At Suvla Bay | Page 6

up with eighteen, you may imagine how
thick the atmosphere became. One old man would smoke his clay-pipe
with choking twist tobacco. Most of the others smoked rank and often
damp "woodbines." The language was thick with grumbling and much
swearing. At first it was not so bad. But some one touched the side of
the tent and the rain began to dribble through. Then we found a tiny
stream of wet slowly trickling along underneath the tent-walls towards
the tent-pole, and by night time we were lying and sitting in a pool of
mud.
About a week later when the sergeant-major told us on parade that we
were "going to Tipperary" we all laughed, and no one believed it.
But the next day they marched us down to the Government siding and
locked us all in a train, which took us right away to Fishguard.
Some of the men got some bread-and-cheese before starting, but I, in
company with a good many others, did not.
The boat was waiting when they bundled us out on the quay.
It was a cattle-boat and very small and very smelly. There were no
cabins or accommodation of any sort: only the cattle-stalls down below.
Six hundred of us got aboard. Out of the six hundred, five hundred
were sick. It was a very rough crossing, and we were all starving and

shivering. I had nothing but what I stood up in--shirt, shorts, and
cowboy-hat, and my old haversack, which contained soap, towel and
razor, and also a sketch-book and a small colour-box.
The Irish sea-winds whistled up my shorts-- but I preferred the icy
wind to the stinking cattle-stalls and insect-infested straw below. We
were packed in like sardines. Men were retching and groaning, cussing
and growling. At last I found a coil of rope. It was a huge coil with a
hole in the centre--something like a large bird's nest. I got into this hole
and curled up like a dormouse. Here I did not feel the cold so much,
and lying down I didn't feel sick. The moon glittered on the great gray
billows. The cattle-boat heaved up and slid down the mountains. She
pitched and rolled and slithered sideways down the wave-slopes. And
so to Waterford.
From Waterford by train to Tipperary. It was early morning. The first
thing I noticed was that the grass in Ireland was very green and that the
fields were very small.
We had had no food for twenty-seven hours. I found a very hard crust
of bread in my haversack, and eat it while the others were asleep in the
carriage.

CHAPTER III
SNARED
"CRIMED"
"Off with his head," said the Queen.--Alice in Wonderland.
"Charge against 31963-- Failing to drink some oniony tea; Ha! Ha!
What! What! I can have you SHOT! D'you realise that I can have you
lashed To a wheel and smashed? What? Rot! Yes--SHOT! D'you
realise this? Right--turn! DISMISS!"
Lemnos: October 1915.

Born and bred in a studio, and brought up among the cloud-swept
mountains of Westmorland, amid the purple heather and the sunset in
the peat-moss puddles, barrack-life soon became like penal servitude. I
was like a caged wild animal. I knew now why the tigers and leopards
pace up and down, up and down, behind their bars at the Zoo.
We only stayed a week in the great, gray, prison-like barracks at
Tipperary. We looked about for the "sweetest girl" of the song--but the
"colleens" were disappointing. My heart was not "right there." We
moved to Limerick; and in Limerick we stopped for seven solid
months.
For seven months we did the same old squad- drill every day, at the
same time, on the same old square, until at last we all began to be
unbearably "fed up." The sections became slack at drill because they
were over-drilled and sickened by the awful monotony of it all.
During those seven dreary months, in that dismal slum-grown town, we
learnt all the tricks of barrack-life. We knew how to "come the old
soldier"; we knew how and when to "wangle out" of doing this or that
fatigue; we practised the ancient art of "going sick" when we knew a
long route march was coming off next day.
We knew how to "square" the guard if we came in late, and the others
learnt how to dodge church parade.
"'E never goes to church parade."
"No; 'e was a fly one--'e was."
"Wotchermean?"
"Put 'isself down as Quaker."
"Lummy--that's me next time I 'list-- Quaker Oats!"
By this time I had been promoted to the rank of corporal.
Next to the regimental sergeant-major, I had the loudest drill voice on

the square, and shouting at squad-drill and stretcher- drill was about the
only thing I ever did well in the army--except