camp has been built for nothing. However, it keeps us employed, for
life is deadly dull. This, then, is to be the end! After all these
months of blood and sweat, of feverish anticipation and dismal
results; after all the toil, the hardships, and sorrows, with the
little graveyards getting fuller and fuller every day as I have
passed them—all this is for nothing, and we are leaving. I am glad,
yet full of regrets—excited, too, at the prospect of getting back to
civilization once more. Alexandria and all its delights will seem like
Paradise; the cosy dinners at the club, the shops, and the meeting
with old friends left behind. These are some of the emotions that I
experience at the thought of evacuation.
The wind is getting up once more, and the sea becomes stormy. The
Field Ambulance receive orders to evacuate all patients at once to
casualty clearing stations. At the clearing station they are hard at
work evacuating all cases on to the lighters for transmission to the
hospital ships.
_Afternoon._
The sea is very rough. A lighter full of sick and a few wounded has
been washed ashore. Two cases have been drowned. All further evacuation
has stopped.
The battleships are heavily bombarding Turkish positions. Over Imbros
black clouds, heavy with rain, are sailing towards us. We are in for a
dirty night.
We are in the middle of loading our A.T. carts when heavy spots of rain
drop, and looking up, we see the sky getting blacker and blacker with
storm clouds. Luckily, issuing is nearly finished. The transport of
many of the battalions has moved off, when a flash of forked lightning
rushes from the sky to the sea, and almost instantly a deafening crash
of thunder bursts overhead. This flash is followed by another and
another, and then several in different parts of the sky stab the black
clouds at the same moment. The rain gently begins to hiss, the hiss
getting louder and louder, developing into a noise like the sound of
loudly escaping steam, until, as if the clouds have all burst together,
water deluges the earth in a soaking torrent. Black night soon falls
upon us, changing at short intervals momentarily into day as the forked
flashes of lightning stab the earth, sky, and sea. The beach men,
bending double under the downfall of water and the struggle against
the wind as they walk, appear in vivid detail and disappear in the
fraction of a second as the lightning plays overhead. Soon a pouring
torrent of water a foot deep is raging down the gullies, turning the
ravines, large and small, down the slopes of the hill into rushing
cascades, washing away dugouts as if they were paper, and filling to
the brim every crevice and hollow on the lower land. The new camps of
trenches into which men have rushed for shelter are half filled with
water, which, in less than an hour, overflows the drains on either side
that we had dug to prevent such an event happening. All the weary weeks
of Engineer labour lost in a short time. I go back to our new dugout
and meet a sorry sight. Our cookhouse, wherein our dinner was being
prepared, washed off the face of the earth. The roof and the back part
of the messroom had fallen in, covering furniture with mud and debris,
and flooding the floor with water 6 inches deep.
I have to go to the Corps Transport depot about some water-carts for
the trenches, so, taking my torch, I cross the gully. The rain is
pouring in torrents, and as I walk the rushing water from the hills
washes round my feet high above my ankles. Parts of dugouts, boxes,
men’s kits, etc., continually come floating down on top of the rushing
stream. The thunder crashes overhead and my torch is unnecessary, for
the incessant flashes of forked lightning illuminate my way. The wind
beating against my face takes my breath away, and makes the climb up
the high slope exhausting. I arrive at the mess dugout of the IX Corps
Transport. Their dugout is intact, for it is on steeply sloping ground,
but their floor is over 6 inches deep in water. They are all sitting
at dinner with gum-boots on, and are a merry party. Afterwards I climb
to D.H.Q., arriving breathless. Back in our dugout, the storm still
raging, appearing to go round and round in circles, first dying off
somewhat, then rushing back with renewed fury; it runs its wild course
till about eight o’clock, when it seems to pass away over Sari Bair,
leaving heavy clouds pouring their burden of rain into the flooded
gullies and trenches. Towards nine the downfall slackens, and shortly
after stars become visible, and the black clouds gradually roll away
over the hills of Gallipoli. We have a meal of bully beef and bread,
for our dinner has been washed away and no hot food is possible. The
wind from the north-west still blows with great violence, and it
becomes steadily colder and colder. Two of our dugouts are intact, and
we turn into these and get off to sleep, wondering if the drainage
system in the trenches has answered its demands.
