The Tale of a Trooper Part 11

More followed in rapid succession; but the first shot had been the signal for the troop in the defile below to set off at a jog-trot up its murky, twisty depths. They trotted along for five minutes, machine-gun bullets from high above sometimes. .h.i.tting up small spurts of sand as they doubled round corners. Then, as they suddenly rounded a sharp ridge, a dozen or so rifles burst on them from fifteen paces distant. Some men went down in front of Mac, a cloud of dust sprang up and he stumbled over one of the p.r.o.ne forms. Instantly they were in among them, the terrified Turks shrieked, a few odd shots rang out, Mac killed two with his revolver, and then, with b.l.o.o.d.y bayonets, shadowy figures emerged from the murky depths of the trench, and pa.s.sed on to explore the ground beyond. They pushed up through the thick scrub to beneath the outpost where a battle now raged, for the purpose of catching fugitives and preventing reinforcements. But none came, and the troop sat quietly in the scrub awaiting developments. The sound of musketry echoed beautifully across the ravines in the clear stillness of the night.

The Turks were lighting fires in the stunted pine growth a short distance ahead, which lit with a red flickering light the overhanging clay cliffs of Table Top rising sharply at the farther side of the defile. Then the cold white glare of a searchlight settled on its flat top, and in a few minutes heavy howitzer, 18-pounder and naval sh.e.l.ls, shrieked overhead and burst, flashing and roaring, on the crest. The overhanging crag, her summit rent by an inferno of sh.e.l.l fire, her inaccessible escarpment lit by the lurid glow of scrub fires, and the fantastic smoke clouds eerily revealed by the searchlight, made altogether a wild night battle scene of weird glory.

The bombardment ceased suddenly, the searchlight switched off, and part of the regiment, who had crawled through the scrub on the more accessible flank during the sh.e.l.ling, successfully rushed the Top. Mac and his mates returned to their first scene of action and continued to guard the communication sap. One or two Turks, who had hidden in the scrub during the melee, gave their presence away, yelled with terror and fell dead at the first shot. Poor old Joe, who had been severely wounded by the first fusillade, lay dying, and soon his moans ceased altogether. Others were dead, and some wounded.

About three in the morning they went on again to join the rest of the regiment on Table Top. Struggling up the trench-like bottom of the ravine, through the inky blackness of the thick scrub, they found themselves at length in a _cul-de-sac_, with clay cliffs on either side. The officer went on to reconnoitre, and then, to the great discomfiture of the forty fellows huddled together in the clay watercourse, a hundred or so Turks put in an appearance on the brink of the steep cliff on the left. Babbling excitedly they looked curiously down on the silent crouching troopers. Trapped, and entirely at the Turks' mercy, Mac momentarily expected annihilation, and wondered vaguely why it did not come. Retreat was hopeless, and he counselled scrambling up the steep bank and attacking them. A tense half hour pa.s.sed. Then came a guarded whistle from high up on the right, and he heard the faint command from his officer, "Climb up to the right."

Quitting the troop, he scrambled up the soft yielding cliff, slid back to the starting point several times, still puzzled why the Turks on the opposite brink did not shoot, and at last found his officer near the top, quite bewildered as to the whereabouts of his men. Mac, exhausted with his exertions, was sent to report the night's events to the Colonel, while his officer returned to guide the others up.

Table Top was a level, scrub-covered plateau, about four chains across, flanked on the north, west and south by steep cliffs, and on the east gently sloping up towards the higher hills. Mac found the Colonel on the far side, answered his questions, heard from him that progress everywhere had been splendid and that the brigade had disposed of all its objectives, and then found a few spare moments to view the country from this high point.

Dawn was breaking--just the same old beautiful dawn they had so often watched silhouetting the trenches opposite and the hills beyond, but now, with the exhilaration of victory thrilling through his body, Mac stood there with the most glorious dawn of all his days, or of anyone else's he thought, lighting the eastern sky.

From the heights of the Table Top, Mac surveyed the scene below him.

