Tell England Part 64

"Take cover," I said to my men.

The sh.e.l.l was on its way, but, as it had a journey of seven miles to make across the Dardanelles, a certain time must elapse before we should hear the shriek of the sh.e.l.l as it raced towards us. It seemed an extraordinary time. We knew the sh.e.l.l was coming with its destiny, involving our life or death, irrevocably determined, and yet we heard nothing. The men, under such cover as they could find, were silent in their suspense. Then the sh.e.l.l roared over our heads, seeming so low that we cowered to avoid it. It exploded a score of yards away. A shower of earth rained upon us, but no splinter touched anyone. The men whistled in their relief and laughed.

"Does this happen often?" I asked Monty, when I found I was still alive.

"Every few minutes. It's ten o'clock. We embark at midnight."

"I'm moving my men, then. Asiatic Annie has the range of this spot too well."

I marched my company down to the beach, and told them to take shelter under the lee of the cliff. We had scarcely got there before Annie's wicked eye sparkled from Asia, the warning whistles blew, and, after crying "There she is!" we waited spellbound for the imminent shriek. The sh.e.l.l burst in the surf, scattering shingle and spray over every one of us.

"You'd think they'd seen us move," I said, listening for the groans of any wounded. None came, but I heard instead the sound of m.u.f.fled voices and marching feet, and saw men moving through the darkness along the brink of the sea like a column of Stygian shades. It was the battalion arriving, with other units of the East Cheshire Brigade.

"I know what'll happen, Rupert," said Monty, when these men had crowded the beach and the hill-slope. "Some drunken Turk will lean against that old gun in Asia, and just push it far enough to perfect its aim."

And he looked round upon the ma.s.s of men and shuddered.

It was getting cold, and we huddled ourselves up on the beach. Some of us were indifferent in our fatalism to the sh.e.l.ls of Asiatic Annie; if our time had come--well, Kismet. Others, like myself, waited fascinated. I know I had almost hungered for that meaning flash in Asia, the terrible delight of suspense, the rush of thrills, and the sudden arresting of the heart as the sh.e.l.l exploded.

--4

Then, about one o'clock, the moon broke the clouds and lit the operations with a white light. It should have filled us with dismay, but instead it seemed the beginning of brighter things. The men groaned merrily and burst into a drawling song:

"Oh, the moon shines bright on Mrs. Porter, And on her daughter, A regular snorter; She has washed her neck in dirty water, She didn't oughter, The dirty cat."

And Monty, hearing them, whispered one of his delightfully out-of-place remarks:

"Aren't they wonderful, Rupert? I could hug them all, but I wish they'd come to Ma.s.s."

The moon, moreover, showed us comforting things. There was the old _Redbreast_ lying off Cape h.e.l.les. There were the lighters, crowded with men, pushing off from the beach to the waiting boat.

"You could get off on any one of those lighters," said I to Monty.

"Why don't you go?"

"Why, because we'll leave this old place together."

After he said this I must have fallen from sheer weariness into a half-sleep. The next thing I remember was Monty's saying: "Look alive, Rupert! _We're_ moving now." Glancing round, I saw that my company was the last left on the beach. I marshalled the men--twenty-eight of them--on to the lighter.

"Now, get aboard, Rupert," said Monty.

"You first," corrected I. "I'm going to be last off to-night."

"As your senior officer, I order you to go first."

"As the only combatant officer on the beach," I retorted, "I'm O.C.

Troops. You're simply attached to me for rations and discipline.

Kindly embark."

Monty muttered something about "upstart impudence," and obeyed the O.C. Troops, who thereupon boarded the rocking lighter, and exchanged with one step the fatal Peninsula for the safety of the seas.

On the _Redbreast_ we leaned upon the rail, looking back. The boat began to steam away, and Monty, knowing with whom the thoughts of both of us lay, said quietly:

"'Tell England--' You must write a book and tell 'em, Rupert, about the dead schoolboys of your generation--

'Tell England, ye who pa.s.s this monument, We died for her, and here we rest content.'"

