SIGNALS
The step is a far one from the signal-office of the first month in
Anzac to that of December. The first crude centre of intelligence was
like a Euclidean point--without magnitude, with position only. It was
a mere location from which signals could be despatched, without any
of the show of a compartment, and without apparatus. And the wireless
station was a hastily scratched hole in the sand, where the operator
supported himself on an elbow and received.
Now in December this is all changed. The Army Corps Signal Office
is a building, of sandbags and timber and galvanised iron, standing
four-square, solid as a blockhouse, protected alike from wind and the
entrance of rain and (by its branch-thatched roof) from the hawk-glance
of the aircraft observer.
Within there is an incongruous sense of civilisation. The staff is
clean, neatly dressed, shaven--in a word, civilianised. The spirit
of order presides. Except that the denizens wear a uniform, and that
the walls are of sandbag, you might be in a metropolitan telegraphic
office. They sit there tap-tap-tapping in their absorbed fashion. The
shrapnel screams overhead and bursts to their north. They are too
intent to hear it, mostly. All that has disturbed them, in the last
month, is the cry of "_Taube!_" (colloquial _Torb!_). Anti-aircraft
bring them trooping out to squint up at the swift, black, forbidding
craft humming raucously across the position. They laugh at shrapnel,
under the lee of the protecting ridge: no ridge makes immune from that
whirring dove of peace up there!
As you stumble up the Gully at night the illumination of the
signal-office gives a touch of the arclight and of city brilliance to
the place. The operators, sitting there, as you peer in from the outer
darkness, are a part of another world. Those not transmitting or under
call sit reading sixpenny editions and smoking cigarettes. They are
tapping out no orders from Headquarters. Neither in the words before
them nor in the placid _tap_ of the instruments is there any hint of
war. They're in London. But that sudden roar as of a locomotive is of
no London street traffic; London streets do not roar in a _crescendo_.
This is as of a rushing, mighty wind, rising to the scream of a
tornado. Comes the blast of explosion which unsettles them in their
seats. The walls of their house quake about them, and the shower of
earth and _débris_ descends; the foul stink drives through the dust,
and the well-ordered city room is hurried back, in the twinkling of
an eye, into the midst of war in the troublous land of Turkey. A
six-inch howitzer shell has exploded in the bank over against them--so
close that the unuttered thought flies to the possibility of a nearer
ultimate burst. The howitzer, searcher out of the protected sites in
ravines, under looming hill-crests, is a searcher of hearts too--a
disturber of the placid sense of security.
The _débris_ is cleared and the fumes pass, and order returns. The
operator goes back to his dot-and-dash monotone, and his neighbour
resumes his novel and lights another cigarette. The quiet undertone of
conversation revives.
Money is the sinews of war: where, in the anthropomorphic figure, will
you place these men of the Army Corps Signal Office? Analytical reader,
you may place them at your leisure--if you can. They make vocal (or
scriptural) the will of Headquarters. A general order they tap out to
the utmost post on the flanks. The flanks flash into them the hourly
report of progress. The watch in the trenches is realised, through
them, by Headquarters. If the Turk is quiescent, it is the telegraphist
here who knows it; if a move is made in the enemy lines--a Turkish
mule convoy sighted from the outpost, an enemy bombardment set up--it
is flashed through incontinently. These men, who see so little of
war--apart from searching howitzer--may, if they choose, visualise the
whole outlook along our line. They are to Army Headquarters what the
sergeant is to the Captain of infantry: the one may scribble or bawl
orders until weary; if the other is not there to distribute and enforce
the given word, all will perhaps be in vain.
And Army Corps Signal Office is the link between the Peninsula and
General Headquarters stationed in that island lying on the west.
Divisions flash in their reports from the flanks to Army Corps; all is
transmitted by cable to Imbros. And this is the medium through which
G.H.Q. orders materialise. Helles reports here also, by cable, for
transmission by cable. Here is the hub of all intelligence relating
to the Turkish campaign. For the network of cables centres here:
cable from Alexandria to Lemnos, Lemnos to Tenedos, Lemnos to Anzac,
Helles to Anzac, Anzac to G.H.Q. on Imbros. Thus there is direct
communication between G.H.Q. and the intermediate base in Egypt; cabled
dialogues are practicable regarding reinforcements of troops and
supplies of equipment and of food. The storeships that dodge submarines
from Alexandria lie at Lemnos waiting to disgorge; Anzac requirements
are cabled down to them, and they off-load accordingly into the small
transports that the Turks shell daily off Anzac. News of mail is
flashed up from Alexandria and from Mudros, and the mail despatch from
the Peninsula cabled down. No progress in operations is possible apart
from this wizard's hut where the signallers sit and tap and smoke and
read.