AT SUVLA BAY

Being The Notes And Sketches Of Scenes, Characters

And Adventures Of The Dardanelles Campaign

By John Hargrave

("White Fox" of "The Scout ")

While Serving With The 32nd Field Ambulance, X Division, MediterraneanExpeditionary Force, During The Great War

 To MINOBI

 We played at Ali Baba, On a green linoleum floor; Now we camp near Lala Baba, By the blue Aegean shore. 

 We sailed the good ship Argus, Behind the studio door; Now we try to play at "Heroes" By the blue Aegean shore. 

 We played at lonely Crusoe, In a pink print pinafore; Now we live like lonely Crusoe, By the blue Aegean shore. 

 We used to call for "Mummy, " In nursery days of yore; And still we dream of Mother, By the blue Aegean shore. 

 While you are having holidays, With hikes and camps galore; We are patching sick and wounded, By the blue Aegean shore. 

 J. H. 

 Salt Lake Dug-out, September 12th, 1915. (Under shell-fire. )

TURKISH WORDS

 Sirt--summit. Dargh--mountain. Bair or bahir--spur. Burnu--cape. Dere--valley or stream. Tepe--hill. Geul--lake. Chesheme--spring. Kuyu--well. Kuchuk--small. Tekke--Moslem shrine. Ova--plain. Liman--bay or harbour. Skala--landing-place. Biyuk--great. 

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

 I. IN WHICH MY KING AND COUNTRY NEED ME

 II. A LONG WAY TO TIPPERARY

 III. SNARED

 IV. CHARACTERS

 V. I HEAR OF HAWK

 VI. ON THE MOVE

 VII. MEDITERRANEAN NIGHTS

 VIII. THE CITY OF WONDERFUL COLOUR

 IX. MAROONED ON LEMNOS ISLAND

 X. THE NEW LANDING

 XI. THE KAPANJA SIRT

 XII. THE SNIPER-HUNT

 XIII. THE ADVENTURE OF THE WHITE PACK-MULE

 XIV. THE SNIPER OF PEAR-TREE GULLY

 XV. KANGAROO BEACH

 XVI. THE ADVENTURE OF THE LOST SQUADS

 XVII. "OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND!"

 XVIII. TWO MEN RETURN

 XIX. THE RETREAT

 XX. "JHILL-O! JOHNNIE!"

 XXI. SILVER BAY

 XXII. DUG-OUT YARNS

 XXIII. THE WISDOM OF FATHER S----

 XXIV. THE SHARP-SHOOTERS

 XXV. A SCOUT AT SULVA BAY

 XXVI. THE BUSH-FIRES

 XXVII. THE DEPARTUR

XXVIII. LOOKING BACK

AT SUVLA BAY

CHAPTER I. IN WHICH MY KING AND COUNTRY NEED ME

I left the office of The Scout, 28 Maiden Lane, W. C. , on September 8th, 1914, took leave of the editor and the staff, said farewell to my littlecamp in the beech-woods of Buckinghamshire and to my woodcraft scouts, bade good-bye to my father, and went off to enlist in the Royal ArmyMedical Corps. 

I made my way to the Marylebone recruiting office, and after waitingabout for hours, I went at last upstairs and "stripped out" with a lotof other men for the medical examination. 

The smell of human sweat was overpowering in the little ante-room. Someof the men had hearts and anchors and ships and dancing-girls tattooedin blue on their chests and arms. Some were skinny and others toofat. Very few looked fit. I remarked upon the shyness they suffered inwalking about naked. 

"Did yer pass?"

"No, 'e spotted it, " said the dejected rejected. 

"Wot?"

"Rupture. "

"Got through, Alf?"

"No: eyesight ain't good enough. "

So it went on for half-an-hour. 

Then came my turn. 

"Ha!" said the little doctor, "this is the sort we want, " and herubbed his gold-rimmed glasses on his handkerchief. "Chest, thirty-four--thirty-seven, " said the doctor, tapping with histape-measure, "How did yer do that?"

"What, sir?" said I, gasping, for I was trying to blow my chest out, orburst. 

"Had breathing exercises?"

"No, sir--I'm a scout. "

"Ha!" said he, and noticed my knees were brown with sunburn because Ialways wore shorts. 

I passed the eyesight test, and they took my name down, and my address, occupation and age. 

"Ever bin in the army before?"

"No, sir. "

"Married?"

"No, sir. "

"Ever bin in prison?"

"No, sir. "

"What's yer religion?"

"Nothing, sir. "

"What?"

"Nothing at all. "

"Ah, but you've got to 'ave one in the army. "

"Got to?"

"Yes, you must. Wot's it to be--C. Of E. ?"

"What d'you mean?"

"Church of England. Most of 'em do. "

Awful thoughts of church parade flashed through my mind. 

"Right you are--Quaker!" said I. 

"Quaker! Is that a religion?" he asked doubtfully. 

"Yes. "

I watched him write it down. 

"Right, that'll do. Report at Munster Road recruiting station, Fulham, to-morrow. "

We were all dressed by this time. After a lot more waiting about outsidein a yard, a sergeant came and took about eight of us into a room wherethere was a table and some papers and an officer in khaki. 

I spotted a Bible on the table. We had to stand in a row while he reada long list of regulations in which we were made to promise to obeyall orders of officers and non-commissioned officers of His Majesty'sService. After that, he told us he would swear us in. We had to hold upthe right hand above the head, and say, all together: "Swhelpmegod!"

I immediately realised that I had taken an oath, which was not inaccordance with my regimental religion!

No sooner were we let out than I began to feel the ever-tighteningtangle of red tape. 

What the dickens had I enlisted for? I asked myself. I had lost allmy old-time freedom: I could no longer go on in my old camping andsketching life. I was now a soldier--a "tommy"--a "private. " I loathedthe army. What a fool I was!

The next day I reported at Fulham. More hours of waiting. I discoveredan old postman who had also enlisted in the R. A. M. C. , and as he"knew the ropes" I stuck to him like a leech. In the afternoon an oldrecruiting sergeant with a husky voice fell us in, and we marched, amob of civilians, through the London streets to the railway station. Although this was quite a short distance, the sergeant fell us out neara public-house, and he and a lot more disappeared inside. 

What a motley crowd we were: clerks in bowler hats; "knuts" in brownsuits, brown ties, brown shoes, and a horse-shoe tie-pin; tramp-likelooking men in rags and tatters and smelling of dirt and beer and ranktwist. 

Old soldiers trying to "chuck a chest"; lanky lads from the countrygaping at the houses, shops and people. 

Rough, broad-speaking, broad-shouldered men from the Lancashirecotton-mills; shop assistants with polished boots, and some even withkid gloves and a silver-banded cane. Here and there was a farm-hand incorduroys and hob-nailed, cowdung-spattered boots, puffing at a brokenold clay pipe, and speaking in the "Darset" dialect. At the station theyhad to have another "wet" in the refreshment room, and by the time thetrain was due to start a good many were "canned up. "

Boozy voices yelled out--

"'S long way. .. Tipper-airy. .. "

"Good-bye, Bill. .. 'ave. .. 'nother swig?"

"Don't ferget ter write, Bill. .. "

"Aw-right, Liz. .. Good-bye, Albert. .. "

We were locked in the carriage. There was much shouting andlaughing. .. . And so to Aldershot. 

CHAPTER II. A LONG WAY TO TIPPERARY

Aldershot was a seething swarm of civilians who had enlisted. Everyclass and every type was to be seen. We found out the R. A. M. C. Depot andreported. A man sat at an old soapbox with a lot of papers, and we hadto file past him. This was in the middle of a field with row upon row ofbell-tents. 

"Name?" he snapped. 

I told him. 

"Age?"

"Religion?"

"Quaker. "

"Right!--Quaker Oats!--Section 'E, ' over there. "

But my old postman knew better, and, having found out where "Section E"was camped, we went off up the town to look for lodging for the night, knowing that in such a crowd of civilians we could not be missed. 

At last we found a pokey little house where the woman agreed to let usstay the night and get some breakfast next day. 

That night was fearful. We had to sleep in a double bed, and it wasfull of fleas. The moonlight shone through the window. The shadow of abarrack-room chimney-pot slid slowly across my face as the hours draggedon. 

We got up about 5. 30 A. M. , so as to get down to the parade-ground intime for the "fall in. "

We washed in a tiny scullery sink downstairs. There was a Pears' Annualprint of an old fisherman telling a story to a little girl stuck overthe mantelpiece. 

We had eggs and bread-and-butter and tea for breakfast, and I think thewoman only charged us three shillings all told. 

Once down at the parade-ground we looked about for "Section E" and foundtheir lines in the hundreds of rows of bell-tents. 

Life for the next few days was indeed "hand to mouth. " We had to go ona tent-pitching fatigue under a sergeant who kept up a continual flow ofastoundingly profane oaths. 

Food came down our lines but seldom. When it did come you had to fetchit in a huge "dixie" and grope with your hands at the bits of gristleand bone which floated in a lot of greasy water. Some one bought a boxof sardines in the next tent. 

"Goin' ter share 'em round?" said a hungry voice. 

"Nah blooming fear I ain't--wot yer tike me for--eh?"

Every one was starving. I had managed to fish a lump of bone with ascrag of tough meat on it from the lukewarm slosh in our "dixie. " Butsome one who was very hungry and very big came along and snatched itaway before I could get my teeth in it. 

We had continually to "fall in" in long rows and answer our names. Thiswas "roll-call, " and roll-call went on morning, noon, and night. Evenwhen your own particular roll-call was not being called you could hearsome other corporal or sergeant shouting--

"Jones F. --Wiggins, T. --Simons, G. -- Harrison, I. .. . " and so on all daylong. 

There were no ground-sheets to the tents. We squatted in the mud, and wehad one blanket each, which was simply crawling. 

We were indeed in a far worse condition than many savages. Then came therain. We huddled into the tents. There were twenty-two in mine, and, as a bell-tent is full up with eighteen, you may imagine how thick theatmosphere became. One old man would smoke his clay-pipe withchoking twist tobacco. Most of the others smoked rank and often damp"woodbines. " The language was thick with grumbling and much swearing. Atfirst it was not so bad. But some one touched the side of the tent andthe rain began to dribble through. Then we found a tiny stream of wetslowly trickling along underneath the tent-walls towards the tent-pole, and by night time we were lying and sitting in a pool of mud. 

About a week later when the sergeant-major told us on parade that wewere "going to Tipperary" we all laughed, and no one believed it. 

But the next day they marched us down to the Government siding andlocked us all in a train, which took us right away to Fishguard. 

Some of the men got some bread-and-cheese before starting, but I, incompany with a good many others, did not. 

The boat was waiting when they bundled us out on the quay. 

It was a cattle-boat and very small and very smelly. There were nocabins or accommodation of any sort: only the cattle-stalls down below. Six hundred of us got aboard. Out of the six hundred, five hundredwere sick. It was a very rough crossing, and we were all starving andshivering. I had nothing but what I stood up in--shirt, shorts, andcowboy-hat, and my old haversack, which contained soap, towel and razor, and also a sketch-book and a small colour-box. 

The Irish sea-winds whistled up my shorts--but I preferred the icy windto the stinking cattle-stalls and insect-infested straw below. We werepacked in like sardines. Men were retching and groaning, cussing andgrowling. At last I found a coil of rope. It was a huge coil with a holein the centre--something like a large bird's nest. I got into this holeand curled up like a dormouse. Here I did not feel the cold so much, and lying down I didn't feel sick. The moon glittered on the great graybillows. The cattle-boat heaved up and slid down the mountains. Shepitched and rolled and slithered sideways down the wave-slopes. And soto Waterford. 

From Waterford by train to Tipperary. It was early morning. The firstthing I noticed was that the grass in Ireland was very green and thatthe fields were very small. 

We had had no food for twenty-seven hours. I found a very hard crust ofbread in my haversack, and eat it while the others were asleep in thecarriage. 

CHAPTER III. SNARED

 "CRIMED"

"Off with his head, " said the Queen. --Alice in Wonderland. 

 "Charge against 31963-- Failing to drink some oniony tea; Ha! Ha! What! What! I can have you SHOT! D'you realise that I can have you lashed To a wheel and smashed? What? Rot! Yes--SHOT! D'you realise this? Right--turn! DISMISS!"

 Lemnos: October 1915. 

Born and bred in a studio, and brought up among the cloud-sweptmountains of Westmorland, amid the purple heather and the sunset in thepeat-moss puddles, barrack-life soon became like penal servitude. I waslike a caged wild animal. I knew now why the tigers and leopards pace upand down, up and down, behind their bars at the Zoo. 

We only stayed a week in the great, gray, prison-like barracks atTipperary. We looked about for the "sweetest girl" of the song--but the"colleens" were disappointing. My heart was not "right there. " We movedto Limerick; and in Limerick we stopped for seven solid months. 

For seven months we did the same old squad-drill every day, at thesame time, on the same old square, until at last we all began to beunbearably "fed up. " The sections became slack at drill because theywere over-drilled and sickened by the awful monotony of it all. 

During those seven dreary months, in that dismal slum-grown town, welearnt all the tricks of barrack-life. We knew how to "come the oldsoldier"; we knew how and when to "wangle out" of doing this or thatfatigue; we practised the ancient art of "going sick" when we knew along route march was coming off next day. 

We knew how to "square" the guard if we came in late, and the otherslearnt how to dodge church parade. 

"'E never goes to church parade. "

"No; 'e was a fly one--'e was. "

"Wotchermean?"

"Put 'isself down as Quaker. "

"Lummy--that's me next time I 'list--Quaker Oats!"

By this time I had been promoted to the rank of corporal. 

Next to the regimental sergeant-major, I had the loudest drill voice onthe square, and shouting at squad-drill and stretcher-drill was aboutthe only thing I ever did well in the army--except that, having been ascout, I was able to instruct the signalling squad. 

Route marches and field-days were a relief from the drill square. Forfive months we got no issue of khaki. Many of the men were through atthe knees, and tattered at the elbows. Some were buttonless and patched. I had to put a patch in my shorts. Our civilian boots were wearingout--some were right through. Heels came off when they "right turned, "others had their soles flapping as they marched. 

My "batman, " who cleaned my boots and swept out the bunk, had histrousers held together with a huge safety-pin. The people called us"Kitchener's Rag-time Army. " We became so torn, and worn, and ragged, that it was impossible to go out in the town. Being the only one inscout rig-out I drew much attention. 

"'Ere 'e comes, Moik-ell!"

"Kitchener's cowboy! Isn't he lovely!"

"Bejazus! so-it-is!"

"Come an' see Path-rick--Kitchener'scowboy!--by-the-holy-sufferin'-jazus!"

I found an old curio-shop down near the docks, and here I used torummage among the gilded Siamese idols, and the painted African gods anddrums. I discovered some odd parts of A Thousand-and-One Arabian Nights, which I bought for a penny or two, and took back to my barrack-room toread. By this means I forgot the gray square, and the gray line of thebarracks outside, and the bare boards and yellow-washed walls within. 

I used to practise "slipping" the guard at the guard-room gate. Thisform of amusement became quite exciting, and I was never caught at it. 

Next I got a very old and worn copy of the Koran. 

By this time I was a full-blown sergeant. I made a mistake in walkinginto the sergeants' mess with the Koran under my arm. It wasdifficult to explain what sort of book it was. One day the regimentalsergeant-major said--

"You know, Hargrave, I can't make you out. "

"No, sir?"

"No;--you're not a soldier, you never will be--you act the part prettywell. But you don't take things seriously enough. "

We were often out on the Clare Mountains for field-days with thestretcher-squads. Coming back one day, I spotted two herons wading amongsome yellow-ochre sedges in a swampy field. I determined there and thento come back and stalk them. The following Saturday I set out with afellow we called "Cherry Blossom, " because he never cleaned his boots. Itook a pair of field-glasses, and "Cherry" had a bag of pastries, whichwe bought on the way. We stalked those herons for hours and hours. Wecrept through the reeds, hid behind trees, and crawled into bushes, butthe herons were better scouts. We only got about fifty yards up to one. For all that, it was like my old scout life--and we had had a break fromthe gray walls and the everlasting saluting of officers. 

There were rumours of war, and that's all we knew of it. There werefresh rumours each day. We were going to Egypt. We were to be sent tothe East Coast for "home defence. " That offended our martial ardour. When were we going out? Should we ever get out? Had we got to do squaddrill for "duration"? Had Kitchener forgotten the Xth Division?

