SACRED TO WHITE
§1
On a certain morning Doe and I in our dug-out on Fusilier Bluff felt
the pull and the fascination, coming over five miles of scrub, of
the magical Cape Helles. It was but a score of weeks since the first
invaders had stormed its beaches: and we wanted to drink again of
the romance that charged the air. So, being free for a time, we
walked to the brow overlooking V Beach, and stood there, letting the
breeze blow on our faces, and thinking of the British Army that blew
in one day like a gale from the sea.
The damage wrought by that tornado was everywhere visible. Near us
were the ruins of a lighthouse. In old days it had glimmered for
distant mariners, who pointed to it as the Dardanelles light. But,
at the outbreak of war, the Turk had closed his Dardanelles and put
out the lamp. He would never kindle it again, for the _Queen
Elizabeth_, or a warship of her kidney, had lain off shore and
reduced the lighthouse to these white stones. Across the
amphitheatre of the bay were the village and broken forts of Seddel
Bahr; and, aground at this point, the famous old hulk, the _River
Clyde_. You remember--who could forget?--how they turned this vessel
into a modern Horse of Troy, cramming its belly with armed men,
running it ashore, and then opening square doors in its hull-sides
and letting loose the invaders--while the plains of Old Troy looked
down from over the Hellespont. What a litter old Mother Clyde
carried in her womb that day! From where we stood we could see those
square doors, cut in her sides, through which the troops and rushed
into the bullet-hail: we could see, too, the semicircular beach,
where they had attempted to land, and the ribbon of blue water in
which so many, weighted with their equipment, had sunk and died.
And what was that thing a few cable lengths out, a rusty iron
something, rising from the water, and being lapped by the incoming
ripples? It was the keel of the old _Majestic_, which lay there,
deck downwards, on the ocean bed.
"It's too pathetic!" exclaimed the sensitive Doe. "Let's go and
visit the _Clyde_. Fancy, old Moles White was in that boat."
We dropped down from the headland into V Beach Bay, and, in doing
so, passed the limit of the British zone and trespassed upon French
territory. The slope, from the beach upward, was as alive with
French and Senegalese as a cloven ant-hill is alive with ants. The
stores of the whole French army seemed accumulated in the
neighbourhood. There was an atmosphere of French excitability, very
different from the stillness of the British Zone. Stepping from the
British Zone into the French was like turning suddenly from the
quiet of Rotten Row into the bustle of the Boulevard des Italiens.
It was _prenez-garde_ and _attention là! depeches-vous_ and _pardon,
m'sieu_, and _sacré nom de dieu!_ before we got through all these
hearty busy-bodies and drew near the hull of the _Clyde_.
With unwitting reverence we approached. I'll swear I was within an
ace of removing my hat, and that, had I talked to Doe, I should have
spoken in a whisper. It was like visiting a church. Look, there by
the square doors were the endless marks of machine-gun bullets that
had swept the men who tried to leave the boat for the shore. God!
they hadn't a dog's chance. If those bullet indentations meant
anything, they meant that the man who left the square door was lucky
if he got ashore with less than a dozen bullets in his flesh.
We stepped on to the gangway that led to the nearest of the doors
and hurried up to it, catching something of the "Get back--get
back!" sensation of those who had been forced by the bullets to
withdraw into the hold. A huge hold it showed itself to be when we
bowed our heads and stepped into it through the square door. Yes,
they could cram battalions here. What a hive the _Clyde_ was when
they hurled it ashore! And what a swarm of bees it housed! In this
hold, now so silent and empty, what emotions throbbed that day!
"Poor old White!" murmured Doe. "He got ashore well enough, and
wasn't killed till the fighting on the high ground. By Jove, Rupert!
we'll search the Peninsula from here to Fusilier Bluff for his
grave. Come on."
We left the comparative darkness of the hold, and stepped through
the square door, that had been so deadly an exit for hundreds, into
the bright daylight. At once there was given us a full view of V
Beach, with the sea sparkling as it broke upon the shingle. The air
all about was strangely opalescent. Seddel Bahr shone in the sun, as
only a white Eastern village can. The hills rising from the beach
looked steep and difficult, but sunlit and shimmering. Everything
shimmered as a result of the sudden contrast from the darkness of
the hold. Even so must the scene have flashed upon the eyes of the
invaders as they issued from the sides of the _Clyde_. For many of
them, how quickly the bright light went out!
We had hardly entered the ruined streets of Seddel Bahr before a
shell screamed into the village and burst with a deafening explosion
in a house, whose walls went up in a volcano of dust and stones.
"Asiatic Annie!" we both said, at once and in unison.
For all of us knew the evil reputation of Asiatic Annie--that large
gun, safely tucked away in the blue hills of Asia, who lobbed her
shells--a seven-mile throw--over the Straits on to the shores of
Cape Helles--a mischievous old lady, who delighted in being the
plague of the Beaches.
"If Asiatic Annie is going to begin," said Doe, "we'll have
important business elsewhere. Hurry on. We're going to find White's
grave."
To get from Seddel Bahr to Fusilier Bluff it was necessary to cross
diagonally the whole of the Helles sector. There lay before us a
long walk over a dusty, scrub-covered plateau, every yard of which
was a yard of battlefield and overspread with the litter of battles.
This red earth, which, when the Army first arrived, was garnished
with grass and flowers, groves, and vineyards, was now beaten by
thousands of feet into a hard, dry drill-ground, where, here and
there, blasted trees stood like calvaries against the sky. The grass
resembled patches of fur on a mangy skin. The birds, which seemed to
revel in the excitements of war, soared and swept over the
devastated tableland. Northward from our feet stretched this
plateau of scarecrow trees, till it began to incline in a gentle
rise, and finally met the sky in the summit of Achi Baba. That was
the whole landscape--a plateau overlooked by a gentle hill.
And here on this sea-girt headland the land-fight had been fought.
No wonder the region was covered with the scars and waste of war.
Our journey took us past old trenches and gun-positions; disused
telephone lines and rusting, barbed wire; dead mules, scattered
cemeteries, and solitary graves.
And not a grave did we pass without examining it to see if it bore
the name of White. Our progress, therefore, was very slow, for, like
highwaymen, these graves held us up and bade us stand and inquire if
they housed our friend. Whenever we saw an isolated cross some
distance away, we left our tracks to approach it, anxious not to
pass, lest this were he. And then, quite unexpectedly, we came upon
twenty graves side by side under one over-arching tree, which bore
the legend: "Pink Farm Cemetery." And Doe said:
"There it is, Rupert."
He said it with deliberate carelessness, as if to show that he was
one not easily excited by sudden surprises.
"Where--where?" I asked.
"There--'Lieutenant R. White, Royal Dublin Fusiliers.'"
"Good Lord!" I muttered: for it was true. We had walked right on to
the grave of our friend. His name stood on a cross with those of six
other officers, and beneath was written in pencil the famous
epitaph:
"Tell England, ye who pass this monument,
We died for her, and here we rest content."
The perfect words went straight to Doe's heart.
"Roop," he said, "if I'm killed you can put those lines over me."
I fear I could not think of anything very helpful to reply.
"They are rather swish," I murmured.