II

We were not to be long at Mudros. For three days we lay in the

sweltering heat of the great hill-circled bay, watching the warships

come and go, and buying fruit from the little Greek sailing boats which

fluttered round the harbour. These were days of hot anxiety about one's

kit; hourly each officer reorganized and re-disposed his exiguous

belongings, and re-weighed his valise, and jettisoned yet more precious

articles of comfort, lest the weight regulations be violated and for the

sake of an extra shirt the whole of one's equipment be cast into the sea

by the mysterious figure we believed to watch over these things.

Afterwards we found that all our care was in vain, and in the

comfortless camps of the Peninsula bitterly bewailed the little luxuries

we had needlessly left behind, now so unattainable. Down in the odorous

troop-decks the men wrote long letters describing the battles in which

they were already engaged, and the sound of quite mythical guns.

But on the third day came our sailing orders. In the evening a little

trawler, promoted to the dignity of a fleet-sweeper, came alongside, and

all the regiment of gross, overloaded figures, festooned with armament

and bags of food, and strange, knobbly parcels, tumbled heavily over the

side. Many men have written of the sailing of the first argosy of

troopships from that bay; and by this time the spectacle of departing

troops was an old one to the vessels there. But this did not diminish

the quality of their farewells. All the King's ships 'manned ship' as we

passed, and sent us a great wave of cheering that filled the heart with

sadness and resolution.

In one of the French ships was a party of her crew high up somewhere

above the deck, and they sang for us with astonishing accuracy and

feeling the 'Chant du Départ'; so moving was this that even the stolid

Northerners in our sweeper were stirred to make some more articulate

acknowledgment than the official British cheer; and one old pitman,

searching among his memories of some Lancashire music-hall, dug out a

rough version of the 'Marseillaise.' By degrees all our men took up the

tune and sang it mightily, with no suspicion of words; and the officers,

not less timidly, joined in, and were proud of the men for what they had

done. For many were moved in that moment who were never moved before.

But while we were yet warm with cheering and the sense of knighthood, we

cleared the boom and shivered a little in the breeze of the open sea.

The sun went down, and soon it was very cold in the sweeper: and in each

man's heart I think there was a certain chill. There were no more songs,

but the men whispered in small groups, or stood silent, shifting

uneasily their wearisome packs. For now we were indeed cut on from

civilization and committed to the unknown. The transport we had left

seemed a very haven of comfort and security; one thought longingly of

white tables in the saloon, and the unfriendly linen bags of bully-beef

and biscuits we carried were concrete evidence of a new life. The war

seemed no longer remote, and each of us realized indignantly that we

were personally involved in it. So for a little all these soldiers had a

period of serious thought unusual in the soldier's life. But as we

neared the Peninsula the excitement and novelty and the prospect of

exercising cramped limbs brought back valour and cheerfulness.

At Malta we had heard many tales of the still terrifying ordeal of

landing under fire. But such terrors were not for us. There was a bright

moon, and as we saw the pale cliffs of Cape Helles, all, I think,

expected each moment a torrent of shells from some obscure quarter. But

instead an unearthly stillness brooded over the two bays, and only a

Morse lamp blinking at the sweeper suggested that any living thing was

there. And there came over the water a strange musty smell; some said it

was the smell of the dead, and some the smell of an incinerator; myself

I do not know, but it was the smell of the Peninsula for ever, which no

man can forget. We disembarked at a pier of rafts by the _River Clyde_,

and stumbled eagerly ashore. And now we were in the very heart of heroic

things. Nowhere, I think, was the new soldier plunged so suddenly into

the genuine scenes of war as he was at Gallipoli; in France there was a

long transition of training-camps and railway trains and billets, and he

moved by easy gradations to the firing-line. But here, a few hours after

a night in linen sheets, we stood suddenly on the very sand where, but

three weeks before, those hideous machine-guns in the cliffs had mown

down that astonishing party of April 25. And in that silver stillness it

was difficult to believe.

We shambled off up the steady slope between two cliffs, marvelling that

any men could have prevailed against so perfect a 'field of fire.' By

now we were very tired, and it was heavy work labouring through the soft

sand. Queer, Moorish-looking figures in white robes peered at us from

dark corners, and here and there a man poked a tousled head from a hole

in the ground, and blinked upon our progress. Some one remarked that it

reminded him of nothing so much as the native camp at Earl's Court on a

fine August evening, and that indeed was the effect.

