At Suvla Bay Part 7

The noise increased. Mechanical Death worked first on our side, and then with the Turks. He led forward a squad, and the next instant mowed them down with a hail of lead. He galloped up a battery, unlimbered--and before the first sh.e.l.l could be rammed home Mechanical Death blew the whole 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 sh.e.l.l came wailing and moaning across the bay, and dropped into the water with a great column of spray glittering in the early morning sunshine. A German Taube buzzed overhead; the hum-hum-hum of the engine was very loud. She dropped several bombs, but none of them did much damage. The little yellow-skinned observation balloon floated above one of our battleships like a penny toy. The Turks had several shots at it, but missed it every time.

The incessant noise of battle grew more distant as our troops on sh.o.r.e advanced. It broke out like a bush-fire, and spread from one section to another. Mechanical Death pressed forward across the Salt Lake. It stormed the heights of the Kapanja Sirt on the one side, and took Lala Baba on the other. Puffs of smoke hung on the hills, and the sh.o.r.e was all wreathed in the smoke of rifle and machine-gun fire. A deadly conflict this--for one Turk on the hills was worth ten British down below on the Salt Lake.

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

Here was organised murder--but it was steel-cold! There was no hand-to-hand glory. A mine dispersed you before you had set foot on dry land; or a high explosive removed your stomach, and left you a mangled heap of human flesh, instead of a medically certified, healthy human being.

Mechanical Death wavered and fluctuated--but it kept going. If it slackened its murderous fire at one side of the bay, it was only to burst 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 sh.o.r.e, and poured out a deadly brood of Death.

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

The fighting got more and more inland, and the rattle and crackle fainter 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--stone dead. We could see our artillery teams galloping along like a team of performing fleas, taking up new positions behind Lala Baba. So this is war? Well, it's pretty awful! Wholesale murder... what's it all for?

Wonder how long we shall last alive before Mechanical Death blows our brains out, or a leg off...

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

And now came the time for us to land. A lighter came alongside, with a little 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 he smoked a pipe. We huddled into the lighter, and hauled our stores down below. Some of us were "green about the gills," and some were trying to pretend we didn't care.

We watched the boat which landed just before us strike a mine and be blown 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 two bodies lay upon the sand as we stepped down.

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

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

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

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

Here again small things left a vivid impression--the crack of a rifle from the top of the ridge, and a party of British climbing up the rocks and 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 distant crackle and the occasional moan of a sh.e.l.l. The rain which came pelting down in great cold blobs, splashing and soaking our thin drill clothes till we were wet to the skin and shivering with cold.

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

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

I worked up and down the line of squads trying to keep them in touch with 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 medical companions.

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

The stretcher-squads worked slowly forward. We pa.s.sed an old Turkish well with a stone-flagged front and a stone trough. Later on we came upon the trenches and bivouacs of a Turkish sniping headquarters. There were all kinds of articles lying about which had evidently belonged to Turkish officers: tobacco in a heap on the ground near a bent willow and thorn bivouac; part of a field telephone with the wires running towards the upper ridges of Sirt; the remains of some dried fish and an earthenware jar or "chattie" which had held some kind of wine; a few very hard biscuits, and a ma.s.s of brand-new clothing, striped shirts and white shirts, grey military overcoats, yellow leather shoes with pointed toes, a red fez, a great padded body-belt with tapes to tie it, a pair of boots, and some richly coloured handkerchiefs and waistbands all striped and worked and fringed.

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

The sun now blazed upon us, and our rain-soaked clothes were steaming in the heat. The open fan-like formation in which we moved was not a success. We lost the officers, and continually got out of touch with each 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, although as a matter of fact it was yards above his head. Here, among a hail of moaning spent shots, our officers called a halt, made us fall in, in close formation, and we retired--what for I do not know.

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

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

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

A parson came with us. I marched just behind the adjutant, and the parson walked with me. He was a big man and a fair age. We went past the well 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 few paces 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?"