Aubrey Herbert

“ It was pleasant once again to be lord of the horizon, to have space through which to roam, and lovely hills and valleys to ride across in the careless, scented air of the Mediterranean summer, with the sea shining a peacock-blue through the pines. It is this space and liberty that men cramped in a siege desire, more than the freedom from the shelling of the enemy’s guns. There was much, too, that was opéra bouffe in the Islands, that made a not unpleasant contrast to the general life at Anzac. ”

“ This morning a shell burst overhead, when I heard maniac peals of laughter and found the cook flying up, hit in the boot and his kitchen upset; he was laughing like a madman. It’s a nuisance one has to sit in the shade in our dining place and not in the sun. They have got our exact range, and are pounding in one shell after another. A shell has just burst over our heads, and hit a lighter and set her on fire.
The mules, most admirable animals, had now begun to give a good deal of trouble, alive and dead. There were hundreds of them on the beach and in the gullies. ”

“ We went towards Monash, and met the Hampshires, very tired and wayworn. Bullets sang very viciously, and burst into flame on the rocks. There was a thunder of rifle fire and echoes in the gullies, men dropping now and then. Lower down the gully I found the Hampshires running like mad upwards to the firing line; beyond this a mixed crowd of men without an officer.... My guide, wild as a hawk, took us up a ridge. I fell over a dead man in the darkness and hurt my ankle. ”

“ We have been expecting howitzers all the time, and speculating as to whether there would be any panic if they really get on to us. The Turks have got their indirect, or rather enfilading, fire on us, and hit our mules. One just hit a few yards away.... Imbros and Samothrace are clear and delicate between the blue sea and the hot sky. The riband of beach is crowded with transport, and Jews, Greeks, Armenians, New Zealanders, Australians, scallywag officers, and officers that still manage to keep a shadow of dandyism between their disreputable selves and immaculate past. ”

“ We met some of the Black Watch—clean, smart men. There was a great bridge of boats, without rails, swaying and tossing 210 in the hurricane and covered with driven foam from the raging yellow water. Across this there lurched Madrassis, Sudanese, terrified cavalry horses, mules that seemed to think that there was only water on one side, and that they would be on dry land if they jumped off on the other. We are out of range, but shelling is going on and one can fix points in the landscape by bursts. The eternal flatness is depressing. This morning I saw Leachman, the political officer. ”

“ The Turks are now expected to attack us. We suppose people realize what is happening here in London, though it isn’t easy to see how troops and reinforcements can be sent us in time—that is, before the Turks have turned all this into a fortification. A good many men hit on the beach to-day. The mules cry like lost souls.
Tuesday, May 4th. The sea like a looking-glass, not a cloud in the sky, and Samothrace looking very clear and close. The moon is like a faint shadow of light in the clear sky over the smoke of the guns. Heavy fighting between us and Helles. A landing is being attempted. ”

“ There was a remarkable contrast between our war against the Germans and the Turks. In France the British soldier started fighting good-naturedly, and it took considerable time to work him up to a pitch of hatred; at Anzac the troops from the Dominions began their campaign with feelings of contempt and hatred, which gradually turned to respect for the Moslems. At the beginning the great majority of our men had naturally no knowledge of the enemy they were fighting. Once, looking down from a gun emplacement, I saw a number of Turks walking about, and asked why they had not been shot at. ”

“ At night, when the great moon of the Dardanelles soared and all was quiet except the occasional whine of a bullet overhead, the voices of the tired men continually 164 argued the merits of the Expedition, and there was always one end to these discussions: “Well, it may all be a —— mistake, but in a war of this size you will have mistakes of this size, and it doesn’t matter a —— to us whether we are for it here or in France, for we came out to do one job, and it’s nothing to us whether we finish in one place or another.” The Turks were not the only fatalists in those days. ”

“ The Australians have been having high old times in Cairo. We have to pay for their extraordinarily fine fighting qualities, but it’s a pity that they can’t be more quiet.... They admire General Birdwood, who’s got a difficult job. We owed a lot to their initiative at Anzac, when all their officers were killed. Salutes, after all, matter less than fighting. In peace they resent General Godley’s discipline, and that’s natural, but it’s inevitable, and they know it, when it comes to fighting. ”

