II

Those first three days were for many of us, who did not know the mild

autumn months, the most pleasant we spent on the Peninsula. The last

weeks of May had something of the quality of an old English summer, and

the seven plagues of the Peninsula had not yet attained the intolerable

violence of June and July. True, the inhabited portion of the narrow

land we won had already become in great part a wilderness; the myrtle,

and rock-rose, and tangled cistus, and all that wealth of spring flowers

in which the landing parties had fallen and died in April, had long been

trodden to death, and there were wide stretches of yellow desert where

not even the parched scrub survived. But in the two and a half miles of

bare country which lay between the capes and the foot-hills of Achi Baba

was one considerable oasis of olives and stunted oaks, and therein, on

the slopes of the bridge, was our camp fortunately set. The word 'camp'

contains an unmerited compliment to the place. The manner of its birth

was characteristic of military arrangements in those days. When we were

told, on that first mysterious midnight, to dig ourselves a shelter

against the morning's 'searching,' we were far from imagining that what

we dug would be our Peninsular 'home' and haven of rest from the

firing-line for many months to come. And so we made what we conceived to

be the quickest and simplest form of shelter against a quite temporary

emergency--long, straight, untraversed ditches, running parallel to and

with but a few yards between each other. No worse form of permanent

dwelling-place could conceivably have been constructed, for the men were

cramped in these places with a minimum of comfort and a maximum of

danger. No man could climb out of his narrow drain without casting a

shower of dust from the crumbling parapet on to his sleeping neighbour

in the next ditch; and three large German shells could have destroyed

half the regiment. Yet there were many such camps, most of them lacking

the grateful concealment of our trees. Such targets even the Turkish

artillery must sometimes hit, There were no dug-outs in the accepted

sense of the Western Front, no deep, elaborate, stair-cased chambers,

hollowed out by miners with miners' material. _Our_ dug-outs _were_

dug-outs in truth, shallow excavations scooped in the surface of the

earth. The only roof for a man against sun and shells was a waterproof

sheet stretched precariously over his hole. It is sufficient testimony

to the indifference of the Turkish artillery that with such naked

concentrations of men scattered about the Peninsula, casualties in the

rest-camps were so few.

Each officer had his own private hole, set democratically among the

men's; and an officers' mess was simply made by digging a larger hole,

and roofing it with _two_ waterproof sheets instead of one. There was no

luxury among the infantry there, and the gulf which yawns between the

lives of officer and man in France as regards material comfort was

barely discernible in Gallipoli. Food was dull and monotonous: for weeks

we had only bully-beef and biscuits, and a little coarse bacon and tea,

but it was the same for all, one honourable equality of discomfort. At

first there were no canteen facilities, and when some newcomer came from

one of the islands with a bottle of champagne and another of chartreuse,

we drank it with 'bully' and cast-iron biscuit. Drinking water was as

precious as the elixir of life, and almost as unobtainable, but officer

and man had the same ration to eke out through the thirsty day. Wells

were sunk, and sometimes immediately condemned, and when we knew the

water was clear and sweet to taste, it was hard to have it corrupted

with the metallic flavour of chemicals by the medical staff. Then indeed

did a man learn to love water; then did he learn discipline, when he

filled his water-bottle in the morning with the exiguous ration of the

day, and fought with the intolerable craving to put it to his lips and

there and then gurgle down his fill.

In the spring nights it was very cold, and men shivered in their single

blanket under the unimaginable stars; but very early the sun came up,

and by five o'clock all the camp were singing; and there were three

hours of fresh coolness when it was very good to wash in a canvas

bucket, and smoke in the sun before the torrid time came on; and again

at seven, when the sun sat perched on the great rock of Samothrace, and

Imbros was set in a fleecy marvel of pink and saffron clouds, there were

two hours of pure physical content; but these, I think, were more nearly

perfect than the morning because they succeeded the irritable fevers of

the day. Then the crickets in the branches sang less tediously, and the

flies melted away, and all over the Peninsula the wood fires began to

twinkle in the dusk, as the men cooked over a few sticks the little

delicacies which were preserved for this hour of respite. When we had

done we sat under our olive-tree in the clear twilight, and watched the

last aeroplanes sail home to Rabbit Islands, and talked and argued till

the glow-worms glimmering in the scrub, and up the hill the long roll of

the Turks' rapid fire, told us that darkness was at hand, and the chill

dew sent us into our crannies to sleep.

So we were not sorry for three days of quiet in the camp before we went

up the hill; Harry alone was all eagerness to reach the firing-line with

the least possible delay. But then Harry was like none of us; indeed,

none of us were like each other. It would have been strange if we had

been. War-chroniclers have noted with an accent of astonishment the

strange diversity of persons to be found in units of the New Army, and

the essential sameness of their attitude to the war. As though a man

were to go into the Haymarket and be surprised if the first twelve

pedestrians there were not of the same profession; were then to summon

them to the assistance of a woman in the hands of a rough, and be still

surprised at the similarity of their methods.