To his right as he faced the north, the Table Top was connected by a series of ridges with the hill summits about a mile away, which the sun was just topping. To his front the ground fell abruptly in a deep ravine, beyond which lay ridge after ridge, and beyond again the high range behind Anafarta, three miles away, all standing out clearly in sun-topped ridges and shadow, in the refreshing air of early morning.

Out to sea were the two islands, rugged and beautiful as ever, which, together with the whole glory of the morning, the hills and the sea, were unconscious and unaffected by the battle of men developing on those beaches and hills to decide the fate of nations.

The Anzac sh.o.r.e swept away to the north-west in a splendid curve to Lala Baba, the point of Suvla Bay; and there, where no vessel floated at sundown, lay now the strategy of the battle, a great fleet of transports, warships, lighters, pinnaces and destroyers, encircled already by a great torpedo-net. Farther out, every detail reflected in the clear blue water, lay a dozen clean, sweet hospital ships. Already round the little mound of Lala Baba were gathered small bodies of men, horses and artillery, and occasionally Turkish shrapnel burst above them. The warships were sending sh.e.l.ls up the Anafarta valley and on to the Turkish positions behind the great white patch of the Salt Lake.

Having thoroughly taken in the situation, Mac turned again to business.

Some of the fellows were digging trenches on the enemy side of the plateau, the medicals were bandaging the wounded, Turkish and New Zealand, in a sheltered spot in the scrub, and Mac was told off to disarm and guard several hundred prisoners who were trooping up the steep slope from the rear. This was the garrison of the old No. 3 Outpost who had found their retreat cut off by the capture of Table Top, and were the same Turks who had, earlier in the morning, gazed down on Mac as he had crouched in the ravine bottom fifteen feet below them. He decided that they must have been demoralized then, or else he and his comrades had been no more.

The prisoners threw down their arms and bandoliers in a pile, and seemed to feel no regret. They beamed with happiness, offered cigarettes, biscuits, money and mementoes to their guards, and embarra.s.sed them by crowding round in an effort to shake their hands.

Eventually they were despatched under escort to the beach, and Mac seized a few spare moments to watch an attack, half a mile to the south, which was being made by Light Hors.e.m.e.n from the main position on Russell's Top.

Destroyers close in below sent high explosive sh.e.l.l whirring upwards to burst in a pall of black smoke and dust on the narrow neck between the Turkish and Australian lines. There was a tornado of machine-gun fire which reached Mac's ears only as a high-pitched continuous note. The sh.e.l.ling lasted about ten minutes only, a hopelessly inadequate preparation, he knew, on such positions. The storm of machine-guns rose to terrific violence, ripping and roaring. A grey fog of smoke and dust partially screened the scarred hill-tops, and shielded the melee from his vision, but, knowing those tiers of Turkish trenches as he did, he was awed with the thought of what must be pa.s.sing. For fifteen minutes it lasted in all its fury, then lulled slightly, to burst forth again for a few minutes only to diminish once more to a steady burr, which left nothing decided in his mind. What had happened he did not know, but when he turned his attention there later in the morning he gathered, from the fact that the machine-guns still rattled in the same locality as before, that ground had not been gained.

His Squadron were instructed to make perches in the seaward cliff of the crag where they would be safe from shrapnel which was now bursting occasionally in the vicinity. Mac endeavoured to do so, but so steep was the cliff that he only managed to make a ledge sufficiently wide to sit on, while his legs dangled over the abyss below, and the sun blazed on him in undiluted fury. But the greatest discomfort was the steady fall of a stream of powdered clay from the constructors of perches and paths higher up. A veranda of Turkish bayonets with Turkish rifles roofed crossways on them, failed to improve the situation greatly, so he gave it up as a bad job, and moved to the shade of a fine arbutus bush on the less steep enemy side of the Top. He preferred shade, comfort, and clean arms and ammunition, with the risk of Turkish shrapnel, of which he had no great fear, to the drawbacks of the cliff face without the risk.

