We used to start long before daylight, when the heavy gloom of early
morning swept mountain, sea and sand in an indistinct haze; when the
cobwebs hung thick from thorn to thorn like fairy cats'-cradles all
dripping and beaded with those heavy dews. The guard would wake us up
about 3.30 A.M. We were asleep anywhere, lying about under rocks and in
sandy dells, sleeping on our haversacks and water-bottles, and our pith
helmets near by. We got an issue of biscuit and jam, or biscuit and
bully-beef, to take with us, and each one carried his iron rations in a
little bag at his side.
So we set off--a long, straggling, follow-my-leader line
of men and stretchers. The officer first, then the
stretcher-sergeant--(myself)--and the squads, two men to a stretcher,
carrying the stretchers folded up, and last of all a corporal or a
“lance-jack” bringing up the rear in case any one should fall out.
Cold, dark, shivery mornings they were; our clothes soaked in dew
and our pith helmets reeking wet, with the puggaree all beaded with
dew-drops. We toiled up and up the ridges and gullies of the Kislar
Dargh and the Kapanja Sirt slowly, like a little column of ants going
out to bring in the ant eggs.
Often we had to wait while the Indian transport came down from the
hill-track before we could proceed, and we always came upon the
Engineers' field-telegraph wires on the ground. I would shout “Wire!”
over my shoulder, and the shout “Wire!... Wire!... Wire!” went down the
line from squad to squad.
From the old Turkish well I led my stretcher-squads past the gun of the
Field Artillery (mounted quite near our hospital tents) along a track
which ran past a patch of dry yellow grass and dead thistles--here
among the prickly plants and sage-bushes grew a white flower--pure and
sweet-scented--something like a flag--a “holy flower” among the dead and
scorched-up yellow ochre blades and the khaki and dull grey-greens of
thorns. We went along this track, past the dead sniper which Hawk and
I had so carefully stalked. Near by, hidden by bushes and rank willow
thickets lay a dozen more dead Turks, swollen, fly-blown and stinking in
the broiling sun. We hurried on past the Turkish bivouacs--many of the
relics had been picked up by the British Tommies since last I saw the
place: the tobacco had all gone--many of the shirts and overcoats which
had been lying about had disappeared--the place had been thoroughly
ransacked. We trudged past the wooden cross of our dead comrade and we
were silent.
Indeed, throughout those first three days--Saturday, Sunday and
Monday--when the British and Turks grappled to and fro and flung
shrapnel at each other incessantly; when the fighting line swayed
and bent, sometimes pushing back the Turks, sometimes bending in the
British; when the fate of the whole undertaking still hung in the
balance; when what became a semi-failure might have been a staggering
success: in those days the death-silence fell upon us all.
No one whistled those rag-time tunes; no one tried to make jokes, except
the very timid, and they giggled nervously at their own.
No one spoke unless it was quite necessary. Each man you passed asked
you the vital question: “Any water?”
For a moment as he asks his eyes glitter with a gleam of hope--when you
shake your head he simply trudges on over the rocks and scrub with the
same fatigued and sullen dullness which we all suffered.
Often you asked the same question yourself with parched and burning
lips.
One after another we came upon the wounded. Here a man dragging a
broken leg along with him. Here a man holding his fractured fore-arm and
running towards us. Sometimes the pitiful cry, faint and full of agony:
“Stretchers! Stretcher-bearers!” away in some densely overgrown defile
swept with bullets and shrapnel.
And so at last all my squads had turned back with stretchers loaded with
men and pieces of men. I went on alone--a lonely figure wandering about
the mountains, looking and listening for the wounded.
I came now upon a party of Engineers at work making a road. They were
working with pick-axe and spade--clearing away bush and rocks.
“Any water?” they asked.
I shook my head.
“Any wounded?” I said.
“Some down there, they say,” said a red-faced man.
“Damn rotten job that,” muttered another, as I went on.
“Better keep well over in the bushes,” shouted the red-faced man.
“They've got this bit of light-coloured ground marked--you're almost
sure ter git plugged.”
“Thanks!” I called back, and broke off to my left among the sage and
thistle and thorn.
I went now downhill into an overgrown water-course (very much like the
one in which I used to sleep and eat away back by the artillery big
gun). Here were willows and brambles with ripe blackberries, and
wild-rose bushes with scarlet hips. “Just like England!” I thought.
And then, as I crossed the little dry-bed stream and came out upon a
sandy spit of rising ground: “Z-z-ipp! Ping!”--just by my left arm.
The bullet struck a ledge of white rock with the now familiar metallic
“tink!”
I went on moving quickly to get behind a thorn-bush--the only cover near
at hand. Here, at any rate, I should be out of sight.
“Ping!”
“Crack--ping!”
I could hear the report of the rifle. I lay flat on my stomach,
grovelled my face into the sandy soil and lay like a snake and as still
as a tortoise.
