Faintest dawn climbed over the bay as I woke up in the morning. I opened one eye and then the other, and took courage and propped myself on an elbow. It was nearly dark; but already the beach showed life and movement, and vague battleships were taking up new stations out at sea. Nobody near by seemed awake, the bushes looked empty and rather mysterious; but far off the everlasting musketry went on—dying, growing, and dying away again. I took a long look round until courage failed me, when back I went under the blanket. From that bed cut in the hillside, I watched the morning growing out of night. Again—and still again—new sights, new sounds were born. The curves among the hills took shape; the waters moved into life; and from a grey distance rose the faint peaks of Imbros. The bay filled with vessels—small and great. Cruisers and churlish battleships man?uvred from point to point; and scouts and destroyers sped along a thoroughfare where mine-sweepers, trawlers, tugboats, colliers,[147] barges, pontoons, lifeboats, and rowing-boats jostled one another all the way. The transports rode beyond this highway, with thin smoke lines creeping to the sky; and with them waited the hospital ships for the burden the day would bring. While yet I watched, morning fully broke. I threw aside the blanket, and sat up; and put out a hand for my boots.
The beach quickly resembled the market-place of a town. Men in groups or singly hurried this way and that—Red Cross men bore wounded on stretchers, Indians led mules, sailors in parties hauled ashore guns and their waggons, artillerymen loaded themselves with ammunition, infantrymen formed up for a return to the trenches, Greeks stabled donkeys, Army Service men stacked high piles of bully beef and tins of biscuit. Guns and limbers blocked the way, lines of wounded lay beneath the shelter of the cliffs, farther on were ingathering vast stores of provisions, and farther yet tanks for fresh water stood where the waves lapped the pebbles.
Sacks of flour were thrown into growing heaps, and beside them sacks of sugar. Cases of tea were dumped upon the sand. Cheeses were arriving, and sides of bacon. Sheets of tin roofing lay on one another, waiting for the shins of the unwary.
Men loaded lengths of wood for bomb-proof roofings and men staggered under bales of hay. Gangs of sappers drove roads along the hillsides, and telephonists ran wires from bush to bush. Infantry parties bore sandbags on their heads[148] towards the firing line, and other parties trudged uphill, loaded with water-bottles. Men mooched round with rifles on their backs, and men were there with picks and shovels. The murmurs of life rose up like a mighty ocean tide.
The hillside, too, awoke: it became peopled with men drawing on shirts and pulling at boots. Blue blankets appeared on half the bushes, waiting for the tardy sun; later wisps of smoke curled up from fifty places. Already our gunners were lingering round their guns, placing last sandbags along the parapets, and stacking the ammunition brought by men toiling up the hill. I was surprised at all that had gone forward while I slept. The guns were lowered nearly to the ground level, and protected by heavy ramparts of earth and sandbags, masked with leafy boughs. Trenches for approach ran out, and telephone wires linked up the observing station. The funk-holes for the gunners ran beside the guns.
Now at last, if reluctantly, the sun got up. I could not see him, but his beams came creeping round the corner. They made the bushland warm and cheerful, and the damp fled away from the patches of brown earth which appeared in places on the hills. The insects came out from cracks and crevices, and set briskly on new travels; and the little birds which were lovemaking in the greener puffed their breasts out, and chirruped with morning confidence. It was going to be a tropic day.
The cook, however he was, had boiled some tea and fried rashers of bacon. He sent me a “Cooee,”[149] and I went over with a mess tin. There were half a dozen about the fire holding out pannikins for filling; and Hawkins was crouched among the ashes, stirring an evil-looking mess meant for Welsh rabbit. He was too interested to look up; but the others greeted me with “Well, and how are things?” I did not feel talkative myself, and answered by an all-round nod.
There were two rashers of bacon each, and as many biscuits as a man wanted. I went back to my funk-hole, balancing the biscuits and bacon in one hand and a pot of tea in the other.
Just then the old balloon went up.
