June 1st—I have just watched a poor devil of an infantryman being carried down on a stretcher. Half his face was shot away and he was trying to sing “Tipperary.” And yet, here I am lying in my dugout, in no pain, fretting like a great kid because I could not march off with the regiment. My blooming knee is now poisoned. The 7th Light Horse took over our dugouts during the early hours of the morning. I hobbled to the 7th doctor this morning and when I returned someone had pinched my poor supply of jam. The world seemed a dinkum hard place. I complained to the man in the next dugout that they might have left a sick man’s jam alone. He has shared his dinner with me. He has two onions; I have a tin of beef, He is going to fry them to-night and we are going halves. He is going to keep my water-bottle filled. If he gets shot I think I will nearly howl. I cannot boil tea—can’t even crawl now to find the wood—and steel biscuits with water and salt tinned beef is no cure for a poisoned leg. Things are very quiet. Only a few stray shells passed today ... The Turks are just beginning to shrapnel us again.
...We have just witnessed a shameful, horrible thing. Part of the infantry next to us consistently drill their men on a tiny plot of flat ground fronting their dugouts, even when the shells are falling only a few hundred yards, and less, away, and when they know that we are right under the glasses of the Turkish artillery observation posts. Such tragic idiocy, drilling soldiers on a battlefield that is night and day under fire! It is what we call a “Gawk Act.” A shell has burst right amongst the thickly packed lines and six of the poor fellows are hit, two down, two being carried, and two limping for their dugouts. Others are hit who can get away. Another shell has burst while they were carrying one poor wretch in. The little patch of “Parade Ground” was torn up by the bullets, just as a dusty road by a fury of hailstones. Another shell has burst above the ground but they are all away now. One poor fellow is crying out in agony. It was a case of sheer murder. The officers responsible should be shot like mad dogs.
...I have had such a splendid tea. Tinned beef mixed with onions and fried in bacon fat; biscuits and cheese; biscuits and jam, and hot tea. Even some mustard which my good Samaritan pinched from a transport. If only I had a match to light the pipe! My rugged friend is short of matches himself and I have not the heart to hint that I would like one.
...I wish my leg would get better. I can’t even hobble about now. It’s a bit miserable lying here of nights. No sleep, and all my mates away. The stars twinkle ever so high up.
June 2nd—Tragedy visited us last night. The roof of a large dugout fell in and smothered three men. They are holding the burial service now. It is something unusual. The infantry are standing about in quiet groups, listening. I think these three are the first of all the poor fellows buried here to the strains of “Nearer My God to Thee.”
...I felt it would have to come. I am down at the beach at the Ambulance Hospital and this afternoon have to go off to the hospital-ship. The ambulance men say thirteen of the infantry were struck by that shrapnel yesterday, four being killed. It was sheer murder on the part of the officers responsible!
...A great crowd of us are on the minesweeper now. One man, whose body and arm are a mass of bandages is affording much amusement to all by trying to eat his slice of bread and jam with only a third of his mouth visible; the hole is hardly big enough to blow away the flies.
...I feel strangely sick and feverish. My troop leader, Mr McLaughlin, is sick aboard too. We have been swapping tales of misery. It is amusing in a way; if only there was not so much pain about. ... The ambulance men on the boat are kind and gentle: one is making me a bed on the deck now. There is such a crowd of wounded everywhere.
...I am getting a bit of ease at last, thank heaven! There’s one thing strikingly noticeable about this shipload of misery—I suppose every man growls, but almost every one growls only to himself. My safety valve is in this diary. It keeps my mind surprisingly occupied. And besides, if I really live through this war. I want to read through the old diary in after years, and remember what war was really like—as I saw it, anyway.
...The officers on this boat cannot do enough for us. Sometimes I feel miserable watching them trying hard to help the poor maimed chaps, and they have got nothing to help them with. They wear partly khaki and partly naval togs. Why are wounded men dumped on a naval boat? I suppose the two big hospital-ships are full up.
5
LEMNOS ISLAND,
S. S. FRANCONIA
June 5th—My little woes overwhelmed me. Dropped the diary with my tail picked it up again to kill time.
The A.M.C. men coming on night-shift washed me. You could not possibly imagine how I felt towards those men. Five days lying in a dugout without a wash, and sick.
Had a wretched night and only smiled when the bundle of bandages beside me turned his pain-dimmed eyes next morning and whispered: “I hope I did not keep you awake last night.”
My own moaning had troubled my conscience, too.
Breakfast came in, a bowl of hot porridge, a slice of bread and jam and a cup of tea with milk in it. Such a welcome meal! though we could eat so little.
Then our vessel steamed up against a towering ship. Iron doors clanged open in her side and into that black cavern they carried the badly hurt men. We others followed somehow. Someone shouted: “Go downstairs and have breakfast.” So we found ourselves huddling down a nice wide stairway emerging into a regal room where there were rows and rows of long tables and cushioned chairs. And such a quaint medley of voices, mostly Scotch and English mess orderlies.
Porridge, bread and butter, jam and coffee were put before us. We tried to eat but were too sick. Hard lines! Presently a few drifted away, but most of us lay down to rest just where we were: right in the way but there seemed to be nowhere to go and many of the chaps were very ill. My own leg became unbearable, so I dragged myself back up the stairs. No one seemed to know where the doctors were. A procession of bandaged cripples were dragging themselves up another lot of stairs. I followed, and we shuffled and crawled into a huge room. There were two doctors and a few A.M.C. orderlies. The doctors’ faces were heavy from want of sleep, their eyes had a starey look. They worked quietly and continuously and I saw at once that if there is an etiquette in a surgery then it was right out of place here. Instruments were picked up one after another and quickly used; if a man had to feel pain then he had to feel it; there was no time for any niceties that might alleviate pain in minor operations. There were so many waiting. All the boys took it as silently as they possibly could. They were stretched out in grotesque lines, all converging towards the doctors. As a man was treated, he would fall aside somehow and his line would wriggle, crawl, shuffle, or hop one up, then lie quietly until it was time to crawl up for the next man’s turn.
One doctor was a big, kind-hearted Frenchman. I could see that saturated with the misery around him as he must have been, still he did not like hurting the men. At long last my turn came and I quickly and thankfully found out that the French doctor knew his business. But it made me sick mentally to find out how bad my knee really was. It must have been rotting right down the leg. I crawled downstairs again and lay in absolute misery on the cold cement floor until long after the last bugle-call had blown. One man told me there were three thousand beds in this ship but you had to get a long thin steward in a blue uniform to get you one. Another said a sergeant was in charge.
No one of us know anything about it, of course. It is just simply a huge ship, pitiably under-staffed with doctors, crowded over and over again with sick and wounded men. Away in the ship somewhere are wards where the doctors are working day and night with the cot-cases, not curing them because they have no time, but just trying to keep life in as many as possible until we get to a hospital. Up our end of the ship are the men who can look after themselves.
I called out to a Red Cross sergeant major; he told me to stop the long thin