_November 27th._
We wake up to find a drizzly rain falling, blown by a strong north
wind. Mud is everywhere, and the whole of the beaches a quagmire. What
were once dugouts are now large puddles full of water. The system of
trenches for winter quarters across the various gullies and nullahs has
ceased to exist. Many of these are full to the brim with water; all
have water and mud covering their floors. Twelve men taking shelter
in their trench, which was roofed by corrugated iron, and which is
situated in the gully in which we lived up to a week ago, have been
drowned by the roof collapsing. We have orders to send up medical
comforts. We send them up by A.T. carts. For the first time a convoy of
A.T. carts is seen on the Gibraltar road in broad daylight.
A gale develops in the afternoon. Elphinstone and I go up to Hill 10.
The road is in many parts under water, and the whole a bog of wet,
tenacious clay that clings to one’s boots and almost pulls their heels
off as one raises each foot. What before was a pleasant country walk is
now a hard, exhausting “slow treadmill” made in a gale that one has to
determinedly bend one’s back to, to make any headway at all. Last night
the pack-mules had the greatest difficulty in getting the rations up,
and one or two that fell into ravines were drowned. We call at the West
Riding R.E., and in Major Bailey’s dugout I find the floor a foot deep
in water and Major Bailey perched up on a table, his feet resting on a
ledge of the dugout, endeavouring to get warm from an oil-drum fire. He
appears as cheery as ever; in fact, every time I see him he is always
merry and bright, evidently a habit, and a habit worth cultivating. We
arrange the position of the new ration dump, though it is difficult
to find cover for it. A line of bushes is the only protection we can
find. We go over to the Dublin camp in the reserve trenches by Hill 10,
and, of course, it is flooded, and the men in a wretched condition.
We see the officer in charge about fatigues for the unloading of
rations. As we come away we meet Colonel Fuller, our G.S.O.1, who asks
as to the conditions of the roads on our left, and we cannot give him
anything but a bad report. We continue our way past the barbed wire
and second-line trenches to the 86th and 88th Brigade H.Q. Turkish
artillery is dead quiet, and hardly a rifleshot is to be heard. Both
Brigade H.Q. have withstood the storm well, protected as they are by
the small hills on the side of which they have been constructed, the
ground sloping away in front.
At the 86th Brigade we hear that our trenches on the low land have
been flooded to the brim, and in some parts are now completely under
water. Sentries are lying flat in the mud and water outside, behind the
trenches, watching the enemy and in full view of him. There they lie,
keeping guard under such conditions as have hardly been known before,
sniped at now and again, and occasionally becoming casualties. The
86th, being in the lowest trenches, suffered the worst, for suddenly,
as their trenches became kneedeep in water, a torrent burst into a
saphead, and in a few minutes had swallowed up the first-line, the
dugouts and communication trenches. Men floundered about, swarmed here
and there, and clambered out on to the open. A few less fortunate were
drowned. Could it ever have been imagined that men would drown in a
trench? This has now happened, and their bodies lie half floating, half
resting on the bottom of the trench, waiting to be dragged out when
nightfall comes.
In this terribly cold northerly wind, gradually beginning to freeze,
those waiting sentries, with their clothes soaking wet through, watch
for the enemy, who probably is worse off than we are. As often as
possible they are relieved, the relief creeping up in the broad open,
chancing the sniper’s easy shot. As we talk, a man comes past, leaning
on the arms of two R.A.M.C. men, who are taking him to the advanced
dressing station, a little way back. His face is blue and swollen, and
his teeth chattering as if with fever. We go round to the H.Q. of the
88th Brigade and ask for instructions as to what to send up in the way
of food and medical comforts. In talking to General Cayley, we make
the remark that we are glad that his dugout has not been washed away,
but immediately feel reproved for having said this by his replying
that “it is not his dugout, but the poor chaps in the trenches that he
worries about, because he can do nothing for them.”
It takes us about a quarter of the time to get back, for the wind
literally blows us along, and it is difficult for us to keep our feet
in the sticky mud. Once I slip while negotiating the side of a deep
puddle, and fall backwards into it, much to the amusement of some
passing gunners. At night it steadily becomes colder and colder, and
the driving, misty rain turns to snow, a northerly cold blizzard
setting in. I am up late arranging about the carting of the rations and
blankets to the sea of mud that was once our trenches. It is freezing
cold, but we shiver the more when we think of those men lying out in
the open behind our front line.
