The Tale of a Trooper Part 8

He learned afterwards that the _Albion_, in taking up her position on the southern flank, had grounded in the mist, and that the _Canopus_ had come to her a.s.sistance, attempting, without success, to get her off. The _Albion_ lightened herself by emptying her magazines through her broadsides, and was finally towed off.

Then came the armistice, a day of interest and amus.e.m.e.nt, and of grim, unpleasant work.

For almost a month, in no man's land, attack after attack had dwindled away to nothing and there, five days before, Turkish losses had been especially heavy. The enemy took the initiative in the matter, and white flag negotiations proceeded on several occasions. Later, a gorgeously apparelled Turkish staff officer came across and was taken blindfolded to Headquarters, where an armistice for internment purposes was agreed upon. Very considerate it was of Abdul to put the proposition, Mac thought, for the condition of the atmosphere in the neighbourhood was not conducive to his peace of mind, nor did it improve his inclination to eat to know that those flies which nothing could keep out of his food, had come from ----. And his internals would squirm at the thought.

A peculiar quietness had marked the pa.s.sage of the night, and with the vanishing of the mists a strange silence filled the air. Since the landing nearly a month back, the continuous music of rifle fire, with its echoes and re-echoes among the nullahs and cliffs, had scarcely ever ceased. And now, from opposing parapets, cautious heads began to appear, Red Cross and Red Crescent flags were brought into the open.

Large burying parties followed, and soon thousands of Cornstalks and Mussulmans were burying each others' dead. Thousands lined the parapets, scanning those acres of which they had had before but wily glances, or had scurried over in the wave of an attack. No one was going to miss the show. The Cove was deserted, and the Infantryman and the Service Corps man stood boldly side by side on the parapet.

Of the work itself little can be said. Mac was on duty in the first line, and was not allowed to leave it to investigate the secrets of no man's land, but he knew well enough of the huddled figures lying in cl.u.s.ters in that green scrub, which hid much. But in parts the scrub had been worn from the earth by the constant ripping of the bullets.

There, partly shielded by withering branches lay withering bodies, mostly in strange postures, sometimes one above the other with rusting rifles, discarded equipment, and odd bits of wire. Often sc.r.a.ps of torn cloth clung to the jagged stems of shattered shrubs, and all was a scene of desolation unutterable.

So numerous were the dead that all day long the burying went on. Some of the workers, resting from their labours, attempted conversation with the Turkish parties, but ignorance of each others' language proved a difficulty. Still they smiled and gesticulated and exchanged cigarettes.

Towards the middle of the afternoon, parties finished their work and returned, no man's land became gradually untenanted, the curious were satisfied, and melted from the parapets, a sudden heat shower damping their ardour, and gradually the old scene came back. About four the white flags with their red emblems disappeared and every one retired discreetly into his trench. Soon a stray shot rang out, and the armistice was over. Snipers were at their old dodges, and later in the evening Mac's section received for some time the attentions of an enemy mountain gun, which was new to this part of the line.

The following day brought a tragedy which sank deep into Mac's heart.

Out on the left flank, near where the _Albion_ had been ash.o.r.e a few mornings back, a man-o'-war had always lain since the days of the landing. There had been some anxiety certainly on account of the submarine excitement the other day; but now, slow, lazy movements on the part of the destroyers and the reoccupation of old anchorages by the cruisers, indicated that naval peace of mind was once more restored. H.M.S. _Triumph_ had anch.o.r.ed soon after daybreak on the southern flank.

Now, at midday, came the shout, "_Triumph's_ been torpedoed." Mac jumped on his fire-step, and, looking down the trench, saw beyond it sure enough the poor old _Triumph_ with a heavy list towards him. Some of the fellows had seen the torpedo strike her right amidships, and a great column of water rise high in the air and fall on her decks.

From all directions destroyers, mine-sweepers and pinnaces were concentrating on the doomed vessel. Two destroyers had run their bows alongside her hull, and her crew was swarming off. Her decks grew steeper, but some of the crew seemed to be sticking to their guns to the last in the after turrets. Mac could not discover whether these shots were directed against the submarine or whether they were but the last farewell of the old battleship. Fifteen minutes from the moment she was struck, her decks lay almost at right angles to the water, then the movement quickening, she turned bottom upward, only her red keel, propellers and rudder showing to the troubled troopers who sadly watched the demise of the famous old ship. A quarter of an hour longer she floated, sinking lower and lower, then, with an easy motion, she slid away from sight. For a few minutes a maelstrom of white, surging water foamed and spurted, then, sadly and slowly, the host of small craft which had rushed to the rescue made again for their stations.

