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At Suvla Bay

J >> John Hargrave >> At Suvla Bay



This etext was produced by Charles Franks and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team





AT SUVLA BAY

BEING THE NOTES AND SKETCHES OF
SCENES, CHARACTERS AND ADVENTURES
OF THE DARDANELLES CAMPAIGN

MADE BY

JOHN HARGRAVE
("White Fox" of "The Scout ")

WHILE SERVING WITH THE 32ND FIELD AMBULANCE,
X DIVISION, MEDITERRANEAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE,
DURING THE GREAT WAR




To
MINOBI

We played at Ali Baba,
On a green linoleum floor;
Now we camp near Lala Baba,
By the blue Aegean shore.

We sailed the good ship Argus,
Behind the studio door;
Now we try to play at "Heroes"
By the blue Aegean shore.

We played at lonely Crusoe,
In a pink print pinafore;
Now we live like lonely Crusoe,
By the blue Aegean shore.

We used to call for "Mummy,"
In nursery days of yore;
And still we dream of Mother,
By the blue Aegean shore.

While you are having holidays,
With hikes and camps galore;
We are patching sick and wounded,
By the blue Aegean shore.

J. H.

Salt Lake Dug-out,
September 12th, 1915.
(Under shell-fire.)




TURKISH WORDS

Sirt--summit.
Dargh--mountain.
Bair or bahir--spur.
Burnu--cape.
Dere--valley or stream.
Tepe--hill.
Geul--lake.
Chesheme--spring.
Kuyu--well.
Kuchuk--small.
Tekke--Moslem shrine.
Ova--plain.
Liman--bay or harbour.
Skala--landing-place.
Biyuk--great.



CONTENTS


CHAPTER

I. IN WHICH MY KING AND COUNTRY NEED ME

II. A LONG WAY TO TIPPERARY

III. SNARED

IV. CHARACTERS

V. I HEAR OF HAWK

VI. ON THE MOVE

VII. MEDITERRANEAN NIGHTS

VIII. THE CITY OF WONDERFUL COLOUR

IX. MAROONED ON LEMNOS ISLAND

X. THE NEW LANDING

XI. THE KAPANJA SIRT

XII. THE SNIPER-HUNT

XIII. THE ADVENTURE OF THE WHITE PACK-MULE

XIV. THE SNIPER OF PEAR-TREE GULLY

XV. KANGAROO BEACH

XVI. THE ADVENTURE OF THE LOST SQUADS

XVII. "OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND!"

XVIII. TWO MEN RETURN

XIX. THE RETREAT

XX. "JHILL-O! JOHNNIE!"

XXI. SILVER BAY

XXII. DUG-OUT YARNS

XXIII. THE WISDOM OF FATHER S----

XXIV. THE SHARP-SHOOTERS

XXV. A SCOUT AT SULVA BAY

XXVI. THE BUSH-FIRES

XXVII. THE DEPARTUR

XXVIII. LOOKING BACK




AT SUVLA BAY


CHAPTER I


IN WHICH MY KING AND COUNTRY NEED ME


I left the office of The Scout, 28 Maiden Lane, W.C., on September
8th, 1914, took leave of the editor and the staff, said farewell to my
little camp in the beech-woods of Buckinghamshire and to my woodcraft
scouts, bade good-bye to my father, and went off to enlist in the
Royal Army Medical Corps.

I made my way to the Marylebone recruiting office, and after waiting
about for hours, I went at last upstairs and "stripped out" with a lot
of other men for the medical examination.

The smell of human sweat was overpowering in the little ante-room.
Some of the men had hearts and anchors and ships and dancing-girls
tattooed in blue on their chests and arms. Some were skinny and others
too fat. Very few looked fit. I remarked upon the shyness they
suffered in walking about naked.

"Did yer pass?"

"No, 'e spotted it," said the dejected rejected.

"Wot?"

"Rupture."