Now and then a batch of men were put into khaki which arrived at thequartermaster's stores in driblets. Some had greeny puttees and sandyslacks, a "civvy" coat and a khaki cap. Others were rigged out in"Kitchener's workhouse blue, " with little forage caps on one side. Thesprinkling of khaki and khaki-browns and greens increased every time wecame on parade: until one day the whole of the three field ambulanceswere fitted out. 

The drill went on like clockwork. It was as if some curse had fallenupon us. The officers were "fed up" you could see. 

And now, just a word as to army methods. Immediately opposite thebarracks was a cloth factory, which was turning out khaki uniforms forthe Government every day. 

For five months we went about in civilian clothes. We were a disgrace aswe marched along. Yet because no order had been given to that factoryto supply us with uniforms, we had to wait till the uniforms had beenshipped to England, and then sent back to Ireland for us to wear!

The spark of patriotism which was in each man when he enlisted was dead. We detested the army, we hated the routine, we were sickened and dulledand crushed by drill. 

The old habit of being always on the alert for anything picturesquesaved me from idiotcy. Whenever opportunity offered, or whenever I couldtake French leave, I went off with sketchbook and pencil, and forgot fora time the horror of barrack-room life, with its unending flow of filthylanguage, and its barren desolation of yellow-washed walls and brokenwindows. 

And then we moved to Dublin. 

CHAPTER IV. CHARACTERS

It may be very amusing to read about "Kipps" and those commonplacepeople whom Mr. H. G. Wells describes so cleverly, but to have to livewith them in barracks is far from pleasant. 

There were shop-assistants, dental mechanics, city clerks, office boys, medical students, and a whole mass of very ordinary, very uninterestingpeople. There was a fair sprinkling of mining engineers and miners, and these men were more interesting and of a far stronger mental andphysical development. They were huge, full-chested, strong-armed men whoswore and drank heavily, but were honest and straight. 

There were characters here from the docks and from the merchantservice, some of whom had surely been created for W. W. Jacobs. One inparticular--Joe Smith, a sailor-man (an engine-greaser, I think)--wasfull of queer yarns and seafaring talk. He was a little man with beadyeyes and a huge curled moustache. He walked about quickly, with theseamen's lurch, as I have noticed most seagoing men of the merchantservice do. 

This man "came up" in bell-bottomed trousers and a pea jacket. He wasfond of telling a yarn about a vessel which was carrying a snake in acrate from the West Indies. This snake got into the boiler when theywere cleaning out the engine-room. 

"The capt'in ses to me, 'Joe. ' I ses, 'Yes-sir. ' 'Joe, ' says 'e, 'wot'sto be done?'

"'Why, ' ses I, 'thing is ter git this 'ere snake out ag'in!'

"'Jistso, ' says the capt'in; 'but 'oo' ter do it?'--'E always lefteverythink ter me--and I ses, 'Why, sir, it's thiswise, if sobe all theothers are afeared, I ain't, or my name's Double Dutch. '

"'Very good, melad, ' ses the capt'in, 'I relies on you, Joe. '--'E alwaysdid--and would you believe it, I upped an' 'ooked that there greatrattlesnake out of the boiler with an old hum-brella!"

There was a clerk who stood six-foot eight who was something of a"knut. " He told me that at home he belonged to a "Lit'ry Society, " and Iasked him what books they had and which he liked. 

"Books?" he asked. "'Ow d'yow mean?"

"You said a Literary Society, didn't you?"

"Oh yes, we 'ave got books. But, you know, we go down there and 'avea concert, or read the papers, and 'ave a social, perhaps, you know;sometimes ask the girls round to afternoon tea. "

I had a barrack-room full of these people to look after. Most of themgot drunk. Once a young medical student tried to knife me with a Chinesejack-knife which his uncle, a missionary, had given him. He had "downed"too much whisky. Just as boys do at school, so these men formed intocliques, and "hung together" in twos and threes. 

Some of them, like the "lit'ry society" clerk, had never seen much oflife or people; had lived in a little suburban villa and pretended tobe "City men. " Others had knocked about all over the world. These weremostly seafaring men. Savage was such a one. He was one of the buccaneertype, strong and sunburnt, with tattooed arms. Often he sang an oldsea-song, which always ended, "Forty-five fadom, and a clear sandybottom!" He knew most of the sea chanties of the old days, one of whichwent something in this way--

 "Heave away Rio! Heave away Rio! So fare thee well, my sweet pretty maid! Heave away Rio! Heave away Rio! For there's plenty of gold--so we've been told-- On the banks of the Sacrament--o!"

An old Irish apple-woman used to come into the barracks, and sit bythe side of the parade ground with two baskets of apples and a box ofchocolate. 

She did a roaring trade when we were dismissed from drill. 

We always addressed her as "Mother. " She looked so witch-like that oneday I asked--

"Can you tell a fortune, Mother?"

"Lord-love-ye, no! Wad ye have the Cuss o' Jazus upon us all? Ye shudsee the priest, sor. "

"And can he?"

"No, Son! All witch-craftin' is forbid in the Book by the Holy Mother o'Gord, so they do be tellin' me. "

"Can no one in all Ireland read a fortune now, Mother?"

"Ach, Son, 'tis died out, sure. Only in the old out-an'-away parts 'tisdone; but 'tis terrible wicked!"

She was a good bit of colour. I have her still in my pocket-book. Herblack shawl with her apples will always remind me of early barrack-daysat Limerick if I live to be ninety. 

CHAPTER V. I HEAR OF HAWK

Seldom are we lucky enough to meet in real life a character so strongand vivid, so full of subtle characteristics, that his appearance in anovel would make the author's name. Such a character was Hawk. 

When you consider, you find that many an author of note has made alasting reputation by evolving some such character; and in most casesthis character has been "founded on fact. " For example, Stevenson's"Long John Silver, " Kipling's "Kim, " and Rider Haggard's "AlanQuatermain. "

Had Kipling met Hawk he would have worked him into a book of Indiansoldier life; for Hawk was full of jungle adventures and stories of theIndian Survey Department and the Khyber Pass; while his descriptions ofKashmir and Secunderabad, with its fakirs and jugglers, monkey templesand sacred bulls, were superb. 

On the other hand, Haggard would have placed him "somewhere in Africa, "a strong, hard man trekking across the African veldt he knew so well;for Hawk had been in the Boer War. 

Little did I realise when I met him on the barrack-square at Limerickhow fate would throw us together upon the scorching sands and rockyridges of Gallipoli, nor could either of us foresee the hairbreadthescapes and queer corners in which we found ourselves at Suvla Bay andon the Serbian frontier. 

I spotted him in the crowd as the only man on parade with a strong, clear-cut face. I noted his drooping moustache, and especially his keengrey eyes, which glittered and looked through and through. Somewhere, Itold myself, there was good blood at the back of beyond on his line ofdescent. I was right, for, as he told me later, when I had come to knowhim as a trusty friend, he came from a Norseman stock. The jaw was toosquare and heavy, but the high-built chiselled nose and the deep-setclear grey eyes were a "throw-back" on the old Viking trail. Althoughdressed in ragged civilian clothes he looked a huge, full-grown, muscular man; active and well developed, with the arms of a miner andthe chest of a gorilla. On one arm I remember he had a heart with adagger through it tattooed in blue and red. 

I heard of him first as one to be shunned and feared. For it was saidthat "when in drink" he would pick up the barrack-room fender with onehand and hurl it across the room. I was told that he was a master of theart of swearing--that he could pour forth a continual flow of oaths fora full five minutes without repeating one single "cuss. "

My interest was immediately aroused. I smelt adventure, and I was on theadventure trail. Hawk was not in my barrack-room, and therefore I knewbut little of him while in the old country. I heard that he had beengalloper-dispatch-rider to Lord Kitchener in South Africa, and I triedto get him to talk about it. As an "artist's model, " for a canvas tobe called "The Buccaneer, " Hawk was perfect. I never saw a man sosplendidly developed. 

And Hawk was fifty years old! You would take him for thirty-nine or so. 

But "drink and the devil had done for the rest"--Hawk himselfacknowledged it. His vices were the vices of a strong man, and when hewas drunk he was "the very devil. "

He was "the old soldier, " and knew all the ins and outs of army life. I quickly became entangled in the interest of unravelling his complexnature. On the one hand he was said to be a desperado and double-dyedliar. On the other hand, if he respected you, he would always tell youthe naked truth, and would never "let you down. " He knew drink was hisruin, but he could not and would not stop it. Yet his advice to mewas always good. Indeed, although he had the reputation of a bold, badblackguard, he never led any one else on the "wrong trail, " and hisadvice to young soldiers in the barrack-rooms was wonderfully clear anduseful. 

If he respected you, you could trust your life with him. If he didn't, you could "look up" for trouble. He was honest and "square"--if he likedyou--but he could make things disappear by "sleight of hand" in a mannerworthy of a West End conjurer. 

He was a miner, and had a sound knowledge of mining and practicalgeology which many a science-master might have been proud of. He had theeyes of a trained observer, and I afterwards discovered he was a crackshot. 

Some months later, when the A. S. C. Ambulance drivers were exercisingtheir horses, he showed himself a good rough-rider, and I recalledhis "galloper" days. And again at Lemnos and Suvla he was a splendidswimmer. He was an all-round man. Unlike the other men in barracks--theshop assistants and clerks--Hawk never missed noticing small things, andit was this which first drew my attention to him. 

I remember one night hearing a woman's voice wailing a queer Hindoochant. It came from the barrack-room door. Afterwards I discovered itwas Hawk sitting on his trestle bed cross-legged, with a bit of sackingand ashes on his head imitating the death-wail of an Indian woman forher dead husband. 

Hawk knew all the rites and ceremonies of the various Hindoo castes, andcould act the part of a fakir or a bazaar-wullah with wonderful realism. 

By turns Hawk was a heavy drinker and a clear-brained man of action, calm in danger. 

In those early days of my "military career" I looked upon him only as anauthor looks upon an interesting character. 

Months afterwards, on the death-swept peninsula, Hawk and I became fastfriends. The "bad man" of the ambulance became the most useful, mostfaithful, in my section. We went everywhere together--like "Horace andHolly" of Rider Haggard fame: he the great, strong man, and I the youngartist scout. 

If Hawk was out of camp, you could bet I was also--and vice-versa. 

Of Hawk more anon. 

CHAPTER VI. ON THE MOVE

We moved to Dublin after seven months of drill and medical lectures inbarracks at Limerick. 

After about a fortnight in the Portobello Barracks we crossed to Englandand pitched our camp at Basingstoke. Here we had two or three months'divisional training. The whole of the Xth Division--about 25, 000men--used to turn out for long route-marches. 

We were out in all weathers. We took no tents, and "slept out. " Thiswas nothing to me, as I had done it on my own when scouting hundreds oftimes. It amused me to hear the men grumbling about the hard ground, andto see them rubbing their hips when they got up. It was a hard training. Still we didn't seem to be going out, and once again, the novelty of anew place having worn off, we became unspeakably "fed up. "

Here at Basingstoke we were inspected by the King, and later by LordKitchener. 

Then came the issue of pith helmets and khaki drill uniforms, and theRed Cross brassards on the left arm. 

Rumour ran riot. We were going to India; we were going to EastAfrica. .. Some one even mentioned Japan! There was a new rumour eachday. 

Then one day, at brief notice, we were quietly entrained at Basingstokeand taken down to the docks at Devonport before anyone had wind of thematter. 

All our ambulance wagons, and field medical equipment in wickerworkpanniers, went with us, and it would astonish a civilian to see theamount of stores and Red Cross materials with which a field ambulancemoves. And so, after much waiting about, aboard the Canada. 

CHAPTER VII. MEDITERRANEAN NIGHTS

Intricate and vivid detail leave a more startling imprint on thememory-film than the main purport of any great adventure, whether it bea polar expedition, a new discovery, or such a stupendous undertaking asthat in which we were now involved. 

The fact of our departure had been carefully kept quiet, and ourdestination was unknown. It might have been a secret expedition insearch of buried treasure. Yet, in spite of all precaution, we might betorpedoed at any moment and go down with all hands, or strike a mine andbe blown up. We knew that victory or defeat were hanging in the balance, and perhaps the destiny of nations. But while the magnitude of theventure has left no impression--I cannot recall that we ever spoke aboutit--commonplace details remain. 

The pitch bubbling in the seams under a Mediterranean sun; the queeriridescent shapes of glowing, greenish phosphorus in the nighttime sea;the butter melting into yellow oil on the plate on the saloon table;the sickly smell of steam and grease and oil from the engine-room; themachine gun fixed at the stern with its waterproof hood; the increasingbrilliance of the stars, and the rapid descent of evening upon thesplendid colour-prism of a Mediterranean sunset--these, and thousands ofother intimate commonplaces, are inlaid for ever in my mind. 

We went about in our shirts and drill "slacks, " and the scorchingboards of the deck blistered our naked feet. In a few days we becamesun-tanned. Each one of us had a sunburnt V-shaped triangle on the chestwhere we left our shirts open. 

The voyage was uneventful. The food was poor. There was very littlefresh water to drink. It was July. The heat was fatiguing, and thesun-glare blinding. 

The coast of Algeria on our right looked bare and terribly forsaken. It had an awfulness about it--a mystery look; it looked like a "juju"country, with its sandy spit running like a narrow ribbon to the bluesea, and its hazy, craggy mountains quivering in the noonday heat. 

Hawk and I were in the habit of coming up from our bunks in theevening. We used to lean over the handrail and watch the wonder ofa Mediterranean sunset transform in schemes of peacock-blue andbeetle-green, down and down, through emerald, pale gold and lemonyellow, and so to the horizon of the inland sea, in bands of deep chromeand orange, scarlet, mauve and purple. 

Hawk was the only man I discovered in all those hundreds of apparentlycommonplace souls who could really appreciate and never tire of watchingand discussing these things. 

I had often heard of the blue of the Mediterranean. But I must confessthat I rather thought it had been exaggerated by authors, artists andpoets as a fruitful and beautiful source of inspiration. 

I never saw such blues before: electric-blue and deep, seething navyblue, flecked with foam and silver spray; calm lapis-lazuli blue; asort of greeny, mummy-case blue; flashing, silk-shot blue, like akingfisher's feathers. Sometimes the sea was as calm as a mill-pond, andyou could see down and down and down. 

There is a certain milky look in the waters of the Mediterranean whichI never saw anywhere else. What it is I do not know, but it hangs in thewater like a cloud. Once there was a shoal of porpoises playing roundus, and they curled and dived and flopped in the warm blue seas. 

At night Hawk and I stood for hours watching first one constellation"light up, " and then another, till the whole purple-velvet of theMediterranean night sky was pinholed with the old familiar star-designs. 

It struck me as most extraordinary, and almost uncanny, to see the sameold stars we knew in England, still above us, so many hundred miles fromhome. 

Phosphorescent fragments went floating along beneath us like bits ofbroken moonlight. 

In watching and talking of these things, I quickly perceived in Hawka man who not only noticed small detail and took a real interest inNature, but one who had a sound, natural philosophy and a good idea ofthe reasonable and scientific explanation of things which so many peopleeither ignore or look upon as "atheistic. "

We did not yet know whither we were sailing. We knew we were part of theMediterranean Expeditionary Force, and that was all. 

One day we put in at Malta. 

Here the fruit-boats, all painted green and red and white and blue, camerowing out to meet us. The Maltese who manned them stood upto row theiroars-and rowed the right way forwards, instead of facing the wrongway, as we do in England. They were selling tomatoes and pears, apples, chocolate, cigars, cigarettes, Turkish delight, and lace. 

Continually they cried their goods--

"Cee-gar-ette!"

"Cee-gar-ette!"

"Tomart! Tomart!"

One man recognised us as the Irish Division, and shouted--

"Irish! Irish! My father Irish--from Dundee!"

Here were diving-boys in their own tiny boats, diving for pennies. Theywere wonderfully lithe and graceful, with sun-tanned limbs and drippingblack hair. 

Here, too, was a huge old man, who was also diving for pennies and tinsof bully-beef. He was fat and sun-browned, and his muscles and chestwere well developed. 

"Me dive for bully-beef!" he shouted. "Me dive for bully-beef!"

Never once did he fail to retrieve these tins when they were chuckedoverboard. 

The tomatoes were very large and ripe, and the tobacco and cigarettesexceedingly cheap and good. Most of the men got a stock. 

The next day we put to sea again. 

