SUVLA AND HELLES AT LAST
§1
The morning sun was up as we lay in Suvla Bay. It lit the famous
battlefield, so that we saw in a shining picture the hills, up which
the invading Britons had rushed to win the steps of Sari Bair. From
over Asia it had risen and, doubtless, beyond the unwon ridges that
blocked our view, the Straits of the Narrows were glistening like a
silver ribbon in its light. We would have been dull fools if we had
gazed otherwise than spellbound at this sunlit landscape, where the
blood of lost battles was scarcely dry upon the ground.
What surprised us most was the invisibility of the warring armies.
On the beaches, certainly, there were tents and stores and men
moving. But the rolling countryside beyond seemed bleak and
deserted. Only occasionally a high-explosive shell threw up a spout
of brown earth, or a burst of shrapnel sent a puff of white smoke to
float like a Cupid's cloud along the sky. And yet two armies were
hidden here, with their rifles, machine-guns, and artillery pointed
at each other.
Yes, and yonder invisible Turk had behind him a sun whose rays were
pouring down upon our guilty troopship. Any moment we might expect
to hear a shell, addressed to us, come whistling down the sun-shaft.
We had reached at last the shell-swept zone. From now onwards there
could be no certainty that we would not be alive one moment and dead
the next. We shivered pleasantly.
It was not till noon that a lighter came alongside, and, having
taken us all aboard, proceeded to make for the beach. All the while
the Turk left us unmolested, causing us to wonder whether he were
short of ammunition, or just rudely indifferent to our coming to
Suvla or our staying away. Two shells or three, we thought, would
have had their courteous aspect. But without greeting of any kind
from the enemy our lighter rose on the last wave and bumped against
the jetty. We gathered our equipment, and with egotistical thrills
stepped upon the Gallipoli Peninsula. For the first time we stood in
Turkey. We felt in our breasts the pride of the invader.
Monty, as spokesman of our party, led us into the office of the
M.L.O., and assured the gentleman that we had come to Suvla to find
the East Cheshires.
"The Cheshires aren't at Suvla," said the M.L.O., with the acerbity
of an overworked staff-officer. "They never were, and never will be
at Suvla."
"Oh," answered Monty brightly, seeing a vision of his friend, the
M.L.O. of the _Aragon_, "then they'll be at Helles."
The Suvla M.L.O. blasted Monty with a look, and said: "That's the
remark of a fool."
"Exactly," agreed Monty; "it was the remark of an M.L.O."
And he explained how, all along, he had conjectured that the
pleasant creature on the _Aragon_ had blundered in sending us to
Suvla.
"Well, why the devil did you come?" inquired the M.L.O.
"Because," answered Monty, imperturbably, "I wanted to see the
world, and Suvla in particular; and I might not have had another
opportunity of visiting your delightful bay."
"You mean to say," said the M.L.O., with his eyes on the badges
of the Army Chaplains' Department, "that you deliberately traded
on a mistake in order to get a holiday trip to Suvla? And
still--ha--still you expect us to go to church."
If he was anxious to discuss the question why men didn't go to
church, nobody was more ready to meet him than Monty, who therewith
sat down upon a box, so as comfortably to do justice to a really
interesting topic, I admit I felt a sudden horror lest he should
hold forth on the Mass and Confession. I went quite cold with
apprehension. It's dreadful the embarrassment you elders cause us
young people lest you say something completely out of place and
impossible. In very fact, youth is the age of embarrassing adults.
What Monty would have said remains a mystery, for at this moment
Major Hardy, who had come in our wake, exploded into the discussion.
"Be damned to you, sir!" he said to the M.L.O., wiping his eyeglass
furiously. "Be damned to you--_what_! I see nothing funny in being
sent to the wrong front by a simpering, defective idiot on the
_Aragon_. Kindly give me a chit to proceed to Helles to-morrow by
some bloody trawler, or something."
"With the utmost pleasure," said the M.L.O.; "Suvla can well be rid
of you. You can go to Helles, or Hell, by the 6 A.M. boat
to-morrow."
