I look anxiously at the illumined dial of my wrist-watch.
“How much farther, guide?”
“About a mile, sir.”
We climb, and at the top of a hill I have to halt the men and let them lie down. Several are almost done. The guide grows impatient.
“It’s all downhill now, sir.”
“Come on, fall in.”
The men straggle along behind me. I can see the sea, and vague shapes below. There is a distant detonation, and a bugle blows.
“What’s that?”
“Asiatic Annie, sir. When she pops off, the Frenchies blow a bugle. It gives one time to get under cover.”
The great shell arrives with a crash in the gloom below. Please God, we shall be lucky. Something looms up on our left, the half-ruined walls of Seddul Bahr castle. Someone in authority is waiting there.
“Who are you?”
“R.A.M.C. party for embarkation.”
“Get your men down under the walls for ten minutes.”
We lie down and again that ghostly bugle blows, and we listen to the coming shell and wonder where it will burst. It lands somewhere amid that collection of huts and food dumps and forage stores. The voice of authority says, “Now then, get along, straight down to the pier and the River Clyde.” We hurry down the hill, and as we near the shore some other voice in authority hails us. “Here, you, if the bugle blows when you reach the jetty, run like hell for the Clyde.”
The bugle does blow just as we reach the causeway. I start to run, shouting to the men to follow. They seem quite incapable of a last sprint. We stampede for the black bulk of the old Clyde and reach it just as the shell bursts somewhere on the beach. We enter the Clyde through one of those tragic portholes cut in her side through which the Dublins and the Munsters rushed to their death on that perfect day in April.
The iron shell of the ship is crowded with men, and I wonder what the effect would be were a shell from Asia to burst inside it.
A trawler places herself beside the Clyde. We scramble down into her and sit packed on the deck like sacks of potatoes. We wait. Asiatic Annie continues to bombard the beach. At last we are moving. The black bulk of the Clyde slips away from us. The sea is like glass, and I can watch the dim outline of Helles fading into the night.
The trawler steams out and brings up beside an anchored ship. A voice orders us to climb up over her rails, and to be brisk about it. We need no such encouragement. The men are herded below, and I find myself in the saloon packed with officers who are hilarious and noisy. There are no regrets here. We drink, we are given an excellent dinner, but I find that there is nowhere for me to sleep. Every corner appears to have been bespoken.
I lie down on the floor of the saloon with my pack under my head. I am conscious of a feeling of infinite relief, and I sleep like the dead.
* * *
Mudros again. The morning is cold, grey and windless, and the great harbour so much more empty than as I remember it in September. Our one-time pleasure steamer berths herself at a wooden pier, and we are ordered to parade according to our units. A nice old gentleman comes on board, asks me a few questions, and tells me that our goal is Sarpi Camp. He points it out, a collection of shanties and tents in a waste of brown earth. We disembark and march off. The men are in excellent spirits, and I let them chatter and joke about Alex. and Cairo, and the redness of the paint they will employ if the chance is given them. Even the grim hills of this Greek island seem friendly. We stodge across the muddy flat to our camp, and the first person I sight is Tipson of the 2nd Ambulance looking as though he had breakfasted well and was finding life good.
“Hallo, I didn’t know you were off.”
“Came off the night before last, Stevie. Which proves how secret the show is.”
He points us out a row of tents where the men can quarter themselves, and takes me to a ramshackle of boxes and canvas and tarpaulin which is the mess. Apparently we are nobody’s children at the moment, and can work our own sweet will, but this freedom has its disadvantages, for there is no one to issue blankets or rations. Tippie has found a canteen; he is a great man at messing, but our present problem appears to be how we shall draw rations for the men.
There are two other officers of the 2nd with Tipson. We sit on boxes in that flimsy erection, in our greatcoats, and swap experiences. None of us regret our escape, and we are supremely cheerful, but the mess is damned cold. We have no flea-bags or blankets, and I wonder where we are going to sleep.
