ROUTINE
Day and night, night and day; they came and went again like the pendulum
of an eternal clock. They brought us varying fortunes such as a soldier
learns to receive in meekness: they grew into weeks and brought the first
awful breaths of summer.
Much had happened since the first wonderful rush. Our footing was secure,
trenches were deep and safe and numerous, and communicated with support
galleries where reinforcements rested. Our guns were in position,
every man boasted his own funk-hole. The army was much increased; the
wilderness was peopled.
Our field artillery brigade had moved headquarters from the beach to a
hillock near the head of Shrapnel Valley. The change left us near the
firing line, but, even so, few shells came our way. Several more of our
fellows were landed now, and the staff was nearly complete again. But
Death had interested himself in us, his eye had looked this way, his
fingers had felt among us. First Oxbridge went, then old Bill Eaves
followed him; then went Lewis, with the face of a girl. I have told you
of Oxbridge; I shall tell you of the others in good time.
That officer of parts, Mr. Sands, was ashore the first day, ahead of
anyone, I believe. He was forward observer for the artillery. We saw
nothing of him for two or three days, and then he appeared out of the
wilderness in most piteous condition. He was painted all over with
dust, he was unshaven and unwashed; his clothes had never been off and
were crumpled and torn, and a boot had lost its heel. He ran at the
nose and seemed worn out, having the look of a man far gone with hunger
and thirst. No scabby and dinnerless pariah prowling the streets of
Constantinople was in more awful case.
I was doing nothing when he turned up, and I must perforce keep an eye on
him. Always I had a liking for the fellow. For whatever his iniquities,
Sands was no coward. And if a man be game, he atones for much; when
death arrives, can he but take up his hat and say firmly, “I am ready,”
will not many items be wiped from the slate? And so I doubt not Sands’s
Valkyrie waits him in Valhalla.
But down below here he found sorry welcome. The colonel spoke a few
sentences and dismissed him with abrupt nod, leaving me sure he had
messed our shooting. The other officers said nothing at all. So he
emptied somebody’s water-bottle, and next sat down without a word, as
though no more fight remained in him.
But after midday tucker he perked up, for was he not Sands the
irrepressible? He found a handkerchief somewhere and then came over in my
direction, and sat down affably enough to smile his Sandslike smile.
“You’re still alive?” he said, looking on to the ground, and picking a
leaf from a bush to crumple in his hand.
“Yes, sir, I’m all right.”
He did not look at me at all, it was a trait of his; but he showed no
signs of going away, and sat on crumpling the leaf to powder. All at once
he said, “How d’ye like this?”
“It’s better than Mena.” He answered with a kind of chuckle. “What sort
of time have you had, sir?” He said nothing, but sniggered again. “You
were over pretty early, weren’t you, sir?”
“Oh, yes, Lake, pretty early,” he answered. “But I wasn’t in the rush up
the hill. I was with the brigadier then.”
“The infantry seem to have done all right,” I said. “You can see their
packs at the bottom of the hill over there, where they threw them off.”
“Yes, the Third did all right,” he went on, after a pause. “But you know
it wasn’t the great affair it was made out to be. We were expected to
land lower down, on the flat where the entanglements are. But there was
some mistake or other, and we were put off here. The Turkish army was
lower down, and there was only a machine gun detachment on the beach.
After that had been rushed, there was practically no resistance until
we were at the top of the hill. By then the Turks had brought their
men up, and when we got to the open country and came properly under
fire, our men began to waver and fall back, and that was how so many
officers were lost, rallying them. Afterwards they advanced too far,
and pushed on nearly into the Turkish camp, and as the reinforcements
were not there, they had to retreat under heavy fire, and so the losses
happened.” He snivelled as he finished, and as afterthought brought out
the handkerchief.
This seemed a more likely story than the other one. The scrub lay on the
hills as thick as hairs on a mat, and no men could rush through it, and
no enemy could see to shoot them if they did. The first story was a fine
one, but this second more true. Sands took up his tale again.
