One evening the colonel sent me from our dug-out near the Salt Lake to “A” Beach to make a report on the water supply which was pumped ashore from the tank-boats. I trudged along the sandy shore. At one spot I remember the carcase of a mule washed up by the tide, the flesh rotted and sodden, and here and there a yellow rib bursting through the skin. Its head floated in the water and nodded to and fro with a most uncanny motion with every ripple of the bay.
The wet season was coming on, and the chill winds went through my khaki drill uniform. The sky was overcast, and the bay, generally a kaleidoscope of Eastern blues and greens, was dull and grey.
At “A” Beach I examined the pipes and tanks of the water-supply system and had a chat with the Australians who were in charge. I drew a small plan, showing how the water was pumped from the tanks afloat to the standing tank ashore, and suggested the probable cause of the sand and dirt of which the C.O. complained.
This done I found our own ambulance water-cart just ready to return to our camp with its nightly supply. Evening was giving place to darkness, and soon the misty hills and the bay were enveloped in starless gloom.
The traffic about “A” Beach was always congested. It reminded you of the Bank and the Mansion House crush far away in London town.
Here were clanking water-carts, dozens of them waiting in their turn, stamping mules and snorting horses; here were motor-transport wagons with “W.D.” in white on their grey sides; ambulance wagons jolting slowly back to their respective units, sometimes full of wounded, sometimes empty. Here all was bustle and noise. Sergeants shouting and corporals cursing; transport-officers giving directions; a party of New Zealand sharp-shooters in scout hats and leggings laughing and yarning; a patrol of the R.E.'s Telegraph Section coming in after repairing the wires along the beach; or a new batch of men, just arrived, falling in with new-looking kit-bags.
It was through this throng of seething khaki and transport traffic that our water-cart jostled and pushed.
Often we had to pull up to let the Indian Pack-mule Corps pass, and it was at one of these halts that I happened to come close to one of these dusky soldiers waiting calmly by the side of his mules.
I wished I had some knowledge of Hindustani, and began to think over any words he might recognise.
“You ever hear of Rabindranarth Tagore, Johnnie?” I asked him. The name of the great writer came to mind.
He shook his head. “No, sergeant,” he answered.
“Buddha, Johnnie?” His face gleamed and he showed his great white teeth.
“No, Buddie.”
“Mahomet, Johnnie?”
“Yes—me, Mahommedie,” he said proudly.
“Gunga, Johnnie?” I asked, remembering the name of the sacred river Ganges from Kipling's “Kim.”
“No Gunga, sa'b—Mahommedie, me.”
“You go Benares, Johnnie?”
“No Benares.”
“Mecca?”
“Mokka, yes; afterwards me go Mokka.”
“After the war you going to Mokka, Johnnie?”
“Yes; Indee, France—here—Indee back again—then Mokka.”
“You been to France, Johnnie?”
“Yes, sa'b.”
“You know Kashmir, Johnnie?”
“Kashmir my house,” he replied.
“You live in Kashmir?”
“Yes; you go Indee, sergeant?”
“No, I've never been.”
“No go Indee?”
“Not yet.”
“Indee very good—English very good—Turk, finish!”
With a sudden jerk and a rattle of chains our water-cart mules pulled out on the trail again and the ghostly figure with its well-folded turban and gleaming white teeth was left behind.
A beautifully calm race, the Hindus. They did wonderful work at Suvla Bay. Up and down, up and down, hour after hour they worked steadily on; taking up biscuits, bully-beef and ammunition to the firing-line, and returning for more and still more. Day and night these splendidly built Easterns kept up the supply.
I remember one man who had had his left leg blown off by shrapnel sitting on a rock smoking a cigarette and great tears rolling down his cheeks. But he said no word. Not a groan or a cry of pain.
They ate little, and said little. But they were always extraordinarily polite and courteous to each other. They never neglected their prayers, even under heavy shell fire.
