ARRIVAL AT LEMNOS
We were not the only troops on board the _Hymettus_. There were some
gunner officers of siege batteries, and some officers and men of the
Royal Army Medical Corps; a stationary hospital with the necessary staff
of the R. A. M. C. men, as well as some other odds and ends for various
units of the Expeditionary Force already at Lemnos. I happened to be the
Senior Officer on board, so was Officer Commanding the troops during the
voyage.
I would like to mention here that the captain, chief officer, and chief
engineer, of the _Hymettus_ were most helpful in every possible way, and
I am glad to be able to pay this little tribute to them for all their
kindness to us while we were aboard.
One of the most interesting of our fellow voyagers was Captain Edmunds,
R. A. M. C., one of the medical officers in charge of the Australian
Hospital stores. He had been taken prisoner by the Germans while
attending to the wounded during the retreat from Mons, and he told us
many tales of his bad treatment at their hands. He was kept a prisoner
for a considerable time, but finally was released owing to some
interchange of medical officers between England and Germany.
The voyage to Lemnos was quite uneventful. We, fortunately, missed the
Turkish torpedo-boat that tried to sink the _Manitou_, a transport just
ahead of us. This troopship had quite an adventurous time. The
torpedo-boat stopped her and the Turkish commander, with rare humanity,
called out that he would give them ten minutes to save themselves. I am
told that there was a German officer on the bridge who was heard
quarrelling with the Turkish commander for being so lenient.
The _Manitou_ lowered her boats in a very great hurry, and unluckily a
couple of them tilted up, with the result that some fifty or sixty men
were drowned. At the end of the time limit the Turks discharged a
torpedo. Now when this missile is first fired it takes a dive before it
steadies itself on its course, and as the two vessels were close
together, luckily for the _Manitou_, the dive took the torpedo well
under her keel; the same thing happened when the second and third
torpedoes were launched; finally, as the Turk was about to open fire
and sink the troopship with his guns, a British destroyer raced up at
full speed and chased the marauder on to the rocks of a Grecian isle,
where the Turkish vessel became a total wreck.
The training of the Zionists went steadily forward on board ship, for
many of the men were still quite raw--in fact, I recruited several on
the ship a few hours before we sailed. The mules and horses took up a
great deal of time every day, but we never had one sick or sorry; and I
may say here that we never lost one from sickness all the time we were
in Gallipoli, which must, I think, be a record.
On April 20th we arrived at Lemnos and anchored just inside the entrance
of Mudros harbour in a blinding wind and rain storm. It will be
remembered that when the gods quarrelled, Jove hurled Vulcan out of
Olympus on to Lemnos, where he established a forge underground. The
morning following our arrival, one of the transports to windward of us
began to drag her anchor, so our captain weighed immediately, fearing a
collision, and we sailed right through the fleet to the opposite end of
the great land-locked harbour. Never in all my life had I seen such a
mighty armada of battleships, cruisers, destroyers, transports, etc.
The _Queen Elizabeth_ was there, looking for all the world like a
floating fortress. There were some quaint French battleships, while the
Russian cruiser _Askold_ caused universal attention, owing to her five
slim funnels. With the soldier's customary knack of giving appropriate
names, the _Askold_ was known throughout the Fleet as "the packet of
Woodbines." Our Zionists, as we sailed by, astonished her crew by
bandying words with them in Russian.
Our trip up the harbour was not to end without adventure, for, on
turning round to cast anchor, our ship ran aground on a mudbank. Here we
stuck fast and all the King's horses and all the King's men failed to
tug us off again. Time after time naval officers came along with
tug-boats and vessels of various kinds which strained to release us, but
each attempt was a hopeless failure.
On the afternoon of the 23rd, I got somewhat of a shock on being
informed that the Zion Mule Corps was to be divided. The half on the
_Hymettus_ was to go with the 29th Division, and the other half, those
already on board the _Anglo-Egyptian_, were to be sent with the
Australians and New Zealanders. Of course, this arrangement would have
been all right if these three Divisions had been landed at the same
place, but as they were to disembark some dozen miles apart it would be
impossible for me to keep an eye on both halves of the Corps, and I
greatly feared that the half away from my own personal supervision would
not prove a success, for officers, N. C. O.'s and men were entirely new
to soldiering, and it was too much to expect that they could go straight
into the firing line, after only some three weeks' training, and come
through the ordeal triumphantly without an experienced commander.
I, therefore, after many vain endeavours to get away, hailed
a passing launch, which, as a great favour, put me on board
the staff ship, the _Arcadian_, where I had an interview with the Deputy
Quartermaster-General, and begged of him not to divide the Corps, as I
feared that those away from my control would prove but a broken reed. He
told me, however, that it was impossible to alter matters, and that the
Australians and New Zealanders had had practically no transport, except
what my Corps would supply, and that in any case we would not be
separated for more than four days, because if we could not crush the
Turks in that time, between the two forces, we were going to give up
the attempt and return to our ships.
