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Tell England by Ernest Raymond

E >> Ernest Raymond >> Tell England




"Ah yes," said the Major's voice, soft again, to the steward, "call
me six-thirty."

"Yes, sir. Will you have shaving water then, sir?"

"Shaving water--_what_? Yes, surely." And the Major shouted through
the wall: "We shave, don't we, Ray?"

"Well, yes, sir," agreed I.

"Of course," continued the Major, reproachfully, to the steward.
"Bring shaving water. And there'll be the most deplorable row if
it's not hot."

"Will you have a cup of tea to get up with, sir?" asked the steward.

"Tea? What? No, I don't think so. No, surely not." Once more he
sought enlightenment through the wall. "We don't have tea, do we,
Ray?"

"Well, no, sir. That's as you please."

"No. No tea, steward. Of course not. What nonsense!"

"Very good, sir. Good night, sir."

"Good night, steward.... You see, Ray," shouted Major Hardy, "I am a
bit out of this church business. Must get into it again--_what_. And
the padre's a good fellow."

In such wise Major Hardy half apologised to two boys for being
present, and limped to the service.

Half a hundred others crowded the smoking room. This last Mass being
what Monty called his "prize effort," he insisted on having two
servers, and selected Doe and myself, whom he chose to regard as his
"prize products." On either side of the altar we took our places,
not now clad in white flannels, but uniformed and booted for going
ashore. Monty, as he approached the altar, gave one quick,
involuntary glance at his packed congregation, ready dressed for
war, and slightly sparkled and flushed with pleasure.

After the Creed had been said, Monty turned to deliver a little
farewell address. Very simply he told his hearers that, when in a
few hours' time the boats came to take them to the Peninsula
Beaches, they were to know that they were doing the right thing.
There was a tense stillness, as he said with suggestive slowness: "I
am only the lips of your Church. She has been with you on this ship,
and striven not to fail you. And now to God's mercy and protection
she commits you. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord give you
His peace this day and evermore."

If Monty desired to fill the room with an unworldly atmosphere, and
to raise the cloud "Shechinah" around his little altar, he knew by
the solemn hush, as he turned to continue the Mass, that he had
succeeded. And at the end of it all he added a farewell hymn, which
the congregation rose from their knees to sing. Sung to the tune of
"Home, sweet Home," like an echo from the purer parts of the
previous night, its words were designed by Monty to linger for many
a day in the minds of his soldier-servers.

"Dismiss me not Thy service, Lord,
But train me for Thy will:
For even I in fields so broad
Some duties may fulfil:
And I would ask for no reward
Except to serve Thee still."

So they sang: and they went out on to the sunlit deck trailing
clouds of glory.


Sec.6

It really did seem the end of the voyage, and the beginning of
something utterly new--and something so dangerous withal that our
pulse-rate quickened with suspense--when the Military Landing
Officer came aboard, laden with papers, and, sitting at a table in
the lounge, gave into the hands of boys, who yesterday were playing
quoits-tennis, written orders to proceed at once to such places as
W. Beach on Helles or the new front at Suvla.

"Here we take our tickets for the tumbrils," murmured Jimmy Doon, as
we stood awaiting our turn. "Third single for La Guillotine."

And yet it was with a jar of disappointment that we heard the M.L.O.
say to Doe, after consulting his papers:

"Stop at Mudros. Report to Rest Camp, Mudros East."

"Why, sir, am I not going to--" began Doe.

"Next, please. What name?" interrupted the M.L.O. There was war
forty miles away, and no time to argue with a young subaltern. "What
name, you?"

"Ray, sir. East Cheshires."

"Rest Camp, Mudros."

"But is it for long, sir?" ventured I.

"Next, please. What name, padre?"

"Monty," answered our friend. "East Cheshires."

"Report Rest Camp," promptly said the M.L.O., and, raising his
voice, called to the waiting crowd: "All East Cheshire Details
detained at Mudros."