"Got through, Alf?"

"No: eyesight ain't good enough."

So it went on for half-an-hour.

Then came my turn.

"Ha!" said the little doctor, "this is the sort we want," and he
rubbed his gold-rimmed glasses on his handkerchief. "Chest, thirty-
four--thirty-seven," said the doctor, tapping with his tape-measure,
"How did yer do that?"

"What, sir?" said I, gasping, for I was trying to blow my chest out,
or burst.

"Had breathing exercises?"

"No, sir--I'm a scout."

"Ha!" said he, and noticed my knees were brown with sunburn because I
always wore shorts.

I passed the eyesight test, and they took my name down, and my
address, occupation and age.

"Ever bin in the army before?"

"No, sir."

"Married?"

"No, sir."

"Ever bin in prison?"

"No, sir."

"What's yer religion?"

"Nothing, sir."

"What?"

"Nothing at all."

"Ah, but you've got to 'ave one in the army."

"Got to?"

"Yes, you must. Wot's it to be--C. of E.?"

"What d'you mean?"

"Church of England. Most of 'em do."

Awful thoughts of church parade flashed through my mind.

"Right you are--Quaker!" said I.

"Quaker! Is that a religion?" he asked doubtfully.

"Yes."

I watched him write it down.

"Right, that'll do. Report at Munster Road recruiting station, Fulham,
to-morrow."

We were all dressed by this time. After a lot more waiting about
outside in a yard, a sergeant came and took about eight of us into a
room where there was a table and some papers and an officer in khaki.

I spotted a Bible on the table. We had to stand in a row while he read
a long list of regulations in which we were made to promise to obey
all orders of officers and non-commissioned officers of His Majesty's
Service. After that, he told us he would swear us in. We had to hold
up the right hand above the head, and say, all together:
"Swhelpmegod!"

I immediately realised that I had taken an oath, which was not in
accordance with my regimental religion!

No sooner were we let out than I began to feel the ever-tightening
tangle of red tape.

What the dickens had I enlisted for? I asked myself. I had lost all my
old-time freedom: I could no longer go on in my old camping and
sketching life. I was now a soldier--a "tommy"--a "private." I loathed
the army. What a fool I was!

The next day I reported at Fulham. More hours of waiting. I discovered
an old postman who had also enlisted in the R.A.M.C., and as he "knew
the ropes" I stuck to him like a leech. In the afternoon an old
recruiting sergeant with a husky voice fell us in, and we marched, a
mob of civilians, through the London streets to the railway station.
Although this was quite a short distance, the sergeant fell us out
near a public-house, and he and a lot more disappeared inside.

What a motley crowd we were: clerks in bowler hats; "knuts" in brown
suits, brown ties, brown shoes, and a horse-shoe tie-pin; tramp-like
looking men in rags and tatters and smelling of dirt and beer and rank
twist.

Old soldiers trying to "chuck a chest"; lanky lads from the country
gaping at the houses, shops and people.

Rough, broad-speaking, broad-shouldered men from the Lancashire
cotton-mills; shop assistants with polished boots, and some even with
kid gloves and a silver-banded cane. Here and there was a farm-hand in
corduroys and hob-nailed, cowdung-spattered boots, puffing at a broken
old clay pipe, and speaking in the "Darset" dialect. At the station
they had to have another "wet" in the refreshment room, and by the
time the train was due to start a good many were "canned up."

Boozy voices yelled out--

"'S long way . . . Tipper-airy . . ."

"Good-bye, Bill . . . 'ave . . . 'nother swig?"

"Don't ferget ter write, Bill . . ."

"Aw-right, Liz . . . Good-bye, Albert . . ."

We were locked in the carriage. There was much shouting and laughing.
. . . And so to Aldershot.




