Mons, Anzac and Kut

by Edward Melotte

  It was pleasant once again to be lord of the horizon, to have space through which to roam, and lovely hills and valleys to ride across in the careless, scented air of the Mediterranean summer, with the sea shining a peacock-blue through the pines. It is this space and liberty that men cramped in a siege desire, more than the freedom from the shelling of the enemy’s guns. There was much, too, that was opéra bouffe in the Islands, that made a not unpleasant contrast to the general life at Anzac.

  If there was spy mania on the Peninsula, it was multiplied tenfold, and quite reasonably, on the Islands, where part of the population were strongly pro-Ally, another part pro-German, while others were anti-British by the accidental kind of ricochet. These were the royalist followers of King Constantine, who hated Venizelos, and consequently the friends of Venizelos, Great Britain and France.

  The situation on the Islands was one with which it was extremely hard to cope. We were very anxious to safeguard the lives of our men, and to prevent information going to the enemy, and, at the same time, not to pursue German methods. It was unceasing work, with a great strain of responsibility. There was an inevitable va et vient between the Peninsula and Imbros. From Imbros boats could slip across to Tenedos, Mytilene or the mainland. The native caïques would drop in at evening, report, be ordered to stay till further notice, and would drift away like ghosts in the night. Men, and women, performed remarkable feats, in appearing and disappearing. They were like pictures on a film in their coming and their going. Watchers and watched, they thrust and parried, discovered and concealed, glowed on the picture and darkened.

  Anatasio, a Serbian by birth, was one of our workers, conspicuous for his quickness and intelligence. At the outbreak of the war he had already been five months in an Austrian prison at Cattaro, but the prospect of battle stimulated his faculties, and he escaped. One day at luncheon, I asked him where it was that he had learned Italian, which he did not talk very well. ‘While I was in prison at Smyrna,’ said he. ‘What for?’ said I. ‘For stabbing a Cretan,’ said he, and added that he would rather be five years in prison in Turkey than one in Austria. Then there was Avani, one of the most vivid personalities that I have ever met. He was a poet and a clairvoyant, a mesmerist and a masseur, a specialist in rheumatism and the science of detection, once a member of General Chermside’s gendarmerie in Crete, and ex-chief of the Smyrna fire brigade. The stories of him are too many, and too flamboyant, to tell.

  Diary. Avani mesmerized the wife of the Armenian dragoman. Unfortunately it went wrong. Her obedience to his volition was delayed and she only obeyed his commands in the wrong company some hours after.

  He had given proof of rare courage, and also considerable indescretion. On one occasion, armed to the teeth, he burst into a perfectly innocent house at night, and, revolver in hand, hunted a terrified inhabitant. His only evidence against this man was, that when he had been caught and hurled to the ground and sat upon, his heart had beaten very fast, which would not happen, insisted Avani, if he had not been guilty of some crime.

  Amongst our opponents were the romantic but sinister Vassilaki family, two brothers and three lovely sisters. Talk about them in the Islands was almost as incessant as was talk about shelling on the Peninsula.

  Diary. Monday, July 26th, 1915. Tenedos. Yesterday I was very ill, and again to-day, but was injected with something or other and feel better, but weak. Tried to sleep yesterday, but one of our monitors at Rabbit Island bombarded hugely, shaking the bugs down on me. This place is clean, but there are bugs and some lice. Last night I dined with the Governor, Colonel Mullins, and a jolly French doctor, and Thompson, who has fallen ill. Am carrying on for him at the moment.

  Tuesday, July 27th, 1915. Tenedos. Went to the trenches at Tenedos. They face the enemy. That is the most military thing about them. Thompson went out to see the inhabitants. I was going with him, but felt worse and went to rest. The Turks here are in a very bad way. We do not allow them to work. It is inevitable. They mayn’t fish or work at the aerodrome.

  Wednesday, July 28th, 1915. Tenedos. Interpreted for the Governor of Tenedos, who, like Jupiter, rules with might, in the afternoon. In the evening I saw the Mufti, who had a list of starving, widows and indigent. … Last night the Cretan soldiers started ragging the Turks and singing, till I stopped them. They were quite good.

  Still ill, but better. Had a beautiful walk in the evening, and a long talk with the Greek refugees working in the vines by the edge of the sea. The old patriarch addressed me all the time as ‘chorbaji’ – that is, Possessor of the Soup, the Headman of the village.

