1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [213]
General Sir Ian Hamilton.
Midnight. When I lay down in my little tent two hours ago, the canvas seemed to make a sort of sounding board. No sooner did I try to sleep than I heard the musketry rolling up and dying away, then rolling up again in volume until I could stick it no longer and simply had to get up and pick a path through the brush and over sandhills, across to the sea on the east coast of our island. There I could hear nothing. Was the firing then an hallucination – a sort of sequel to the battle in my brain? Not so. Far away I could see faint coruscations of sparks, star shells, coloured fireballs from pistols, searchlights playing up and down the coast.
Our fellows were being beset to hold on to what they had won there where the horizon stood out with spectral luminosity. What a contrast! The direct fear, joy and excitement of the fighting men out there in the search-lights and the dull anguish of waiting here in the darkness, imagining horrors, praying the Almighty our men may be vouchsafed valour to stick it through the night, wondering, waiting, until the wire brings its colourless message!
Lt. R. F. E. Laidlaw.
The Turks attacked us four or five times that night but only once did a few of them get into the trench. None of these got out – our men were as good with the bayonet as they were with the rifle!
We had plenty of ammunition, brought up earlier, and a few jam tin bombs, but most of the men had drunk their water during the strenuous day and were now very thirsty – and thirst is not a pleasant thing, especially when you are fighting in a sandy and hot country. All along the trench I could hear cries of ‘Water, water’ and water there was none. My own water bottle was empty. There was none even for the wounded men and somehow I had failed to get any message through to the destroyers when their boat came ashore to pick up the wounded. They were only able to do this two or three times during the night and one never knew when or where they would come. No regular arrangements had been made to deal with the wounded as far as I knew. I saw later when our General’s diary was published that he knew that we ‘were being hard beset to hold on to what we had won’. A little more imagination might have suggested that the prayers for ‘valour’ might have included a few for the transport of wounded and for a little water. Better still, the necessary arrangements might have been made beforehand!
With every attack the toll of dead and wounded mounted and fewer and fewer men were left to beat them off. All night long they stood at the alert, peering across the parapets of the captured trenches into the shadows where the vicious little fires darted and flickered in the scrub, coughing in the acrid smoke, watching, listening, waiting for the enemy to make a move. Every man was needed and even if any could have been spared it would have been out of the question to carry away the wounded over treacherous country in the dark. They could only bind up their wounds and lay them down in the trench, to wait patiently, parched, suffering, and sometimes dying before the first light of morning.
Willie Begbie was one of the lucky ones. He had got out just before dark, but it had taken him hours to limp back and, lying on Gully Beach, he marvelled that he had made it.
Pte. W. Begbie.
I must have lost my way because when I first saw the wagons I was high on the side of a ravine and the wagons were down below. The ravine was dry and full of stones. I sat on the edge and putting my weight on my left leg, I tried to slide down the side. It was very steep. When I started to slide I dug the heel of my left boot into the sand but I hit some stones and finished up rolling down. Some men who were loading the wagons ran to help me. After they found that my bandage was still in position I was laid on a stretcher and carried to a wagon,