“ I think we ought to do our best to prevent the Arabs being the subjects and victims of High Explosive Powers. They themselves don’t realize what it means, and simply look forward to the boredom of having to beat their swords into ploughshares and take up the dullness of civilization. The second result is that we shall have vast, conterminous frontiers with France and Russia, and that we shall be compelled to become a huge military power and adopt the Prussianism that we are fighting. ”

“ The cliff is becoming like a rookery, with ill-made nests. George Lloyd and Ian Smith have a charming view, only no room to lie down in. Everybody’s dugout is falling on his neighbour’s head. I went round the corner of the cliff to find a clean place to wash in the sea, but was sniped, and had to come back quick. The Gallipoli Division of Turks, 18,000 strong, is supposed to be approaching, while we listened to a great artillery duel not far off. An Armenian who was captured yesterday reported the Gallipoli Division advancing on us. ”

“ To-day is a wild day, Arabia crouching, yellow like a lion, in a sand-storm, and spray and sand flying in layers on the ship. All the land is lurid and the sea foaming and the sky black. If only there had been some sharks at sea and lions on shore, it would have been a perfect picture. ”

“ For the last two days I have been standing by to go to Kut, constantly dressing up for it and then undressing for the heat. A wave of great heat has come and the air is black with flies. Practically no firing, though they tried to shell us yesterday and an aeroplane dropped bombs near here. We have got very little to bargain with, as far as the Turks are concerned, practically only the exchange of prisoners. The operations of this force are not to be reckoned with as a bargaining asset. We are not to retire to save Townshend. Yesterday Townshend saw Khalil at ten a.m., whom he liked. ”

“ This morning we had a service in the valley, which is extraordinarily beautiful. The flies are 177 awful, horrible, lethargic; they stick to one like gum. The men in the trenches are wearing the head-dresses that Egypt has sent. I went with the General in the afternoon to Anzac. We walked back as shelling began. We had one whizz round us, and a man fell beside me on the beach. I heard a tremendous smack, and thought he was dead, and began to drag him in to cover, but he was all right, though a bullet had thumped him.
The flies and their habits deserve to live in a diary of their own. ”

“ All firing except from Helles has ceased. Things look better. The most the men can do is to hang on. General Godley has been very fine. The men know it.
4.30 p.m. Turks suddenly reported to have mounted huge howitzer on our left flank, two or three miles away. We rushed all the ammunition off the beach, men working like ants, complete silence and furious work. We were absolutely enfiladed, and they could have pounded us, mules and machinery, to pulp, or driven us into the gully and up the hill, cutting us off from our water and at the same time attacking us with shrapnel. ”

“ Every year rings new changes on the old order of Nature, and the observant eye can always find fresh features on the face of the Seasons. Sir Herbert Maxwell goes out to meet Nature on the moor and loch, in garden and forest, and writes of what he sees and feels. ”

“ I went ashore this morning and saw Leachman, then Colonel Beach. The flies are awful; one black web of them this morning; in one’s hair and eyes and mouth, in one’s bath and shaving-water, in one’s tea and in one’s towel. It’s a great nuisance being without Edward and having to do everything oneself, besides one’s work. It destroys all joy in war.
Tuesday, April 25, 1916. H.M.S. “Greenfly.” A year ago to-day we landed at Anzac. To-day is the day of the fall of Kut, though the surrender may not be made for some time. Last night the Julnar left. I saw old Cowley, an old friend. ”

“ I woke to hear the howitzers that everybody had been talking of here droning over us, and watched them lifting great columns of water where they hit the sea. Then there came the sigh and the snarl of shrapnel, but that to the other is like the rustle of a lady’s fan to the rumble of a brewer’s dray. This hymn of hate went on for an unusually long time this morning from the big stuff. A lot of men were hit all round, and it has been difficult to wash in the sea. All the loading, unloading, etc., is done at night. The picket-boats are fairly well protected. ”

