Scott in the Antarctic voyage, told a curious story of prophecy. He had
been to a fortune-teller after the idea of going with Captain Scott had
occurred to him, but before he had taken any steps. The fortune-teller
gave a description of the melancholy place where he was to live for
two years, of the unknown men who were to be his companions, and
particularly one who had strangely flecked hair.
I returned to Cairo and office work with some reluctance. Friends
of mine and I took a house, which somehow managed to run itself, in
Gezireh. It was covered with Bougainvillea and flowers of every colour,
and was a delight to see. Sometimes it lacked servants completely, and
at other times there was a black horde. Gardeners sprang up as if by
enchantment, and made things grow almost before one’s eyes.
* * * * *
I quote from my diary of March 8, 1915:--
News to-day that King Constantine won’t have Greece come in, and that
Venizelos has resigned. At a guess, this means that either Greece or
King Constantine is lost. If Constantine goes, Venizelos might shepherd
his son through his minority.
_March 14, 1915._ I left Luxor Tuesday night, after a wonderful time.
My guide was a Senoussi--something-or-other Galleel. He had a tip of
white turban hanging, which he said was a sign of his people. He was
rather like one of the Arabs out of a Hichens book, and I expect about
as genuine. A snake-charmer came with us. He gave me the freedom of the
snakes as a man is given the freedom of a city, but as one scorpion
and two snakes--one of them a so-to-speak soi-disant cobra--stung and
bit him during the day, it’s not likely to be of much help to me. He
did some very mysterious things, and called snakes from every kind of
place--one from a window in the wall, a 5-foot long cobra, and a Coptic
cook found its old skin in the next window.
* * * * *
In justice to the snake-charmer it ought to be said that he was only
stung and bitten as a consequence of a quarrel with an archæologist.
In Egypt every archæologist looks upon the local magician or
snake-charmer as his competitor, and hates him. When the archæologist
is telling the tourist the history of Rameses II the attention of the
tourist is distracted by a half-naked man doing the mango trick. My
archæologist friend, irritated by the presence of the snake-charmer,
declared that his snakes were all doped and his scorpions were tame
town scorpions, green, and not yellow like the country scorpions. He
found a bucolic scorpion under a stone, of the proper colour, which
instantly stung the snake-charmer; he then insisted upon stirring up
his snakes with a stick, with the unfortunate results that have already
been mentioned.
The Egyptian has always seemed to me harder to understand than his
neighbours. It may be because there is less in him to understand. The
Greeks, Turks, and Arabs have all got very salient characteristic
qualities, but though the characteristics of the Egyptians are
probably as strongly marked, they are less conspicuous to the
foreigner’s eye; in other words, the Egyptian has less in common with
the outer world than any of the Asiatic, or even African, peoples who
surround him. Lane, in his _Modern Egyptians_, says that they refused
to believe that the ordinary traveller was not an agent for the
Government, because they could not understand the desire for travel,
and their character has not changed since his day. Here is a story of
Egyptian guile and credulity:--
An Egyptian was anxious to get some job profitable to himself done,
and he went to one of the kavasses (guards) at the Agency for advice.
The kavass professed himself able to help. He said: “The man for you
to go to is Mr. Jones, that high English official. He will get what
you want done, but I warn you that Mr. Jones is an expensive man. Give
me three hundred pounds, and I will see what can be done.” The three
hundred pounds was duly paid, and for a long time nothing happened. The
petitioner grew impatient and importunate, and was eventually satisfied
for the moment by an invitation to lunch with a Levantine who passed
himself off as Mr. Jones. At luncheon the Levantine, who was of German
extraction, wore his hat, banged his fist on the table, smoked a pipe,
interrupted, and generally acted as an Englishman abroad is supposed by
some to behave. Then occurred an interval of inaction; the petitioner
again grew restive, and this time he complained to the authorities.
Finally the transaction was discovered, and the kavass was sent to gaol.
Events moved in Egypt. The Australian and New Zealand troops poured in,
and splendid men they were. But there was little love lost between
the Australians and the Egyptians, though the British troops and the
natives fraternized occasionally. The native Egyptian was, it must be
admitted, constantly very roughly treated, for the average Australian,
while he was at first apt to resent superiority in others, felt little
doubt about his own claim to it. The Australian and New Zealand Corps
was commanded by General Birdwood, and the New Zealand and Australian
Division by General Godley.