“You hear every man say there are only a hundred men left of his
battalion, and that he is the last man of his platoon, and that kind of
thing; but, of course, it isn’t so. The battalions lost themselves the
first day, they’re all mixed up, and until there’s a chance to reorganise
a bit, thousands will be missing.”
We sat a long time without speaking again; but at last Sands looked
sideways at me.
“Lake, next time you are down at the beach, do you think you could find
me a pair of boots somewhere? These are done for.” And he pushed forward
the one with the heel gone. “You ought to be able to get something at the
hospital or the morgue. One boot will do if you can’t get a pair.”
He looked so broken down, and yet said so little of his troubles, that
my heart went out to him, and I answered gladly enough I would do what
I could. Next morning I was passing the hospital, and, remembering him,
looked inside. The picture was not pleasant, and there seemed no boots
about. I went on to the quartermaster, and, after a little haggling, got
a new pair. Away I started and dangled them before Sands.
“You’ve got a new pair!” he exclaimed, getting up in a hurry. “You’re the
most wonderful man, Lake. I never could have got them.”
“I couldn’t get any laces, sir,” I said.
“That doesn’t matter in the least. These are splendid. I would willingly
give ten shillings for them.” And he looked at me in a sort of
what-about-it way, and then dropped the subject. Thus it came about that
Sands regained his respectability.
In a week or two, the whole face of the country was changed, and the
army had settled down into a daily routine. The scrub was thinning under
the demands of cooks for firewood, and definite roads pierced the main
valleys and linked them together, while paths crawled over the hills
wherever there were headquarters or gunpits, or whatever else you like.
The feeling of great adventure was done with.
On first days I had been up some of those valleys, pushing a way through
the scrub if I left the track by a yard. And all the way one would tumble
on relics of the first advance. It sorrowed my heart to look about. Boxes
of ammunition had been thrown down in the undergrowth, tens of thousands,
aye, hundreds of thousands of rounds spilled about for the dews to damp
and blacken. Cases of jam, big yellow cheeses, sacks of bully beef lay
here, unclaimed except by such runaways as were on the lookout for a
dinner. Once I found a dead donkey loaded up as he had started on the
journey. At every dozen paces one passed rifles and web equipment and
endless other things, some damaged in the great game, true; but much just
spoiling there for the want of picking up.
And the scrub held other secrets. As you peered among the shadows you
might happen on strange and grisly objects lying even stiller than the
leaves in the hot noon: horrid black and swollen figures, causing you to
turn and push for opener spaces. Or a short-lived, sickly wind might come
drifting over, warning of yet other spots to be left alone.
I would not have you think we were careless with our dead, and left them
as they died, but some fell in lonely places, and some lay under enemy
fire where the search parties could not go. Few only were left thus
unattended. In strangest, most difficult, most wayward places little
graves had found a way: here one alone, now a community of them; each
with simple marks which spring was hiding, and which winter would wash
presently quite away.
Australia alone had not left marks for passage. At one time there were
many Turkish prizes for him who sought. Choked rifles, a clip of pointed
cartridges, a belt, a water-bottle: any of these were there to point out
the path of battle. And of empty shell-cases and fuse-caps there was no
end: one never troubled to turn them over.
Springtime had come along, the hour of lovemaking was at hand, and tiny
birds played hide-and-seek through all this ruin. When we tired of our
furies, and the guns awhile shut their mouths, you could hear the birds
singing and singing, so swollen were they with love. I have crouched in
odd corners of that playground waiting for an outbreak of shrapnel to
pass, and I have seen the happy hurry-scurry in the twigs, and I have
thought—but what does a soldier with thinking? A soldier draws pay to act.
These times I speak of were in early days, before the army had landed
and changed wilderness to a peopled city. As soon as the hour of pause
came, fatigue parties were sent abroad to bring in the wasting material.
