Tell England Part 56

I laughed deprecatingly.

"Oh, I'm resigned to the idea," he pursued. "It's more probable than improbable. Sooner or later. _Tant va la cruche a l'eau qu' a la fin elle se ca.s.se._"

"_Tant_--'aunt,'" thought I. "_Va_--'goes.' _La cruche_--'the crust.' _Qu' a la fin elle se ca.s.se._" And I said aloud: "I've got it! 'Aunt goes for the crust at the water, into which, in fine, she casts herself.'"

"No," corrected Doe, looking away from me wistfully and self-consciously. "'The pitcher goes so often to the well that at last it is broken.'"

--2

About this time the great blizzard broke over Gallipoli. On the last Sunday in November I awoke, feeling like iced chicken, to learn that the blizzard had begun. It was still dark, and the snow was being driven along by the wind, so that it flew nearly parallel with the ground, and clothed with mantles of white all the scrub that opposed its onrush. This morning only did the wild Peninsula look beautiful.

But its whiteness was that of a whited sepulchre. Never before had it been so mercilessly cruel. For now was opening the notorious blizzard that should strike down hundreds with frost-bite, and drown in their trenches Turks and Britons alike.

It was freezing--freezing. The water in our canvas buckets froze into solid cakes of ice, which we hewed out with pickaxes and kicked about like footb.a.l.l.s. And all the guns stopped speaking. No more was heard the whip-crack of a rifle, nor the rapid, crisp, unintelligent report of a machine-gun. Fingers of friend and foe were too numbed to fire. An Arctic silence settled upon Gallipoli.

And yet I remember the first day of the blizzard as a day of glowing things. For on the previous night I had read in Battalion Orders that I was to be Captain Ray. And so, this piercing morning, I could go out into the blizzard with three stars on my shoulders. With Gallipoli suddenness I had leapt into this exalted rank, while Doe, a more brilliant officer, remained only a Second Lieutenant. For him, as a specialist, there was no promotion. For me, no sooner had my O.C. Company been buried alive by the explosion of a Turkish mine, and his second-in-command gone sick with dysentery, than I, the next senior though only nineteen, was given the rank of Acting Captain. And Doe, always most generous when most jealous, had been profuse in his congratulations.

I confess that not even the hail, with its icy bite, could spoil the glow which I felt in being Captain Ray. I walked along my company front, behind parapets ma.s.sed with snow, to have a look at the men of my command. All these lads with the chattering lips--lads from twenty to forty years old--were mine to do what I liked with. They were my family--my children. And I would be a father to them.

And when, at the end of my inspection, a s.h.i.+vering post corporal put into my hands a letter addressed by my mother to 2nd-Lieut. R. Ray, I delighted to think how out-of-date she was, and how I must enlighten her at once on the correct method of addressing her son. I would do it that day, so that she might have opportunities of writing "Capt. Ray." For one never knew: some unpleasantly senior person might come along and take to himself my honourable rank.

I seized the letter and hurried home to our dug-out. Doe was already in possession of his mail, so, having wrapped ourselves in blankets to defeat the polar atmosphere, we crouched over a smoking oil-stove and read our letters.

I was the first to break a long silence.

"Really," I said, "Mother's rather sweet. Listen to this:--

"'Rupert, I had such a shock yesterday. I heard the postman's knock, which always frightens me. I picked up a long, blue envelope, stamped "War Office." Oh, my heart stood still. I went into my bedroom, and tried to compose myself to break the envelope. Then I asked my new maid to come and be with me when I opened it. After she had arrived, I said a prayer that all might be well with you. Then I opened it: and, Rupert, it was only your Commission as 2nd Lieutenant arriving a year late.

Oh, I went straight to church and gave thanks!'"

Doe gazed into the light of the oil-stove.

"The dear, good, beautiful woman!" he said.

And so it is that the famous blizzard carries with it two glowing memories: the one, my promotion to Captain's rank; the other, the sudden arrival of my mother's letter like a sea-gull out of a storm.

Her loving words threw about me, during the appalling conditions of the afternoon, an atmosphere of England. And, when in the biting night our elevated home was quiet under the stars, and Doe and I were rolled up in our blankets, I was quite pleased to find him disposed to be sentimental.

"I've cold feet to-night," he grumbled. "Roll on Peace, and a pa.s.sage home. Let's cheer ourselves up by thinking of the first dinner we'll have when we get back to England. _Allons_, I'll begin with turtle soup."

"And a gla.s.s of sherry," added I from my pillow.

"Then, I think, turbot and white sauce."

"Good enough," I agreed, "and we'll trifle with the wing of a fowl."

"Two cream buns for sweets," continued the Brigade Bombing Officer, "or possibly three. And fruit salad. _Ah, mon dieu, que c'est beau!_"

"And a piece of Stilton on a sweet biscuit," suggested the Captain of D Company, "with a gla.s.s of port."

