In the course of these peregrinations I met Marshall of the 53rd Division, Beresford, commanding the 86th Brigade, and Colonel Savage, R.E.
After tea with Byng, including the rare treat of a slice of rich cake, we went down to our friend H.M.S. _Savage_. The wind had risen to a fairly stiff gale, and the sea was beginning to get very big. Those field gun shells had caused the _Savage_ to lie a desperate long way out to sea; we had a very stiff pull in the teeth of the waves, and every one of us began to think that salt water rather than the bullet was going to end our days. However, we just managed by the skin of our teeth and the usual monkey tricks, to scramble up on board. As I said in my wrath when I first stood on the firm deck, I would sooner have a hundred shells fired at me by the Turks.
Captain Davidson commanding H.M.S. _Cornwallis_ dined; everyone liked him very much.
_6th October, 1915._ Left General Headquarters soon after 11 o'clock for Helles, taking with me Aspinall and Freddie. Lunched with Davies at 8th Corps Headquarters.
Afterwards rode across to Royal Naval Division and saw Paris. Then went with Bertie Lawrence, commanding 52nd Division, to his lines. Our route lay up Achi Baba Nallah and along the trenches to the Horse Shoe; then along Princes Street trench up the Vineyard, and back along the Krithia Nallah to the Headquarters of the 156th Brigade. There we mounted our horses and rode back to Corps Headquarters. I brought Steward back with me to dine and sleep the night. Colonel Tyrrell and Major Hunloke (King's Messenger) also dined.
_7th October, 1915._ Wasted energy brooding over the addled eggs of the past. Are the High Gods bringing our new Iliad to grief in a spirit of wanton mischief? At whose door will history leave the blame for the helpless, hopeless fix we are left in--rotting with disease and told to take it easy?
That clever fellow Deedes dined; also Rowan Hamilton, son of my old Simla friend the Colonel of that name.
_8th October, 1915. Imbros._ At 11 a.m. Ellison, Taylor, Gascoigne and Freddie sailed with me for Anzac. There we lunched with the ascetic Birdie and Staff off bully beef, biscuits and water. Then, the whole lot of us, together with de Crespigny, Birdie's Staff Officer, hurried five miles an hour down the communication trench to the Headquarters of the Indian Brigade. After greetings we shoved on and saw the 2nd Lovat Scouts under Lieutenant-Colonel Stirling and met, whilst going round their line, Major Morrison Bell and Captain Oppenheim. They seemed in very good fettle, and it would have been hard to find a finer lot of men. Taking leave of the 2nd Lovat Scouts, we worked along the trenches of the Fife and Forfar Yeomanry, under Colonel Mitchell, until we came to the 1st Lovat Scouts under Colonel Bailey. Lovat himself was sick, but Peyton commanding the 2nd Mounted Division turned up just when the inspection was at an end. He had got lost in the trenches, or we had. Next time the way was lost there was no mistake as to who had made the mistake. Birdie and I were pushing along as fast as we could leg it back towards Anzac. In the maze of trenches we came to a dividing of the ways. Two jolly old Sikhs were sitting at the junction. I asked if the road to the left led to the Headquarters of the Indian Brigade. They said, "Yes," so on we went, I leading, Birdie following. The trench got shallower and shallower until, in a little grove of trees, it petered out entirely. But it seemed to begin again in the other side and so we crossed through the trees. Once there we found that the supposed trench was only a shallow scratching up of the earth, and that we were standing within a hundred yards of the Turkish lines just about half way between them and the Lovat Scouts! I shouted to Birdie and we turned and ran for it--for our lives, I mean. Luckily the Turks were slow at spotting us, all except one who was a rank bad shot: so tumbling back into the trenches from which we had emerged, we saved ourselves by the skin of our teeth. I could not have been smarter about dodging two or three bullets had it been the beginning of our enterprise and had the high minarets of Constantinople glittered before my eyes.