CHAPTER II


A LONG WAY TO TIPPERARY


Aldershot was a seething swarm of civilians who had enlisted. Every
class and every type was to be seen. We found out the R.A.M.C. depot
and reported. A man sat at an old soapbox with a lot of papers, and we
had to file past him. This was in the middle of a field with row upon
row of bell-tents.

"Name?" he snapped.

I told him.

"Age?"

"Religion?"

"Quaker."

"Right!--Quaker Oats!--Section 'E,' over there."

But my old postman knew better, and, having found out where "Section
E" was camped, we went off up the town to look for lodging for the
night, knowing that in such a crowd of civilians we could not be
missed.

At last we found a pokey little house where the woman agreed to let us
stay the night and get some breakfast next day.

That night was fearful. We had to sleep in a double bed, and it was
full of fleas. The moonlight shone through the window. The shadow of a
barrack-room chimney-pot slid slowly across my face as the hours
dragged on.

We got up about 5.30 A.M., so as to get down to the parade-ground in
time for the "fall in."

We washed in a tiny scullery sink downstairs. There was a Pears'
Annual print of an old fisherman telling a story to a little girl
stuck over the mantelpiece.

We had eggs and bread-and-butter and tea for breakfast, and I think
the woman only charged us three shillings all told.

Once down at the parade-ground we looked about for "Section E" and
found their lines in the hundreds of rows of bell-tents.

Life for the next few days was indeed "hand to mouth." We had to go on
a tent-pitching fatigue under a sergeant who kept up a continual flow
of astoundingly profane oaths.

Food came down our lines but seldom. When it did come you had to fetch
it in a huge "dixie" and grope with your hands at the bits of gristle
and bone which floated in a lot of greasy water. Some one bought a box
of sardines in the next tent.

"Goin' ter share 'em round?" said a hungry voice.

"Nah blooming fear I ain't--wot yer tike me for--eh?"

Every one was starving. I had managed to fish a lump of bone with a
scrag of tough meat on it from the lukewarm slosh in our "dixie." But
some one who was very hungry and very big came along and snatched it
away before I could get my teeth in it.

We had continually to "fall in" in long rows and answer our names.
This was "roll-call," and roll-call went on morning, noon, and night.
Even when your own particular roll-call was not being called you could
hear some other corporal or sergeant shouting--

"Jones F.--Wiggins, T.--Simons, G.-- Harrison, I. . . ." and so on all
day long.

There were no ground-sheets to the tents. We squatted in the mud, and
we had one blanket each, which was simply crawling.

We were indeed in a far worse condition than many savages. Then came
the rain. We huddled into the tents. There were twenty-two in mine,
and, as a bell-tent is full up with eighteen, you may imagine how
thick the atmosphere became. One old man would smoke his clay-pipe
with choking twist tobacco. Most of the others smoked rank and often
damp "woodbines." The language was thick with grumbling and much
swearing. At first it was not so bad. But some one touched the side of
the tent and the rain began to dribble through. Then we found a tiny
stream of wet slowly trickling along underneath the tent-walls towards
the tent-pole, and by night time we were lying and sitting in a pool
of mud.

About a week later when the sergeant-major told us on parade that we
were "going to Tipperary" we all laughed, and no one believed it.

But the next day they marched us down to the Government siding and
locked us all in a train, which took us right away to Fishguard.

Some of the men got some bread-and-cheese before starting, but I, in
company with a good many others, did not.

The boat was waiting when they bundled us out on the quay.

It was a cattle-boat and very small and very smelly. There were no
cabins or accommodation of any sort: only the cattle-stalls down
below. Six hundred of us got aboard. Out of the six hundred, five
hundred were sick. It was a very rough crossing, and we were all
starving and shivering. I had nothing but what I stood up in--shirt,
shorts, and cowboy-hat, and my old haversack, which contained soap,
towel and razor, and also a sketch-book and a small colour-box.

