towing strings of boats, and as they approached the shore, fired for
all they were worth with machine guns mounted forward, protected by
shields. Then, swinging round, they cast the boats adrift. Each boat
had a few sailors, who rowed for shore like mad, and many in so doing
lost their lives, shot in the back. To row an open boat, unprotected,
into murderous machine gun and rifle fire requires pluck backed by
a discipline which only the British Navy can supply. Some of the
sailors grabbed rifles from dead and wounded soldiers and fought as
infantrymen. I can see many such dead Naval heroes before my eyes now,
lying still on the bloody sand. I am sitting on the boxes now, and
“ping” goes something past my head, and then “ping-ping,” with a long
ringing sound, follows one after the other. The crackle of musketry
begins again, and faster and faster the bullets come. At last I know
what bullets are like.
The feeling at first is weird. We get behind the pile of boxes, and
bullets hit bully beef and biscuit boxes or pass harmlessly overhead.
At last, boats come alongside and we unload the boxes into them, and
I go ashore with the first batch, and there I meet 86th and 87th
Supply Officers, who landed two hours earlier. My servant meets me and
asks where shall I sleep. What a question! What does he expect me to
answer—“Room 44, first floor”? I say, “Oh, shove my kit down there,”
pointing to some lying figures on the sand. Five minutes after he comes
up, and with a scared voice says, “Them is all stiff corpses, sir; you
can’t sleep there.” I reply, “Oh, damn it; go and sit down on my kit
till I come back.” I start to work to get the stores higher up the
cliff. Oh! the sand. It is devilish heavy going, walking up and down
with my feet sinking in almost ankle-deep. It is quite dark now, and I
stumble at frequent intervals over the dead. Parties are removing them,
not for burial, but higher up the beach out of the way of the working
parties. I run into the Brigade quartermaster-sergeant and ask him,
“How’s the Brigadier?” He replies, “Killed, sir.” I can’t speak for
a moment. “And the Brigade Major?” “Killed also, sir.” That finishes
me. It is my first experience of the real horrors of war—losing those
who had become friends, whom one respected. And I had worked in their
headquarters in England every day for two months, knew them almost
intimately, and looked forward with pleasure to going through the
campaign on their Staff. “How did it happen, Leslie?” I ask. The
General was shot in the stomach while in the pinnace, before he could
step on to the hopper alongside the _River Clyde_, and died shortly
after. The Brigade Major got it walking along the hopper. The _River
Clyde_ was to have been Brigade H.Q., and the Brigade was to have taken
“V” Beach that day. So far, “V” Beach was still Turkish. Their machine
guns kept our men at bay. I wonder what it is like on the _River Clyde_
at present, and whether those few men are still crouching behind that
sand dune.
Way comes up and says it is going to be a devil of a job getting those
stores ashore, and that he can’t get enough men. I have a few seamen,
Cooper, Whitbourn, and my servant, so put them on to it, and I myself
help. Thus we struggle on over the sand and up to the grass on the
slope of the cliff. Phew! it is work, and I am getting dead tired. We
work till eleven o’clock and then Foley and I have a rest behind a pile
of boxes on the sand. Bullets steadily “ping” overhead, and now and
again a man gives a little sigh of pain and falls helplessly to the
sand. The strange part is that I do not feel sick at the sight of the
dead and wounded. I think it is because of the excitement, and because
I am dead tired. I get a bit cold sitting still, and can’t find my
coat, so I huddle against Foley behind the boxes. A philosophical Naval
officer sits alongside, smoking a huge pipe. Crack-crack-crack goes the
desultory fire of the rifles. The ships cease firing. It is awfully
quiet and uncanny. Suddenly the musketry and rifle fire breaks out with
a burst which develops into a steady roar. The beach becomes alive
with people once more. All seems confusion. The Naval officer goes on
steadily smoking, and we sit still, wondering how things are going to
develop. The Fleet is silent. But I can just see the outline of the
warships, with a few lights showing.
