afraid something might go wrong, but it all went off all right. Skeen,
Blamey,[11] Howse, V.C.,[12] Hough and I started early. Skeen offered
me breakfast but, like a fool, I refused. He put some creosote on my
handkerchief. We were at the rendezvous on the beach at 6.30. Heavy
rain soaked us to the skin. At 7.30 we met the Turks, Miralai Izzedin,
a pleasant, rather sharp, little man; Arif, the son of Achmet Pasha,
who gave me a card, “Sculpteur et Peintre,” and “Etudiant de Poésie.”
I saw Sahib and had a few words with him, but he did not come with us.
Fahreddin Bey came later. We walked from the sea and passed immediately
up the hill, through a field of tall corn filled with poppies, then
another cornfield; then the fearful smell of death began as we came
upon scattered bodies. We mounted over a plateau and down through
gullies filled with thyme, where there lay about 4,000 Turkish dead.
It was indescribable. One was grateful for the rain and the grey sky.
A Turkish Red Crescent man came and gave me some antiseptic wool with
scent on it, and this they renewed frequently. There were two wounded
crying in that multitude of silence. The Turks were distressed, and
Skeen strained a point to let them send water to the first wounded man,
who must have been a sniper crawling home. I walked over to the second,
who lay with a high circle of dead that made a mound round him, and
gave him a drink from my water-bottle, but Skeen called me to come on
and I had to leave the bottle. Later a Turk gave it back to me. The
Turkish Captain with me said: “At this spectacle even the most gentle
must feel savage, and the most savage must weep.” The dead fill acres
of ground, mostly killed in the one big attack, but some recently. They
fill the myrtle-grown gullies. One saw the result of machine-gun fire
very clearly; entire companies annihilated--not wounded, but killed,
their heads doubled under them with the impetus of their rush and both
hands clasping their bayonets. It was as if God had breathed in their
faces, as “the Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold.”
The line was not easy to settle. Neither side wanted to give its
position or its trenches away. At the end Skeen agreed that the Turks
had been fair. We had not been going very long when we had a message
to say that the Turks were entrenching at Johnson’s Jolly. Skeen had,
however, just been there and seen that they were doing nothing at all.
He left me at Quinn’s Post, looking at the communication trench through
which I had spoken to the Turks. Corpses and dead men blown to bits
everywhere. Richards was with me part of the time: easy to get on with;
also a gentleman called indifferently by the men Mr. or Major Tibbs. A
good deal of friction at first. The trenches were 10 to 15 yards apart.
Each side was on the _qui vive_ for treachery. In one gully the dead
had got to be left unburied. It was impossible to bury them without one
side seeing the position of the other. In the Turkish parapet there
were many bodies buried. Fahreddin told Skeen he wanted to bury them,
“but,” he said, “we cannot take them out without putting something in
their place.” Skeen agreed, but said that this concession was not to be
taken advantage of to repair the trench. This was a difficult business.
When our people complained that the Turks were making loopholes, they
invited me into their trench to look. Then the Turks said that we were
stealing their rifles; this came from the dead land where we could not
let them go. I went down, and when I got back, very hot, they took my
word for it that we were not. There was some trouble because we were
always crossing each other’s lines. I talked to the Turks, one of whom
pointed to the graves. “That’s politics,” he said. Then he pointed to
the dead bodies and said: “That’s diplomacy. God pity all of us poor
soldiers.”
Much of this business was ghastly to the point of nightmare. I found
a hardened old Albanian chaoush and got him to do anything I wanted.
Then a lot of other Albanians came up, and I said: “Tunya tyeta.”[13] I
had met some of them in Janina. They began clapping me on the back and
cheering while half a dozen funeral services were going on all round,
conducted by the chaplains. I had to stop them. I asked them if they
did not want an Imam for a service over their own dead, but the old
Albanian pagan roared with laughter and said that their souls were all
right. They could look after themselves. Not many signs of fanaticism.
One huge, savage-looking Anatolian looked curses at me. Greeks came up
and tried to surrender to me, but were ordered back by the Turks pretty
roughly.
Considering the number of their men we had killed, they remained
extraordinarily unmoved and polite. They wouldn’t have, if we had been
Russians. Blamey came to say that Skeen had lost H. and wanted me, so
he, Arif and I walked to the sea. The burying had not been well done.
It was sometimes impossible to do it.... As we went, we took our rifles
from the Turkish side, minus their bolts, and gave the Turks their
rifles in the same way....