It was a real voyage of adventure, for here we were, on an unknowncourse, sailing under sealed orders, no one knew whither, nor did weknow what would be the climax to this great enterprise. 

Would any of us ever return across those blue-green waters?. .. Or wouldour bones lie, a few days hence, bleaching on the yellow sands? . .. Mystery and adventure sailed with us--and each day the heat increased. The sun blazed from a brazen sky, the shadow of the halyards and thegreat ventilators were clear-cut black silhouettes upon the bakingdecks. 

The decks were crammed with that same khaki crowd of civilians who hadcursed and sworn and drilled and growled for ten long months in theOld Country. You imagine what desperate adventurers they had suddenlybecome. Some had never been out of Ireland, others had been as far asPortsmouth, and taken a return voyage to the Isle of Wight. And each daywe zigzagged across the blue seas towards some unknown Fate. .. Death, perhaps. .. Victory or failure--who could tell?

Until one day a thin, yellowish-white streak appeared upon the sea-line;little groups of palms huddled together, and here and there a white domeor a needle-minaret. And so we warped into harbour, through the boom andpast the lightships, to join the crowd of transports and battle cruiserslying off this muddled city--the city of wonderful colour, Alexandria. 

CHAPTER VIII. THE CITY OF WONDERFUL COLOUR: ALEXANDRIA

 Scarlet-orange; Beetle-green, Flashing like a magic screen. Silken garment, 'Broidered hood; Richly woven gown; Flashing like a pantomime, In and out Aladdin's town. 

 Fretted lattice; Dancing girl; Drooping lash and ebon curl. Silver tassel; Scented room; Almond "glad"-eye-look. Queersome figures prowling round, From some kiddies' picture-book. 

 Graeco-Serbian Frontier, J. H. , October 1915. 

The coal-yards and dingy quays looked gray and chill. Here weregray-painted Government sheds, with white numbers on the sliding doors, dull gray trucks, and dirty sidings. 

A couple of Egyptian native police in khaki drill, brown belts, side-arms, red fezes, and carrying canes, both smoking cigarettes, swaggered up and down in front of an arc-light. 

There were dump-yards and gray tin offices, rusty cranes, and a grayfloating quay. Gangs of Egyptian beggars in ragged clothes and a flockof little brown children continually dodged the native police as wesailed slowly through the docks. They were the only touch of colour in amuddle of Government buildings, stores, and transport ships. 

We were all crowding to the handrail looking overboard. The Egyptiansunset had just vanished and the deep blue of an Eastern night held thedocks in a haze of gloom. 

The pipe band of the Inniskillings was playing "The Wearin' o' theGreen" in that mournful, gurgling chant which we came to know so well. 

One of the little Egyptian beggar-girls was dancing to it on thefloating quay down below us by the flicker of the arc-lamp. She was atiny mite, with a shock of black hair and brown face and arms. She worea pink dress with some brass buttons hung round her neck. She dancedwith all the supple gracefulness of the out-door tribes of the desert, never out of step, always true and rhythmic in every motion of arms andbody. 

When the pipes on board trailed away with a hiss of wind and a choking, gurgling noise into silence the little dancing girl began to sing ina deep, musical voice--the voice of one who has lived out-of-doors intents--

 "Itta long way--Tipple-airy! --Long way to go! --Long way--Tipple-airy! Sweetie girl I know!. .. "

She sang in broken English, and danced to the tune, which she knewperfectly. 

The khaki crowd aboard whistled and cheered and laughed. Some one threwa penny. The whole gang of beggars scrambled after it, and there ensueda scrimmage with much shouting and swearing in Arabic. 

We could see the city lit up beyond the dull gray docks. 

Next morning we went for a route march through Alexandria. Wemarched through the dockyards. Gangs of native workmen in nativecostume-coloured robes and bare feet, turbans and red fezes--wereworking on the transports, unloading box after box of bully-beef andbiscuit and piling them in huge "dumps" on the quays. Rusty chainsclanked, steam cranes rattled and puffed out whiffs of white steam. 

But they did not hustle or hurry. They worked under the direction ofEnglish sergeants and officers, loading and unloading. 

At last we got outside the zone of awful ugliness which follows theBritish wherever they go. The docks were left behind and the change wassudden and startling. 

It was like putting down a novel by Arnold Bennett and taking up theKoran. 

I did not trouble to keep in step or "cover off. " My eyes were tryingto take in the splendid Eastern scenes. Here were figures which had comeright out of the Arabian Nights. 

Was that not Haroun Al Raschid, Commander of the Faithful, disguisedas a water-carrier, with a goatskin bottle slung over his shoulder, andgreat yellow baggy trousers and a striped cummerbund?

Here were veiled women and old men squatting under their open bazaarfronts, with coloured mats and blinds strung across the narrow streets. Fruit sellers surrounded by melons, and beans, tomatoes and figs anddates--a jumble of colour, orange, scarlet, green, and gold. Pitchersand jars and woven carpets; queer Eastern scents; shuttered windows andflat roofs, mules and here and there a loaded camel, two Jews in blackrobes, a band of wild-looking desert wanderers in white with hoods andveils. 

Egyptian women carrying little brown babies; who would believe therecould be such figures, such colour and picturesque compositions?

It was a short march, but we saw much. 

So this was the land of Egypt. It was good. What a pity we could see solittle of it. .. 

There were very smartly dressed French women with faces powdered andpainted and scented. Old men with hollow eyes and yellow parchmentskins all creased and wrinkled squatted on the cobble-stones, smokinghubble-bubbles and long ivory-stemmed pipes. 

Arab boys selling oranges ran about the streets. The heat wasstifling--the shadows purple-black, the sunlight glared golden-white onthe buildings and towers and minarets. 

Here were curio-shops with queer oriental carvings and alabasterfigures. 

It was like a chapter of my _Thousand-and-One Nights_ come true, and Iremembered the gray barracks at Limerick and the incessant drill. 

At last we marched back through the docks and aboard the Canada. Nextmorning we were sailing far away upon a blue sea. Just a glimpse ofthe city of wonderful colour and we were once more creeping closer andcloser to the mystery of our unknown venture. 

Many of us would never pass that way again--and each one wonderedsometimes if he would be claimed by that Mechanical Death which none ofus fully realised. 

Only a few short hours--a day or two longer--and we should be plungedinto battle. A bullet for one, shrapnel for another, dysentery for athird, a bayonet or death from weakness and starvation. 

The great game of luck was gathering faster and faster. We loafed abouton deck and wondered where we were going and what it would be like. .. Our minds were thinking of the immediate future. Each one tried to makeout he didn't care, but each one was thinking upon the same subject--hisluck, fate, kismet. How many would return to old England--should I beone; or would the Eastern sunshine blaze down upon my decomposing bodyon some barren sandy shore?

We passed many of the Greek Islands--some came up pink and mauve outof the sea, others were green with vineyards; once or twice a littletriangular-sailed boat bobbed along the coast. 

The uncertainty was a strain, and we felt utterly cut off, until atlast we sighted a sandy streak, and later a line of volcanic-lookingpeaks--the Isle of Lemnos. 

CHAPTER IX. MAROONED ON LEMNOS ISLAND

 LEMNOS HARBOUR

 Within the outer anchorage The ancient Argonauts lay to; Little they dreamt--that dauntless crew-- That here to-day in the sheltered bay Where the seas are still and blue, Great battle-ships should froth and hum, And mighty transport-vessels come Serenely floating through. 

 With magic sail the Argonauts Stood by to go about; Little they thought--that hero band-- As they made once more for an unknown land In a world of terror and doubt, That here in the wake of the magical bough Should come the all-terrible ironclad now Serenely floating out. 

 Written on Mudros Beach: Oct. 7, 1915. 

July the twenty-seventh. 

The deadly silence. .. 

The tenderfoot on an expedition of this sort naturally expects to findhimself plunged into a whirl of noise and tumult. 

The crags were colourless and shimmering in the heat. The harbour wascalm and greeny-blue. One by one, with our haversacks and water-bottles, belts and rolled overcoats, we went down the companion-way into thewaiting surf-boats. Again and again these boats, roped together andtugged by a little launch, went back and forth from the S. S. Canada tothe "Turk's Head Pier"-a tiny wooden jetty built by the Engineers. 

I asked one of the straw-hatted men of the Naval Division, who wascasting off the painter, what the place was like--

"Sand an' flies, and flies an' sand--nothinkelse!" he replied. 

No sooner ashore than the green and black flies came pestering andtormenting like a host of wicked jinn. The glare of sunlight onthe yellow sand hurt the eyes. The deadly silence of the place wasoppressive--especially when you had strung yourself up to concert pitchto face the crash and turmoil of a fearful battle. 

The quiet isolation and khaki desolation of jagged peaks and sandyslopes was nerve-breaking. 

You could see the thin lines of the wireless station and little groupsof white bell-tents dotted here and there. 

Robinson Crusoe wasn't in it. Sand and flies and sun; sun and flies andsand. 

"Wot 'ave we struck 'ere, Bill?"

"Some d---d desert island, I reckon!"

"A blasted heath. .. "

"Gordlummy, look at the d---d flies!"

"Curse the ---- sun; sweat's trickling down me back. "

"And curse all the d---d issue. .. "

"What the holy son of Moses did we join for?"

We growled and groaned and cursed our luck. The sweat ran down under ourpith helmets and soaked in a stream from under our armpits. We trudgedto our camping-place along the shore. One or two Greek natives followedus about with melons to sell. Parched and choked with sand, we were onlytoo glad to buy these water-melons for two or three leptas. 

The rind was green like a vegetable marrow, but the inside was yellowwith pink and crimson pips--the colour of a Mediterranean sunset. 

One day ashore on this accursed island and the diarrhoea set in. I neversaw men suffer such awful stomach-pains before. The continual eating ofmelons to allay the blistering thirst helped the disease. Many men sleptclose to the latrines, too weak to crawl to and fro all night long. Thesun blazed, and the flies in thousands of millions swarmed and irritatedfrom early morning till sundown. 

At night it was cold. The stars burned white-hot--a calm, fierceglitter. 

Hawk and I "kipped down" (slept) together on a sandy stretch overlookingthe bay. We could see the green-and-red electric lights of the hospitalships waiting in the harbour--for us, perhaps. .. 

The "graft" (work) was fearful. All day long we were at it: hauling upour equipment from the beach where it had been dumped ashore. Medicalpanniers, operating marquee, tents and tent-poles, cook-house dixies, picks and shovels, bully and biscuit boxes and a hundred-and-onearticles necessary to the work of the Medical Corps in the field: allthis had to be man-handled through the sand up to our camp about a mileaway. And the sun blazed, and the flies pestered and stung and buzzedand fought with each other for the drops of sweat streaming down yourface. How long should we be here? When were we going into action?. .. Thesuspense was brain-racking. The diarrhoea increased: everyone went downwith it. Some got the ague shivers and some a touch of dysentery. 

We became gloomy and bodily sick. We wanted to get into it--intoaction. .. 

Anything would be better than this God-forsaken island. Why the dickensdid they leave us moping here: working in the blazing heat, and crawlingto the latrines in the chilly nights? For goodness' sake, let's get outof it! Let's get to work!. .. So the days dragged on. 

The natives wore baggy trousers and coloured head-bands. They sat allday near our camp selling melons, tomatoes, very cheap and tastelesschocolates, raisins, figs and dates. 

We used to go down to swim in the little bay-like semicircle of theharbour. The water was always warm and very salt. Here were tinyshoals of tiny fish. The water was clear and glassy. There were pinkysea-urchins with spikey spines which jabbed your feet. The sandy bed ofthe bay was all ribbed with ripples. 

The island was humming and ticking like a watch with insect-noises:otherwise the deadly silence held. There were red-winged grasshoppersand great green-gray locust-looking crickets which whistled and"cricked" all night. 

We had to fetch our water from the water-tank boats, about a mile and ahalf distant, and haul it up in a water-cart. 

Gangs of natives were working under the military authorities. Therewere Greeks and Greek-Armenians, Turks and Ethiopians, Egyptians andhalf-breeds of all kinds from Malta and Gib. They were employed inmaking roads and clearing the ground for huts and camps. 

And all the time we had no letters from home. We were actually maroonedon Lemnos Island: as literally marooned on a barren desert isle as anybuccaneer of the old Spanish galleon days. We went suddenly back to asavage life. We went down to bathe stark naked, with the sunset glowingorange on our sunburnt limbs. Here it was that Hawk proved himself awonderfully good swimmer. He was lithe and supple and well-made--anextraordinary specimen of virile manhood--and he spent his fiftiethbirthday on Lemnos!

One day came the order to pack up and man-handle all our stuff downto the beach ready for re-embarkation. At last we were on the move. Weworked with a will now. The great day would soon dawn. Some of us wouldget "put out of mess, " no doubt, but this waiting about to get killedwas much worse than plunging into the thick of it. 

August the 6th saw us steaming out at night towards the great unknownclimax--the New Landing. 

CHAPTER X. THE NEW LANDING

A pale pink sunrise burst across the eastern sky as our transportcame steaming into the bay. The haze of early morning dusk still held, blurring the mainland and water in misty outlines. 

Hawk and I had slept upon the deck. Now we got up and stretched ourcramped limbs. Slowly we warped through the quiet seas. 

You must understand that we knew not where we were. We had never heardof Suvla Bay--we didn't know what part of the Peninsula we had reached. The mystery of the adventure made it all the more exciting. It was to be"a new landing by the Xth Division"--that was all we knew. 

Some of us had slept, and some had lain awake all night. Rapidly thepink sunrise swept behind the rugged mountains to the left, and wasreflected in wobbling ripples in the bay. 

We joined the host of battleships, monitors, and troopships standingout, and "stood by. "

We could hear the rattle of machine-guns in the distant gloom beyondthe streak of sandy shore. The decks were crowded with that same khakicrowd. We all stood eagerly watching and listening. The death-silencehad come upon us. No one spoke. No one whistled. 

We could see the lighters and small boats towing troops ashore. We sawthe men scramble out, only to be blown to pieces by land mines asthey waded to the beach. On the Lala Baba side we watched platoons andcompanies form up and march along in fours, all in step, as if they wereon parade. 

"In fours!" I exclaimed to Hawk, who was peering through myfield-glasses. 

"Sheer murder, " said Hawk. 

No sooner had he spoken than a high explosive from the Turkishpositions on the Sari Bair range came screaming over the Salt Lake:"Z-z-z-e-e-e-o-o-o-p--Crash!"

They lay there like a little group of dead beetles, and the wounded werecrawling away like ants into the dead yellow grass and the sage bushesto die. A whole platoon was smashed. 

It was not yet daylight. We could see the flicker of rifle-fire, and thecrackle sounded first on one part of the bay, and then another. Amongthe dark rocks and bushes it looked as if people were striking thousandsof matches. 

Mechanical Death went steadily on. Four Turkish batteries on the KislarDargh were blown up one after the other by our battleships. We watchedthe thick rolling smoke of the explosions, and saw bits of wheels, andthe arms and legs of gunners blown up in little black fragments againstthat pearl-pink sunrise. 

The noise of Mechanical Battle went surging from one side of the bay tothe other--it swept round suddenly with an angry rattle of maxims andthe hard echoing crackle of rifle-fire. 

Now and then our battle-ships crashed forth, and their shells wenthurtling and screaming over the mountains to burst with a muffled roarsomewhere out of sight. 

Mechanical Death moved back and forth. It whistled and screamed andcrashed. It spat fire, and unfolded puffs of grey and white and blacksmoke. It flashed tongues of livid flame, like some devilish ant-eaterlapping up its insects. .. And the insects were the sons of men. 

Mechanical Death, as we saw him at work, was hard and metallic, steel-studded and shrapnel-toothed. Now and then he bristled withbayonets, and they glittered here and there in tiny groups, and chargedup the rocks and through the bushes. 

The noise increased. Mechanical Death worked first on our side, and thenwith the Turks. He led forward a squad, and the next instant mowed themdown with a hail of lead. He galloped up a battery, unlimbered--andbefore the first shell could be rammed home Mechanical Death blew thewhole lot up with a high explosive from a Turkish battery in the hills. 

And so it went on hour after hour. Crackle, rattle and roar; scream, whistle and crash. We stood there on the deck watching men get killed. Now and then a shell came wailing and moaning across the bay, anddropped into the water with a great column of spray glittering in theearly morning sunshine. A German Taube buzzed overhead; the hum-hum-humof the engine was very loud. She dropped several bombs, but none of themdid much damage. The little yellow-skinned observation balloon floatedabove one of our battleships like a penny toy. The Turks had severalshots at it, but missed it every time. 