  Thursday, July 29th, 1915. Tenedos. Yesterday morning I took a donkey and a boy and rode out to the French aerodrome, coming late for luncheon, but had coffee with about twenty French officers, all very jolly. Promised to let me fly over the Dardanelles. I went on to the Cretans in a pinewood. Their officer, a Frenchman, very keen on a show in Asia Minor. … The elder Vassilaki has been arrested. His brother saw him go by in a trawler. Am going to Mytilene, then return after three days, and leave here on Tuesday for Anzac. No news of anything happening. Tenedos is a beautiful town in its way, surrounded by windmills, with Mount Elias in the background. Its streets are narrow, picturesque, and hung with vines that make them cool and shady. At the end of the town there is a very fine old Venetian fortress, but its magnificence is outside; inside it is furnished with round stone cannon-balls, ammunition for catapults. In the last war the Greeks took the island, but one day a Turkish destroyer popped her nose in. All the Greeks fled, and the Mufti and the Moslems went and pulled the Greek flag down. Then in came a Greek destroyer, and the Turkish one departed. The Mufti and the Turks were taken off to Mudros, where he and they were beaten. He narrowly missed being killed.

  Friday, July 30th, 1915. Tenedos. Slept very badly again. Had a letter from the OC. Poor Onslow killed, lying on his bed by his dugout. A good fellow and a fine soldier. Aden nearly captured.

  I prophesied its capture in Egypt. I shall be recalled before anything happens.

  The radiant air of Tenedos gave health as it did in Homeric times, and I left with the desire that others should have the same chance as myself of using that beautiful island as a hospital; but all the pictures there were not bright. Under the windmills above the shining sea there were the motionless, dark-clad, desolate Moslem women, sitting without food or shelter. Their case, it is true, was no harder than that of the thousands of Greek refugees who had been driven from their homes, but these at any rate were living amongst kindred, while the unfortunate Moslems were without help or sympathy, except that which came from their enemies, the British.

  Diary. Friday, July 30th, 1915. Mytilene. I left by the Greek boat yesterday. On the boat I met a man who might be useful as an interpreter, Anibal Miscu, Entrepreneur de Travaux Publiques, black as my hat, but talks English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Turkish, Greek, Arabic, Bulgar, Russian, and something else. The boat was stopped by our trawler, No. 48, and searched for contraband of war. The Greeks were furious. I landed at Mytilene, not having slept much and felling bad. Avani said they had tried to bribe him to allow some raisins through, and kicked up the devil of a row. He seemed to think that the raisins were dynamite. He was left guarding the raisins, all night, I believe, with his revolver.

  I was given a warm welcome by Compton Mackenzie at Mytilene. He, fortunately for me, had been sent there by GHQ. I found several old friends – Heathcote-Smith, the Consul, whose work it would be impertinent for me to praise, and Hadkinson, whom I had last seen at my own house in England, where he was staying with me when the Archduke Franz Ferdinand had been murdered. Hadkinson had passed most of his life on his property in Macedonia. Of the Eastern and Southern languages he talked Greek, Italian, Turkish, Bulgarian, Serbian, and Albanian. His voice was as delightful as his knowledge of Balkan ballads was wide, and his friends made him sing the endless songs of the mountaineers. His personality had carried him through experiences that would have been disastrous to most men; batt
les, decisive in Europeans’ history had raged in front of his doors, while his house had remained untouched; brigands of most of the Balkan races had crossed his farm, rarely driving off his stock, and most of the local peasantry in their misfortunes had come to him for help, for advice, doctoring or intercession. Until the European war had crashed upon the world, Hadkinson had been a good example of the fact that minorities, even when they are a minority of one, do not always suffer.

  The people of Mytilene, at that time, were very pro-English, though the officials were of the faction of King Constantine. The desire I frequently heard expressed was that Great Britain should take over Mytilene, as she did the Ionian Islands, and that when Mytilene had been put in order it should be restored to Greece.

  Diary. Friday, July 30th, 1915. Mytilene. H. Smith and Hadkinson have gone out with a motor-boat and a machine gun. The Vassilakis, or some of them, have been deported. Vassilaki to Imbros and the beautiful sisters to Mudros. … It’s a blazing, burning day.

  Saturday, July 31st, 1915. Mytilene. A gaming-house. Moved from my first hotel to a larger and more disreputable one. Lunched with Hadkinson and Compton Mackenzie73. At Thasos the Greeks have arrested our agents under the orders of Gunaris. Have worked, and am feeling better.