After a little the stillness was broken by a sound which we could not

conceal from ourselves was 'the distant rattle of musketry'; somewhere a

gun fired startlingly; and now as we went each man felt vaguely that at

any minute we might be plunged into the thick of a battle, laden as we

were, and I think each man braced himself for a desperate struggle. Such

is the effect of marching in the dark to an unknown destination. Soon we

were halted in a piece of apparently waste land circled by trees, and

ordered to dig ourselves a habitation at once, for 'in the morning' it

was whispered 'the Turks search all this ground.' Everything was said in

a kind of hoarse, mysterious whisper, presumably to conceal our

observations from the ears of the Turks five miles away. But then we did

not know they were five miles away; we had no idea where they were or

where we were ourselves. Men glanced furtively at the North Star for

guidance, and were pained to find that, contrary to their military

teaching, it told them nothing. Even the digging was carried on a little

stealthily till it was discovered that the Turks were not behind those

trees. The digging was a comfort to the men, who, being pitmen, were now

in their element; and the officers found solace in whispering to each

other that magical communication about the prospective 'searching'; it

was the first technical word they had used 'in the field,' and they were

secretly proud to know what it meant.

In a little the dawn began, and the grey trees took shape; and the sun

came up out of Asia, and we saw at last the little sugar-loaf peak of

Achi Baba, absurdly pink and diminutive in the distance. A man's first

frontal impression of that great rampart, with the outlying slopes

masking the summit, was that it was disappointingly small; but when he

had lived under and upon it for a while, day by day, it seemed to grow

in menace and in bulk, and ultimately became a hideous, overpowering

monster, pervading all his life; so that it worked upon men's nerves,

and almost everywhere in the Peninsula they were painfully conscious

that every movement they made could be watched from somewhere on that

massive hill.

But now the kitchens had come, and there was breakfast and viscous,

milkless tea. We discovered that all around our seeming solitude the

earth had been peopled with sleepers, who now emerged from their holes;

there was a stir of washing and cooking and singing, and the smoke went

up from the wood fires in the clear, cool air. D Company officers made

their camp under an olive-tree, with a view over the blue water to

Samothrace and Imbros, and now in the early cool, before the sun had

gathered his noonday malignity, it was very pleasant. At seven o'clock

the 'searching' began. A mile away, on the northern cliffs, the first

shell burst, stampeding a number of horses. The long-drawn warning

scream and the final crash gave all the expectant battalion a faintly

pleasurable thrill, and as each shell came a little nearer the sensation

remained. No one was afraid; without the knowledge of experience no one

could be seriously afraid on this cool, sunny morning in the grove of

olive-trees. Those chill hours in the sweeper had been much more

alarming. The common sensation was: 'At last I am really under fire;

to-day I shall write home and tell them about it.' And then, when it

seemed that the line on which the shells were falling must, if

continued, pass through the middle of our camp, the firing mysteriously

ceased.

Harry, I know, was disappointed; personally, I was pleased.

* * * * *

I learned more about Harry that afternoon. He had been much exhausted by

the long night, but was now refreshed and filled with an almost childish

enthusiasm by the pictorial attractions of the place. For this

enthusiastic soul one thing only was lacking in the site of the camp:

the rise of the hill which here runs down the centre of the Peninsula,

hid from us the Dardanelles. These, he said, must immediately be viewed.

It was a bright afternoon of blue skies and gentle air,--not yet had the

dry north-east wind come to plague us with dust-clouds,--and all the

vivid colours of the scene were unspoiled. We walked over the hill

through the parched scrub, where lizards darted from under our feet and

tortoises lay comatose in the scanty shade, and came to a kind of inland

cliff, where the Turks had had many riflemen at the landing, for all the

ground was littered with empty cartridges. And there was unfolded surely

the most gorgeous panorama this war has provided for prosaic Englishmen

to see. Below was a cool, inviting grove of imperial cypresses; all

along the narrow strip between us and the shore lay the rest-lines of

the French, where moved lazy figures in blue and red, and black

Senegalese in many colours. To the left was the wide sweep of Morto Bay,

and beyond the first section of Achi Baba rising to De Tott's Battery in

terraces of olives and vines. But what caught the immediate eye, what we

had come to see and had sailed hither to fight for, was that strip of

unbelievably blue water before us, deep, generous blue, like a Chinese

bowl. On the farther shore, towards the entrance to the Straits, we

could see a wide green plain, and beyond and to the left, peak after

peak of the mountains of Asia; and far away in the middle distance there

was a glint of snow from some regal summit of the Anatolian Mountains.