I joined the New Zealand Division as Interpreter and Intelligence
officer, and we all made preparations to start early in April. I was
anxious to buy a beautiful snow-white Arab, that had won most of the
races at Cairo, from a friend of mine, but General Godley spoke simply
but firmly. “You aren’t the Duke of Marlborough,” he said. “You can’t
have that white pony unless he’s dyed, and even then it would wash off
in any rain-storm. You may get yourself shot, but not me.” I agreed
with the less reluctance because I had found that the pony pulled
furiously and would certainly lead any advance or retreat by many miles.
The day for our departure approached. The golden sunlight and
tranquillity of Egypt was tragic in its contrast to what was coming.
Every Intelligence officer was a Cassandra with an attentive audience.
In every discussion there was, as far as I saw, unanimity between
military, naval, and political officers, who all wished the landing to
take place at Alexandretta, and deplored (not to use a stronger word)
the project of the Dardanelles, which the Turks had been given ample
time to fortify.
The heat increased, and the English officers’ wives, who had come to
Egypt to be with their husbands, were given a taste of a ferocious
khamsin that affected their complexions. In the spring of 1915 this
wind came in waves and gusts of lurid heat. It was like a Nessus shirt,
scorching the skin and making slow fire of one’s blood. After the
khamsin, which has the one advantage of killing insects with its heat,
locusts came. They made a carpet on the ground and a shadow against the
sun. Life was intolerable out of doors, and they followed one into the
recesses of the house. A friend of mine said to me: “What on earth had
they got to grumble about in Egypt in the time of the Pharaohs? They
had one plague at a time then; we are having all the lot at once.”
* * * * *
I quote from my diary:--
Yesterday I saw Todd, who had been on the _Annie Rickmers_ when she was
torpedoed off Smyrna. The crew was Greek. There were five Englishmen on
board, and a good many wounded. The Greeks were all off at once, taking
all the boats. They had no interpreter with them. He said the English
in Smyrna were angry at being bombarded, and came aboard with Rahmy
Bey, the Vali, to complain. Rahmy was always Anglophile.
* * * * *
Early in April Sir Ian Hamilton came and went. He had a great review
of the troops in the desert on a glorious day. It was a very splendid
sight, and one I should have enjoyed better if I had not been riding a
mountainous roan horse that bolted through the glittering Staff.
Many old friends, Ock Asquith, Patrick Shaw-Stewart, Charles Lister,
and Rupert Brooke, had come out to Egypt in the Naval Division, and we
lunched, dined, and went to the Pyramids by moonlight.
The first week in April we made our preparations for leaving, and I
went to say good-bye to native friends. One of them was an old Albanian
Abbot of the Bektashi sect, whose monastery was in the living rock
in a huge cave behind the Mokattan Hills. He had a fine face and a
venerable beard, and I spent much time talking to him, drinking his
coffee, by a fountain in the cool garden outside his home. I was sorry
to say goodbye to the delightful Zoo in Cairo, with the hawks calling
unceasingly in the sunlight, and a hundred different birds. Another
pleasure there was Said, an attractive and intellectual hippopotamus,
who performed a number of tricks.
On April 10th I went to Alexandria to report aboard the German prize
ship _Lutzow_, and on the 12th we sailed. We discovered that night at
dinner that the puritanical New Zealand Government had ordained that
this boat should be a dry one, but it made no difference to our mess,
which was very pleasant. On April 13th we made a new discovery, that
the boat was even drier than we expected, as there was not enough
water, and the men had to shave in salt water. On April 15th we came
into Lemnos Harbour, with a keen wind and a rustling deep blue sea,
and white-crested waves, with cheer on cheer from French and English
warships, from German prizes with British crews, from submarines, and
even from anchored balloons.
The next day I went ashore with a couple of other officers to buy
donkeys, who were to carry our kits. Mudros was not too bad a town,
and was a very curious spectacle in those days. There were great black
Senegalese troops with filed teeth who chased the children in play,
though if the children had known what their home habits were the games
would probably have ceased abruptly.