The incessant noise of battle grew more distant as our troops on shoreadvanced. It broke out like a bush-fire, and spread from one sectionto another. Mechanical Death pressed forward across the Salt Lake. Itstormed the heights of the Kapanja Sirt on the one side, and took LalaBaba on the other. Puffs of smoke hung on the hills, and the shorewas all wreathed in the smoke of rifle and machine-gun fire. A deadlyconflict this--for one Turk on the hills was worth ten British downbelow on the Salt Lake. 

There was no glory. Here was Death, sure enough--Mechanical Death runamok--but where was the glory?

Here was organised murder--but it was steel-cold! There was nohand-to-hand glory. A mine dispersed you before you had set foot on dryland; or a high explosive removed your stomach, and left you a mangledheap of human flesh, instead of a medically certified, healthy humanbeing. 

Mechanical Death wavered and fluctuated--but it kept going. If itslackened its murderous fire at one side of the bay, it was only toburst forth afresh upon the other. 

We wondered how it was that we were still alive, when so many lay dead. Some were killed on the decks of the transports by shrapnel. 

Our monitors crept close to the sandy shore, and poured out a deadlybrood of Death. 

The crack and crash was deafening, and it literally shook the air. .. Itquivered like a jelly after each shot. 

The fighting got more and more inland, and the rattle and cracklefainter and farther away. But we still watched, fascinated. 

The little groups of men lay in exactly the same positions on the beach. That platoon by the side of Lala Baba lay in a black bunch--stonedead. We could see our artillery teams galloping along like a team ofperforming fleas, taking up new positions behind Lala Baba. So this iswar? Well, it's pretty awful! Wholesale murder. .. What's it all for?Wonder how long we shall last alive before Mechanical Death blows ourbrains out, or a leg off. .. 

Queer thing, war! Didn't think it was quite like this! So mechanical andsenseless. 

And now came the time for us to land. A lighter came alongside, with alittle red-bearded man in command--

"Remind you of any one?" I said to Hawk. 

"Cap'n Kettle!"

"Yes!"

He was exactly like Cutcliffe Hyne's famous "Kettle, " except that hesmoked a pipe. We huddled into the lighter, and hauled our stores downbelow. Some of us were "green about the gills, " and some were trying topretend we didn't care. 

We watched the boat which landed just before us strike a mine and beblown to pieces. Encouraging sight. .. At last we reached the tiny cove, and the lighter let down a sort of tail-board on the sand. 

CHAPTER XI. THE KAPANJA SIRT

One had his stomach blown out, and the other his chest blown in. The twobodies lay upon the sand as we stepped down. 

The metallic rattle of the firing-line sounded far away. We man-handledall our medical equipment and stores from the hold of the lighter to thebeach. 

We had orders to "fall in" the stretcher-bearers, and work in openformation to the firing-line. 

The Kapanja Sirt runs right along one side of Suvla Bay. It is onewing of that horse-shoe formation of rugged mountains which hems in theAnafarta Ova and the Salt Lake. 

Our searching zone for wounded lay along this ridge, which rises likethe vertebrae of some great antediluvian reptile--dropping sheer downon the Gulf of Saros side, and, in varying slopes, to the plains and theSalt Lake on the other. 

Here again small things left a vivid impression--the crack of a riflefrom the top of the ridge, and a party of British climbing up the rocksand scrub in search of the hidden Turk. 

The smell of human blood soaking its way into the sand from those two"stiffies" on the beach. The sullen silence, except for the distantcrackle and the occasional moan of a shell. The rain which came peltingdown in great cold blobs, splashing and soaking our thin drill clothestill we were wet to the skin and shivering with cold. 

We were all thinking: "Who will be the first to get plugged?" We movedslowly along the ridge, searching every bush and rock for signs ofwounded men. 

We wondered what the first case would be--and which squad would comeacross it. 

I worked up and down the line of squads trying to keep them in touchwith each other. We were carrying stretchers, haversacks, iron rations, medical haversacks, medical water-bottles, our own private water-bottles(filled on Lemnos Island), and three "monkey-boxes" or field medicalcompanions. 

Those we had left on the beach were busy putting up the operatingmarquee and other tents, and the cooks in getting a fire going andmaking tea. 

The stretcher-squads worked slowly forward. We passed an old Turkishwell with a stone-flagged front and a stone trough. Later on we cameupon the trenches and bivouacs of a Turkish sniping headquarters. Therewere all kinds of articles lying about which had evidently belonged toTurkish officers: tobacco in a heap on the ground near a bent willow andthorn bivouac; part of a field telephone with the wires runningtowards the upper ridges of Sirt; the remains of some dried fish andan earthenware jar or "chattie" which had held some kind of wine; a fewvery hard biscuits, and a mass of brand-new clothing, striped shirts andwhite shirts, grey military overcoats, yellow leather shoes with pointedtoes, a red fez, a great padded body-belt with tapes to tie it, a pairof boots, and some richly coloured handkerchiefs and waistbands allstriped and worked and fringed. 

It was near here that our first man was killed later in the day. He waslooking into one of these bivouacs, and was about to crawl out when abullet went through his brain. It was a sniper's shot. We buried himin an old Turkish trench close by, and put a cross made of a woodenbully-beef crate over him. 

The sun now blazed upon us, and our rain-soaked clothes were steamingin the heat. The open fan-like formation in which we moved was not asuccess. We lost the officers, and continually got out of touch witheach other. 

At last we reached the zone of spent bullets. "Z-z-z-z-e-e-e-e-e-pp!--zing!" "S-s-s-ippp!"

"That one was jist by me left ear!" said Sergeant Joe Smith, althoughas a matter of fact it was yards above his head. Here, among a hail ofmoaning spent shots, our officers called a halt, made us fall in, inclose formation, and we retired--what for I do not know. 

We went back as far as the old Turkish well. Here Hawk had something tosay. 

"Our place is advancing, " said he, "not retiring because of a few spentbullets. There's men there dying for want of medical attention--bleedingto death. "

The next time we went forward that day was in Indian file, eachstretcher-squad following the one in front. 

A parson came with us. I marched just behind the adjutant, and theparson walked with me. He was a big man and a fair age. We went past thewell and the bivouacs. I could see he was very nervous. 

"Do you think we are out of danger here?" he asked. 

"I think so, sir" (we were three miles from the firing-line). A fewpaces further on--

"I wonder how far the firing-line is?"

"Couldn't say, sir. "

A yard or so, and then--

"D'you suppose the British are advancing?"

"I hope so. " And after a minute or two--

"I wonder if there are any Turks near here. .. ?"

I made no answer, and marvelled greatly that the "man of God" shouldnot be better prepared to meet "his Maker, " of Whom in civil life he hadtalked so much. 

It was just then that I spotted it--a little black figure, motionless, away beyond the bushes on the right. 

CHAPTER XII. THE SNIPER-HUNT

He lay flat under a huge rock. I left the stretcher-squads, and, crawling behind a bush, looked through the glasses. It certainly was aTurk, and his position was one of hiding. He kept perfectly motionlesson his stomach and his rifle lay by his side. 

I sent a message to pass the word up to the leading squads for Hawk. Quickly he came down to me and took the glasses. He had wonderful sight. After looking for a few seconds he agreed that it looked like a Turkishsniper lying in wait. 

"Let's go and see, anyway, " said I. 

"Chance it?"

"Yes. "

"Righto. "

Hawk led the way down into the thorn-bushes and dried-up plants. Ifollowed close at his heels. We crouched as we went and kept wellunder cover. Hawk took a semicircular route, which I could see wouldultimately bring us out by the side of the rock under which the sniperhid. 

Now we caught a glimpse of the little dark figure--then we plungeddeeper into the rank willow-growth and bore round to the right. 

Hawk unslung the great jack-knife which hung round his waist andsilently opened the gleaming blade. I did the same. 

"I'll surprise him; you can leave it to me to get in a good slash, " saidHawk, and I saw the great muscles of his miner's arms tighten. "But ifhe gets one in on me, " he whispered, "be ready with your knife at theback of his neck. "

A few steps farther brought us suddenly upon the rock and the sniper. Hawk was immediately in front of me, and his arm was held back readyfor a mighty blow. He stood perfectly still looking at the rock, and Iwatched his muscles relax. 

"See it?" he said. 

"What?"

"Dead. "

There was the Turk--a great heat-swollen figure stinking in thesunshine. As I moved forward a swarm of green and black flies, whichhad been feeding on his face and crawling up his nostrils, went up in ahumming, buzzing cloud. 

A bit of wood lying near had looked like his rifle from a distance; andnow we saw that, instead of lying on his stomach, he was lying on hisback, and looked as if he had been killed by shrapnel. 

"Putrid stink, " said I; "come on--let's clear out. "

And so our sniper-hunt led to nothing but a dead Turk stewing in theglaring sunshine. We rejoined the squads. No one had missed us. Thisfirst day was destined to be one of many adventures. 

CHAPTER XIII. THE ADVENTURE OF THE WHITE PACK-MULE

That night was dark, with no stars. I didn't know what part of Gallipoliwe were in, and the maps issued were useless. 

The first cases had been picked up close to the firing-line, and weremostly gun-shot wounds, and now--late in the evening--all my squadshaving worked four miles to the beach, I was trying to get my owndirection back to the ambulance. 

The Turks seldom fired at night, so that it was only the occasionalshot of a British rifle, or the sudden "pop-pop-pop-pop-pop!" of amachine-gun which told me the direction of the firing-line. 

I trudged on and on in the dark, stumbling over rocks and slitheringdown steep crags, tearing my way through thorns and brambles, andsometimes rustling among high dry grass. 

Queer scents, pepperminty and sage-like smells, came in whiffs. It wascold. I must have gone several miles along the Kapanja Sirt when I cameto a halt and once more tried to get my bearings. I peered at the gloomysky, but there was no star. I listened for the lap-lap of water on thebeach of Suvla Bay, but I must have been too far up the ridges to hearanything. There was dead silence. When I moved a little green lizardscutted over a white rock and vanished among the dead scrub. 

I was past feeling hungry, although I had eaten one army biscuit in theearly morning and had had nothing since. 

It was extraordinarily lonely. You may imagine how queer it was, forhere was I, trying to get back to my ambulance headquarters at night onthe first day of landing--and I was hopelessly lost. It was impossibleto tell where the firing-line began. I reckoned I was outside theBritish outposts and not far from the Turkish lines. Once, as I wentblundering along over some rocks, a dark figure bolted out of a bush andran away up the ridge in a panic. 

"Halt!" I shouted, trying to make believe I was a British armed sentry. But the figure ran on, and I began to stride after it. This led meup and up the ridge over very broken ground. Whoever it was (it wasprobably a Turkish sniper, for there were many out night-scouting) Ilost sight and sound of him. 

I went climbing steadily up till at last I found myself looking intodarkness. I got down on my hands and knees and peered over the edge of aridge of rock. I could see a tiny beam of light away down, and thisbeam grew and grew as it slowly moved up and up till it became a greattriangular ray. It swept slowly along the top of what I now saw wasa steep precipice sloping sheer down into blackness below. One stepfurther and I should have gone hurtling into the sea. For, although Idid not then know it, this was the topmost ridge of the Kapanja Sirt. 

The great searchlight came nearer and nearer, and I slid backwards andlay on my stomach looking over. The nearer it came the lower I moved, so as to get well off the skyline when the beam reached me. It may havebeen a Turkish searchlight. It swept slowly, slowly, till at last it wasturned off and everything was deadly black. 

I started off again in another direction, keeping my back to the ridge, as I reckoned that to be a Turkish searchlight, and, therefore, our ownlines would be somewhere down the ridge. Here, high up, I could just seea grey streak, which I took to be the bay. 

I tried to make for this streak. I scrambled down a very steep stratumof the mountain-side and landed at last in a little patch of dead grassand tall dried-up thistles. 

By this time, having come down from my high position on the Sirt, Icould no longer see the bay; but I judged the direction as best I could, and without waiting I tramped on. 

I began to wonder how long I had been trudging about, and I put it atabout two hours. 

"Halt!--who are you?" called a voice down below. 

"Friend! stretcher-bearer!" I shouted. 

"Come here--this way!" answered the voice. 

I went down to a clump of bushes, and a man with a rifle slung over hisshoulder stepped forward, and we both glared at each other for a second. 

"Do yer know where the 45th Company is?"

"No idea, " said I. 

"Any water?"

"Not a drop left. "

"We're trying to get back to the firing-line but we're all lost--there'seight of us. "

"I'm trying to get to the 32nd Field Ambulance--d'you know the way?"

"Yes; go right ahead there, " he pointed, "and keep well down off thehills--you'll see the beach when you've gone for a mile or so--"

"How far is it?"

"'Bout four miles;" and then, "Got a match?"

"Yes--but it's dangerous to light up. "

"Must 'ave a smoke--nothink to eat or drink. "

"Well, here you are; light up inside my helmet. "

He did; this hid the lighted match from any sniper's eye. The otherseven men came crawling out of the bushes to light up their "woodbines"and fag-ends. 

"Well, I'm off, " said I, and once more went forward in the directionpointed out by the corporal and his lost squad. 

"So long, mate--good luck!" he shouted. 

"Same to you!" I called back. 

And now came sleep upon me. Even as I walked an awful weariness fellupon every limb. My legs became heavy and slow. That short rest hadstiffened me, and my eyelids closed as I trudged on. I lifted them withan effort and dragged one foot after the other. I knew I must get backto my unit, and that here it was very dangerous. I wanted to lie downon the dead grass and sleep and sleep and sleep. I urged my muscles toswing my legs--for I knew if once I sat down to rest I should never keepawake. 

It was while I was thus trying to jerk my sleepy nerves on to actionthat I came upon a zigzagged trench. It was fully six feet deep andabout a yard wide. It was of course an old Turkish defence runningcrosswise along the great backbone of the Sirt. I knew now that I wasnearing the bay, for most of these trenches overlooked the beach. 

There was a white object about ten yards from me. What it was I couldnot tell, and a quiver of fear ran through me and threw off the awfulsleepiness of fatigue. 

Was it a Turkish sniper's shirt? Or was it a piece of white cloth, or asheet of paper? In the gloom of night I could not discover. 

However, I determined to go steady, and I crept up to a dark thorn-bushand stood still. It did not move. Still standing against the dark bush tohide the fact that I was unarmed, I shouted--

"Halt! who are you?" in as gruff and threatening a tone as I couldcommand. 

Silence. It did not move. I ran forward along the trench and therefound a white pack-mule all loaded up with baggage; I could make outthe queerly worked trappings, with brass-coins on the fringed bridleand coloured fly-tassels over the eyes. It was stone dead and stiff. Itseyes glared at me--a glassy glare full of fear. The Turkish pack-mulehad been bringing up material to the Turks in the trench when it hadbeen killed--and now the deep sides of the trench were holding itupright. 

I trudged away towards the beach and lay down to sleep at last among theother men of the ambulance, who were lying scattered about behind tuftsof bush or against ledges of rock. 

When weighed down with sleep any bed will serve. 

And this was the end of our first day's work on the field. 

CHAPTER XIV. THE SNIPER OF THE PEAR-TREE GULLY

We used to start long before daylight, when the heavy gloom of earlymorning swept mountain, sea and sand in an indistinct haze; when thecobwebs hung thick from thorn to thorn like fairy cats'-cradles alldripping and beaded with those heavy dews. The guard would wake us upabout 3. 30 A. M. We were asleep anywhere, lying about under rocks and insandy dells, sleeping on our haversacks and water-bottles, and our pithhelmets near by. We got an issue of biscuit and jam, or biscuit andbully-beef, to take with us, and each one carried his iron rations in alittle bag at his side. 

So we set off--a long, straggling, follow-my-leader lineof men and stretchers. The officer first, then thestretcher-sergeant--(myself)--and the squads, two men to a stretcher, carrying the stretchers folded up, and last of all a corporal or a"lance-jack" bringing up the rear in case any one should fall out. 

Cold, dark, shivery mornings they were; our clothes soaked in dewand our pith helmets reeking wet, with the puggaree all beaded withdew-drops. We toiled up and up the ridges and gullies of the KislarDargh and the Kapanja Sirt slowly, like a little column of ants goingout to bring in the ant eggs. 

Often we had to wait while the Indian transport came down from thehill-track before we could proceed, and we always came upon theEngineers' field-telegraph wires on the ground. I would shout "Wire!"over my shoulder, and the shout "Wire!. .. Wire!. .. Wire!" went down theline from squad to squad. 