_November 28th._
We wake up to find it bitterly cold and a northerly blizzard driving
with great force down the Hill. A Staff officer comes into our dugout
early and instructs me to get as many medical comforts as possible
in the way of rum, brandy, milk, Oxo, etc., up to the line. I go
down to the Main Supply depot, and there find shelters made of boxes
and sailcovers built as temporary hospitals. They are full of men
frostbitten in legs, arms, and faces, who lie in great distress,
suffering agonies as their blood warms up and circulates to the frozen
parts of their bodies. A hospital ship is standing quite close inshore
off West Beach, but five hundred yards from the pier, the closest a
hospital ship has moved to the beaches as yet. Hodsall, the O.C., a
temporary A.S.C. Major, does all he can for me, and I collar all the
comforts and fuel I can lay my hands on. There is a plentiful supply,
in spite of the heavy demands of yesterday. Again, as yesterday, these
are conveyed up by daylight, and yet the Turks do not shell us. We are
extraordinarily free from shell fire. Our line is held very thinly,
only by forward parts, relieved in daylight at frequent intervals
regardless of snipers. Last night the frost was severe, and the men
lying out in the mud behind the soaking trenches suffered the greatest
hardship that a soldier could endure—namely to lie out in the soaking
clothes, which freeze stiff in a biting wind, while the temperature
rapidly falls to below zero.
The enemy is more inactive than he has ever been, showing that he
has suffered as badly as we have, if not worse. In front of the 86th
Brigade the Turks hold slightly higher ground than we do, and I think
that they must have opened one or two of their sapheads when their
trenches were flooded, thus allowing the water to rush over to our
side, engulfing all our first-line dugouts and communication trenches.
The gale blowing from the north-east to-day is the fiercest that I have
known, for, as well as being biting cold, it drives stinging sleet
before it with terrific force. As I talk to an officer on the hill
of IX Corps Gully, outside my dugout, I have to stand with my legs
wide apart, bending my body against the wind to prevent myself from
being blown backwards on the frozen ground. Many Turkish prisoners
have come in, in as bad a state of collapse as our men. Last night a
party of forty came over unmolested as far as the gully behind our
support trenches. Seeing some of our men crowding around a coke brazier
endeavouring to get warm, they walked up to them with hands up, but
were “shoo’d” away like a lot of sheep by our half-frozen Tommies,
who advised them to “get to Hell out of it.” Pondering, they walked
over towards the Salt Lake and were taken in by the casualty clearing
station on “B” Beach. This morning a few have died. Officers in the
line, if they were not on watch, were huddled together all night
endeavouring to get warmth from each other’s bodies. Ration carts were
unable to get to many parts of the line owing to the mud and water
in places being over the axles of the wheels. Quantities of rum and
rations were lost in the mud. Telephone communication broke down, and
many men, cut off from the rest and having to watch the enemy, froze
and died at their posts.
To-day, walking cases are streaming and staggering down the roads from
the trenches to advanced dressing stations, from advanced dressing
stations to the casualty clearing station, which is rapidly becoming
overcrowded. Such an influx of cases has come in so unexpectedly, that
the staff is unable to deal with them quickly. Frozen and frostbitten
men continually stagger in, collapse on the damp floors of the tents
and marquees, exhausted, to wait their turn for medical attention.
The sea is rough, and it is impossible to get the cases off to the
hospital ship. One lighter has been swamped and a few cases drowned.
Motor-lorries are busy plying between the casualty clearing station and
West Beach all day, for the casualty clearing station is crowded out.
More improvised shelters have been put up in the Main Supply depot, in
the Ordnance marquees, and in dugouts on the beaches. Three exhausted
men staggering down the Gibraltar road to the advanced dressing station
are a unique party. Linking arms, they painfully stumble along to the
refuge of a dressing station, where, on arrival, they are received with
surprise and interest, for two are British Tommies and the third a
Turk, all allies against a common enemy.
