MUDROS, IN THE ISLE OF LEMNOS
§1
The motor-launch beat away from the _Rangoon_. Monty, standing in
the stern, lit a pipe, and stared over the match-flame at the empty
troopship. Jimmy Doon, sitting in the bows, surveyed the hill-locked
harbour, and said to me:
"Well, there's one comfort: we shan't be killed on Gallipoli."
"Why not?"
"Because we shall certainly die at Mudros."
Doe was brooding over the ships of the Navy on the water, and over
the white camps of the Army on the dull, bleak hill-slopes.
"I didn't know there were so many ships in the world," he said.
It was a wonderful revelation of sea power. There were battleships,
heavy and squat; cruisers, more slender and graceful; low-lying
destroyers, coal black or silver grey; and hospital ships, which, in
their glistening white paint, were as much more lovely than the
men-of-war as ruth is more lovely than ruthlessness. Our little
launch was passing heavy-gunned monitors; skirting round submarines
that lay above the surface like the backs of whales; and panting
along beneath the enormous _Aquitania_, whose funnels appeared to
reach a higher sky than the surrounding hills. Flags flew
everywhere: the white ensign from the masts of the Navy, the red
ensign from the troopers, and the martial tricolour from the vessels
of the Frenchmen.
Jimmy Doon sighed and pointed ashore. "Look at the unseemly
hospitals," he said.
As he spoke, we were steering towards a little landing-jetty, called
the "Egyptian Pier," and could see the Red Cross floating over the
camps.
"Hospitals at Malta," groaned Jimmy, "hospitals at Alexandria,
hospital ships all over the Mediterranean and the Ægean--Ray, it's
dangerous: we'll go home."
But, instead, we stepped ashore. At once the reflected coolness of
the water deserted us; the heady heat off the dusty land hit our
flesh like the hot air from an oven; and a glare from the white,
trampled dust and the white canvas tents troubled our eyes and set
our temples aching. And the rolling hills, empty of growth, except
grass burnt brown and thistles burnt yellow, gave us a shock of
depression.
"Damn, oh damn," said Jimmy.
"Precisely," agreed Monty.
We walked on, till we reached an array of square tents that formed
No. 16 Stationary Hospital. Here pale and emaciated men were
wandering in pyjamas between tents marked "Dysentery," "Enteric,"
and "Infectious Wards."
"Damn," repeated Jimmy.
Then we came upon a barbed-wire compound, and, caught by the morbid
fascination of all prisons, looked in. It was full of sick and
wounded Turks, who lay on stretchers in bell-tents, and, by a
miserable pantomime of raising two fingers to their lips and blowing
into the air, besought of our charity a cigarette. We went in, and
handed Abdullas among them. And that--now I come to think of it--was
our first encounter with the enemy we had been sent to fight.
At the Rest Camp Doe and I were pushed into a tent that,
insufficiently supplied with pegs, was flapping irritatingly in a
rising wind. Sighing for the cosy cabins of the _Rangoon_, we tossed
off our equipment on to the earthy floor and lounged into the mess
for lunch. In the mess tent we sat down to trestle-tables, laid with
coarse enamelled plates and mugs.
Monty turned to Jimmy, and asked: "What was that remark you made
just now, James Doon?"
"Damn," answered Jimmy with great readiness.
"Thanks," said Monty.
After lunch there came to Doe and myself the only pleasing thing in
a day of gloom. That was the joy of dressing up in the true tropical
kit worn at Mudros; brown brogue shoes; pale brown stockings, turned
down at the calves; khaki drill shorts, displaying bare knees; khaki
shirts open at the throats, and with sleeves rolled up above white
elbows; our topees, and no more. And, since we were sure we looked
very nice, we decided to walk abroad among men. Besides, the
shameful whiteness of our knees and forearms must be browned at once
by a walk in the toasting sun.
We set off for the village of Mudros East. It proved to be a
collection of ramshackle dwellings, as little habitable as English
cowhouses; of stores, where thieving Greeks sold groceries to the
soldiers; and of taverns, whose vines hung heavily clustered over
porch and window. There was an ornate and lofty Greek Orthodox
Church, and a little, unconsidered cemetery, where the bones of the
dead were working their way above the ground.
In the streets of this tumble-down town walked every type of
Gallipoli campaigner: British Tommies, grousing and cheerful;
Australians, remarkable for their physique; deep-brown Maoris;
bearded Frenchmen in baggy trousers; shining and grinning African
negroes from French colonies; stately Sikhs; charming little
Gurkhas, looking like chocolate Japanese; British Tars in their
white drill; and similarly clad sailors of Russia, France and
Greece.
It was while strolling through this fancy-dress fair that we
suddenly came upon the camp of the French, and were briskly saluted
by a French sentry. We returned a thrilling acknowledgment. For it
was the first time that our great Ally had greeted our advent into
the area of war.
Lord! how the wind was rising! And with it the dust! The grey motor
ambulances, as they purred past with their sick, raised dust storms,
that blew away over the roofs in clouds as high again as the houses.
The ships and the harbour, though it was a sunny, cloudless day,
could only be seen through a flying veil of dust. Quickly the vines,
overhanging the porches, became white with dust; our teeth and
palates coated with it. We hastened home to the sorry shelter of the
mess that we might wash the dust down our throats with tea.
