Volume I Part 18 (1/2)
Daily we ress, and whenever the reinforcein to put in an appearance, the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force will press forith a fresh ireatest Imperial task ever entrusted to an army
_27th May, 1915 HMT ”Arcadian”_ The _Majestic_ has been torpedoed and has sunk off Cape helles Got the news at mid-day Fuller, my Artillery Commander, and Ashmead-Bartlett, the correspondent, were both on board, and both were saved--one under
Bad luck A Naval Officer who has seen her says she is lying in shalloater--6 fatho like a stranded whale He says the Gerh a crowd of cargo shi+ps and transports Like picking a royal stag out of his harem of does To my Staff, they tell me, he delivered himself further but, as I said to the Officer who repeated these criticised”
_28th May, 1915 HMT ”Arcadian”_ Went for a ith the Ader to accept the responsibility of keeping us afloat
As helles, Anzac and Tenedos have each been ruled out, we are going to doss down on this sandbank opposite us One thing, it will be central to both my theatres of work
_29th May, 1915 HMT ”Arcadian”_ The Coer Keyes, arrived mid-day and invited me to come over to helles with hi in hopes--_in hopes,_ if you please--of hitting off the subht hit hireatly excited to see the bladder of an indicator net sot ready to drop But the net remained motionless and, as the water was too deep for the subh no one dared to say so) that a porpoise had been poking fun at the Co at helles inspected the various roads, which were in the
Next saw Hunter-Weston Canvassed plans with him and felt myself refreshed Then went on to Gouraud's Headquarters, taking the Commodore with me My Commanders are an asset which cancels ave us tea Walked down to ”V” Beach at 6 pot on to the pier, which ends in the _River Clyde_, we found another destroyer, the _Wolverine_, under Lieutenant-Commander Keyes, the brother of the Commodore She was to take us across, and (of all places in the world to select for a berth!) she had run herself alongside the _River Clyde_ which was, at that ined that taking aboard a boss like the Coer boss (in naval esti brother, the Commodore, our Lieutenant-Commander would nip away presto Not a bit of it! No sooner had he got us aboard than he came out boldly and very, very slowly, stern first, froainst Asia with 4-inch lyddite froht seems quite funny to me now but, at the time, serio-comic would have better described my impressions Shells ashore are part of the common lot; they come in the day's work: on the water; in a cockleshell--well, you can't go to ground, anyway!
[Illustration: VIEW OF ”V” BEACH, TAKEN FROM SS ”RIVER CLYDE”
_”Central News” photo_]
Heavy fighting at Anzac The Turks fired a mine under Quinn's Post and then rushed a section of the defence isolated by the explosion At 6 in the allantly retaken with the bayonet There are excursions and alarms; attacks and counter-attacks; boe is our only retort--but we hold fast the crater!
When I tell theh to let ive them Constantinople, that is the truth On paper, the Turks no doubt h together to drive the Australians back a short two hundred yards they could give the Sultan the resounding prestige of a Peninsula freed from the Giaour But that would require more Turks than the Turks could feed, whereas we knoe could do it now, as we are--given the ithal--trench e from Hanbury Williams, who is with the Grand Duke Nicholas, to say that all idea of sending me a Russian Army Corps to land at the Bosphorus has been abandoned!!!