"But I have to relieve--" began Monty.

"Next, please. What name?" the M.L.O. burst in, looking up into
Jimmy Doon's face.

"Jimmy--I mean, Lieutenant Doon, Fifth East Lancs."

"Held up, Mudros. Report--"

"But my draft, sir, has--"

"Next, please."

And Jimmy came away, hoping he had heard the last of his draft. He
joined our Cheshire group, which was discussing the latest
thunderbolt.

"Lord, isn't it enormously unseemly?" he grumbled. "I'm left out,
too. Why, I've been a year in the Army, and not yet seen a man
killed. I hoped I was certain to see one now."

"You detestably gruesome little cad," said Monty.

"I wonder if it's for long," murmured Doe. "I'd take the risk of
being killed rather than not be able to say I'd seen the great Cape
Helles, or, failing Helles, this new Suvla front."

"As it is," grunted Jimmy, "we shall probably be at Mudros till the
end of the world."

The M.L.O. had not been gone an hour before the Navy sent its
pinnaces with large lighters in tow for conveying the first drafts
to the Peninsula ferry-boats. Each pinnace was in command of a
midshipman, generally a fair-haired English boy looking about
fifteen. These baby officers, who gave their orders to wide-chested
and bronzed Tars, old enough to be their fathers, were stared at by
us with romantic interest. For there had been stories in England of
the deeds of the middies in the famous First Landing at Helles, when
they remained in the bows of the boats they commanded, scorning
cover of any kind, as became British officers in charge of men.

After the lighters, the _Snaefell_, an old Isle of Man steamer, came
alongside, and, having taken some hundreds of men aboard, edged away
from us, while Major Hardy, his heart ever overthrowing his dignity,
said wrathfully:

"Give 'em a cheer or something, damn you."

We raised a cheer. The men responded, though not very effectively,
and cheered and waved as the _Snaefell_ carried them away.

"They know what they're going to, poor lads," mumbled Major Hardy.

Next came the _Redbreast_, whose decks were soon as crowded as the
_Snaefell's_ had been. Major Hardy scanned them through his
eyeglass, and then turned snuffily upon us and said:

"Damn your English reticence! Damn your unimaginative silence! Why
don't you study the psychology of these boys and this moment?"

Leaning over the rail, he cried at the crowd on the _Redbreast_:

"Good-bye, lads. Let fly! Three cheers for the king! Let 'em go!"

The boys caught his enthusiasm, as boys always will, and followed
his lead, cheering the king and singing: "For he's a jolly good
fellow.... And so say all of us. With a hip-hip-hip-hurrah!"

And with them cheering and singing thus, the _Redbreast_ slipped
quietly away.

Major Hardy dropped his monocle on his chest. A good voyage--a jolly
voyage--was over.

And now a little motor-launch puffed alongside to collect the Mudros
Details: and we went down the _Rangoon's_ hull to be ferried ashore.
We were ferried, as you shall see, out of our dazzling news of the
campaign into the darkness of collapsing things.




_Part II: The White Heights_


CHAPTER VII

MUDROS, IN THE ISLE OF LEMNOS


Sec.1

The motor-launch beat away from the _Rangoon_. Monty, standing in
the stern, lit a pipe, and stared over the match-flame at the empty
troopship. Jimmy Doon, sitting in the bows, surveyed the hill-locked
harbour, and said to me:

"Well, there's one comfort: we shan't be killed on Gallipoli."

"Why not?"

"Because we shall certainly die at Mudros."

Doe was brooding over the ships of the Navy on the water, and over
the white camps of the Army on the dull, bleak hill-slopes.

"I didn't know there were so many ships in the world," he said.