And curio hunters, and such people as cannot pass an object without
taking possession, cleaned up whatever was overlooked. At one time there
was regular trade with the navy, who gave a loaf of bread for an empty
Turkish shell-case. Presently there grew up large fenced graveyards, with
level rows of graves and a wooden cross at the head of each. The greenery
was thinned, there were easy ways to the stiffest points, and many of the
birds went off to happier lands. So, much that was romantic departed.
I had a central funk-hole—near headquarters and near the cookhouse. I
had a balcony, eighteen inches high maybe, and from a seat I dug there
one could look across the sea into the eye of the setting sun. There
was a tiny path just above the funk-hole, used by everyone coming from
the valley top to headquarters; and all who went that way sent a trickle
of dirt into my bed. Some honest spade work might have mended matters,
but it was a big affair, and I was too lazy ever to begin. A melancholy
bush grew by the path, but from it I received no shade; and I was driven
to rig a shaky overhead cover of waterproof sheets, the spoils of early
days. This awning kept off the sun a little; but the space below had a
sickly heat when there was no breeze. At night I took down the cover; and
by leaning on an elbow, I could look over the sea, or stare up to watch
the stars turning in the skies.
We were always certain of our dinners now, and there was plenty to eat,
though, to speak truth, the stuff was sufficiently uninteresting. And
so—as all the others were doing—we of the Staff settled down to hum-drum
everyday affairs.
Much of the desert training went for nothing. We had not a horse ashore.
The guns were man-handled to this or that position, and dug in. An
overhead cover of sandbags went up, and heavy sandbagged ramparts grew
around. And there the gun stayed for days: it might be for weeks. From
first to last we never wagged a flag; all lines of communication were
kept by telephonists. The signallers sat down to an office girl’s duty.
The staff telephonists dug a funk-hole, quite a roomy affair, with seats
and a step down. All lines came together here, so that the place grew
into a regular exchange with switch-boards and other affairs. You would
always find two or three fellows at home, and a heap of Melbourne papers
in the corner. The fellows were ever ready for a yarn, and could give you
beach information for trench news. A fatigue party of batmen made daily
trips to the beach for rations.
Now there was scarcely a horse on land, mules performing the transport
work and mountain battery work. So it came about that haughtiest generals
tramped the rounds as any vulgar private. And among the hapless horsemen
left horseless to toil the hills may be counted Gunner Lake. Galloper
I remained in name only. I came to foot it behind the colonel on every
excursion, and as he was restless as the wind, and stayed unrebuffed by
sun or mountain height, I grew to be known as periscope carrier from
Walker’s Ridge to The Wheatfield. We could tell you of the end of every
winding of every trench; and on the moment could upend the periscope, and
point you whatever you wanted—Lonesome Pine or Jackson’s Jolly, Collins
Street or the Chessboard: it was all the same to us. And we could do
more than that. We could point to the hidden battery at C; we could show
you the puff of the gun on Turk’s Hump; and could put your eyes on the
V-shaped piece on the skyline where lurked the captured seventy-five.
In the beginning our guns had little luck. Truth to tell, they were
at disadvantage. The country was no field gunner’s country. First we
lacked the horses, and must move the guns by means of imprecations and
our sweat. Next the lay of the country was wrong; and space so lacked
that we must shoot from the pockets of our infantry. This drew fire on
neighbouring trenches, and the infantry loved us accordingly.
The colonel was a restless spirit, loving the society of his guns as
should an honest gunner. First thing each day he would make his bath
of a spoonful of water, standing up as naked as the ground below, and
rubbing himself over in brisk fashion. To the bath he added a shave; and
while he dressed he talked over the telephone to Divisional Artillery or
the batteries. Then we began the rounds. The colonel would get up, tuck
the periscope under his arm with a “Come along, Lake,” and lead the way
up the path over my dug-out. Close on his heels I followed. A few yards
on he would hold back the periscope without turning round. Sometimes he
might say, “You are younger than I am.” Frequently he said nothing at
all. Level country or hill land, he went always at an eager pace.
