Second shot at P. of W. Then third big shot right over the Queen near the Hessen. They’ll be sinking her if our people don’t look out. I believe i.e. quite expect to lose a transport or two and it looks as if any minute we shall see the beginning: fourth big shot alongside Hessen – she’s a German steamer, too. I wonder when they’ll get her moving – they’re frightfully slow. No, she’s thrashing out at last – screw very high out of water.
Then a big shot – fifth – close alongside Minnewaska.
Next a shot close alongside a destroyer – it seemed to explode on touching the water – wonder if it went through her – it would sink her surely. You can see a white powdery patch on her black side, where the explosion dried the spray on it, I suppose. A sailor went straight to the side and looked over to see if any damage had been done. If it had she’d have been sunk by now so I suppose it just missed her.
The Turkish gun (later dubbed ‘Beachy Bill’) behind Kaba Tepe has fired a shot at us as we came ashore – at least I suppose they were firing at us. It fell a good way short. Another destroyer was moving in parallel to us, carrying troops from other transport. About two hundred yards from the shore the destroyers stopped. There were some very big empty ships’ boats coming alongside and we clambered into them – Gellibrand and most of our party got up into the bows to be out of the way. I don’t think anybody in the boat worried about shrapnel. Somebody says another shell burst between us and the other destroyer – not far away; but I didn’t notice it. I was busy taking photos of the boats and the hills.
The sight of the hills as we got in closer and could see what they really were made one realise what our men had really done. I remember someone saying that the map ought to have been made more precipitous, that it didn’t really give an idea of how steep the hills actually were – and I understand what they meant. The place is like a sandpit on a huge scale – raw sandslopes and precipices alternating with steep slopes covered with low scrub – the scrub where it exists is pretty dense. There seems to be a tallish hummock at the northern end of the beach and another at the south end. We are landing between them.
The boat grounded in at two feet of water. We jumped out – got used to this at Lemnos where I saw many a man spilt by his heavy pack, so I got out carefully, waded to the beach, and stood on Turkish soil.
I took a photo of two of the fellows landing and then turned round to see the beach. It was a curve of sand, about half a mile long, between the two knolls before mentioned. Between them, high above us, ran back a steep scrub-covered slope to a skyline about 300 feet above us. One or two deep little gullies came down the mountainside, each with a little narrow winding gutter in the depth of it; these gutters were about as deep as a man, sometimes deeper, not more than five or six feet wide, more or less covered in the low scrub (largely arbutus) and so splendid natural cover against shrapnel whether it came from north or south. On the beach some seamen were rigging up the first pole of a wireless station; infantry and engineers as they landed were being lined up and marched off at once – mostly, I think, towards the south end of the beach. Foster and Casey met us and took us off in a southerly direction to the second gully where they said the General (Bridges) had decided to make his divisional H.Q. The place they chose was the bottom of the gully just where the gully opened out onto the sand. I chucked my pack and haversack down with others on a bunch of bush in the middle of this gully. Shrapnel had been dropping here thickly.
I think the General was away when we arrived – anyway Foster couldn’t say definitely if this would be the place for the camp; so we waited on to see where H.Q. would be. The General was there shortly afterwards. White, Glasfurd, Blamey, Howse and Foott were all ashore before us.
10 a.m: The mountain guns have just landed. There is continuous firing.
10.30: The wireless is up. The boys are digging out a place for Headquarters in this gully near the beach. The signallers seem to have been allotted a bit of the gully just above us and the artillery just above them. A Turkish prisoner is being examined at H.Q. …
We saw a few wounded men, a very few, limping or carried along the beach. I think about half a dozen poor chaps were also lying there dead – with overcoats or rugs over them. Most of these were carried away round the northern point of the beach, and away along the northern beach where they were laid out together, about 30 of them …
I didn’t want to get in the way at H.Q. so as Col. Hobbs was going up to see if he could find a position for his guns I asked if I might go with him. The Artillery staff scrambled up the gutter at the back of our H.Q. winding in and out under the leaves, dragging one another up the gravelly banks until we got to the top of our ridge. When about halfway up I noticed an insect with a soft rustle of a flight, like a bee’s, flying over – I could hear them and looked once or twice to make sure. Then for the first time I realised it must be a bullet. It was so feeble, that sound, and so spent that it was quite comforting. One had expected something much more businesslike. As we got higher up the whistle did become louder, but I hadn’t any idea whether they were near or far.
At the top we got into a path – I don’t know if it was ours or Turkish, but our engineers were building quite a fine path lower down – which led us for about half a dozen yards over the beginning of a plateau and then a shallow trench crossed our path, running from right to left; so we dropped into it. There were several men in it and I think they were chiefly engaged in passing ammunition along it. We crept along it, passing a certain number of men – Col. Hobbs seemed rather desperate of getting any artillery up this way. As we went along this trench there was a dead Turk lying in it and there was one of our own men, dead, lying just outside the trench. Some parts of the trench had a very nasty smell – there was no mistaking it – the Turks must have used it for purposes of sanitation as well as of protection – I believe their trenches serve for every purpose. Finally we got to where the trench finished abruptly on the other side of the plateau in a V-shaped cut through which you could see down into the valley and across to the other side of it. Col. Hobbs went on and had a look out of the opening and as he could do no good here we all returned to the beach. I stayed for a bit to talk to some of the men in the trench. One could hear occasionally a burst overhead and a whizz which I took to be shrapnel; but in this trench one was reasonably safe.