_30th May, 1915 HMT ”Arcadian”_ Went to Anzac in a destroyer The Cove was being heavily shelled, and the troops near the beach together with the fatigue parties handling stores and aouts like le Birdwood came out to meethiht on to the end of the deserted pier
Just as ere getting near his quarters, a couple of shrapnel burst at an angle and height which, by the laws of gravity, ht to have put a fullstop to this chronicle Actually, alked on--through the ”Valley of Death”--past the spot where the brave Bridges bit the dust, to the Headquarters of the 4th Australian Infantry Brigade Thence I could see the enemy trenches in front of Quinn's Post, and also a very brisk bomb combat in full flaood the Turkish cothe path at the botto notices were stuck up The wayfarer has to be as punctilious about each footstep as Christian in the ”Pilgri hiht or to the left of the track, he is almost certainly shot Half of the pathway may be as safe as Piccadilly, whilst he who treads the other had far better be up yonder at hand grips with the Turks Presuround defilades one part, for the eneh, were they only 20 yards nearer the edge of the cliff, they would command its whole extent The spirit of the ive them blankets: as to square meals and soft sleeps, these are drea Yet I never struck a e sides of frozen beef;up cliffs with kerosine tins full of water;in small dens scooped out from the banks of yellow clay--everyone wore a Bank Holiday air;--evidently the ranklings and worry of mankind--miseries and concerns of the spirit--had fled the precincts of this valley The Boss--the bill--the girl--envy, er, hatred--had scooted far away to the Antipodes All the tiroaned and whined, touching just the say as was in evidence everywhere else To understand that awful din, raise the eyes 25 degrees to the top of the cliff which closes in the tail end of the valley and you can see the Turkish hand grenades bursting along the crest, just where an occasional bayonet flashes and figures hardly distinguishable froular line Or else they rise to fire and are silhouetted a nize the naked athletes frooes into your mouth as a whole bunch of them dart forward suddenly, and as suddenly disappear And the bomb shower stops dead--for the moment; but, all the time, from that fiery crest line which is Quinn's, there co the on stretchers
Boes and blood Yet three out of four of ”the boys” have grit left for a gay s for their turn as they pass, pass, pass, down on their way to the sea
There are poets and writers who see naught in war but carrion, filth, savagery and horror The heroism of the rank and filethe only exercise in devotion on the large scale existing in this world The superb moral victory over death leaves them cold Each one to his taste To me this is no valley of death--it is a valley brih more in five o or Ballarat Ask the brothers of these very fighters--Calgoorlie or Coolgardie miners--to do one quarter the work and to run one hundredth the risk on a wages basis--instanter there would be a riot
But here,--not a murmur, not a question; only a radiant force of caes and renades as they can throe have--a dozen per Cost all the troops, but especially the Australians, at this lack of elerenades Our overseas ent They are prepared to uns; lack of high explosives But they know there ood bombs to our one bad one; and they think, some of them, that this must be my fault Far from it _Directly_ after the naval battle of the 18th March--ie, over twofor boht, and I had hoped for a ot, practically, none; nor any promise for the future In default of help from home, we have tried to manufacture these primitive but very effective projectiles for ourselves with jaether De Lothbiniere has shown ingenuity in thusbricks without straw The Fleet, too, has played up and de Robeck has guaranteed me two thousand to be ypt has been i a few; Methuen at Malta says they can't make the country like Great Britain should be in straits for engines so simple
Yesterday and to-day we have fired, for us, a terrible lot of shells (1,800 shrapnel) but never was shot better spent We reckon the eneuns playing on the colument in Quinn's Post Add this to the 3,000 killed, and, say, 12,000 wounded on the 18th instant, and it is clear no troops in the world can stand it very long But we are literally at the end of our shrapnel; and as to high explosive, according to the standards of the gunners, we have never had any!
Left on a picket boat with Birdie to board my destroyer to an accompaniment of various denominations of projectiles One or two shells burst hard by just as ere scra up her side
Vice-Admiral Nicholls called after my return Courtauld Thomson, the Red Cross man, dined; very helpful; very well stocked with comforts and everyone likes him, even the RAMC
_31st May, 1915 HMT ”Arcadian”_ Worked in the forenoon Gouraud, Girodon and Hunter-Weston lunched and we spent the afternoon at the schereed that Fortune had not been over kind By one h _moral_ of the Turks ht, thousands of their coreat battleshi+ps sink beneath the waves and all the others nified Most of the Armada of store shi+ps had already cleared out and now the last of the battleshi+ps has offed it over the offing; a move which the whole of the German Grand Fleet could not have forced them to make! What better pick-me-up could Providence have provided for the badly-shaken Turks? Nothat stirs Nofroean into the Dardanelles!
_1st June, 1915 Imbros_ Came ashore and stuck up uine Greek agriculturalist has been trying to plant wheat
We shall live the silad to be off the shi+p and able to stretch our legs
Hard fighting in the North zone and the South Both outposts captured by us on the 29th May at Anzac and on the French right at helles heavily attacked In the North we had to give ground, but not before we had made the enemy pay ten times its value in killed and wounded Had we only had a few spare rounds of shrapnel we need never have gone back The War Office have called for a return of ht, and I find that, since the 14th May, we have expended 477 shell altogether at Anzac and helles combined In the South the enemy twice recaptured the redoubt taken by the French on the 29th, but Gouraud, having a nice little parcel of high explosive on hand, was able to drive them out definitely and to keep the all day in ca De Robeck caether in the afternoon Everything is fixed up for our big attack on the 4th Froraphs it would appear that the front line Turkish trenches are holds In fact, the true tug only begins e try to carry the second line and the flanking roups of 75s with HE shell, and I areat deal to us When I say they are lent to us, I do not uns at our disposal They are only ours for defensive purposes; that is to say, they reun positions in the French lines and are to help by thickening the barrage in front of the Naval Division