AN OUTPOST AFFAIR
Fortunately for the regiment, most of the daylight hours during the
short stay in the present bivouac were spent away on working-parties or
in support to some section of the front line. They usually returned in
the evening to find fresh holes in their oil-sheets and shrapnel
pellets on their floors. Still, they often had a good night's sleep,
and always a fine bathe in the morning.
While lodged on this slope, Mac and his squadron became involved in an
engagement which kept them fully occupied for three days. One Friday
evening at dusk they moved northwards along the beach to the farthest
outpost. Inland from here about half a mile on a high ridge the Turks
had commenced the formation of an outpost. About nine o'clock this was
attacked and easily captured. Then the squadron commenced digging in,
and, by dawn, with small loss, had dug a fairly satisfactory
semicircular position, facing over ravines, beyond which were higher
hills.
The Turks were expected to counterattack, but contented themselves by
sniping from all sides, which considerably impeded the work of
consolidation. Mac and his section toiled and sweated all day, and, in
the late afternoon, connected their section of trench with those on the
right and left. Water had run dry, no communication could be had with
the rear, the sun blazed down, with withering heat, and altogether Mac
had known of pleasanter spots to spend a summer's day. In the
afternoon, too, the Turks added shrapnel to their missiles.
About ten o'clock at night another squadron appeared for their relief,
and Mac, with keen anticipations of a drink, a bathe and a sleep,
speedily stumbled off through the scrub after his cobbers. Their line
of march lay the length of a long ridge through enemy country, and on
this ridge one of the destroyers protecting the flank chose this
inopportune moment to cast her attention and her searchlight. Each
time it caught him in its brilliant glare on the sky-line, Mac crashed
down into the nearest shrub, prickly holly, arbutus or stunted oak, and
cursed lowly to himself till the beam lifted. Progressing
spasmodically when the beam was directed elsewhere, they reached the
outpost, then stumbled wearily back along the beach, ate and bathed and
turned in for a real long sleep.
They were to have no such luck. They had only just settled down when
word came back that the enemy had closed over the ridge along which
they had returned, and that the squadron in the new outpost was cut
off. The only remaining squadron was sent out at once to their relief,
but, the Turks being in too great strength, it could do nothing. So
Mac's squadron, tired as they were, dodged away out again to another
hard day's work in the blazing sun. It was now daylight, and certain
spots had to be crossed by each man singly at a run, while the close
attention of a Turkish machine-gun at long range lent wings to their
feet. With his head down and his teeth clenched, Mac would bolt
full-speed across these open spaces. Tut--tut--tut would echo from the
hills, then a whinging past his ears or a spurt of dust in too close
proximity, and he would redouble his pace. The shelter of the bank on
the farther side gained, he would turn to laugh at the expressions,
whimsical, serious as death, or thoroughly amused, of his cobbers as
they rapidly paced their hundred yards.
Arrived in a ravine which cut the ridge, they found the Turks in a
position too strong to be attacked in daylight by so small a force.
Eventually it was decided to await nightfall and strong reinforcements
before attempting to force a passage through the Turkish lines to the
beleaguered garrison of the outpost. They gathered in shady corners of
the dried water-course, and yarned and smoked the long hot hours away.
Shrapnel came screaming across the scrub in the afternoon, but spent
itself harmlessly in desert spots.
It was decided that the outpost was too isolated a position to hold,
and that, after nightfall, the enemy, who had entrenched, should be
forced back, the besieged with their wounded withdrawn, and a retreat
made to the old position. This was all successfully carried out. Mac
took his fortunes with a covering party on the right flank. He could
follow little of what was taking place up at the outpost itself. There
was a good deal of rifle-fire and bombing, and a certain amount of
shell-fire, whose great white flashes lit up the wild ravine in
fleeting visions of weird beauty.
At midnight the order for retreat found Mac almost asleep, for he was
very weary from long wakefulness. They passed silently down the
valley, being apparently the last to go. The Turks were following the
retirement, for they were chanting their weird invocations to Allah not
very far distant.
At the foot of the ravine, near the ruins of a solitary fisherman's
hut, he and half a dozen others were instructed to take up a position
and to stick to it till the last. He expected that, when the Turks
emerged from the dried-up watercourse, there would be some fun, but,
though their cries to Allah floated down the ravine, along with some
indiscriminate firing, they themselves did not choose to come. During
the long wait here, the padre, heedless of danger from spattering
bullets, which flicked fire when they struck the dust, and despite the
dysentery which racked his frame, and the long days and nights without
sleep, went right along the scattered exposed firing line, taking
cheese, biscuits and water to the weary, thirsty troopers. Wherever
they went in action there was their quiet old padre, always working
among the wounded, and, if these lacked, he would join in some other
good work, bringing up water and provisions, or the like.