That wide green plain was the Plain of Troy. The scarcity of classical

scholars in Expeditionary Forces, and the wearisome observations of

pressmen on the subject of Troy, have combined to belittle the

significance of the classical surroundings of the Gallipoli campaign. I

myself am a stolid, ill-read person, but I confess that the spectacle of

those historic flats was not one, in diplomatic phrase, which I could

view with indifference. On Harry, ridiculously excited already, the

effect was almost alarming. He became quite lyrical over two little

sweepers apparently anchored near the mouth of the Straits. 'That,' he

said, 'must have been where the Greek fleet lay. God! it's wonderful.'

Up on the slope towards De Tott's Battery the guns were busy, and now

and then Asiatic Annie sent over a large shell from the region of

Achilles' tomb, which burst ponderously in the sea off Cape Helles. And

there we sat on the rough edge of the cliff and talked of Achilles and

Hector and Diomed and Patroclus and the far-sounding bolts of Jove. I do

not defend or exalt this action; but this is a truthful record of a

man's personality, and I simply state what occurred. And I confess that

with the best wish in the world I was myself becoming a little bored

with Troy, when in the middle of a sentence he suddenly became silent

and gazed across the Straits with a fixed, pinched look in his face,

like a man who is reminded of some far-off calamity he had forgotten.

For perhaps a minute he maintained this rigid aspect, and then as

suddenly relaxed, murmuring in a tone of relentless determination, 'I

will.' It was not in me not to inquire into the nature of this

passionate intention, and somehow I induced him to explain.

It seemed that in spite of his genuine academic successes and a moderate

popularity at school and at Oxford, he had suffered from early boyhood

from a curious distrust of his own capacity in the face of anything he

had to do. In a measure, no doubt, this had even contributed to his

successes. For his nervousness took the form of an intimate, silent

brooding over any ordeal that lay before him, whether it was a visit to

his uncle, or 'Schools,' or a dance: he would lie awake for hours

imagining all conceivable forms of error and failure and humiliation

that might befall him in his endeavour. And though he was to this extent

forewarned and forearmed, it must have been a painful process. And it

explained to me the puzzling intervals of seeming melancholy which I had

seen varying his usually cheerful demeanour.

'You remember last night,' he said, 'I had been detailed to look after

the baggage when we disembarked, and take charge of the unloading-party?

As far as I know I did the job all right, except for losing old

Tompkins' valise--but you can't think how much worry and anxiety it gave

me _beforehand_. All the time on the sweeper I was imagining the

hundreds of possible disasters: the working-party not turning up, and me

left alone on the boat with the baggage--the Colonel's things being

dropped overboard--a row with the M.L.O.--getting the baggage ashore,

and then losing the battalion, or the working-party, or the baggage. It

all worked out quite simply, but I tell you, Benson, it gave me hell.

And it's always the same. That's really why I didn't take a

commission--because I couldn't imagine myself drilling men once without

becoming a permanent laughing-stock. I know now that I was a fool about

that--I usually do find that out--but I can't escape the feeling next

time.

'And now, it's not only little things like that, but that's what I feel

about the whole war. I've a terror of being a failure in it, a failure

out here--you know, a sort of regimental dud. I've heard of lots of

them; the kind of man that nobody gives an important job because he's

sure to muck it up (though I do believe Eccleston's more likely to be

that than me). But that's what I was thinking just now. Somehow, looking

at this view--Troy and all that--and thinking how those Greeks sweated

blood for ten years on afternoons like this, doing their duty for the

damned old kings, and how we've come out here to fight in the same place

thousands of years afterwards, and we still know about them and remember

their names--well, it gave me a kind of inspiration; I don't know why.

I've got a bit of confidence--God knows how long it will last--but I

swear I won't be a failure, I won't be the battalion dud--and I'll have

a damned good try to get a medal of some sort and be like--like Achilles

or somebody.'

Sheer breathlessness put a sudden end to this outburst, and since it was

followed by a certain shyness at his own revelations I did not probe

deeper. But I thought to myself that this young man's spirit of romance

would die hard; I did not know whether it would ever die; for certainly

I had never seen that spirit working so powerfully in any man as a

positive incentive to achievement. And I tell you all this, because I

want you to understand how it was with him in the beginning.

But now the bay was in shadow below us; on the hill the solemn stillness

that comes over all trenches in the hour before dusk had already

descended, and away towards the cape the Indians were coming out to

kneel in prayer beside the alien sea.

The Romance of War was in full song. And scrambling down the cliff, we

bathed almost reverently in the Hellespont.