BACK TO ENGLAND
Shortly before I left Gallipoli our Staff arranged what the American
soldier would call a great "stunt." Materials for a huge bonfire were
secretly collected and placed in a commanding position after dark on the
heights near the Ægean coast; near to it a mine was laid. At about ten
o'clock at night this was purposely exploded, making a terrific report;
next moment, according to prearranged plan, the bonfire, which had been
liberally saturated with oil and tar, burst into a great sheet of flame
which lit up half our end of the Peninsula. Our Staff fully expected
that the explosion followed by the great fire would bring every Turk out
of the depths of his trench to the parapet in order to see what had
happened; so at this moment every gun on the Peninsula, which of course
had the range of these Turkish trenches to a yard, loosed off a mighty
salvo. Next morning at daylight the Staff eagerly scanned the enemy's
parapets, expecting to see them littered with dead--but instead they
were somewhat chagrined to observe our old friend the Turkish wag slowly
raise a great placard announcing: "No Casualties!"
The Turks were now much more lively in their cannonading, and began once
more their hateful tactics of loosing off shells at mounted men.
About a fortnight before I left the Peninsula, I was riding up from
Gully Ravine, and, having got to the top of what is called Artillery
Road, I met a gun team, and one of the drivers told me to be careful
going along the next couple of hundred yards, as the Turks were shelling
the short strip of road just ahead. I was walking my horse at the time,
and continued to do so, as I felt I was just as safe walking as
galloping. In a few moments I heard the report of a gun from behind
Krithia, then I heard the scream of a shell coming nearer and nearer,
and as I bent my head down to the horse's mane I said to myself: "This
is going to be a near thing." The shell whizzed close above my head and
exploded a yard or two beyond me, plastering some twenty or thirty yards
of ground with shrapnel. My horse took no notice of the explosion, and
continued walking on as if nothing had happened. Although I was
anxiously on the look-out for another salute from the enemy, I thought,
if I just walked on, I would bluff the Turkish observing officer into
thinking that, as I took the matter so unconcernedly, he must have the
wrong range and it would be useless to go on shooting. It was either
that or else he was a sportsman and thought that, as I had taken my
escape so calmly, he would not shoot again, for at any rate not another
round was fired.
Although I did not know it at the time, Gye had been watching the whole
of this episode from a little distance. He had seen the gun team being
shelled as it galloped for shelter down to the Gully, and when he saw me
emerge he felt pretty sure that I would be fired on as soon as I was
spotted by the Turkish gunners. He told me it was most exciting to watch
me as I came to the dangerous bit of road, hear the report of the
Turkish gun, hear the shriek of the shell as it came along, and then see
it go bang, apparently on my head!
As was to be expected, where cannonading and battles were the order of
the day, there was little to be seen on the Peninsula in the way of
animal or bird life. The cranes which Homer sings of somewhere or other,
flew in great flocks down to Egypt, flying almost in the arrow formation
of geese when in flight, but with the arrow not quite so regular. I
have put up some partridges out of the gorse, between the Gully Ravine
and the Ægean, within a hundred yards of where the guns were blazing
away for all they were worth. There were a few other small birds about,
but very few, if any, warblers. I came across one dead hare, shot by a
stray bullet, and I had a glimpse of one live one as it scuttled away in
the gorse. The only other four-footed wild thing that I saw in the
Peninsula was what appeared to be a cross between the merecat and the
mongoose, but slightly larger than the mongoose. It was of a dark
reddish-brown colour, thickly dotted over with grey spots. I saw one or
two small snakes, but whether they were venomous or not I cannot say,
for they glided off into their holes before I could secure a specimen.
A night or two before I left Gallipoli we had a sudden downpour of rain
which made the trenches raging torrents, and turned the dug-outs into
diving baths; but still our men remained cheery throughout it all;
nothing can depress them. The men of L Battery, R. H. A., like all
others, were flooded out in the twinkling of an eye, and I watched them,
standing in their shirts on the edge of their dug-outs, endeavoring
with a hooked stick to fish up their equipment and the remainder of
their attire from a murky flood of water four feet deep--all the time
singing gaily: "It's a long way to Tipperary."
My escape on Artillery Road was the last serious little bit of adventure
I had on the Peninsula, for towards the end of November I got ill, and
Captain Blandy, R. A. M. C., packed me off to hospital. My faithful
orderly, Corporal Yorish, came with me to the hospital and saw that I
was comfortably fixed up for the night. I cannot speak too highly of
this man's behaviour during the whole time he was with me in Egypt and
Gallipoli. In Palestine he was a dental student, but he could turn his
hand to anything, and was never happy unless he was at work.
