At Suvla Bay Part 11

"COMMUNICATIONS"

The native only needs a drum, On which to thump his dusky thumb--

But WE--the Royal Engineers, Must needs have carts and pontoon-piers; Hundreds of miles of copper-wire, Fitted on poles to make it higher.

Hundreds of sappers lay it down, And stick the poles up like a town.

By a wonderful system of dashes and dots, Safe from the Turkish sniper's shots-- We have, as you see, a marvellous trick, Of sending messages double-quick.

You can't deny it's a great erection, Done by the 3rd Field Telegraph Section; But somewhere-- THERE'S A DISCONNECTION!

The native merely thumps his drum, He thumps it boldly, thus--"Tum! Tum!"

J. H.

(Sailing for Salonika.)

Kangaroo Beach was where the Australian bridge-building section had their stores and dug-outs.

It was one muddle and confusion of water-tanks, pier-planks, pontoons, huge piles of bully-beef, biscuit and jam boxes. Here we came each evening with the water-cart to get our supply of water, and here the water-carts of every unit came down each evening and stood in a row and waited their turn. The water was pumped from the water-tank boats to the tank on sh.o.r.e.

The water-tank boats brought it from Alexandria. It was filthy water, full of dirt, and very brackish to taste. Also it was warm. During the two months at Suvla Bay I never tasted a drop of cold water--it was always sickly lukewarm, sun-stewed.

All day long high explosives used to sing and burst--sometimes killing and wounding men, sometimes blowing up the bully-beef and biscuits, sometimes falling with a hiss and a column of white spray into the sea.

It was here that the field-telegraph of the Royal Engineers became a tangled spider's web of wires and cross wires. They added wires and branch wires every day, and stuck them up on thin poles. Here you could see the Engineers in s.h.i.+rt and shorts trying to find a disconnection, or carrying a huge reel of wire. Wooden shanties sprang up where dug-outs had been a day or so before. Piers began to crawl out into the bay, adding a leg and trestle and pontoon every hour. Near Kangaroo Beach was the camp of the Indians, and here you could see the dusky ones praying on prayer mats and cooking rice and "chupatties" (sort of oatcake-pancakes).

Here they were laying a light rail from the beach up with trucks for carrying sh.e.l.ls and parts of big guns.

Here was the field post-office with sacks and sacks of letters and parcels. Some of the parcels were burst and unaddressed; a pair of socks or a mouldy home-made cake squashed in a cardboard box--sometimes nothing but the brown paper, card box and string, an empty sh.e.l.l--the contents having disappeared. What happened to all the parcels which never got to the Dardanelles no one knows, but those which did arrive were rifled and lost and stolen. Parcels containing cigarettes had a way of not getting delivered, and cakes and sweets often fell out mysteriously on the way from England.

CHAPTER XVI. THE ADVENTURE OF THE LOST SQUADS

Things became jumbled.

The continual working up to the firing-line and the awful labour of carrying heavy men back to our dressing station: it went on. We got used to being always tired, and having only an hour or two of sleep. It was log-heavy, dreamless sleep... sheer nothingness. Just as tired when you were wakened in the early hours by a sleepy, grumbling guard. And then going round finding the men and wakening them up and getting them on parade. Every day the same... late into the night.

Then came the disappearance of a certain section of our ambulance and the loss of an officer.

This particular young lieutenant was left on Lemnos sick. He really was very sick indeed. He recovered to some extent of the fever, and joined us one day at Suvla. This was in the Old Dry Water-course period, when Hawk and I lived in the bush-grown ditch.

Officers, N.C.O.'s, and men were tired out with overwork. This young officer came up to the Kapanja Sirt to take over the next spell of duty.

I remember him now, pale and sickly, with the fever still hanging on him, and dark, sunken eyes. He spoke in a dull, lifeless way.

"Do you think you'll be all right?" asked the adjutant.

"Yes, I think so," he answered.

"Well, just stick here and send down the wounded as you find them. Don't go any farther along; it's too dangerous up there--you understand?"

"All right, sir."

It was only a stroke of luck that I didn't stay with him and his stretcher-squads.

"You'd better come down with me, sergeant," says the adjutant.

Next day the news spread in that mysterious way which has always puzzled me. It spread as news does spread in the wild and desolate regions of the earth.

"... lost... all the lot..."

"Who is?"

"Up there... Lieutenant S--- and the squads..."

"How-joo-know?"

"Just heard--that wounded fellow over there on the stretcher... they went out early this morning, and they've gone--no sign, never came back at all--"

"'E warn't fit ter take charge... 'e was ill, you could see."

"Nice thing ter do. The old man'll go ravin' mad."

"It was a ravin' mad thing to put the poor feller in charge... "

"Don't criticise yer officers," said some wit, quoting the Army Regulations.

The adjutant and a string of squads turned out, and we went back again to the spot where we had left the young officer the evening before.

The cook and an orderly man remained, and we heard from them the details of the mystery.

Early that morning they had formed up, and gone off under Lieutenant S--- along the mule track overlooking the Gulf of Saros. That was all.

There was still hope, of course... but there wasn't a sign of them to be seen. The machine-gun section had seen them pa.s.s right along. Some officers had warned them not to go up, but they went and they never came back.

There were rumours that one of the N.C.O.'s of the party, a sergeant, had been seen lying on some rocks.

"Just riddled with bullets--riddled!"

The hours dragged on. I begged of the adjutant to let me go off along the ridge on my own to see if I could find any trace.

"It's too dangerous," he said. "If I thought there was half a chance I'd go with you, but we don't want to lose any more."

Those ten or twelve men went out of our lives completely. Days pa.s.sed.

There was no news. It was queer. It was queer when I called the roll next day--

"Briggs!"--"Sar'nt!"