Tippie is facetious.
“Survey the world, Stevie. Hundreds of tents, desirable bijou residences. Take your choice.”
It appears that Tipson and the other officers are sharing a tent, and they have managed to scrounge three stretchers, but my desire is to be alone. I choose an isolated tent, and dump my pack and haversack in it, and go to see how the men are getting on. They have brought two days’ rations with them, thanks to Frost’s forethought, and have discovered a vacant cookhouse. Fuel appears to be non-existent, but Rogers is a sly optimist. “We’ll scrounge it from somewhere, sir.” I suppose they will. But I am feeling cold, and I start out for a walk towards one of the hills whose blackness is patched with gold-green lichen. The exercise warms me, but I have a feeling that it is going to freeze. The earth for one’s bed in an empty tent may be no pleasant prospect, but I am so full of rejoicing over this reprieve, that hardships are of no great significance.
I want to write to Mary, and warn her I am safe, but when I go back to the mess Tippie tells me that no letters will be forwarded for a fortnight. We are to be muzzled, and our people at home left in suspense.
“How do you know?”
“Because I did a tramp, my dear, to try and post a letter, and an official person snubbed me.”
“I think it’s a damned shame.”
“Well, I suppose they are afraid that nasty things will be said, and they want to be in first with the eye-wash.”
Tippie has discovered a better mess, an Indian marquee, with a yellow lining, and since no one is there to say us nay, we move into it. Just before tea we are surprised to see a body of men marching across the muddy soil towards us.
“By Jove, it’s the C.O. and the rest of the unit.”
Tipson and the others rush across to welcome their C.O. and the Field Ambulance. I suppose they must have embarked very early in the morning, or been on a ship all night. Their C.O., Colonel Kent, is a little, hard-bitten man with eyes that show the strain of the last months. He comes into the marquee, nods and smiles at me, and throws off his haversack and greatcoat.
“Tippie, we’ve got to celebrate. What can you do about it?”
“I’ll manage somehow, sir. We’ve got a bottle of whisky.”
So, that night we celebrate our farewell to Gallipoli and I am granted the unique spectacle of seeing the commanding officer of a unit swarming up a tent pole, and giving voice to his exultation.
“What price Cairo, boys?”
Tippie and another officer seize him by the legs, get him on their shoulders, and carry him round the marquee.
Some time before midnight I go in search of my own tent and spend ten minutes in exploring a series of empty tents before I find my own. I bend down and feel the ground; it seems hard and dry and I realize that it is frozen. I arrange my pack, take off my collar and tie, and lie down dressed in my greatcoat. The soil of this Greek island is damned inhospitable. I try to sleep, only to realize that I am getting colder and colder, and that the chill of the soil seems to be gripping my kidneys. This is impossible. I get up and open the flap of the tent and find the moon shining, and I wander out and look for anything to place between my body and that frozen soil. I am lucky. I come upon a marquee whose yellow lining has been left lying on the ground. I get hold of the thing and drag it towards and into my tent, and make a mattress of it, but I am still terribly cold. Again I get up, open out my improvised bed, lie down, and pull the folded ends over me. I feel warm for a while, and fall asleep, only to wake
up again two or three hours later, feeling that the small of my back is frozen. In all my life I have never felt so completely chilled; it is as though my very muscles were filled with spicules of ice.
X
Though I write in the present tense, these happenings are immediately behind me, for I have been and am in hospital, an Australian hospital. The night in that freezing tent put me down with pneumonia, but now as I lie here and scribble, all that breathless and semi-delirious business is both blurred and vivid. I am at peace in this marquee, with oil stoves burning, and a hot bottle to my feet, and with six other men at peace near me. I feel deliciously relaxed in this actual bed, knowing that the crisis is past, and that I am getting well.
These Australians are great people. Outside, the weather has been doing its damndest, with a howling wind blowing rain against the canvas and threatening to tumble us into the sea, but we lie padded and protected against the elements by a pragmatical cheerfulness and efficiency that transcend the tempestuous moods of nature.
