The Little Cemeteries F ROM Gibraltar to Egypt are two thousand
miles of sea, and upon these waters and in the lands sur- rounding them the ships of England and her soldiery have fought the enemies of our Kings for many hundreds of years. Along the coasts and upon the islands the British dead sleep in their thousands. Sometimes they are in great congregations, as upon the Peninsula of Gallipoli or at Malta ; but more often in small and half- forgotten companies, as in the hollow near the Water- Port at Gibraltar,_ where rest the lesser men who died at Trafalgar. - The Great War has left our dead in. many sma114ce ine. teries. Some of the burial grounds were old in 1914, -such as Corfu and Argostoli. Another lies in the shadows of the hills which face the ancient Kyamon Promontory across Suda Bay. These hills are the outerworks of the White Mountains of Crete, which rise in jagged outline seven thousand feet above the Mediterranean.
We left the road and walked through the thorny scrub up to the little cemetery. Dandy, the black cocker spaniel, who is the junior and most privileged and least disciplined member of a certain staff, flushed a fat quail, then plainly looked his resentment at the absence of a shot.
The cemetery is walled round, and it was pleasant to see its perfect order, the fruit of the labours of an ancient Cretan gardener. There are Russian graves here and British Army graves, memories of the International occupation of 1897. Here lies a Post-Captain of the Royal Navy, who died when commanding his ship at Suda. At his side is a Sub-Lieutenant. A little apart, in a row of their own, are some twenty memorials of the Great War. These are men who died in torpedoed transports and merchant vessels. Doubtless for every sailor-man who rests at Suda a score or two score are sleeping beneath the blue waters which masked the craft that brought them death. In the centre of the line of graves were two crosses which aroused reflection. One bore the inscription :- To AN UNKNOWN BRITISH SAILOR.
1917.
The other told that Ah Ping, Able Seaman, had died when a transport was torpedoed in 1917.
They lie side by side, these two. Did they sling their hammocks in the same forepeak, to meet again on Cretan soil ?
An Unknown British Sailor. Kings and Field-Marshals have laid no wreaths on his tomb. He lies far from the centre of the Empire for which he died, but I expect he is happy. He would probably say : " Below there ! What's the matter ? I've a Chink on my port hand and a Second Lieutenant of the British Army on my starboard beam. I'm as snug as could be. Leave well alone."
I looked at Ah Ping's grave, and though there are millions of Ah Pings in China I couldn't help wondering whether the Ah Ping who had served me so well in 1923 in China had ever owned an uncle—let us suppose—who had gone seafaring in troublesome times and never returned to Canton and the Pearl River. I wonder what Ah Ping would have said if he had been told before he left Chinaside for the last time that he would stay in the West and dream away the ages under a Christian cross
Previous page