Well, we did not crush the Turks in the four days, and, having failed,
it was not so easy to get away, and the result was that, owing to lack
of experience, and mismanagement in the handling of them, the two troops
with the Australians, after a couple of weeks' service with that force,
were sent back to Alexandria, without any reference to me, and there
disbanded.
As there were no boats available, I had the greatest difficulty in
getting away from the _Arcadian_, and it was only after wasting many
valuable hours and meeting with many rebuffs, that I eventually got a
kind-hearted sailor to give me a lift back to the _Hymettus_. A few
steam launches were badly needed to enable commanding officers to go
aboard the staff ship to discuss with the chiefs of the various
departments such items as can only be settled satisfactorily at a
personal interview.
I must say that I was not at all pleased with our position on the
mudbank, where, in spite of all efforts to move us, we still remained
stuck. In the first place, I feared that we would be unable to get away
with the rest of the transports on the morning of the 25th, the date
fixed for the great attack, and even if by chance another vessel could
be found for us, it would mean transhipping all the men, horses, mules,
baggage, forage and equipment, which would be an immense labour in an
open harbour like Mudros, where it is often blowing half a gale. It is
no wonder that, as each attempt at hauling off the _Hymettus_ failed, I
grew more and more anxious as to our ultimate chance of getting away in
time to see the start of the great fight in Gallipoli.
At last, on the 24th, the naval officers engaged on the work gave up all
further attempts to haul us off, and reported the task as hopeless--at
any rate until everything was removed from the ship. In the course of an
hour I received a signal from the Deputy Quartermaster-General to
tranship all my corps, stores, etc., from the _Hymettus_ to the
_Dundrennon_, a transport lying half a mile or more away. On receipt of
this message I signalled back and asked for tugs and lighters to enable
us to effect the transfer, but, although my signallers endeavoured for
hours to attract the attention of those on the staff ship, I entirely
failed to get any reply. I finally tried to extort a response of some
sort by sending an ire-raising message to the effect that on
investigation, I found that many of the men and mules could not swim!
But my sarcasm was wasted, for the _Arcadian_ remained dumb.
This failure in the signalling arrangements was very marked all through
the two or three days we spent at Lemnos. It was practically impossible
to get any message through, and one felt completely cut off from all
communication with the staff ship. There were no arrangements for
getting about in the harbour. The ship's small boats would have been
swamped in the heavy sea, and it was practically impossible to secure a
launch.
This failure, together with the wretched signalling arrangements, gave
me serious qualms, and I could not help wondering if the muddle ceased
here, or did it extend to other and more grave matters which would
imperil the success of the expedition?
All day long I was anxiously on the look-out for a tug and lighters to
enable me to tranship to the _Dundrennon_, and at last, at about 6 P.M.,
I saw a little trawler, towing a string of half a dozen lighters, making
her way up the harbour towards us. In a few minutes they were alongside
and made fast to the _Hymettus_, but, alas! I soon discovered that,
although the lighters were for us, the tug was about to sail away again.
The only order the commander had received was to bring the lighters
alongside and make them fast to the _Hymettus_, and there his task
ended. This was a blow to me, for I felt that, if the little _Jessie_
went off, I and my Corps would be left high and dry on the Lemnos mud,
while the rest of the Expedition sailed off next morning on the great
adventure! Luckily, the commander of the _Jessie_ was a friend of the
Captain's and came on board for a yarn. After a few moments I followed
him to the Captain's cabin and, on being introduced, found that he was
Mr. A. R. Murley. I soon discovered that he was a most exceptional man
in every way, and a sailor to his finger tips. He had been Chief Officer
on board a large liner, but had resigned his post to volunteer his
services to the Admiralty for the war, and, although the position he now
held as skipper of the _Jessie_ was a very small one compared with his
last charge, yet, as he sportingly said, what did it matter so long as
he was usefully doing his bit?--and I believe he was as proud of the
_Jessie_ as if she had been a liner or a battleship.
I used all my eloquence on Mr. Murley, pointed out what a desperate
position I was in, and said that if he did not come to my aid we would,
indeed, be hopelessly stranded. The Captain of the _Hymettus_, who, by
the way, was naturally very much upset at having struck this uncharted
mudbank, ably seconded my appeal, and although Murley had been working
from dawn and had intended to return to his depot to lay in stores of
coal, water and oil, to enable him to start with the expedition at five
o'clock in the morning, he agreed to work for me throughout the night.