Muffled footsteps slow and heavy came down the dark gully. We strained our eyes as the shadowy forms of stretcher-bearers went by. I shivered involuntarily to the vanishing pad of their feet, for a man’s hand hung limply over a stretcher.
Then “Forward!” We arose and stumbled on up the gully. Not far though. We dived for the bushes again, for anywhere, and stayed there the whole night, cramped and shivering and cold, listening to the big shells trying to burst the very air above, to the ominous roar of rifle fire just ahead, to those damned canaries among the bushes. The rifle-roar in front made us certain that the Turks were attacking only a few yards away. We knew nothing. Most of us did not know where our officers were. They were scattered amongst us of course, but I doubt if they knew where they were.
“We are to be used as reserves for the trenches!” someone bawled in my ear.
“How the hell do you know?” I yelled, but got no reply.
When a sort of shadowy moonlight came there sounded a cracking rumble coming down the gully. We held our breath. “Guns!” Around a bend in the gully came some sort of animal dragging a squeaking, funny looking cart, a little cart that rocked and swayed over the uneven gully-bed. We could not see distinctly, but two other carts creaked slowly behind. The drivers walked, cloaked and silent, creaking past us with never a word. A voice from the night said distinctly, “Don’t their legs wobble funny!” The dead men’s legs were hanging over the rear of the carts.
At daylight we crawled out of our retreats, the officers trying to sort out the hopeless muddle of squadrons and troops. Gillespie sat on a stone, six feet of patience, trying to get some dirt out of his eye.
Anyway, we got back to our “camp.” Now we have shifted and are digging out fresh lodgings as yesterday’s are too abundantly supplied with shrapnel. Only a very few of us were hit last night. Providence may have smiled on us, but I’ll bet our quick instinct for crawling into any available “burrow” shielded us a lot, too. The cracking of rifles is still menacing, but mainly from snipers. The rifles never cease; every minute they crack! crack! crack!
Strange! a few birds are flying about, merrily chirping, while the air is trilling with death!
I was a fool this morning. I saw such a bonza pair of Turkish top-boots, almost brand new, sticking up out of the ground near my new dugout. I pulled at one boot and out came part of a Turk’s leg.
All along the paths leading to and from the trenches are the graves of the poor Aussies who have been shot. A man grows wary where he walks—many of the graves are so shallow. They could literally call this place “Death’s Gully.” I’ve only been here a few hours, but, by Jove, I’ve seen some dead men. And old dead ones make their presence felt right up and down this great gully.
May 22nd—A party of us volunteered for a sapping job last night. We left camp at eleven and followed the road, which is the gully bottom, meandering up to the firing-line. Across the gully are built sandbag barricades which shield a man just a little from the death-traps along the road. We would bend our heads and run to a big barricade, lean against the bags until we panted back our breath, then dive around the corner and rush for the next barricade. The bullets that flew in between each barricade did not lend wings to our feet for nothing could have made us run faster. A few hundred yards ahead of us and high up is the firing-line, perched precariously on a circle of frowning cliffs. The Turks have an especial trench up there which commands our “road.” This trench is filled with expert snipers, unerring shots who have killed God only knows how many of our men when coming along the road.
None of our party were hit. Eventually we reached the farthest bunch of sandbags, stacked higgledy-piggledy on a shadowy mound directly beneath the big cliffs by Quinn’s Post. It was pitch dark up by the cliffs. On the cliff and hill peaks the rifles fired like spitting needles of flame. The firing was not heavy, but numerous bullets came thrillingly close.
Our object was to cut a trench from a sap, through the little rise back towards the Gully, and thus save the necessity of walking along that particular danger-spot of the tragic road.
The night, away from the bases of the hills, was only semi-dark. The bullets coming so far were mostly high shots flying over the tops of our trenches which clung to the cliffy hills above.
We set to work, a shadowy line of us working in pairs and, by Jove, we did work. We made that dirt fly digging ourselves in. I had a queer impression of grave-diggers in the night who were digging their own graves.
The bullets began coming faster and faster and each man felt mighty glad when he had scooped a hole down three feet and thus had partial shelter. We could dig on our hands and knees now. Then one poor chap, Watson of H Squadron, was shot clean through the head.
We worked in a sweating hurry as the night’s inferno began, thankful that the tall hills sheltered us greatly from artillery-fire. But there came a rain of vicious bullets. One smacked a clod of earth down my neck and the old spine shivered to the grisly dirt. Heaven only knew what germs were in that soil from the battlefields of ages. We belted into the digging again. A bullet sighed clean through Nix’s hat. It rained bullets for a while and we crouched in our holes like anxious mice, wishing they were deeper. To an awful roar and a flame that crimsoned the sky we gazed awe-struck above our burrows. We breathed intense relief when we realized it was only the Japanese bombs, and not the whole world blowing up. We had brought those bombs along in the Lutzow—a present, I believe, from the Japanese government. Our fellows were now passing the gift on to the Turks and I did not envy the poor devils the receiving. At the same time, the knowledge that we Australians can fight courageously in these bloody battles, using and struggling against the most terrible modern weapons, filled me with a deep feeling of satisfaction.
Straight up from the cliff’s black edge there rocketed skywards two flaring bombs. They descended directly into the Turkish trenches. For breathless seconds the rifle-fire ceased, then came a tearing roar that shook the very ground. In streaks of blackened flame there spewed up a smoke-cloud blacker than the night. Some Turks were panic-stricken. In inky silhouette we glimpsed them, like toy men, away up on the cliffs as they sprang from their trenches to run. But the air vibrated to the machine-gun and rifle-fire that was turned on them. And thus the game went on all through the night. After our working shift, we lost no time hurrying down that “zip—zipping” road to “camp.”
...Last night we were sapping again, right up at Quinn’s Post. None of my particular crowd were shot, but we are so tired and sleepy! The air was foetid with the smell of dead men.
We are frightfully tired, but have to shift camp once more.
...The infantry are quite cut up—not over their terrible losses, but because of one man, Simpson Kirkpatrick I think his name is. He was known everywhere as “Murph. and his Donk.” At the Landing he commandeered a donkey and ever since has been coming and going from the distant firing-line to the beach with wounded men. He worked day and night, plodding along unscathed under fire till all thought he must be protected by supernatural means. His colonel long ago told him to carry on all on his own; to do whatever he liked and go wherever he liked. He has been a little army of mercy all on his own. Yesterday morning, I think it was, he went up the valley and stopped by the Water Guard where he generally had breakfast. It wasn’t ready so he went on, calling, “Never mind, give me a good dinner when I come back.”
He never came back. Coming along the valley holding two wounded men to the donkey he was shot through the heart. Both wounded men were wounded again.
3
The warships have been circling the bay with the torpedo-boat destroyers racing around them. A Turkish submarine has sneaked in, and to see the way that insignificant little wasp is stirring up these big grey ships would be amusing—if one did not realize the significance.
Our new camp is on a rugged hill near the sea. It is hard for a man to understand the various positions and zones of fighting, but it appears to me that the little bay is the hub of everything. Practically from the landing place Shrapnel Gully meanders up between the hills to its cliffy head at Quinn’s Post, about a