Sunday, August 8th, 1915. Near Anafarta. Slept badly last night at Anzac. The place was very desolate with everyone away. I got up before a clear dawn and went out to the observation post, where I found General Godley and General Shaw. Our assault began. We saw our men in the growing light attack the Turks. It was a cruel and beautiful sight, for it was like a fight in fairyland; they went forward in parties through the beautiful light, with the clouds crimsoning over them. Sometimes a tiny, gallant figure would be in front, then a puff would come and they would be lying still. We got to within about forty yards of the Turks; later we lost ground. Meanwhile, men were streaming up, through awful heat. There were Irish troops cursing the Kaiser. At the observation post we were being badly shelled. The beauty of the place was extraordinary, and made it better than the baldness of Anzac, but we were on an unpropitious hillside, and beyond there were mules and men, clustered thickly.
Then I was sent back to Kaba Tepé, where I found a lot of wounded prisoners, who had not been attended to. I woke a doctor who had not slept for ages. He talked almost deliriously, but came along and worked like a real good man. I saw General Howse, VC, and suggested attaching one doctor to the prisoners, so that we should not get contagious diseases.
Returned to Bauchop’s Post and examined a couple of Germans from the Goeben. Got a good deal of information. Then I was telephoned for to interrogate a wounded Greek, who had, however, got lost. I went back outside the hospital, where there were many wounded lying. I stumbled upon poor Critchley-Salmonson77 (a schoolfellow), who had been wounded about 3 am. the day before, and had lain in the sun on the sand all the previous day. He recognized me, and asked me to help him, but was light-headed. There were fifty-six others with him; Macaulay and I counted. It was awful having to pass them. A lot of the men called out: ‘We are being murdered.’ The smells were fearful and they had not been cleaned. I went down a sap to the north to find the Greek. Fierce shelling began. The sap was knocked down in front and behind.
I came to a field hospital, situated where the troops were going through. There no one knew where Taylor’s Hollow, the place where the Greek was supposed to be, was. While I was there shelling was bad. Several of the wounded were hit again. One man was knocked in on the top of me, bleeding all over. I returned to meet Thoms, who said he knew the way. We ran the gauntlet.
I had a curious, beautiful walk, looking for the wounded Greek, going to nineteen hospitals. Many wounded everywhere. First I saw one of our fellows who had met ten Turks and had ten bayonet wounds. He was extremely cheerful. Then a couple of Turks in the shadow of some pines, one dying and groaning, really unconscious. I offered the other water from my bottle, but he refused because of his companion, using Philip Sidney’s words78 in Turkish. Men were being hit everywhere. After going by fields and groves and lanes I came back to where the wounded were lying in hundreds, in the sap going to the sea, near Bauchop’s Fountain. There a man called to me in French. He was the Greek I was looking for, badly wounded. He talked a great deal. Said 200,000 reinforcements were expected from Gallipoli. No gas would be used here.
Monday, August 9th, 1915. No. 3 Outpost. Slept uncomfortably on the ground. Went before dawn to observation post; returned to examine prisoners. Had an unsuccessful expedition with Hastings to find some guns which he said had been lost between the lines. Bullets came streaming down our valley, and we put up a small wall of sacks, 3 feet high, behind which we slept. I was sitting at breakfast this morning listening to Colonel Manders79 talking, when suddenly I saw Charlie Bentinck put his hand to his own head and say: ‘By G——, he’s killed!’ Manders fell back dead, with a bullet through his temple he was a very good fellow.
Sir Ian Hamilton came ashore. I saw him for a moment. Then to Kaba Tepé; going and coming one passes a line of bodies, some dreadful, being carried for burial. Many still lying out. The last wounded have been more pitiful than anything I have seen. Cazalet is badly wounded; I hope he will recover; he is a good boy. Colonel Malone was killed last night and Jacky Hughes wounded. Lots of shelling. Coming back I had to go outside the crowded sap, and got sniped. Thoms and I had a very lively time of it.