Destroyers manoeuvred in vain search of the submarine, while battleships and cruisers in a haze of smoke disappeared beyond the horizon. Only a few bright tins, some boards, and a patch of oil marked the spot on the peaceful, azure sea, where, an hour before, a fine old ship, and fifty of her crew, had gone to their doom.

The troopers ate their lunch in stony silence. It seemed they had lost an old friend.

Still, in going about the afternoon's work, they soon forgot their sadness. They had been a fortnight in these trenches, and now they were to be relieved by the Light Horse. It was good getting out after a fortnight there, but it was a darned nuisance moving. When Mac had all his gear up, there was not much of himself left in view. Valise, bandolier, rifle, revolver, gla.s.ses, water-bottle, extra ammunition, cooking utensils, haversack, a stove, the day's rations, a bundle of fire-wood, and half a dozen odds and ends had to find s.p.a.ce about his person; the Q.M.S., too, usually had something to add to this load. A heavy summer shower did not improve matters, and made the descent of the steep clay paths one of speed rather than elegance. Once started with so heavy a load, it was impossible to pull up. So the descent of his regiment that afternoon from the plateau above was a weird and wonderful sight, and resembled nothing more than a mixed avalanche of perspiring troopers, mud and gear.

They took up their new abode on a steep northerly slope above the sea.

Instructions were that all habitations were to be made shrapnel proof, but this was a matter of difficulty on so steep a face. Nightfall found Mac and his section with an awninged platform, six feet square and three feet high and partially walled, but far from shrapnel proof and never likely to be. They were not inclined to meet trouble half-way, so each disposed his equipment in its rightful spot. The four partook heartily of a most sociable evening meal, and then wandered off for a good long bathe in the pleasantly cool water of the AEgean.

The bivouac on the steep slope north of Anzac Cove was hardly the safest, and domestic life there was not the most unruffled. Just when five more seconds would have seen the bacon done to a T, the whistle of the look-out up above would go. That meant that the Turkish battery on the W Hills had delivered itself of a missile, which might, or might not, be directed at this bivouac. Then Mac would find himself in a dilemma. Would he trust to luck that the sh.e.l.l was not for him, and save the bacon, or would he crouch for safety under the protection wall? More often the bacon had the benefit of the decision for meal-time was Abdul's favourite hour for action, and, if Mac took heed of every warning, the section would never get through its meals. He knew that the warning whistle gave him seventeen seconds before the arrival of the sh.e.l.l, and, if he waited for the sound of the discharge, he had about four seconds left. Still they didn't worry much until, after a few opening rounds, Abdul's practice got too good and there was no mistaking his malevolent attentions. Mac, if he were not near his own bivouac, would dive into the nearest one, irrespective of owner, and seek its leeward corners. A few seconds of quiet waiting while he exchanged the time of day with his host; then the burst, the singing whistle of the fragments, the whirr of the nose-cap, and the fut--fut--fut as the pieces came to earth. Then, if another whistle had not sounded, he would thank his host and proceed on his way.

Often would come the cry of "Stretcher-bearer," and the M.O. would hurry up the steep slope to some one who had been hit.

Mac lost his sergeant, a real fine fellow, one morning, while he was serving out rations. The whole regiment was grieved. For the rest of the day his body, shrouded in his grey blanket, lay on a stretcher in his bivouac with as much calm and holy dignity as any royal monarch lying in state.

Soon after dusk, for the little cemetery was under direct machine-gun fire during the day, the regiment gathered, bareheaded and silent, to bury its comrade. Six of the dead soldier's friends lifted the bier, and bore it tenderly down the steep slope and over the bridge across the sap. The regiment followed and gathered round the open grave.

It was given to few on the Peninsula to be buried thus. Many still lie where they fell on those Gallipoli hills; some are graced with shallow graves, scratched hastily under fire, among the torn and tattered scrub, while others, with fire-bars and blanket and with a few parting words, have been plunged into the blue AEgean.

On the little sandy point on the north of Anzac Cove is one small graveyard, where, when Mac knew it, were fifty or sixty graves. In the daytime it was sh.e.l.l swept and subject to direct rifle fire, but at night came shadowy figures which pa.s.sed to and fro from the beach bringing neat stones and round boulders for picturesque and permanent adornment of a cobber's grave. Or maybe there would be some diggers at work, or a burying-party.