The Squadron lay in reserve all day, and Mac, from his shady alt.i.tude, revelled in being just so situated with a great battle in progress, with almost the whole battlefield in view, and him with nothing more to do than sit there in comfort watching it. He surveyed it all through his gla.s.ses, tracing the present limits of the advance. The high hills seemed still to be Turkish, for different bodies of white-patched troops made a rough line some distance below the summit, running down laterally towards Suvla Bay. Distant ridges lined by the same white-patched men showed that all the foothills had been taken; but Mac watched eagerly, though in vain, for the appearance of British troops on the higher ridges. Chocolate Hill and Osman Oblu Tepe at the inner end of the Salt Lake, which were the main obstruction to the success of what seemed to be the plan of attack. He saw only a few Turks on these hills, and odd ones scurrying about near Anafarta, but never a body of them, large or small.

There was a great ma.s.s of troops gathered round the small mound of Lala Baba, on whose top was now a wireless station and a signal mast. There were horses, artillery, limbers, mobs of men and increasing piles of stores. From huge four-masted transatlantic liners came lines of seven or eight crowded boats in tow of a pinnace, and already the same lines were threading their way back to the hospital ships farther out. But the troops on sh.o.r.e were scarcely moving. During the whole day only a few small bodies advanced a short distance, with little opposition it seemed, at any time. Why did they not make a general advance? Sh.e.l.ls fell occasionally on different sections of the general line, the diminishing music of the machine-guns floated, almost unnoticed, across the hot stillness of the midday hours, the freshness of the morning had given way to the summer glare, softened rather by the blue haze from fires which here and there crept through the scrub. Men-o'-war, close insh.o.r.e, were shrouded in a murky pall from their flashing broadsides, while their sh.e.l.ls tore holes in the village of Anafarta, or sent scrub and earth flying as they searched enemy ridges or pa.s.sed to unseen billets beyond the summits.

Hospital ships weighed anchor and pa.s.sed into distance, and destroyers patrolled unceasingly to guard against submarine attack.

Up the narrow, twisting sultry bottoms of ravines swarmed confused trails of sweating men and animals, mules laden with ammunition and water, with their Punjab muleteers, Sikhs with their mountain pieces, and fresh troops, British and Purkha, New Zealand, Australian, pa.s.sing up to the line. Trickling rearwards, moving when opportunities offered, went limping the bandaged wounded, the stretcher-cases, blood-stained and grey, but patient, splendidly patient, the unladen mules, often waiting long periods for a clear pa.s.sage, and all the odd men, messengers, prisoner escorts and others who move up and down the communications during a battle.

A few fellows of the Regiment were caught by snipers hidden still in the scrub behind the advancing line. Otherwise the Table Top was undisturbed, and the trenches grew deeper. Some went back to bury those who had fallen in the night encounters. Mac, Bill and Charley stuck to their shady spot most of the day. In a hollow at their feet half a dozen dead Turks turned black in the sun. Midday came, and they consumed the last of the Mudros luxuries; then they cleaned their gear, slept awhile and awoke at five, expectant of great activity after the lethargy of the day.

The Suvla Bay force had at last roused itself, and now steady extended lines of men were advancing across the dazzling whiteness of the Salt Lake towards Chocolate Hill and Osman. White puffs of bursting shrapnel broke here and there above them; but only occasional men fell.

Naval artillery raked the hills in front of them, where no Turk could be seen. The lines went forward slowly, too slowly, for there seemed to be little opposition to the advance and no hand-to-hand fighting.

They did not even appear to have reached the base of Chocolate Hill when deepening shadows made it no longer possible to follow their progress.

CHAPTER XXII

THE NIGHT BATTLE ON CHANAK BAIR

Of the general progress of the battle through the night and indeed until he was wounded, Mac knew little. He heard but vaguely what was going on on other portions of the front and could see little, and gathered only indefinite impressions of happenings elsewhere.