Our men gave cigarettes to the Turks, and beyond the storm-centre at
Quinn’s Post the feeling was all right. We sat down and sent men to
look for Skeen. Arif was nervous and almost rude. Then Skeen came.
He told me to get back as quickly as possible to Quinn’s Post, as I
said I was nervous at being away, and to retire the troops at 4 and
the white-flag men at 4.15. I said to Arif: “Everybody’s behaved very
well. Now we must take care that nobody loses his head. Your men won’t
shoot you and my men won’t shoot me, so we must walk about, otherwise
a gun will go off and everybody will get shot.” But Arif faded away. I
got back as quickly as possible. Blamey went away on the left. I then
found that the Turks’ time was eight minutes ahead of ours, and put on
our watches. The Turks asked me to witness their taking the money from
their dead, as they had no officer there. They were very worried by
having no officer, and asked me if any one were coming. I, of course,
had no idea, but I told them I would see that they were all right.
They were very patient....
The burying was finished some time before the end. There were certain
tricks on both sides.
Our men and the Turks began fraternizing, exchanging badges, etc. I
had to keep them apart. At 4 o’clock the Turks came to me for orders.
I do not believe this could have happened anywhere else. I retired
their troops and ours, walking along the line. At 4.7 I retired the
white-flag men, making them shake hands with our men. Then I came to
the upper end. About a dozen Turks came out. I chaffed them, and said
that they would shoot me next day. They said, in a horrified chorus:
“God forbid!” The Albanians laughed and cheered, and said: “We will
never shoot you.” Then the Australians began coming up, and said:
“Good-bye, old chap; good luck!” And the Turks said: “Oghur Ola gule
gule gedejekseniz, gule gule gelejekseniz” (Smiling may you go and
smiling come again). Then I told them all to get into their trenches,
and unthinkingly went up to the Turkish trench and got a deep salaam
from it. I told them that neither side would fire for twenty-five
minutes after they had got into the trenches. One Turk was seen out
away on our left, but there was nothing to be done, and I think he
was all right. A couple of rifles had gone off about twenty minutes
before the end, but Potts and I went hurriedly to and fro seeing it was
all right. At last we dropped into our trenches, glad that the strain
was over. I walked back with Temperley. I got some raw whisky for the
infection in my throat, and iodine for where the barbed wire had torn
my feet. There was a hush over the Peninsula....
_Wednesday, May 26, 1915._ _Kaba Tepé._ This morning I was talking
to Dix, asking him if he believed there were submarines. “Yes,” he
said, and then swore and added: “There’s the _Triumph_ sinking.” Every
picket-boat dashed off to pick up the survivors. The Turks behaved well
in not shelling. There was fury, panic and rage on the beach and on the
hill. I heard Uncle Bill, half off his head, saying: “You should kill
all enemies. Like a wounded bird, she is. Give them cigarettes. Swine!
Like a wounded bird. The swine!” He was shaking his fist. Men were
crying and cursing. Very different from yesterday’s temper.
This afternoon I went round past Monash Gully, towards Kaba Tepé, and
bathed. I got shelled, and came back over the ridges having a beastly
time from the shrapnel which hunted me.
We have now got a sap under Quinn’s Post. The flies and ants are past
endurance.
_Thursday, May 27, 1915._ _Kaba Tepé._ A very wet night. I wish the
Turks would forget how to shoot. Here we are for an indefinite period
without the power of replying effectively and with the knowledge that
we are firmly locked outside the back door of a side-show....
Went with the General to General Russell’s trenches. They are very much
improved. The men call an ideal trench a Godley-Braithwaite trench;
that is, tall enough for General Godley and broad enough for Colonel
Braithwaite. Bathed. Charlie Bentinck arrived. His destroyer lay just
off the beach and was shelled. Some sailors and five soldiers killed.
Forty-five wounded. Very unfortunate. If they had come yesterday,
it would have been all right--a quiet day, though we had thirty men
sniped. The _Majestic_ reported sunk off Helles. Off to Mudros to get
stores.
_Friday, May 28, 1915._ _Mudros._ Left after many delays, and slept on
deck. Very cold. It’s a pretty tall order for the French to put black
Senegalese cannibals into Red Cross uniform....
_Saturday, May 29, 1915._ _Lemnos._ Drove across the island to Castro.