From the old Turkish well I led my stretcher-squads past the gun of theField Artillery (mounted quite near our hospital tents) along a trackwhich ran past a patch of dry yellow grass and dead thistles--hereamong the prickly plants and sage-bushes grew a white flower--pure andsweet-scented--something like a flag--a "holy flower" among the dead andscorched-up yellow ochre blades and the khaki and dull grey-greens ofthorns. We went along this track, past the dead sniper which Hawk andI had so carefully stalked. Near by, hidden by bushes and rank willowthickets lay a dozen more dead Turks, swollen, fly-blown and stinking inthe broiling sun. We hurried on past the Turkish bivouacs--many of therelics had been picked up by the British Tommies since last I saw theplace: the tobacco had all gone--many of the shirts and overcoats whichhad been lying about had disappeared--the place had been thoroughlyransacked. We trudged past the wooden cross of our dead comrade and wewere silent. 

Indeed, throughout those first three days--Saturday, Sunday andMonday--when the British and Turks grappled to and fro and flungshrapnel at each other incessantly; when the fighting line swayedand bent, sometimes pushing back the Turks, sometimes bending in theBritish; when the fate of the whole undertaking still hung in thebalance; when what became a semi-failure might have been a staggeringsuccess: in those days the death-silence fell upon us all. 

No one whistled those rag-time tunes; no one tried to make jokes, exceptthe very timid, and they giggled nervously at their own. 

No one spoke unless it was quite necessary. Each man you passed askedyou the vital question: "Any water?"

For a moment as he asks his eyes glitter with a gleam of hope--when youshake your head he simply trudges on over the rocks and scrub with thesame fatigued and sullen dullness which we all suffered. 

Often you asked the same question yourself with parched and burninglips. 

One after another we came upon the wounded. Here a man dragging abroken leg along with him. Here a man holding his fractured fore-arm andrunning towards us. Sometimes the pitiful cry, faint and full of agony:"Stretchers! Stretcher-bearers!" away in some densely overgrown defileswept with bullets and shrapnel. 

And so at last all my squads had turned back with stretchers loaded withmen and pieces of men. I went on alone--a lonely figure wandering aboutthe mountains, looking and listening for the wounded. 

I came now upon a party of Engineers at work making a road. They wereworking with pick-axe and spade--clearing away bush and rocks. 

"Any water?" they asked. 

I shook my head. 

"Any wounded?" I said. 

"Some down there, they say, " said a red-faced man. 

"Damn rotten job that, " muttered another, as I went on. 

"Better keep well over in the bushes, " shouted the red-faced man. "They've got this bit of light-coloured ground marked--you're almostsure ter git plugged. "

"Thanks!" I called back, and broke off to my left among the sage andthistle and thorn. 

I went now downhill into an overgrown water-course (very much like theone in which I used to sleep and eat away back by the artillery biggun). Here were willows and brambles with ripe blackberries, andwild-rose bushes with scarlet hips. "Just like England!" I thought. 

And then, as I crossed the little dry-bed stream and came out upon asandy spit of rising ground: "Z-z-ipp! Ping!"--just by my left arm. The bullet struck a ledge of white rock with the now familiar metallic"tink!"

I went on moving quickly to get behind a thorn-bush--the only cover nearat hand. Here, at any rate, I should be out of sight. 

"Ping!"

"Crack--ping!"

I could hear the report of the rifle. I lay flat on my stomach, grovelled my face into the sandy soil and lay like a snake and as stillas a tortoise. 

I waited for about ten minutes. It seemed an hour, at least, to me. Thesniper did not shoot again. In front of my thorn-bush was an open spaceof pale yellow grass, with no cover at all. I crawled towards theleft flank and tried to creep slowly away. I moved like the hands ofa clock--so slowly; about an inch at a time, pushing forward like areptile on my stomach, propelling myself only by digging my toes intothe earth. My arms I kept stiff by my side, my head well down. 

But the sniper away behind that little pear-tree (which stood at the farend of the open space) had an eagle eye. 

"Ping! z-z-pp! ping!"

I lay very still for a long time and then crept slowly back to mythorn-bush. 

I tried the right flank, but with the same effect. And now he beganshooting through my thorn-bush on the chance of hitting me. 

Behind me was a dense undergrowth of thorn, wild-rose bramble, thistle, willow and sage. 

I turned about and crawled through this tangle, until at last I cameout, scratched and dishevelled and sweating, into the old water-course. 

The firing-line was only a few hundred yards away, and the bullets froma Turkish maxim went wailing over my head, dropping far over by theEngineers whom I had passed. 

I wanted to find those wounded, and I wanted to get past that openspace, and I wanted above all to dodge that sniper. The old scoutinginstincts of the primitive man came calling me to try my skill againstthe skill of the Turk. I sat there wiping away blood from the scratchesand sweat from my forehead and trying to think of a way through. 

I looked at the mountains on my left--the lower ridge of the KapanjaSirt--and saw how the water-course went up and up and in and out, and Ithought if I kept low and crawled round in this ditch I should come outat last close behind the firing-line, and then I could get in touch withthe trenches. I could hear the machine-gun of the M--'s rattling andspitting. 

I began crawling along the water-course. I had only gone three yards orso, and turned a bend, when I came suddenly upon two wounded men. Bothquite young--one merely a boy. He had a bad shrapnel wound through hisboot, crushing the toes of his right foot. The other lay groaning uponhis back--with a very bad shrapnel wound in his left arm. The arm wasbroken. 

The boy sat up and grinned when he saw me. 

"What's up?" asked his pal. 

"Red Cross man, " says the boy; and then: "Any water?"

"Not a drop, mate, " said I. "Been wounded long?"

"Since yesterday evening, " says the boy. 

"Been here all that time?" I asked. (It was now mid-afternoon. )

"Yes: couldn't get away"--and he pointed to his foot. 

"'E carn't move--it's 'is arm. We crawled 'ere. "

"I'll be back soon with stretchers and bandages, " I said, and wentquickly back along the water-course and then past the Engineers. 

"Found 'em?" they asked. 

"Yes: getting stretchers up now, " said I. "Awful stink here! Found anydead?" I asked. 

"Yes, there's one or two round here. We buried one over there yesterday:'e fell ter bits when we moved 'im. "

I went on. Soon I was back in the ditch beside the wounded men. I hadsuccessfully dodged the sniper by following along the bottom of the bedof the stream. With me I brought two stretcher-squads, and they had ahaversack containing, as I thought, splints and bandages. But whenI opened it, it had only some field dressings in it and some iodineampoules. 

I soon found that the man's arm was not only septic, but broken andsplintered. 

"Got a pair of scissors?" I asked. 

One man had a pair of nail-scissors, and with this very awkwardinstrument I proceeded to operate. It was a terrible gash. His sleevewas soaked in blood. I cut it away, and his shirt also. 

I broke an iodine phial and poured the yellow chemical into his greatgaping wound. Actually his flesh stunk: it was going bad. 

"Is it broke?" he asked. 

"Be all right in a few minutes; nothing much. " I lied to him. 

"Not broke then?"

"Bit bent; be all right. "

With the nail-scissors I cut great chunks of his arm out, and allthis flesh was gangrenous, and mortification was rapidly spreading. Myfingers were soaked in blood and iodine. 

I cut away a piece of muscle which stunk like bad meat. 

"Can you feel that?" I asked. 

"Feel what?" he murmured. 

"I thought that might hurt. I was cutting your sleeve away, that's all. "

I cut out all the bad flesh, almost to the broken bones. I filled upthe jagged hole with another iodine ampoule. I plugged the opening withdouble-cyanide gauze, and put on an antiseptic pad. 

"Splints?" I asked. 

"Haven't any. "

So I used the helve of an entrenching-tool and the stalks of the willowundergrowth. 

I set his arm straight and bandaged it tightly and fixed it absolutelyimmovably. Then we got him on a stretcher, and they carried him threeand a half miles to our ambulance tents. But I'm afraid that arm had tocome off. I never heard of him again. 

The other fellow was cheerful enough, and only set his teeth anddrew his breath when I cut off his boot with a jack-knife. Wonderfulendurance some of these young fellows have. There's hope for Englandyet. 

CHAPTER XV. KANGAROO BEACH

 "COMMUNICATIONS"

 The native only needs a drum, On which to thump his dusky thumb--

 But WE--the Royal Engineers, Must needs have carts and pontoon-piers; Hundreds of miles of copper-wire, Fitted on poles to make it higher. Hundreds of sappers lay it down, And stick the poles up like a town. By a wonderful system of dashes and dots, Safe from the Turkish sniper's shots-- We have, as you see, a marvellous trick, Of sending messages double-quick. You can't deny it's a great erection, Done by the 3rd Field Telegraph Section; But somewhere-- THERE'S A DISCONNECTION!

 The native merely thumps his drum, He thumps it boldly, thus--"Tum! Tum!"

 J. H. (Sailing for Salonika. )

Kangaroo Beach was where the Australian bridge-building section hadtheir stores and dug-outs. 

It was one muddle and confusion of water-tanks, pier-planks, pontoons, huge piles of bully-beef, biscuit and jam boxes. Here we came eachevening with the water-cart to get our supply of water, and here thewater-carts of every unit came down each evening and stood in a row andwaited their turn. The water was pumped from the water-tank boats to thetank on shore. 

The water-tank boats brought it from Alexandria. It was filthy water, full of dirt, and very brackish to taste. Also it was warm. During thetwo months at Suvla Bay I never tasted a drop of cold water--it wasalways sickly lukewarm, sun-stewed. 

All day long high explosives used to sing and burst--sometimes killingand wounding men, sometimes blowing up the bully-beef and biscuits, sometimes falling with a hiss and a column of white spray into the sea. It was here that the field-telegraph of the Royal Engineers became atangled spider's web of wires and cross wires. They added wires andbranch wires every day, and stuck them up on thin poles. Here you couldsee the Engineers in shirt and shorts trying to find a disconnection, orcarrying a huge reel of wire. Wooden shanties sprang up where dug-outshad been a day or so before. Piers began to crawl out into the bay, adding a leg and trestle and pontoon every hour. Near Kangaroo Beach wasthe camp of the Indians, and here you could see the dusky onespraying on prayer mats and cooking rice and "chupatties" (sort ofoatcake-pancakes). 

Here they were laying a light rail from the beach up with trucks forcarrying shells and parts of big guns. 

Here was the field post-office with sacks and sacks of letters andparcels. Some of the parcels were burst and unaddressed; a pair ofsocks or a mouldy home-made cake squashed in a cardboard box--sometimesnothing but the brown paper, card box and string, an empty shell--thecontents having disappeared. What happened to all the parcels whichnever got to the Dardanelles no one knows, but those which did arrivewere rifled and lost and stolen. Parcels containing cigarettes had away of not getting delivered, and cakes and sweets often fell outmysteriously on the way from England. 

CHAPTER XVI. THE ADVENTURE OF THE LOST SQUADS

Things became jumbled. 

The continual working up to the firing-line and the awful labour ofcarrying heavy men back to our dressing station: it went on. We got usedto being always tired, and having only an hour or two of sleep. It waslog-heavy, dreamless sleep. .. Sheer nothingness. Just as tired when youwere wakened in the early hours by a sleepy, grumbling guard. And thengoing round finding the men and wakening them up and getting them onparade. Every day the same. .. Late into the night. 

Then came the disappearance of a certain section of our ambulance andthe loss of an officer. 

This particular young lieutenant was left on Lemnos sick. He really wasvery sick indeed. He recovered to some extent of the fever, and joinedus one day at Suvla. This was in the Old Dry Water-course period, whenHawk and I lived in the bush-grown ditch. 

Officers, N. C. O. 's, and men were tired out with overwork. This youngofficer came up to the Kapanja Sirt to take over the next spell of duty. 

I remember him now, pale and sickly, with the fever still hanging onhim, and dark, sunken eyes. He spoke in a dull, lifeless way. 

"Do you think you'll be all right?" asked the adjutant. 

"Yes, I think so, " he answered. 

"Well, just stick here and send down the wounded as you find them. Don'tgo any farther along; it's too dangerous up there--you understand?"

"All right, sir. "

It was only a stroke of luck that I didn't stay with him and hisstretcher-squads. 

"You'd better come down with me, sergeant, " says the adjutant. 

Next day the news spread in that mysterious way which has always puzzledme. It spread as news does spread in the wild and desolate regions ofthe earth. 

". .. Lost. .. All the lot. .. "

"Who is?"

"Up there. .. Lieutenant S--- and the squads. .. "

"How-joo-know?"

"Just heard--that wounded fellow over there on the stretcher. .. Theywent out early this morning, and they've gone--no sign, never came backat all--"

"'E warn't fit ter take charge. .. 'e was ill, you could see. "

"Nice thing ter do. The old man'll go ravin' mad. "

"It was a ravin' mad thing to put the poor feller in charge. .. "

"Don't criticise yer officers, " said some wit, quoting the ArmyRegulations. 

The adjutant and a string of squads turned out, and we went back againto the spot where we had left the young officer the evening before. 

The cook and an orderly man remained, and we heard from them the detailsof the mystery. 

Early that morning they had formed up, and gone off under LieutenantS--- along the mule track overlooking the Gulf of Saros. That was all. There was still hope, of course. .. But there wasn't a sign of them tobe seen. The machine-gun section had seen them pass right along. Someofficers had warned them not to go up, but they went and they never cameback. 

There were rumours that one of the N. C. O. 's of the party, a sergeant, had been seen lying on some rocks. 

"Just riddled with bullets--riddled!"

The hours dragged on. I begged of the adjutant to let me go off alongthe ridge on my own to see if I could find any trace. 

"It's too dangerous, " he said. "If I thought there was half a chance I'dgo with you, but we don't want to lose any more. "

Those ten or twelve men went out of our lives completely. Days passed. There was no news. It was queer. It was queer when I called the rollnext day--

"Briggs!"--"Sar'nt!"

"Boots!"--"Sarn't!"

"Cudworth!"--"Here, Sar'nt!"

"Dean!"--"Sar'nt!"

"Desmond!"--"Sar'nt!"

"D---. "

I couldn't remember not to call his name out. It seemed queer that hewas missing. It seemed quite hopeless now. Three or four days draggedon. Everything continued as usual. We went up past the place where wehad left them, and there was no news, no sign. They just vanished. Noone saw them again, and except for the "riddled" rumour of the poor oldsergeant the whole thing was a blank. 

We supposed that the young officer, coming fresh to the place, did notknow where the British lines ended and the Turks' began, and he marchedhis squads into that bit of No Man's Land beyond the machine-gun near"Jefferson's Post, " and was either shot or taken prisoner. 

It made the men heavy and sad-minded. 

"Poor old Mellor--'e warn't a bad sort, was he!"

"Ah!--an' Bell, Sergeant Bell. .. Riddled they say. .. Some one seen'm--artillery or some one!"

It hung over them like a cloud. The men talked of nothing else. 

"Somebody's blundered, " said one. 

"It's a pity any'ow. "

"It's a disgrace to the ambulance--losin' men like that. "

And, also, it made the men nervous and unreliable. It was a shock. 

CHAPTER XVII. "OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND!"

It may be that I have never grown up properly. I'm a very poor hand atpretending I'm a "grown man. "

Impressions of small queer things still stamp themselves with a clearkodak-click on my mind--an ivory-white mule's skull lying in the sandwith green beetles running through the eye-holes. .. Anything--trivial, childlike details. 

I remember reading an article in a magazine which stated that underfire, and more especially in a charge, a man moves in a whirl ofexcitement which blots out all the small realities around him, all the"local colour. " He remembers nothing but a wild, mad rush, or the tenseintensity of the danger he is in. 

It is not so. The greater the danger and the more exciting the positionthe more intensely does the mind receive the imprint of tiny commonplaceobjects. 

Memories of Egypt and the Mediterranean are far more a jumble of generaleffects of colour, sound and smell. 

The closer we crept to the shores of Suvla Bay, and the deathbed of theSalt Lake, the more exact and vivid are the impressions; the one is likean impressionist sketch--blobs and dabs and great sloshy washes; but thememories of Pear-tree Gully, of the Kapanja Sirt, and Chocolate Hillare drawn in with a fine mapping pen and Indian ink--like a Rackhamfairy-book illustration--every blade of dead grass, every ripple ofblue, every pink pebble; and towards the firing-line I could draw itnow, every inch of the way up the hills with every stone and jagged rockin the right place. 