I had grown so used to the perpetual musketry fire that I no longer heard it; and though the enemy still shelled us in a casual manner, they were overshooting the mark, and most of their endeavours ended in the sea. Sometimes, with a whizz and a bang, a hail of bullets descended on the beach, and some poor fellow would fall down, and maybe two or three others hobble away; but this was very seldom. From where we sat eating on the hillside we received no more notice than the tunes of shells in their passage, the hum of strayed bullets, and the sounds of an angry beehive when a machine gun sent part of a charge through space.
But just now one of the battleships drew to a standstill and swung slowly about; and even while I poured the pannikin of tea in joyous stream down my throat, with a roar like the last trump she vomited a thousand-pound shell half-across[150] the peninsula. As I stopped choking, a cruiser took up the running; and behold another round in the battle had begun.
I hurried breakfast after this, and hung within call of the observing station. The other fellows too seemed to think our ball would soon open, for they stretched jaws wide on the biscuits and bacon, and that duty done, collected the flags and telephones. The usual abuse was exchanged when nothing could be found.
“What the hell have you done with those flags? Can’t you leave a blasted cove’s things alone for a minute? They were there before breakfast!”
“I’ve not touched your damned things. You want a nurse, you do!”
The colonel, the adjutant, the sergeant-major, and Wilkinson, as telephonist, climbed presently up to the brigade observing station. Not far away, and lower down, Major Felix, his sergeant-major, and telephonist took possession of a dug-out—the B Battery observing station was higher up, to the left hand. The whole position was congested, but where was the room? A dozen yards below the brigade observing station Eaves curled himself up, his head fastened to a telephone running to Divisional Artillery; and I received orders to perch myself half-way between him and the observing station, under the shelter of an overhanging ledge.
The bombardment grew in volume: battleship after battleship engaged a target. Like a colossal thunderstorm the explosions roared around the[151] bay. The very ground was a-tremble. Now the veteran Triumph opened fire; and the Queen Elizabeth drew farther out and came to a standstill. I became aware that the sun was mounting and his beams had turned unpleasantly fierce. There was not a puff of wind, there was not a cloud in the sky; and the blue waters of Saros were without ruffle or furrow. I became aware that the musketry was more intense, and that machine guns were opening in sharp bursts along the lines. We for our part were ready now—the gunners waiting in the funk-hole behind the guns, the section commanders at their posts, Major Felix megaphone in hand. But still no order for us came through.
The effect of the ships’ fire quickly became apparent, insomuch as the enemy woke up with a vengeance, and answered with salvos of shrapnel and lyddite, following hard on one another’s heels, and coming over our heads with a rush and a bang which were unholy, to say the least.
Many of the salvos fell about the craft in the bay, but some were better timed, and poured into the bushes, sending us close into whatever shelter was handy, or hissed on to the crowded beach, where there was a sporting chance of bagging anything from generals to tin cans. May be after a lucky shot a riot would start among the mules, or some poor chap would go to his Maker or fall down winged: and then would go forward a cry for stretcher-bearers and Red Cross men. Or may be a party hauling at some gun would scatter[152] without warning behind a pile of stores, like mice into a hole. Yet in that bustling thoroughfare it was strange how few were the accidents.
Long ago conversation had grown impossible; but there would be moments of silence when from the head of the valley descended very plainly the frantic splutter of musketry, the fierce bursts of machine guns, and the game barking of our little Indian mountain batteries. Also at such times there rose up many strange cries from the beach. Then I could hear distinctly the loud buzz of the wireless plant calling to the navy what targets to engage. By now we gunners were all close in our funk-holes; but the road from the valley was still populous with long processions of wounded toiling to the Red Cross headquarters below.
An infantry fellow in fighting order and with a haversack on his back came scrambling up the hill just then, found room beside me and planted himself there. He could not speak for panting and was ready to break down; but the place he secured was fairly well protected, and confidence came back with breath. I glanced over him as he crouched there: he was a thin, weakly-bred fellow, and plainly a liar. I said nothing to him because he was upset, and because the sun was getting too hot for talking; but I went on watching the beach very hard.
“Halloa, cobber,” he said at last.
“Hallo,” I answered, and turned towards him.
He looked at me out of palest blue eyes. “I[153] just come from the firing line,” he said. “It’s murder there. What are you blokes doing?”
“Going to shoot soon, I suppose,” said I.
