It may be that I have never grown up properly. I'm a very poor hand at
pretending I'm a “grown man.”
Impressions of small queer things still stamp themselves with a clear
kodak-click on my mind--an ivory-white mule's skull lying in the sand
with green beetles running through the eye-holes... anything--trivial,
childlike details.
I remember reading an article in a magazine which stated that under
fire, and more especially in a charge, a man moves in a whirl of
excitement which blots out all the small realities around him, all the
“local colour.” He remembers nothing but a wild, mad rush, or the tense
intensity of the danger he is in.
It is not so. The greater the danger and the more exciting the position
the more intensely does the mind receive the imprint of tiny commonplace
objects.
Memories of Egypt and the Mediterranean are far more a jumble of general
effects of colour, sound and smell.
The closer we crept to the shores of Suvla Bay, and the deathbed of the
Salt Lake, the more exact and vivid are the impressions; the one is like
an impressionist sketch--blobs and dabs and great sloshy washes; but the
memories of Pear-tree Gully, of the Kapanja Sirt, and Chocolate Hill
are drawn in with a fine mapping pen and Indian ink--like a Rackham
fairy-book illustration--every blade of dead grass, every ripple of
blue, every pink pebble; and towards the firing-line I could draw it
now, every inch of the way up the hills with every stone and jagged rock
in the right place.
Before sailing from England I had bought a little colour-box, one good
sable brush, and a few H.B. pencils--these and a sketch-book which my
father gave me I carried everywhere in my haversack. The pocket-book was
specially made with paper which would take pencil, colour, crayon, ink
or charcoal. I was always on the look out for sketches and notes. The
cover bore the strange device--
JOHN HARGRAVE,
R.A.M.C.
32ND FIELD AMBULANCE.
printed in gilt which gradually wore off as time went on. Inside on the
fly-leaf I had written--
“IF FOUND, please return to
Sgt. J. HARGRAVE, 32819, R.A.M.C.
32nd Field Ambulance,
X Division, Med. Exp. Force.”
And on the opposite page I wrote--
“IN CASE OF DEATH please post as soon as possible to
GORDON HARGRAVE,
Cinderbarrow Cottage,
Levens,
Westmorland.”
I remember printing the word “DEATH,” and wondering if the book would
some day lie with my own dead body “somewhere in the Dardanelles.”
Printing that word in England before we started made the whole thing
seem very real. Somehow up to then I hadn't realised that I might get
killed quite easily. I hadn't troubled to think about it.
We moved our camp from “A” Beach farther along towards the Salt Lake. We
moved several times. Always Hawk and I “hung together.” Once he was very
ill in the old dried-up water-course which wriggled down from the Kislar
Dargh. He ate nothing for three days. I never saw anything like it
before. He was as weak as a rat, and I know he came very near “pegging
out.” He felt it himself. I was sitting on the ground near by.
“I may not pull through this, old fellow,” says Hawk, with just a
tear-glint under one eyelid. He lay under a shelf of rock, safe from
shrapnel.
“Come now, Fred,” says I, “you're not going to snuff it yet.”
“Weak as a rat--can't eat nothink, PRACtically... nothink; but see here,
John,”--he seldom called me John--“if I do slip off the map, an' I
feel PRACtically done for this time--if I SHOULD--you see that
ration-bag”--he pointed to a little white bag bulging and tied up and
knotted.
“Yes?”
“It's got some little things in it--for the kiddies at home--a little
teapot I found up by the Turkish bivouac over there, and one or two more
relics--I want 'em to have 'em--will you take care of it and send it
home for me if you get out of this alive?”
Of course I promised to do this, but tried to cheer him up, and assured
him he would soon pull round.
In a few days he threw off the fever and was about again.
Hawk and I had lived for some weeks in this overgrown water-course.
It was a natural trench, and at one place Hawk had made a dug-out. He
picked and shovelled right into the hard, sandy rock until there was
quite a good-sized little cave about eight feet long and five deep.
The same sickness got me. It came over me quite suddenly. I was
fearfully tired. Every limb ached, and, like all the others, I began to
develop what I call the “stretcher-stoop.” I just lay down in the
ditch with a blanket and went to sleep. Hawk sat over me and brought me
bovril, which we had “pinched” on Lemnos Island.
I felt absolutely dying, and I really wondered whether I should have
enough strength to throw the sickness off as Hawk had. I gave him just
the same sort of instructions about my notes and sketches as he had
given me about his little ration-bag.
“Get 'em back to England if you can,” I said; “you're the man I'd
soonest trust here.”
If Hawk hadn't looked after me and made me eat, I don't believe I should
have lived. I used to lie there looking at the wild-rose tangles and the
red hips; there were brambles, too, with poor, dried-up blackberries. It
reminded me of England. Little green lizards scuttled about, and great
black centipedes crawled under my blanket. The sun was blazing
at mid-day. Hawk used to rig me up an awning over the ditch with
willow-stems and a waterproof ground-sheet.
Somehow you always thought yourself back to England. No matter what
train of thought you went upon, it always worked its way by one thread
or another to England. Mine did, anyway.
It was better to be up with the stretcher-squads in the firing line than
lying there sick, and thinking those long, long thoughts.
This is how I would think--
“What a waste of life; what a waste... Christianity this; all part
of civilisation; what's it all for? Queer thing this civilised
Christianity... very queer. So this really IS war; see now: how does
it feel? not much different to usual... But why? It's getting awfully
sickening... plenty of excitement, too--plenty... too much, in fact;
very easy to get killed any time here; plenty of men getting killed
every minute over there; but it isn't really very exciting... not like I
thought war was in England... England? Long way off, England; thousands
of miles; they don't know I'm sick in England; wonder what they'd think
to see me now; not a bad place, England, green trees and green grass...
much better place than I thought it was; wonder how long this will hang
on... I'd like to get back after it's finished here; I expect it's all
going on just the same in England; people going about to offices in
London; women dressing themselves up and shopping; and all that...
This is a d----place, this beastly peninsula--no green anywhere... just
yellow sand and grey rocks and sage-coloured bushes, dead grass--even
the thistles are all bleached and dead and rustling in the breeze like
paper flowers...
“And we WANTED to get out here... Just eating our hearts out to get into
it all, to get to work--and now... we're all sick of it... it's rotten,
absolutely rotten; everything. It's a rotten war. Wonder what they are
doing now at home...”