Once, when we were moving from the Salt Lake to “C” Beach, Lala Baba, the Indians moved all our equipment in their little two-wheeled carts.
They were much amused and interested in our sergeant clerk, who stood 6 feet 8 inches. They were joking and pointing to him in a little bunch.
Going up to them, I pointed up to the sky, and then to the Sergeant, saying: “Himalayas, Johnnie!”
They roared with laughter, and ever afterwards called him “Himalayas.”
On the edge of the Salt Lake, by the blue Aegean shore, Hawk and I dug a little underground home into the sandy hillock upon which our ambulance was now encamped.
“I'm going deep into this,” said Hawk—he was a very skilful miner, and he knew his work.
“None of your dead heroes for me,” he said; “I don't hold with 'em—we'll make it PRACtically shell-proof.” We did. Each day we burrowed into the soft sandy layers, he swinging the pick, and I filling up sand-bags. At last we made a sort of cave, a snug little Peter Pan home, sand-bagged all round and safe from shells when you crawled in.
I often thought what a fine thing Stevenson would have written from the local colour of the bay.
Its changing colours were intense and wonderful. In the early morning the waves were a rich royal blue, with splashing lines of white breakers rolling in and in upon the pale grey sand, and the sea-birds skimming and wheeling overhead.
At mid-day it was colourless, glaring, steel-flashing, with the sunlight blazing and everything shimmering in the heat haze.
In the early afternoon, when Hawk and I used to go down to the shore and strip naked like savages, and plunge into the warm water, the bay had changed to pale blue with green ripples, and the outline of Imbros Island, on the horizon, was a long jagged strip of mauve.
Later, when the sunset sky turned lemon-yellow, orange, and deep crimson, the bay went into peacock blues and purples, with here and there a current of bottle-glass green, and Imbros Island stood clear cut against the sunset-colour a violet-black silhouette.
Queer creatures crept across the sands and into the old Turkish snipers' trenches; long black centipedes, sand-birds—very much resembling our martin, but with something of the canary in their colour. Horned beetles, baby tortoises, mice, and green-grey lizards all left their tiny footprints on the shore.
“If this silver sand was only in England a man could make his fortune,” said Hawk. (“We wept like anything to see—!”)
I never saw such white sand before. One had to misquote: “Come unto these SILVER sands.” It glittered white in a great horse-shoe round the bay, and the bed of the Salt Lake (which is really an overflow from the sea) was a barren patch of this silver-sand, with here and there a dead mule or a sniper's body lying out, a little black blot, the haunt of vultures.
I made some careful drawings of the sand-tracks of the bay; noting down tracks being a habit with the scout.
In these things Hawk was always interested, and often a great help; for, in spite of his fifty years and his buccaneerish-habits, he was at heart a boy—a boy-scout, in fact, and a fine tracker.
One of the most picturesque sights I ever saw was an Indian officer mounted on a white Arab horse with a long flowing mane, and a tail which swept in a splendid curve and trailed in the sands. The Hindu wore a khaki turban, with a long end floating behind. He sat his horse bolt upright, and rode in the proper military style.
The Arab steed pranced, and arched its great neck. With the blue of the bay as a background it made a magnificent picture, worthy of the Thousand-and-One Nights.
Day by day we improved our dug-out, going deeper into the solid rock, and putting up an awning in front made of two army blankets, with a wooden cross-beam roped to an old rusty bayonet driven into the sand.
We lived a truly Robinson Crusoe life, with the addition of Turkish high-explosives, and bully-beef-and-biscuit stew.
Our dug-out was back to the firing-line, and at night we looked out upon the bay. We lay in our blankets watching the white moonlight on the waves, and the black shadows of our ambulance wagons on the silver sand.
It was in this dug-out that Hawk used to cook the most wonderful dishes on a Primus stove.
The language was thick and terrible when that stove refused to work, and Hawk would squat there cursing and cleaning it, and sticking bits of wire down the gas-tube.
