At Suvla Bay Part 6

The crags were colourless and shimmering in the heat. The harbour was calm and greeny-blue. One by one, with our haversacks and water-bottles, belts and rolled overcoats, we went down the companion-way into the waiting surf-boats. Again and again these boats, roped together and tugged by a little launch, went back and forth from the S.S. Canada to the "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 was casting off the painter, what the place was like--

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

No sooner ash.o.r.e than the green and black flies came pestering and tormenting like a host of wicked jinn. The glare of sunlight on the yellow sand hurt the eyes. The deadly silence of the place was oppressive--especially when you had strung yourself up to concert pitch to face the crash and turmoil of a fearful battle.

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

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

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

"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 our pith helmets and soaked in a stream from under our armpits. We trudged to our camping-place along the sh.o.r.e. One or two Greek natives followed us about with melons to sell. Parched and choked with sand, we were only too glad to buy these water-melons for two or three leptas.

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

One day ash.o.r.e on this accursed island and the diarrhoea set in. I never saw men suffer such awful stomach-pains before. The continual eating of melons to allay the blistering thirst helped the disease. Many men slept close to the latrines, too weak to crawl to and fro all night long. The sun blazed, and the flies in thousands of millions swarmed and irritated from early morning till sundown.

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

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

The "graft" (work) was fearful. All day long we were at it: hauling up our equipment from the beach where it had been dumped ash.o.r.e. Medical panniers, operating marquee, tents and tent-poles, cook-house dixies, picks and shovels, bully and biscuit boxes and a hundred-and-one articles necessary to the work of the Medical Corps in the field: all this had to be man-handled through the sand up to our camp about a mile away. And the sun blazed, and the flies pestered and stung and buzzed and fought with each other for the drops of sweat streaming down your face. How long should we be here? When were we going into action?... The suspense was brain-racking. The diarrhoea increased: everyone went down with it. Some got the ague shivers and some a touch of dysentery.

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

Anything would be better than this G.o.d-forsaken island. Why the d.i.c.kens did they leave us moping here: working in the blazing heat, and crawling to the latrines in the chilly nights? For goodness' sake, let's get out of it! Let's get to work!... So the days dragged on.

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

We used to go down to swim in the little bay-like semicircle of the harbour. The water was always warm and very salt. Here were tiny shoals of tiny fish. The water was clear and gla.s.sy. There were pinky sea-urchins with spikey spines which jabbed your feet. The sandy bed of the 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 gra.s.shoppers and 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 a half distant, and haul it up in a water-cart.

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER X. THE NEW LANDING

A pale pink sunrise burst across the eastern sky as our transport came 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 our cramped limbs. Slowly we warped through the quiet seas.

You must understand that we knew not where we were. We had never heard of 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 the pink sunrise swept behind the rugged mountains to the left, and was reflected in wobbling ripples in the bay.

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

We could hear the rattle of machine-guns in the distant gloom beyond the streak of sandy sh.o.r.e. The decks were crowded with that same khaki crowd. We all stood eagerly watching and listening. The death-silence had come upon us. No one spoke. No one whistled.

We could see the lighters and small boats towing troops ash.o.r.e. We saw the men scramble out, only to be blown to pieces by land mines as they waded to the beach. On the Lala Baba side we watched platoons and companies form up and march along in fours, all in step, as if they were on parade.

"In fours!" I exclaimed to Hawk, who was peering through my field-gla.s.ses.

"Sheer murder," said Hawk.

No sooner had he spoken than a high explosive from the Turkish positions 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 were crawling away like ants into the dead yellow gra.s.s and the sage bushes to die. A whole platoon was smashed.

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

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

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

Now and then our battle-ships crashed forth, and their sh.e.l.ls went hurtling and screaming over the mountains to burst with a m.u.f.fled roar somewhere out of sight.

Mechanical Death moved back and forth. It whistled and screamed and crashed. It spat fire, and unfolded puffs of grey and white and black smoke. It flashed tongues of livid flame, like some devilish ant-eater lapping 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 with bayonets, and they glittered here and there in tiny groups, and charged up the rocks and through the bushes.