By the time I got out of the trench the road up to the entrance of it seemed to be nearly finished. Men bringing up ammunition were resting there for a moment. A certain number of infantry were sitting down there also for a breather. The ammunition men didn’t get down into the trench but went straight on across the plateau – where to I could not see. It was a big labour bringing those boxes up the hill – but I knew it was awfully important.
Presently four guns from the north started shelling the road up north edge of the hill, up which the troops were continually moving or else these shells were meant for the troops landing, I couldn’t say which. As I sat on the hillside above the northern knoll – just at the northern edge of the hillslope up from the beach – they were coming over my head, high over, in salvos of four and bursting rather high over the beach and the water in front of the destroyers. I can’t say I like shrapnel although it seemed to be quite familiar by this time. I sat watching it by the road for some time and then walked down through the scrub towards our gully. On the way I saw several of the men of Jock’s battalion carrying ammunition. They had a depot in the scrub there and a sergeant who evidently recognised me was in charge of it. He said the doctor had been attending to men on the beach, he thought, for a time and had now gone on with his battalion.
Then I came down to the beach and had a little lunch – that is, some biscuits, a little chocolate and some water.
The General was there – they were making him a dugout on the right-hand corner of the mouth of the creek as you looked towards the hills …
After lunch I went up the hill at the back of the beach for a bit, and finally decided to go and see if I could fin
d old Jock. I went up to the communication trench on the hilltop and through it, inquiring where Jock’s dressing station was. Several men had told me if I went over that way I should find it down in the gully. I asked several in the trench (along which ammunition was being passed) the way, but they told me they didn’t know – they were mostly 10th Battalion but also some 1st … I went along the trench to near its exit on the further slope. I got a photo from this exit, but a man seemed to be sniping in at it from the other side of the valley – the men at the exit were well tucked into the sides of it so I didn’t stay there. I waited tucked up in the trench – and the shrapnel began to plump in salvos of four shots regularly into the backs of the men lying out on the opposite side of the valley. You could hear the shots going overhead and see the burst, I think, sometimes. It went on with monotonous regularity – apparently never-ending and one began to think the chaps there must be having an awful time. I couldn’t get a man from Jock’s battalion – every other sort seemed to go through the trench. A number of New Zealanders came along it and filled it up, with some officers and orders seemed to be passed along from a Col. Plugge at the back. There was a signaller in the trench, the reader in the trench with a telescope and the sender somewhere on the face of the slope outside. I knew – I don’t know how, but one guessed from the way those guns were firing, unhindered by any firing at all of ours, that the troops were being very severely tried. It was sickening to hear it. I thought there was only a party of troops on the further ridge but it was the main line of our men really. One could tell something from the messages passed along. A request came back (from 1st Brig., I think) to know how the other landings were getting on. That meant they wanted something cheerful to tell the troops, I knew. I am not sure it didn’t come along twice …
The afternoon wore on and I suddenly saw men crossing the trench a little way to my right – amongst them was Col. Owen. I wished afterwards I had gone alone and spoken to him – that was really my chance and I should have found Jack; but he was some way away and I didn’t. The shelling went on and on – of course a good many bullets were nipping overhead – you heard the whistle and the low scrub just above the trench bank looked pretty dangerous …
It was getting on towards evening so I decided to go on and find 3rd Bn, if I could, myself. I went along the trench to near the mouth, jumped out, and ran across the top and at once found myself in a little dip in the front side of the hill. There were a few men there, all lying down under the brow of the slope. On the edge of the slope was standing – I think he came up at that moment – Evans, the machine-gun officer of the 3rd Bn … and I told him I was glad to see he wasn’t hit. I lay down under the cover of the edge of the ridge – it was slight cover – but he sat up on the edge of it all by himself, treating the bullets as if they did not exist, and they were pretty thick. The men were lying down pretty closely and I did the same. He didn’t know where Jock’s dressing station was and the men of the 3rd Bn with him didn’t either. (I think it must have been in that very place to start off with.) As I lay there a lot of New Zealanders came up the hill and lined this ridge to left and right: the firing seemed to be heavy away to our left all the time and I couldn’t help thinking that the Turks were getting round our left flank … As we were lying there six guns just behind us somewhere opened over our heads with a delicious salvo. It was like a soothing draught of water to hear those guns blaze at the Turks …
I went down and found H.Q. about dinner time. I thought I noticed the fellows seemed rather quiet with me – I couldn’t help wondering if they had heard that anything was wrong with Jock. After dinner – I forget what time – Col. White told me that he had seen Jock. ‘He was very cheerful – I don’t think Howse thinks he’s been badly hit,’ he said. That was the first I heard of it. Howse told me he had seen him and he never saw a wounded man better – not the least sign of collapse. ‘I don’t think the bullet hit any important part,’ he said. ‘It was still in – but I don’t think it hit the intestine.’ He said Jock had gone off to a hospital ship – he didn’t know which. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon Jock was hit. He was the only medical officer wounded.
