SEPTEMBER
September 1st.
Start off with my man Lewington on donkeys and a pack pony across the hills, over a stony, narrow path, with three little boys in charge of the animals. The way is sometimes over and sometimes round a line of irregular, conical-shaped hills, some almost mountains, covered with thick green gorse, large boulders, rocks, and small stones. The few valleys are beautifully wooded and dotted with vineyards growing luscious dark grapes, and also groves of fig-trees.
One gets glimpses of the blue Ægean now and again, and the distant Isthmus of Gallipoli and the Island of Samothrace, with the coast of Bulgaria still further off. After two hours’ trek, during which I felt as if I was a character in the Scriptures, we sighted the village of Panaghia, and we had a sporting trot down a narrow, sandy, steep path.
One little boy on a donkey, who joined us, raced me and beat me by a short neck. Poor old Lewington was hanging on to his moke with a pained but polite expression on his face, and heaved a sigh of relief when we arrived at the village.
We pulled up at the Grand Britannia Hotel, recently so named by a Greek. It is a little broken-down house, having on the ground floor a boot shop, and on the first and top floor two small bare rooms.
After a meal of partridge, omelettes, and honey, with German beer to drink, I am taken out to an empty house, and shown to a room furnished only with a bench.
My man slept on the landing and I in the room, and I soon fell fast asleep. At midnight I am awakened by certain creepy insects. I light candles and awake my man, and we conduct a massacre. Our landlord arrives on the scene much disturbed, and places my bed in the centre of the room, whereupon I turn in again and sleep peacefully for the rest of the night.
September 2nd.
Awake in the morning with the sun streaming in and with the sounds of cocks crowing and chickens clucking. Looking out, the view of the conical beautiful hills makes me almost catch my breath, and, God bless my soul! a Greek peasant maiden, beauteous to look upon and fair of complexion, is feeding her pigs and chickens.
After breakfast at the Grand Britannia Hotel (sounds like the Ritz, London, doesn’t it?), Duff, of all people, rolls up with Munro. We all lunch together, and then roam round the village, buy a few things, and take photographs.
After tea, Duff goes on to Castra, by the sea on the other side of the island, and Munro and I go back to camp. It is beautiful riding back through the hills in the late afternoon. Perfect day and colouring gorgeous. Nearing camp we get a fine view of Gallipoli. All is so peaceful where we are, but just over that narrow strip of sea, war rules in its most horrible form.
Have dinner with Cox, of the Essex, who turns in at 8.30, and I go back to Headquarters and have an after-dinner smoke with the General and Staff, sitting round a little table in the marquee lit by candle-light.
September 3rd.
Start off with Phillips on a donkey and pony respectively over the hills again. A gorgeous morning, and it is good to be alive. Peasants give us delightful grapes as we ride along. Sheep are grazing, their bells tinkling, with a few cows and bullocks, and now and again a covey of partridges rises.
Arriving at Panaghia, we have a bottle of beer, and then go on along the road to Castra, by the sea. Castra is situated on a high hill overlooking the sea, with a few fishermen’s huts on the beach.
The Isle of Samothrace, which is a cluster of mountains rising sheer from the sea, lies opposite. The sea is dead calm, and of a gorgeous blue. A few fishing boats lie in a tiny little harbour on the right of the little bay, which is flanked by hills. In the background are more hills and low wooded valleys, and we feel as if we had stepped into the Garden of Eden.
Duff is here, and we have lunch, after which Duff returns to camp. Phillips and I go up on the cliff and have a delightful sleep. Everything is dead quiet, and there is not a cloud in the sky. We are right away from the world, and the scene before us—that of the blue Ægean with Samothrace a few miles away—has not changed for thousands of years.
After tea, we have a bathe in beautifully clear, warm water, and no rocks. The evening closes in, and the colouring thrown by the declining sun on Samothrace is beautiful. A boat with a square sail comes sailing home, looking like “the return of Ulysses.”
After dinner we turn in and sleep on the floor of the veranda.
September 4th.
Wake up early. A perfect morning, but a high wind. Scene beautiful. Talk to an old Greek, who has been all over the world, and in all the ports of England, and who has come home to his native island for the rest of his days. Try fishing, but catch nothing. After lunch, start back to camp on ponies, stopping at Panaghia for tea, arriving home at 6.30.
September 5th.
Start off again for Panaghia with Duff and Elliott, and have lunch there. After lunch we go off to another village, where an annual holiday is being held. Bands are playing and the inhabitants are dancing weird native dances, appearing very solemn about it. Parties are going round from house to house, visiting and partaking of refreshment, such as grapes, figs, wine and liqueurs. An old Greek invites us in, and his wife forces us to have grapes, melon, jelly, and liqueurs. I took a bite of cake and was nearly violently ill.
We came back another way through vineyards, where grapes can be had for the asking, olive groves, and fig-tree orchards.
September 6th.
A fine day again, but windy. No news, but a rumour that Bulgaria is against us now, and that we shall be in Gallipoli for the winter. We go back to-morrow night.
We get up a concert, which takes place in the evening. We rig up a platform, borrow a piano from the Y.M.C.A., and make up a programme. I snaffle some champagne for Headquarters, and after a cheery dinner we go to the concert. We have some excellent talent, and everybody thoroughly enjoys it. It is a sight worth seeing—the platform lit by candles, and the Brigade seated around on the sand: some of those who took part in the landing, some recently in the fighting at Suvla, and new drafts who had not yet tasted war.
“The Defence of Lucknow” was recited by Lieutenant Butler, of the Worcesters, an actor by profession and a good fellow, and it went splendidly and gripped us all. New Brigade Major arrives, Wilson, of the Royal Fusiliers.
September 7th.
