Last night Kyriakidis heard a nightingale. I notice that the cuckoo has changed his note, worried about the shrapnel. I don’t blame the bird. My new dugout is built. It has a corridor and a patio, and is sort of Louis Quinze. I have got away from Jacky Hughes, who is a very good fellow but he, Tahu and I were too crowded in the last. Now in this I can give parties and look at the view. The food is good, but we are always hungry.
Went out with Colonel Bill Braithwaite. He is a very great man for his luxuries, and looks on cover as the first of these. He is very funny about shelling, and is huffy, like a man who has received an insult, if he gets hit by a spent bullet or covered with earth. They have got the range of our new Headquarters beautifully – two shells before lunch, one on either side of the kitchen range. The men and the mess table covered with dust and stones. The fact is our ships have gone; they can now do pretty much as they like. Most people here agree that the position is hopeless, unless we drive the Turks back on our left and get reinforcements from Helles, where they could quite well spare them.
Sunday, May 16th. A day made for Trojan heroes to fight. As a matter of fact there is some friction between the Generals. Poor General Bridges reported very bad. I went into Butler’s dugout and a shell came, hitting five men. The beach atmosphere alters in the most extraordinary way. In the mornings they say the Generals are pawns, Winston is a knave and a murderer, things are going badly. In the evening they say everything is for the best, we are the greatest people on earth and shall win through even in this show if only the things are done which we point out. A Greek of Butler’s is to go out again. It is a risky business; I don’t know if the information to be gained is in proportion to the risk run to life and also the chance of treachery.
I have been absolutely contented here all this time, and have been singularly happy. This sounds very selfish; but it is after all comparative. If one sits down to count the misery of this place or any other during the war, you are adding another mite of misery. When this place is a butcher’s shop, as it often is, I loathe it; otherwise the sea and the sky are beautiful, and there are some very jolly fellows. I would not change this for anything else, short of having a say in the settlement of things, which isn’t likely to come my way. They are pounding at us again and have just hit another interpreter and another man close by. My typewriter has come up. One bottle sweet wine, one bottle whisky and plenty of cigarettes. I saw Skeen. He said that Birdwood is making out a scheme which will be shown to me. He is going to ask me to go out with a flag of truce and a bugler. I said it would be a very great pleasure, which it will. I am enchanted with my new dugout. There is a very brave German Artillery officer. I haven’t seen him but they say he is a huge man and walks about everywhere under fire, but I dare say it is one of the many legends.
Monday, May 17th. The anniversary of the relief of Mafeking to-day. The General wants to telegraph to Baden Powell. I walked out to the left with Sam Butler and bathed in the beautiful quiet sea. Others were bathing too, and sometimes shrapnel bathed also. There was the scent of thyme and the scent of death on the beach. Most of the graves were very hurriedly made. I got a touch of the sun and had to lie down, and couldn’t walk straight for some time. When I got back I heard that poor Villiers Stuart had been killed that morning, instantaneously. I was just going down to thank him for his kindness of two days ago when instead of sending for me about some little thing he took the trouble to come up the hill. Bullets fell all round Tahu after I left him.
Tuesday, May 18th. Last night poor Villiers Stuart was buried. The funeral was to have been at sunset, but at that time we were savagely shelled and there was some delay. We formed up in as decent a kit as we could muster, and after the sun had set in a storm of red, and while the young moon was rising, the procession started. We stumbled over boulders, and met stretcher-bearers with dead and wounded; we passed Indians driving mules and shadowy Australians standing at attention, till we came to the graves by the sea. The prayers were very short and good, interrupted by the boom of our guns and the whining of Turkish bullets overhead. The semicircle of officers joined in the prayers. Some were much moved as he had been a great friend of many of them. He was a very good fellow. His salute was fired above his head from both the trenches.
Butler told me that Birdwood had asked for him as GSO 3. He wanted to know if George Lloyd would want it. I said no; that it was Butler’s profession, his job and his chance and George would see that.