He cooked chocolate-pudding, and rice-and-milk, and arrowroot-blancmange, stewed prunes, fried bread in bacon fat, and many other tasty morsels.
“The proof of a good cook,” said Hawk, “is whether he can make a meal worth eating out of PRACtically nothink”—and he could.
There were very few wounds now to attend to in the hospital dug-out. Mostly we got men with sandfly-fever and dysentery; men with scabies and lice; men utterly and unspeakably exhausted, with hollow, black-rimmed eyes, cracked lips and foot-sores; men who limped across the sandy bed, dragging their rifles and equipment in their hands; men who were desperately hungry, whose eyes held the glint of sniper-madness; men whose bodies were wasting away, the skin taut and dry like a drum, with every rib showing like the beams of a wreck, or the rafters of an old roof.
Always we were in the midst of pain and misery, hunger and death. We do not get much of the rush and glory of battle in the “Linseed Lancers.” We deal with the wreckage thrown up by the tide of battle, and wreckage is always a sad sight—human wreckage most of all.
But the bay was always full of interest for me, with its ever-changing colour, and the imprint of the ripples in the gleaming silver-sand.
And the silver moonlight silvers the silver-sand, while the skeletons of the Xth sink deeper and deeper, to be rediscovered perhaps at some future geological period, and recognised as a type of primitive man.
I have slept and lived in every kind of camp and bivouac. I have dug and helped to dig dug-outs. I have lain full length in the dry, dead grass “under the wide and starry sky.” I have crept behind a ledge of rock, and gone to sleep with the ants crawling over me. I have slept with a pair of boots for a pillow. I have lived and snoozed in the dried-up bed of a mountain torrent for weeks. A ground-sheet tied to a bough has been my bedroom. I have slumbered curled in a coil of rope on the deck of a cattle-boat, in an ambulance wagon, on a stretcher, in farmhouse barns and under hedges and haystacks. I have slept in the sand by the blue Mediterranean Sea, with the crickets and grasshoppers “zipping” and “zinging” all night long.
But our dug-out nights on the edge of the bay at Buccaneer Bivouac were the most enjoyable.
It was here of a night-time that Hawk and I—sometimes alone, sometimes with Brockley, or “Cherry Blossom,” or “Corporal Mush,” or Sergeant Joe Smith, the sailormen as onlookers and listeners—it was here we drew diagrams in the sand with our fingers, and talked on politics and women's rights, marriage and immorality, drink and religion, customs and habits; of life and death, peace and war.
Sometimes Hawk burst into a rare phrase of splendid composition—well-balanced rhetoric, not unworthy of a Prime Minister.
At other times he is the buccaneer, the flinger of foul oaths, and terrible damning curses. But as a rule they are not vindictive, they have no sting—for Hawk is a forgiving and humble man in reality, in spite of his mask of arrogance.
A remarkable character in every way, he fell unknowingly into the old north-country Quaker talk of “thee and thou.”
Another minute he gives an order in those hard, calm, commanding words which, had he had the chance, would have made him, in spite of his lack of schooling, one of the finest Generals the world could ever know.
On these occasional gleams of pure leadership he finds the finest King's English ready to his lips, while at other times he is ungrammatical, ordinary, but never uninteresting or slow of intuition.
He was a master of slang, and like all strong and vivid characters had his own peculiar sayings.
He never thought of looking over my shoulder when I was sketching. He was a gentleman of Nature. But when he saw I had finished, his clear, deep-set eyes (handed down to him from those old Norseman ancestors) would glint with interest—
“Dekko the drawing,” he would say, using the old Romany word for “let's see.”
“PRACtically” was a favourite word.
“PRACtically the 'ole Peninsula—”
“PRACtically every one of 'em—”
“It weren't that,” he would say; or, “I weren't bothering—”
“I'm not bothered—”
“Thee needn't bother, but it's a misfortunate thing—”
“Hates me like the divil 'ates Holy Water.”