Each morning we drew the same cover, starting on B Battery preserve, and
ending there again midday or later.
The path above my funk-hole led by steep pinches to the head of Shrapnel
Valley, one of two main valleys piercing these hills. Shrapnel Valley
and Monash Valley they were named; and Shrapnel Valley was the centre of
our position. Once all had been wilderness as I have told; then appeared
half-way a couple of barrels where the sappers had tapped for water, and
about the same time a field dressing station came into being across the
way. The position was important, and soon infantry brigade headquarters
claimed the top, a New South Wales battalion headquarters kept house
alongside, and we gunners prospected lower down. Dug-outs, cookhouses,
and officers came in our wake, and in no time a primitive township grew
up with suburbs wandering downhill towards the beach.
As often as not the colonel made a first call at infantry brigade
headquarters, for we must pass it on the way. There was a notice board
without; and I read Reuter’s telegrams while the colonel went inside.
Now, General Runner, the infantry brigadier, was a tough customer, and
an Indian man, I think, from his ribbons and the colour of his face. His
A.D.C. was trained to jump at the wrinkle of an eyelid or the bristle of
a moustache hair. What his staff thought of him I don’t know, but he was
liked well enough by the men. He had a curious droop of an eyelid; and
when he shot his savage glances at you, he seemed to shut his eyes. He
may have had a liver or he may not; but this I know, I should be sorry
for his butler when the coffee was cold of a morning.
Like most of the big men, he was for ever poking about the trenches,
nor was he chary of a risk. He was a true periscope fiend, holding the
periscope well above the parapet so that every sniper for hundreds of
yards was potting away. Possibly periscope casualties were his vanity.
One morning the periscope was struck sideways. The general’s head was
just below the parapet, and the bullet passed an inch or so over his
cap. He cocked his wicked eye up—he had quick movements like a bird—and
looked at the holes in the tin case. “Bullet through the periscope, sir?”
came a toady’s voice. The brigadier twisted about his head, and looked
down. Then followed a noise between a chuckle and a choke, and back he
went to his observation.
When the colonel and I made an early call at infantry brigade
headquarters, the general would be at breakfast or in his office. He had
built a table of a sort, and he sat at the head of it, often in the open
air, with his staff before him. There was nothing special to eat; but the
company lived in a civilised fashion, which keeps a man alive. On the
colonel’s approach, the general would look up. “Good morning, Jackson,”
he would say, passing a hand over his hair in a way of his; and then he
would pucker his face and squint, for the sun was always In his eyes.
“Morning, sir.” Brigadier and colonel would talk then for a few minutes,
the brigadier in a strong high-pitched voice, which generally had last
word. It was said he was hard to turn from his opinion; and I believe
he had strange artillery ideas. However, argument and explanation did
not delay his breakfast. He chewed on with easy indifference. Presently
the colonel would come away, not always best pleased, and we would start
up a very stiff pinch which took us to the top of the valley. There it
was the trenches ran away to right and left, excepting for a space of
twenty yards maybe, where the empty waterway down the valley began. This
opening was protected with wire entanglements and sandbag ramparts.
One or two really good dug-outs were about here, places with plenty of
sawn timber gone to their making, with roofs of corrugated iron and
sandbags, and curtains of old sacking to keep away the sun. There were
always rough tables in such places, and plenty of up-ended packing cases
for chairs. One can tell a man’s character from his funk-hole.
There was a cookhouse down in the bed of the creek, where a cook
compounded savoury messes from pretty hopeless materials. I have sat on
the bank above on a red-hot afternoon, wondering how he found the spirit
to go on at the job. That cook grew a beard in time; but he never left it
to straggle as did other men. It was pointed and trimmed. He talked to
nobody, and I wondered what he thought about down there. Maybe he cooked
to forget his miseries. He cooked and he kept shut his mouth, which was
all asked of him. A fellow can grow into a hero by shutting his mouth on
a remorseless campaign of this kind.