He pa.s.sed the second night of the battle in alternately trenching and resting, when he occasionally had a few moments of sleep. It was very dark, warm and clear with a glorious showing of stars. The noise of battle increased and seemed to fill the whole sky and earth as it had not in the daytime. Star rockets shot skyward from the enemy lines and burst into dazzling falling lights while the fellows crouched low in the scrub to escape notice. The flash of the artillery and of the bursting sh.e.l.ls were here, there and everywhere, but mostly along the ridge tops, and the musketry roared spasmodically in squalls along the ridges, or drifted down from the high summits.

At length the stars slowly faded before the eastern glow, and the hill-tops stood out darker than before. Did dawn find them gained?

Mac waited eagerly for more light; but, when it came, found little to discover. The summits seemed to be won, but he could find no trace of the British nearer Anafarta.

Sunday pa.s.sed much in the same way as Sat.u.r.day. The Suvla Bay force was still hanging about the landing-place, and there was no indication of a heavy engagement on their front. The New Zealanders had reached the high ridges of Chanak Bair, but no one knew, if they had progressed at all, how far they had gone over on the Dardanelles side. Nearly all the hospital ships had vanished with full cargoes of wounded; but otherwise the whole scene was little different from that of the previous day. The hot hours pa.s.sed slowly, the battle roared on, and Mac and his mates wondered what might be their next move, for they were not at present opposed to any direct enemy force.

In the middle of the afternoon they received orders to prepare to move, with the exception of one Squadron which was to garrison the positions.

They moved off almost immediately, pa.s.sing down the steep northern slope of the plateau and forcing their way through the dense thicket until they reached the bottom of the hollow. They turned to the right and jostled their way up through the struggling traffic along the narrow, suffocating bed of the ravine. There were places where many fine fellows had been laid low by snipers, places where they hurried, if possible. There were times when they were jammed between mules and the banks, and others when they had to wait many minutes for opportunities of pushing on. After an hour of this sort of thing, they came practically to the head of the ravine, and pushed into the scrub on one side to make temporary bivouacs.

Here all slacked and rested their weary bodies, stretched out full length under the stunted bushes. Weak, most of them, with dysentery when the battle started, they had now had two days of it, and with the heat, the short commons of water, and little sleep, they felt a wee bit tired, and they made the most of the short hours.

The cool of evening came again, and with it orders to prepare for further movements, this time to the firing line in support of their own men on the summit of the hills above. They made the best possible meal from the dry rations, dry enough when there was unlimited water, but quite impossible to more than nibble in these almost waterless days.

Mac did not feel very hungry; but he had room inside his thin frame for a tankful of water. He had started on Friday evening with a liberally rum-tinctured bottleful, which had since been restocked with water as strongly tainted with petrol. For the purpose of the advance, sealed petrol tins of water had been brought from Alexandria, but the fillers of the tins seemed to have paid no particular attention as to whether they had first been emptied of petrol. His bottle was almost half-empty, and he did not care for the prospect of going up to those struggling lines without a fresh supply; but, just in time, a mule train came up with full fanta.s.sas, and he got a half-bottle.

When dusk had almost deepened to darkness they joined the surging traffic of mules, men and stretchers on the dusty track, and filed laboriously up the steep hill. The din of battle heightened with the deepening night. Indian mountain batteries barked furiously behind them, and the heavier artillery sent sh.e.l.ls shrieking up from far below, to burst somewhere up there where the crest stood silhouetted against the stars. From above came the incessant roar of bursting bombs and sh.e.l.ls and rattle of musketry. At dawn the summit had been gained, but just how good or bad our position was Mac had not the vaguest idea. He had not heard of, nor had he seen any progress, except the taking of this summit, since Sat.u.r.day morning, and had no idea as to whether the battle was progressing favourably or otherwise.

What was expected of them up there to-night none knew. Each carried a pick or a shovel and two bombs.