But bah! we went out of the dust into the flies. The mess was
buzzing with them; and they were accompanied in their attacks upon
our persons by bees, who hummed about like air-ships among
aeroplanes. I dropped upon the table a speck of Sir Joseph Paxton's
excellent jam, now peppered and gritty with dust, and in a few
seconds it was hidden by a scrimmage of black flies, fighting over
it and over one another. Other flies fell into my tea, and did the
breast-stroke for the side of the mug. I pushed the mug along to
Jimmy Doon, and pointed out to him, with the conceit of the expert,
that they were making the mistake of all novices at swimming; they
were moving their arms and legs too fast, and getting no motive
power out of their leg-drive.
"Don't talk to me about 'em," said Jimmy. "I'm fast going mad. I'm
not knocking 'em off my jam, but swallowing the little devils as
they sit there. If I didn't do that, they'd commit suicide down my
throat. Every time so far that I've opened my mouth to inhale the
breeze, I've taken down a fly. It's tedious."
Ah! this wit was all forced gaiety, and the more depressing for
that. It generated melancholy, as a damp fire generates smoke. I
felt there was something wrong around me this afternoon--a shadow of
evil. The conversation died: only the flies buzzed monotonously over
us, as though we were offal or carrion; and the wind blew the dust
in hail-storms against the canvas walls of the tent. And then it
came--the terribly evil thing. The O.C. Rest Camp entered the mess,
and announced with cynical cheerfulness:
"_Well, we've lost this campaign._ The great new landing at Suvla
has failed."
There was a ghastly silence, and a voice muttered, "God!"
"Yes, and had it succeeded we'd have won. But the Turks have got us
held at Suvla beneath Sari Bair, same as they've got us held at
Helles beneath Achi Baba. The news is just filtering through."
With horror I listened to the cold-blooded statement. The shock of
it produced a beating in the head, and a sickness. And I felt
foolish, as though I might do something lunatic, like giving a
witless shout, or running amok with a table-knife. I touched Doe,
and whispered: "I'm going to get out of this. The old fool doesn't
know what he's talking about."
I went away, and flung myself down on my valise in my flapping tent.
I lay on my back, my hands clasped behind my head, and gazed up into
the tent-roof loud with flies. Suvla had failed! It was a lie--an
alarmist lie! Why, only yesterday we had exulted in it as the
winning move, declaring that the game was over bar shouting, and
regretting that we could not be in at the death. What was it
reminding me of--this sudden "black-out," just as the lights had
been brightest? Ah, I had it: that moment, when, in the flush of
winning the Swimming Cup for Bramhall, I learned that I had lost it.
How similar this was! Then the prize had been a silver cup, which
had been fought for by a parcel of schoolboys. Now the grander
trophy was that silver strip of the Dardanelles which men called
"the Narrows," and the combatants were a pack of nations.
Suvla had failed! Why was I identifying my tiny self with a huge
thing like Britain, and feeling that, because she had failed in her
great fight for the Dardanelles, so I would fail, and purposely, in
my little struggle after moral beauty? What a fool I was--but that
was how it was working out. Beauty be hanged! Monty was badly wrong
in proclaiming that nature was chiefly beautiful, and life on the
whole was good. And, if he were wrong, why, then there was no
further need to toil after a beauty of character to match the beauty
of seas and hills. Good heavens! Beauty in the Mudros Hills! They
were but homes of thirsty grass and dying thistles, dust and
torturing flies. These ideals of Monty's were vapoury. Why not throw
them up--throw up moral effort? I would. There was _not_ more
beauty--
It was at this moment that Monty himself stood in the tent door.
"Down, Rupert?" he asked. "What's the matter?"
I looked up into his eyes, and saw in them that inquiring sympathy
which could so quickly transfigure him from a lively friend into a
gentle priest.
"Oh, nothing," I said. I was in no mood just now to tell him
anything. "Bored, that's all."
And then I looked round, and noticed that the tent was full of a
violet light. It was as if limelight had been turned on from behind
a violet glass.
"Good Lord!" I exclaimed. "The air's all coloured!"
"Yes," said he, "I was coming to tell you to look at the sunset.
It's bad old Mudros's one good deed."
Out to the tent door I went, and looked over the harbour to the
western shores. And there, very rapidly, the ball of the sun was
going down behind the hills with an affair of gold and crimson
lights, while all the hills were violet. The colour was so strong
that it came out and flushed with violet the black hulls of the
ships. And they, strangely motionless, lay mirrored in a water of
white and gold.
"Listen!" said Monty.
For from all the camps the British bugles were singing the sad call
of "Retreat"; the French trumpets wailing "Sun-down," and their
rifles firing a rapid fusillade to speed the departing day.
Meanwhile the heat had died into a refreshing coolness; the wind had
dropped, leaving the dust undisturbed on the ground; and the flies
were roosting in the tops of the tents.
Very soon it was quite dark. Then everything lit up: first, the
camps on the hills, their innumerable hurricane-lamps resembling the
lights of great cities; then, the vessels in the bay--and, in the
quiet of the windless evening, their bells, telling the hour, came
clearly over the water. The long hulls of the hospital ships marked
themselves off by rows of green lights and large, luminous red
crosses. Reflected in the still water, they gave to the basin the
appearance of a pleasure lake, gay with red and green fairy lamps.
The battleships hid their bellicose features in the darkness, and,
since one or two of them had their bands playing, might have been
pleasure steamers. And from an Indian encampment behind us came a
weird incantation and the steady beat of the tom-tom.
Somehow, in the beauty of the Mudros night, I felt a spring of new
hope in our campaign. We would win in the end. And with this re-born
confidence went nobler resolutions for myself. To-morrow I would
resume moral effort. To-morrow I would begin again.