I have seen a woman for the first time for three months or more, the Australian sister in charge of this canvas ward. She is very fair and tall, the colour of a cornstalk with cornflower eyes, and she treats us all with an impersonal and calm candour that makes us feel like children. I like to lie and watch her moving about the tent, for to me she is more than woman, no mere symbol of sex, but a young priestess whose hands are helping to open the gates of freedom.
It is January. At the end of March I shall have completed my year’s contract. In less than three more months I shall be a free man, and no longer at the mercy of any cad who happens to wear a crown and a star. I lie and gloat over the prospect of going home. April in England, the Sussex country, gorse in flower, primroses, work, woman.
Frost has been to see me. He was one of the last men to leave Helles, scrambling off when the weather was breaking, but he does not tell me this. I hear it later from Gregson. Luckily there were no wounded, or Frost and his remnant would have had to stay behind to become prisoners with the Turks. The evacuation of Helles was as amazingly successful as that of Anzac and Suvla.
Frost looked tired and drawn.
“Afraid we shall have to leave you behind, Brent. They are shipping us off to Egypt.”
“Won’t you get leave, sir, now?”
“God knows!”
I can remember the way he looked at me, almost as though he hated me.
“You are one of these damned contract men. I suppose you will go home.”
“Perhaps.”
“If they let you home.”
I suppose I must have looked scared, for he smiled at me.
“O, yes, I expect they will let you home. We Territorials have to stick it, but that’s not your fault. Never give away anything in the army; the chance is too rare.”
But I wanted to thank Frost for many things, not only for the kindness he had shown me, but for the stark example of his hard-headed courage. With a few Frosts in high places the tragedy of Gallipoli might not have been. But the Australian sister came in and with pragmatical serenity gave Frost his marching orders.
“You mustn’t stay too long.”
Frost sniffed, gave her an amused look, and got up. He laid his hand on my shoulder.
“Well, good luck, Brent.”
“Thank you for everything, sir.”
“What the devil have you to thank me for?”
“More than you know, sir.”
“Oh, rot.”
They have put me on a hospital ship and I am on my way to Alexandria. The Mediterranean is in a winter mood, but I feel that I am on a pleasure cruise, for I can lie in my bunk and read and dream. As we near Africa the sea calms itself and the sun appears. Through my porthole I see a very blue sea and a lighthouse, and white buildings in the distance. Alexandria! So, Cæsar came here, and must have seen the great pharos shining at the mysterious gateway of the ancient land.
* * *
Being officially sick is a silly business. My chest has not quite cleared up, a little dry pleurisy remains. They are keeping me in hospital in Alexandria, and I have time to reflect upon the comparative futility of my year’s service in the army. At Southcliffe I did work that could have been performed more efficiently by a capable clerk. Beyond dressing a few wounded and inspecting a great number of sick men and automatically passing them on, I have contributed to the allied cause no activities of serious value. My one dramatic adventure ended in failure and disgrace. I have been liberally paid and carried free of cost upon a species of circular tour, and I am ending my year as a sick parasite. This feeling of futility and frustration oppresses me, and leads me to wonder whether war is not essentially futile, ordered yet chaotic destruction in which the individual becomes less significant than an ant working upon the communal nest. Of course, one can make the supreme contribution of death, but that again is negation. My ideal is to help bring life into the world and to try to keep it there instead of assisting in its dissipation.
I long more and more to be out of the clutches of this damned machine. No one can protest while one is part of the machine, or it crushes one while pealing patriotic pæans like an organ. What must one do? Suffer the supreme stupidity of it all, and try to console oneself with the thought that this unhappy generation is involved in one of those periodic and inevitable world tragedies.