“You ought ter be up in the firin’ line. They could do with you.”
“Oh!” I answered.
“Gettin’ any losses here?”
“Most of the fire is going over, but we’ll be shooting in a minute or two, and that ought to open the ball in earnest.”
He said nothing to this; but soon, very soon, he was up and creeping away. He passed from view, but not towards the firing line.
Yes, it was going to be a hot day. I pushed my finger into the neck of my shirt, which already was clammy with perspiration. A haze had fallen over the more distant parts of the bay; and round my ears a solitary fly buzzed with persistence worthy of a nobler cause. Neither shrapnel nor lyddite could move him. Yes, it was going to be a hot day!
Orders were through. Just near me someone called out: it was Major Felix, a megaphone to his mouth. He shouted something, and I caught most of it.
“Infantry advancing! Aiming point, left ridge of Battleship Hill! Line of fire, twenty degrees three-ough minutes right. Corrector one-five-ough——three-six hundred! Angle of sight three degrees one-ough minutes elevation! One round battery fire!”
The section commander saluted, and cried to his sergeants, the sergeants, kneeling at the trails,[154] saluted and turned to the gunners. No. 3, on the left seat, laid the gun; No. 6 set the fuse, and No. 5 passed the shell to No. 4. No. 2, on the right-hand seat, opened the breech, No. 4 pushed home the shell, No. 2 closed the breech again. Then came a pause, then “Fire” was given, though I could not hear it. But there followed a mighty uproar, which seemed to beat the ground and plunge back again on to my ears, the boughs about the guns sprang into the air, long tongues of flame leaped forth, and the gun-barrels slid backwards and into place again.
The seconds went by. Again Major Felix was shouting. “C gun five minutes more left! Shorten corrector six! drop two-ough-ough! Repeat!”
“What?” the section commander shouted.
“C Gun Five Minutes More Left! Shorten Corrector Six! drop Two-ough-ough! Repeat!”
“What?” the section commander shouted.
“C GUN FIVE MINUTES MORE LEFT! SHORTEN CORRECTOR SIX! drop TWO-OUGH-OUGH! REPEAT!”
The section commander saluted and turned to his sergeants, the sergeants saluted and directed the gunners, and again the yellow flames stabbed the air, and the uproar seemed to rebound and strike me.
A third time the order came: “C gun two minutes more left! drop five-ough! Gunfire!”
We were into it with a vengeance now: by land, by sea equally engaged. Never a moment[155] slackened the enemy fire: rather the sky became more terrible with the voices of travelling shells, and more beautiful with delicate bursts of shrapnel. At intervals mighty howitzer shells rumbled solemnly through space, and plunged into the sea amid columns of spray. We gunners must soon have made ourselves unwelcome, for the enemy guns started to search for us, and quickly the game of hide and seek became too hot for pleasure. I was still perched under the projecting ledge; but my time was coming. Eaves lifted up his transmitter and began to call—“’Ullo ’Ullo!” A message was coming through from Divisional Artillery. Presently, receiver at ear, Eaves wrote it heavily down. Next he read it slowly through. He was quite undisturbed: he was a good man, was Eaves. Then he beckoned me. “’Ere you are,” he said, holding out the message in a hairy hand.
I took the paper and began to crawl up the bank to the observing station. Matters were livelier than ever in the open. Shells were bursting like the devils of hell, and rifle bullets went by with the slashing sound of steel drawn tightly on steel. The ascent was a matter of seconds, and I leaned over the edge of the dug-out. Wilkinson, telephone at ear, lay in a half-moon in a funk-hole of his own; and in the main funk-hole sat the colonel, adjutant, and sergeant-major with maps across their knees. An argument was going on. News was through we were shelling our own infantry. “They’re dirty liars!” I heard the colonel burst out—and then the message was[156] taken in, and I was beckoned away by a quick gesture.
Round I went again, and down the hill. The major was shouting once more.
“Aiming point, straight edge of Gaba Tepeh! Two degrees four-five minutes elevation! Corrector one-four-five-three-four hundred! One round battery fire!”
The guns roared out, the long flames stabbed the air. A call came—“One gun out of action, sir.” “............