It was a wonderful revelation of sea power. There were battleships,
heavy and squat; cruisers, more slender and graceful; low-lying
destroyers, coal black or silver grey; and hospital ships, which, in
their glistening white paint, were as much more lovely than the
men-of-war as ruth is more lovely than ruthlessness. Our little
launch was passing heavy-gunned monitors; skirting round submarines
that lay above the surface like the backs of whales; and panting
along beneath the enormous _Aquitania_, whose funnels appeared to
reach a higher sky than the surrounding hills. Flags flew
everywhere: the white ensign from the masts of the Navy, the red
ensign from the troopers, and the martial tricolour from the vessels
of the Frenchmen.

Jimmy Doon sighed and pointed ashore. "Look at the unseemly
hospitals," he said.

As he spoke, we were steering towards a little landing-jetty, called
the "Egyptian Pier," and could see the Red Cross floating over the
camps.

"Hospitals at Malta," groaned Jimmy, "hospitals at Alexandria,
hospital ships all over the Mediterranean and the AEgean--Ray, it's
dangerous: we'll go home."

But, instead, we stepped ashore. At once the reflected coolness of
the water deserted us; the heady heat off the dusty land hit our
flesh like the hot air from an oven; and a glare from the white,
trampled dust and the white canvas tents troubled our eyes and set
our temples aching. And the rolling hills, empty of growth, except
grass burnt brown and thistles burnt yellow, gave us a shock of
depression.

"Damn, oh damn," said Jimmy.

"Precisely," agreed Monty.

We walked on, till we reached an array of square tents that formed
No. 16 Stationary Hospital. Here pale and emaciated men were
wandering in pyjamas between tents marked "Dysentery," "Enteric,"
and "Infectious Wards."

"Damn," repeated Jimmy.

Then we came upon a barbed-wire compound, and, caught by the morbid
fascination of all prisons, looked in. It was full of sick and
wounded Turks, who lay on stretchers in bell-tents, and, by a
miserable pantomime of raising two fingers to their lips and blowing
into the air, besought of our charity a cigarette. We went in, and
handed Abdullas among them. And that--now I come to think of it--was
our first encounter with the enemy we had been sent to fight.

At the Rest Camp Doe and I were pushed into a tent that,
insufficiently supplied with pegs, was flapping irritatingly in a
rising wind. Sighing for the cosy cabins of the _Rangoon_, we tossed
off our equipment on to the earthy floor and lounged into the mess
for lunch. In the mess tent we sat down to trestle-tables, laid with
coarse enamelled plates and mugs.

Monty turned to Jimmy, and asked: "What was that remark you made
just now, James Doon?"

"Damn," answered Jimmy with great readiness.

"Thanks," said Monty.

After lunch there came to Doe and myself the only pleasing thing in
a day of gloom. That was the joy of dressing up in the true tropical
kit worn at Mudros; brown brogue shoes; pale brown stockings, turned
down at the calves; khaki drill shorts, displaying bare knees; khaki
shirts open at the throats, and with sleeves rolled up above white
elbows; our topees, and no more. And, since we were sure we looked
very nice, we decided to walk abroad among men. Besides, the
shameful whiteness of our knees and forearms must be browned at once
by a walk in the toasting sun.

We set off for the village of Mudros East. It proved to be a
collection of ramshackle dwellings, as little habitable as English
cowhouses; of stores, where thieving Greeks sold groceries to the
soldiers; and of taverns, whose vines hung heavily clustered over
porch and window. There was an ornate and lofty Greek Orthodox
Church, and a little, unconsidered cemetery, where the bones of the
dead were working their way above the ground.

In the streets of this tumble-down town walked every type of
Gallipoli campaigner: British Tommies, grousing and cheerful;
Australians, remarkable for their physique; deep-brown Maoris;
bearded Frenchmen in baggy trousers; shining and grinning African
negroes from French colonies; stately Sikhs; charming little
Gurkhas, looking like chocolate Japanese; British Tars in their
white drill; and similarly clad sailors of Russia, France and
Greece.

It was while strolling through this fancy-dress fair that we
suddenly came upon the camp of the French, and were briskly saluted
by a French sentry. We returned a thrilling acknowledgment. For it
was the first time that our great Ally had greeted our advent into
the area of war.