“Like enough!”
“A pound to a penny!”
“As like as not!”
“Ah; very like.”
These were all typical Hawkish expressions.
His yarns of India out-Rudyard Kipling. They were superb, full of barrack-room touches, and the smells and sounds of the jungle. He told of the time when a soldier could get “jungling leave”; when he could go off with a Winchester and a pal and a native guide for two or three months; when the Government paid so many rupees for a tiger skin, so many for a cobra—a scale of rewards for bringing back the trophies of the jungle wilds.
He pictured the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush, describing the everlasting snows where you look up and up at the sheer rocks and glaciers; “you feel like a baby tortoise away down there, so small, as like as not you get giddy and drunk-like.”
One night Hawk told me of a Hindu fakir who sat by the roadside performing the mango-trick for one anna. I illustrated it in the sand as he told it.
caption: Dug-out, September 9, 1915.
1. The fakir puts a pinch of dust from the ground in a little pile on a glass plate on a tripod.
2. He covers it up with a handkerchief or a cloth.
3. He plays the bagpipes, or a wooden flute, while you can see the heap of dust under the cloth a-growing and a-growing up and up, bigger and bigger.
4. At last he lifts up the cloth and shows you the green mango-tree growing on the piece of glass.
“He covers it again—plays. Lifts the cloth, shows you the mango tree in leaf. Covers it again—plays again. Takes away the cloth, and shows you the mango-tree in fruit, real fruit; but they never let you have the fruit for love or money. Rather than let any one have it, they pluck it and squash it between their fingers.”
One day, while I was making some sketch-book drawings of bursting shells down in the old water-course, the Roman Catholic padre came along.
“Sketching, Hargrave?”
“Yes, sir.”
And then: “I suppose you're Church of England, aren't you?”
“No, sir; I'm down as Quaker.”
“Quaker, eh?—that's interesting; I know quite a lot of Quakers in Dublin and Belfast.”
Who would expect to find “Father Brown” of G. K. Chesterton fame in a khaki drill uniform and a pith helmet?
A small, energetic man, with a round face and a habit of putting his hands deep into the patch pockets of his tunic. Here was a priest who knew his people, who was a real “father” to his khaki followers. I quickly discovered him to be a man of learning, and one who noticed small signs and commonplace details.
His eyes twinkled and glittered when he was amused, and his little round face wrinkled into wreaths of smiles.
When we moved to the Salt Lake dug-outs he came with us, and here he had a dug-out of his own.
When the day's work was finished, and the moonlight glittered white across the Salt Lake, I used to stroll away for a time by myself before turning in.
It was a good time to think. Everything was so silent. Even my own footsteps were soundless in the soft sand. It was on one of these night-prowls that I spotted the tiny figure of Father S—- jerking across the sands, with that well-known energetic walk, stick in hand.
“Stars, Hargrave?” said the little priest.
“Very clear to-night, sir.”
“Queer, you know, Hargrave, to think that those same old stars have looked down all these ages; same old stars which looked down on Darius and his Persians.”
He prodded the sand with his walking stick, stuck his cap on one side (I don't think he cared for his helmet), and peered up to the star-spangled sky.
“Wonderful country, all this,” said the padre; “it may be across this very Salt Lake that the armies of the ancients fought with sling and stone and spear; St. Paul may have put in here, he was well acquainted with these parts—Lemnos and all round about—preaching and teaching on his travels, you know.”
“Talking about Lemnos Island,” he went on, “did you notice the series of peaks which run across it in a line?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it was on those promontories that Agamemnon, King of Mycenæ, lit a chain of fire-beacons to announce the taking of Troy to his Queen, Clytaemnestra, at Argos—”
Here the little priest, as pleased as a school-boy, scratched a rough sketch map in the sand—
“All the islands round here are full of historical interest, you know; `far-famed Samothrace,' for instance.” Father S—- talked much of classical history, connecting these islands with Greek and Roman heroes.