Before sailing from England I had bought a little colour-box, one goodsable brush, and a few H. B. Pencils--these and a sketch-book which myfather gave me I carried everywhere in my haversack. The pocket-book wasspecially made with paper which would take pencil, colour, crayon, inkor charcoal. I was always on the look out for sketches and notes. Thecover bore the strange device--

 JOHN HARGRAVE, R. A. M. C. 32ND FIELD AMBULANCE. 

printed in gilt which gradually wore off as time went on. Inside on thefly-leaf I had written--

 "IF FOUND, please return to

 Sgt. J. HARGRAVE, 32819, R. A. M. C. 32nd Field Ambulance, X Division, Med. Exp. Force. "

And on the opposite page I wrote--

 "IN CASE OF DEATH please post as soon as possible to

 GORDON HARGRAVE, Cinderbarrow Cottage, Levens, Westmorland. "

I remember printing the word "DEATH, " and wondering if the book wouldsome day lie with my own dead body "somewhere in the Dardanelles. "Printing that word in England before we started made the whole thingseem very real. Somehow up to then I hadn't realised that I might getkilled quite easily. I hadn't troubled to think about it. 

We moved our camp from "A" Beach farther along towards the Salt Lake. Wemoved several times. Always Hawk and I "hung together. " Once he was veryill in the old dried-up water-course which wriggled down from the KislarDargh. He ate nothing for three days. I never saw anything like itbefore. He was as weak as a rat, and I know he came very near "peggingout. " He felt it himself. I was sitting on the ground near by. 

"I may not pull through this, old fellow, " says Hawk, with just atear-glint under one eyelid. He lay under a shelf of rock, safe fromshrapnel. 

"Come now, Fred, " says I, "you're not going to snuff it yet. "

"Weak as a rat--can't eat nothink, PRACtically. .. Nothink; but see here, John, "--he seldom called me John--"if I do slip off the map, an' Ifeel PRACtically done for this time--if I SHOULD--you see thatration-bag"--he pointed to a little white bag bulging and tied up andknotted. 

"Yes?"

"It's got some little things in it--for the kiddies at home--a littleteapot I found up by the Turkish bivouac over there, and one or two morerelics--I want 'em to have 'em--will you take care of it and send ithome for me if you get out of this alive?"

Of course I promised to do this, but tried to cheer him up, and assuredhim he would soon pull round. 

In a few days he threw off the fever and was about again. 

Hawk and I had lived for some weeks in this overgrown water-course. It was a natural trench, and at one place Hawk had made a dug-out. Hepicked and shovelled right into the hard, sandy rock until there wasquite a good-sized little cave about eight feet long and five deep. 

The same sickness got me. It came over me quite suddenly. I wasfearfully tired. Every limb ached, and, like all the others, I began todevelop what I call the "stretcher-stoop. " I just lay down in theditch with a blanket and went to sleep. Hawk sat over me and brought mebovril, which we had "pinched" on Lemnos Island. 

I felt absolutely dying, and I really wondered whether I should haveenough strength to throw the sickness off as Hawk had. I gave him justthe same sort of instructions about my notes and sketches as he hadgiven me about his little ration-bag. 

"Get 'em back to England if you can, " I said; "you're the man I'dsoonest trust here. "

If Hawk hadn't looked after me and made me eat, I don't believe I shouldhave lived. I used to lie there looking at the wild-rose tangles and thered hips; there were brambles, too, with poor, dried-up blackberries. Itreminded me of England. Little green lizards scuttled about, and greatblack centipedes crawled under my blanket. The sun was blazingat mid-day. Hawk used to rig me up an awning over the ditch withwillow-stems and a waterproof ground-sheet. 

Somehow you always thought yourself back to England. No matter whattrain of thought you went upon, it always worked its way by one threador another to England. Mine did, anyway. 

It was better to be up with the stretcher-squads in the firing line thanlying there sick, and thinking those long, long thoughts. 

This is how I would think--

"What a waste of life; what a waste. .. Christianity this; all partof civilisation; what's it all for? Queer thing this civilisedChristianity. .. Very queer. So this really IS war; see now: how doesit feel? not much different to usual. .. But why? It's getting awfullysickening. .. Plenty of excitement, too--plenty. .. Too much, in fact;very easy to get killed any time here; plenty of men getting killedevery minute over there; but it isn't really very exciting. .. Not like Ithought war was in England. .. England? Long way off, England; thousandsof miles; they don't know I'm sick in England; wonder what they'd thinkto see me now; not a bad place, England, green trees and green grass. .. Much better place than I thought it was; wonder how long this will hangon. .. I'd like to get back after it's finished here; I expect it's allgoing on just the same in England; people going about to offices inLondon; women dressing themselves up and shopping; and all that. .. This is a d----place, this beastly peninsula--no green anywhere. .. Justyellow sand and grey rocks and sage-coloured bushes, dead grass--eventhe thistles are all bleached and dead and rustling in the breeze likepaper flowers. .. 

"And we WANTED to get out here. .. Just eating our hearts out to get intoit all, to get to work--and now. .. We're all sick of it. .. It's rotten, absolutely rotten; everything. It's a rotten war. Wonder what they aredoing now at home. .. "

CHAPTER XVIII. TWO MEN RETURN

I shall never forget those two little figures coming into camp. 

They were both trembling like aspen leaves. One had ginger hair, and acrop of ginger beard bristled on his chin. Their eyes were hollow andsunken, and glittered and roamed unmeaningly with the glare of insanity. They glanced with a horrible suspicion at their pals, and knew them not. The one with the ginger stubble muttered to himself. Their clothes weretorn with brambles, and prickles from thorn-bushes still clung roundtheir puttees. A pitiful sight. They tottered along, keeping closetogether and avoiding the others. An awful tiredness weighed upon them;they dragged themselves along. Their lips were cracked and swollen anddry. They had lost their helmets, and the sun had scorched and peeledthe back of their necks. Their hair was matted and full of sand. But thefear which looked out of those glinting eyes was terrible to behold. 

We gave them "Oxo, " and the medical officer came and looked at them. They came down to our dried-up water-course and tried to sleep; but theywere past sleep. They kept dozing off and waking up with a start andmuttering--

". .. All gone. .. Killed. .. Where? where? No, no. .. No!. . . Don't move. .. (mumble-mumble). .. Keep still. .. Idiot! you'll get shot. .. Can you seethem? Eh? where?. .. He's dying, dying. .. Stop the bleeding, man! He'sdying. .. We're all dying. .. No water. .. Drink. .. "

I've seen men, healthy, strong, hard-faced Irishmen, blown to shreds. I've helped to clear up the mess. I've trod on dead men's chests in thesand, and the ribs have bent in and the putrid gases of decay have burstthrough with a whhh-h-ff-f. 

But I'd rather have to deal with the dead and dying than a case of"sniper-madness. "

I was just recovering from that attack of fever and dysentery, and thesetwo were lying beside me; the one mumbling and the other panting in afitful sleep. 

When they were questioned they could give very little information. 

"Where's Lieutenant S---?"

". .. Gone. .. They're all gone. .. "

"How far did you go with him?"

No answer. 

"Where are the others?"

". .. Gone. .. They're all gone. .. "

"Are they killed?"

". .. Gone. "

"Are any of the others alive?"

"We got away. .. They're lost. .. Dead, I think. "

"Did you come straight back--it's a week since you were lost?"

"It's days and days and long nights. .. Couldn't move; couldn't move aninch, and poor old George dying under a rock. .. No cover; and they shotat us if we moved. .. We waved the stretchers when we found we'd got toofar. .. Too far we got. .. Too far. .. Much too far; shot at us. .. "

"What about the sergeant?"

"We got cut off. .. Cut off. .. We tried to crawl away at night byrolling over and over down the hill, and creeping round bushes. .. Alwayscreeping an' crawling. .. But it took us two days and two nights toget away. .. Crawling, creeping and crawling. .. An' they kep' firing atus. .. "

"No food. .. We chewed grass. .. Sucked dead grass to get some spittle. .. An' sometimes we tried to eat grass to fill up a bit. . . No food. .. Nowater. .. "

They were complete wrecks. They couldn't keep their limbs still. Theytrembled and shook as they lay there. 

Their ribs were standing out like skeletons, and their stomachs hadsunken in. They were black with sunburn, and filthily dirty. 

Gradually they got better. The glare of insanity became less obvious, but a certain haunted look never left them. They were broken men. Monthsafterwards they mumbled to themselves in the night-time. 

Nolan, one of the seafaring men of my section who was with the lostsquads, also returned, but he had not suffered so badly, or at any ratehe had been able to stand the strain better. 

It was about this time that we began to realise that the new landing hadbeen a failure. It was becoming a stale-mate. It was like a clock withits hands stuck. The whole thing went ticking on every day, but therewas no progress--nothing gained. And while we waited there the Turksbrought up heavy guns and fresh troops on the hills. They consolidatedtheir positions in a great semicircle all round us--and we just held thebay and the Salt Lake and the Kapanja Sirt. 

So all this seemed sheer waste. Thousands of lives wasted--thousandsof armless and legless cripples sent back--for nothing. The troops soonrealised that it was now hopeless. You can't "kid" a great body of menfor long. It became utterly sickening--the inactivity--the waiting--fornothing. And every day we lost men. Men were killed by snipers as theywent up to the trenches. The Turkish snipers killed them when they wentdown to the wells for water. 

The whole thing had lost impetus. It came to a standstill. It kept on"marking time, " and nothing appeared to move it. 

In the first three days of the landing it wanted but one thing to havemarched us right through to Constantinople--it wanted, dash!

It didn't want a careful, thoughtful man in command--it wanted dash andbluff. It could have been done in those early days. The landing WAS asuccess--a brilliant, blinding success--but it stuck at the verymoment when it should have rushed forward. It was no one's fault if youunderstand. It was sheer luck. It just didn't "come off"--and only just. But a man with dash, a devil-may-care sort of leader, could have cutright across on Sunday, August the 8th, and brought off a staggeringvictory. 

CHAPTER XIX. THE RETREAT

It happened on the left of Pear-tree Gully. 

Pear-tree Gully was a piece of ground which neither we nor the Turkscould hold. It was a gap in both lines, swept by machine-gun fire andhaunted by snipers and sharp-shooters. 

We had advanced right up behind the machine-gun section, which washidden in a dense clump of bushes on the top of a steep rise. 

The sun was blazing hot and the sweat was dripping from our faces. Wewere continually on the look-out for wounded, and always alert for theagonised cry of "Stretcher-bearers!" away on some distant knoll or downbelow in the thickets. Looking back the bay shimmered a silver-whitestreak with grey battleships lying out. 

In front the fighting broke out in fierce gusts. 

"Pop-pop-pop-pop!--Pop-pop!" went the machine-gun. We could see one mangetting another belt of ammunition ready to "feed. " Bullets fromthe Turkish quick-firers went singing with an angry "ssss-ooooo!zzz-z-eeee!. .. Whheee-ooo-o-o! zz-ing!"

"D'you know where Brigade Headquarters is?" asked the adjutant. 

"I'll find it, sir. "

"Very well, go up with this message, and I shall be here when you comeback. "

I took the message, saluted and went off, plunging down into thethickets, and at last along my old water-course where I had crawled awayfrom the sniper some days before. 

I made a big detour to avoid showing myself on the sky-line. I knew thegeneral direction of our Brigade Headquarters, and after half-an-hour'ssteady trudging with various creepings and crawlings I arrived anddelivered my message. I returned quickly towards Pear-tree Gully. Istopped once to listen for the "Pop-pop-pop!" of our machine-gun but Icould not hear it. I hurried on. It was downhill most of the way goingback. I crept up through the bushes and looked about for signs of ourmen and the officer. 

I saw a man of the machine-gun section carrying the tripod-stand, followed by another with the ammunition-belt-box. 

"Seen any Medical Corps here?"

"They've gone down--'ooked it. .. You'd better get out o' this quickyourself--we're retreating--can't 'old this place no'ow--too 'ot!"

"Did the officer leave any message?"

"No--they've bin gone some time--come on, Sammy. "

Well, I thought to myself, this IS nice. So I went down with themachine-gunners and in the dead grass just below the gully I found awounded man: he was shot through the thigh and it had gone clean throughboth legs. 

He was bleeding to death quickly, for it had ripped both arteries. Looking round I saw another man coming down, hopping along but verycheerful. 

"In the ankle, " he said; "can you do anything?"

"I'll have a look in a minute. "

I examined the man who was hit in the thigh and discovered twotourniquets had been applied made out of a handkerchief and bits ofstick to twist them up. But the blood was now pumping steadily from bothwounds and soaking its way into the sandy soil. I tightened them up, butit was useless. There was no stopping the loss of blood. 

All the time little groups of British went straggling past--hurryingback towards the bay--retreating. 

It was impossible to leave my wounded. I helped the cheerful man to hopnear a willow thicket, and there I took off his boot and found a cleanbullet wound right through the ankle-bone of the left foot. It wasbleeding slowly and the man was very pale. 

"Been bleeding long?" I asked. 

"About half an hour I reckon. Is it all right, mate?"

"Yes. It's a clean wound. "

I plugged each hole, padded it and bound it up tightly. I had a lookat the other man, who was still bleeding and had lost consciousnessaltogether. 

It was a race for life. Which to attend to? Both men were stillbleeding, and both would bleed to death within half an hour or so. Ireckoned it was almost hopeless with the tourniquet-man and I left himpassing painlessly from life to death. But the ankle-man's wound wasstill bleeding when I turned again to him. It trickled through myplugging. It's a difficult thing to stop the bleeding from such a place. Seeing the plug was useless I tried another way. I rolled up one ofhis puttees, put it under his knee, braced his knee up and tied it inposition with the other puttee. This brought pressure on the arteryitself and stopped the loss of blood from his ankle. I could hear theTurkish machine-gun much closer now. It sputtered out a leaden rain witha hard metallic clatter. 

"Thanks, mate, " said the man; "'ow's the other bloke?"

"He's all right, " I answered, and I could see him lying a little way upthe hill, calm and still and stiffening. 

I found two regimental stretcher-bearers coming down with the rest inthis little retreat, and I got them to take my ankle-man on to theirdressing station about two miles further back. 

It's no fun attending to wounded when the troops are retiring. 

Next day they regained the lost position, and I trudged past the poordead body of the man who had bled to death. The tourniquets were stillgripping his lifeless limbs and the blood on the handkerchiefs had drieda rich red-brown. 

CHAPTER XX. "JHILL-O! JOHNNIE!"

 "A" BEACH

 SUVLA BAY

 There's a lot of senseless "doing" And a fearful lot of work; There are gangs of men with "gangers, " To see they do not shirk. There's the usual waste of power In the usual Western way, There's a tangle in the transport, And a blockage every day. The sergeants do the swearing, The corporals "carry on"; The private cusses openly, And hopes he'll soon be gone. 

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 ashorefrom the tank-boats. I trudged along the sandy shore. At one spot Iremember the carcase of a mule washed up by the tide, the flesh rottedand 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 uncannymotion with every ripple of the bay. 

The wet season was coming on, and the chill winds went through mykhaki drill uniform. The sky was overcast, and the bay, generally akaleidoscope of Eastern blues and greens, was dull and grey. 

At "A" Beach I examined the pipes and tanks of the water-supply systemand had a chat with the Australians who were in charge. I drew a smallplan, showing how the water was pumped from the tanks afloat to thestanding tank ashore, and suggested the probable cause of the sand anddirt of which the C. O. Complained. 

This done I found our own ambulance water-cart just ready to return toour 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 theBank 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 wagonswith "W. D. " in white on their grey sides; ambulance wagons joltingslowly back to their respective units, sometimes full of wounded, sometimes empty. Here all was bustle and noise. Sergeants shouting andcorporals cursing; transport-officers giving directions; a party of NewZealand sharp-shooters in scout hats and leggings laughing and yarning;a patrol of the R. E. 's Telegraph Section coming in after repairing thewires along the beach; or a new batch of men, just arrived, falling inwith new-looking kit-bags. 

It was through this throng of seething khaki and transport traffic thatour water-cart jostled and pushed. 

Often we had to pull up to let the Indian Pack-mule Corps pass, and itwas at one of these halts that I happened to come close to one of thesedusky soldiers waiting calmly by the side of his mules. 

I wished I had some knowledge of Hindustani, and began to think over anywords he might recognise. 