Lord! how the wind was rising! And with it the dust! The grey motor
ambulances, as they purred past with their sick, raised dust storms,
that blew away over the roofs in clouds as high again as the houses.
The ships and the harbour, though it was a sunny, cloudless day,
could only be seen through a flying veil of dust. Quickly the vines,
overhanging the porches, became white with dust; our teeth and
palates coated with it. We hastened home to the sorry shelter of the
mess that we might wash the dust down our throats with tea.

But bah! we went out of the dust into the flies. The mess was
buzzing with them; and they were accompanied in their attacks upon
our persons by bees, who hummed about like air-ships among
aeroplanes. I dropped upon the table a speck of Sir Joseph Paxton's
excellent jam, now peppered and gritty with dust, and in a few
seconds it was hidden by a scrimmage of black flies, fighting over
it and over one another. Other flies fell into my tea, and did the
breast-stroke for the side of the mug. I pushed the mug along to
Jimmy Doon, and pointed out to him, with the conceit of the expert,
that they were making the mistake of all novices at swimming; they
were moving their arms and legs too fast, and getting no motive
power out of their leg-drive.

"Don't talk to me about 'em," said Jimmy. "I'm fast going mad. I'm
not knocking 'em off my jam, but swallowing the little devils as
they sit there. If I didn't do that, they'd commit suicide down my
throat. Every time so far that I've opened my mouth to inhale the
breeze, I've taken down a fly. It's tedious."

Ah! this wit was all forced gaiety, and the more depressing for
that. It generated melancholy, as a damp fire generates smoke. I
felt there was something wrong around me this afternoon--a shadow of
evil. The conversation died: only the flies buzzed monotonously over
us, as though we were offal or carrion; and the wind blew the dust
in hail-storms against the canvas walls of the tent. And then it
came--the terribly evil thing. The O.C. Rest Camp entered the mess,
and announced with cynical cheerfulness:

"_Well, we've lost this campaign._ The great new landing at Suvla
has failed."

There was a ghastly silence, and a voice muttered, "God!"

"Yes, and had it succeeded we'd have won. But the Turks have got us
held at Suvla beneath Sari Bair, same as they've got us held at
Helles beneath Achi Baba. The news is just filtering through."

With horror I listened to the cold-blooded statement. The shock of
it produced a beating in the head, and a sickness. And I felt
foolish, as though I might do something lunatic, like giving a
witless shout, or running amok with a table-knife. I touched Doe,
and whispered: "I'm going to get out of this. The old fool doesn't
know what he's talking about."

I went away, and flung myself down on my valise in my flapping tent.
I lay on my back, my hands clasped behind my head, and gazed up into
the tent-roof loud with flies. Suvla had failed! It was a lie--an
alarmist lie! Why, only yesterday we had exulted in it as the
winning move, declaring that the game was over bar shouting, and
regretting that we could not be in at the death. What was it
reminding me of--this sudden "black-out," just as the lights had
been brightest? Ah, I had it: that moment, when, in the flush of
winning the Swimming Cup for Bramhall, I learned that I had lost it.
How similar this was! Then the prize had been a silver cup, which
had been fought for by a parcel of schoolboys. Now the grander
trophy was that silver strip of the Dardanelles which men called
"the Narrows," and the combatants were a pack of nations.

Suvla had failed! Why was I identifying my tiny self with a huge
thing like Britain, and feeling that, because she had failed in her
great fight for the Dardanelles, so I would fail, and purposely, in
my little struggle after moral beauty? What a fool I was--but that
was how it was working out. Beauty be hanged! Monty was badly wrong
in proclaiming that nature was chiefly beautiful, and life on the
whole was good. And, if he were wrong, why, then there was no
further need to toil after a beauty of character to match the beauty
of seas and hills. Good heavens! Beauty in the Mudros Hills! They
were but homes of thirsty grass and dying thistles, dust and
torturing flies. These ideals of Monty's were vapoury. Why not throw
them up--throw up moral effort? I would. There was _not_ more
beauty--

It was at this moment that Monty himself stood in the tent door.