_7 p.m._
Colonel Pearson, O.C. Lancashire Fusiliers, of Lancashire Landing
fame, visits us in an exhausted state, his clothes damp and sodden. We
provide him with an outfit of dry clothes, gathered from our respective
kits. He talks about going back to his regiment to-night, which is
sheltering in the C.R.E. nullah, by our forward ration dump, but I
think soon he will collapse altogether and have to be evacuated. He was
all last night holding a portion of our flooded, sodden and freezing
line. At night Horne and I go on to cart some of the rations from the
C.R.E. dump to Hill 10 by A.T. carts. On arrival at the camp of the
Royal Dublin Fusiliers, we find a poor shivering fatigue party waiting
for us. I had expected to find these men in a miserable condition,
for their camp has suffered heavily in the storm, and even the best
built dugouts have been washed entirely away. We have brought with
us whisky-bottles filled with rum and water. As the last cart is
unloaded, we hand the bottles to the sergeant, who calls the men up one
at a time. They come forward eagerly as each name is called, “Private
Murphy! Private O’Brien!” etc., and drink a tot from the bottle handed
to them.
It is amusing to watch them standing waiting their turn, with keen
anticipation, for a pull at the bottle under the superintendence of
their watchful sergeant, who regulates fair play in the length of the
drink by interrupting an extra long one by snatching the bottle from
the man’s mouth, now and again. As we go away, several of the men
shout, “The blessings of Jasus be on you, sir!” in a Dublin brogue,
and we leave the poor devils to shiver in the camp the rest of the
night. We are delayed in our return by a chase after two mules, which
we capture after much difficulty amongst gorse-bushes, trees, and
boulders. Calling in at the Australians’ dugout on Kangaroo Beach, we
see them sitting round a welcome log fire, and as we warm ourselves,
a figure covered in a blanket, his head swathed in a cloth, creeps in
stealthily like a cat. He is a half-frozen Drabi, edging towards the
fire to warm himself. An Australian makes him understand that he had
better go back to his camp, and orders him out. He creeps out, but
after a pause I see him come back stealthily once more, unnoticed by
the others, and sit at the back of the stove on his haunches, his hands
spread out for warmth. He is at last noticed, but some one says, “Let
the poor devil be!” and we go on talking, taking no notice of him.
_November 29th._
The gale is still heavy, but the blizzard has stopped. The sky is clear
overhead, but it is freezing hard, and the steady stream of casualties
from the storm still continues to be evacuated. The whole country-side
has frozen hard. All day we are hard at work sending up comforts to
the line and to the C.R.E. nullah, and nursing the casualties who have
arrived in our little camp. The wind is slackening a little, and in
consequence the sea is going down. Advantage is therefore being taken
of this to thin down the overcrowded casualty clearing station and
the many improvised shelters, which are overflowing with cases. The
hospital ship is standing close inshore, only five hundred yards off
West Beach. My visits to D.H.Q. on the top of the hill above our gully
are made to-day with great exertion in the teeth of the bitterly cold
gale, and I arrive at the top each time absolutely exhausted. Before I
go into the D.A.Q.M.G.’s little dugout, which is his office and bedroom
combined, I have to sit down on a boulder to recover my breath.
Horne and I go up with the A.T. carts to take more of the forward
reserve rations from the C.R.E. nullah over to the left of Hill 10, for
two forward dumps have to be made of equal numbers of rations, and the
one we have now is therefore being halved. Hill 10 is a position of
which several of our batteries have taken advantage, and in consequence
is a favourite target of the Turkish gunners. One veritably walks on a
surface of shrapnel bullets around this hill, lying like pebbles on the
shore. On arrival at the nullah we find that all the Supply boxes, with
their tarpaulin covers, have been built up to form a large improvised
dressing station. They are full of cases of frostbite and exhaustion.
From all around comes the sound of men groaning. And so the carting of
rations to Hill 10 is off to-night. As I walk back, I hear a groaning
voice calling “Mother, mother!” and peering through the darkness of the
night, I see the form of a man lying under a gorse-bush. Poor devil!
His mother, to whom he calls, is probably knitting him socks at home.
We carry him along to the 89th Field Ambulance Dressing Station, just
to the right of the nullah, having to negotiate a muddy brook on the
way. We walk back fast, to get up a circulation, and find on arrival
that a nice fire has been kept up. The roads are hardening with the
frost. This will aid the solution of the transport difficulties, which
have been almost insuperable during these awful last few days, for
the wind has been so strong as to almost prevent the use of the light
motor-ambulance, and horse transport is restricted, owing, I find, to
animals having already been evacuated just before the storm.