  Later. The three Miss Vassilakis have not gone to Mudros. They turned up this morning, and I was left to deal with them. Not as beautiful, except one, as I had been led to believe. They got Avani out of the room and wept and wept. I told them their brother would be all right. … They wanted to know who prevented them from leaving. I said it was the Admiral. That good man is far away.

  Sunday, August 1st, 1915. Mytilene. Avani went off with the three Miss Vassilakis, in hysterics, last night. They were very angry with us. It seems probable that we shall have a landing on the mainland here to divert attention from the Peninsula. Sir Ian Hamilton is coming down to have a look. A good deal of friction over the blockade. The present system causes much inconvenience to all concerned.

  They were enchanting days of golden light or starlit darkness, while one drank health almost in the concrete from the hot pine-scented air and the famous wine of Mytilene. The conditions of others was unfortunately less happy. There were some 80,000 Greek refugees from the mainland, for whom the Greek Government had done practically nothing, while the patriotic Greek communities of England and America had not had the opportunity of relieving their necessities. We all did what we could to help these people.

  There was another question allied to this to be considered: whether a Greek Expeditionary Force, largely composed of these refugees, should be sent into Asia Minor. The danger of such a campaign to the native Greeks was obvious; mainly for this reason it was not undertaken. But while no expedition occurred, there was much talk about one. The fact that Sir Ian Hamilton had come was widely known. It was said that great preparations were being made, and these rumours probably troubled the Turks and kept troops of theirs in a non-combatant area.

  Diary. Sunday, August 1st, 1915. Mytilene. Lunched with Mavromati Bey. He was very heroic, saying he preferred to die rather than to live under the German yoke, but there were no signs of a funeral at luncheon, which was delicious.

  Dined with Hadkinson, and was taken ill, but got all right and went off with him on the motor-boat Omala after dinner. H. said that for a long time he had felt that I was coming, and had ordered a lamb for me to be executed the following day; told the cook, too, to get some special herbs.

  The object of our journey was to find a wonderful woman, lithe as a leopard and strong as a horse, and put her somewhere near Aivali to gain information.

  Monday, August 2nd, 1915. ‘Omala.’ Off Moskonisi. At dawn this morning we came to Moskonisi, luminous in the sea. A decrepit shepherd led a flock of sheep along the beach. His name is Panayotis and he has a Homeric past; he killed two Turkish guards who courted a beautiful sister-in-law before marriage. Then he killed two others for a pusillanimous brother-in-law after marriage, and he has also sent two other Turks to their rest, though H. does not know the reason for their death.

  Hadkinson had collected a large band of Palikaris, but the motor-boat only held a few, the cream of them. He had English names for most of them – Little John, Robin Hood, etc. They were tall men with very quick, clever eyes and lithe movements, picturesquely dressed. One of them had a cross glittering in his kalpak, and A.M. (for Asia Minor) on both sides of the cross. He said to me, pointing to Aivali: ‘There is my country; we are an orphan people. For 150 years we have shed our blood and given our best to Greece. Now in her hour of triumph and in our day of wretchedness she denies us help. May she ever be less!’ Another Greek had been to Mecca as a soldier and stayed there and in the Yemen for some years. The Captain was a quiet man, but apparently very excitable. They were delighted with their army rifles. The woman, Angeliko Andriotis, did not turn up at Gymno, so we went on to Moskonisi, the men often playing on a plaintive flute, and sometimes singing low together. At breakfast, soon after dawn, we had a sort of orchestra.

  We arrived opposite to Aivali. The Turks have sunk three mauna … Hadkinson saw one of their submarines.

  The situation at Aivali is curious. It lies at the head of a bay. Above it there are hills, not high hills, but high enough, the men said who were with us, to prevent its being bombarded by the Turks. They looked at it with longing eyes. Their families were there. They kept on cursing the ‘black dogs’ and saying they would eat them. There were 35,000 people in Aivali, now only 25,000; 10,000 have left lately. The sword of Damocles hangs over the rest of them, for they might be sent off into the interior at any moment. We went on to the channel between Moskonisi and Pyrgos. There we found the child of the woman, who was sent with a note to her. Men were moving in the olives and the scrub some distance off, whom the Greeks said were their own compatriots.