All this was desperately interesting to me. It was picturesque to stand in the sand-bed of the Salt Lake, lit by the broad flood of silver moonlight, with the little priest eagerly scratching like an ibis in the sand with his walking-stick.
I learnt more about the Near East in those few minutes than I had ever done at school.
But besides the interest in this novel history lesson, I was more than delighted to find the padre so correct in his sketch of the island and the coast, and I took down what he told me in a note-book afterwards, and copied his sand-maps also.
After this I came to know him better than I had. I visited his dug-out, and he let me look at his books and Punch and a month-old Illustrated London News, or so. I came to admire him for his simplicity and for his devotion to his men. Every Sunday he held Mass in the trenches of the firing-line, and he never had the least fear of going up.
A splendid little man, always cheerful, always looking after his “flock.” Praying with those who were about to give up the ghost; administering the last rites of the Church to those who, in awful agony, were fluttering like singed moths at the edge of the great flame, the Great Life-Mystery of Death.
He wrote beautifully sad letters of comfort to the mothers of boy-officers who were killed. Father S—- knew every man: every man knew Father S—- and admired him.
His dug-out was made in a slope overlooking the bay, and was really a deep square pit in the sand-bank, roofed with corrugated iron and sandbagged all round. Here we talked. I found he knew G. K. C. and Hilaire Belloc. Always he wanted to look at any new drawings in my sketch-books.
It is a relief to speak with some intelligent person sometimes.
Such was Father S—-, a very 'cute little man, knowing most of the troubles of the men about him, noticing their ways and keeping in touch with them all.
Just after the episode of the lost squads we were working our stretcher-bearers as far as Brigade Headquarters which were situated on a steep backbone-like spur of the Kapanja Sirt.
One of my “lance-jacks” (lance-corporals) had been missing for a good long time, and we began to fear he was either shot or taken prisoner with the others who had gone too far up the Sirt.
One afternoon we were resting among the rocks, waiting for wounded to be sent back to us; for since the loss of the others we were not allowed to pass the Brigade Headquarters. There was a lull in the fighting, with only a few bursting shrapnel now and then.
This particular lance-jack was quite a young lad of the middle-class, with a fairly good education.
But he was a weedy specimen physically, and I doubted whether he could pull through if escape should mean a fight with Nature for food and water and life itself.
Fairly late in the day as we all lay sprawling on the rocks or under the thorn-bushes, I saw a little party staggering along the defile which led up to the Sirt at this point.
There were two men with cow-boy hats, and between them they helped another very thin and very exhausted-looking fellow, who tottered along holding one arm which had been wounded.
As they came closer I recognised my lost lance-jack, very pale and shaky, a little thinner than usual, and with a hint of that gleam of sniper-madness which I have noticed before in the jumpy, unsteady eyes of hunted men.
The other two, one each side, were sturdy enough. Well-built men, one short and the other tall, with great rough hands, sunburnt faces, and bare arms. They wore brown leggings and riding-breeches and khaki shirts. They carried their rifles at the trail and strode up to us with the graceful gait of those accustomed to the outdoor life.
“Awstralians!” said some one.
“An' the corporal!”
Immediately our men roused up and gathered round.
“Where's yer boss?” asked the tall Colonial.
“The adjutant is over here,” I answered.
“We'd like a word with him,” continued the man. I took them up to the officer, and they both saluted in an easy-going sort of way.
“We found 'im up there,” the Australian jerked his head, “being sniped and couldn't git away—says 'e belongs t' th' 32nd Ambulance—so here he is.”
The two Australians were just about to slouch off again when the adjutant called them back.
“Where did you find him?” he asked.
“Up beyond Jefferson's Post; there was five snipers pottin' at 'im, an' it looked mighty like as if 'is number was up. We killed four o' the snipers, and got him out.”
“That was very good of you. Did you see any more Medical Corps up there? We've lost some others, and an officer and sergeant.”