There were Greeks dressed in fantastic costume and British troops
of all sorts. Many old friends from the East were there, among them
Colonel Doughty Wylie, who in a few days was to win his V.C. and lose a
life of great value to his country.
I met a friend, Bettelheim, nicknamed “Beetle,” whose life had been
one long adventure. When last I had seen him he had been an official
in Turkey, and in a rising had been dragged from his carriage on
Galata Bridge in Constantinople by the mob, with his companion, the
Emir Arslan. Emir Arslan was torn to pieces, but “Beetle,” with his
marvellous luck, escaped.
Many of us lunched together under a vine, drinking excellent wine at a
penny a glass. Everybody was extremely cheerful, and there was great
elation in the island air. The talk was, of course, about the landing.
A friend of mine said: “This is a terrible business; entire Staffs
will be wiped out.” He seemed to think that the Staffs were the most
important thing.
After lunch I went to see the Mayor, to help me buy all that I wanted.
He was rather shaky with regard to his own position, as Lemnos had not
yet been recognized by us as Greek, and our recognition was contingent
on the behaviour of the Greek Government. He was a very good linguist,
talking French, a little English, Italian, Greek, Turkish and Arabic.
I think it was he who quoted to me the story of the Khoja Nasr-ed-Din.
Nasr-ed-Din was lent a saucepan by a friend; he returned it with
another small saucepan, saying it had produced a child. Next year the
friend offered a huge saucepan at the same date, which the friend
considered the breeding time of saucepans. Later on, when his friend
applied for the return of the saucepan, Nasr-ed-Din said: “It is
dead.” His friend expostulated: “How can a saucepan die?” “Well,” said
Nasr-ed-Din, “if it can have a child, why can’t it die?”
Lemnos itself, though then it was a pageant, is on the whole a dreary
island. The land was green, as all lands are in the spring, but there
was not the carpet of anemones that one finds in Crete, Cyprus, and
other islands, nor was there even asphodel.
On Friday, April 16th, we heard that the _Manitou_ had been torpedoed,
and that a number of men had been drowned. This was not the case,
though she had had three torpedoes fired at her.
At this time we believed that we were to make three simultaneous
attacks, the New Zealanders taking the centre of the Peninsula. A
rather melancholy call to arms was issued by General Birdwood, the pith
of which was that for the first few days there would be no transport of
any kind. This made it all the more necessary to obtain the donkeys,
and with the help of the Mayor of Mudros I bought six, and one little
one for £1 as a mascot. It was a great deal of trouble getting them on
board. The Greek whose boat I had commandeered was very unfriendly, and
I had to requisition the services of some Senegalese troops.
* * * * *
_Diary._ _April 21, 1915._ _Mudros._ Inner Bay. Monday, the 19th, I
tried to dine on H.M.S. _Bacchante_, but failed to find her. Dined
on the _Arcadia_. Came back with Commodore Keyes.... Met ---- (a
journalist turned censor). He said that the Turks had thirty 15-inch
howitzers on Gallipoli, also wire entanglements everywhere. The general
impression is that we shall get a very bad knock, and that it may set
the war back a year, besides producing an indefinite amount of trouble
in the East.
_Tuesday, April 20th._ I went ashore to get porters, but the Mayor
was in a nervous state, and I failed. I tried to get back in a dinghy
with a couple of Greeks, and we nearly swamped. A gale got up. Finally
I made the _Imogen_, tied up by the _Hussar_, and at last reached my
destination. Great gale in the night. I hope we don’t suffer the fate
of the Armada. It is said that our orders are to steam for the outer
harbour at once.
* * * * *
It was curious to see the _Imogen_, once the Ambassador’s yacht at
Constantinople. In those days she was treated with reverent care. The
Mediterranean had to be calmed by the finest of weather before she
travelled. Now she had to sink or swim with the rest. Her adventures
did not end at Lemnos. Travellers may see her name written proudly
on the harsh cliffs of Muscat in the Persian Gulf, and to-day she is
probably at Kurna, the site of the Garden of Eden.
On Thursday, April 22nd, I was able to get two Greek porters, Kristo
Keresteji (which being interpreted means Kristo the Timber-merchant)
and Yanni, of the little island of Ayo Strati. Kristo was with me
until I was invalided in the middle of October. He showed the greatest
fidelity and courage after the first few days. The other man was a
natural coward, and had to be sent away when an opportunity offered,
after the landing.