There was another dug-out near by, where later on lived among bombs and
empty boxes the sergeant of the trench mortars. He was a small man, and
middle-aged, with sad eyes. He was a man of birth, a gentleman, and was
said to have a history. I wondered what he thought of sitting there alone
after putting his mortars to bed.
Once we dragged a couple of guns behind these trenches, but we had no
luck with them. Two sergeants were sniped before a shot was fired. The
guns went back to the valley bottom afterwards, and stayed there; but the
colonel was never truly content.
At the valley head you turned to the right hand for B Battery observing
station, and for the left hand did you want Clayton’s trenches where
Sands observed. Always we turned to the right. The way was through a
deep cutting with scooped-out seats on either side, where often sat two
stretcher-bearers reading papers or playing cards. Other fellows would be
here too to gain the few yards of shade and the slight draught caused by
the high, close walls. They gambled for ever for cigarettes.
Beyond the gamblers began the trenches, and near by at their mouth was
B Battery observing station. I have described it before: it had been
held by the marines. The spot was much improved since then, was wider
and safer; besides, the enemy had lost interest in it. The telephonists
grilled in the sun there, for as elsewhere in this barbarous country
there was no spot of shade. As often as not Major Cannister, the battery
commander, was with his men.
“Good morning, Cannister,” the colonel would say coming up, glad to stand
still after the climb.
“Good morning, sir,” Cannister would answer. And then they saluted one
another, and Cannister would come away from the big periscope tied
against the parapet, leaving the sergeant-major or somebody else to watch
in his place. And the colonel and he would sit side by side on the
hot earth and exchange latest news. As a start the colonel’s cigarette
case came into sight. He would open it and eye bitterly the weekly dole
of Woodbines. “Have one?” he would say, holding open the case. “I’m
getting some real cigarettes this week, thank God!” And he would take one
himself and light it, and stare at the opposite wall with his keen eyes.
“Anything doing this morning, Cannister?”
“Nothing at all. I put a round into ‘C’ half an hour ago, that’s all.”
Cannister never could resist “C.”
“Be careful, Cannister, we can’t afford to throw away a round. We’re cut
down to five rounds this morning. Five rounds a day! Good God! And this
is supposed to be a war!”
“Short of ammunition again?” came from Cannister.
“Yes, and after all the talk. The old man rang me up this morning, and
said five was our limit. He had done all he could, but it was no use.
They’re saving up for something. We’re going to have a real battle in a
day or two. Think of it, Cannister, a real battle, with noise and smoke
and two or three extra rounds to fire off. It will be quite like a story
book. It will be a column in the _Argus_ for us. Think of it, Cannister.
Think of it.”
Generally Cannister thought pretty hopelessly of it. He would cross his
legs and smile and say nothing. But the colonel could say enough for two.
“What do they bring us here for,” he would begin again impatiently, “if
we mustn’t fight? One might be in Melbourne now, where one could get a
drink and a decent cigarette. How much ammunition has come with the new
howitzers, do you think? Fifty rounds! They’re limited to a round a day
or something! Good God! Why don’t we shoot off all we’ve got, and then
pack up the guns and send them home, and go to Hell like gentlemen!”
Cannister would answer nothing.
“The brigadier has started fussing again. I don’t know what he expects us
to do. He is on again about Mortar Ridge gun. I’ve told him a dozen times
it’s a New Zealand target. God knows what the New Zealanders are doing!
They never open their mouths, or if they do, they shut up again at the
first return shell.”
So the talk went forward until it was time to move on. Then the colonel
took a final look round through his periscope. “I’m going to C Battery
and then to A. Ring me up if you want me.” Colonel and major saluted.
We marched off through the trenches then, making good pace along less
crowded bits; but often pulling up to look at that or this Turkish work
from this or that position, or stopping to gather latest news or only to
pass the time of day.