Bless these M.L.O.'s! Were we not indebted to them? The mistake of
one conceded us a visit to Suvla Bay, and the discourteous dismissal
of another ensured that we should bear down upon Cape Helles, not,
as normally, in a dead darkness, but in the bright light of an
October morning. I began to understand Monty's unscrupulous
opportunism. It would be a wonderful trip, skirting by daylight the
coastline of the Peninsula, till we rounded the point and looked
upon the Helles Beaches, the sacred site of the first and most
marvellous battle of the Dardanelles campaign. It was a pilgrimage
to a shrine that stretched before us on the morrow. The pilgrim's
route was a path in the blue Ægean from Suvla Bay to Helles Point;
and the shrine was the immortal battleground. Enough; let us make
the most of Suvla this day, for to-morrow we should see Helles.
Leaving the office, we sought out some shelter for the night. We
found a line of deserted dug-outs--little cells cut in the sloping
hillside, and scantily roofed by waterproof sheets. It was now late
in the afternoon, and no sooner had we thrown down our kit into
these grave-like chambers than the Turk wiped his mouth after his
tea and opened his Evening Hate. There was the distant boom of a
shell. Before we could realise what the sound was, and say "Hallo!
they've begun," the missile had exploded among the stores on the
beach. That was my baptism of fire. Without the least hesitation I
copied Major Hardy and Monty, and went flat on my face behind some
brushwood. Only Doe, too proud to take cover, remained standing, and
then blushed self-consciously lest he had appeared to be posing.
"Does this go on for long?" asked Monty of a man who, being near
us, had hurled himself prone across my back.
"Don't know, sir," answered he, cheerily, as he picked himself up.
"Yesterday they sent down seventy shells, and killed six men and
four mules.... Oh! there it is again."
And our informant took up a position on his stomach, while a second
shell shrieked into the stores.
"They've the range all right," said Monty, as we all got up again.
"Yes, sir. But they can't have many shells left after yesterday's
effort. They're so starvation short that we reckon last night they
had a surprise camel-load arrive. But ain't it plain, sir, that if
the Germans could get through to the Turk with ammunition, they
could send down ten thousand shells in a day and blow us into the
sea? That's why the 'Uns are thundering along through Servia to
Turkey now, sir. They're coming all right.... Oh! there it is
again."
Once more the soldier stretched his length on the ground, and a
third shell tore towards us.
"As I was saying, sir," continued our new friend, now on his hind
legs again, and brushing dust from his clothes. "This Suvla army,
unless it can get to the top of Sari Bair, is faced with
destruction, and they tell me the Helles army is just the same,
unless it can get to the top of Achi Baba. It never will now, sir.
And how can we quit without being seen from those hills? The 'Uns
know they've got us trapped. That's why they're coming through
Servia, ammunition and all. They'll be on us soon."
"But we'll win," suggested Monty, tentatively.
"O Lord, yes, sir. But not here. Things are going to be interesting
here.... God knows how it'll all end.... Oh! there it is again."
The gun boomed, and the speaker kissed the dust.
I had just decided that it was best to remain recumbent, and Doe,
too, had sat down rather sheepishly, when the Turk either ran out of
ammunition or felt that he had done all that formality required of
him, and returned to his hookah in peace.
Knowing that night would fall quickly, we hastened to make ourselves
some supper. Its last mouthfuls we finished in darkness; and, having
nothing further to do, determined to go to bed in our little
dug-outs on the hillside. Standing in the blue darkness outside
these narrow dwelling-places, like lepers among our tombs, we wished
each other good-night and a good sleep. Then we crawled into our
graves. Wrapping my knees in my British warm, I disposed myself to
rest.
But I could not sleep. My mind was too active with thinking that I
was lying in the historic ground, over which the battle had rolled.
As a light in a room keeps a would-be sleeper awake, so the bright
glow of my thoughts kept my brain from rest. Here was I on that
amazing Peninsula, towards which I had looked in wonder from the
cliffs of Mudros. Around me, and in the earth as I was, the dead
men, more successful than I, were sleeping dreamlessly. On higher
slopes the tired army held the fire-trenches, with its faces and
rifles still turned bravely landward and upward. Above them the
Turks hung to the extremities of their territory with the same
tenacity that we should show in defending Kent or Cornwall. Behind
the Turk ran the silver Narrows, the splendid trophy of the present
tourney. And, as I had been reminded that afternoon, far away the
German armies were battling through the corridors of Servia that
they might come and destroy the invaders of Suvla and Helles.