* * * * *
_Diary._ _Friday, April 23rd._ I have just seen the most wonderful
procession of ships I shall ever see. In the afternoon we left for the
outer harbour. The wind was blowing; there was foam upon the sea and
the air of the island was sparkling. With the band playing and flags
flying, we steamed past the rest of the fleet. Cheers went from one end
of the harbour to the other. Spring and summer met. Everybody felt it
more than anything that had gone before.
After we had passed the fleet, the pageant of the fleet passed us.
First the _Queen Elizabeth_, immense, beautiful lines, long, like
a snake, straight as an arrow. This time there was silence. It was
grim and very beautiful. We would rather have had the music and the
cheers.... This morning instructions were given to the officers and
landing arrangements made. We leave at 1.30 to-night. The Australians
are to land first. This they should do to-night. Then we land.... Naval
guns will have to cover our advance, and the men are to be warned that
the naval fire is very accurate. They will need some reassuring if the
fire is just over our heads. The 29th land at Helles, the French in
Asia near Troy. This is curious, as they can’t support us or we them.
The Naval Division goes north and makes a demonstration.... The general
opinion is that very many boats must be sunk from the shore. Having
got ashore, we go on to a rendezvous. We have no native guides.... The
politicians are very unpopular.
The sea was very quiet between Lemnos and Anzac on April 24th. There
were one or two alterations in plans, but nothing very material. We
expected to have to land in the afternoon, but this was changed, and we
were ordered to land after the Australians, who were to attack at 4.30
a.m. Some proposed to get up to see the first attack at dawn. I thought
that we should see plenty of the attack before we had done with it, and
preferred to sleep.
* * * * *
_Diary._ _Sunday, April 25th._ I got up at 6.30. Thoms, who shared my
cabin, had been up earlier. There was a continuous roll of thunder
from the south. Opposite to us the land rose steeply in cliffs and
hills covered with the usual Mediterranean vegetation. The crackle of
rifles sounded and ceased in turns.... Orders were given to us to start
at 8.30 a.m.... The tows were punctual.... We were ordered to take
practically nothing but rations. I gave my sleeping-bag to Kyriakidis,
the old Greek interpreter whom I had snatched from the _Arcadia_, and
took my British warm and my Burberry.... The tow was unpleasantly open
to look at; there was naturally no shelter of any kind. We all packed
in, and were towed across the shining sea towards the land fight.... We
could see some still figures lying on the beach to our left, one or two
in front. Some bullets splashed round.
* * * * *
As we were all jumping into the sea to flounder ashore, I heard cries
from the sergeant at the back of the tow. He said to me: “These two men
refuse to go ashore.” I turned and saw Kristo Keresteji and Yanni of
Ayo Strati with mesmerized eyes looking at the plops that the bullets
made in the water, and with their minds evidently fixed on the Greek
equivalent of “Home, Sweet Home.” They were, however, pushed in, and
we all scrambled on to that unholy land. The word was then, I thought
rather unnecessarily, passed that we were under fire.
It was difficult to understand why the Turkish fire developed so late.
If they had started shelling us during our landing as they shelled
us later, our losses would have been very heavy. We frequently owed
our salvation in the Peninsula to a Turkish weakness and a Turkish
mistake. They were constantly slow to appreciate a position and take
full advantage of it, and their shrapnel was generally fused too high.
Hardly any man who landed escaped being thumped and bumped on different
occasions by shrapnel, which would, of course, have killed or seriously
wounded him if the burst had not been so high. I remember on the
afternoon of the first landing a sailor was knocked down beside me, and
I and another man carried him to what shelter there was. We found that,
while the bullet had pierced his clothes, it had not even broken his
skin. Said the sailor: “This is the third time that that’s ’appened to
me to-day. I’m beginning to think of my little grey ’ome in the West.”
So were others.
We had landed on a spit of land which in those days we called Shrapnel
Point, to the left of what afterwards became Corps Headquarters, though
later the other spit on the right usurped that name. I took cover under
a bush with a New Zealand officer, Major Browne. This officer had risen
from the ranks. He fought through the whole of the Gallipoli campaign,
and in the end, to the sorrow of all who knew him, was killed as a
Brigadier in France.