“No, I didn't spot any—did you, Bill?” The tall man turned to his pal leaning on his rifle.
“No,” answered the short sharp-shooter; “he's the only one. It was a good afternoon's sport—very good. We saw 'e'd got no rifle, and was in a tight clove-'itch, so we took the job on right there an' finished four of 'em; but it took some creepin' and crawlin'.”
“Well, we'll be quittin' this now,” said the tall one. “There's only one thing we'd ask of you, sir: don't let our people know anything about this.”
“But why?” asked the adjutant, astonished. “You've saved his life, and it ought to be known.”
“Ya-as, that may be, sir; but we're not supposed to be up here sharp-shootin'—we jist done it fer a bit of sport. Rightly we don't carry a rifle; we belong to the bridge-buildin' section. We've only borrowed these rifles from the Cycle Corps, an' we shall be charged with bein' out o' bounds without leave, an' all that sort o' thing if it gits known down at our headquarters.”
“Very well, I'll tell no one; all the same it was good work, and we thank you for getting him back to us,” the adjutant smiled.
The two Australians gave him a friendly nod, and said, “So long, you chaps!” to us and lurched off down the defile.
“We'll chuck it fer to-day—done enough,” said the tall man.
“Ya-as, we'd better git back. It was good sport—very good,” said the short one.
Certainly the Australians we met were a cheerful, happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care crew. They were the most picturesque set of men on the peninsula.
Rough travelling, little or no food, no water, sleepless nights and thrilling escapes made them look queerly primitive and Robinson Crusoeish.
I wrote in my pocket-book: “September 8, 1915.—The Australians have the keen eye, quick ear and silent tongue which evolves in the bushman and those who have faced starvation and the constant risk of sudden death, who have lived a hard life on the hard ground, like the animals of the wild, and come through.
“Fine fellows these, with good chests and arms, well-knit and gracefully poised by habitually having to creep and crouch, and run and fight. Sunburnt to a deep bronze, one and all.
“Their khaki shorts flap and ripple in the sea-wind like a troop of Boy Scouts. Some wear green shirts, and they all wear stone-gray wide-awake hats with pinched crown and broad flat brims.”
When at last the mails brought us month-old papers from England, we read that “The gallant Australians” at Suvla “took” Lala Baba and Chocolate Hill; indeed, as Hawk read out in our dug-out one mail-day—
“The Australians have took everythink, or practically everythink worth takin'. They stormed Lala Baba and captured Chocolate 'ill—in fac' they made the landin'; and the Xth and XIth Divisions are simply a myth accordin' to the papers!”
Many times have I seen the value of the Scout training, but never was it demonstrated so clearly as at Suvla Bay. Here, owing to the rugged nature of the country—devoid of all signs of civilisation—a barren, sandy waste—it was necessary to practise all the cunning and craft of the savage scout. Therefore those who had from boyhood been trained in scouting and scoutcraft came out top-dog.
And why?—because here we were working against men who were born scouts.
It became necessary to be able to find your way at night by the stars. You were not allowed to strike a light to look at a map, and anyhow the maps we had were on too small a scale to be of any real use locally.
Now, a great many officers were unable to find even the North Star! Perhaps in civil life they had been men who laughed at the boy scout in his shirt and shorts because they couldn't see the good of it! But when we came face to face with bare Nature we had to return to the methods of primitive man.
More than once I found it very useful to be able to judge the time by the swing of the star-sky.
Then again, many and many a young officer or army-scout on outpost duty was shot and killed because, instead of keeping still, he jerked his head up above the rocks and finding himself spotted jerked down again. The consequence was, that when he raised himself the next time the Turks had the spot “taped” and “his number was up.”
This means unnecessary loss of men, owing entirely to lack of training in scoutcraft and stalking.
Finding your way was another point. How many companies got “cut up” simply because the officer or sergeant in charge had no bump of location. As most men came from our big cities and towns, they knew nothing of spotting the trail or of guessing the right direction. Indeed, I see Sir Ian Hamilton states that owing to one battalion “losing its way” a most important position was lost—and this happened again and again—simply because the leaders were not scouts.
