Читать книгу The Desert Column - Ion Idriess - Страница 10

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 mile from the beach. Our fighting-line seems a crescent with the Post the farthermost middle, from whence both flanks bend back to the coast. We are within the crescent and the Turks, with all the country behind them, are pressing us to drive us into the sea.

The line of the crescent might be five miles. We are in continual anticipation of the Turks’ breaking through for they hold the commanding positions in overwhelming numbers. I can see hellish fighting if they do smash through our trenches. They will find battalions and regiments scattered amongst these hills, and if all of us have to fight in our own little groups, the slaughter amongst the Turks will be more terrible than the punishment we will have to take. This “anticipation” of berserk things liable to happen at any moment is an unexpected phase of warfare for me. But then, I am just a learner.

We went for a swim this evening. As the Turks sent an occasional shrapnel screaming across the wee beach, our bathing was in running dips. The beach is strewn with discarded equipment, broken rifles, numerous mess-tins, and water-bottles, all with shrapnel holes through them, lengths of barbed wire, jagged stakes, torn haversacks, and now and again a trampled-on felt hat with the little hole and black blood patch. These are the relics of the landing of the first battalions and each tragic lot of flotsam tells its own story. I picked up a sand-dirtied photo of a woman and kiddy, with a bullet hole through it. The graves of the men line the beach, their shrapnel-torn boats lie overturned at the water’s edge. It seems pitiful waste, men and everything smashed—and hearts in Australia too.

The Turks have been given a seven hours’ armistice to bury their dead. They are rotting in thousands in front of our trenches. The air is dreadful. It is raining.

By Caesar! we have just had ten shrapnel-shells dropped right into camp. We were all sitting by our dugouts talking and laughing. Immediately the first shell burst there was not a man to be seen. The hill reminded me of a huge rabbit burrow when a man with a gun comes along. As each shell burst, a rousing roar of laughter went up. Not a man was hurt. It seems a real miracle: shrapnel is so deadly. By Jove, here they come again. Good night. We can hear the shrapnel-bullets pelting the ground around our dugouts.

May 25th—We have just witnessed the torpedoing of the Triumph. While having dinner we saw a lively commotion among the craft in the bay. Then small boats raced out from the shore. We dropped our mess-tins and rushed to high ground and there, close inshore, with a destroyer standing by and firing like blazes, was the battleship already lying on her side. Busy boats were taking the Jack Tars off while from all over the bay arose the dense smoke of big ships running for their lives. Slowly the Triumph moved over—we could see the sailors leaping down—she moved over quite stricken. Green water seemed to climb across her deck—we could see down her funnels—then she turned completely over and floated bottom upwards.

Water-spouts of steam belched up from beside her. Then the Turks tore the shrapnel into us and we ran for our burrows. The Turks had wonderful targets as we massed on the hills and gazed down, but they did not fire until she sank. I don’t know whether they were “sporty” or whether they were too excited gazing at their own triumph.

The battleship has completely sunk.

The Turkish batteries are throwing us our evening bye-bye of shrapnel. We hear that over a hundred men went down with the Triumph. One shrapnel-shell has just got five men of the 2nd Light Horse. The stretcher-bearers are busy day and night. It is sad: the lads are such fine chaps it is hard to see them die.

...It is raining.

May 26th—Rifle-fire has been very quiet last night and to-day, but the Turks have got a lot of our men with shrapnel. The cruisers have all cleared out. We miss their protecting shells. The Turks are seizing the opportunity to pump more shells into us and the reply from our few guns is feeble by comparison. Our boats sank a submarine last night. Three torpedoes were fired at the Vengeance, but luckily all missed. We hear that the submarines are German and Austrian. Torpedo-boat destroyers are landing more troops on the beach. The Turks’ shrapnel is exploding right over the crowded vessels. The destroyers have raced farther out.

We are getting better tucker now and have had a free issue of tobacco, which is appreciated more than words can say.

...One of the Turkish shells has just struck a destroyer loaded with troops. Luckily it only killed two and wounded ten. The troops are landing—jumping from the boats in a wading plunge to the beach. The shrapnel is exploding above them—their backs are bent as they run across the beach seeking shelter.

The snipers shot seventeen of our men to-day in one spot alone in the gully.

May 27th—The Majestic was torpedoed last night. It is stupefying: those massive ships stricken so suddenly. It is woe to us, for the help of their great guns feels almost like human support.

...We are being shelled with shrapnel again; the damn things are screaming overhead and bursting with frightful crashes. Hardly a man in the 5th that has not experienced some miraculous escapes. Steaming hot fragments of shell have plunged into our dugouts by day and by night, bullets have pierced men’s hats and equipment, some have nicked the puttees of men as they slept. And yet we have only had a few men hit.

...We are expecting a momentous move soon.

...Our big howitzer is replying to the enemy’s fire. She invariably does when the firing gets too hot for us. Of course, we are only one little group. There are other battalions and regiments for miles. They all have troubles of their own. So our howitzer looks after us and it is warmly cheering to hear that big shell tearing through the air overhead on its vengeful errand, and then the distant bang!—fair on the enemy’s trenches, we hope, or better still, on some hidden gun.