"Down, Rupert?" he asked. "What's the matter?"

I looked up into his eyes, and saw in them that inquiring sympathy
which could so quickly transfigure him from a lively friend into a
gentle priest.

"Oh, nothing," I said. I was in no mood just now to tell him
anything. "Bored, that's all."

And then I looked round, and noticed that the tent was full of a
violet light. It was as if limelight had been turned on from behind
a violet glass.

"Good Lord!" I exclaimed. "The air's all coloured!"

"Yes," said he, "I was coming to tell you to look at the sunset.
It's bad old Mudros's one good deed."

Out to the tent door I went, and looked over the harbour to the
western shores. And there, very rapidly, the ball of the sun was
going down behind the hills with an affair of gold and crimson
lights, while all the hills were violet. The colour was so strong
that it came out and flushed with violet the black hulls of the
ships. And they, strangely motionless, lay mirrored in a water of
white and gold.

"Listen!" said Monty.

For from all the camps the British bugles were singing the sad call
of "Retreat"; the French trumpets wailing "Sun-down," and their
rifles firing a rapid fusillade to speed the departing day.
Meanwhile the heat had died into a refreshing coolness; the wind had
dropped, leaving the dust undisturbed on the ground; and the flies
were roosting in the tops of the tents.

Very soon it was quite dark. Then everything lit up: first, the
camps on the hills, their innumerable hurricane-lamps resembling the
lights of great cities; then, the vessels in the bay--and, in the
quiet of the windless evening, their bells, telling the hour, came
clearly over the water. The long hulls of the hospital ships marked
themselves off by rows of green lights and large, luminous red
crosses. Reflected in the still water, they gave to the basin the
appearance of a pleasure lake, gay with red and green fairy lamps.
The battleships hid their bellicose features in the darkness, and,
since one or two of them had their bands playing, might have been
pleasure steamers. And from an Indian encampment behind us came a
weird incantation and the steady beat of the tom-tom.

Somehow, in the beauty of the Mudros night, I felt a spring of new
hope in our campaign. We would win in the end. And with this re-born
confidence went nobler resolutions for myself. To-morrow I would
resume moral effort. To-morrow I would begin again.




CHAPTER VIII

THE GREEN ROOM


Sec.1

The story of our two-months' delay at Mudros is largely the story of
Monty's eccentricities. As for Doe and myself, we just watched with
growing pride our knees burning in the sun to a Maori brown. When we
bathed in the bay and saw that, while our bodies as a whole were a
pale English pink, our elbows, knees and necks, that were daily
exposed to the sun, were turning to this beautiful tint, we would
place our limbs side by side to see which of us achieved the greater
depth of colour. For this we drew our pay.

Jimmy Doon received early his orders to join his regiment on the
Peninsula. He left us, declaring that he only contemplated paying a
flying visit to the front, as the very sound of the guns convinced
him that he was a civilian at heart. He would be back soon, he said.

Monty appointed himself Chaplain to No. 16 Stationary Hospital, and
set to work. And during this period at Mudros he was just about as
regrettable and impossible in his behaviour as I have ever known
him. He procured a gramophone, and, touring the tents, in which the
sick men lay, would set the atrocious instrument playing, "Kitty,
Kitty, isn't it a pity in the city you work so hard?" The invalids
loved the jingling refrain, and added to the plagues of Mudros by
roaring its chorus. Then Monty would return in the worst of tempers
to our tent, and, putting the instrument roughly away, sit down and
look miserable. If Doe asked permission to feel his pulse or see his
tongue, he would shut him up with the words, "Oh, stuff!" But once
he laughed sarcastically and burst, with all the Monty enthusiasm
and emphasis, into a diatribe against Broad Churchmanship, the
ignorance of laymen, the timidity of the clergy, wishy-washy
sermons--in short, the criminal lack of dogmatic teaching. Not
seeing any connexion between dogmatic teaching and a gramophone, Doe
looked so amazed that Monty laughed, and grumbled:

"It's fine priestly work I'm doing for these lads, isn't it? Work
any hospital orderly could do. I ought to be hearing their
confessions, and saying Mass for them. Instead I play them 'Kitty,
Kitty, isn't it a pity--?' But they don't understand--they don't
understand."