Then there were many young officers who when it came to the test could not read a map quickly as they went. (Boy scouts, please note.) This became a very serious thing when taking up fresh men into the firing-line.
Those men who went out with a lot of “la-di-da swank” soon found that they were nowhere in the game with the man who cut his drill trousers into shorts—went about with his shirt sleeves rolled up and didn't mind getting himself dirty.
There were very few “knuts” and they soon got cracked!
Shouting and talking was another point in scouting at Suvla Bay. Brought up in towns and streets, many men found it extremely difficult to keep quiet. Slowly they learnt that silence was the only protection against the hidden sniper.
I remember a lot of fresh men landing in high spirits and keen to get up to the fighting zone. They marched along in fours and whistled and sang; but the Turks in the hills soon spotted them and landed a shell in the middle of them. Silence is the scout's shield in war-time.
It fell to my lot to make crosses to mark the graves of the dead. These crosses were made out of bully-beef packing-cases, and on most of them I was asked to inscribe the name, number and regiment of the slain. I did this in purple copying pencil, as I had nothing more lasting: and generally it read:—
I had to be tombstone maker and engraver—and sometimes even sexton—a scout turns his hand to anything.
We had our advanced dressing station on the left of Chocolate Hill—the proper name of which is Bakka Baba.
Our ambulance wagons had to cross the Salt Lake, and often the wheels sank and we had to take another team of mules to pull them out.
The Turks had a tower—a gleaming white minaret—just beyond Chocolate Hill, near the Moslem cemetery in the village of Anafarta. It was supposed to be a sacred tower, but as they used it as an observation post, our battle-ships in the bay blew it down.
Flies swarmed everywhere, and were a great cause of disease, as, after visiting the dead and the latrines they used to come and have a meal on our jam and biscuits!
During the whole of August and September we were under heavy shell-fire; but we got quite used to it and hardly turned to look at a bursting shell.
I must say khaki drill uniform is not a good hiding colour. In the sunlight it showed up too light. I believe a parti-coloured uniform, say of green, khaki and gray would be much better. Therefore the Scout who wears a khaki hat, green shirt, khaki shorts and gray stockings is really wearing the best uniform for colour-protection in stalking.
The more scouting we can introduce the better.
Carry on, Boy Scouts! Bad scoutcraft was one of the chief drawbacks in what has been dubbed “The Glorious Failure.”
There are some things you never forget...
That little Welshman, for instance, lying on a ledge of rock above our Brigade Headquarters with a great gaping shrapnel wound in his abdomen imploring the Medical Officer in the Gaelic tongue to “put him out,” and how he died, with a morphia tablet in his mouth, singing at the top of his high-pitched voice—
And so, slowly his soul steamed out of the wrecked station of his body and left for “Alabam!”
One evening, the 25th of August, bush-fires broke out on the right of Chocolate Hill.
The shells from the Turks set light to the dried sage, and thistle and thorn, and soon the whole place was blazing. It was a fearful sight. Many wounded tried to crawl away, dragging their broken arms and legs out of the burning bushes and were cremated alive.
It was impossible to rescue them. Boxes of ammunition caught fire and exploded with terrific noise in thick bunches of murky smoke. A bombing section tried to throw off their equipment before the explosives burst, but many were blown to pieces by their own bombs. Puffs of white smoke rose up in little clouds and floated slowly across the Salt Lake.
The flames ran along the ridges in long lapping lines with a canopy of blue and gray smoke. We could hear the crackle of the burning thickets, and the sharp “bang!” of bullets. The sand round Suvla Bay hid thousands of bullets and ammunition pouches, some flung away by wounded men, some belonging to the dead. As the bush-fires licked from the lower slopes of the Sari Bair towards Chocolate Hill this lost ammunition exploded, and it sounded like erratic rifle-fire. The fires glowed and spluttered all night, and went on smoking in the morning. I had to go up to Chocolate Hill about some sand-bags for our hospital dug-outs next day, and on the way up I noticed a human pelvis and a chunk of charred human vertebrae under a scorched and charcoaled thorn-bush.