We shelled the village of Anafarta yesterday, which I don’t much care about. A good many here want to destroy the minaret of the mosque. I can see no difference in principle between this and the destruction of Rheims Cathedral. Kyriakidis told me a Greek cure for sunstroke. You fill the ears of the afflicted one with salt water; it makes a noise like thunder in his head, but the sunstroke passes. Christo thereupon got me salt water in a jug without telling me, and several thirsty people tried to drink it.
A German submarine seen here. 4 p.m. A day of almost perfect peace; the rifle fire ceased sometimes for several minutes together but 8-inch shells were fired into our trenches. I wrote a letter to the Commander-in-Chief of the Turks to be submitted to Birdwood before I go out. The people have begun to sing for the first time and there is something cheerful in the air. The enfilading gun is reported to be knocked out, but gunners are great optimists. No news from Helles. I am experimenting wearing no socks. Turkish reinforcements just seen coming up. Attack expected at 3 a.m. We stand to arms here.
Wednesday, May 19th. Work under heavy shellfire. This grew worse about 6.30. Several heavy shells hit within a few yards of this dugout and the neighbouring ones, but did not burst. A little farther off they did explode, or striking the sea, raised tall columns and high fountains of white water. Colonel Chaytor badly wounded in the shoulder. A great loss to us. He looks happy or rather elated under the influence of morphia. I have got leave to send away Ashjian, the Armenian boy; he is simply terrified. And this after all is a quarrel for those directly concerned. The Germans have brought up about twelve more field guns and four or five Jack Johnsons, and the shelling is very heavy. Saw a horrid sight: a barge full of wounded was being towed out to the hospital ship. Two great Jack Johnsons came, one just in front of them; then when they turned with a wriggle, one just behind them, sending up towers of water, and leaving two great white roses in the sea that turned muddy as the stuff from the bottom rose. They had shells round them again, and a miraculous escape. It’s cruel hard on the nerves of wounded men, but of course that was bad luck, not wicked intentions, because the enemy couldn’t see them.
I went down to the beach by the new cut-out. A Private happened to follow me in the thick of the shelling. I said ‘Stop, I want to see if it can get into the cut-out.’ As I spoke a shell burst just behind him against the side of the cut-out. He said: Now sir, you have seen; let us go on.’ As we got out another shell hit just in front of my foot. This is worse than our first days because of the fierce attack on top with this here. If the Turks had done this earlier they might have had us out. Now we ought to be all right, but they cannot go on using ammunition like this. Their losses are said to be very great. If the Kaiser is a man of blood, what about Winston? His vanity primarily the cause for us getting killed and the Turks too; for even if this campaign was right, all agree its strategy was all wrong. These Turkish reinforcements are said to be from Helles. They have done what we ought to have done. Now they are sending 11-inch at us. It’s too bad. I saw Skeen. He said to me: ‘You had better be ready to go out this afternoon; we have just shot a Turk with a white flag. That will give us an excuse for apologizing.’ I suppose it will. It seems to me it will also give the Turks an excuse for retaliating.
Wind is very fresh. I had two narrow misses. A Turkish officer just brought in says the real attack is to be this afternoon, now at 1.30. I spent an hour in the hospital, interpreting for the Turkish wounded. The Australians are very good indeed to them. As I came back the pause in the shelling ended. I found the General�
��s dugout had been hit hard. He is vexed and says he doesn’t know where to go. Nothing to be done but to dig deeper. It really isn’t worse than it has been before. I suppose we have to thank the German aeroplane of this morning for some of it. Chaytor has gone light-headed, asking me not to go out with the party I wanted to. Ian Hamilton48 has refused the Turks, request for an Armistice. I saw Birdwood, he told me so. I said: ‘Would there be any objection to my going to General Hamilton and seeing him, or rather that I wanted to go there, might I see him if I went?’ He said certainly.
From the third week of May to the third week in June was the kernel of our time in Anzac. We had grown accustomed to think of the place as home, and of the conditions of our life as natural and permanent. The monotony of the details of shelling and the worry of the flies are of interest only to those who endured them, and have been eliminated, here and there, from this diary.
During this month we were not greatly troubled. The men continued to make the trenches impregnable, and were contented. It was in some ways a curiously happy time.
