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IV. The Haven of Lemnos

—Shakespeare

The Auckland Battalion embarked on the Lutzow, a captured German liner, which afterwards made two terrible trips to Alexandria with men desperately wounded, numbers of whom died because there were not the men or the facilities to care for them properly. This dark and terrible side of war was little in the minds of the magnificently trained volunteers who filed up her gangways and rank by rank took up their quarters on the iron decks. At last they, too, were going to war. Greatly elated, they crowded to the rails as the transport slowly steamed through the forest of masts which crowded the harbour, and made for the breakwater and the open sea. They cheered and were cheered. The band was playing. Merry jests flew round. So the harbour was passed, and they, too. had finished with all pleasant and beautiful things. The stately buildings of Alexandria, the tall masts of the ships sank below the horizon, and the Lutzow ploughed on through the blue waters of the Mediterranean.

The food was of very poor quality, bully-beef, biscuits, cheese and tea; and by way of variety tea, cheese, biscuits and bully. The iron decks were hard to sleep on. Iron, having no resiliency about it, does not in any way conform itself to the outstanding features of the human body. Moreover, it grows cold of nights. One wag put it rather neatly writing home to his people. "Dear Mother, we are living on iron rations, sleeping on iron decks, and we are commanded by a fellow called Ian Hamilton." Physical comfort and poor food were, however, small things, for now the "Isles of Greece" were on the right hand and the left. Past Patmos, and many another famous place, the ship swept on through the Ægean, while the men sharpened their bayonets and received their orders.

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April 15th, and the Lutzow was running up towards the port of Mudros, which harbour had been selected as the main base of the venture for which the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force had been called into being. A great, commodious haven it was, ringed on all sides by green hills, and with room for a great armada to swing at anchor. Through the booms, past the picquet boat, round a spit of land, and the vessel passed to her anchorage.

Never in all her history had Great Britain brought together such an assemblage of ships. There were battleships, cruisers, destroyers and submarines of the British Navy; auxiliary cruisers, Channel picquet boats, tugs, river boats, oil tanks, water tanks, colliers, store ships, quaint French men-of-war of peculiar construction, the Russian "Packet-of-Woodbines," and then row after row of transports crowded with fighting-men. Atlantic liners, battered tramps, boats of the Cunard line and the Castle Company were moored with the vessels of the Nord-Deutscher Lloyd, with Hamburg and Bremen boats, and with Turkish and Egyptian vessels, which in former times plied through the Straits and the Sea of Marmora. The Gaby Deslys, a tiny tug, buzzed busily around the harbour. The Ark Royal sent up her seaplanes and sometimes the yellow sausage-shaped captive balloon. The Queen Elizabeth, super dread nought, magnificent, majestic, lay in state, surrounded by ships of lesser name.

Day by day the concentration grew larger and larger. A great transport steamed in with five thousand French soldiers aboard. Battalions of the 29th Division, battalions of English Territaorials, Indian troops, Australians, New Zealanders, all came to swell the muster. Here lay the Argonauts before they sailed away for the stormy Euxine and the dark wood of the War God, where hung the Golden Fleece. Here came Agamemnon and his Greeks before they fought the ten years' fight for Troy. Those ancient Greeks live for ever in immortal story, but they were not taller or stronger men, more beautiful in body, higher of heart, or of a more splendid daring than these young unblooded troops who had assembled from the page 23ends of the earth, "to attempt the well-nigh impossible." On board the Lutzow, as on board every transport of the fleet, the men were straining at the leash. Cramped in their narrow quarters, with little to do, they were overflowing with energy. Trained to the uttermost perfection of physical fitness, their superb vitality demanded expression, and found none. Above everything, they desired the day of battle and the test of arms. They were impatient, restless, almost bursting with a fierce discontent. Day after day they fell in on the iron decks, with full equipment and packs, clambered down the swaying "Jacob's ladders," and pulled into the shore—then pulled back again to the transport and the weary, monotonous waiting.

At last, on the 23rd April, there was a movement among the transports. All the next day ships were moving to their stations. Now all men knew that the hour had come. There was no more discontent. The Lutzow moved to the outer harbour. The decks were crowded with men, all desirous of greeting their fellow adventurers. Now on the eve of battle, there was a great thrill in the hearts of all. Rejoicing in the full strength of their youth, trained until it was impossible for them to be harder, longing for their baptism of fire and the opportunity of doing some feat of arms which would place them on a level with the heroes of Mons, the Marne and Ypres, they had waited with eagerness and desire for this time to come. Now they were on the threshold of great happenings. The Colonel and his officers were high up on the bridge deck. The men were massed along the rails. As the transport passed through the line of shipping, the band played the national anthems of all the nations represented by the men, who cheered and counter-cheered. The hundred thousand men crowded on the transports were exultant and exulting.

On the evening of the 24th, the Queen Elisabeth steamed majestically out and away; then another great grey shape, and another, and another, and then the transports, line after line. There was a swell of cheering from the Australians and New Zealanders, for at last they, too, were moving out on the heroes' track, and for them, also, the great adventure had page 24begun. It was a happy evening on board the Lutsow. The officers spent their last night in the mess joyfully. The sergeants had a particularly merry time, although supper was only the inevitable cheese, biscuits and tea. There were no gloomy forebodings. They might have been going to a picnic, judging by the high spirits shown by all that gallant company. At one o'clock the ship slipped quietly through the boom, and with all lights screened, followed out on the track which for the next nine months was to be so often travelled.