They pa.s.sed the dressing-stations, perched on either side on the steep slope, where hundreds of wounded lay, then over a ridge where the track stopped and out into the pitch black open. The bullets zipped past or thudded into the ground. The troop lay down while they got their bearings. A fellow close by Mac gave a yell and was dead. A few wounded men, limping or crawling back, pa.s.sed them. Then in extended order they went forward again, guided by a telephone wire, keeping touch with difficulty in the scrub and the darkness. Frequently there would come from the blackness in front of their feet a warning "Keep clear o' me, cobber, I'm wounded," or groans and the gleam of a white bandage, and sometimes they stumbled over p.r.o.ne still forms. Slowly they picked their way forward, making towards the centre of the firing, which was in a semicircle round them, and the whistling bullets came from both sides as well as from in front, and the din grew fiercer.

They reached at length a hollow full of wounded, then went slowly up a slope littered with equipment and dead, and, at last, topping the rise, they came upon a scene so weird and infernal that Mac instantly stopped and stared with awe.

Lit fantastically by flickering flames which were licking slowly through the scrub was a small ghastly, battle-rent piece of ground, not one hundred yards in width and rising slightly. Beyond and close on either side, it was bounded by the starry heavens, and seemed a strange, detached dreamland where men had gone mad. The Turks lined the far edge, their ghostly faces appearing and vanishing in the eerie light, as they poured a point-blank fusillade at the shattered series of shallow holes where the remnants of the New Zealanders were fighting gallantly. Sweeping round to the left was the flashing semicircle of the enemy line, bombs exploded with a lurid glare, their murky pall drifting slowly back towards Mac. Sh.e.l.ls came whirring up from the black depths behind, and burst beyond the further lip. Above the rending of the bombs, the rattle and burr of the rifles and machine-guns and the crash of sh.e.l.ls, sometimes sounded faintly men's voices--the weird "Allah, Allah, Allah" of the enemy in a chanted cadence, and the fierce half-humorous taunts of the attackers.

Everywhere lay dead and dying men--mostly the former, Turkish and British. Equipment and rifles were strewn in the greatest confusion over the torn earth, and all the time the creeping flames cast weird lights upon the pa.s.sing drama.

"Say, old boy," came a voice from his feet, "you'd better not stand there too long--it's pretty thick."

Mac leaned down to the wounded man, and found him one of the Aucklands.

"It's been simply blanky h.e.l.l up here all day and now I'm just waiting for them to give me a hand out. You boys have come up none too soon.

Mind you give the devils h.e.l.l!"

"You there with the pick," Mac found himself addressed, "get over to those holes up front there and dig in for all you're blanky well worth."

"Good luck, matey, Kia Ora," came the parting blessing from the wounded Aucklander in the scrub.

So br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with good fellowship were the tones, so short, yet so deeply affectionate that Mac instinctively felt much more lighthearted as he stumbled across the shattered battlefield to the thin line of toiling, hard-pressed fighters, close to the rim where the cliff fell away on the Dardanelles side. He found a line of shallow holes, some a foot deep, some eighteen inches, aided a little by a few almost useless sandbags. The cliff brink was six or eight yards away, and under it lay the enemy--whose spectral figures, popping up and disappearing rapidly, blazed point blank into the exposed line. A few yards on the left the Turks poured across from the cliff to a small k.n.o.b which protruded into the attackers' line, and upon which they bore down constantly and bombed furiously. From the ravine below the enemy, came the constant "Allah, Allah, Allah," of many Turks encouraging themselves for the attack, and occasional yells when sh.e.l.ls or bombs fell among them.

Mac knelt on the ground and endeavoured to deepen the hold by steady picking, while two other men kept a steady fire on the agile heads of the enemy. But try his best, he was now beginning to feel severely his decreasing strength and could make but little impression on the trench on this parched, sun-baked hill-top. Another trooper offered to take his place, and he went to the less arduous work of carrying such tattered sandbags as still contained earth from the second line about fifteen feet back and piling them up in some sort of a parapet for the front line. The second line was only half a dozen square holes whose fine garrisons lay dead within them, except a few who raved in delirium for water which was not to be had. They and their arms lay prostrate across each other, many half-buried by flying earth from sh.e.l.ls and bombs.