To increase my wakefulness the rapid fire of rifle and machine-gun,
which had been almost unheard during the day-time, began with the
fall of darkness, and continued sporadic through the night. Like the
chirp of a great cricket, it was doubly insistent in the silent
hours. The artillery, too, was more restless than it had been in the
light of day. Seemingly all were nervous of the dark.
It is ever difficult to sleep in a strange bed. I found myself
opening my eyes and looking up at my oil-sheet roof. So scanty was
it that it left apertures, through which I could see the stars
shining in a perfect sky. I shut my eyes and gave rein to my
thoughts, gradually elaborating the wild dream of a thinker who was
unaware that he had at last dropped off to sleep. It seemed to me
that the whole army at Suvla was that night storming the hills that
intervened between us and the silver Narrows. I was rushing with the
attackers, while the shells roared and pitched harmlessly among us,
and at length I was standing on the summit of Sari Bair, which
showed the Narrows under the moon and stars. The Narrows seen at
last! There, look, was the waterway to Constantinople. I waited
patiently to see the Navy pour up it in triumphant procession.
Beside me was the stranger who had spoken to us in the afternoon,
and I said to him: "The coast seems clear. Let's go down and swim
the Hellespont, where Leander and Byron swam." But at that moment
there was a loud explosion near us, and a sound as of particles of
earth falling upon an oil-sheet roof.
Conscious that this tremendous report was not the creation of a
troubled dreamer, but something real, which had worked itself into
the texture of my dreams, I lifted heavy eyelids, and learned that a
stray night-shell from the Turkish lines had burst very close to my
dug-out, and the debris was tumbling on the roof.... And we were
still low down on the slope to victory.
After that, sleep passed from me, and I watched the dawn break.
§2
At six o'clock the next morning we were all on the little trawler,
due to leave for Cape Helles. Helles! The stirring, pregnant name
was a thing to toy with. Suvla was a great word, but Helles was a
greater. So farewell to Suvla now. We must also see Helles.
"To Helles," said the hardened skipper, with the same dull unconcern
that a cabman might show in saying "To Hyde Park."
The workmanlike boat got under way. As I gazed from its side towards
the Suvla that we were leaving, the whole line of the Peninsula came
into panorama before me. The sun, just awake, bathed a long, waving
skyline that rose at two points to dominant levels. One was Sari
Bair, the stately hill which stood inviolate, although an army had
dashed itself against its fastnesses. The other, lower down the
skyline, was Achi Baba, as impregnable as her sister, Sari Bair. The
story of the campaign was the story of these two hills.
For perfect charm, I recall no trip to equal this cruise betimes in
the sparking Ægean. Our trawler was travelling with the smoothness
of a gondola on a Venetian canal. And the voyage, sunny and
refreshing in itself, was given an added glamour, by reason of the
shrine to which it was a pilgrimage. For, whether I could believe it
or not, we were steaming fast to Helles.
My sensations, as we gaily bore through the sea upon the hallowed
site, were those of one who awaits the rise of a curtain upon a
famous drama. I sprang my imagination to the alert position, that I
might not miss one thrill, when we should enter the bay whose waters
played on W Beach. Conceive it: there would meet my gaze a stretch
of lapping water, a width of beach, and a bluff hill; and I must
say: "Here were confused battle, and blood filtering through the
ground. There was agony here, and quivering flesh. Here the promises
of straight limbs, keen eyes, and clear cheeks were cancelled in a
spring morning. Our schoolfellows died here, Stanley, and Lancelot,
and Moles White. Hither a thousand destinies converged upon the
beach, and here they closed."
The boat was approaching a rounded headland. In a second the vision
would be before me. Come now, could I think all these things--could
I realise them, as we entered the bay? I found not. Before I had
gripped half the thrilling ideas that were the gift of the moment,
we were moored against the jetty at W Beach, and I was stepping
ashore to take my part in the last chapters of the Gallipoli story.