Poppies at Skyros
By LESLIE GARDINER FOR an hour or two we had been peering out through nasty scudding rain at the indistinct outlines of the islands around us. Then, as we came under the lee of Skyros, we lost the wind and the sky cleared.
I was thankful for that, because the entrance to the anchorage we had been given at Port Trebuki promised to be a tricky one. Like so many of these Greek harbours, Port Trebuki was a landlocked bay to which access, already difficult enough, was further complicated by a steep islet which left a slim channel of deep water on either side. Studying it on the chart. I was struck by the thought that this might have been the very place to have received the homeless Trojans of the Aeneid. It was certainly on their route, and Virgil's fitting description of the scene had stuck in my mind since schooldays : " There is a spot deep in a cove's recess, An isle there makes a barrier of its sides. 'Gainst which no deep-sea billow but is dashed. And sundered far into sequestered creeks."
As it happened, we slipped quite nicely through the entrance and turned between closely-overhanging slopes into the silent harbour.
Port Trebuki was a disappointment to some. The only town on Skyros lay on the far side of the island, and here was no sign of dwelling or landmark. Indeed the navigator was having difficulty in locating, from shore bearings, the exact spot in which I wanted to anchor. " Nothing to run in on ' he grumbled. " There's a patch here called ' Where the Turks landed and massacred the inhabitants, 1822,' but that's not much help." " What about that bit of greenery on the opposite hillside ? " asked the midshipman. " Hasn't that got a name ? "
" Oh, yes." And he told me what it was. Suddenly I realised that I had been here before. It was surprising that I should have forgotten it. But it had happened at the very beginning of my career, nearly forty years ago. A little later, when the anchor cable had rattled down, and we were lying snugly beneath hills that kept the furious wind at bay, it all came back to me very clearly.
• • * • It was the evening of St. George's Day, 1915. An assortment of odd craft lay in Port Trebuki. They held, among other things, a British naval division, which the next day would be off on the last stage of its journey to make history at the Dardanelles. I lounged on the upper deck, enjoying the cool scented breeze of that April evening. It had been an exhaust- ing day—our last run ashore on this funny little island that smelled so powerfully of sage, and was sprinkled so liberally with poppies and other bright flowers.
We, the midshipmen, had landed earlier to climb one of the three hills that fringed the bay; the padre said the view from the summit was a rewarding one. They were not too high, but the going was heavy through the scrub, and there were many diversions en route. A family of hissing tortoises kept us amused for half-an-hour, and higher up we came across a nest of adders which, schoolboy-like, we beat to death with our sticks. We had been warned about the snakes. In fact, it was said they had already claimed a victim—a young officer whom we had seen going over to the hospital ship on a stretcher a day or two ago. We conquered the upper slopes of the hill in one last'sweat- ing scramble, forbearing to look at the view until we had reached the very top. Once we had arrived there, the scope and beauty of our surroundings took away what little breath ' we had left. Towards the horizon on every side stretched the unruffled blue carpet of the Mediterranean, its surface broken here and there by the precipitous rocks of the Sporades. In the west we saw Mount Delphi, and glimpsed a suggestion, on the Greek mainland beyond, of snowy mountain ranges that swept up towards Pelion and Ossa and Olympus itself. To the north-east, somewhere beyond the haze, were Turkey and Gallipoli, the font at which we were soon to receive our baptism of fire. A thousand feet below us lay the tangible evidence of war—units of our own fleet, and prominent among them the French hospital .ship Duguay-Trouin.' The big Red Cross painted flat on her boat-deck for the Zeppelins to see was to us the latest novelty of modern warfare.
Yes, it had been a tiring day, and I wondered, back on board, as I watched the sun set, when and in what, circum- stances I should set foot ashore again. It was to be much sooner than I had imagined. That same evening, a few hours before we were due to sail, the duty boat was called out, and I was put. in charge of it. Mine was a gloomy mission. The sub-lieutenant who had blood-poisoning was dead, and I was to pick up the funeral party and grave-diggers and take them ashore to Skyros.
It was a surprise to find that this man had so many friends. When I got alongside the darkened Duguay-Trouin,' I found several. boats already waiting there, and it was quite a little convoy that set off towards the beach. We ran ashore at, the mouth of a dried-up mountain torrent. Six hefty Petty Officers shouldered the ensign-draped coffin, which swayed perilously as they stumbled up the bed of the stream to the chosen burial-ground. The mourners followed with the firing party —an impressive turn-out for a humble sub-lieutenant, I remarked to my neighbour.
" You know who that was ? " he replied. " Rupert Brooke, the poet. His name was on that white cross they took with them."
Even in those days we had all heard of Rupert Brooke, and some of us could quote him, although none at that time had read those most famous, and now strangely apposite, lines of his from " The Soldier." So it was with a heightened sense of the drama of the occasion that we pulled silently back to the ship two hours later.
And now thirty-eight years had passed, and here was Skyros looking unchanged, the scent of the sage still blowing out to sea and a green plantation of olives marking the grave of Rupert Brooke. Next day I went up to have a look at it. A handsome granite stone, " suitably inscribed," as they say, had replaced the' plain wooden cross I remembered, and our sailors had already begun to freshen up and tidy the monument and its surroundings. Once again the wild poppies were in bloom, and we added a huge bunch of them to the flowers planted round the grave. As we sailed away from Skyros that afternoon, we could see clearly the bright splash of red and white in the olive-grove, pin-pointing the spot where the poet lay.
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