There was a delightful spring half a mile from Castro and a café kept
by a Greek. His wife had been killed by the Turks. Great fig-trees
and gardens. I met two naval officers, who told me Wedgwood had died
of wounds. I am very sorry; he was a very fine man. I admired him a
lot. Castro is beautiful, with balconies over the narrow streets, half
Turk and half Greek, and shady gardens. I bathed in a transparent sea,
facing Athos, which was gleaming like a diamond. I watched its shadow
come across the eighty miles of sea at sunset, as Homer said it did. I
found a Greek, who had been Cromer’s cook. He said he would come back
and cook for me, if there was no danger. He said he knew that G.H.Q.
cooks were safe, but his wife would not let him go on to the Peninsula.
He said her idea of warfare was wrong. She always thought of men and
bullets skipping about together on a hillside.
_Sunday, May 30, 1915._ _Mudros._ I bathed before dawn and went back to
Mudros with masses of mosquito-netting, etc. Turkish prisoners of the
French were being guarded by Greeks. It was rather like monkeys looking
after bears. They wore uniforms that were a cross between Ali Pasha of
Janina and Little Lord Fauntleroy. I saw H., who had been on the River
Clyde. He looked as if he were still watching the sea turn red with
blood, as he described the landing on Gallipoli. Jack was sick, and I
had to leave him with my coat. Went and saw my friend the Papas of the
little Greek church on the hill.
_Monday, May 31, 1915._ _Anzac._ I saw Hutton this morning, slightly
wounded. Bathed at the farthest point towards Kaba Tepé, but had to fly
with my clothes in my hand, leaving my cigarettes....
_Wednesday, June 2, 1915._ _Kaba Tepé._ Had a picturesque examination
of a Greek peasant this morning. It was a fine picture, with the
setting of the blue sea and the mountains. The man himself was
patriarchal and biblical, surrounded by tall English officers and
half-naked soldiers. Last night we sent up bombs from Japanese mortars
by Quinn’s. It sounded beastly. This morning I went to Reserve Gully
with the General. Monash’s Brigade is resting there for the first
time for five weeks. The General, looking like a Trojan hero, made
them a fine speech from a sort of natural throne in the middle of
the sunlit amphitheatre, in which they all sat, tier after tier of
magnificent-looking fellows, brown as Indians. Bullets swept over all
the time, sometimes drowning the General’s voice.... Have just heard
that Quinn is killed. I am very sorry. He was a fine, jolly, gallant
fellow.
_Friday, June 4, 1915._ _Anzac._ Nothing doing. George Lloyd came over.
Very glad to see him. This morning I went with Shaw to the extreme
left, through fields of poppies, thyme and lavender. We saw a vulture
high overhead, and the air was full of the song of larks. At Helles
there was a savage attack going on. There was very bad sniping. In
some places the trenches are only knee-high; in other places there
are no trenches and the Turks are anything from four to eight hundred
yards off. Yesterday seventeen men were hit at one place, they said,
by one sniper. At one place on the way, we ran like deer, dodging.
The General, when he had had a number of bullets at him, also ran.
Sniping is better fun than shrapnel; it’s more human. You pit your wits
against the enemy in a rather friendly sort of way. A lot of vultures
collecting.
_Saturday, June 5, 1915._ _Anzac._ Examined sixteen prisoners. Food
good, munitions plentiful, morale all right. The individuals fed up
with the war, but the mass obedient and pretty willing. No idea of
surrendering. They think they are going to win. There was one Greek, a
Karamanly, who only talked Turkish. He did not say until to-night that
he was wounded. The flies are bad.
_Sunday, June 6, 1915._ _Anzac._ Went to the service this morning
with the General, in the amphitheatre. The sermon was mainly against
America for not coming into the war, and also against bad language.
The chaplain said he could not understand the meaning of it. The men
laughed. So did I.
_Monday, June 7, 1915._ _Kaba Tepé._ This morning the land was sweet
as Eden and there was the calm of the first creation. H. has been
made a new Uriah the Hittite, but not because of Mrs. H. Last night I
was invaded by mice. There is tremendous shelling going on now. This
afternoon S. B., Onslow and I climbed a hill and had a beautiful view.
Every one is rather ill and feverish. I have no news about Jack. The
Intelligence office has been moved to a higher and safer place. Pirie
Gordon, poor chap, has gone sick a long time ago. I rather liked the
stuffy old place, which was called “The Mountain Path to the Jackal’s
Cave.”
The attack last night failed, but the drone of the rifles went on
unceasingly, like the drone of a dry waterfall. We shall not get to
Constantinople unless the flat-faced Bulgars come in.
Yesterday I lunched with Temperley at the H.Q. of Monash Valley. Times
have changed: it’s fairly safe going there through a long sap they
have dug, and the noise is less bad.