I spent that night in the clearing station close to Lancashire Landing,
on a bed having a big side tilt, with a dozen other officers all round,
some sick, some wounded. We had a dim light from a hurricane lamp
suspended to a rope, which was tied to the tent poles, and we got a
little warmth and a lot of smell from an oil stove, for the weather was
now very cold.
At about 4 A. M. I dozed off, and the next thing I remember was a Turk
leaning over me, trying, as I thought, to prod me in the face with a
bayonet. I made a vicious kick at him which woke me up, and then I
discovered that my Turk was no Turk at all but merely the hospital
orderly, who was attempting to jab a thermometer into my mouth in an
effort to take my temperature. It was 5 A. M. and the hospital machine
had begun to work, and whether you are well, or whether you are ill, or
whether you are asleep, or whether you are awake, temperatures and
medicines must be taken according to rule and regulation.
This same clearing station had seen some very lively times, because it
is close to the ordnance stores, and in a line from Asia to W Beach, so
that shells used to fall into it both from Achi Baba and from across the
Dardanelles. Orderlies and patients had been killed there, and many
others had had marvellous escapes. Scores and scores of times have I
witnessed the departure of the sick and wounded, which generally took
place in the evening, and the clock-like precision with which everything
worked reflected the greatest credit on Colonel Humphreys, R. A. M. C.,
who was in charge of it from the beginning to the end, and on the
members of the R. A. M. C. Corps who assisted him. From what I saw of
the R. A. M. C. men in Gallipoli, this Corps has every reason to be
proud of itself. Of course, at the first landing there was a lamentable
medical break-down, and there is no doubt that hundreds of lives were
lost because there were not enough doctors, attendants, and stores to go
round. Hundreds and hundreds of badly wounded men had to be stuffed
anywhere on board transports and sent down to the hospitals at
Alexandria with practically no one to look after them, excepting their
lesser wounded comrades; but this was an administrative blunder, which
does not reflect on the pluck, energy and skill shown by all those R. A.
M. C. officers and men with whom I came in contact in Gallipoli.
Colonel Humphreys saw me off on the morning of the 29th of November, and
I went down in an ambulance full of officers and soldiers to the French
pier at V Beach, the same at which I had landed in April, because our
own pier at W Beach had been washed away and could not be used. While we
were getting on board the trawler which was to take us to the hospital
ship, the Turks put a few shells close round us in their efforts to
damage the French works on V Beach. This was their last salute so far as
I was concerned, for I never heard another shot fired. They were very
good about our hospital ships, and never attempted to do any shooting
which would endanger them in any way.
As we rounded the stern of the hospital ship in order to get to the
lee-side, as the weather was a bit boisterous, I was interested to see
that the ship was called the _Assaye_.
Now during the South African War, I had gone out in this same ship in
command of about twelve hundred troops, and it was somewhat odd that I
should now see her as a hospital ship and be going aboard her as a
patient. I found things very comfortable on board, and certainly it was
an immense change to us to find ourselves once more between sheets on a
spring bed swung on pivots, so that the patients should not feel the
motion of the ship. We were very democratic in the hospital, as
generals, colonels, majors, captains, lieutenants and senior N. C. O.'s,
some thirty or forty of us in all, were jumbled up together in the ward.
There was only one nursing sister for our ward, an Australian lady,
Sister Dixon, who certainly worked like a slave from somewhere about
seven in the morning until ten at night. Her task was too severe, and
enough to break down any ordinary mortal. She was assisted in the ward
duties by Corporal O'Brien, who did what he could to make us
comfortable. The night orderly was a big kindly Scotch Highlander, named
Mackinnon, almost as tender and sympathetic as a woman, who apologised
profusely when he had to wake us every morning at 8 A. M. to take our
temperatures and count the beats of our pulse.
The _Assaye_ lay off Cape Helles in a blinding blizzard of hail and
snow, during which many of the poor fellows in the trenches were, I am
told, frozen to death, or, as a lesser evil, got their feet frozen
during that very cold spell.