The Irish sea-winds whistled up my shorts-- but I preferred the icy
wind to the stinking cattle-stalls and insect-infested straw below. We
were packed in like sardines. Men were retching and groaning, cussing
and growling. At last I found a coil of rope. It was a huge coil with
a hole in the centre--something like a large bird's nest. I got into
this hole and curled up like a dormouse. Here I did not feel the cold
so much, and lying down I didn't feel sick. The moon glittered on the
great gray billows. The cattle-boat heaved up and slid down the
mountains. She pitched and rolled and slithered sideways down the
wave-slopes. And so to Waterford.

From Waterford by train to Tipperary. It was early morning. The first
thing I noticed was that the grass in Ireland was very green and that
the fields were very small.

We had had no food for twenty-seven hours. I found a very hard crust
of bread in my haversack, and eat it while the others were asleep in
the carriage.




CHAPTER III


SNARED


"CRIMED"

"Off with his head," said the Queen.--Alice in Wonderland.

"Charge against 31963--
Failing to drink some oniony tea;
Ha! Ha!
What! What!
I can have you SHOT!
D'you realise that
I can have you lashed
To a wheel and smashed?
What?
Rot!
Yes--SHOT!
D'you realise this?
Right--turn!
DISMISS!"

Lemnos: October 1915.


Born and bred in a studio, and brought up among the cloud-swept
mountains of Westmorland, amid the purple heather and the sunset in
the peat-moss puddles, barrack-life soon became like penal servitude.
I was like a caged wild animal. I knew now why the tigers and leopards
pace up and down, up and down, behind their bars at the Zoo.

We only stayed a week in the great, gray, prison-like barracks at
Tipperary. We looked about for the "sweetest girl" of the song--but
the "colleens" were disappointing. My heart was not "right there." We
moved to Limerick; and in Limerick we stopped for seven solid months.

For seven months we did the same old squad- drill every day, at the
same time, on the same old square, until at last we all began to be
unbearably "fed up." The sections became slack at drill because they
were over-drilled and sickened by the awful monotony of it all.

During those seven dreary months, in that dismal slum-grown town, we
learnt all the tricks of barrack-life. We knew how to "come the old
soldier"; we knew how and when to "wangle out" of doing this or that
fatigue; we practised the ancient art of "going sick" when we knew a
long route march was coming off next day.

We knew how to "square" the guard if we came in late, and the others
learnt how to dodge church parade.

"'E never goes to church parade."

"No; 'e was a fly one--'e was."

"Wotchermean?"

"Put 'isself down as Quaker."

"Lummy--that's me next time I 'list-- Quaker Oats!"

By this time I had been promoted to the rank of corporal.

Next to the regimental sergeant-major, I had the loudest drill voice
on the square, and shouting at squad-drill and stretcher- drill was
about the only thing I ever did well in the army--except that, having
been a scout, I was able to instruct the signalling squad.

Route marches and field-days were a relief from the drill square. For
five months we got no issue of khaki. Many of the men were through at
the knees, and tattered at the elbows. Some were buttonless and
patched. I had to put a patch in my shorts. Our civilian boots were
wearing out--some were right through. Heels came off when they "right
turned," others had their soles flapping as they marched.

My "batman," who cleaned my boots and swept out the bunk, had his
trousers held together with a huge safety-pin. The people called us
"Kitchener's Rag-time Army." We became so torn, and worn, and ragged,
that it was impossible to go out in the town. Being the only one in
scout rig-out I drew much attention.

"'Ere 'e comes, Moik-ell!"

"Kitchener's cowboy! Isn't he lovely!"

"Bejazus! so-it-is!"

"Come an' see Path-rick--Kitchener's cowboy!--by-the-holy-sufferin'-
jazus!"

I found an old curio-shop down near the docks, and here I used to
rummage among the gilded Siamese idols, and the painted African gods
and drums. I discovered some odd parts of A Thousand-and-One Arabian
Nights, which I bought for a penny or two, and took back to my
barrack-room to read. By this means I forgot the gray square, and the
gray line of the barracks outside, and the bare boards and yellow-
washed walls within.