To-night, in the peaceful calm of that summer evening, when not a ripple lapped on the stony beach, when the only indication of war was the music of the firing high above and the occasional whistle of a spent bullet overhead, the good old padre, in clear, low tones, went through the sergeant's burial service. The rites were finished, and the silent troopers moved away into the darkness as quietly as they had come, while the padre started the service anew among another group of silent, waiting figures. And so the summer pa.s.sed over that little burial-ground. In the daytime, the scorching sun blazed over the crude crosses and whitened stones, and the sh.e.l.ls shrieked by, while in the dark coolness of the night shadowy figures brought the day's toll silently and reverently to its resting place.

CHAPTER XVII

AN OUTPOST AFFAIR

Fortunately for the regiment, most of the daylight hours during the short stay in the present bivouac were spent away on working-parties or in support to some section of the front line. They usually returned in the evening to find fresh holes in their oil-sheets and shrapnel pellets on their floors. Still, they often had a good night's sleep, and always a fine bathe in the morning.

While lodged on this slope, Mac and his squadron became involved in an engagement which kept them fully occupied for three days. One Friday evening at dusk they moved northwards along the beach to the farthest outpost. Inland from here about half a mile on a high ridge the Turks had commenced the formation of an outpost. About nine o'clock this was attacked and easily captured. Then the squadron commenced digging in, and, by dawn, with small loss, had dug a fairly satisfactory semicircular position, facing over ravines, beyond which were higher hills.

The Turks were expected to counterattack, but contented themselves by sniping from all sides, which considerably impeded the work of consolidation. Mac and his section toiled and sweated all day, and, in the late afternoon, connected their section of trench with those on the right and left. Water had run dry, no communication could be had with the rear, the sun blazed down, with withering heat, and altogether Mac had known of pleasanter spots to spend a summer's day. In the afternoon, too, the Turks added shrapnel to their missiles.

About ten o'clock at night another squadron appeared for their relief, and Mac, with keen antic.i.p.ations of a drink, a bathe and a sleep, speedily stumbled off through the scrub after his cobbers. Their line of march lay the length of a long ridge through enemy country, and on this ridge one of the destroyers protecting the flank chose this inopportune moment to cast her attention and her searchlight. Each time it caught him in its brilliant glare on the sky-line, Mac crashed down into the nearest shrub, p.r.i.c.kly holly, arbutus or stunted oak, and cursed lowly to himself till the beam lifted. Progressing spasmodically when the beam was directed elsewhere, they reached the outpost, then stumbled wearily back along the beach, ate and bathed and turned in for a real long sleep.

They were to have no such luck. They had only just settled down when word came back that the enemy had closed over the ridge along which they had returned, and that the squadron in the new outpost was cut off. The only remaining squadron was sent out at once to their relief, but, the Turks being in too great strength, it could do nothing. So Mac's squadron, tired as they were, dodged away out again to another hard day's work in the blazing sun. It was now daylight, and certain spots had to be crossed by each man singly at a run, while the close attention of a Turkish machine-gun at long range lent wings to their feet. With his head down and his teeth clenched, Mac would bolt full-speed across these open s.p.a.ces. Tut--tut--tut would echo from the hills, then a whinging past his ears or a spurt of dust in too close proximity, and he would redouble his pace. The shelter of the bank on the farther side gained, he would turn to laugh at the expressions, whimsical, serious as death, or thoroughly amused, of his cobbers as they rapidly paced their hundred yards.

Arrived in a ravine which cut the ridge, they found the Turks in a position too strong to be attacked in daylight by so small a force.

Eventually it was decided to await nightfall and strong reinforcements before attempting to force a pa.s.sage through the Turkish lines to the beleaguered garrison of the outpost. They gathered in shady corners of the dried water-course, and yarned and smoked the long hot hours away.

Shrapnel came screaming across the scrub in the afternoon, but spent itself harmlessly in desert spots.

It was decided that the outpost was too isolated a position to hold, and that, after nightfall, the enemy, who had entrenched, should be forced back, the besieged with their wounded withdrawn, and a retreat made to the old position. This was all successfully carried out. Mac took his fortunes with a covering party on the right flank. He could follow little of what was taking place up at the outpost itself. There was a good deal of rifle-fire and bombing, and a certain amount of sh.e.l.l-fire, whose great white flashes lit up the wild ravine in fleeting visions of weird beauty.

At midnight the order for retreat found Mac almost asleep, for he was very weary from long wakefulness. They pa.s.sed silently down the valley, being apparently the last to go. The Turks were following the retirement, for they were chanting their weird invocations to Allah not very far distant.

At the foot of the ravine, near the ruins of a solitary fisherman's hut, he and half a dozen others were instructed to take up a position and to stick to it till the last. He expected that, when the Turks emerged from the dried-up watercourse, there would be some fun, but, though their cries to Allah floated down the ravine, along with some indiscriminate firing, they themselves did not choose to come. During the long wait here, the padre, heedless of danger from spattering bullets, which flicked fire when they struck the dust, and despite the dysentery which racked his frame, and the long days and nights without sleep, went right along the scattered exposed firing line, taking cheese, biscuits and water to the weary, thirsty troopers. Wherever they went in action there was their quiet old padre, always working among the wounded, and, if these lacked, he would join in some other good work, bringing up water and provisions, or the like.

The Turks had attacked heavily the summit of a ridge about one hundred yards to Mac's right, and here he was sent now to bring in wounded, one of whom three of them were instructed to carry round to Anzac Cove. It was a long and weary journey, stumbling over scrubby hillocks and then away along the stony beach. This bad going in the dark was pretty rough on the wounded man, but, like most in his condition, he stuck it splendidly, and was deeply grieved he was such a burden to his cobbers.

At length they reached the dressing-station at the Cove, and placed him on a table in a room with sandbag walls. Several medical men examined the wound and spoke technically thereon. The stretcher-party asked anxiously after his condition, and sought tidings also of cobbers who had been brought back earlier. Then they set off for the firing-line once more.

The third dawn in this outpost affair was now lighting the eastern sky, beyond the hills where the night's fighting had taken place. Half-way back near the poppy-patch, one glorious riot of red summer flowers, they met their regiment returning. They had done their work, the Turks had ceased attacking and the weary regiment which had been kept busy the long, hot days in this outpost skirmish had been relieved. The tired troopers trailed homewards, carelessly tramping the dewy wild poppy heads on their way. A bathe and a drink, and then a long, long sleep.

The three days' skirmish had been an interesting little engagement.

Mac thought that the establishment of an outpost so far beyond the Anzac territory had been undertaken rather too lightly. The cutting off of the garrison thirty hours from the time of capture, the relief of the besieged twenty-four hours later and the subsequent retreat were actions which had brought many anxious moments, plenty of hard work in the blazing sun, and the lives of some fine officers and men. The Turks, too, had suffered many casualties. The only tactical result of the operation was that the enemy chose to make the outpost of contention a strong, almost impregnable position, which was captured three months later only by a ruse and hard fighting.

Altogether it had been a pleasant sc.r.a.p in the open, and Mac was not dissatisfied that he had gone through the experience. Anyhow as, profoundly and delightfully weary, he lay down on the hard clay floor of his bivouac, he felt a satisfied contentment with life.

It was late that afternoon--Monday--when the troopers awoke and set about preparing a meal as sumptuous as the limited larder permitted.

Since Friday only odd nibbles of bully and biscuit had pa.s.sed into their internals.

That evening they cursed the Turks in free bush fashion for committing an act of a kind to which they usually rose superior. Facing the bivouac on the steep cliff below the disputed outpost, lay two stark white bodies. The enemy had apparently stripped the dead, of whom there were nine left in the outpost, and had flung the bodies over the cliff. The Regiment was infuriated with this treatment of its dead, and vowed vengeance. Next morning a destroyer, with a few well-directed shots, blew up the bodies, and gradually the deed was forgotten.

Owing to the casualties from sh.e.l.l-fire on this slope, the following day was spent in moving to a new situation, not so pleasant as the last, and shut away in a ravine, but safer from sh.e.l.l-fire. Here all toiled solidly for two days, terracing a steep clay slope and making new homes.

And here for some days with the Regiment the normal routine life of the Gallipoli summer campaign ran smoothly. The days were spent on road-work or on big communication saps, and at night, more often than not, there were sapping fatigues in the front firing line, squadron supports, heavy pieces of artillery to haul to their emplacement, and the like.

At most times there was work, but occasionally there were spare hours, when Mac and Smoky, with their towels and tooth-brushes, would wander down to the beach for a morning of sea and sun-bathing. They would remove what few clothes they wore and take to the water. Only a limited portion of this end of the beach was available for bathing, and often, when he wasn't too sleepy, Abdul stirred things up too much for comfort. Still, the practice of the snipers was not particularly good, and Mac felt comfortably secure as long as he didn't venture out too far. It was their habit to wash what clothes they were wearing, and to bake in the sun while they dried. And so, bathing and splashing, sunning and smoking, sleeping and talking, a morning on the beach pa.s.sed pleasantly enough.