...We were bathing just now when a shell came and wounded McDonald and Liddell, both of my own troop. Bathing is off—until to-morrow.

May 28th—Snipers shot fifteen Aussies this morning and shrapnel got four of our regimental A.M.C. men. It is heartbreaking to see so many men killed and maimed when they are not in the actual firing-line. No matter on what peaceful errand we go, death goes too. We never know whether we will wake up alive.

...The enemy has kept surprisingly quiet these last few days and nights ... I was down on the beach just now on fatigue duty. A man had his leg blown off. The doctors were working at it—it looked like a big red lump of beef. War is a sickening thing.

They are bombarding us with shrapnel. Their aim is getting startlingly close. They must have got better observation-posts during the armistice, or shifted their guns nearer. Did I mention they buried three thousand Jacko dead and many of our own during the armistice?

...Last report is that the Turks’ most vicious eighteen pounder is silenced. We sincerely hope so.

...To-night is the first night that we have had no shrapnel. We are sitting by our dugouts on the hillside, little groups singing, others smoking, others lousing themselves. The colonel’s gramophone is playing the “Marsellaise,” and the rest of us are silently watching a beautiful, peaceful scene. The sun is sinking, a golden ball, behind the island of Imbros. Over a sea of deepest blue destroyers are quietly gliding: the hospital-ships are anchored closer inshore, near numbers of smaller craft which seldom dare to anchor; behind us the hills are darkening: the Aegean is peaceful and one star is in the sky. As I write, one of our own guns has broken the peace; a bomb has burst away up in the trenches and now comes the vicious crackle of rifle-fire. Soon the first fury of the night will storm upon us.

May 29th—It is a cold, grey dawn. Death is bursting all around us now, but plenty of the boys are crawling out and lighting their little fires. A long, tanned bushman is kneeling down, blowing carefully into flame a few dry sticks; a smoke-cloud from an exploded shrapnel-shell is drifting into the air above him. A counter-jumper on the gully opposite is bemoaning the swine who pinched his scanty supply of wood, and invites the unknown lousy thief to come out and fight. And one fair-haired chap is combing his nice wavy hair with a dirty old broken comb.

...They are calling out for stretcher-bearers now. I don’t know how many are hurt. The Indian stretcher bearers are busy too. ... What miraculous escapes! A shell has just burst in front of me; ten feet below two infantry chaps are cooking their breakfast. They were splattered with smoke and earth but refuse to leave their cooking. As I write, another shell has burst beneath them, but still the obstinate goats won’t budge. Another has come and this time they grabbed their pots and ran. We all laughed. By Caesar! it is about time they did run. A fourth shell has come and where their fireplace was is now a cloud of smoke, ashes, earth, and fragments of shell. Shells are bursting amongst us all over the hill and up and down the tiny gully. A rumour is flying around that the Turks broke into our trenches last night. They never got out again alive, I’ll bet. Johnny is sending his big stuff over this morning—high explosive mixed with the shrapnel-shells. A shrapnel bursts in the air and sprays the ground with hundreds and thousands of bullets, according to the size of the shell. One gun alone, firing quickly, can make a regiment feel as if it were under the rifle-fire of five hundred men. But when batteries of guns get going—! High explosive has its own terror. The shell itself plonks fair into the ground then explodes with a fearful crash broadcasting jagged fragments of shell.

...Finished breakfast under their cursed shrapnel-fire. They are “searching” for the Indian battery now, but their creeping shells are exploding above us—unseen marksmen sending unseen death into unseen men. These artillery duels mean sheer hell for us chaps in between. Not half a stone’s throw away from us, just across the gully are the dugouts of an infantry battalion. Owing to the direction that the shells are coming these poor chaps are getting it far worse than we are, for the shrapnel bullets are pelting right into the mouths of their dugouts. One shell has exploded fair in a dugout and blown the four men up into the air.

Another two are now hit. If it were not for our dugouts we could not live. They are perfect shelters against shrapnel only, except when a shell explodes fair in or above them, or just at the angle where the bullets will strike down into the dugout. The dugout is no protection though against a direct hit by a high explosive. It is getting fearfully hot now, shells are exploding every few seconds; the row is an inferno made hellish by the hot smell of fumes. The cry is becoming continuous, “Stretcher-bearers!” “Stretcher-bearers!” “Doctor!” as more and more of our poor chaps get hit. Good luck to all the medical men! We have the shelter of our dugouts, but they run out into this hail of shrapnel directly the cry goes up. The pity of it is that we cannot fire a shot in return.

Bits of earth come crumbling down from my dugout walls as I write, lying on my back. It is hard work writing that way, especially with the blasted ground rocking underneath. One poor chap opposite has just had hard luck. His mate was wounded in the leg. He knelt up, undoing his mate’s puttees. A fragment of shell whizzed into the dugout and took the top of his head clean off.

...This horrible fire is easing off. I stopped writing, just lay flat out and shivered as those great shells sizzled, seemingly just over my nose. We have had five heart-choking hours of it. It seems longer.