“ I am for a hillside. The plain is a marsh and the valley a water-course. We ought to have fuel, caves for drying clothes, cooking, etc., and mostly this hill is made of dust and sand. A great mail came in last night, but the machine-guns got on to the men as they passed by the beach in the moonlight, killed some and wounded five men. So there are the mails lying now, with the machine-guns playing round them....
I advised Lawless yesterday at Anzac to move out from the beach, lest the sea should rise and take him like a winkle from his shell. ”

“ The wounded began to cry dreadfully in the darkness. I found myself beside Robin, who was very badly wounded in the leg. The Germans gave me water when I asked for it, but every time I drank it made me sick. At, I suppose, 9.30 or 10 p.m. they took us off into an ambulance and carried us to a house that had been turned into a hospital. I was left outside, talking to a Dane who was very anti-German, though he was serving with them as a Red Cross man. He cursed them loudly in German. He said it was monstrous that I hadn’t been attended to, that the Germans had had a defeat and would be beaten. ”

“ I have never seen a more friendly lot than these men here. They have always got something cheerful to say when you meet them. The weather has changed and it’s very fine, with a 215 beautiful wind and clear skies, but there are no scents, like in Gallipoli, of thyme and myrtle. It’s a limitless bare plain, green and sometimes brown mud, covered by an amazing mixture of men and creatures: horses and mules and buffaloes, Highlanders, Soudanese and Devons, Arabs and Babus. Camp fires spring up, somehow, at night by magic. We generally have a bombardment most days, but no shells round us. ”

“ They have been hopelessly outnumbered by the Turks. They have been starved of everything, from food to letters, not to speak of high explosives. They have been through the most ghastly heat and the most cruel cold, and they are still cheerful. ”

“ The Turks were distressed, and Skeen strained a point to let them send water to the first wounded man, who must have been a sniper crawling home. I walked over to the second, who lay with a high circle of dead that made a mound round him, and gave him a drink from my water-bottle, but Skeen called me to come on and I had to leave the bottle. Later a Turk gave it back to me. The Turkish Captain with me said: “At this spectacle even the most gentle must feel savage, and the most savage must weep.” The dead fill acres of ground, mostly killed in the one big attack, but some recently. ”

“ At Helles there was a savage attack going on. There was very bad sniping. In some places the trenches are only knee-high; in other places there are no trenches and the Turks are anything from four to eight hundred yards off. Yesterday seventeen men were hit at one place, they said, by one sniper. At one place on the way, we ran like deer, dodging. The General, when he had had a number of bullets at him, also ran. Sniping is better fun than shrapnel; it’s more human. You pit your wits against the enemy in a rather friendly sort of way. A lot of vultures collecting. ”

“ KUT, 1916 After some months of convalescence, I was passed fit for Active Service. Admiral Wemyss, Commander-in-Chief of the East Indian Fleet, had done me the honour to ask me to serve under him, when I was well again, as his liaison and Intelligence officer. I accepted very gladly, for I knew how devoted to him were all those who served Admiral Wemyss. The unappreciative War Office showed no reluctance in dispensing with my services, but my orders got lost, and it was only late in February when I left. ”

“ The Ashakas in the past had been strong Nationalists. When the war between the Turks and ourselves broke out, in spite of the fact that it seemed possible, and indeed likely, that Egypt might again become a Turkish province, their politics changed, and they hastily became Anglophile, but their past record haunted them. They feared the British Government almost as much as the Turks, and yearned to prove themselves loyal. ”

“ The trenches in Quinn’s Post were narrow and low, full of exhausted men sleeping. I crawled over them and through tiny holes. There was the smell of death everywhere. I spoke in three places.
In conversations with the Turks across the trenches I generally said the same thing: that we took prisoners and treated them well; that the essential quarrel was between us and the Germans and not between England and the Turks; that the Turks had been our friends in the Crimea; and I ended by quoting the Turkish proverb “Eski dost dushman olmaz” (An old friend cannot be an enemy) . ”