A Naval Venture: The War Story of an Armoured Cruiser

by T. T. Jeans

Water, or rather the scarcity of it, made life still more unpleasant; water for drinking was sufficient, but had to be used carefully; the amount allowed for washing was entirely inadequate. However, whenever the snotties had the chance, they would scramble along to the rocks right at the end of the Peninsula, under Cape Tekke, and have a bathe.

Many a grand hour they put in down there, and forgot, for a time, the discomforts and perils of the day which had passed, or of the days which were to come.

But now, worse than the bombs, the field-guns' shells, or those roaring, rending high-explosives, came the flies. A fortnight after the landing they had been a nuisance; at the end of the third week, bred in the horse and mule lines, they became an unbearable plague. The food on one's plate was covered with them, they crawled over it; they crawled over hands and faces; rest during the day was almost impossible. It was horrid to see a man asleep, with his lips, nostrils, and eyelids hidden in a dense mass of them, clinging there and sucking the moisture. At night, and only at night, was one free from these beastly things, and then they gathered in countless millions on the upper parts of the insides of the tents, waiting till the warmth of next day's sun woke them to start their intolerable persecution.

The mental torture caused by these was infinitely greater than the total effect of the shells and bombs; worst of all, they brought dysentery.

The Pink Rat was the first one to go down. He had worked hard and well, but the strain of the shells had, very evidently, upset his nerves; he had been moody and depressed for some days, and the flies finished him. He had to be sent on board to Dr. O'Neill, thinner, and more like a rat than ever. He was quickly followed by six or seven of the men; but Bubbles and the Lamp-post, though both were affected by a mild form of dysentery—as was practically everyone—and their hands were covered with small "chipped-out" bits which would not heal, "stuck it out" until they, and all who remained of the original beach party, were replaced by officers and men from the sunken Ocean and Irresistible.

The same day on which the Pink Rat left them, the Orphan joined the little naval camp at the foot of the gully, with its marquees and tents, and boundaries marked neatly with white-washed stones.

"My aunt! Isn't this splendid?" he said, as Plunky Bill gave him a hand up the beach with his uniform tin case.

His coming was a great event, just what the other two snotties required to cheer them up. There was so much to show him, and so much to do when all three happened to be off duty—the bathes among the rocks at the foot of Cape Tekke, the 60-pounders above it to show him, the trenches down in the plain, the trench up which they had carried ammunition, the big Turkish guns on Hill 138; and one afternoon they all three had time to walk across to "V" beach, and wander about the neat, orderly French camp, ingratiate themselves with the sentries to let them pass forbidden places, and to look over the old castle itself. The Orphan proudly took them to the "front door", as his friend the Royal Naval Division Sub-lieutenant had called the great arched entrance, and explained to them how he had fired at the Turks coming through it, with a maxim, and started a battle "on his own", pointing to the bows of the River Clyde to show where he and his maxim actually had been.

"You do come in for all the tit-bits; you are a lucky chap!" Bubbles gurgled excitedly.

The late afternoon was not the most pleasant time to choose for such an excursion, because "V" beach was seldom "healthy" at that time of day, and proved to be more than usually "unhealthy" on this particular occasion, for "Asiatic Annie" plumped fourteen or fifteen big 8-inch shells among the stores and the camps whilst they were there.