We were, in truth, a motley crowd, gathered from everywhere; but when we

sat under that olive-tree we were very much alike--with the single

exception of Harry.

Egerton, our company commander, a man of about thirty, with a round face

and a large head, was a stockbroker by profession, and rather

improbably, an old Territorial by pastime. He was an excellent company

commander, but would have made a still more admirable second-in-command,

for his training in figures and his meticulous habits in such things as

the keeping of accounts were just what is required of a

second-in-command, and were lamentably deficient in myself. The

intricacies of Acquittance Rolls and Imprest Accounts, and page 3 of the

Soldier's Pay-Book, were meat and drink to him, and in general I must

confess that I shamefully surrendered such delicacies to him.

Harry Penrose had the 14th Platoon. Of the other three subalterns

perhaps the most interesting was Hewett. He, like Harry, had been at

Oxford before the war, though they had never come together there. He was

a fair, dreamy person, of remarkably good looks. Alone of all the 'young

Apollos' I have known did he at all deserve that title. Most of these

have been men of surpassing stupidity and material tastes, but Hewett

added to his physical qualifications something of the mental refinement

which presumably one should expect of even a modern Apollo. Intensely

fastidious, he frankly detested the war, and all the dirt and disgust he

must personally encounter. Like Harry, he was an idealist--but more so;

for he could not idealize the war. But the shrinking of his spirit had

no effect on his conduct: he was no less courageous than Harry or any

one else, and no less keen to see the thing through. Only, at that time,

he was a little less blind. A year senior to Harry, he had taken Greats

in 1914, and though his degree had been disappointingly low he had not

yet lost the passionate attachment of the 'Greats' man to philosophy and

thoughts of the Ultimate Truths. Sometimes he would try to induce one of

us to talk with him of his religious and philosophical doubts; but in

that feverish place it was too difficult for us, and usually he brooded

over his problems alone.

Eustace, of the 16th Platoon, was a journalist by repute, though it was

never discovered to what journal, if any, he was specially attached. His

character was more attractive than his appearance, which was long,

awkward, and angular; and if he had ever been to school, he would have

been quite undeservedly unpopular for not playing games:

undeservedly--because one could not conceive of him as playing any game.

Physically, indeed, he was one of Nature's gawks; intellectually he was

nimble, not to say athletic, with an acute and deeply logical mind. As a

companion, more especially a companion in war, he was made tedious by a

habit of cynicism and a passion for argument. The cynicism, I think, had

developed originally from some early grievance against Society, had been

adopted as an effective pose, and had now become part of his nature.

Whatever its origin it was wearing to us, for in the actual scenes of

war one likes to cling to one's illusions while any shred of them

remains, and would rather they faded honourably under the gentle

influence of time than be torn to fragments in a moment by reasoned

mockery. But Eustace was never tired of exhibiting the frailty and

subterfuge of all men, particularly in their relations to the war; the

_Nation_ arrived for him as regularly as the German submarines would

allow, and all his views were in that sense distinctly 'National.' If

any of us were rash enough to read that paper ourselves, we were

inevitably provoked to some comment which led to a hot wrangle on the

Public Schools, or Kitchener, or the rights of the war, and the pleasant

calm of the dusk was marred. For Eustace could always meet us with a

powerfully logical case, and while in spirit we revolted against his

heresies, we were distressed by the appeal they made to our reluctant

reasons. Harry, the most ingenuous of us all and the most devoted to his

illusions, was particularly worried by this conflict. It seemed very

wrong to him that a man so loyal and gallant in his personal relations

with others should trample so ruthlessly on their dearest opinions.

Burnett was of a very different type. Tall and muscular, with reddish

hair and vivid blue eyes, he looked (as he wanted to look) a 'man of

action' by nature and practice. He had 'knocked about' for some years in

Africa and Australia (a process which had failed equally to establish

his fortunes or soften his rough edges), and from the first he affected

the patronizing attitude of the experienced campaigner. The little

discomforts of camp life were nothing to him, for were they not part of

his normal life? And when I emerged from my dug-out pursued by a

centipede of incredible ferocity, he held forth for a long time on the

best method of dispatching rattlesnakes in the Umgoga, or some such

locality. By degrees, however, as life became more unbearable, the

conviction dawned upon us that he was no less sensible to heat and

hunger and thirst than mere 'temporary' campaigners, and rather more

ready to utter his complaints. Finally, the weight of evidence became

overwhelming, and it was whispered at the end of our first week at

Gallipoli that 'Burnett was bogus.' The quality of being 'bogus' was in

those days the last word in military condemnation; and in Burnett's case

events showed the verdict to be lamentably correct.

So we were a strangely assorted crowd, only alike, as I have said, in

that we were keen on the winning of this war and resolved to do our

personal best towards that end. Of the five of us, Hewett and Eustace

had the most influence on Harry. Me he regarded as a solid kind of wall

that would never let him down, or be guilty of any startling deviations

from the normal. By Hewett he was personally and spiritually attracted;

by Eustace alternately fascinated and disturbed. And it was a very bad

day for Harry when Hewett's death removed that gentle, comfortable

influence.