretty thoroughly, and orders me to stay in bed until further orders.

Lunch: rice and milk. Very hot; nothing to smoke. Flies damnable, and I find myself actually longing to get back to work on the Peninsula. But I do certainly enjoy at present the relief of being away from shells and bullets and the horrors of war.

July 5th.

Awakened early by one of the wounded crying loudly for a doctor. The poor chap had been hit in the leg by an explosive bullet and had a pretty bad wound. He was in great agony, and amongst other things cried out, “What a war; and this is what they do to me!” and then he made a continual cluck with his mouth that one makes by putting one’s tongue to the roof of one’s mouth and drawing it away when annoyed.