A trench may be romantic, but it makes a thankless home. These trenches
were deep and narrow, and quite safe from rifle fire, and pretty secure
from shrapnel. Of course now and then there were accidents. A fellow
would keep his head too long at a loophole and get sniped, or a bullet
would come through a badly filled sandbag and settle some poor devil’s
account. It would mean the call: “Pass the word for stretcher-bearers:
stretcher-bearers wanted on the right!” and the men gambling at the
entrance would hurry along. There would be a few minutes’ delay while the
dead man was wrapped up in a blanket or waterproof sheet, and put on the
stretcher together with his pack and other belongings, and then began the
tiresome journey to the beach. Someone would get hold of a shovel and
cover up the bloodstains, and that was the end of the affair. You might
hear them say: “Smith’s gone. Bad luck, weren’t it? A bullet copped ’im
in the ’ead. ’E wasn’t a bad bloke.” Sun and thirst, indifferent food,
and a dog’s sleep leave little energy for regretting.
The trenches zig-zagged all the way, that, part being lost, the enemy’s
fire could not enfilade for any distance. Where fellows had not stretched
blankets overhead by pinning them to the walls with bayonets, there was
no spot of shade, the sun stared in on to the baked earth and searched
out every corner. Sometimes one discovered attempts at comfort—seats,
little fireplaces, shelves for ammunition, rifle racks dug out of the
wall, pictures from illustrated papers. But nothing really disguised the
horror of these homes. You could not make space where space was not; you
could not blot out the sun, nor make nectar of stewed tea, nor a Lord
Mayor’s banquet of army rations. You could not charm away the flies in
their hosts, nor pretend you had no use for Keating’s Powder. You could
not dream of a bank of violets and let the breezes climb in through the
loopholes.
For anywhere here one might push up the periscope and stare upon the
strangest, stillest scene. It was like peering into some magic world,
far, far remote from every day. One found a stretch of barren heathland,
bearing such poor bushes and herbs as the pitiless sun allowed; a field
of rusty browns and faded greens, and here and here brighter spots where
hardy heath flowers gathered. Frail, sickly winds wandered there, causing
no grass to bend its head.
Death was the farmer of that tranquil field. Look where they lie, tumbled
over in every shape, all as still as still may be. Mark how the green
uniforms hold the sunshine, and fail to give it back; and mark the dusky
faces hideous with decay. Mark the swollen bodies. Mark the rotting
eye-sockets. By night and by day shells pass over them; but ever sleep on
the silent company.
We came one morning to a new post: it lay beyond our beat. The dead were
thick outside and the stench sickened. A charge had swept over here the
week before, up to our very rifle muzzles. Bodies lay within a few yards
of the parapet. I was twisting the periscope this way and that to get a
fuller view, when I picked up a fellow right before me, and so near that
I was hard put to it to get the periscope down on to him. Finally I made
a crack in the sandbags and looked at him face to face.
He had been crawling up, and at the last moment our man had fired point
blank. In the centre of his forehead was a black hole, plain as a man
might wish to see. He had made no farther movement; he had died on the
moment; and now he was blackening and swelling, as the fierce suns
poured over him their beams. He would swell and swell, and presently
down towards the earth he would sink again, and his clothes would flap
wearily whenever a wind passed by, and the rust spots would creep about
his rifle. To die at the mouth of your enemy’s trench—to die with your
rifle at your side—a soldier may count the end a fair one, and maybe
this fellow’s soul had passed the gates of Paradise. And yet I must be
thinking of that woman far away who cried on Allah for his safe return. I
stopped up the crack in the bags, and stepped down again on to the trench
floor.
