first hill. Apparently the Turkish gunners cannot quite get the range. What ho—she bumps! A shell has crashed right into their boat! What a lovely time is awaiting us!
Our landing-party is ready. What oiling of rifles; excitement; laughing and swearing. ... Here come the destroyers, racing back hell for leather for more loads. Looks as if men are at a premium.
After dinner—The last boatload of men from the other ship has just raced shorewards. They are New Zealanders. As their packed vessels sped by we yelled from our crowded decks the old Cairo sayings: “Si-eda! Tallahena bint!” “Have you got a piastre?” and the pet sayings of the Tommies. They sounded comical with Australian voices imitating the English accents: “Has your mawther got a Ba-by?” “Have you been to Cai-ro?” etc.
...We are not to land until to-morrow. All are disgusted, but I suppose the “Heads” know best. The mists have long since evaporated. It is a beautiful day. We can see the shore distinctly, where our first battalions made Australian history.
What a seemingly impossible task they were set! The landing-place looks a sheer line of rocky cliffs, the abrupt hills frowning under their grey undergrowth. Cliffs and hills and gullies were swarming with Turks and machine guns at the Landing. It must have been a supreme bayonet charge, as awful as its success was miraculous.
And above survivors and reinforcements are now shrapnel-puffs, with much higher and to the right a scouting biplane like a droning bird. The cruisers farther to our right are roaring a devil’s tattoo. Smoke drifts lazily across the water and wisps away. We are landing after all. The boat is already alongside.
...A Squadron’s turn came. We tumbled down the ladders and packed tightly all over the tiny steamer’s deck. Our kit felt massive, everything felt like haste, even the small steamer looked excited and puffy. Some men were rather quiet, but the majority laughed and joked. I wish I was good humoured. I swore when a big fellow tramped on my toe.
We moved off for the shore all ears to the pop, pop, pop of rifle-shots. Smoke fairly belched from the toy funnel: I suppose the sweating devils below were shoving the coal into her.
Nothing happened until we got closer inshore and the bushes on the hillsides began to take shape. Then whizzz, then ping, ping, ping, ping. By jove, rifle-bullets! Whizz-zz, smack! and a shrill receding whistle as the bullet ricocheted off the water.
We opened our eyes rather inquiringly, two or three laughed—then we all laughed. I know I felt a queer, excited warming at the stomach too. What if one of the damned things smacked into a man before he had a chance!
After that, we listened for the whizz-zz and laughed as the bullet would strike the funnel or smack off the water alongside. They were stray bullets perhaps, but they were straying uncomfortably close.
Our steamer pulled up with a grunt and rattle close inshore as two launches raced out to meet us. Men tumbled aboard and the packed launches raced for the beach, the busy captain roaring to us to get below because the shrapnel would be here any moment!
He had hardly closed his mouth when something came tearing in a shriek through the air and—bang! Bullets burst on the water, clattered on the sides of the boat, screeched through the funnel. How we tumbled down below! How we tried to pack into that little black hole—as if there were room!
There came another screaming whine bursting into a splitting bang! another shower of bullets and hissing of lead-sprayed water.
Someone laughed loudly. Lots of us laughed, some smiled, some shouted derisively advising the far-away Turks where to aim. But they sent seven well-aimed shells right around us and in that very short time the captain had up-anchored and we cleared right out for the horizon. Presently we crept in again, and anchored and went while the going was good. Were jolly glad to step on shore among huge stacks of ammunition and stores. Men were bathing—so strange it seemed that men were dying too. Men were toiling among the heavy stacks of stores, men trudged all over that tiny beach in ragged, clay-stained uniforms, their familiar Australian faces cheerful and grimy under sprouting beards.
Pock marking the first steep hillside were scores of dugouts, like rough black kennels. A few Indian soldiers were loading ammunition on mules. Zigzag tracks were cut along the big hillside. Close inshore were over-turned boats, all shell-smashed, relics of the Landing. We glanced at the sinister bumpy of sandbags that is the dressing-shed. A long line of wounded were lying on the ground waiting their turn. The doctors looked busy; they appeared awfully workmanlike. One of our fools had to make a joke of course as we hurried past. He called to us that he could see one of the doctors and an orderly cutting off a man’s arm.
We climbed up the steep hill path, joking with the toil stained warriors who were cooking their evening meal, or toiling at the ammunition boxes, or lying like tired brown men about their tiny dugouts. Then we filed through a trench that led to the back of the hill and came out in a gloomy, narrow valley all tortuous and fissured as it wound through a sort of basin at the bottom of the big, sombre hills. We now faced many hills gutted with gorges, overshadowed a mile farther ahead by a flat rampart of cliffy peaks. An occasional shrapnel-shell screamed overhead. The whizz, zip, zip, zip of bullets became definite and unfriendly.
And so we climbed the back of the big hill that faces the sea. We are digging holes to get in out of the way of the shrapnel. Quite close one of our hidden Australian guns replies to the Turks and makes a monstrous row. The steep hills are covered with a dense, prickly shrub.
...We have just been called to arms. I suppose we are going into the trenches.
2
SHRAPNEL GULLY,
GALLIPOLI.
May—The regiment has been all night under fire. Rifle-fire started suddenly. In one minute we could not hear ourselves speak. Came a hoarse whisper: “Fill magazines!” We jammed in the clips. My fingers tingled as the empty clips grated out of the magazine. Another hoarse whisper, and we fled down the shadowed ravines that gouge our big hill.
Then ugh-ugh bang! Shrapnel burst above us in an instantaneous black-grey cloud of smoke: bushes around bent as if under a hail-storm. We scrambled on a little faster, instinctively ducking our heads from the storm. Again came that long-drawn scream to apparently split with its own velocity—bang!—and hail whipped the bushes around. We crouched low as we slithered down the ravines, grasping any handy bush, steading ourselves with our rifle-butts, slipping and sometimes falling to scramble sheepishly up to the instant joke. The sun was sinking: it was a creepy feeling among those black hills: we did not seem to know what was happening: we were hurrying somewhere to kill men and be killed. Our own battery answered the Turks. The rifle-fire grew to a roar that drowned the voice of the man beside me. I felt as a stone-age man might feel if volcanoes all around him suddenly spat fire and roared. Doctor Dods in front suddenly fell on his knees. I caught my breath—it would be awful if the doctor were the first man killed! But he got up again and scrambled on. He did this several times. Instinctively I understood. The doctor had been to the South African war! The next time he ducked, I ducked. When he scrambled up, I followed suit—so did others, a sort of automatic ducking all along the line. Thus we quickly learnt the best, the quickest chance of dodging shrapnel. We had to. Immediately that scream came tearing directly overhead we would duck down flat. The doctor glanced around and we laughed. He is a long man and very soldierly, but has no dignity at all when he flops down so. He screwed up his face and winked over his shoulder. Then we all rushed forward again and burst through the bushes that lined a little road meandering through the hills. We were in the little valley again, with the big black hills enveloping us. They call it Shrapnel Gully.
It got coldly dark. If a man were home he’d
