But, alas! we hadn't the ammunition and we hadn't the men; and when the Turks took to mole tactics, and protected their front with those two inventions of the Evil One--barbed wire and machine-guns--our case, considering the means at our disposal, was a hopeless one.
During a fierce battle which took place in June, I was standing close to one of our batteries in position, just south of the Pink Farm, and what a contrast it was to see these guns in action after having repeatedly watched the French .75s! Here was no smooth barrel-recoil, but a clumsy spade stuck in the ground to prevent the piece from kicking. Whenever the gun was fired it jumped back like a bucking bronco, necessitating the relaying of the gun after each shot.
We have better guns than that now, of course, but with all our mechanical superiority and mechanical resources we should years ago have had a gun equal, or superior, to the French .75. Of course there is no use in having a quick-firing gun if you cannot have mountains of ammunition alongside of it, and this point should never be lost sight of by the Staff, whose duty it is to look after such matters.
As we were very short of high explosive shells the battery was not doing a great deal of firing, and in the lull a Staff Officer rode up and told the Battery Commander to lay his guns on to some Turks whom he pointed out, saying they were threatening our line.
Now I had been watching this part of the battlefield most carefully through my glasses, and I had seen our own men advance and go into the position which the Staff Officer said was held by the Turks. I overheard his instructions to the gunner officer, so I called out: "Those are our men, not Turks!" However, in spite of my warning, a couple of rounds were loosed off, and they were only too well placed, for they exploded among our unfortunate troops, doing, no doubt, a considerable amount of damage, because, in a moment, a wrathful telephone message came to the Battery Commander telling him to cease fire instantly, on which the discreet Staff Officer made a hurried departure.
While we had some excellent Staff Officers, there were others not exactly noted for their brilliancy, and no doubt the Turks saw that some of our "regrettable incidents" were due to bad Staff work, and the following story was vouched for by the Peninsula wag.
It had been noted with some surprise that, though the Turkish sniper exacted his toll from all other ranks, the Staff appeared to be immune.
At last the mystery was solved when one of these sharpshooters was captured, for on being asked how it was that the Staff always escaped, he replied: "Oh, well, you see, I get five shillings for every private I shoot, ten shillings for every sergeant, a pound for every officer, but if I were to shoot a Staff Officer I would be shot myself!"
I need hardly say that these merry quips made at the expense of the Staff by our frolicsome wits should be taken with a grain of salt. So far as my own experience goes, the Staff Officers of the 29th Division, and, later, of the 8th Army Corps, were all that could be desired, and at them no such gibe could be levelled. All those with whom I came in contact were very much all there at their respective jobs.
There is no doubt, however, that there is some reason for the general lack of confidence in the Staff. Responsible positions are unfortunately too often given to most unsuitable men, with regrettable results.
Glaring instances of jobbery and favouritism are so universally known that it is unnecessary to quote examples. Puck must be having the time of his life. If only our responsible administrators would for the future abjure nepotism (vain wish!) and give proved talent a chance, we should, I am convinced, have something better to show than "strategic retreats"
and "brilliant evacuations."
I am reminded of an incident that occurred when I was staying with Colonel Roosevelt during the time he was President of the United States.
An influential and well-known Senator came into the room while I was there, and urged on the President the claims of a _protege_ of his to a post as Mining Inspector. President Roosevelt's reply impressed me very much: "Well, Senator, if your man is the best Mining Engineer that can be found in the United States he shall get the job, but not otherwise; he will have the lives of men in his hands."
Mark this, ye jobbites of England!
CHAPTER XIX
VISITS TO THE TRENCHES
During one of the hot June days Gye and I paid a visit to Colonel Bruce and his Gurkhas, who were holding the left of the line down by the aegean Sea.
The Gurkhas have done some splendid work in the Peninsula. They are in their element when out at night doing reconnoitring work. Bruce told me of the valuable report brought in by one of his N. C. O.'s, on the strength of which he took his men up the side of a cliff and was able to surprise and drive the Turks out of a very strong position which it was of prime importance we should hold. Other troops had several times attempted this feat, but failed because they attacked in the open, while the Gurkhas succeeded owing to good reconnoitring work.
The night previous to our visit the Turks had made a most determined attack on the Gurkhas, and the Gurkhas asked for no better sport.
Flares, shot up by our officers, showed the Turks advancing in regular parade formation in line of columns. As soon as the Turks saw that they had been observed, they charged, yelling their war cry: "Allah, Allah!"
The Gurkhas waited patiently, lining the trenches as thickly as they could stand. They allowed the Turks to approach within about fifty yards of them and then opened such a hurricane of rifle and machine-gun fire that the Turks were absolutely crumpled up in ranks as they stood. The fury of the Gurkhas was now thoroughly aroused and, the reserves having been brought up, the whole brigade made such an onslaught that practically not a single Turk out of that huge attacking force ever got back to his own trench.