Hawk and I kept a very good look-out every day. We noted the arrival of reinforcements, and the putting up of new telegraph lines; we spotted incoming transports, and the departure of our battle-ships in the bay.
In fact, between us, we worked a very complete “Intelligence Department” of our own. We made a rough chart showing the main lines of communications, and the position of snipers and wells, telegraph wires to the artillery, and the main observation posts and listening saps.
“It's just as well,” said I, “to know as much as we can how things are going, and to keep account of details—it's safer, and might be very useful.”
“Very true,” said Hawk; “'ave you noticed 'ow that little cruiser comes in every morning at the same time, and goes out again in the late afternoon? Also, two brigades of Territorials came in last night and went round by the beach early this morning towards Lala Baba; I see the footprints when I went down for a wash.”
The colonel had camped us on the edge of the Salt Lake on this side of an incline which led up to a flat plateau. Into this incline we had made our dug-outs, and he was now planning the digging out of a square-shaped place which would hold all our stretchers on which the sick and wounded lay, and would be protected from the Turkish shell-fire by being dug into the solid sandstone.
I was looking about for sand-tracks and shells, and I noticed that the grass had grown much more luxuriously at one level than it did lower down. This grass was last year's and was now yellow and dead and rustling like paper flowers.
“This,” said I to Hawk, “was last year's water-mark in the rainy season.”
“That's gospel,” said Hawk; “and what would you make out o' that observation?”
He smiled his queer whimsical smile.
“Why, I guess we shall be swamped out of this camp in a month's time.”
“Yes; practically the 'ole of this, up to this level, will be under water.”
“Then what's the good of starting to dig a big permanent hospital here when——?”
“Yours not to reason why,” said Hawk; “it's a way they have in the army; but I'm not bothering.”
Each section dug in shifts day after day until the men were worn out with digging.
Then the long, flat rain-clouds appeared one morning over the distant range of mountains.
“You see them,” said Hawk, lighting a “woodbine,” and pointing across the Salt Lake; “that's the first sign of the wet season coming up.”
Sure enough in a few days the colonel had orders to shift his ambulance to “C” Beach, near Lala Baba, as our present position was unfavourable for the construction of a permanent field hospital, owing to the rise of water in the wet season.
Soon after this, Hawk was moved to the advanced dressing station on Chocolate Hill, and I had to remain with my section near the Salt Lake. Thus we were separated.
“It's to break up our click, too thick together, we bin noticing too much, we know the workin' o' things too well, must break up the combine, dangerous to 'ave people about 'oo spot things and keep their jaws tight. Git rid o' Hawk—see th' ideeah? Very clever, ain't it? Practically we're the only two 'oo do feel which way the wind blows, an' that's inconvenient sometimes.”
I asked Hawk while he was on Chocolate Hill to note down in his head the various snipers' posts, and the general positions of the British and Turkish trenches.
There came a time when I wanted to send him a note. But it was a dangerous thing to send notes about. They might fall into the hands of some sniper and give away information.
Therefore I got a bar of yellow soap from our stores, cut it in two, bored out a small hole in one half, wrapped up my note, put it inside the soap, clapped the two halves together, stuck them together by wetting it, and completely concealed the cut by rubbing it with water.
I then asked one of the A.S.C. drivers who was going up with the ambulance wagon in the morning to give the piece of soap to Hawk.
“He hasn't got any soap,” I explained, “and he asked me to send him a bit. Tell him it's from me, and that I hope he'll find it all right—it's the best we have!”
Hawk got the soap, guessed there was a reason for sending it, broke it open and found the note. So a simple boy-scout trick came in useful on active service.