Then I hear an officer shouting angrily, “Now then, fall in, you men!
Who are you? Well, fall in. Get a rifle. Find one then, and damn
quick!” Then another officer shouts, “All but R.A.M.C. fall in. Who
are you? Fall in. Into file, right turn, quick march.” About a dozen or
two march off into the night up the cliff—officers’ servants, A.S.C.,
seamen, R.N.D.—every man who was not either R.A.M.C. or working on the
dozen or so lighters that had been beached. I pause a bit. I feel a
worm skulking behind these boxes while these events are happening. I
express my feelings to Foley, and he says he feels the same. I say,
“We must do something,” and he replies, “Let’s get rifles,” and off
we go searching for rifles, but can find none in the dark. I lose
my temper—why, Heaven only knows. I see some men falling in, and I
go up to them and say, “Fall in, you men; why aren’t you falling
in?”—although I know they are, and I find an officer in charge and
feel an ass. They move up to man the third-line trench just running
along the edge of the cliff. All the beach parties have moved up to
this trench. I have lost Foley, and so I follow up with no rifle and no
revolver, and shivering with cold. But I feel much better, although I
am still in a temper. Extraordinary this! I am annoyed with everybody
I see. Nerves, I suppose. Then a petty officer comes along and shouts,
“Now then, you men, where the —— is the —— ammunition?” and in the
darkness I discern some seamen carrying boxes of S.A.A. I go to the
first pair, carrying a box between them, and take one side of the box
from one of the seamen, and immediately feel delighted with myself, the
sailor, and everybody. I have got a definite job. Up we pant; half-way
up the cliff, I find Foley on the same job. A voice shouts, “Have you
got the ammunition, Foley?” It is O’Hara’s voice, our D.A.Q.M.G., and
he comes running down to us.
Suddenly the Fleet open fire, and the infernal din begins all over
again, the flashes lighting up the beach, silhouetting men on shore
and ships lying off, and all the time the song of bullets. Red Hell
and a Sunday night! And this is war at last! I never thought I should
ever get as near it as this, when I was a civilian. O’Hara says, “Who’s
that?” to me, and I answer my name, and he says, “Righto! give us a
hand with this little lot, lad.” He bends down, and he and a sailor
lift a box. Foley and I lift another, and six seamen (I find they are
off the _Implacable_) lift the others, and off we pant up the cliff
over that third-line trench, lined with men of the beach parties with
fixed bayonets. It’s a devil of a walk to the second line, and it
reminds me of hurrying to the railway station with a heavy portmanteau
to catch a train. Foley and I constantly change hands.
The seamen too find it heavy going. We arrive at the second line and
run into the Adjutant of the Lancashire Fusiliers, calmly walking up
and down his trench with a stick. We halt, open the boxes, and hang
the strings of ammunition around our necks and over our shoulders. I
am almost weighed down with the load. We have a rest, taking cover in
the trench now and again as bullets come rather thicker than usual.
The firing is frightful—now a roar of musketry, and now desultory
firing—while the ships’ guns boom away in the same spasmodic way.
O’Hara then says, “Come along; follow me,” and we go, headed by the
Adjutant of the Lancashire Fusiliers to show us the way, and on over
the grass and gorse into the blackness beyond. We are lucky, for it is
a quiet moment and we have only to go three or four hundred yards, but
just as we approach the first line, out bursts a spell of machine gun
and rifle fire—rapid—and I fall headlong into what I think is space,
but which proves to be our front-line trench. I fall clean on top of
a Tommy, who is the opposite of polite, for my ammunition slings had
tapped his nose painfully. I apologize, and feeling a bit done, lie
down in the mud like a frog, the coolness of the mud soon reviving me.
We pass the ammunition along, each man keeping two or three slings.
O’Hara wanders along the trench, having to keep his head low, for it
is none too deep and bullets are pretty free overhead, while I remain
and chat to the Tommy, another Lancashire Fusilier, who is shivering,
with teeth chattering and wet through, for it is raining. A Tommy on
the other side of me is fast asleep and snoring loudly. The one awake
describes to me the landing of the previous early morning, the machine
gun fire and the venomous barbed wire, with the sea just lapping over
it, and the exciting bayonet work that followed.
