Eyewitness Read Free Page A

deckchair talking to one of our interpreters. He has orders to wake the troops at four (a.m.). All lights are to be turned out altogether when we get off the mainland – Gallipoli. We wonder whether the British have landed yet. Some say they landed during the past day – I fancy they land this morning. The Turk does not realise what is in store for him during the next few hours.
    2.30: Came on deck again. The moon is almost down now. Our 3 rd Brigade has to land in the little interval of darkness between the moonset and the dawn. They must be getting near there now – ten miles ahead of us perhaps.
    We are steaming just north of a high coastline – it must be Imbros. There are clouds on the high velvet black hills. Other land, which must be Samothrace, to the north. Wonder if anyone sees us from Imbros. The light on the point of Lemnos is far behind, still winking. Two white stern lights still directly ahead of us. As I lean over the rail below the bridge watching them there is a flash on the foc’sle, a prolonged flicker of light. Some prize idiot lighting his pipe. Nothing will ever make some individuals forego that luxury.
    3 a.m.: On deck again. All lights have been put out since last I was here.
    3.30: We are clearing the last point of Imbros. The moon is down and it is much darker. I cannot see the land beyond although I know it is there – the distance is only 12 miles. Far on our right, either on the point of Imbros Island or on some ship stationed in the channel between there and the land are two white lights, one above the other and a little aslant as if on a mast. I shall not go down again. A colonel of the Army Corps Staff in his overcoat is leaning over the rail beside me.
    Suddenly a circle of hazy misty white light appears behind some land far away to the right of us. I cannot see the land but I know it must be there because there is something hiding the actual light from which that glare comes. There is no mistaking it – a searchlight. It must be somewhere in the Dardanelles, south of the peninsula. It sweeps in a scared sort of way to right and left, shifts up a bit; fidgets and suddenly disappears. That must be one of the lights on the Turkish forts in the straits. It is just on 4 a.m. Wonder if they have heard anything – equally suddenly another searchlight – further in the straits. We can only see the haze of this one also searching round like the startled eyes of some frightened animal. There is the old searchlight again.
    And just at that moment I first notice that dawn is slowly breaking right ahead – just the first faint rim of grey. Presently I look that way and the dawn is no longer there. The fringe of grey is away on our port side. We must have turned suddenly in southwards. The line of the land, a high line of hills, can be seen straight ahead and away to the left of us. We are moving in between two flanking ships, merchant ships, evidently stationed there to give us the position. It is well past four – just the time when our 3 rd Brigade ought to be rushing out of their boats somewhere up the slope of those grey hills ahead. There is no sign yet of action.
    It is still too dark to see what I am writing. But the dawn is slowly growing. A line of officers is gradually lining the rail under the bridge, a ship’s officer or two as excited as the rest. Down on the foc’sle forward the men are beginning to cluster to the sides. Another idiot strikes a match and immediately a torrent of words bursts over him like a shell from the bridge above. Five minutes later a British officer beside me – newly arrived from England – does the same.
    4.25: Still no sound. We have passed between the two ships. There are three of our sister transports ahead and we are moving in between two of them to make up a line of four. Past us on our port beam slowly moves a destroyer dragging two long wrinkles across the silky water as she moves – it is light enough to see that now.
    Suddenly (4.37) from low