On the 27th we set sail for Mudros, which we reached in about four
hours, where we lay at anchor for a day, and there was much speculation
as to whether we would be transhipped, or go ashore and be put in
hospital on this island, each and all wondering what was going to
happen. One or two light cases were put ashore, and then the ship
weighed anchor bound for Alexandria, which we reached without adventure
on the 1st of December. All of us who were unable to walk were carried
ashore by some stalwart Australians, and then we were sandwiched into a
motor ambulance, still remaining on our stretchers, and driven off to
Ras-el-Tin Hospital, which occupied an excellent position by the edge
of the sea. Here I spent fifteen days getting every care and attention
from Miss Bond (the matron), and nursing sisters Blythe and Jordon, who
looked after the patients in my ward. Ras-el-Tin Hospital is used for
officers only, but I noticed that some of the medical officers were
somewhat young and inexperienced. This I consider wrong, because in
these days the lives of officers are of great importance, and only the
best and most experienced medical officers should be employed to look
after them, and get them fit for their duties as soon as possible.
My own little experience in this respect may not be out of place here as
an apt illustration of what I have just written.
The senior medical officer in charge, a very young temporary captain,
without coming to see me, decreed that I was fit and well enough to
leave the hospital for a convalescent home. Now, I was just about able
to crawl and no more, and the matron and sister who knew the state I was
in, told him that I was utterly unfit to leave the hospital. However,
without coming to see me, he still remained obstinate, and ordered my
kit away, but meanwhile, Colonel Beach, the A. D. M. S. Alexandria,
having come to see me, his experienced eye showed him that it would be
some months before I should be fit for military duty again, and he told
me I should have to go before a medical board, who would dispose of my
case. The following day the medical board decided to send me to England,
and I was put on board the hospital ship _Gurkha_, which I found very
comfortable, with excellent food and a most excellent medical staff, a
colonel, three majors, and a captain, all of the Indian Medical Service;
and I thought what a pity it was that some of these able and experienced
officers could not be utilised to take charge of such hospitals as
Ras-el-Tin, where they could guide the junior staff into the way they
should go. It is just another example of not utilising in the right way
the wealth of talent which we possess in skilled and able men. I do not
for a moment mean to suggest that the talents of these Indian Medical
Service officers were wasted on the _Gurkha_. What I do mean is that one
or two of the senior men, would have been ample on the ship, with a
couple of younger men as assistants, and the other senior men could then
have been released for similar work among some of the ill-staffed
hospitals in Egypt or Mesopotamia.
Colonel Haig, I. M. S., the senior medical officer on board, was
untiring in his care of the sick and wounded, and if a testimonial of
his zeal were wanted, it could be found in the difference in the
appearance which his three hundred patients presented from the day when
they came on board the Gurkha at Alexandria to the day when they left
his hands at Southampton. I, who saw it, can only say it was simply
marvellous.
After eleven days' treatment in the capable hands of Major Houston, I.
M. S., I found myself a different man when I walked off the ship at
Southampton, where we arrived on Boxing Day, 1915, and reached London on
a hospital train the same evening. At Waterloo we were met by a medical
officer, who scattered us throughout the hospitals in London. I was
fortunate in being sent to that organised by Lady Violet Brassey at 40,
Upper Grosvenor Street, where I was never so comfortable, or so well
cared for in the whole course of my life, and for which I tender her my
very sincere thanks; and I would also like to thank Doctor A. B. Howitt,
Miss Spencer (the matron), and the sisters and nurses for the care and
kindness which they showed me during the three weeks I was in their
charge.
It was delightful to have old friends crowding in with gifts of flowers,
and fruit, and books, and all the latest London papers and gossip. Lady
Violet arranged some delightful concerts for us at which such public
favourites as Madame Bertha Moore, Miss Evie Greene and others charmed
us with song, story, and recitation. Among the "others" was Miss
Marjorie Moore, whose song, "Just a Little Bit of Heaven," reached all
the Irish hearts there.
Harry Irving, too, came to see me one day, and presented me with a box
for the Savoy, where half a dozen of us thoroughly enjoyed _The Case of
Lady Camber_.
Discussing the play at dinner in the hospital afterwards, I remarked how
well Holman Clarke had acted in the Sherry scene, when the V. A. D.
nurse who was at that moment handing me some soup remarked: "I am glad
you liked him, because he is my brother."
How wonderfully well the women of the Empire have shown up during the
war! They have come forward in their thousands, not only for V. A. D.
work, where their help is invaluable, but also for munition work and
work of every kind, which up to the outbreak of war it was thought could
only be done by men.
Yes, the women have certainly come into their own, and I for one am very
glad of it, and proud too of the fact that they have responded so nobly
to the call.