Many a time one might pass this way and see never a sign of war other
than men polishing rifles, nor hear a sound of it beyond the crack of a
sniper at a loophole, or a thud of an enemy bullet chipping the baked
parapet. You would find men shaving, and men cooking little dinners; men
reading old papers and writing love letters. You would see men sleeping;
and men naked to the waists, bending close over shirts, where among the
seams and other crevices, with thumbnail in place of horn and hound, the
hunt went forward. You might come on fatigue parties, armed with spade
and sandbag, strengthening the parapet, or building new traverses, or
tunnelling towards the enemy. They were all dirt and sweat and thirst,
these parties; yet, the job over, there was no wash for them; they pulled
on their shirts and lay back and tried to forget things in a sort of
dog’s doze. Grumbling was rife, and I have heard men pray for a bullet
to end them, and there were mysterious accidents of a bullet through the
hand or the foot, yet all the time there was heart in us. You would ever
find men eager to lie of what they had done before being fool enough to
join in the affair, and others ready to tell you what they were going to
do when they got back. And everywhere was conviction of final victory.
The trenches were not always galleries of peace. The enemy would take
evil fits and shell us. We minded this little when they sent only common
shrapnel; but in course of time big guns were brought up, which was a
very different matter. There was always an evening battle, for, did they
leave us at peace, we were at pains to stir them up. And then there were
the big attacks; but they are another story.
Other people had observing stations along here—the New Zealanders had
one, and the Indian gunners one. Always we stopped for a few words in
passing. The Indian men were friendly fellows. You would meet them
suddenly, a white officer and two or three native telephonists. “Good
day, sir.” “Good day.” And then Australian and Indian would salute, and
we would come to a standstill.
“Anything special going on?” from the colonel.
“They’re making a great work of Lonesome Pine. They have been hard at it
all the morning. Something ought to be done before it gets too strong.”
Out would come the colonel’s hand for the periscope. “Yes,” he would
say, breaking off from a long look, “Lonesome Pine and the Jolly are too
strong for my Liking, and too near. Something should be done right away.
The places are little fortresses and stuck right under our nose.” He
would look again and then turn round. “I suppose you know we knocked that
gun out yesterday?”
“We claim that, sir; and I hear the New Zealanders say it was theirs.”
“You claim it, do you? What damned cheek! It’s ours right enough. They
had it out in the open; you could see the gunners standing up to it
breast high. We put a shell right on top of it, and left it on its side.
It’s there now.” He would take another long look round the landscape.
“They’ve got a road over there; quite a thoroughfare, where mules and
camels and hand-organs and such interesting things pass up and down all
day. I’ll give them a bit of hurry up there some time. It’s quite a
fashionable place, fountains and that sort of thing: probably they have
afternoon tea there. A round or two would be just the thing.”
“You might plug one into the band.”
“Quite so. Quite so. By the way, we have been knocked down again. Five
rounds per day is the limit now. I wonder why we troubled to come here?
Soon we shall be told there is no more ammunition, then I shall have to
throw my glasses at them, or hit them on the head with the periscope.”
He would continue to stare into the glass. “I think I must put a round
into that road to-day. I’ll do it on the way home: it will be dinner
time then. They’ll be out in the open, and there will be a better chance
of catching somebody. Besides, it will mean a spoilt dinner, if nothing
else.”
They saluted, and we pushed on towards C Battery. It was on a bit of a
rise called the Pimple; and a few more traverses and a few more turnings
emptied us out on to it. A couple of guns were level with the trenches,
and the others were a matter of two hundred yards farther back. The
trench guns had good sandbagged overhead cover, and a sandbag screen
before them. The country here was more open and less precipitous, and
less miserable to live in, it struck me. The battery commander had built
himself a good funk-hole—a square, fairly roomy place, where he passed
the day when nothing important was on hand. He had much of an epicure’s
soul, and, being a wise man, got what good living he was able. His dishes
were ever more tempting than ours. The colonel knew it, and broke his
journey there on many a scorching morn. For in his heart the colonel
sighed for Melbourne’s fleshpots. “Yards is a poor housekeeper,” I have
heard him say, sadly shaking his head. Such times the major would laugh.
He was stout, with a wonderful complexion, which matched the D.S.O.
ribbon on his coat.
It was quiet round here, as the enemy fire passed over into the open
country beyond. An entire shell missed me by feet one day, striking a
bank just overhead and bursting upwards, and that was my only hurried
moment in these parts.