When Rolo and I viewed the battlefield within a few hours of the fight, there were still some wounded to be seen in the intervening ground between the two forces, while in regular battle array lay line upon line of Turkish dead, silent witnesses to the terribly accurate fire poured into them by the Gurkhas. They are brave fellows, those Turks, and it was a sad sight to see so many gallant men laid low.
No doubt in revenge for the defeat they had suffered the previous night, the Turks were bombarding the Gurkha lines vigorously, and while I was there they landed a big "Black Maria" shell underneath a little fellow who was squatting on his heels outside his dug-out. It was an extraordinary sight to see him shoot down the hill in this position and land some forty feet away in a clump of bushes, from which he emerged not much the worse for his involuntary flight.
The Gurkhas, in one of their previous attacks on the heights occupied by the Turks, were held up by some barbed wire and had to retire. A private soldier, however, chose to remain behind, ensconced under the scanty protection of a couple of knapsacks, which he pulled together from those strewn round, thinking that he could hold his own until another assault was delivered by his comrades, when he would join them. No comrades came, however, so he found himself unable to move without being observed. He therefore pretended to be dead and lay absolutely still for hours, not even daring to move his head, except when his neck got very stiff, and then only by pushing his hat up a fraction of an inch, so that he might slowly twist his head inside it without showing any movement. At last he could stand the strain no longer, so he leaped up, raced in a zig-zag to his own trenches amid a hail of bullets, and, carefully avoiding a low spot where the Turks had concentrated their fire, expecting him to go in that way, he leaped over the highest part of the parapet and escaped scot-free.
I saw this little fellow a few hours after his exploit and he looked as though he had thoroughly enjoyed the adventure.
A few days after the big Turkish assault I was again on my way to this part of the line, when I happened to meet General de Lisle, and, on mentioning that I was going to see Colonel Bruce, he told me I would not find him, for he had been wounded on the previous night by a bomb, while gallantly leading his men.
I had several friends in the Inniskilling Fusiliers and frequently I came across them in my journeys to and from the Gurkha lines. As a rule, they held the trenches to the right of the little brown men from Nepaul.
I always made a point, when I was anywhere near, of looking up Captain Gordon Tillie. He was now practically the only officer left of the Inniskillings who had taken part in the original landing and had, so far, escaped scot-free. I was hopeful that his luck would see him through, because he had only been married a few days before he left England for the front, and I knew his wife very well, and had promised her to look him up whenever I had an opportunity.
Just before the 29th Division went to Suvla, Gye and I paid him a visit, while he was holding the front trenches, and, sad to say, this was the last occasion on which I ever saw Gordon Tillie. He took us along that portion of the trench for which his company was responsible, and showed us the various points of interest in the Turkish line, which, at this particular place, was sometimes parallel, and sometimes almost at right angles to our trenches, and in places only a dozen yards distant. When I was leaving him he cautioned me to be careful of a certain part of the trench we should have to pass through, as he said it was exposed to the Turkish guns and they often gave it a "strafing." My parting remark to him was: "Take care they don't 'strafe' you."
Of course, shells were dropping here and there all the time from the Turkish guns, and they were paying some attention to the piece of dangerous trench which Gye and I were bound to go through, so, saying to him: "Let's make a bolt for it," we started off at our best pace, but before we got through we had to lie down in the bottom of the trench to escape a couple of shells which burst all round us and knocked to pieces the sandbag parapet protecting our heads.
Gordon Tillie's friendly warning may have saved our lives, and it is a nice thought, for, soon afterwards, the 29th Division were sent to Suvla, and there Captain Tillie was killed while gallantly leading his company up the slopes of Sari Bair--a brave soldier, as Sir Ian Hamilton testifies in his Suvla Bay Despatch.
I often made an expedition to visit a friend, only to find, when I got there, that he had perhaps been killed the day before, or else had been sent off to hospital badly wounded, and it was sad to see how one's friends gradually got thinned off. Many of them lay buried all round.
One would suddenly be startled by coming across a freshly-dug grave in some sheltered little nook by the wayside and learn for the first time, from the rude cross erected over it, that one's friend lay there. But war is war, and as a shell or bullet may come at any moment and bring sudden death with it to one's self, one gets used to the idea, and somehow it does not seem so dreadful. Many of us often escaped by the merest chance. In my own case the turning aside to pluck a flower, or straying a little from the path to get a better view of a sunset, was the chance that prevented Death from finding me, because more than once I have seen a shell explode and excavate a huge hole on the exact spot where, had I not turned aside, I would undoubtedly have been standing.
Yes, indeed, in those days, one often heard, sounding softly in one's ears, the faint rustle of the wings of the Angel of Death.
I do not know whether the Turks had any particular spite against my Zionists, but they certainly gave us more than our fair share of shells.