The Turks had attacked heavily the summit of a ridge about one hundred
yards to Mac's right, and here he was sent now to bring in wounded, one
of whom three of them were instructed to carry round to Anzac Cove. It
was a long and weary journey, stumbling over scrubby hillocks and then
away along the stony beach. This bad going in the dark was pretty
rough on the wounded man, but, like most in his condition, he stuck it
splendidly, and was deeply grieved he was such a burden to his cobbers.
At length they reached the dressing-station at the Cove, and placed him
on a table in a room with sandbag walls. Several medical men examined
the wound and spoke technically thereon. The stretcher-party asked
anxiously after his condition, and sought tidings also of cobbers who
had been brought back earlier. Then they set off for the firing-line
once more.
The third dawn in this outpost affair was now lighting the eastern sky,
beyond the hills where the night's fighting had taken place. Half-way
back near the poppy-patch, one glorious riot of red summer flowers,
they met their regiment returning. They had done their work, the Turks
had ceased attacking and the weary regiment which had been kept busy
the long, hot days in this outpost skirmish had been relieved. The
tired troopers trailed homewards, carelessly tramping the dewy wild
poppy heads on their way. A bathe and a drink, and then a long, long
sleep.
The three days' skirmish had been an interesting little engagement.
Mac thought that the establishment of an outpost so far beyond the
Anzac territory had been undertaken rather too lightly. The cutting
off of the garrison thirty hours from the time of capture, the relief
of the besieged twenty-four hours later and the subsequent retreat were
actions which had brought many anxious moments, plenty of hard work in
the blazing sun, and the lives of some fine officers and men. The
Turks, too, had suffered many casualties. The only tactical result of
the operation was that the enemy chose to make the outpost of
contention a strong, almost impregnable position, which was captured
three months later only by a ruse and hard fighting.
Altogether it had been a pleasant scrap in the open, and Mac was not
dissatisfied that he had gone through the experience. Anyhow as,
profoundly and delightfully weary, he lay down on the hard clay floor
of his bivouac, he felt a satisfied contentment with life.
* * * * *
It was late that afternoon--Monday--when the troopers awoke and set
about preparing a meal as sumptuous as the limited larder permitted.
Since Friday only odd nibbles of bully and biscuit had passed into
their internals.
That evening they cursed the Turks in free bush fashion for committing
an act of a kind to which they usually rose superior. Facing the
bivouac on the steep cliff below the disputed outpost, lay two stark
white bodies. The enemy had apparently stripped the dead, of whom
there were nine left in the outpost, and had flung the bodies over the
cliff. The Regiment was infuriated with this treatment of its dead,
and vowed vengeance. Next morning a destroyer, with a few
well-directed shots, blew up the bodies, and gradually the deed was
forgotten.
Owing to the casualties from shell-fire on this slope, the following
day was spent in moving to a new situation, not so pleasant as the
last, and shut away in a ravine, but safer from shell-fire. Here all
toiled solidly for two days, terracing a steep clay slope and making
new homes.
And here for some days with the Regiment the normal routine life of the
Gallipoli summer campaign ran smoothly. The days were spent on
road-work or on big communication saps, and at night, more often than
not, there were sapping fatigues in the front firing line, squadron
supports, heavy pieces of artillery to haul to their emplacement, and
the like.
At most times there was work, but occasionally there were spare hours,
when Mac and Smoky, with their towels and tooth-brushes, would wander
down to the beach for a morning of sea and sun-bathing. They would
remove what few clothes they wore and take to the water. Only a
limited portion of this end of the beach was available for bathing, and
often, when he wasn't too sleepy, Abdul stirred things up too much for
comfort. Still, the practice of the snipers was not particularly good,
and Mac felt comfortably secure as long as he didn't venture out too
far. It was their habit to wash what clothes they were wearing, and to
bake in the sun while they dried. And so, bathing and splashing,
sunning and smoking, sleeping and talking, a morning on the beach
passed pleasantly enough.
Sometimes the pair wandered off to see a cobber in another part of the
lines, exchange experiences and rumours with him, partake of his
rations and water, and wander homeward through miles of dusty saps, not
forgetting on their way to replenish their water-bottles at the landing
and to acquire there any provisions which might, or might not look as
if they lacked an owner, or, at any rate, the supervision of a
policeman's eye.
Mails were now arriving occasionally, and never were letters more
warmly welcomed. There would be a buzz of excitement while a mail-bag
was being sorted, and then a strange quiet would hang over the terraces
while every one in his dug-outs eagerly explored his pages.