I discuss this problem with my neighbour, an A.S.C. captain. He tells me of an incident on one of the beaches. He was watching a party of men who had been crimed, unloading stores, a compulsory fatigue. He heard one bitter little, middle-aged private exclaim in a moment of disillusionment, “British army, there ain’t no British army; we’re just a ruddy crowd of slaves.”
Slaves! Yes, we men are slaves, to superstition, prejudice, passion, the conventions. War is a convention which man must overthrow.
* * *
This hospital bores me. February, and I am allowed up. The sun shines, and from the windows I can see mimosa in flower, and a purple creeper whose name I do not know, painting patches of brilliant colour on the white walls of a building opposite. Everyone is bright and efficient and kind, and as an officer who has seen the real thing in war I am treated with respect by other doctors who have known no fear. They do not understand that I regard myself as a futile creature and that I sometimes envy those positive persons who do not develop beyond the age of eighteen, and to whom this war business is like the games tradition at a public school.
“Playing the game!” O yes, but need the game be so crude and silly?
* * *
I am out at last, or rather transferred to a sort of annexe for convalescent officers. I am allowed out in Alexandria. It disappoints me, or is it my secret disappointment with myself that colours my moods? Really, one’s egoism ends in futility. Can one be overdeveloped in the matter of sensitiveness? War is hell to the sensitive, so where is the sin, in war, or in one’s own revolted soul?
* * *
I manage to wangle three days’ leave to Cairo. The Gallipoli fiasco seems to have imbued our world with cheerful cynicism, and I feel that it would be a pity to have come all this way and endured so much discomfort without seeing Cairo, the Sphinx and the Pyramids! I put up at the Continental Hotel, and eat table d’hôte dinner. Cairo is supposed to contain all the wickedness of war; wine I can buy, and women I could buy, if I knew where to look for them, but my sentimental soul is sacred to my wife. Cairo is very full of Australians; they give one the impression of possessing the city. I have tea at Groppi’s, go to the club, and find Gregson there, reading The Times in a club chair. He has been removed from the Field Ambulance and been given a surgical post at one of the hospitals.
He tells me that the division was camped near the Pyramids, and has now moved to the Canal near Suez. He gives me an amusing description of the first night in camp, and how every officer rushed off to Cairo. Frost was left alone in the mess.
“All the pretty ladies in Egypt must have been working overtime, Brent.”
> “Frost did not go?”
“Stayed behind writing letters home.”
“But he let the others go.”
“Yes.”
I realize how necessary to the army in Egypt is the word “Imshi.” One is pestered by Cairene cadgers, and irrepressible urchins. I see one small boy hanging on to the arm of a drunken Australian, and squealing for pennies. The Australian drops him into the gutter, but the urchin, quite undiscouraged, gets up and follows the unsteady figure. Cairo is rather like a show at Olympia specially prepared for the army. Even the banks are trustful and obliging, cashing officers’ cheques without the blink of an eyelid. I visit the Citadel and the bazaar, but khaki is everywhere, and to me the colour of it has a tinge of yellow. As a soldier I am disillusioned with myself. I hire a taxi and drive to Mena, and the Pyramids. Even the desert is stippled with white tents and crowded with troops. It may have a splendour of tawny and blue, but this land has lost its mystery. There is nothing mysterious in ragged eucalyptus trees, and a few palms. Moreover, my taxi-driver has put the wind up me, he was a reckless devil who treated the long straight road like a racing track, and missed trees and camels by inches.
What a surly, disillusioned-looking brute the camel is!
The Pyramids are not the sky-cleaving masses of stone I expected them to be, and the Sphinx needs a new face.
I return to my taxi, and the orgy of speed and of recklessness is repeated. I presume that I shall have to pay for shattered nerves. I do pay.
* * *
The truth of it is that all my thoughts are in England, and that I am yearning with a very great yearning for that green land. There is so little of the nomad or the buccaneer in me. I crave for quiet places, and an ordered and self-controlled day, things that I can do because the I in me chooses to do them and knows that the doing of them is necessary. This war business is so much wanton yet impotent waste.
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