We annexed all the pans and boilers and made good use of them for our own Ambulance. Then, proceeding further up the gully, we found it almost impassable by reason of dead Ghurkas and mules; a gun on a ridge had the range of this place to a nicety, and the ammunition train was held up for a time. I never saw such a mess of entangled mules; they were kicking and squealing, many of them were wounded, and through it all the Indian drivers were endeavouring to restore some kind of order. One had to keep close under the banks to escape the shells. Not far from here was the emplacement of our old friend "Windy Annie," but alas! Annie was constant to Abdul, and they had taken her with them. It was a great pity we did not get the gun. No wonder our guns never found the place. The ground had been dug out to some depth and then roofed over with great logs and covered with earth and sandbags; the ammunition—plenty of it—was in deep pits on either side; artillery quarters were in close proximity, and the tracks of the gun were clearly seen.
The shelling was far too heavy to let us pitch a dressing station anywhere here, so we retired to the beach to find a place more sheltered under the hills; the bearers meanwhile followed the troops. Soon scores of casualties began to arrive, and we selected a position in a dry creek about six yards wide, with high banks on either side. The operating tent was used as a protection from the sun and stretched from bank to bank, the centre being upheld by rifles lashed together; the panniers were used to form the operating table, and our drugs were placed round the banks. We were, however, much handicapped by not having any transport, as our donkeys had been requisitioned by the Army Service Corps. Everything had to be carried from a distance, and water was exceedingly scarce. All day we were treating cases and operating until late at night. Major Meikle and I divided the night, and we were kept going. From one until four in the morning I slept in a hole in a trench like a tomb.
At daylight we could see our men righting their way through the scrub over Sari Bair, the warships firing just ahead of them to clear the scrub of the Turkish Infantry. The foremost men carried flags, which denoted the farthest point reached and the extent of the two flanks, as a direction to the ship. With the glasses one could see that the bayonet was being used pretty freely; the Turks were making a great stand, and we were losing a lot of men. They could be seen falling everywhere.
Our bearers were doing splendid work; it was a long and dangerous carry, and a lot of them were wounded themselves. The miserable part of the affair was that the Casualty Clearing Station on the beach broke down and could not evacuate our wounded. This caused a block, and we had numbers of wounded on our hands. A block of a few hours can be dealt with, but when it is impossible to get cases away for forty hours the condition of the men is very miserable. However, we got the cooks going, and had plenty of Bovril and Oxo, which we boiled up with biscuits broken small. It made a very sustaining meal, but caused thirst, which was troublesome, as it was particularly difficult to obtain water. Shelter from the sun, too, was hard to get; the day was exceedingly hot, and there were only a few trees about. As many as could be got into the shade were put there, but we had to keep moving them round to avoid the sun. Many of the cases were desperate, but they uttered not a word of complaint—they all seemed to understand that it was not our fault that they were kept here.
As the cases were treated by us, they were taken down towards the beach and kept under cover as much as possible. At one time we had nearly four hundred waiting for removal to the ship. Then came a message asking for more stretchers to be sent to the firing line, and none were to be obtained; so we just had to remove the wounded from those we had, lay them on the ground, and send the stretchers up. Thank goodness, we had plenty of morphia, and the hypodermic syringe relieved many who would otherwise have suffered great agony.
Going through the cases, I found one man who had his arm shattered and a large wound in his chest. Amputation at the shoulder-joint was the only way of saving his life. Major Clayton gave the anaesthetic, and we got him through.
Quite a number of Ghurkas and Sikhs were amongst the wounded, and they all seemed to think that it was part of the game; patience loomed large among their virtues. Turkish wounded were also on our hands, and, though they could not speak our language, still they expressed gratitude with their eyes. One of the Turks was interrogated, first by the Turkish interpreter with no result; the Frenchman then had a go at him, and still nothing could be got out of him. After these two had finished, Captain Jefferies went over to the man and said, "Would you like a drink of water?" "Yes, please," was the reply.
During one afternoon, after we had been in this place for three days, a battalion crossed the ground between us and the beach. This brought the Turkish guns into action immediately, and we got the time of our lives. We had reached a stage when we regarded ourselves as fair judges of decent shell-fire, and could give an unbiassed opinion on the point, but—to paraphrase Kipling—what we knew before was "Pop" to what we now had to swallow. The shells simply rained on us, shrapnel all the time; of course our tent was no protection as it consisted simply of canvas, and the only thing to do was to keep under the banks as much as possible. We were jammed full of wounded in no time. Men rushing into the gully one after another, and even a company of infantry tried to take shelter there; but that, of course, could not be allowed. We had our Geneva Cross flag up, and their coming there only drew fire.