"You ever hear of Rabindranarth Tagore, Johnnie?" I asked him. The nameof 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 riverGanges 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 pulledout on the trail again and the ghostly figure with its well-foldedturban and gleaming white teeth was left behind. 

A beautifully calm race, the Hindus. They did wonderful work at SuvlaBay. Up and down, up and down, hour after hour they worked steadily on;taking up biscuits, bully-beef and ammunition to the firing-line, andreturning for more and still more. Day and night these splendidly builtEasterns kept up the supply. 

I remember one man who had had his left leg blown off by shrapnelsitting on a rock smoking a cigarette and great tears rolling down hischeeks. But he said no word. Not a groan or a cry of pain. 

They ate little, and said little. But they were always extraordinarilypolite 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 6feet 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. "

 THE INDIAN TRANSPORT TRAIN

 (Across the bed of the Salt Lake every night from the Supply Depot at Kangaroo Beach to the firing-line beyond Chocolate Hill, September 1915. )

 (footnote: "Jhill-o!"--Hindustani for "Gee-up"; used by the drivers of the Indian Pack-mule Corps. )

 The Indian whallahs go up to the hills-- "Jhill-o! Johnnie, Jhill-o!" They pass by the spot where the gun-cotton kills; They shiver and huddle--they feel the night chills-- "Jhill-o! Johnnie, Jhill-o!"

 With creaking and jingle of harness and pack-- "Jhill-o! Johnnie, Jhill-o!" Where the moonlight is white and the shadows are black, They are climbing the winding and rocky mule-track-- "Jhill-o! Johnnie, Jhill-o!"

 By the blessing of Allah he's more than one wife; "Jhill-o! Johnnie, Jhill-o!" He's forbidden the wine which encourages strife, But you don't like the look of his dangerous knife; "Jhill-o! Johnnie, Jhill-o!"

 The picturesque whallah is dusky and spare; "Jhill-o! Johnnie, Jhill-o!" A turban he wears with magnificent air, But he chucks down his pack when it's time for his prayer; "Jhill-o! Johnnie, Jhill-o!"

 When his moment arrives he'll be dropped in a hole; "Jhill-o! Johnnie, Jhill-o!" 'Tis Kismet, he says, and beyond his control; But the dear little houris will comfort his soul; "Jhill-o! Johnnie, Jhill-o!"

 The Indian whallahs go up to the hills; "Jhill-o! Johnnie, Jhill-o!" They pass by the spot where the gun-cotton kills; But those who come down carry something that chills; "Jhill-o! Johnnie, Jhill-o!"

CHAPTER XXI. SILVER BAY

On the edge of the Salt Lake, by the blue Aegean shore, Hawk and I dug alittle underground home into the sandy hillock upon which our ambulancewas now encamped. 

"I'm going deep into this, " said Hawk--he was a very skilful miner, andhe 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 weburrowed into the soft sandy layers, he swinging the pick, and I fillingup sand-bags. At last we made a sort of cave, a snug little Peter Panhome, sand-bagged all round and safe from shells when you crawled in. 

I often thought what a fine thing Stevenson would have written from thelocal colour of the bay. 

Its changing colours were intense and wonderful. In the early morningthe waves were a rich royal blue, with splashing lines of white breakersrolling in and in upon the pale grey sand, and the sea-birds skimmingand wheeling overhead. 

At mid-day it was colourless, glaring, steel-flashing, with the sunlightblazing and everything shimmering in the heat haze. 

In the early afternoon, when Hawk and I used to go down to the shore andstrip naked like savages, and plunge into the warm water, the bay hadchanged to pale blue with green ripples, and the outline of ImbrosIsland, on the horizon, was a long jagged strip of mauve. 

Later, when the sunset sky turned lemon-yellow, orange, and deepcrimson, the bay went into peacock blues and purples, with here andthere a current of bottle-glass green, and Imbros Island stood clear cutagainst 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 resemblingour martin, but with something of the canary in their colour. Hornedbeetles, baby tortoises, mice, and green-grey lizards all left theirtiny 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 untothese SILVER sands. " It glittered white in a great horse-shoe round thebay, and the bed of the Salt Lake (which is really an overflow from thesea) was a barren patch of this silver-sand, with here and there a deadmule or a sniper's body lying out, a little black blot, the haunt ofvultures. 

I made some careful drawings of the sand-tracks of the bay; noting downtracks 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 hearta boy--a boy-scout, in fact, and a fine tracker. 

One of the most picturesque sights I ever saw was an Indian officermounted on a white Arab horse with a long flowing mane, and a tail whichswept in a splendid curve and trailed in the sands. The Hindu wore akhaki turban, with a long end floating behind. He sat his horse boltupright, and rode in the proper military style. 

The Arab steed pranced, and arched its great neck. With the blue ofthe bay as a background it made a magnificent picture, worthy of theThousand-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 awooden cross-beam roped to an old rusty bayonet driven into the sand. 

We lived a truly Robinson Crusoe life, with the addition of Turkishhigh-explosives, and bully-beef-and-biscuit stew. 

Our dug-out was back to the firing-line, and at night we looked outupon the bay. We lay in our blankets watching the white moonlight on thewaves, 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 disheson 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 ofwire down the gas-tube. 

He cooked chocolate-pudding, and rice-and-milk, andarrowroot-blancmange, stewed prunes, fried bread in bacon fat, and manyother tasty morsels. 

"The proof of a good cook, " said Hawk, "is whether he can make a mealworth 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 andlice; men utterly and unspeakably exhausted, with hollow, black-rimmedeyes, cracked lips and foot-sores; men who limped across the sandybed, dragging their rifles and equipment in their hands; men who weredesperately hungry, whose eyes held the glint of sniper-madness; menwhose bodies were wasting away, the skin taut and dry like a drum, withevery rib showing like the beams of a wreck, or the rafters of an oldroof. 

Always we were in the midst of pain and misery, hunger and death. We donot 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 wreckageis always a sad sight--human wreckage most of all. 

But the bay was always full of interest for me, with its ever-changingcolour, and the imprint of the ripples in the gleaming silver-sand. 

And the silver moonlight silvers the silver-sand, while the skeletonsof the Xth sink deeper and deeper, to be rediscovered perhaps at somefuture geological period, and recognised as a type of primitive man. 

CHAPTER XXII. DUG-OUT YARNS

 Oft in the stilly night, By yellow candle-light, With finger in the sand We mapped and planned. 

 "This is the Turkish well, That's where the Captain fell, There's the great Salt Lake bed, Here's where the Munsters led. "

 Primitive man arose, With prehistoric pose, Like Dug-out Men of old, By signs our thoughts were told. 

I have slept and lived in every kind of camp and bivouac. I have dug andhelped 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 apair of boots for a pillow. I have lived and snoozed in the dried-up bedof a mountain torrent for weeks. A ground-sheet tied to a bough has beenmy bedroom. I have slumbered curled in a coil of rope on the deck of acattle-boat, in an ambulance wagon, on a stretcher, in farmhouse barnsand under hedges and haystacks. I have slept in the sand by the blueMediterranean 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 werethe most enjoyable. 

It was here of a night-time that Hawk and I--sometimes alone, sometimeswith Brockley, or "Cherry Blossom, " or "Corporal Mush, " or Sergeant JoeSmith, the sailormen as onlookers and listeners--it was here we drewdiagrams in the sand with our fingers, and talked on politics andwomen's rights, marriage and immorality, drink and religion, customs andhabits; of life and death, peace and war. 

Sometimes Hawk burst into a rare phrase of splendidcomposition--well-balanced rhetoric, not unworthy of a Prime Minister. 

At other times he is the buccaneer, the flinger of foul oaths, andterrible damning curses. But as a rule they are not vindictive, theyhave no sting--for Hawk is a forgiving and humble man in reality, inspite of his mask of arrogance. 

A remarkable character in every way, he fell unknowingly into the oldnorth-country Quaker talk of "thee and thou. "

Another minute he gives an order in those hard, calm, commanding wordswhich, had he had the chance, would have made him, in spite of his lackof schooling, one of the finest Generals the world could ever know. 

On these occasional gleams of pure leadership he finds the finest King'sEnglish 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 hadhis own peculiar sayings. 

He never thought of looking over my shoulder when I was sketching. Hewas 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'ssee. "

"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 ofbarrack-room touches, and the smells and sounds of the jungle. He toldof the time when a soldier could get "jungling leave"; when he couldgo off with a Winchester and a pal and a native guide for two or threemonths; when the Government paid so many rupees for a tiger skin, somany for a cobra--a scale of rewards for bringing back the trophies ofthe jungle wilds. 

He pictured the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush, describing the everlastingsnows where you look up and up at the sheer rocks and glaciers; "youfeel like a baby tortoise away down there, so small, as like as not youget giddy and drunk-like. "

One night Hawk told me of a Hindu fakir who sat by the roadsideperforming the mango-trick for one anna. I illustrated it in the sand ashe told it. 

_caption: Dug-out, September 9, 1915. _

1. The fakir puts a pinch of dust from the ground in a little pile on aglass 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 heapof dust under the cloth a-growing and a-growing up and up, bigger andbigger. 

4. At last he lifts up the cloth and shows you the green mango-treegrowing on the piece of glass. 

"He covers it again--plays. Lifts the cloth, shows you the mango tree inleaf. Covers it again--plays again. Takes away the cloth, and shows youthe mango-tree in fruit, real fruit; but they never let you have thefruit for love or money. Rather than let any one have it, they pluck itand squash it between their fingers. "

CHAPTER XXIII. THE WISDOM OF FATHER S----

One day, while I was making some sketch-book drawings of bursting shellsdown 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 inDublin and Belfast. "

Who would expect to find "Father Brown" of G. K. Chesterton fame in akhaki drill uniform and a pith helmet?

A small, energetic man, with a round face and a habit of putting hishands deep into the patch pockets of his tunic. Here was a priest whoknew his people, who was a real "father" to his khaki followers. Iquickly discovered him to be a man of learning, and one who noticedsmall signs and commonplace details. 

His eyes twinkled and glittered when he was amused, and his little roundface wrinkled into wreaths of smiles. 

When we moved to the Salt Lake dug-outs he came with us, and here he hada dug-out of his own. 

When the day's work was finished, and the moonlight glittered whiteacross the Salt Lake, I used to stroll away for a time by myself beforeturning in. 

It was a good time to think. Everything was so silent. Even my ownfootsteps were soundless in the soft sand. It was on one of thesenight-prowls that I spotted the tiny figure of Father S--- jerkingacross 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 havelooked down all these ages; same old stars which looked down on Dariusand his Persians. "

He prodded the sand with his walking stick, stuck his cap on one side (Idon't think he cared for his helmet), and peered up to the star-spangledsky. 

"Wonderful country, all this, " said the padre; "it may be across thisvery Salt Lake that the armies of the ancients fought with sling andstone and spear; St. Paul may have put in here, he was well acquaintedwith these parts--Lemnos and all round about--preaching and teaching onhis travels, you know. "

"Talking about Lemnos Island, " he went on, "did you notice the series ofpeaks which run across it in a line?"

"Yes. "

"Well, it was on those promontories that Agamemnon, King of Mycenx, lita 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 roughsketch 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 ofclassical history, connecting these islands with Greek and Roman heroes. 

All this was desperately interesting to me. It was picturesque to standin the sand-bed of the Salt Lake, lit by the broad flood of silvermoonlight, with the little priest eagerly scratching like an ibis in thesand with his walking-stick. 

I learnt more about the Near East in those few minutes than I had everdone at school. 

But besides the interest in this novel history lesson, I was more thandelighted to find the padre so correct in his sketch of the island andthe 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 IllustratedLondon News, or so. I came to admire him for his simplicity and for hisdevotion to his men. Every Sunday he held Mass in the trenches of thefiring-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, theGreat Life-Mystery of Death. 

He wrote beautifully sad letters of comfort to the mothers ofboy-officers who were killed. Father S--- knew every man: every man knewFather S--- and admired him. 

His dug-out was made in a slope overlooking the bay, and was reallya deep square pit in the sand-bank, roofed with corrugated iron andsandbagged all round. Here we talked. I found he knew G. K. C. AndHilaire Belloc. Always he wanted to look at any new drawings in mysketch-books. 

It is a relief to speak with some intelligent person sometimes. 

Such was Father S---, a very 'cute little man, knowing most of thetroubles of the men about him, noticing their ways and keeping in touchwith them all. 

CHAPTER XXIV. THE SHARP-SHOOTERS

Just after the episode of the lost squads we were working ourstretcher-bearers as far as Brigade Headquarters which were situated ona steep backbone-like spur of the Kapanja Sirt. 

One of my "lance-jacks" (lance-corporals) had been missing for a goodlong time, and we began to fear he was either shot or taken prisonerwith the others who had gone too far up the Sirt. 

One afternoon we were resting among the rocks, waiting for wounded to besent back to us; for since the loss of the others we were not allowedto pass the Brigade Headquarters. There was a lull in the fighting, withonly 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 couldpull through if escape should mean a fight with Nature for food andwater and life itself. 

Fairly late in the day as we all lay sprawling on the rocks or under thethorn-bushes, I saw a little party staggering along the defile which ledup to the Sirt at this point. 

There were two men with cow-boy hats, and between them they helpedanother very thin and very exhausted-looking fellow, who tottered alongholding one arm which had been wounded. 

As they came closer I recognised my lost lance-jack, very pale andshaky, a little thinner than usual, and with a hint of that gleam ofsniper-madness which I have noticed before in the jumpy, unsteady eyesof hunted men. 

The other two, one each side, were sturdy enough. Well-built men, oneshort and the other tall, with great rough hands, sunburnt faces, and bare arms. They wore brown leggings and riding-breeches and khakishirts. They carried their rifles at the trail and strode up to us withthe 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 theofficer, and they both saluted in an easy-going sort of way. 

"We found 'im up there, " the Australian jerked his head, "being snipedand couldn't git away--says 'e belongs t' th' 32nd Ambulance--so here heis. "

The two Australians were just about to slouch off again when theadjutant 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' thesnipers, 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 palleaning on his rifle. 

"No, " answered the short sharp-shooter; "he's the only one. It was agood afternoon's sport--very good. We saw 'e'd got no rifle, and was ina tight clove-'itch, so we took the job on right there an' finished fourof 'em; but it took some creepin' and crawlin'. "

"Well, we'll be quittin' this now, " said the tall one. "There's onlyone thing we'd ask of you, sir: don't let our people know anything aboutthis. "

"But why?" asked the adjutant, astonished. "You've saved his life, andit ought to be known. "

"Ya-as, that may be, sir; but we're not supposed to be up heresharp-shootin'--we jist done it fer a bit of sport. Rightly we don'tcarry a rifle; we belong to the bridge-buildin' section. We've onlyborrowed these rifles from the Cycle Corps, an' we shall be charged withbein' out o' bounds without leave, an' all that sort o' thing if it gitsknown down at our headquarters. "

"Very well, I'll tell no one; all the same it was good work, and wethank you for getting him back to us, " the adjutant smiled. 

The two Australians gave him a friendly nod, and said, "So long, youchaps!" 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 theshort 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 thepeninsula. 

Rough travelling, little or no food, no water, sleepless nightsand thrilling escapes made them look queerly primitive and RobinsonCrusoeish. 

I wrote in my pocket-book: "September 8, 1915. --The Australians have thekeen eye, quick ear and silent tongue which evolves in the bushman andthose 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 thewild, and come through. 

"Fine fellows these, with good chests and arms, well-knit and gracefullypoised 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 BoyScouts. Some wear green shirts, and they all wear stone-gray wide-awakehats with pinched crown and broad flat brims. "

When at last the mails brought us month-old papers from England, we readthat "The gallant Australians" at Suvla "took" Lala Baba and ChocolateHill; indeed, as Hawk read out in our dug-out one mail-day--

"The Australians have took everythink, or practically everythink worthtakin'. They stormed Lala Baba and captured Chocolate 'ill--in fac'they made the landin'; and the Xth and XIth Divisions are simply a mythaccordin' to the papers!"

CHAPTER XXV. A SCOUT AT SUVLA BAY

Many times have I seen the value of the Scout training, but never wasit demonstrated so clearly as at Suvla Bay. Here, owing to the ruggednature of the country--devoid of all signs of civilisation--a barren, sandy waste--it was necessary to practise all the cunning and craft ofthe savage scout. Therefore those who had from boyhood been trained inscouting 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 themaps 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 inhis shirt and shorts because they couldn't see the good of it! But whenwe came face to face with bare Nature we had to return to the methods ofprimitive man. 