The New Zealanders and the Australians were generally clothed by the sunlight, which fitted them, better than any tailor, with a red-brown skin, and only on ceremonial occasions did they wear their belts and accoutrements.
Our sport was bathing, and the Brotherhood of the Bath was rudely democratic. There was at Anzac a singularly benevolent officer, but for all his geniality a strong disciplinarian, devoted to military observances. He was kind to all the world, not forgetting himself, and he had developed a kindly figure. No insect could resist his contours. Fleas and bugs made passionate love to him, inlaying his white skin with a wonderful red mosaic. One day he undressed and, leaving nothing of his dignity with his uniform, he mingled superbly with the crowd of bathers. Instantly he received a hearty blow upon his tender, red and white shoulder, and a cordial greeting from some democrat of Sydney or of Wellington: ‘Old man, you’ve been amongst the biscuits!’ He drew himself up to rebuke this presumption, then dived for the sea, for, as he said, ‘What’s the good of telling one naked man to salute another naked man, especially when neither have got their caps?’
This month was marked by a feature that is rare in modern warfare. We had an armistice for the burial of the dead, which is described in the diary. On the Peninsula we were extremely anxious for an armistice for many reasons. We wished, on all occasions, to be able to get our wounded in after a fight, and we believed, or at least the writer was confident, that an arrangement could be come to. We were also very anxious to bury the dead. Rightly or wrongly, we thought that GHQ, living on its perfumed island, did not consider how great was the abomination of life upon the cramped and stinking battlefield that was our encampment, though this was not a charge that any man would have dreamed of bringing against Sir Ian Hamilton49.
Diary. Wednesday, May 19th, 1915. Kaba Tepé. General Birdwood told me to go to Imbros to talk to Sir Ian Hamilton about an armistice, if General Godley would give me leave.
Thursday, May 20th, 1915. Kaba Tepé. Have been waiting for four hours in Colonel Knox’s boat, which was supposed to go to Imbros. Turkish guns very quiet. I hear that Ock Asquith and Wedgwood are wounded. A liaison officer down south says: ‘When the Senegalese fly, and the French troops stream forward twenty yards and then stream back twenty-five yards, we know that we are making excellent progress.’ There is a Coalition Government at home. We think that we are the reason of that; we think the Government cannot face the blunder of the Dardanelles without asking for support from the Conservatives.
6 p.m. Arcadian. I came on to the Arcadian finally with George Lloyd. Have been talking to Sir Ian Hamilton with regard to the armistice. Hamilton said: ‘I agree with you in principle. I have telegraphed to Kitchener with regard to Birdwood’s desire for an armistice and the question of sending you out, but it is largely a political business. Greece is out. Bulgaria and Italy may come in, but they won’t if it can be made out that we are suing for an armistice’. I agreed with that. I said that if the political situation admits it I think an armistice would be good for these reasons:
(1) It is not decent to let the wounded die unnecessarily of thirst
(2) We have now knocked the Turks. It is for us to grant them favours. Later we shall want to advance, it will then be our turn to lose. If we give an armistice now, we can ask for one then
(3) Sanitation demands it
(4) It will show the Turks we are not the brutes the Germans make us out and produce a good impression all over the East.
Having knocked the Turks, said I, why can’t we tell them to bury their own dead, and look after their wounded. He acquiesced but said it must be unofficial. I didn’t say this must almost inevitably give rise to accusation of bad faith etc. He said: ‘I should like to do the decent thing.’ He looked very worried and asked me to tea which I refused.
I saw Compton MacKenzie, private novelist to Sir Ian Hamilton and Clive Bigham50 was also there, looking I suppose for orders, but kindly lending me Shakespeares.
Friday, May 21st, 1915. Kaba Tepé. I had to sleep the night as I could not get off, though I was reluctant to stay fearing there might be an attack which I should miss. As I waited after breakfast Sir Ian Hamilton came up in a fussy rage and asked vehemently ‘What do you think of it now?’ I didn’t know what he was talking about. He said: ‘Last night the Turks put up a white flag and massed behind it in their trenches. They meant to rush us and used a ruse. If you had had your way, our fellows on the beach would now all have had their throats cut or be swimming about in the sea. It was very difficult for me to say no to B. after the very nice way in which he asked me.’ I said I knew nothing of all this. That it wasn’t a question of sentiment, as he said, but of sanitation, and that even if the Turks were treacherous every day in the week (and Skeen’s programme was drawn to prevent that) it was no reason why we should share Asiatic cholera with them. He repeated ‘I am very glad I had the strength of mind to refuse.’ A vain weak man, whose proper headquarters are the Arcadian.