Came back for Manders’ funeral. I was very fond of him. No chaplain turned up for poor Colonel Manders’ funeral, so General Godley read a few sentences with the help of my electric torch, which failed. Four other officers were buried with him. I saw a great shell strike the grave the next day. A cemetery, or rather, many are growing up round us. There are dead men buried or half-buried in all the gullies.
Tuesday, August 10th, 1915. No. 3 Outpost. Christo arrived with my kit and some grapes last night. While we were eating these, two men, one of whom was our cook, were hit, and he being the second cook, it was decided to change our quarters, as a lot of bullets streamed down the gully and we had been losing heavily. I was called up in the night to see about some wounded. The General had said they had better go by boat, because of the difficulty of the saps, but there were no boats, and Manders’ death had caused confusion at the hospital. The doctor on the beach said he could not keep the wounded there any longer, because of the rifle fire. I woke Charlie and we got 200 men from the Canterbury reinforcements. They had been fighting without sleep since Sunday morning, but evacuated about 300 wounded to below Walker’s Ridge. There were no complaints. The Turks still had to be left. They called to me at night and at dawn. I gave them drinks, and later, after sunrise, shifted them into the shade, which made them cheerful. The General had not slept for three nights. The day went badly for us. We lost Chunuk Bair, and without it we cannot win the battle. The Turks have fought very finely, and all praise their courage. It was wonderful to see them charging down the hill, through the storm of shrapnel, under the white ghost wreaths of smoke. Our own men were splendid. The NZ Infantry Brigade must have ceased to exist. Meanwhile, the condition of the wounded is indescribable. They lie in the sand in rows upon rows, their faces caked with sand and blood; one murmur for water; no shelter from the sun; many of them in saps, with men passing all the time scattering more dust on them. There is hardly any possibility of transporting them. The fire zones are desperate, and the saps are blocked with ammunition transport and mules, also whinnying for water, carrying food, etc. Some unwounded men almost mad from thirst, cursing. We all did what we could, but amongst so many it was almost impossible. The wounded Turks still here. I kept them alive with water. More prisoners in, report another 15,000 men at Bulair and a new Division, the 7th, coming against us here. I saw General Cooper80 wounded, in the afternoon, and got him water. His Staff had all been killed or wounded. In most of my journeys to the beach early in the day I saw some man hit.
If the Turks continue to hold Chunuk Bair and get up their big guns there, we are, as a force, far worse off than at Anzac. What has happened is roughly this: we have emerged from a position which was unsatisfactory, but certain, into one that is uncertain but partly satisfactory. If the Turks have the time to dig themselves in, then we are worse off than before, because we shall again be held up, with the winter to face, and time running hard against us, with an extended front. The Turks will still have land communications, while we shall only have sea communications, and though we ourselves shall be possibly better off, because we shall now have a harbour, the Turks some time will almost certainly be able to break through, though possibly not able to keep what they take. But the men at Helles will not be freed as our move proposed to free them.
We have a terrible view here; the lines of wounded are creeping up to the cemetery like a tide, and the cemetery is going to meet the wounded. Between us and the sea is about 150 yards; this space is now empty of men because of the sniping. There are a number of dead mules on it, which smell horrible but cannot be moved. A curious exhibition of sniping took place just below us about 50 yards away. Two men were on the open space when a sniper started to shoot at them. They popped into a dry well that practically hid them, but he got his bullets all round them, in front and behind and on the sides. They weren�
��t hit. The camp watched laughing.
Thursday, August 12th, 1915. No. 3 Outpost. This day a year ago I left England for France. I wish I was doing that again. Last night I had a lot of questioning of prisoners and getting water for the wounded, and shifting the wounded Turks and the English. They caught what they said was a sniper and nearly killed him. I told some Maoris to shift some Turks lying in the sun. They said ‘let them die’. Many had fever. I thought one had cholera. One has to give them drinks out of one’s own water-bottle. There is no water, not enough for the dying.
