Fortunately, only about one in four of its shells burst, otherwise we should have suffered very heavily, because many of them fell in and around our lines. My men would calmly pick up these unexploded shells and struggle off with them on their shoulders to adorn the entrance of their dug-outs! This used to horrify the French gunners, who were close by and knew the danger of touching such dangerous toys. I am afraid my Zionists thought me somewhat of a tyrant for abolishing these aesthetic aids to the beautification of their subterranean homes!
Now and again, just as a reminder of the rigours to come, we were deluged by a downpour of rain, and then life in the trenches was almost unbearable, for, owing to the subsoil being clay, all the water ran on the surface and speedily filled up every trench, dug-out and hollow; and this discomfort, coupled with mud, filth, too little food and sleep, and too much shells and bombs, made life in Gallipoli more fit for a dog than a man.
As the cold weather was coming on, I determined to build a good stone house for my men, where there would always be a big fire going to keep them warm and to dry their clothes when they came back wet from the trenches. As it was not in our zone, I had to get the permission of the Chief Engineer of the French Army to take some stones from Sedd-el-Bahr village, because it was only there that building material could be obtained. While we were pulling down a house and excavating the foundation, we dug up a slab of marble with a beautiful filigree design carved round the outer edge of it, and in the centre, strange to say, was the Shield of David! The stone must have been very, very old, and how it got there is a mystery. Perhaps it may have been taken from Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem.
My Zion men were delighted at the find and brought the stone in triumph to our camp, and it was kept in the new house as a talisman to ward off the shells. Strange to say, although they fell all round, the building was never touched nor was any one injured in its vicinity.
Our own dug-out was also greatly improved when the weather became bitterly cold. We made the fireplace and chimney-stack out of old kerosene tins, which made a kind of brasier on which we burned charcoal obtained from the refuse heap at the Field Bakery. Altogether, our dug-out was considered to be the cosiest one in the whole Peninsula, as indeed it had every right to be, for was not Claude Rolo, who was our architect and engineer, one of the cleverest civil engineers that ever passed through the Polytechnic in Paris?
Our charcoal fire was very useful in many ways; it made very good toast, for the bread, which up to now had been excellent, began to be sodden owing to the bakery being in the open and, of course, getting the full benefit of all the rain that often came down in torrents; and in addition to the rain the unfortunate bakers were at all times under shell-fire. Although the bread was not up to the usual standard after the rains set in, yet in the whole history of war I do not believe that men and animals have ever been better fed than were the troops, horses and mules during the whole time we were on the Peninsula. The variety of food might perhaps have been bettered, but the quality and quantity on the whole were excellent and reflected the greatest credit on the organisation of the Army Service Corps; in fact, it was the only department where one could say all the time--it had done well. The Ordnance failed at times--failed lamentably in the supply of high explosives for the guns, but this was through no fault of the ordnance officer on the spot, who, I know, took every precaution to ask for every conceivable article months before it was required. Of course, he did sometimes get the needed articles, and sometimes, when it was on its way, submarines would sink the ship, or the ordnance people said the ship was sunk, which amounted to the same thing and covered a multitude of sins. Those submarines saved many reputations! All the sapper supplies, however, might just as well have been sunk, as it was impossible to get the smallest scrap of material, no matter how urgently required, without the most minute details as to what it was for and all about it. There was any amount of stuff one wanted in the Field Park, but when application was made for it the invariable reply was, "It is earmarked for other purposes."
This policy is all very well in normal times, but does not do for war.
Some men cannot shake off the petty trammels by which they are fettered in times of peace.
I have no doubt the Turks much enjoyed the use of a considerable amount of this "earmarked" material, which, if it had been issued to us, would have greatly enhanced the comfort of man and beast.
I remember on one occasion being in want of a gallon of tar. Now there was any amount of it in the stores, in fact, one could see it oozing out of the barrels in all directions. I wanted this tar to put on some ropes and sacks filled with sand which I was burying in the ground to make my horse lines and to waterproof some canvas; so I sent a man to the R. E.
Park, with a requisition, hoping to get it back in the course of half an hour or so; but no: all he brought back was a letter to say: "Please explain for what purpose you require this gallon of tar." I was so annoyed that I replied: "To make a bonfire when you get the order of the boot." But I have some doubt as to whether this message ever reached its destination, as I had a very diplomatic adjutant.
The officers and men of the corps of Royal Engineers who wore no red-tabs were simply splendid, and it was with admiration that I often watched them at all hours of the day and night, digging trenches, making saps, or putting up barbed wire, right in the very teeth of the enemy--"Second to None."
It is sometimes of vital importance in war to do the exact contrary to all peace tradition; but men get into a groove, get narrow, and often fail to rise to the occasion. I have a good instance of this in mind. A certain officer refused to issue sandbags from his store when they were urgently needed. (This did not happen at Helles.) "They cost sixpence each," he remarked, "and I have got to be careful of them,"--a wise precaution in peace-time, but utterly unsound in war, because a few sandbags at sixpence each might save the lives of several soldiers worth hundreds of pounds, putting it on merely a cash basis.
CHAPTER XXX
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 aegean 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 aegean, 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.
CHAPTER XXXI
THE EVACUATION
When I learned in August of the Great Failure at Suvla, and heard with astonishment and no little anger that no further troops were to be sent to Gallipoli, I knew then that the only thing to do was to get out as quickly as possible before the Turks could get a fresh stock of munitions and reinforcements from Germany and Bulgaria.
It must not be imagined that I was anxious that we should leave Gallipoli after all our great sacrifices there, but since the Government had decided once more to fritter away our chances by diverting troops to Salonika, when it was already too late to accomplish any useful purpose there, I knew that our position on the Peninsula was hopeless.
Bad weather was coming on and it would have been absolutely impossible to live in the trenches and dug-outs. Even with the little amount of rain that I had experienced, the communication and other trenches were at times waist deep in raging torrents, carrying down empty cases, dead Turks and other debris.