I used to practise "slipping" the guard at the guard-room gate. This
form of amusement became quite exciting, and I was never caught at it.

Next I got a very old and worn copy of the Koran.

By this time I was a full-blown sergeant. I made a mistake in walking
into the sergeants' mess with the Koran under my arm. It was difficult
to explain what sort of book it was. One day the regimental sergeant-
major said--

"You know, Hargrave, I can't make you out."

"No, sir?"

"No;--you're not a soldier, you never will be--you act the part pretty
well. But you don't take things seriously enough."

We were often out on the Clare Mountains for field-days with the
stretcher-squads. Coming back one day, I spotted two herons wading
among some yellow-ochre sedges in a swampy field. I determined there
and then to come back and stalk them. The following Saturday I set out
with a fellow we called "Cherry Blossom," because he never cleaned his
boots. I took a pair of field-glasses, and "Cherry" had a bag of
pastries, which we bought on the way. We stalked those herons for
hours and hours. We crept through the reeds, hid behind trees, and
crawled into bushes, but the herons were better scouts. We only got
about fifty yards up to one. For all that, it was like my old scout
life--and we had had a break from the gray walls and the everlasting
saluting of officers.

There were rumours of war, and that's all we knew of it. There were
fresh rumours each day. We were going to Egypt. We were to be sent to
the East Coast for "home defence." That offended our martial ardour.
When were we going out? Should we ever get out? Had we got to do squad
drill for "duration"? Had Kitchener forgotten the Xth Division?

Now and then a batch of men were put into khaki which arrived at the
quartermaster's stores in driblets. Some had greeny puttees and sandy
slacks, a "civvy" coat and a khaki cap. Others were rigged out in
"Kitchener's workhouse blue," with little forage caps on one side. The
sprinkling of khaki and khaki-browns and greens increased every time
we came on parade: until one day the whole of the three field
ambulances were fitted out.

The drill went on like clockwork. It was as if some curse had fallen
upon us. The officers were "fed up" you could see.

And now, just a word as to army methods. Immediately opposite the
barracks was a cloth factory, which was turning out khaki uniforms for
the Government every day.

For five months we went about in civilian clothes. We were a disgrace
as we marched along. Yet because no order had been given to that
factory to supply us with uniforms, we had to wait till the uniforms
had been shipped to England, and then sent back to Ireland for us
to wear!

The spark of patriotism which was in each man when he enlisted was
dead. We detested the army, we hated the routine, we were sickened and
dulled and crushed by drill.

The old habit of being always on the alert for anything picturesque
saved me from idiotcy. Whenever opportunity offered, or whenever I
could take French leave, I went off with sketchbook and pencil, and
forgot for a time the horror of barrack-room life, with its unending
flow of filthy language, and its barren desolation of yellow-washed
walls and broken windows.

And then we moved to Dublin.




CHAPTER IV


CHARACTERS


It may be very amusing to read about "Kipps" and those commonplace
people whom Mr. H.G. Wells describes so cleverly, but to have to live
with them in barracks is far from pleasant.

There were shop-assistants, dental mechanics, city clerks, office
boys, medical students, and a whole mass of very ordinary, very
uninteresting people. There was a fair sprinkling of mining engineers
and miners, and these men were more interesting and of a far stronger
mental and physical development. They were huge, full-chested, strong-
armed men who swore and drank heavily, but were honest and straight.

There were characters here from the docks and from the merchant
service, some of whom had surely been created for W.W. Jacobs. One in
particular--Joe Smith, a sailor-man (an engine-greaser, I think)--was
full of queer yarns and seafaring talk. He was a little man with beady
eyes and a huge curled moustache. He walked about quickly, with the
seamen's lurch, as I have noticed most seagoing men of the merchant
service do.