Colonel ---- had seen a lot of the Crown Prince in India, and said he
was a very good fellow. Dined with Woods, Dix, S. B. and Edwards. Lots
of champagne for once; a very good dinner.
I went to No. 2 Outpost with the General. There is a sap all the
way now. Only one sniper the whole way. The Turkish birds were
singing beautifully as we went. There was also a Turkish snake,
which I believed was quite harmless, but Tahu killed it. The men are
getting pretty tired. They are not as resigned as their ten thousand
brother-monks over the way at Mount Athos.
_Friday, June 11, 1915._ _Kaba Tepé._ The Australians and New
Zealanders have given up wearing clothes. They lie about and bathe and
become darker than Indians. The General objects to this. “I suppose,”
he says, “we shall have our servants waiting on us like that.” The
flies are very bad, so are the mice, and so is the shelling....
_Sunday, June 13, 1915._ _Kaba Tepé._ A lot of mules and several men
hit yesterday. Last night, S. B. and I were on the beach, when a man
on a stretcher went by, groaning rhythmically. I thought he had been
shot through the brain. Later on I went into the hospital to find a
wounded Turk, and found that this man had never been hit at all. He had
been doing very good work till a shell exploded near him and gave him a
shock. Then he went on imitating a machine-gun. Some men in a sap up at
Quinn’s have been going off their heads.
Awful accounts of Mudros: flies, heat, sand, no water, typhoid. To-day
are the Greek elections.
Am dining with H. Woods. “The beach” now says that Ot has been poisoned
by the Greek guides, whom he illtreats and uses as cooks. I shouldn’t
wonder. The shelling is bad. I am going to make a new dugout to get
away from the flies and mice. The Turkish prisoners will do this. I pay
them a small sum.
_Tuesday, June 15, 1915._ _Kaba Tepé._ Colonel Chauvel[14] has
pleurisy, Colonel Johnston[15] enteric. The sea’s high and the Navy
depressed.... One man and two mules killed in our gully this morning;
the body of one mule blown about 50 yards both ways.
_Wednesday, June 16, 1915._ _Kaba Tepé._ Rain. I was to have gone to
Helles with Woods to see Dedez, but no boats went; it was too rough.
I was going to talk about spies to S. B., when General Cunliffe Owen
said to me: “Wait a bit. The shelling is too bad. We will go along
together.” But I was in too much of a hurry. A shell fell in the gully
as I crossed, and Woods came out to see where it had hit. It went into
Machonochie’s dugout, where H. was, and blew him out of his dugout,
black and shaken. It destroyed his furniture. I felt sorry for him. Ot
tried to turn him out of the Intelligence dugout, but we protested.
The General has come back with the latest casualty lists from France....
_Thursday, June 17, 1915._ _Helles._ Thirty men killed and wounded
on the beach to-day. This morning I came to Helles with Woods. As
we got there a submarine had two shots at one of our transports by
us. I was to have seen Dedez, but he had gone off to see Gouraud.
George Peel walked in and took me round the beach, two miles on. We
climbed on to the headland, in what he called “the quiet track of the
Black Marias.” He talked of every mortal thing--the future Liberal
and Socialist, the possibility of touching the heart of the people,
the collapse of Christianity, our past and our policy. I left him and
walked back across thyme and asphodel, Asia glowing like a jewel across
the Dardanelles in the sunset. At night I talked late and long with
Dash. Every Department is jealous, every one is at cross-purposes, no
co-operation between the War Office and the Foreign Office.
Walked in the morning to the H.Q. of the R.N.D. with Whittall. We were
shelled most of the way in the open landscape. There was no cover
anywhere. It felt unfamiliar. I was unfavourably impressed with the
insecurity of life in this part of the world, and wished for Anzac. In
the evening we drank mavrodaphne and tried to get rid of----
_Friday, June 18, 1915._ _Kaba Tepé._ I left Helles in the middle of
very heavy shelling, a star performance. A lot of horses killed this
morning. A submarine popped up last night. As we came back to Anzac
the Turks shelled our trawler and hit her twice, but without doing any
damage.
* * * * *
Shelling grew worse at Anzac, and sickness began to make itself felt.
Men were sent across to Imbros when it was possible to rest.
* * * * *
_Diary._ On June 25th I went across to Imbros with H. Woods and the
Greek miller, Nikolas. Hawker was there, and E. of Macedonia. E.
is very unpopular. If he takes a dislike to a man he digs around
his dugout, until it falls in on him. The chief R.A.M.C. officer,
an Irishman, was mourning over the ruins of his home. We slept
uncomfortably on the ground, with flies to keep us warm.