At 4.30 in the morning I got up and walked with the General. We went up to Rhododendron Ridge to have a look at the Turks. It is a steep, beautiful walk. He said he was convinced no troops could have done better. Of course if the 9th had been able to advance we should have done the trick, but the Army and Navy appears to have landed them in the wrong place, and Birdwood says the Turks are too good for these mere boys. Fifty broke and ran with two lieutenants in a panic. The Beach Master at Suvla put them under arrest. On the top of the ridge we heard a wounded man calling for water. I asked twice to be allowed to go but the General refused, which as he allowed volunteers to be called for to go out with the Red Cross, he had scarcely the right to do. We are fastening the cliffs up, and camouflaging the trenches.
I took Nikolas the miller round the observation post in the morning. A new Division is supposed to be against us, the 8th. In the afternoon walked into Anzac to get a drink of water as have had fever and a cruel thirst. The dugouts smell, and washing’s difficult. Anglesey gave me excellent water.
Friday, August 13th, 1915. No. 3 Outpost. Nothing doing. Bullets singing about, but nobody’s getting hit. The heat’s ferocious, and everybody’s feeling ill. Macaulay’s wounded. Worked yesterday morning. Also started on new dugout. In the afternoon went with Turkish papers to Anzac. I saw Corbyn. He said that this beach, for cruelty, had beaten the Crimea. Birrell the doctor in charge had come ashore at Anzac and stayed there for about half an hour. They knew the date of the landing, yet they did nothing. The doctors came down here from No. 2 and were then sent back. There were two doctors at Anzac who had joined in order to do their bit; one of these was a very distinguished man and the other all right. What they had to do was to see if the wounded who went off had a blue or a green ticket; a corporal could have done this work; RAMC jealousy put them up to it. Old Birrell has been the man in command. He said a staff officer had come up to him yesterday and said there are sixteen dead men on stretchers there. I don’t know if they were dead originally or if they had been forgotten. C. said to him they aren’t carrying about dead men these days. One RAMC man refused to have his kitchen moved to make way for the wounded. General Shaw said: ‘Damn the wounded, I am not a quarter-master.’ Eight bell tents had never been put up that would have protected a lot of men from the sun. The Navy are refusing to evacuate except at night, as they say they have had a petty officer and a coxswain wounded these last days. Savage feeling with the RAMC.
Streams of mules took water out in the evening as the sun set. I met several men with sunstroke coming in. I saw George Hutton, Royal Welsh Fusiliers, who has become a Colonel. He had a hand-to-hand bayonet tussle with a Turk, in the last fight. Another man came up, and killed the Turk with his bayonet. Then, he said, the man, instead of pulling his bayonet out, dashed to another man and asked him for his bayonet, saying: ‘I have left mine in the Turk.’ The battle-cries, by the way, were for the Turks the sonorous, deep-voiced ‘Allah, Allah,’ and ‘Voor’ (‘God, God,’ ‘Strike’); while the New Zealanders used often to shout: ‘Eggs is cooked.’ This apparently irrelevant, unwarlike slogan had its origin in Egypt. There, on field days in the desert, when the men halted to rest, Egyptians would appear magically with primitive kitchens and the cry of ‘Eggs is cooked!’
Diary. Monday, August 16th, 1915. No. 3 Outpost. Christo will spit on my razor strop, otherwise he is very good. Worked yesterday morning and went and bathed with Charlie B. in the afternoon, when Birdwood left. Chaytor is coming back, this means he will take Charlie B’s place. I am very sorry as I am very fond of him. I don’t think the General can stand the winter here. The big fight ought to come before long, I take it. We shan’t get the Balkans in until we get to Constantinople. I don’t think we seem to want Roumania in. If she has no ammunition and takes a really bad knock from Germany, it would give Germany a very strong strategic position. It is said that Roumania keeps a percentage of all the ammunition she sends to Turkey. Bulgaria has stated her terms, Monastir and Cavalla. We agree but Serbia don’t; can Russia make her? She can’t risk the Serbs disobeying her. The Serbs might still do a deal with Austria; anyhow there is bound to be another Balkan war.