I am enjoying myself now, for I am in the front-line trench with a
regiment which has just added a few more laurels to its glorious
collection. It is curious, but no shells are coming from the Turks, and
bullets are such gentlemanly little things that they do not worry me.
It is funny, but everybody up here appears very cool and confident,
while on the beach they all are inclined to be jumpy. O’Hara comes
back with the two sailors. Foley has disappeared, and the other four
sailors also have gone. We push along to the end of the trench, and
the firing having died down somewhat, we climb out into the open and
wend our way back. We seem to miss our bearing and go wandering off a
devil of a way, when another burst of firing from a few machine guns
forces us to dive promptly into a hole which by Providence we find in
our path. The two sailors have disappeared somewhere. We find two men
crouching in the hole, and on asking who they are, find that they are
Lancashire Fusiliers, separated from their regiment. I can hear the
swish of the machine gun bullets sweeping nearer and nearer, farther
and farther from me, and then nearer as the guns are traversed. We
are evidently lying in a hole which was dug to begin a trench, but
which was abandoned. It is practically only a ditch the shape of a
small right angle. O’Hara and I fall one side, and the two Lancashire
Fusiliers the other, and we crouch for three-quarters of an hour. If
we kneel, our heads are above the parapet. After a while O’Hara says
to me, “I am awfully sorry for getting you in this fix, Gillam,” and I
reply automatically, just as one might in ordinary life, “Not at all;
a pleasure, sir.” Really though, I don’t like it much, but I am much
happier here than I would be on the beach. The firing dies down again.
The ships’ guns are still banging away steadily. O’Hara disappears
somewhere. I follow where I think he has gone, but I hear his voice
after a minute talking to an officer, and I therefore lie down. But
for a while I can’t make out the situation. Firing starts again and I
can almost feel the flight of some bullets, and I lie flat. It dawns
on me that I am lying in front of a trench. I wriggle like a snake
over the heap of earth in front of me, into the trench behind, and
find it not nearly so deep as the one I have just left, nor so roomy.
The firing gets so hot that I try to wriggle in beside a form of a man
which is perfectly still. An extra burst of firing sends me struggling
for room into the trench, and the man whom I thought was dead moves,
which sends a shiver down my spine. I apologize, and he makes room
for me. A little later, the firing dies down again; two figures run
past our trench shouting “All correct, sir,” and an officer shouts
“All correct.” They are runners sent up from the beach. I can hear
O’Hara talking to some officer the other side of a traverse; then he
calls me, and joining him, I follow him down towards the masts of the
ships that we can just see silhouetted against the brightening sky.
Suddenly an advanced sentry cries, “’Alt, who are you?” “Friend.” “Who
are you?” “Friend—friend—friend!” shouts O’Hara. “Hands up; advance
one,” and for some stupid reason I think he means advance one pace,
which I solemnly do. O’Hara catches me a blow in the “tummy” and nearly
winds me, saying, “Stand still, you —— fool,” and I stand stock-still,
gasping for breath, with my hands above my head, while he walks slowly
forward with hands up, and I can just see the sentry covering him with
his rifle the while. I can hear them talking, and after a few sentences
O’Hara calls me and I follow, still with my hands up, until I reach the
sentry.
I think this frightened me more than all the events of this night.
We continue our way. It is not so dark as it was, and it has ceased
raining. Then a horrid thing happens. I fall headlong over a dead Turk,
with face staring up into the sky and glazed eyes wide open. He wears a
blue uniform, and I think he must have been a sailor from Sed-el-Bahr
fort. Ugh! I almost touched his face with mine. Shortly after this
mishap we arrive at the third-line trench, crowded with troops of all
kinds, made up from the parties on the beaches, and get challenged
again by some Engineers. Safely passing these, we stumble down the
slope to the beach. O’Hara sends me off to look for the stores, and I
last see him going back once more with a rifle and bayonet.