Unable to conquer a slight warming of the eyes at these words, I watched the Peninsula pa.s.s. All that I could see of it in the moonlight was the white surf on the beach, the slope of Hunter Weston Hill, and the outline of Achi Baba, rising behind like a monument.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE END OF RUPERT'S STORY

--1

Let Monty have the last word, for he spoke it well. He spoke it a few days ago, in the late autumn of 1918, that is to say, as the war breaks up, and nearly three years after we slipped away in the moonlight from W Beach.

In those intervening years the game losers of Gallipoli had avenged themselves at Bagdad, Jerusalem, and Aleppo. In every field the Turkish Armies had been destroyed: and now the forts of the Dardanelles were to be surrendered, and the Narrows thrown open to the Allies. One wished that the dead on Gallipoli might be awakened, if only for a minute, at the sound of the old language spoken among the graves, to see the khaki ash.o.r.e again, and British ships sailing in triumph up the Straits.

Many of the old Colonel's visions of the emanc.i.p.ation of the Arab world, and the control of the junction of the continents, had thus been realised. And a n.o.bler crusade than that which he saw in the Dardanelles campaign had been fought and won by the army which entered Jerusalem. And, note it well, the men who won these victories were in great part the men who escaped from Suvla and h.e.l.les. For, like the Suvla Army, the whole h.e.l.les Army escaped. And the Turk was a fool to let them go.

But, before I give you Monty's last word, let me tell you where I am at this moment. It is early evening, and I am writing these closing lines, in which I bid you farewell, sitting on the floor of my kennel-like dug-out in a Belgian trench. There is a most glorious bombardment going on overhead. It has thundered over our trench for days and nights on to the German lines, which to-morrow, when we go over the top, we shall capture, as surely as we captured the one I am sitting in now. Yes, Turkey is out of the game; Bulgaria is out of it; Austria is crying for quarter; and Germany is disintegrating before our advance.

Our bombardment is the most uplifting and exciting thing. So fast do the sh.e.l.ls fly over and detonate on the enemy ground that it is almost impossible to distinguish the isolated sh.e.l.l-bursts; they are lost in one dense fog of smoke. Just now we ceased to be rational as we stood watching it. "That's the stuff to give 'em!" cried a Tommy in his excitement. "Pump it over! Pump it over!" and, as some German sand-bags flew into the air: "Gee! Look at that! Are we downhearted?

NO! 'Ave we won? YES!" And I wanted to throw up my hat and cheer.

There seized me the sensation I got when my house was winning on the football-ground at school. "We're on top! On top of the Boche, and he asked for it!"

I have now returned to my dug-out, feeling it in my heart to be sorry for the Germans. I am impatient to finish my story, for we go over the top in the morning.

--2

It is in a letter just arrived from my mother that we find Monty's last word--his footnote to this history. She describes a ceremony which she attended at Kensingtowe, the unveiling of a memorial in the chapel to the Old Kensingtonians who fell at Gallipoli. Monty, as an old Peninsula padre, had been invited to preach the sermon. My mother writes in her womanly way:

"He preached a wonderful sermon. We all thought him like a man who had seen terrible things, and was pa.s.sionately anxious that somehow good should come of it all.

"Calvary, he said, was a sacrifice offered by a Holy Family.

There was a Father Who gave His Son, because He so loved the world; a mother who yielded up her child, whispering (he doubted not): 'Behold the handmaid of the Lord'; and a Son Who went to His death in the spirit of the words: 'In the volume of the Book it was written of me that I should do Thy will, O my G.o.d; I am content to do it.'

"And, in days to come, England must remember that once upon a time she, too, was a Holy Family; for there had been years in which she was composed of fathers who so loved the world that they gave their sons; of mothers who whispered, as their boys set their faces for Gallipoli or Flanders: 'Behold the handmaid of the Lord' (and oh, Rupert, I felt so ashamed to think how badly I behaved that last night before you went to Gallipoli--how rebellious I was!). He went on to speak of the sons, and what do you think he said? He spoke of one who, the evening before the last attack at Cape h.e.l.les, asked him: 'Will you take care of these envelopes, in case--' He declared that this simple sentence was, in its shy English way, a reflection of the words: 'It was written of me that I should do Thy will; I am content to do it.'

"That boy, an old Kensingtonian, was mortally hit in the morning. There was another with him, also an old Kensingtonian, who was still alive, and might yet come marching home with the victorious army.

"I lost his next words, for there I broke down. But I seem to remember his saying: