Charles E W Bean, Diaries, AWM38 3DRL 606/8/1 - May - June 1915 - Part 8

60.
an integral part of it was a rifle & a periscope. They were
poking it over the parapet – Blamey sd: “What on earth have
you got there ?” “Oh a bit of an arrangement”, sd
the man - a really hard mostly bitten little fellow looking xxx a mixture
between a green small suburban grocer & a tramp - as a
matter of fact I believe he was a man from out back -
"What 's it for ?" asked Blamey.  "Thought we might
do a bit of shootin' without bein' hit." It was a periscope
rifle. They put a triangle onto the butt, & a periscope
opposite the sight. You looked into the put the rifle put the rifle on the parapet, the triangle
-the foot of it - onto your shoulder, & look into the
periscope - & there you have the sights, beautifully
aligned. then you pull a wire attached to the trigger.
Col. White was in the trenches a day or two later
& they tested it for him. I know I was most sceptical 
of its value when first I saw it – it seemed to be a sort
of clumsy machine underestimated which would waste
a lot of time for / sake of avoiding a little exposure.  But
Col. White thought it wd give a tremendous kick up,
like a revolver. But assault Then they tested it for him.
The chap working it fired two shots & brought down
a Turk each time. [May 26. Since then they have set up a factory
of these things on the beach. Every day one sees a
dozen or so brought up to be taken to the trenches. The
old up country man - "Bill" is Pte. Beach of the
2nd Bn. They had him down here making the things
What they want to do now is to keep the trick from the
enemy. I expect it will go to Australia in a letter
& be published in the newspapers. I see old Jimmy
Green & lots of others are writing to the press there
- absolutely subject to no supervision; & the censor
doesnt object.
Hosp.  Some of the hospital ships - or rather transports
used as hospital ships - in spite of the shortage of equipment
 

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have pretty good records: for example the Clan M'Gillivray
- 850 wounded were put on board - for 2 doctors. Only 15
died on board, only 10 more became septic. She landed 200 at
Alex & sent took the remaining 650 to Malta where the
ladies were preparing to give them as comfortable a time
as possible. They are now sending our wounded
to England. Alex. cant hold them.
The waste in war is astounding. For example,
the ammunition boxes in which shells are carried, which
are used either for firewood or for instead of sandbags
or as shelves & cupboards, are beautifully made - dove tailed,
with brass screws, & partitions lined with copper -
beautifully finished. Each box holds 4-18 pdr shells;
fitted on little sliding cradles in grooves. The four
shells are fired off in a single salvo - Bang - Bang - Bang
Bang - & the box cabinet work is tossed off down the hillside. "From a
Scotchman's point of view," says Ramsay, "its horrible!"
10 p.m. sudden outburst of fire - after a bomb our
men in the 13^th & other bns. up. Quinns Post way used to
throw a bomb just before they all rushed out together.
Now whenever a bomb goes there is five minutes
rapid fire from the Turks.
10.18 & 10 20 suden burst of ^rifle fire & m.g.
11 p.m. fierce firing
12 p.m.    "          "     very sudden.
Lt Clowes of the 1^st Artillery Bde (a Duntroon boy I
believe) has been asked ordered to observe from the balloon
ship for the Navy. He was before on the Queen with
Gen. Cunliffe Owen.
[*The Australian*]
The beach has become very quiet since that attack.
They give us very few shells a day - even the
 

62
8 in. shells have ceased. They dropped 3 of them
into one of their own trenches to the delight of our men.
"Pass along & tell them theyre firing into their own
trenches," sd one of our men. These things had
been falling pretty fast for a day or two. One fell opposite
Monashes H.Q., on the other slope. It burst &
wounded a man. Another man - a big man
chap - immediately went up & inspected the
place. "Come out of that you b. fool" shouted
half a dozen men, "what the h- are you doing there -
you'll get the next as sure as eggs are eggs."
He turned round slowly.  "Who in h -  tells me to
come down out of this?" he sd. "If I want to
stand here wh of you's goin' to stop me."
[*Anzac cove*]
The hills behind the beach are getting has long come
to look just like Manly - with little ^made paths
all winding all over the hillside. The valleys
are becoming xx In the gullies at the back
you find clustered up under the crests,
& on the hollows behind them, hundreds of
little booths - dug outs with water proof sheets
over them - where the supports & reserves & the
cooks & signallers & H.Q. live.  Really
Walker Valley (or whatever it is called, opp. Walker
Bay, where the N.Z. position is) looks like a
big country fair. I wonder what the old
Turk who owned this bit of scrub two months ago
wd think of it now. There is a cotton field up
behind our right, with wheat growing on it also.
There is one green field just in front of the 2nd Bn
There is a curious layer of pottery abt 18 inches
below the surface just there, in one of our
 

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trenches - I think 2nd Bn. The pottery layer stretches
for perhaps 50 feet - perhaps some ancient Greek
dwelling, because the land cant "make" very quickly
on these ridge tops - it would rather weather down
I shd say. They say there is the remains of a house
near our trenches; & there is a large square slab of
polished stone somewhere on the hillside up there.
But all ^other traces of recent mans occupatn is so dead & gone
that it is like you feel as if you were exploring the plains of Troy or the tombs
desert edge in Egypt when you come on any remains
at all here. Glasfurd tells me that when first he
landed - that first morning -  there were goat ^or animal tracks
all over the hill face. So it must have been pasture
someones pasture. Far up on the face shoulder of 971
facing the sea you notice from the ships quite a
large patch of green field & poppy field on the lap
of some ridge top, abt a mile north of our lines.
Otherwise the country is green arbutus & holly scrub
with some gorse & beautiful flowers & amongst occasional sand patches
amongst them.

[*Telephone*]  

As you tramp thro this heath both here &
at the Point you sometimes feel a thread line, as
of the tendril of some creeper, catching your
instep. You stop now instinctively & lift
your foot carefully out of it. It is someones
telephone wire. In the outer areas of the
lines & during the earlier days every where
the insulated wires, wh our signallers use for
the communicatns, were everywhere; & we
had to ware of them so often that one has come to
do it without thinking.
There is little use for money in this collection
of mountain villages - not even in the sea port.
 

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No enterprising Gk has come along as one did at Hellas,
& set up a miniature market on the end of a pontoon pier
- with cigarettes, chocolate, bread  6^d loaf- I believe he
brought a shipload.  But there is a market on the beach.
xxx You will see ^some fellows on the hills rush for every shell
case that falls. They take them when any business sends
them to the beach - the sailors there are very anxious
to get them always ready to swap them for cigarettes
or loaves of bread or tobacco. The sailors take them on
board & sometimes sell them at a good profit to
officers who want a vase or a curio.
These shell cases used to be thick up the
gully; & on some of the paths I have seen stretches
where you cd not see a single squarefoot of earth
without some shrapnel bullet lying on it.
But this exchange on the beach & the collection of
shells for curios xxxx for the men themselves.
has cleared the gullies of shell cases.
At Cape Hellas you couldnt walk move 10 yards
without walking over some fragment of shell - 
I saw one which I think must have been from the
Q. Elizabeth but most were smaller. We
have a sprinkling of potholes thro' our
lines now. The poor old Sergt Maj. of the 5th
Bn. was blown to pieces by one which landed
fair in his dug out – An 11 inch shell I believe.
It threw half his body right across from one
side of the gully to the other, & I am told that
the man who was there when this part of the
body fell there, & was almost hit by it, xxxx
went gone out of his mind for the time being. I
was talking to Old Nielsen only a day or two before,
 

65
& someone sd that old soldiers always got the
comfortable billets - he ws an old soldier &
Quartermaster Sergt of the 5th Bn.
Sunday May 23rd.
They were going to have church parade in the
5th Bn. This morning - I thought of going up to it -
all the men to be in their dug outs & the service
simply read in the midst of them. But at 7 o'c.
this morning ^Capt O'Gorman of the Veterinary officer
of the 1st Art. Brigade who has now bn attached to
D.H.Q. told me there was a collectn of troop
ships off K. Tepe & that two warships there were
shelling it tremendously heavily. I went down to
the corner of the path - you cd see our men
from the beach & hill above it - (the men who work
the stores, A.M.C. & so on) - lining the shoulders of
the hill watching as they wd from a gallery all these
side shows. When one got to the point there, close in, was
a battleship with another close outside of her, several destroyers,
a small boat or two, xx F.S.2. (Fleetsweeper Hythe)
a little farther out, & one or two merchant steamers
not for away on the seaward side. I took it at once that
they were making another landing on Kaba Tepe, &
thought I cd see someone signalling from a point below the
Turkish trenches.
But as I was walking back someone said
"What's this about the Albion being ashore". It turned
out that This was the explanation. The Albion
(one of the old Vengeance, Glory, Ocean class to wh
most of our squadron here now belongs) had come
in close to Kaba Tepe xxxx - probably to avoid
the submarines which are said to be about
although many people are very sceptical - 
& had gone aground there. The It takes a little
time to grasp a situation, and at first one
[*Had breakfast
& went out towards 
south end of
lines to 
watch.*] 

This was really
Canopus & Albion

66
cdn't make out whether they had decided to go leave
xxxx her or were trying to move the men. I watched
through my telescope from near the end of our beach.
It was abt 8.20. The Turks were putting shrapnel
over the Albion & the ? Vengeance wh was standing in to
help her. I think it came from the olive grove. The
hand drawn diagram-see original document

