By-ways on Service: Notes from an Australian Journal — John Shaqi
By-ways on Service: Notes from an Australian JournalDinning, Hector
History
By-ways on Service: Notes from an Australian Journal
Dinning, Hector
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, Australian
In Mudros we lay a week, waiting, waiting. Let the spot be lovely as
you will, waiting is not good with the sound of the guns coming down on
the wind day and night. Our fifth morning on Lemnos was the Sabbath.
We woke to the soft boom of naval guns. Lemnos is a goodish sail from
the straits. The "boom, boom," was a low, soft growl, felt rather than
heard. The day before, at sundown, the first trooper of the fleet had
gone out, with band playing, to the cheering of the cruisers. The
Army and Navy have always in this campaign, shown themselves happily
complementary. A seaplane escorted them out aloft, two cruisers below.
Great was the rejoicing at the beginning of the exodus.
Next morning we left the mules of Zion and transferred to a store-ship.
She lay two days. We solaced ourselves with bathing in the clear bay
from the ship's side, and basking nude, with our pipes, afterwards in
the pleasant heat of the spring sun; with visits to the shore, where we
wandered into the Greek Church, in size and magnificence of decoration
out of all consonance with its neighbouring villages, and where the
wine of Lemnos might be drunk for a penny a glass; with bargaining at
the boats that drew alongside from the shore, as at Aden, filled with
nuts, figs, dates, Egyptian delight--all the old stock, except Greeks,
who manned them here. The dwellers on Lemnos are all Greeks.... Would
we never move?
On the seventh day at noon the naval cutter ran alongside. In half an
hour we were moving through the boom. As soon as we had cleared the
south-east corner of the island, Imbros stood out to port, and Tenedos,
our destination, lay dead ahead, under the mountains of Turkey in
Asia. A fresh breeze blew out of the Dardanelles, thunder-laden with
the roar of the guns, and every heave of our bow brought it down more
clear. Before sundown we were abreast of Tenedos and had sighted the
aeroplane station and had seen five of the great amphibious planes come
to earth. As we swung round to a view of the straits' mouth, every
eye was strained for the visible signs of what we had been hearing so
long. The straits lay murky under the smoke of three days' firing. The
first flash was sighted--with what a quickening of the pulse! In three
minutes we had the lay of the discharges and the bursts. An attempt was
made to muster a fall-in aft for the first issue of tobacco ration. Not
a man moved! The attempt was postponed until we should have seen enough
of these epoch-making flashes. "We can get tobacco at home--without
paying for it; you don't see cruisers spitting shrapnel every day at
Port Philip!" At length two ranks got formed-up--one for cigarettes
(appropriately, the rear), the front rank for those who smoked pipes.
Oh, degenerates!--the rear was half as long again! Two ounces of
medium-Capstan per man--in tins; four packets of cigarettes: that was
our momentous first issue.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account