I run into Foley, who I find has had an adventurous time. Having had
the ammunition taken off him, he tried to find us, but turned the wrong
way up the trench. He got out into the open after a bit and wandered
apparently just behind our front line towards “V” Beach, well the other
side of “W.” The rifle fire was so hot there that he crawled like a
caterpillar back to the second line, and from there doubled back to the
beach, steering himself by the mast-lights of the ships.
We see that the stores are O.K., and then run into Carver, who has
just landed. Afterwards I find my friend Major Gibbon, of the howitzer
battery, busy getting his guns ashore. Foley and I then go back to the
boxes, and we lie down like dogs, falling to sleep at once on the soft,
comfortable sand. Dawn breaks over the hills of Asia.
_Monday, April 26th._
I awake about seven and find myself nestling up close against Foley,
who is still asleep. I wake him, and he promptly falls asleep again,
murmuring something about “that —— machine gun.”
The beach quickly becomes alive with men all working for dear life, and
we get to our feet, go down to the water’s edge and bathe our faces,
and start to finish the work of making a small Supply depot which we
left last night. My servant comes to tell me that breakfast is ready,
and we go up the cliff and join Way and Carver at a repast of biscuits,
jam, bacon, and tea. But the tea tastes strong of sea water. All water
had been carried with us in tins, and we had struck a bad batch, for
most of them leaked. And then our day’s work begins in all seriousness.
By night O’Hara wishes us to have a proper Supply depot working, the
Quartermasters coming with fatigue parties, presenting their B55’s, and
rations to the full are promptly issued and accounted for in our books.
At frequent intervals the Fleet bombard, but we are quite used to the
roar of the guns now. I am covered and coated with clayey mud and have
no time to clean myself properly. We have to take cover continually
from snipers—unknown enemies who fire at us from Lord knows where. One
open part of the beach is especially dangerous, and I cross that part
about six times during a day—not a very wide space, but I feel each
time I go across that I am taking a long journey. The dead are still
lying about, and as there is no time to bury them, we pass to and fro
by their bodies unheedingly. In addition to these snipers who pick off
one of our number now and again, we have spent bullets flying in all
directions, for our firing-line is but a few hundred yards away. The
Turk, however, does not appear to have a proper firing-line; he only
seems to have advanced posts strongly held, and must have retreated
well inshore.
It is a blessing for us that no shells come along, only these spent
bullets and the deadly shots from the unseen snipers. Heavy firing
sounds, however, from “V” Beach, a rattle of musketry and a roar of the
battleships and torpedo-boat destroyers lying at the mouth. Colonel
Beadon and Major Streidinger are getting a proper system of supply and
transport working.
We become venturesome in the late afternoon, and many of us, quite two
to three hundred, go up on the high land on the right and left of the
beach and make a tour of the lately captured trenches. Turkish dead are
lying about in grotesque attitudes; the trenches are full of equipment,
and I notice particularly bundles of remarkably clean linen, and many
loaves of bread, one loaf sticking out of a dead Turk’s pocket. Several
of the dead are dressed in a navy-blue uniform with brass buttons,
but most are in khaki with grey overcoats and cloth hats. Suddenly a
whistle blows, and several cry “Get off the skyline!” and we all run
helter-skelter for the safety of the beach. When darkness arrives we
have a proper Supply depot working, and strings of pack-mules are hard
at work carrying stores. Guns, ammunition, and men are everywhere. The
Engineers have run out a pier already. Every one is in the best of
spirits, for we have tasted a brilliant victory, and organizing brains
are still at work in preparation for further ventures. I go to sleep
behind boxes with the sound of a heavy rifle fire disturbing the night.
_Tuesday, April 27._
I am ordered to make a small advanced depot just behind the firing
line, using pack-mules under Colonel Patterson, of the Zion Mule Corps.