_November 30th._
We awake to find the gale has died away. It is a cool, beautiful day,
with not a cloud in the sky. In fact, the sun is beaming warm. It is
hard to believe that we have just passed through a terrible blizzard.
The beach is crowded with cases of frostbite waiting for evacuation,
which is rapidly going on now. Men lie about everywhere on the beaches,
with their limbs swathed in bundles of bandages. Many cases are
serious, and not a few will lose their limbs. The Main Supply depot is
now a large hospital of shelters built of boxes and sailcovers. All
over the beaches men are hunting about for lost property buried in the
mud. Dugouts and trenches are being drained of the remaining water.
The beaches are gradually becoming themselves again. The Division has
suffered heavily.
On the inspection of the Royal Fusiliers to-day, one company, on being
called to attention, proved to be a company consisting of Captain Gee,
a sergeant-major, and a private. Captain Gee shouted, “Sergeant-major,
call the company to attention.” The sergeant-major then shouted, “‘W’
Company, ’shun!” and the one man left, who was the company cook, sprang
to attention.
Gee, forty-five years of age, and who at the best of times could not
be called robust-looking, stuck this storm through at his post in the
trenches, which are situated on the lowest ground—trenches which in
consequence suffered the worst of all—until he was relieved.
He told me after that on coming back on relief he came to a small
nullah, and that he was so weak and finished that he actually cried
like a child before he could summon up the will-power to get across
that little brook, which at ordinary times he would have cleared at a
leap.
_Later._
The evacuation of Suvla, which was decided on before the storm and
then cancelled, I believe has now been finally decided on. Parties are
now hard at work at night improving the second line, which stretches
behind our first line on the same latitude as our C.R.E. dump, across
the Gibraltar road and over to Hill 10. A third line is being dug
just a short way in on the mainland from “W” Beach, and over the hill
of the promontory a fourth line also. Our dugout is now being rapidly
repaired, and the dugouts behind on the higher ground, one story
higher, are now finished. All the dugouts are built together as a
whole, really forming a picturesque house. On the ground floor, up a
short path bordered by little gorse-bushes and a rockery, one enters
our messroom, furnished with a table, arm-chairs, and a stove made from
an oil-drum. Two smaller rooms lead out from the left, and two from the
right. One is the clerk’s office, in which he sleeps, and the other
three are each occupied by Horne, Elphinstone, and myself.
Next to our dugouts, on the same level, are the dugouts of the Q.M.’s
of a few regiments, which are built on the same scale as ours, but
separated by a flight of about a dozen steps running up in a bend to a
row of smaller dugouts, which house the N.C.O.’s of our Supply Section,
a few quartermaster-sergeants, regimental N.C.O.’s, and the two Brigade
postal staffs. Opposite, in the gully, as the trenches that we had
made are now damaged beyond repair by the recent storm, the remainder
of the men live in shelters made from sailcovers and tarpaulins,
with shrapnel-proof roofs, built in places where boulders and mounds
of earth protect them from high explosive shells. Behind us is an
Egyptian encampment, situated in full view of the Turks among rocks
and boulders. But as they sleep most of the day, working only at night
digging on the beaches, they cause very little movement to be seen by
the enemy, and in consequence have been very little shelled. If a shell
does come near them, however, they make no bones about running as far
away as possible, chattering like a lot of chickens.
All day cases of frozen men, now happily diminishing in number,
are being shipped off. It was the most terrible storm I have ever
witnessed.
DECEMBER
_December 1st._
A beautiful day, but very cold. Turks shell the beaches pretty heavily
in the morning and afternoon with high explosive and cause some
casualties. Quite a new kind of shell, I think, and from new guns. One
shell hits our depot, smashing our clerks’ office, but fortunately
nobody is hurt. Poign Destre, of the Munsters, a charming boy, comes to
spend a few days with us. He was out on the parapet during the night of
the storm and was carried back unconscious, but is now quite fit again.
Times are rather anxious just at present. Troops arrive this morning
to reinforce. Evacuation of stores and equipment proceeding full steam
ahead.
_December 2nd._