At 9 p.m. I go down to “W” Beach and make inquiries. As usual, nobody knows anything, and all is confusion. The piers are very congested with the baggage being shipped on to lighters, which are then towed out to trawlers. All such work, of course, has to be done after dark. At twelve, after making exhaustive inquiries and with no result, Way and I walk over to “V” Beach.
At the fort on the left of “V” Beach, looking shorewards, we find that a lot of Lancashire and Munster Fusiliers are taking shelter, as the Turks had been shelling the beach. We lie down just outside the fort on the stone floor and try to get some sleep. A perfect night, and as I look up at the stars I wonder what it was like here a year ago, when war had not devastated this land.
August 20th.
At 1.30 a.m. we get up and go down to the River Clyde. The River Clyde is now supporting a very fine pier that the French have constructed. The French are excellent people at organization. After waiting some time, an M.L.O. tells me that the 88th are not going till the following night, and so I say good-night to Way, who is going off with the 86th, and proceed to walk back the mile and a half to “W” Beach.
I take the wrong turning, inquire the way of a French soldier, who puts me wrong again, and I find myself in a perfect maze of French dugouts. Once in the maze, I have an awful job to get out, and after stumbling and falling about for some time, manage to find the road. Feeling very tired, I stumble along in and out of the shell holes, it being very dark, and at last I arrive at “W” Beach.
I find Major Blackburn, Camp Commandant, still at work in his office in a dugout on the side of the cliff, and he very kindly revives me with a whisky. It is now 3.30 a.m., and after chatting with him, he giving a most dismal and chilling outlook of Suvla Bay (20,000 casualties and only just hanging on to the low land), I go back to the tent. Have no bed, my kit having gone on. I lie down like a dog and sleep soundly till five o’clock, when I am awakened by the cold. I go out to try to get warm, and see the sun rise. The breath of the coming winter seems to be in the air. Phew! In winter we shall be washed off by rain, not driven off by the Turks.
I sleep again, and then have breakfast with Phillips. Heavy artillery duels all day and the Gully people get it badly—twelve men wounded.
I rest during the day, as I shall be up all night again to-night.
I wonder how many other people are keeping diaries on Gallipoli besides me. It would be interesting for me to read them, for they must all be told from far different points of view.
The impression the Gallipoli campaign has on the minds of the men in the trenches, by far the most important men in the machine of the Dardanelles Army, must be widely foreign to the impression made on the mind, for instance, of a lighterman. The man in the trenches, probably, if he has been to France, and many here have, sees no great difference from life in the trenches in the Ypres salient.