The drivers are Syrian refugees from Syria, and curiously enough speak
Russian as their common language. While up there, but a very short
walk from the beach, I sit down on the layer’s seat of one of the
18-pounders of one of the batteries in position just behind our line.
The battery is not dug in at all. I look through a telescopic sight,
but can only see a lovely view of grass, barley, gorse and flowers,
hillocks, nullahs, and the great hill of Achi Baba in the background,
looking like Polyphemus in _Dido and Æneas_, with an ugly head and arms
outstretched from the Straits to the Ægean.
I ask where the Turks are, and they point to a line some two thousand
yards away, marked by newly turned earth, which is just distinguishable
through strong glasses. I can see no sign of life, but away up on the
ridges of Achi Baba columns of earth and smoke suddenly burst from the
ground, caused by the shells of our Fleet.
Rifle fire has died down; hardly a shot on our front comes over, and no
shells at all.
On our right, shell fire continues. I hear that “V” Beach is taken. It
was taken midday yesterday, but with heavy casualties. The Dublins,
Munsters, and Hants had the job, and the Hants did magnificently.
Colonel Williams, the G.S.O.1, behaved most gallantly. Snipers were
worrying after the village was taken, and in crossing a certain part of
the village he exposed himself by mounting a wall, and, standing there
for a time, looked down, saying to men round him, “You see, there are
no snipers left, men.” They leapt after him like cats, and were through
the village in no time. Man after man had been hit on that wall that
morning.
I make a little depot of boxes just behind the battery, and go back
to the beach and load for another journey. On arrival there, Colonel
Beadon orders me to proceed to “V” Beach to collect all stores there
and make an inventory. For at first this was to have been our beach,
had we been able to land on the first day. The French are to take it
over now, as they are coming back from the Asiatic side, evacuating it
entirely. I go down to “W” Beach for a fatigue party of the R.N.D.,
and am told to apply to the Naval Landing Officer, and an officer
standing talking on the sands is pointed out to me as he. I go up
to him and wait for an opportunity to catch his eye; for he is an
Admiral. He is talking to a Captain, and two midshipmen are standing
near. I wait fifteen minutes, manœuvring for position so that he may
ask me what I want. I think I must have shown signs of impatience, for
the Admiral turned full round toward me, and after looking at me in
mild surprise for a few seconds, during which I felt a desire to turn
round and run up the cliff, quietly turned round to the Captain and
continued his conversation. A minute or two passed and he walked away
with the midshipmen, and the Captain asked me what I wanted. I told him
a fatigue party, and he pointed out an R.N.D. officer a hundred yards
away, to whom I went, at once obtained satisfaction, and to whom I
should have gone at the start. I find I have made an ass of myself, and
therefore administer mental kicks. With my fatigue party, my corporal,
private, and servant, I march up the cliff toward “V” Beach. We pass
the lighthouse, which has been badly knocked about, following the line
of the Turkish trench, which is along the edge of the cliff, to the
fort, which had withstood the bombardment well. At the fort we see two
huge guns of very old pattern, knocked about a good deal. Then we dip
down to “V” Beach, a much deeper and wider beach than “W,” and walk
towards the sea. Then I see a sight which I shall never forget all my
life. About two hundred bodies are laid out for burial, consisting of
soldiers and sailors. I repeat, never have the Army and Navy been so
dovetailed together. They lie in all postures, their faces blackened,
swollen, and distorted by the sun. The bodies of seven officers lie in
a row in front by themselves. I cannot but think what a fine company
they would make if by a miracle an Unseen Hand could restore them to
life by a touch. The rank of major and the red tabs on one of the
bodies arrests my eye, and the form of the officer seems familiar.
Colonel Gostling, of the 88th Field Ambulance, is standing near me,
and he goes over to the form, bends down, and gently removes a khaki
handkerchief covering the face. I then see that it is Major Costaker,
our late Brigade Major. In his breast-pocket is a cigarette-case and
a few letters; one is in his wife’s handwriting. I had worked in his
office for two months in England, and was looking forward to working
with him in Gallipoli.