When I got down to the beach I found that almost everyone had a dugout – a sort of ditch cut, something between a grave and a cave, into the creek side. The General’s was pretty well finished.
Next it was a little one which Glasfurd was sharing with Casey – they asked me to sit in it – a sort of little kennel place. They were awfully kind …
I presently got my things and started on a dugout for myself. I started first up amongst the signallers. Several of them were lying cooped up there in little half-circular places, not unlike tiny sandpits. I found a vacant corner – only a few feet, for the whole place was covered with these dugouts especially on the south side (for protection against Kaba Tepe). I started to dig. The man in the dugout next door strongly objected – I don’t know who it was. ‘What do you want to keep a man awake with that damned digging for?’ he asked. ‘Haven’t you got any bloody consideration?’ I thought that was a bit humorous – a chap who was safely cuddled up in his dugout objecting to me making one on a night like this. I went on – but I presently got a better place on the other side of the creek a little way up the bank, just above the beach. As I was digging Ramsay and Murphy came up and gave me a hand – it really was a welcome help for I was fearfully hot. When they finished the dugout looked quite well – we heaped the earth on the Kaba Tepe side of it, which would keep out shrapnel bullets. But after they had finished I went on and dug and dug until it seemed to me ordinarily safe against gun fire from either flank – Kaba Tepe might get your boots, but not much else …
I don’t know what time it was – perhaps 10 p.m. – when the dugout was finished. The staff were mostly sitting somewhere around not far from the General’s dugout. In front of it was another dugout for the office which was also used as a mess room – tea was going there at meal times. But I, like most others, never felt in the least hungry and needed very little to drink. After the dugout was finished I fetched my pack, haversack and things there … The following morning first thing I went out and cut some arbutus branches and spread them overhead with the waterproof sheet over them for a roof. I had a post across the top and Riley helped me heap sandbags there for a bit of head cover – very heavy work but it made the dugout reasonably safe and was certainly needed for the roof was hit with shrapnel pellets. The dugout was never wide but it was safe. I used to write there at night after turning in – scribbling notes into the notebook from which I am transcribing this. The nights were moonlit and fortunately one could see to write by the light of the moon (for I had no other light) on most nights. But on Sunday and Wednesday nights when it was wet, and before the moon rose or after she went down, one could only guess at the position of the words one wrote, and I found pages afterwards scribbled over with lines written one on top of the other. One had not many hours of sleep – three or four this Sunday night – perhaps from 10 to 4 the following nights. There was a cup of tea at 4.30 and breakfast at 7. This continued for about four or five days when the hour became seven o’clock breakfast, one o’clock lunch and about six or seven o’clock dinner – I was always very irregular so I never really knew what hours these meals were. I was out the whole day and wrote at night what little I did – bare notes. It was the third day – or perhaps the second evening before I discovered that the mess was going for I was out nearly all day long. My meals until then consisted of chocolate and biscuits and water. (I generally took the water bottle to the trenches in case the men might like a drink.) You filled your water bottle at some large tins on the beach into which water was pumped from a barge through a canvas hose. An A.M.C. man stood over these tins and there were several pannikins for ladling water out. There was also a low trough or tin for the mules. After the first few days these water tins, which were opposite the end of our gully, just on the edge of the sea, became very exposed to shrapnel and they built up sandbags in fron
t of them. The water was taken up to the firing line in petrol or kerosene tins painted khaki and carried two on each side of a mule in wooden panniers … The men knew the value of these mules though they never liked them. As you went along the jostling crowded beach, a kick from a mule was very easy thing to get. You avoid them! A man would say – I’d rather have a bullet than a kick from a mule any day.
A pile of the kerosene tins and a pile of biscuit boxes gradually began to rise in front of my dugout – high and wider every day. The kerosene tins often had water in them and both they and the biscuit boxes provided shelters for the men on the beach when shrapnel came, although the working parties usually disregarded the shrapnel altogether …
Of course the beach was fearfully congested. As the night went on a great number of these stragglers were organised into parties to carry water, ammunition and food, up to the lines. I have heard their number put at anything from 600 to 1000. Many of them came down with wounded men. This is an offence in war, but few realised it at this early stage. The helping down of wounded did not really begin until about 4 or 5. Then it began to reach fair proportions – six men came down with one wounded officer. It is very easy to persuade yourself that you are really doing a charitable soldierly action in helping a wounded soldier to the rear. In later actions this has been chiefly done by the wounded themselves – one wounded man helping another – the men now realise that it is not right to leave the firing line. They were raw soldiers on that first day …
I went to sleep at about 11 or 12 for a couple of hours or less – I don’t know if I even dropped off. The firing on the ridge above was tremendous and incessant and it sounded as though it were on the ridge above our heads – in fact many down on the beach thought it was – but it was not. There were every now and then a few specially sharp cracks and bullets whistled softly through the air …
Eyewitness Page 3