It was one of the Great Dates: one of those red dates which build up the
calendar of a soldier's past, and dwell in his memory when the date of
his own birth is almost forgotten. It is strange what definite
sign-posts these dates of a man's battle--days become in his calculation
of time--like the foundation of Rome. An old soldier will sigh and say,
'Yes, I know that was when Jim died--it was ten days after the Fourth of
June,' or, 'I was promoted the day before the Twelfth of July.'
The years pile up, and zero after zero day is added for ever to his
primitive calendar, and not one of them is thrust from his reverent
memory; but at each anniversary he wakes and says, 'This is the 3rd of
February, or the 1st of July,' and thinks of old companions who went
down on that day; and though he has seen glorious successes since, he
will ever think with a special tenderness of the black early failures
when he first saw battle and his friends going under. And if in any
place where soldiers gather and tell old tales, there are two men who
can say to each other, 'I, too, was at Helles on such a date,' there is
a great bond between them.
On one of these days we sat under the olive-tree and waited. Up the hill
one of that long series of heroic, costly semi-successes was going
through. We were in reserve. We had done six turns in the trenches
without doing an attack. When we came out we were very ready to attack,
very sure of ourselves. Now we were not so sure of ourselves; we were
waiting, and there was a terrible noise. Very early the guns had begun,
and everywhere, from the Straits to the sea, were the loud barkings of
the French 'seventy-fives,' thinly assisted by the British artillery,
which was scanty, and had almost no ammunition. But the big ships came
out from Imbros and stood off and swelled the chorus, dropping their
huge shells on the very peak of the little sugar-loaf that tops Achi
Baba, and covering his western slopes with monstrous eruptions of black
and yellow.
Down in the thirsty wilderness of the rest-camps the few troops in
reserve lay restless under occasional olive-trees, or huddled under the
exiguous shelter of ground-sheets stretched over their scratchings in
the earth. They looked up and saw the whole of the great hill swathed in
smoke and dust and filthy fumes, and heard the ruthless crackle of the
Turks' rifles, incredibly rapid and sustained; and they thought of their
friends scrambling over in the bright sun, trying to get to those
rifles. They themselves were thin and wasted with disease, and this
uncertainty of waiting in readiness for they knew not what plucked at
their nerves. They could not rest or sleep, for the flies crawled over
their mouths and eyes and tormented them ceaselessly, and great storms
of dust swept upon them as they lay. They were parched with thirst, but
they must not drink, for their water-bottles were filled with the day's
allowance, and none knew when they would be filled again. If a man took
out of his haversack a chunk of bread, it was immediately black with
flies, and he could not eat. Sometimes a shell came over the Straits
from Asia with a quick, shrill shriek, and burst at the top of the
cliffs near the staff officers who stood there and gazed up the hill
with glasses. All morning the noise increased, and the shells streamed
up the hill with a sound like a hundred expresses vanishing into a
hundred tunnels: and there was no news. But soon the wounded began to
trickle down, and there were rumours of a great success with terrible
losses. In the afternoon the news became uncertain and disturbing. Most
of the morning's fruits had been lost. And by evening they knew that
indeed it had been a terrible day.
Under our olive-tree we were very fidgety. There had been no mail for
many days, and we had only month-old copies of the _Mail_ and the
_Weekly Times_, which we pretended listlessly to read. Eustace had an
ancient _Nation_, and Hewett a shilling edition of _Vanity Fair_. Harry
in the morning kept climbing excitedly up the trees to gaze at the
obscure haze of smoke on the hill, and trying vainly to divine what was
going on; but after a little he too sat silent and brooding. We were no
longer irritable with each other, but studiously considerate, as if each
felt that to-morrow he might want to take back a spiteful word and the
other be dead. All our valises and our sparse mess-furniture had long
been packed away, for we had now been standing by for twenty-four hours,
and we lay uneasily on the hard ground, shifting continually from
posture to posture to escape the unfriendly protuberances of the soil.