He finished this work and then responded to an oft-repeated call from farther along, "Reinforcements for the right. Reinforcements for the right. Enemy getting round behind!" Here was a shallow bit of a hole with three or four men, the right flank of this part of the line, while the cliff edge was only four or five yards distant, and the enemy was thought to be crawling back and gathering for a heavy a.s.sault. Mac set about improving the trench and forming a small right angle to prevent enfilade and to protect the flank. The sap had been deeper earlier in the day, for the first foot he shovelled out consisted of a sticky muddy ma.s.s of blood, soil, ammunition and gear of all sorts. He sifted it carefully for good ammunition and bombs, and formed the rest into a parapet with the a.s.sistance of sandbags. Sometimes when he was tired he took a turn at keeping the enemy from becoming too venturesome on the cliff brink. Queer shapes stood out against the stars, but whether they were always Turks he could not tell, as from long sleeplessness and strain his sight was inclined to play him tricks. Anyhow he ran no risks. Somehow or other the troops farther on the left were constantly shouting warnings concerning figures pa.s.sing back to the right, but these he could not see; while, curiously enough, he could plainly follow Turkish figures flitting across the sky-line on the left from the cliff to the small k.n.o.b which could enfilade the trench from the left. His rifle jammed from heat and dust. He took two from dead men and kept them both on the parapet ready for instant action. The others did much the same sort of thing, helping each other, sticking grimly to the job and not worrying much, apparently, about their future.

The battle raged on through hour after hour with unabated fierceness; and the din of it all, the whirring and crashing of the sh.e.l.ls, the furious rattle of musketry, the yells of men and the cries of the wounded, became almost an unnoticed monotone in Mac's ears. The Turks threw bombs steadily, but fortunately only in ones and twos. They were fairly slow to explode, and, if they landed on the parapet, the troops crouched in the bottom of the trench, or, if into the trench, they got out until the explosion and the fumes had cleared away. The enemy was almost safe from bombing, for grenades which were thrown at him found no resting-place until far down into the ravine, where their explosion sounded only as a dull unsatisfactory thud. Sometimes big sh.e.l.ls whirring up from the warships or the heavy land batteries burst short and caught some of the already too spa.r.s.e attackers, or brought the sufferings of the wounded to an end. Mac's line lost men who went bleeding to the rear. Sometimes their places were taken--more often they were not.

He wondered vaguely what would happen, but all were too busy with affairs of immediate importance, and somehow it did not seem to matter in the least--the outlook was not bright. The Turkish mound on the left could enfilade the trench at short range when daylight came, the enemy was in great force in front and was creeping back to the rear--already a fire-swept zone impossible to cross. Where was that great force from Suvla Bay? They had landed three miles away at midnight on Friday and it was now just before dawn on Monday.

The night came in time near to its end. He could not describe it as having gone quickly, nor yet slowly--it had simply pa.s.sed. Dawn brought no particular pleasure, only the transition from the unearthly phantasmagoria of bitter night fighting to the practical fierce hand-to-hand struggling of day. The paling sky figured the sky-line and the Turkish heads in definite silhouette, and many of the large shrubs of the night where Turks might lurk revealed themselves as small tufts of gra.s.s. Vigilance increased. If rifles did not sweep that crest continually the old Turk would leave his head and shoulders above the edge long enough to take aim, instead of blazing away rather at random.

It was now definitely seen that the Turks had got well round the right flank during the darkness, in spite of a machine-gun which had been said to sweep this zone; but of it Mac saw no sign. Some Turks were creeping through a hollow immediately to the right, and he being the tallest man at this point directed his attention at the wriggling backs with some success. One wounded Turk there signalled by waving his rifle to some of the advanced party, but was soon after lifted by a mate who ran with him to safety.