I waited for about ten minutes. It seemed an hour, at least, to me. The
sniper did not shoot again. In front of my thorn-bush was an open space
of pale yellow grass, with no cover at all. I crawled towards the
left flank and tried to creep slowly away. I moved like the hands of
a clock--so slowly; about an inch at a time, pushing forward like a
reptile on my stomach, propelling myself only by digging my toes into
the earth. My arms I kept stiff by my side, my head well down.
But the sniper away behind that little pear-tree (which stood at the far
end of the open space) had an eagle eye.
“Ping! z-z-pp! ping!”
I lay very still for a long time and then crept slowly back to my
thorn-bush.
I tried the right flank, but with the same effect. And now he began
shooting through my thorn-bush on the chance of hitting me.
Behind me was a dense undergrowth of thorn, wild-rose bramble, thistle,
willow and sage.
I turned about and crawled through this tangle, until at last I came
out, scratched and dishevelled and sweating, into the old water-course.
The firing-line was only a few hundred yards away, and the bullets from
a Turkish maxim went wailing over my head, dropping far over by the
Engineers whom I had passed.
I wanted to find those wounded, and I wanted to get past that open
space, and I wanted above all to dodge that sniper. The old scouting
instincts of the primitive man came calling me to try my skill against
the skill of the Turk. I sat there wiping away blood from the scratches
and sweat from my forehead and trying to think of a way through.
I looked at the mountains on my left--the lower ridge of the Kapanja
Sirt--and saw how the water-course went up and up and in and out, and I
thought if I kept low and crawled round in this ditch I should come out
at last close behind the firing-line, and then I could get in touch with
the trenches. I could hear the machine-gun of the M--'s rattling and
spitting.
I began crawling along the water-course. I had only gone three yards or
so, and turned a bend, when I came suddenly upon two wounded men. Both
quite young--one merely a boy. He had a bad shrapnel wound through his
boot, crushing the toes of his right foot. The other lay groaning upon
his back--with a very bad shrapnel wound in his left arm. The arm was
broken.
The boy sat up and grinned when he saw me.
“What's up?” asked his pal.
“Red Cross man,” says the boy; and then: “Any water?”
“Not a drop, mate,” said I. “Been wounded long?”
“Since yesterday evening,” says the boy.
“Been here all that time?” I asked. (It was now mid-afternoon.)
“Yes: couldn't get away”--and he pointed to his foot.
“'E carn't move--it's 'is arm. We crawled 'ere.”
“I'll be back soon with stretchers and bandages,” I said, and went
quickly back along the water-course and then past the Engineers.
“Found 'em?” they asked.
“Yes: getting stretchers up now,” said I. “Awful stink here! Found any
dead?” I asked.
“Yes, there's one or two round here. We buried one over there yesterday:
'e fell ter bits when we moved 'im.”
I went on. Soon I was back in the ditch beside the wounded men. I had
successfully dodged the sniper by following along the bottom of the bed
of the stream. With me I brought two stretcher-squads, and they had a
haversack containing, as I thought, splints and bandages. But when
I opened it, it had only some field dressings in it and some iodine
ampoules.
I soon found that the man's arm was not only septic, but broken and
splintered.
“Got a pair of scissors?” I asked.
One man had a pair of nail-scissors, and with this very awkward
instrument I proceeded to operate. It was a terrible gash. His sleeve
was soaked in blood. I cut it away, and his shirt also.
I broke an iodine phial and poured the yellow chemical into his great
gaping wound. Actually his flesh stunk: it was going bad.
“Is it broke?” he asked.
“Be all right in a few minutes; nothing much.” I lied to him.
“Not broke then?”
“Bit bent; be all right.”
With the nail-scissors I cut great chunks of his arm out, and all
this flesh was gangrenous, and mortification was rapidly spreading. My
fingers were soaked in blood and iodine.
I cut away a piece of muscle which stunk like bad meat.
“Can you feel that?” I asked.
“Feel what?” he murmured.
“I thought that might hurt. I was cutting your sleeve away, that's all.”
I cut out all the bad flesh, almost to the broken bones. I filled up
the jagged hole with another iodine ampoule. I plugged the opening with
double-cyanide gauze, and put on an antiseptic pad.
“Splints?” I asked.
“Haven't any.”
So I used the helve of an entrenching-tool and the stalks of the willow
undergrowth.
I set his arm straight and bandaged it tightly and fixed it absolutely
immovably. Then we got him on a stretcher, and they carried him three
and a half miles to our ambulance tents. But I'm afraid that arm had to
come off. I never heard of him again.
The other fellow was cheerful enough, and only set his teeth and
drew his breath when I cut off his boot with a jack-knife. Wonderful
endurance some of these young fellows have. There's hope for England
yet.