More than once I found it very useful to be able to judge the time bythe swing of the star-sky. 

Then again, many and many a young officer or army-scout on outpost dutywas shot and killed because, instead of keeping still, he jerked hishead up above the rocks and finding himself spotted jerked down again. The consequence was, that when he raised himself the next time the Turkshad the spot "taped" and "his number was up. "

This means unnecessary loss of men, owing entirely to lack of trainingin scoutcraft and stalking. 

Finding your way was another point. How many companies got "cutup" simply because the officer or sergeant in charge had no bump oflocation. As most men came from our big cities and towns, they knewnothing 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 happenedagain and again--simply because the leaders were not scouts. 

Then there were many young officers who when it came to the test couldnot read a map quickly as they went. (Boy scouts, please note. )This became a very serious thing when taking up fresh men into thefiring-line. 

Those men who went out with a lot of "la-di-da swank" soon found thatthey were nowhere in the game with the man who cut his drill trousersinto shorts--went about with his shirt sleeves rolled up and didn't mindgetting himself dirty. 

There were very few "knuts" and they soon got cracked!

Shouting and talking was another point in scouting at Suvla Bay. Broughtup in towns and streets, many men found it extremely difficult to keepquiet. Slowly they learnt that silence was the only protection againstthe hidden sniper. 

I remember a lot of fresh men landing in high spirits and keen to get upto 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 themiddle 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. Thesecrosses were made out of bully-beef packing-cases, and on most of them Iwas asked to inscribe the name, number and regiment of the slain. Idid this in purple copying pencil, as I had nothing more lasting: andgenerally it read:--

 "In Memory of 19673, Pte. ------ Royal Irish Fus. R. I. P. "

I had to be tombstone maker and engraver--and sometimes even sexton--ascout turns his hand to anything. 

We had our advanced dressing station on the left of Chocolate Hill--theproper name of which is Bakka Baba. 

Our ambulance wagons had to cross the Salt Lake, and often the wheelssank and we had to take another team of mules to pull them out. 

The Turks had a tower--a gleaming white minaret--just beyond ChocolateHill, near the Moslem cemetery in the village of Anafarta. It wassupposed to be a sacred tower, but as they used it as an observationpost, our battle-ships in the bay blew it down. 

Flies swarmed everywhere, and were a great cause of disease, as, aftervisiting the dead and the latrines they used to come and have a meal onour 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 burstingshell. 

I must say khaki drill uniform is not a good hiding colour. In thesunlight it showed up too light. I believe a parti-coloured uniform, sayof green, khaki and gray would be much better. Therefore the Scoutwho wears a khaki hat, green shirt, khaki shorts and gray stockings isreally 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 inwhat has been dubbed "The Glorious Failure. "

CHAPTER XXVI. THE BUSH-FIRES

There are some things you never forget. .. 

That little Welshman, for instance, lying on a ledge of rock above ourBrigade Headquarters with a great gaping shrapnel wound in his abdomenimploring the Medical Officer in the Gaelic tongue to "put him out, " andhow he died, with a morphia tablet in his mouth, singing at the top ofhis high-pitched voice--

 "When the midnight chu-chu leaves for Alabam! I'll be right there! I've got my fare. .. All aboard! All aboard! All aboard for Alla-Bam! . .. Midnight. .. Chu-chu. .. Chu-chu. .. "

And so, slowly his soul steamed out of the wrecked station of his bodyand left for "Alabam!"

One evening, the 25th of August, bush-fires broke out on the right ofChocolate Hill. 

The shells from the Turks set light to the dried sage, and thistle andthorn, and soon the whole place was blazing. It was a fearful sight. Many wounded tried to crawl away, dragging their broken arms and legsout of the burning bushes and were cremated alive. 

It was impossible to rescue them. Boxes of ammunition caught fire andexploded with terrific noise in thick bunches of murky smoke. A bombingsection tried to throw off their equipment before the explosives burst, but many were blown to pieces by their own bombs. Puffs of white smokerose up in little clouds and floated slowly across the Salt Lake. 

The flames ran along the ridges in long lapping lines with a canopy ofblue and gray smoke. We could hear the crackle of the burning thickets, and the sharp "bang!" of bullets. The sand round Suvla Bay hid thousandsof bullets and ammunition pouches, some flung away by wounded men, somebelonging to the dead. As the bush-fires licked from the lower slopes ofthe Sari Bair towards Chocolate Hill this lost ammunition exploded, andit sounded like erratic rifle-fire. The fires glowed and spluttered allnight, and went on smoking in the morning. I had to go up to ChocolateHill about some sand-bags for our hospital dug-outs next day, and on theway up I noticed a human pelvis and a chunk of charred human vertebraeunder a scorched and charcoaled thorn-bush. 

Hawk and I kept a very good look-out every day. We noted the arrival ofreinforcements, and the putting up of new telegraph lines; we spottedincoming transports, and the departure of our battle-ships in the bay. 

In fact, between us, we worked a very complete "IntelligenceDepartment" of our own. We made a rough chart showing the main lines ofcommunications, and the position of snipers and wells, telegraph wiresto 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 aregoing, and to keep account of details--it's safer, and might be veryuseful. "

"Very true, " said Hawk; "'ave you noticed 'ow that little cruisercomes in every morning at the same time, and goes out again in the lateafternoon? Also, two brigades of Territorials came in last night andwent round by the beach early this morning towards Lala Baba; I see thefootprints when I went down for a wash. "

The colonel had camped us on the edge of the Salt Lake on this side ofan incline which led up to a flat plateau. Into this incline we had madeour dug-outs, and he was now planning the digging out of a square-shapedplace which would hold all our stretchers on which the sick and woundedlay, and would be protected from the Turkish shell-fire by being duginto the solid sandstone. 

I was looking about for sand-tracks and shells, and I noticed that thegrass had grown much more luxuriously at one level than it did lowerdown. This grass was last year's and was now yellow and dead andrustling like paper flowers. 

"This, " said I to Hawk, "was last year's water-mark in the rainyseason. "

"That's gospel, " said Hawk; "and what would you make out o' thatobservation?"

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 underwater. "

"Then what's the good of starting to dig a big permanent hospital herewhen----?"

"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 outwith digging. 

Then the long, flat rain-clouds appeared one morning over the distantrange of mountains. 

"You see them, " said Hawk, lighting a "woodbine, " and pointing acrossthe 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 ambulanceto "C" Beach, near Lala Baba, as our present position was unfavourablefor the construction of a permanent field hospital, owing to the rise ofwater in the wet season. 

Soon after this, Hawk was moved to the advanced dressing station onChocolate 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 toomuch, we know the workin' o' things too well, must break up the combine, dangerous to 'ave people about 'oo spot things and keep their jawstight. 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 headthe various snipers' posts, and the general positions of the British andTurkish trenches. 

There came a time when I wanted to send him a note. But it was adangerous thing to send notes about. They might fall into the hands ofsome 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 insidethe soap, clapped the two halves together, stuck them together bywetting 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 theambulance 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 hima bit. Tell him it's from me, and that I hope he'll find it allright--it's the best we have!"

Hawk got the soap, guessed there was a reason for sending it, broke itopen and found the note. So a simple boy-scout trick came in useful onactive service. 

CHAPTER XXVII. THE DEPARTURE

Now came a period of utter stagnation

It was a deadlock. 

We held the bay, the plain of Anafarta, the Salt Lake, the Kislar Daghand Kapanja Sirt in a horse-shoe. 

The Turks held the heights of Sari Bair, Anafarta village, and thehills beyond "Jefferson's Post" in a semicircle enclosing us. Nothinghappened. We shelled and they shelled--every day. Snipers sniped and mengot killed; but there was no further advance. Things had remained at astandstill since the first week of the landing. 

Rumours floated from one unit to another:

"We were going to make a great attack on the 28th"--always a fixeddate; "the Italians were landing troops to help the Australians atAnzac"--every possible absurdity was noised abroad. 

Hawk was on Chocolate Hill with our advanced dressing station. I was on"C" Beach, Lala Baba, with the remainder of the ambulance. I had lostall my officers by sickness and wounds, and I was now the last of theoriginal N. C. O. 's of "A" Section. Except for the swimming and my ownobservations of tracks and birds and natural history generally, this wasa desperately uninteresting period. 

Orders to pack up ready for a move came suddenly. It was now late inSeptember. The wet season was just beginning. The storm-clouds werecoming up over the hills in great masses of rolling banks, black andforbidding. It grew colder at night, and a cold wind sprang up duringthe day. 

Every one was bustling about, packing the operating tent and equipment, operating table, instruments, bottles, pans, stretchers, "monkey-boxes, "bandages, splints, cooking dixies, bully-beef crates, biscuittins--everything was being packed up and sorted out ready for moving. 

But where? No one knew. We were going to move. .. Soon, very soon, it wasrumoured. 

Within every mind a small voice asked--"Blighty?" And then came anotherwhiff of rumour: "The Xth Division are going--England perhaps!"

But it was too good to believe. Every one wanted to believe it. .. Eachman in his inmost soul hoped it might be true. .. But it couldn't beEngland. .. And yet it might!

One night the Indian Pack-mule Corps came trailing down with theirlittle two-wheeled, two-muled carts and transported all our medicalpanniers away into the gloom, and they went towards Lala Baba. It was agood sign. 

Everything was gone now except our own packs and kit, and we had ordersto "stand by" for the command to "Fall in. "

We lay about in the sand waiting--and wondering. At last towards thelast minutes of midnight we got the orders to "Fall in. " The N. C. O. 'scalled the "Roll, " "numbered off" their sections and reported "Allpresent and correct, sir!"

In a long straggling column we marched from our last encampment towardsLala Baba. The night was very dark and the sand gave under our feet. It was hard going, but every man had a gleam of hope, and trudgedalong heavy-laden with rolled overcoat, haversack and water-bottle andstretcher, but with a light heart. 

The advanced party from Chocolate Hill met us at Lala Baba. Hereeverything was bustle and hurry. 

Every unit of the Xth Division was packed up and ready for embarkation. Lighters and tugs puffed and grated by the shore. Horses stamped andsnorted; sergeants swore continually; officers nagged and shouted. 

Men got mixed up and lost their units, sections lost their way in thegreat crowd of companies assembled. 

Once Hawk loomed out of the darkness and a strong whiff of rum camewith him. .. He disappeared again: "See you later, Sar'nt--lookin' afterthings--important--practically everythink----"

He was full of drink, and in his hurry to look after "things" (mostlybottles) he lost some of his own kit and my field-glasses. He workedhard at getting the equipment into the lighters, notwithstanding thefact that he was "three-parts canned. "

Every now and then he loomed up like some great khaki-clad gorilla, onlyto fade away again to the secret hiding-place of a bottle. 

And so at last we got aboard. It was still a profound secret. No oneknew whither we were going, or why we were leaving the desolation ofSuvla Bay. 

But every one was glad. Anything would be better than this barren wasteof sand and flies and dead men. 

That was the last we saw of the bay. A sheet of gray water, a movingmob on the slope of Lala Baba, the trailing smoke of the tug, and apitch-black sky--and Hawk lurching round and swearing at the loss of hisbottle and his kit. 

An old sea-song was running in my mind:--

 "But two men of her crew alive-- What put to sea with seventy-five!"

Only three months ago we had landed 25, 000 strong; and now we numberedabout 6000. A fearful loss--a smashed Division. 

We transferred to a troop-ship standing out in the bay with all possiblespeed. 

Still with the gloom hanging over everything we steamed out and everyman was dead tired. 

However, I found Hawk, and we decided not to sleep down below with theothers, all crowded together and stinking in the dirty interior of theship. 

We took our hammocks up on deck and slung them forward from the handrailnear one of the great anchors. 

I had a purpose in doing this. I had no intention of going to sleep. Bytaking note of a certain star which had appeared just to the right ofa cross-spar, and by noticing its change of position, I was enabled toguess with some exactitude the course we were laying. 

For the first two or three hours the star and the mast kept a perfectlyunchangeable position. 

I woke up after dozing for some minutes, and taking up my old stand nearthe companion-way again took my star observation. But this time the starhad swept right round and was the other side of the mast. We hadchanged our course from south-west to north. Just then Hawk came up thecompanion-way, no doubt from a bottle-hunt down below. 

"It's--Salonika!" said he. 

"We've turned almost due north in the last quarter of an hour. "

"I know it, --been down to the stokers' bunks--it's Salonika--another newlanding. "

"They keep the Xth for making new landings. "

And so to the Graeco-Serbian frontier and a fresh series of adventures, including sickness, life in an Egyptian hospital--and then England. 

CHAPTER XXVIII. LOOKING BACK

The queer thing is, that when I look back upon that "Great Failure" itis not the danger or the importance of the undertaking which is stronglyimpressed so much as a jumble of smells and sounds and small things. 

It is just these small things which no author can make up in his studyat home. 

The glitter of some one carrying an army biscuit-tin along the muletrack; the imprinted tracks of sand-birds by the blue Aegean shore; thestink of the dead; a dead man's hand sticking up through the sand; theblankets soaked each morning by the heavy dew; the incessant rattle of amachine-gun behind Pear-tree Gully; the distant ridges of the Sari Bahirrange shimmering in the heat of noon-day; the angry "buzz" of the greenand black flies disturbed from a jam-pot lid; the grit of sand in themouth with every bite of food; the sullen dullness of the overworked, death-wearied troops; the hoarse dried-up and everlasting question:"Any water?"; the silence of the Hindus of the Pack-mule Corps; the"S-s-s-e-e-e-e-o-o-o-op!--Crash!"--of the high explosives bursting in abunch of densely solid smoke on the Kislar Dargh, and the slow unfoldingof these masses of smoke and sand in black and khaki rolls; the snortand stampede of a couple of mules bolting along the beach with theirtrappings swinging and rattling under their panting bellies; the steadyburning of the star-lit night skies; the regular morning shelling fromthe Turkish batteries on the break of dawn over the gloom-shroudedhills; the far-away call of some wounded man for "Stretchers!Stretchers!"; the naked white men splashing and swimming in the bay; theswoop of a couple of skinny vultures over the burning white sand ofthe Salt Lake bed to the stinking and decomposing body of ashrapnel-slaughtered mule hidden in the willow-thickets at the bottomof Chocolate Hill; a torn and bullet-pierced French warplane stranded onthe other side of Lala Baba--lying over at an angle like a wounded whiteseabird; the rush for the little figure bringing in "the mails" ina sack over his shoulder; the smell of iodine and iodoform round thehospital-tents; the long wobbling moan of the Turkish long-distanceshells, and the harmless "Z-z-z-eee-e-e-o-ooop!" of their "dud" shellswhich buried themselves so often in the sand without exploding; thetattered, begrimed and sunken-eyed appearance of men who had been in thetrenches for three weeks at a stretch; the bristling unshaven chins, and the craving desire for "woodbines"; the ingrained stale blood onmy hands and arms from those fearful gaping wounds, and the red-brownblood-stain patches on my khaki drill clothes; the pestering curse ofthose damnable Suvla Bay flies and the lice with which every officer andman swarmed. 

The awful--cut-off, Robinson Crusoe feeling--no letters from home, no newspapers, no books. .. Sand, biscuits and flies; flies, bully andsand. .. 

Stay-at-home critics and prophets of war cannot strike just that tinyspark of reality which makes the whole thing "live. "

However many diagrams and wonderful ideas these remarkable amateurexperts publish they won't "go down" with the man who has humped hispack and has "been out. "

Mention the word "Blighty" or "Tickler's plum-and-apple, " "KangarooBeach" or "Jhill-o! Johnnie!" or "Up yer go--an' the best o' luck!" toany man of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force and in each caseyou will have touched upon a vividly imprinted impresssion of theDardanelles. 

There was adventure wild and queer enough in the Dardanelles campaign tofill a volume of Turkish Nights' Entertainments, but the people at homeknow nothing of it. 

This is the very type of adventure and incident which would have arouseda war-sickened people; which would have rekindled war-weary enthusiasmand patriotism in the land. Maybe most of these accounts of marvellousescapes and 'cute encounters, secret scoutings and extraordinaryexpeditions will lie now for ever with the silent dead and the thousandsof rounds of ammunition in the silver sand of Suvla Bay. 

The stars still burn above the Salt Lake bed; the white breakers roll ineach morning along the blue sea-shore, sometimes washing up the bodiesof the slain--just as they did when we camped near Lala Baba. 

But the guns are gone and there the heavy silence of the waste placesreigns supreme.