  The boy, who was thirteen, took the letter and put it under his saddle. He went off calmly to get past the Turks, without any air of adventure about him. The others realized the stage on which they were acting, and swaggered finely. I got off on Pyrgos with Hadkinson, and went to a small, rough chapel, where they were bringing the eikons back in triumph.

  The beauty of it all was beyond words. I bathed on a silver sand in transparent water between the two islands. Moskonisi, by the way, doesn’t mean the Island of Perfume, but takes its name from a great brigand who practically held the island against the Turks about thirty years ago.

  After a time the boy returned with a letter from his mother, and a peasant with binoculars. He and the peasant both said that they had seen a great oil-pool in Aivali Bay. We thought that this must be from a submarine, and dashed round there at full speed, but found nothing. Then we decided to come home. We picked up some of the men we had dropped en route; and they brought us presents of gran Turco, basilica and sweet-scented pinks. Then they played their flutes as the sun set, and Hadkinson sang Greek, Bulgarian and Turkish songs, singing the ‘Imam’s Call’ beautifully and, to the horror of his Greek followers, reverently.

  We might have bagged the twenty-five Turks, or whatever number there were, quite easily, but H. thought this would have produced reprisals. He was probably right.

  Tuesday, August 3rd, 1915. Mytilene. We got back last night after dinner and heard that Sir Ian Hamilton, George Lloyd and George Brodrick74 had been here. One of the poor Whittall boys very badly wounded. They were a fine pair.

  August 4th, 1915. Mytilene. Yesterday we heard that the Turks had sent the town-crier to the equivalent of the capital of Moskonisi to say that any Greek going beyond a certain line would be put to death. Miss Vassilaki turned up, and said that she and her sister would come with me to Tenedos. I said they couldn’t.

  We dined with General Hill and his Staff and slept on the Canopus. Mackenzie no better, his neurasthenia was very bad. A good deal of friction in Tenedos. Athanasius Vassilaki has escaped, and everyone is annoyed. Some men have been arrested for signalling.

  Thursday, August 5th, 1915. Tenedos. Mos
t of the officers sick. I was asked to stay on at Tenedos, but felt I must get back at once. Christo says that it’s dull here, and Kaba Tepé is better than this house. Turkish guns have been firing at our trawlers. A couple of men wounded. Examined a man just escaped from Constantinople. Constantinople is quite cheery: theatres, carriages, boats, etc. The Germans say we can’t hold out on the Peninsula when the bad weather comes.

  Then I examined a Lebanese French soldier who had arrested a child and an old man for signalling.

  Here there are some pages of my diary missing, but the events that occurred are still vividly in my mind.

  In company with other officers I went first to Imbros, hearing the thunder of the guns from Helles. In passionate haste we tried every means to get on to the Peninsula for the great battle. I left Christo to follow with my kit, if he could, with the future doubtful before him, and no certainty, except that of being arrested many times.

  In the harbour at Imbros on that night there was a heavy sea, and in a small, dancing boat we quested through the darkness for any ship sailing to Anzac. One was found at last that was on the point of sailing, and off we went.

  The instructions of my friend Ian Smith were to get to Suvla, and luck favoured him, for at dawn we lay off Suvla, and a trawler took him ashore.

  Along the heights and down to the seashore the battle growled and raged, and it was difficult to know what was the mist of the morning or battle smoke. I got off at Anzac, which was calm, realizing that I had missed the first attack.

  Diary. Saturday, August 7th, 1915. Kaba Tepé. I went out to Headquarters, which are now beyond Colonel Bauchop’s old Headquarters. He, poor fellow, had just been hit and was said to be dying. Dix75 again wounded in the leg and Cator killed when he had just been promoted. I saw the General; on the way out I met 300 Turkish prisoners and was ordered to return and embark them. We came to the pier on the beach, then three shells fell on and beside it; both Sam Butler and I thought we were going to have a very bad time, packed like sardines, with panicky prisoners. Embarking them took time; we were all very snappy, but we got them off. I was glad to find Butler and Woods. All the dugouts here are desolate. I saw General Birdwood, who was very sad about Onslow76, shot just outside his dugout. He talked of the water difficulties. He was cheerful, as usual, and said he thought we should know which way things were going by 5 o’clock. Sam was less cheerful. I went back to Headquarters, a weary trudge of two hot, steaming miles, past masses of wounded. The saps were constantly blocked. Then back to Anzac for a few hours’ sleep, till I can get my kit.