"But, gracious heavens," said Doe, "you can't be always doing
priestly work. And we know to our sorrow that you do have sing-song
services sometimes. Why, last night you had at least a couple of
hundred bawling hymns at the tops of their voices, and making the
night hideous. Wasn't that priestly enough?"

"No," he snapped. "It was a service any layman or hot-gospeller
could hold. There they were--a mass of bonny lads, all calling
themselves 'C. of E.,' and none of them knowing anything about the
Mass or confession. Ah, they don't understand. It breaks my heart,
Rupert. All sons of the Church; and they don't know the lines of
their mother's face!"

"Well, why on earth," said Doe, impatiently, "do you run your
beastly gramophone and your rousing services, if they're not your
proper work?"

"Why, don't you see?" murmured Monty, turning away to watch the sun
setting behind a sweep of violet hills, "I _must_ pull my weight. I
can feel patriotic at times. And, if I can't be a priest to the big
majority, I can at least be their pal. That's how a padre's work
pans out: a priest to the tiny few, and a pal to the big majority. I
suppose it's something. Perhaps it's something."


Sec.2

It was Monty who first called Mudros, "The Green Room." The name was
happily chosen, for here at Mudros the actors either prepared for
their entry on the Gallipoli stage, or returned for a breather, till
the call-boy should summon them again. In it, after the manner of
green rooms, we discussed how the show in the limelight was going.
We saw much that made us gossip.

We saw the huge black transports bear into Mudros Bay. Many were
ships that were the pride of this watery planet. Like a duchess
sailing into a ball-room came the _Mauretania_, making the mere
professional warships and the common merchantmen look very small
indeed. But even she, haughty lady, was put in the shade, when her
young but gargantuan sister, the _Aquitania_, floating leisurely
between the booms, claimed the attention of the harbour, and reduced
us all to a state of grovelling homage. And then the _Olympic_, not
to be outdone by these overrated Cunarders, would join the company
with her nose in the air.

They were packed with yellow-clad and helmeted soldiers, who were as
noisy about their entrance as the great ships were silent. Tommy,
coming into harbour at the end of a voyage, had a habit of
announcing his approach. So, when we on the land heard over the
water shouting, singing, genial oaths, "How-d'ye-do's," and
"What-ho's"; and such advices as "Cheerioh! The Cheshires are here!"
"We'll open them Narrows for you"; "Here we are, here we are, here
we are again," or the simple statement "We've coom!" we left our
tents, and just went into our field-glasses, as one goes into a
theatre.

The men in the transports were delayed a night in the harbour, and
on the following day disgorged into the floating omnibuses that
plied nightly to Suvla or Helles. These omnibuses were old Isle of
Man passenger steamers, jolly old tubs, doing their bit like papa
and uncle and grandad in the National Guard at home. Being due to
arrive with their crowds of fighting men at the Peninsula in the
darkness of midnight, they would get under way just before dusk.
They went out with the sun, travelling straight and slowly between
the hulls.

To the lads, thus being drawn to the danger-zone, a send-off would
be given in salvos of cheers from the sides of the anchored vessels,
the bands of the Navy sometimes playing them out with the old airs
of England. And the lads themselves, enjoying their evanescent
triumph, and feeling like the applauded heroes on a carnival car,
would shout back a merry response, or pick up the chorus of the tune
rendered by the distant band.

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