Albion shots were falling all round the
Albion but you dont see the shots wh
hit unless something falls or burns &
I cdn't tell if she ws being hit at all
until from just aft of her forward bridge
on the Port side there came two or three huge flares
of red flame - They looked v. like the flare from
the transport wh ws hit here two weeks ago, so
they may have been ^the effect of shells which exploded in a
bunker & exploded the gas there or burned all
the coal dust - but I thought at the time they
were fire. Just against the side sheltered side of
the Albion underneath this was a ships boat
lying & into it someone on board was throwing
for dear life some sort of article - I dont know
what - things not bigger than a mans head I shd
say- one after another 

hand drawn sketch-see original document
possibly timber wh
they thought wd catch
fire. And just about then the Albion & the
Vengeance - which was astern of her with a rope
fixed towing for all she ws worth - began to
spit fire as I have never seen any ship here fire
yet. The flashes came at the rate of one or
two per second, continuously, from the 6 in battery
The whole vally behind K. Tepe was plastered
 

67

with bursting shell-they must have been

Hand drawn sketch - see original document
Searching for the guns in the olive grove I think.
There was not a move in the Albion – &, having
seen the Hymettus tugged at for 2 whole days
at Lemnos without a move, I didn't wait
to see the end of it but went up towards the
3rd Brigade H.Q.  As I went up some fellows
who I suppose didn't know me - artillery or A.S.C.-
camped in / mouth of a gully picked me up: "That's
Bean" - they sd as I passed - "Whom?" " Bean -
war correspondent...." The next thing was the old
shout " How about the Bally Australians? " I don't
take any notice - its the first time for a month they
have gone back to the subject matter. The men since
they have seen me in the trenches & so on, & especially
the 2nd I.Bde who knew me down at the point have
quite changed in their manner - they generally make
me very welcome now - good chaps.
I went up the hill to Col. Maclagans & found
him just come out - as had everyone else who cd
do so, to see the sight. During this time the
destroyers had all come up, & the Lord Nelson
(or Agamemnon) from Cape Hellas; & the
point of land to our north - Nibranesi Point
- was left quite unwatched . The Hallix  MacLagan
ws clearly anxious abt their getting guns onto that
point at the north (which looks right into our
backs). "Look at the beggars," he sd, "left the
point absolutely xx bare. I hope to goodness
 

? Turgut Reis.

68.

they don't get a gun up onto there – if they got a battery
there only for half an hour they cd make things d---d
awkward for us."
xxxx In spite of the Albions & Vengeances
fire there seemed not the least difference in the
enemys fire - salvoes of 4 guns were all over the
Albion. I saw no more fires on her. Then there
was a boom & a slow rustle we know very well
- & over went a shell from the Goeben. It was far to
the right of the ships. Presently another, then another
in the same spot. Then two together - very
right except the about 1/2 a mile away from
the ship. Every three or four minutes another
pair wd drop into the sea in the same place
making great thick geysers of foam.
Then just at 9.20 we noticed tt xx xxx the inner ship
had started to xx move -I looked at the Albion cleared
moved she certainly was moving. Perh., I thought
it is the other that is stuck. But she was moving
also. One cd hardly believe they had got her off -
but they had. She was towed slowly backwards
away from the land. Our men cheered. The Lord
Nelson, which had come up, ^ had begun to fire with her
big guns - enormous clouds of yellow smoke - bigger
almost than those of the Queen Elizabeth (what a
bit of past history the Q.E.is - she seems seems a century
since we saw her here). The Lord Nelson & the other
two ships xxxx steamed away off xxx towards Imbros
- the destroyers seemed all to go off too. We
got a warship back later in the day off K. Tepe
& one off the beach - they are still moving as a
precaution agst submarines. But none off our northern
flank. A destroyer or torpedo boat, however,
[*Our guns started to fire at the olive grove - 

we were able to help the navy - that time *]

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moved in by night as usual to watch the N. flank,
searchlight on and off by turns.
Blamey showed me a curious thing today -
a cartridge with a purple-red wooden bullet. we
have often thought these are dummies when found in
clips, but they are not. There is a yellowest sulphury
powder behind them. They bullets are round pointed like ours.
They are very light & hollow, & wd almost
fray in your hand if you squeezed them.

Diagram - see original document
We heard yesterday, what we knew must come
within a day or two- the news of Gen. Bridges death. I
sent a cable about the manner in which he was wounded
- as White had told me the story. Tonight when I was passing
White called me  in "Bean" he sd, "I want you if you
will to make an exception to the vale about not mentioning
names. I don't want to interfere with a  It is in the case of the
General - General Bridges. I think his work deserves to
be understood in Australia & I don't think many people
will understand it.  You know many of his friends, who
even those who knew him best, wd not have expected him to
make his mark as a commander in the field. Many
Few of us realised that he had the necessary qualities.
We knew he was a skilled administrator & a man of
great experience xxx in organising. This force, the First
Australian Divn, was of his making of course
his making; & he made the College at Duntroon. But
he was absolutely untried as a commander in the field.
His This was his first trial: & of course you know the
way he came out of it - he turned out to be a man of
extraordinary courage. I dont mean that in a trite sort sense
x - the majority of us here be are not uncourageous,
but he faced danger in a way that almost
amounted to a fault - xx & when under fire his