Awake at five, and on becoming conscious of the fact that to-day I have to go back to that Peninsula, to remain there for Lord knows how long, I have the same depressed feeling, only more so, that one has in the days of school on the last day of the holiday.
At 6 a.m. Phillips and I and the Supply Section embark, and on a tossing trawler, bucking about like a wild horse, we undergo the misery of a four hours’ crossing in a very rough sea to Suvla Bay, where we arrive at 10 a.m. We lie off the Swiftsure for an hour, and then two pinnaces come alongside, to take us on shore. Shrapnel is bursting steadily over the low lands, and one or two high explosives are now and again bursting on “A” Beach and “W” Beach. We land soon after 11 a.m., and on arrival back at our part of the promontory we find that our camp has been moved to the end of the long gully, where on the side of a hill D.H.Q. are dug in.
The contours of the country are curious. Great natural scars run down to a flat plateau washed by the waves. In these gullies hundreds of men and animals are getting what protection they can. The Engineers are building a road, on one side of which is a row of dugouts, artfully hidden by a row of great boulders. This is our advanced Horse Transport depot, and a pretty hot shop, as the Turks have the exact range. In front of the dugouts are the horse-lines, where rows and rows of mules and horses are packed into the throat of the gorge for shelter. A dry watercourse winds down the gorge, so the place will be impossible in winter; as it is, Death takes his daily toll of men and animals, while down the path comes a never-ending procession of sick and wounded from the front line, and very occasionally a prisoner or two. Up the same path, at night, the reinforcements march to rest in dugouts just behind the line until their turn to take over arrives. To the left of the gorge a huge rocky point runs out to the sea—this point also is a thick mass of men and animals, practically in the open, so limited is space. Truly an unfriendly and uninviting country. The hot dust is over everything—the flies torment, and shells take their toll of us, while we are powerless to hit back. The mouth of the gorge widens to the beach, where there are three tiny bays, which with the plateau form “A” Beach: Kangaroo Beach, with its lighter and pontoon quays, its sand-bagged dugouts, and the like; West Beach—the main landing-place, with rather better piers and offices; and Little West Beach, a sort of overflow to West Beach proper, embellished with a tram line for horse-drawn trucks, the Ordnance depot, etc.—all these places are swarming with men, and over all hangs the eternal dust!
Further along on the plateau from West Beach, and looking towards Lala Baba, is the Supply depot and the watering-places for the animals, all in the open, with no protection at all: a wonderful spectacle, if you like to think of it, and only possible because John Turk is short of ammunition. Here in the bare open the troops live from day to day, a few sand-bags only between them and death, and very few of the dugouts boast a real roof; blankets and waterproof sheets answer that purpose, and so it is not difficult to imagine the havoc wrought when shrapnel is about. To the north lies the bold, forbidding point, before mentioned, with the waves flinging their white manes in anger against its sides. Such, roughly, is Suvla Bay as I see it now, and I cannot say that it impresses me as a practical proposition.
Dug in on the side of a slope the others have built a house, or, as far as dugouts in Gallipoli go, a summer residence. The door faces the rise leading up to the rugged point, from the craggy back of which one sees the cliff-side dropping sheer to the sea.
The roof of corrugated iron slopes at the same angle as the slope of the ground in which we have dug. For walls, the dugout earth forms the back wall, and the side walls are built of biscuit boxes. We spend the day improving on this. Immediately in front is our Supply depot, divided into three dumps, one each for the 86th, 87th, and 88th Brigades. At dusk the pack-mules and A.T. carts form up, and we load on to the set of mules or carts allotted to each unit the rations and fuel. The transport then moves off by Brigades to the front, the mules led by Drabis, the carts driven also by Drabis, and the whole escorted by Indian N.C.O.’s under a white N.C.O. Q.M.S.’s Transport N.C.O.’s, guides of the units, and the A.S.C. Transport Officer accompany them to the respective battalion and dumps, situated a distance of two hundred to three hundred yards behind the front line. In some cases convoys proceed direct to the regimental cookhouses. The transport dares not show itself by day. To-night our Brigade arrives from Imbros, and is to spend the night in De Lisle’s Gully, some short distance to the left of the road that leads to Lone Tree Gully, but up the hill rather, and so our rations go there. Water has been put there for them by Carver last night. We watch this water question closely. It needs careful handling and foresight. A man can go hungry much longer than he can go thirsty, and water is far more difficult to transport by sea than food. Imbros is the source of our supply, and water-tank lighters are filled there and towed over each day.
The water dump is on “A” Beach, and all the Divisions that are being supplied from this promontory draw from this dump. An able man, one Private Jones, is in charge. Though before the war an L.C.C. school-teacher, he appears to be the one man in the world who could be chosen to be the most efficient and tactful organizer of the difficult task of satisfying an army of 30,000 men with their daily requirements of water, from a limited source, and by means of a limited supply of receptacles, steadily diminishing in number.
At seven I go up with Carver to the H.Q. of the 86th Brigade. Instead of walking up the road that leads to Pine Tree Gully, we bear off to the right, and pass along a lower road through the wooded, gorse-covered low lands for a distance of about a mile and a half inland, until bullets are merrily singing their song of war overhead. “Zi-i-ip” goes one between us. A pause in the conversation, and Carver says, “That was not pleasant,” to which I agree, but adding, “If hit, it means Blighty, my boy, the Savoy, and theatres, or ‘Finish,’ as we say in Egypt.”
We come to a wide space in front of us, and to our left is high ground, rising in one place to about 30 feet. Carver tells me that we are at Brigade dumping-ground. A.T. carts are packed here in readiness to bring the baggage back to the beach for the 86th Brigade, as it is their turn now to go to Imbros.