I came back with four ‘Arcadians’. A shell came a long way off but they all bobbed and lay down and got in the cabin. Yesterday as we started a German aeroplane dropped a bomb near us. I thought it was an ordinary shell. While I had been away there had been a parley, but it was not a case of bad faith as the ‘Arcadians’ believed; the Turks had put up white flags, as Sir Ian had said, but everyone admitted there was no case of bad faith. It was said we had shot one Red Crescent man by mistake. General Walker51 had gone out and talked to the Turks, just like that. Both sides had, apparently, been frightened. The General was sorry I had missed it. I walked up with him to Reserve Gully to see the new brigade. The evening sun was shining on the myrtle in the gully, and all the splendid fellows were half-stripped and singing and whistling while little fires crackled everywhere.
Saturday, May 22nd, 1915. Kaba Tepé. Sam Butler was sent out yesterday to talk to the Turks, but he did not take a white flag with him, and was sniped and bruised. I saw Birdwood; he said Ian Hamilton was very angry and had written him a letter beginning ‘My Dear Birdwood, I am frankly horrified’. Birdwood told me to talk to the Turks first opportunity and say nice things to them.
Diary. I went out with Butler, we hurried along the beach, crossed the barbed wire entanglements and met a fierce Arab and a wandery-looking Turkish Lieutenant. Then came Kemal Bey52. Sam and Kemal Bey, as they came, provided the Australian escort with much innocent laughter. Our barbed wire down to the sea consisted only of a few light strands, over which the Turk was helped by having his legs raised high for him. Sam, however, wished him, as he was blindfolded, to believe that this defence went on for at least twenty yards. So the Turk was made to do an enormously high, stiff goose-step over the empty air for that space, as absurd a spectacle to our men as I was to be, later, to the Turks. The Australians were almost sick from internal laughter.
Diary. Kemal Bey asked for a hostage and I said I was ready to go. They bandaged my eyes and I mounted a hors
e and rode off with Sahib Bey and spent four or five comfortable hours with him. At one moment the soldier who was supposed to be leading my horse had apparently let go and had fallen behind to light a cigarette or pick flowers. Sahib Bey called out: ‘You fool, can’t you see he is riding straight over the cliff?’ I protested that this negligence was an infringement of the Hague Convention. We left the smell of death behind and rode along by the sea for some way, for I could hear the waves. Then we went round and round, I think to puzzle me, and we ended up in a tent in a grove where they took the handkerchief off, and Sahib Bey said: ‘This is the beginning of a life-long friendship.’ We had cheese and tea and coffee. He ate first to show me it was all right, though I said it was an insult to me. He tried to impress me with their well-being. He said it may not be political economy, but it is very comfortable having no exports, such lots of everything and all so cheap too; he hated all politicians and had sworn a vow never to read the papers. He knew my name and thought we had met. Later the ther officer in the tent, a charming fellow, cleared out and left us alone. I then said: ‘Why ever did you do this, my dear? Could you win the Caucasus or Egypt? What was there to gain? You had all to lose. Germany has made a victim of you like Belgium. She wanted to hold our troops up, and that she accomplished. She wanted to make trouble in India and Egypt. There she failed.’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘there are many of us who think like you but we must obey. We know you are just, and that Moslems thrive under you, but you have made cruel mistakes by us, the taking of those two ships and the way in which you took them.’ He asked me a few questions which I put aside. He had had a conversation with ‘Dash’ Blamey the day before. Blamey is the Australian Intelligence Officer. He had apparently told him where Hamilton was and what a bore he had been about the armistice, also the number of Turkish prisoners we had taken.
Mons, Anzac and Kut Page 11