The shrapnel fire became too warm to be pleasant, and I said: “Major,
a soldier’s first duty is to save his life for his country.” He said:
“I quite agree, but I don’t see how it’s to be done.” We were driven
from Shrapnel Point to the north, round the cliff, but were almost
immediately driven back again by the furious fire that met us.
* * * * *
_Diary._ We were being shot at from three sides. All that morning
we kept moving. There were lines of men clinging like cockroaches
under the cliffs or moving silently as the guns on the right and left
enfiladed us. The only thing to be done was to dig in as soon as
possible, but a good many men were shot while they were doing this.
General Godley landed about twelve, and went up Monash Gully with
General Birdwood. We remained on the beach.... We had no artillery to
keep the enemy’s fire down.
* * * * *
We spent a chilly night, sometimes lying down, sometimes walking, as
the rain began to fall after dark, and we had not too much food. My
servant, Jack, who was a very old friend, and I made ourselves as
comfortable as we could.
There was a great deal of inevitable confusion. We were very hard
pressed; as every draft landed it was hurried off to that spot in the
line where reinforcements were most needed. This naturally produced
chaos amongst the units, and order was not re-established for some
time. It was a terrible night for those in authority. I believe that,
had it been possible, we should have re-embarked that night, but the
sacrifices involved would have been too great. Preparations for the
expedition had been totally inadequate. The chief R.A.M.C. officer
had told me the ridiculously small number of casualties he had been
ordered to make preparations for, and asked my opinion, which I gave
him with some freedom. As it was, we had to put 600 men on the ship
from which we had disembarked in the morning, to go back to hospital in
Egypt, a four days’ journey, under the charge of one officer, who was a
veterinary surgeon.
* * * * *
_Diary._ _Monday, April 26th._ At 5 o’clock yesterday our artillery
began to land. It’s a very rough country; the Mediterranean macchia
everywhere, and steep, winding valleys. We slept on a ledge a few feet
above the beach.... Firing went on all night. In the morning it was
very cold, and we were all soaked. The Navy, it appeared, had landed
us in the wrong place. This made the Army extremely angry, though as
things turned out it was the one bright spot. Had we landed anywhere
else, we should have been wiped out.
* * * * *
I believe the actual place decided on for our landing was a mile
farther south, which was an open plain, and an ideal place for a
hostile landing from the Turkish point of view.
Next morning I walked with General Godley and Tahu Rhodes, his A.D.C.,
up the height to the plateau which was afterwards called Plugges
Plateau. The gullies and ravines were very steep, and covered with
undergrowth. We found General Walker, General Birdwood’s Chief of the
Staff, on the ridge that bears his name. Bullets were whining about,
through the undergrowth, but were not doing much harm, though the
shelling on the beach was serious.
* * * * *
_Diary._ We believed that the Turks were using 16-inch shells from the
Dardanelles, and we were now able to reply. The noise was deafening,
and our firing knocked down our own dugouts. The Generals all behaved
as if the whole thing was a tea-party. Their different Staffs looked
worried for their chiefs and themselves. Generals Godley and Walker
were the most reckless, but General Birdwood also went out of his way
to take risks. The sun was very hot, and our clothes dried while the
shrapnel whistled over us into the sea.
At noon we heard the rumour that the 29th were fighting their way
up from Helles, and everybody grew happy. We also heard that two
Brigadiers had been wounded and one killed.
* * * * *
The Australians had brought with them two ideas, which were only
eliminated by time, fighting, and their own good sense. The “eight
hours’ day” was almost a holy principle, and when they had violated it
by holding on for two or three days heroically, they thought that they
deserved a “spell.” Their second principle was not to leave their pals.
When a man was wounded his friends would insist upon bringing him down,
instead of leaving him to the stretcher-bearers. When they had learned
the practical side of war, both these dogmas were jettisoned. In Egypt
the Australians had human weaknesses, and had shown them; in Gallipoli
they were the best of companions. Naturally, with the New Zealand
Division, I saw more of the New Zealanders, who had the virtues of the
Australians and the British troops. They had all the dash and _élan_ of
the Australians, and the discipline of the Englishmen.
* * * * *