This man "came up" in bell-bottomed trousers and a pea jacket. He was
fond of telling a yarn about a vessel which was carrying a snake in a
crate from the West Indies. This snake got into the boiler when they
were cleaning out the engine-room.

"The capt'in ses to me, 'Joe.' I ses, 'Yes-sir.' 'Joe,' says 'e,
'wot's to be done?'

"'Why,' ses I, 'thing is ter git this 'ere snake out ag'in!'

"'Jistso,' says the capt'in; 'but 'oo' ter do it?'--'E always left
everythink ter me--and I ses, 'Why, sir, it's thiswise, if sobe all
the others are afeared, I ain't, or my name's Double Dutch.'

"'Very good, melad,' ses the capt'in, 'I relies on you, Joe.'--'E
always did--and would you believe it, I upped an' 'ooked that there
great rattlesnake out of the boiler with an old hum-brella!"

There was a clerk who stood six-foot eight who was something of a
"knut." He told me that at home he belonged to a "Lit'ry Society," and
I asked him what books they had and which he liked.

"Books?" he asked. "'Ow d'yow mean?"

"You said a Literary Society, didn't you?"

"Oh yes, we 'ave got books. But, you know, we go down there and 'ave a
concert, or read the papers, and 'ave a social, perhaps, you know;
sometimes ask the girls round to afternoon tea."

I had a barrack-room full of these people to look after. Most of them
got drunk. Once a young medical student tried to knife me with a
Chinese jack-knife which his uncle, a missionary, had given him. He
had "downed" too much whisky. Just as boys do at school, so these men
formed into cliques, and "hung together" in twos and threes.

Some of them, like the "lit'ry society" clerk, had never seen much of
life or people; had lived in a little suburban villa and pretended to
be "City men." Others had knocked about all over the world. These were
mostly seafaring men. Savage was such a one. He was one of the
buccaneer type, strong and sunburnt, with tattooed arms. Often he sang
an old sea-song, which always ended, "Forty-five fadom, and a clear
sandy bottom!" He knew most of the sea chanties of the old days, one
of which went something in this way--

"Heave away Rio! Heave away Rio!
So fare thee well, my sweet pretty maid!
Heave away Rio! Heave away Rio!
For there's plenty of gold--so we've been told--
On the banks of the Sacrament--o!"

An old Irish apple-woman used to come into the barracks, and sit by
the side of the parade ground with two baskets of apples and a box of
chocolate.

She did a roaring trade when we were dismissed from drill.

We always addressed her as "Mother." She looked se witch-like that one
day I asked--

"Can you tell a fortune, Mother?"

"Lord-love-ye, no! Wad ye have the Cuss o' Jazus upon us all? Ye shud
see the priest, sor."

"And can he?"

"No, Son! All witch-craftin' is forbid in the Book by the Holy Mother
o' Gord, so they do be tellin' me."

"Can no one in all Ireland read a fortune now, Mother?"

"Ach, Son, 'tis died out, sure. Only in the old out-an'-away parts
'tis done; but 'tis terrible wicked!"

She was a good bit of colour. I have her still in my pocket-book. Her
black shawl with her apples will always remind me of early barrack-
days at Limerick if I live to be ninety.




CHAPTER V


I HEAR OF HAWK


Seldom are we lucky enough to meet in real life a character so strong
and vivid, so full of subtle characteristics, that his appearance in a
novel would make the author's name. Such a character was Hawk.

When you consider, you find that many an author of note has made a
lasting reputation by evolving some such character; and in most cases
this character has been "founded on fact." For example, Stevenson's
"Long John Silver," Kipling's "Kim," and Rider Haggard's "Alan
Quatermain."

Had Kipling met Hawk he would have worked him into a book of Indian
soldier life; for Hawk was full of jungle adventures and stories of
the Indian Survey Department and the Khyber Pass; while his
descriptions of Kashmir and Secunderabad, with its fakirs and
jugglers, monkey temples and sacred bulls, were superb.

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