* * * * *
As I was writing this a shell burst outside my dugout, a lot of
shrapnel coming through, and one bullet glancing off the typewriter,
which has just come. At the same time Jack was hit across the gully
going from my dugout to his. Conolly, the escort, and I carried him
down, after binding his leg up, under heavy fire. Then I nipped back to
get some of his stuff to take off, but on going back to the beach found
that he had gone. Many men hit on the beach. Thousands of flies on the
wounded. The General’s blankets riddled with bullets. They have our
range, pat. Two days ago Colonel Parker had his chair and table smashed
while he was in his dugout. He left it to have tea with Wagstaffe.
There he was reading when another bullet tore his paper in two. I have
been covered with dirt several times in the last days. L. S. Amery came
with K. I only saw him for a minute, worse luck, but he is coming back
to-morrow, I hope, when we can have a talk. G.H.Q. turned up in force,
and walked about like wooden images.
We have a clerk here, Venables. He has got tired of writing, and,
wanting to change the pen for the sword, borrowed a rifle and walked
up to the front line at Quinn’s Post. There he popped his head in and
said: “Excuse me, is this a private trench, or may any one fire out of
it?”
The sound of battle has ended. Men are bathing. The clouds that the
cannonade had called up are gone, and the sea is still and crimson in
the sunset to Imbros and Samothrace.
_Tuesday, June 29, 1915._ _Anzac._ We have advanced 1,000 yards down
at Helles, but no details yet. Many men shot here yesterday by the
Anafarta gun. I should think this gun had as good a tale of killed and
wounded as any gun in the war. Every day it gets its twenty odd on the
beach. The Australians attacked on the right yesterday. Fifty killed
and wounded; they think the Turks suffered more heavily. I went with
the General to the extreme left. Terrific heat. We came to a valley
filled with thyme and lavender, which the Maoris are to inhabit. The
men were bathing beyond Shrapnel Point. They say the Turks let them.
I had two letters--one two months old, a curious one to receive here,
from an Englishwoman, wife of the ex-Grand Vizier of Afghanistan. He
was a progressive man, and is therefore in an Afghan prison. She wants
work for her son. Wants him to be a saddler, a job a lot of men here
would like. All my stuff looted coming from Egypt.
Men are practising bomb-throwing, all over the place. They are mostly
half-naked, and darker than Red Indians. It’s a day of blessed peace,
but there’s a lot of feeling about the Anafarta gun, and bathing is
stopped on the beach till night.
_Wednesday, June 30, 1915._ _Anzac._ Last night I went down to the
hospital and was inoculated for cholera by C., a witty man. A trench
had been blown in, and men were lying groaning on the floor, most of
them suffering from shell-shock, not wounds, but some of the wounds
horrible.... I asked C. why the wounded were not sent to Cyprus instead
of Mudros. He said: “Because it’s a splendid climate and there is heaps
of water.” The chief doctor at Mudros is useless, the second ---- (With
regard to the second doctor I regret that the diary is libellous.)
Anyway, what is certain is that the condition of the sick and wounded
is awful. This morning it’s very rough, and I can’t get out to Jack at
the hospital ship, as prisoners are coming in....
_July 1, 1915._ _Anzac._ I examined the prisoners, amongst them a
tall Armenian lawyer, who talked some English. I asked him how he had
surrendered. He said: “I saw two gentlemen with their looking-glasses,
and came over to them.” By this he meant two officers with periscopes.
He said that the psychology of the Turks is a curious thing. They do
not fear death, yet are not brave....
No water came in yesterday. The storm wrecked the barges and the beach
is covered with lighters. We got brackish water from the hill. I could
not get to Jack for work.
At lunch I heard there were wounded crying on Walker’s Ridge, and went
up there with Zachariades. We found a first-rate Australian, Major
Reynell. We went through the trenches, dripping with sweat; it was
a boiling day, and my head reeled from inoculation. We had to crawl
through a secret sap over a number of dead Turks, some of whom were in
a ghastly condition, headless and covered with flies. Then out from the
darkness into another sap, with a dead Turk to walk over. The Turkish
trenches were 30 yards off, and the dead lay between the two lines.
When I called I was answered at once by a Turk. He said he could
not move.... I gave him a drink, and Reynell and I carried him
in, stumbling over the dead among whom he lay. I went back for my
water-bottle, but the Turks began shooting as a warning, and I had to
go back into the trench.
An awful time getting the Turk through the very narrow trench. I got
one other, unwounded, shamming dead. We threw him a rope, and in he
came.
* * * * *