"Yes," conceded the Bombing Officer, "and then cafe noir, and an Abdulla No. 5 in the arm-chair. _Sapristi_! isn't it cold?" He turned round sulkily in his bed. "If it's like this to-morrow I shan't get up--no, not if Gladys Cooper comes to wake me."

So he dropped off to sleep.... And, with Doe asleep, I can say that to which I have been leading up. Always before the war I used to think forced and exaggerated those pictures which showed the soldier in his uniform, sleeping on the field near the piled arms, and suggested, by a vision painted on the canvas, that his dreams were of his hearth and loved ones. But I know now of a certain Captain-fellow, who, on that first night of the blizzard, after he had received a letter from his mother, dreamt long and fully of friends in England, awaking at times to find himself lying on a lofty wild Bluff, and falling off to sleep again to continue dreams of home.

CHAPTER XIV

THE NINETEENTH OF DECEMBER

--1

The grand incident in the last act of the Gallipoli Campaign--the grand _motif_--was the Germans' successful break through Servia.

They had driven their corridor from Central Europe through Servia to Constantinople; and, for all we knew, the might of Germany in men and guns were pouring down it. Of course they were coming; they must come. Never had the generals of Germany so fine an opportunity of destroying the British Divisions that languished at Suvla and h.e.l.les. What chance had the Haughty Islanders now of escaping?

The wintry storms were already cutting their frail line of communications by sea, and smas.h.i.+ng up their miserable jetties on the beaches. The plot should unravel simply. The German-Turk combine would attack in force, and the British, unable to escape, would either surrender or, in good Roman style, die fighting.

We knew the Germans were coming. When the blizzard rolled away and left behind a glorious December, we began to hear their new guns throbbing on the distant Suvla front. Doubtless more guns were rumbling along the streets of Constantinople, and troops concentrating in its squares. They were out for the biggest victory of the Central Empires since Tannenberg. Six divisions from Suvla and four from h.e.l.les would be a good day's bag. Perhaps the Turks were not without pity for the tough little British Divisions that, depleted, exhausted, and unreinforced, lay at their mercy on the extremities of the Gallipoli Peninsula.

We knew they were coming, and joked about it.

"It's getting distinctly interesting, Captain Ray," said Doe, as we sat drinking tea in Monty's dug-out in the Eski Line. "I say, give me a decent funeral, won't you?"

"We shan't bury you," answered Monty unpleasantly. "We shall put you on the incinerator."

"If the worst comes to the worst, I shall swim for it," said I, always conceited on this point. "It'll only be a few miles easy going, in this gorgeous December weather, from Gully Beach to Imbros."

"But, _au serieux_," continued the picturesque Doe, "do you realise that this is December, 1915, and we shall probably never see the year of grace 1916? d.a.m.ned funny, Captain Ray, isn't it?"

"Don't be so romantic and treacly," retorted Monty. "You'll do nothing heroic. You'll just march down to W Beach and get on a boat and sail away. There's going to be some sort of evacuation, I'm sure. They've cleared the hospitals at Alexandria and Malta, and ordered every hospital s.h.i.+p in the world to lie off the Peninsula empty. They are prepared for twenty thousand casualties."

"Yes," agreed I, "and, as there are no reinforcements, it can't mean a big advance, so it must mean a big retreat. There's nothing to bellyache about. We're going to evacuate, praise be to Allah!"

"Oh, try not to be foolish, Captain Ray," returned Doe impatiently.

"Have you been so long on this cursed Peninsula without knowing that we couldn't evacuate Suvla without being seen from Sari Bair, nor h.e.l.les without being seen from Achi Baba? And, directly the jolly old Turk saw us quitting, he, and the whole German army, and Ludendorff, would stream down and ma.s.sacre us as we ran. We'd want every man for a rearguard action to hold them off. The bally thing's impossible."

"Well, we did the impossible in getting on to the Peninsula," put in Monty, "and we shall probably do the impossible in getting off.

Besides, not even Turks can see at night."

"That's all very fine," rejoined the lively youth. "But the impossible landing was done by the grandest Division in history, when they were up to full strength. Now our divisions are jaded and done for. Besides, only one army could get away. Even if the Suvla crowd did effect a surprise escape, the Turk would see to it that the h.e.l.les mob didn't repeat the performance. Our Staff would have to sacrifice one army for the other. And, as the Suvla army is bigger than ours, they'd sacrifice us for a certainty. So cheer up, and don't be so d.a.m.ned miserable."

"Oh, well," said Monty, refilling Doe's cup. "Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die."

Doe lifted up the mug to toast his host.

"_Morituri te salutamus_," he said, and out of his abounding spirits began to sing:

"The Germans are coming, oh dear, oh dear, The Germans are coming, oh can't you hear?"