At Suvla Bay Being the notes and sketches of scenes, characters and adventures of the Dardanelles campaign, made by John Hargrave ("White Fox") while serving with the 32nd field ambulance, X division, Mediterranean expeditionary force, during the great war.

From the opening

We were all dressed by this time. After a lot more waiting about outside in a yard, a sergeant came and took about eight of us into a room where there was a table and some papers and an officer in khaki.

I spotted a Bible on the table. We had to stand in a row while he read a long list of regulations in which we were made to promise to obey all orders of officers and non-commissioned officers of His Majesty's Service. After that, he told us he would swear us in. We had to hold up the right hand above the head, and say, all together: “Swhelpmegod!”

I immediately realised that I had taken an oath, which was not in accordance with my regimental religion!

No sooner were we let out than I began to feel the ever-tightening tangle of red tape.

What the dickens had I enlisted for? I asked myself. I had lost all my old-time freedom: I could no longer go on in my old camping and sketching life. I was now a soldier--a “tommy”--a “private.” I loathed the army. What a fool I was!

The next day I reported at Fulham. More hours of waiting. I discovered an old postman who had also enlisted in the R.A.M.C., and as he “knew the ropes” I stuck to him like a leech. In the afternoon an old recruiting sergeant with a husky voice fell us in, and we marched, a mob of civilians, through the London streets to the railway station. Although this was quite a short distance, the sergeant fell us out near a public-house, and he and a lot more disappeared inside.

What a motley crowd we were: clerks in bowler hats; “knuts” in brown suits, brown ties, brown shoes, and a horse-shoe tie-pin; tramp-like looking men in rags and tatters and smelling of dirt and beer and rank twist.

A short sample. Read the whole book

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