Farther along you entered an open valley overlooking the sea. No doubt
it had been scrub-covered like other hillsides, but a rest camp grew up
here, and the place was all funk-holes and cook-houses and communication
trenches. I don’t know why the spot was chosen, as it was poorly
sheltered, and at one period underwent heavy daily doses of shellfire. To
reach A Battery one had to cross it and additional open country beyond. A
fair road led there, taking you past a prosperous graveyard to the right
hand. There were still some bushes among the graves where stayed the last
of the tits and goldfinches. Later on they too flew away. The road sloped
fast towards the sea, but before you had travelled far a footpath ran
over the hill to meet it. This footpath came from A Battery trenches.
In early days, when the rest camp filled part of the open, you might
expect one or two shells to hurry you on the way. It might happen there
would be more than one or two. On a certain hazy morning the colonel and
I came back from A Battery. We reached the end of the footpath where
it finished on the road. The shrapnel was falling down the valley in
generous style and here and here, without plan. The rest camp had gone
to ground, and such unlucky fellows as were abroad on business spent as
short time on their errands as possible. The colonel sat down on the
bank to cool and allow the Turkish gunners to tire; but five minutes went
by and matters were unaltered. Then he stood again, to look keenly up the
valley towards the C Battery funk-holes, the while humping his shoulders
and stroking his nose with the periscope. “Lake!” he cried out of a
sudden in his quick way, “it’s Kismet!” And we ran.
A Battery fellows were to be envied; their views were the finest anywhere
about. They had a broad blue view of the sea, and they could gaze their
fill on impregnable Achi-Baba. Some mornings no wrinkle aged the hot
waters; and the fleets were all asleep. Other mornings the battleships
stood off Achi-Baba, hurling vast shells on to the ridges. You could hear
the rumbling, and could watch the cones of dust rise into the skies. But
fire as the sailors might, the army beyond the hills never drew more near.
The A Battery men could see Gaba Tepeh down below, and not far away
either. It ran into the sea like a cigar or a man’s finger. One might
watch the ruined observing station, and guess at the wire entanglements.
From a wide ledge outside the first communication trench was the best
view of all. From there one morning the colonel and I sighted the
_Albion_ aground. She had run over a mudbank in a submarine scare.
Gaba Tepeh peppered away with might and main, and a battleship in the
straits—the _Goeben_ they said—tossed great shells across the Peninsula.
Round the unhappy boat fussed the _Canopus_, trying what hawsers
might do. Our watch ended as finally the _Albion_ slipped away. “There
she goes!” burst out the colonel, shutting up his glasses. “There she
scuttles away like a ——!” No, I had better not.
Already I have told you of the flat country dividing us from Achi-Baba.
In the haze of sunshine hours it was revealed rich, cultivated, and
broken by trees. It was a home for shepherdesses and lovesick, piping
shepherds. But it was false as it was fair.
For in an olive grove towards the farther side there lurked a gun named
Beachy Bill. By day and by night he waited there, preying upon the beach
and the anchorage. Incredible bags stood to his account, and my own back
was grazed by his pellet on an unlucky afternoon. Would that I could
boast as Beachy Bill!
He had a comrade—a warrior after his heart—the Anafarta gun. This comrade
fired from Anafarta, the low land beyond our left, and one or other would
sweep the beach all hours of the day. Did you leave the shelter of the
provision stacks, you took life in your hands. They would snipe at the
crowds at the water tanks, and at the bathers in the sea. They would send
the sandbags flying into the dug-outs, and scatter the cheeses and the
biscuit cases. They were the scourge of all who dwelt upon the beach.
Aye, would that I had proved myself as well!
In spite of the pastoral outlook, A Battery had few peaceful hours. The
enemy judged their whereabouts with accuracy, and half a dozen shells
tore over directly they opened their mouths. Through the long summer many
stretchers made the journey to the beach. And the gunners left behind
grew browner and leaner, and swore more heartfelt oaths.