In the tree the crickets chirped on always, in strange indifference to
the storm of noise about them. They were hateful, those crickets.... Now
and then Egerton was summoned to Headquarters; and when he came back
each man said to himself, 'He has got our orders.' And some would not
look at him, but talked suddenly of something else. And some said to him
with a painful cheeriness, 'Any orders?' and when he shook his head,
cursed a little, but in their hearts wondered if they were glad. For the
waiting was bad indeed, but who knew what tasks they would have when
the orders came.... Often the Reserves had the worst of it in these
affairs ... a forlorn hope of an attack without artillery ... digging a
new line under fire ... beating off the counterattack....
But the waiting became intolerable, and all were glad, an hour before
sunset, when we filed off slowly by half-platoons. Every gun was busy
again, and all along the path to the hill batteries of 'seventy-fives'
barked suddenly from unsuspected holes, so close that a man's heart
seemed to halt at the shock. The gully was full of confusion and
wounded, and tired officers and odd groups of men bandying rumours and
arguing in the sun. Half-way up the tale came mysteriously down the line
that we were to attack a trench by ourselves; a whole brigade had tried
and failed--there was a redoubt--there were endless machine-guns....
Some laughed--'a rumour'; but most men felt in their heart that there
was something in it, and inwardly 'pulled themselves together.' At last
they were to be in a real battle, and walk naked in the open through the
rapid fire. And as they moved on, there came over them an overpowering
sense of the irrevocable. They thought of that summer day in 1914 when
they walked light-hearted into the recruiting office. It had seemed a
small thing then, but that was what had done it; had brought them into
this blazing gully, with the frogs croaking, and the men moaning in
corners with their legs messed up.... If they had known about this gully
then and these flies, and this battle they were going to, then, perhaps,
they would have done something else in that August ... gone into a
dockyard ... joined the A.S.C. like Jim Roberts.... Well, they hadn't,
and they were not really sorry ... only let there be no more waiting ...
and let it be quick and merciful, no stomach wounds and nastiness ... no
lying out in the scrub for a day with the sun, and the flies, and no
water.
Look at that officer on the stretcher ... _he_ won't last long ...
remember his face ... his platoon relieved us somewhere ... where was
it?... Hope I don't get one like him ... nasty mess ... would like one
in the shoulder if it's got to be ... hospital ship ... get home,
perhaps ... no, they send you to Egypt ... officer said so.... Hallo,
halting here ... Merton trench ... old Reserve Line.... Getting dark ...
night-attack?... not wait till dawn, I hope ... can't stand much more
waiting.... Pass the word, Company Commanders to see the Colonel ...
that's done it, there goes Egerton ... good man, thinks a lot of me ...
try not to let him down....
But what Egerton and the others heard from the Colonel made a vain thing
of all this bracing of men's spirits. There was a muddle; the attack was
cancelled ... no one knew where the Turks were, where anybody was ... we
were to stay the night in this old reserve trench and relieve the front
line in the morning....
When Egerton told his officers only Burnett spoke: he said 'Damn. _As_
usual. I wanted a go at the old Turks': and we knew that it was not
true. The rest of us said nothing, for we were wondering if it were true
of ourselves. I went with Harry to his platoon; they too said nothing,
and their faces were expressionless.
But they were cold now, and hungry, and suddenly very tired; and they
had no real fire of battle in them; they had waited too long for this
crowning experience of an attack, braced themselves for it too often to
be disappointed; and I knew that they were glad. But they did not mind
being glad; they pondered no doubts about themselves, only curled up
like animals in corners to sleep....
Harry, too, no doubt, had braced himself like the rest of us, and he,
too, must have been glad, glad to lie down and look forward after all to
seeing another sunrise. But I thought of his doubts about himself, and I
felt that this business was far from easing his burden. For me and for
the men it was a simple thing--the postponement of a battle with the
Turks; for Harry it was the postponement of a personal test: the battle
inside him still went on; only it went on more bitterly.