The Turks who come in do not really seem very disheartened; they talk in those very quiet soft patient voices, but pat one quite heartily. I am afraid they are beginning to fight without giving quarter. It is very curious the way the men speak of them here. They still can’t be made to wear gas helmets because they say the Turks are clean fighters and won’t use gas. Last night one man was talking to me in the darkness about his pal who had seen a little trench by Quinn’s taken. Then they had to kill the Turks who were in dugouts. ‘It had to be,’ he said, ‘it had to be, and my pal knew that, but he’d had enough fighting after that.’ After that he said: ‘Let me go back to New Zealand.’ Most of these men up here have been sick, dysentery etc.
At about this time the Expeditionary Force entered upon a new phase. The agony of the struggle had passed its crisis. Both sides sat down grimly, to wait for the winter. In many ways our position had distinctly improved. There was more room, and space banished the sense of imprisonment that had afflicted us. The country was not as battle-scarred as Anzac, and walking over the heights at sunset was a feast of loveliness.
We moved our Headquarters again, and I went up to a large dugout in what had been a Turkish fort. The troops quartered in this fort were an Indian Field Battery and sixty-three New Zealanders, all that was left of their battalion. These men had been in the first landing. They had, every one of them, had dysentery or fever, and the great majority were still sick and over-ripe for hospital. As time went on, and illness increased, one often heard men and officers say: ‘If we can’t hold the trenches with sound men, we have got to hold them with sick men.’ When all was quiet, the sick-list grew daily. But when the men knew that there was to be an attack, they fought their sickness, to fight the Turk, and the stream to the hospitals shrank.
I admired nothing in the war more than the spirit of these sixty-three New Zealanders, who were soon to go to their last fight. When the day’s work was over, and the sunset swept the sea, we used to lean upon the parapet and look up to where Chunuk Bair flamed, and talk. The great distance from their own country created an atmosphere of loneliness. This loneliness was emphasized by the fact that the New Zealanders rarely received the same recognition as the Australians in the Press, and many of their gallant deeds went unrecorded or were attributed to their greater neighbours. But they had a silent pride that put these things into proper perspective. The spirit of these men was unconquered and unconquerable. At night, when the great moon of the Dardanelles soared and all was quiet except the occasional whine of a bullet overhead, the voices of the tired men continually argued the merits of the Expedition, and there was always one end to these discussions: ‘Well, it may all be a—— mistake, but in a war of this size you will have mistakes of this size, and it doesn’t matter a—— to us whether we are for it here or in France, for we came out to do one job, and it’s nothing to us whether we finish in one place or another.’ The Turks were not the only fatalists in those days.
We were now well supplied with water, but food of the right kind was a difficulty. It was very hard to obtain supplies for sick men, and here, as always, we met with the greatest kindness from the Navy. Horlick’s Malted Milk and fruit from the Islands did us more good than anything else. Relations of mine in Egypt sent me an enormous quantity of the first,
which I was able to distribute to the garrison of the fort. Later, when I was invalided, I bequeathed the massive remnants to a friend who had just landed. Greedily he opened my stores, hoping for the good things of the world – tongues, potted ham and whisky – only to find a wilderness of Horlick’s Malted Milk.
Our position had at last been appreciated at home, and we were no longer irritated, as in the early days, by the frivolity and fatuousness of London. Upon one occasion, shortly after the first landing, one of the illustrated papers had a magnificent picture entitled, if I remember right, ‘The Charge that Won Constantinople.’ The picture was of a cavalry charge, led quite obviously by General Godley – and those were the days when we were living on the edge of a cliff, where only centipedes could, and did, charge, and when we were provided with some mules and my six donkeys for all our transport.
There was a remarkable contrast between our war against the Germans and the Turks. In France the British soldier started fighting good-naturedly, and it took considerable time to work him up to a pitch of hatred; at Anzac the troops from the Dominions began their campaign with feelings of contempt and hatred, which gradually turned to respect for the Moslems. At the beginning the great majority of our men had naturally no knowledge of the enemy they were fighting. Once, looking down from a gun emplacement, I saw a number of Turks walking about, and asked why they had not been shot at. ‘Well,’ said one man, ‘it seems hard on them, poor chaps. They aren’t doing any harm.’ Then up came another: ‘Those Turks,’ he said, ‘they walk about as if this place belongs to them.’ I suggested that it was their native land. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I never thought of that.’
Mons, Anzac and Kut Page 16