Those men who went out with a lot of “la-di-da swank” soon found that they were nowhere in the game with the man who cut his drill trousers into shorts—went about with his shirt sleeves rolled up and didn't mind getting himself dirty.
There were very few “knuts” and they soon got cracked!
Shouting and talking was another point in scouting at Suvla Bay. Brought up in towns and streets, many men found it extremely difficult to keep quiet. Slowly they learnt that silence was the only protection against the hidden sniper.
I remember a lot of fresh men landing in high spirits and keen to get up to the fighting zone. They marched along in fours and whistled and sang; but the Turks in the hills soon spotted them and landed a shell in the middle of them. Silence is the scout's shield in war-time.
It fell to my lot to make crosses to mark the graves of the dead. These crosses were made out of bully-beef packing-cases, and on most of them I was asked to inscribe the name, number and regiment of the slain. I did this in purple copying pencil, as I had nothing more lasting: and generally it read:—
“In Memory of 19673,
Pte.———
Royal Irish Fus.
R.I.P.”
I had to be tombstone maker and engraver—and sometimes even sexton—a scout turns his hand to anything.
We had our advanced dressing station on the left of Chocolate Hill—the proper name of which is Bakka Baba.
Our ambulance wagons had to cross the Salt Lake, and often the wheels sank and we had to take another team of mules to pull them out.
The Turks had a tower—a gleaming white minaret—just beyond Chocolate Hill, near the Moslem cemetery in the village of Anafarta. It was supposed to be a sacred tower, but as they used it as an observation post, our battle-ships in the bay blew it down.