One afternoon they began a bombardment and plumped a shell into a bank on which sat a Zion man, Private Scorobogaty. The explosion sent him some feet into the air, but, beyond the bruise and shock, he suffered no damage. The next shell dropped plump in the middle of our little supply of stores, within six feet of the door of our dug-out, and sent everything flying through space. A third shot plunged into the roots of a tree which stood close to our lines, by which the trumpeter of L Battery, R. H. A., was standing. He heard the shell coming, and, without any particular reason, but luckily for him, he made a dive to the right instead of to the left, and so escaped for the moment. Next afternoon at tea-time another shell came, cut the same tree clean in two, wounding the trumpeter and two other men of L Battery, who were having their tea in its shade.
CHAPTER XX
FLIES, DUST AND BATTLE
July was a scorching month, and to add to the discomfort of heat there was a plague of flies; flies, flies, flies everywhere, and I have no doubt that they were responsible for the serious epidemics which broke out among the troops. Doubtless it was the self-same pestilence which Homer tells us attacked the Grecian Army camped round Troy, and which they attributed to the anger of Apollo, though none of our mules suffered as did those of the Greeks.
These flies were disgusting, horrible pests, for they would come straight from the rotting corpses of the Turks, which lay in unburied hundreds in front of our trenches, and blacken every scrap of food on which they could obtain a foot-hold. The only way to get a clean bite into one's mouth, without taking the flies with it, was to blow vigorously all the time until the lips had actually closed on the morsel, and even then these pests would hover round, waiting for a chance opening to dart in and chase it down.
The dust, too, in these days was very trying, for the whole peninsula was now one vast dust heap, which the slightest wind would swirl about in blinding, choking clouds. I noticed that on several occasions our men had to do battle with this dust storm blowing directly in their eyes, so that it was impossible to see anything in front of them, while the Turks, with their backs to it, could see our men coming along plainly enough and could slate them at their leisure. I always found, as was to be expected, that when we foolishly attacked on such days as these we effected nothing beyond getting ourselves killed. The Turks must have marvelled at our blind folly.
I well remember that one of our most successful battles was fought on a day when the wind carried the dust into the faces of the Turks; towards the close of this fight I saw a couple of battalions go right through and over all the Turkish trenches within sight, and then get engulfed in a great ravine on the very slope of Achi Baba itself, where they were hidden from view, and then I saw thousands of Turks stream down through communication trenches on each side of our men, filling the trenches in their rear, as could be plainly seen by the bristling bayonets which showed above the parapets.
I felt that these two battalions were lost, as indeed they were for two or three days, but somehow or other, after some extraordinary hide-and-seek experiences among the Turkish trenches, they fought their way back again, clearing the Turks out of their path, in hand-to-hand fighting, as they hacked their way back to our own lines.
A friend of mine, Captain Braham of the 6th Manchesters, had a narrow escape on one occasion when he made an attempt to lead his men in an assault. Being short of ammunition for the guns, the Turkish trenches had not been properly bombarded; Turkish machine-guns and riflemen were still in position, ready to mow our men down the moment they leaped from their trenches. This was the fate which overtook the 6th Manchesters; they were practically cut to pieces before they had advanced more than a dozen yards from their lines, and the few survivors thought it wiser to get back to cover as quickly as possible. Captain Braham, however, tried to rally them out of the trench again, and at that moment, while standing on the parapet, a bullet struck his knapsack, cut through the buckle, a box of chocolate and a tin-opener. The tin-opener diverted the bullet out through the bottom of the haversack by his heels, but the impact of it was so great that it knocked him off the parapet into the trench, as if he had been struck with a sledge hammer. He told me afterwards that he did not know at the time what had knocked him over, and it was not until he had removed his haversack that the mystery was explained.
During one of these dog days Rolo and I went as far forward as it was possible to go, so that we might get a close view of a battle which was to begin at 11 A. M. on the 12th of July.
Punctually to the minute our guns crashed out along the line and pounded away steadily for an hour. Then we watched the attack, and what impressed me in this battle, as it did also in others, was the inadequate force with which we attempted to take the offensive. A line of our men would dash forward, take two or three Turkish trenches, losing perhaps half its effective strength in so doing, and then find itself too weak to do more than hold on, and very often they could not even do that. There seemed to be no regular system of sending line after line at intervals into the fight. I know that this was arranged for in orders, but it did not always come off, and the men who had, with such gallantry and at such a cost, taken the trenches, would be forced out of them in a counter-attack by overwhelming numbers of Turks, and, in getting back to their own lines, would again lose heavily.
To obtain a view of the battlefield from a different point we made our way along a communication trench, and here our interest in the fight in the front was abruptly switched off and centred on ourselves, for the Turks had spotted a Battalion of Lancashire Fusiliers coming along to reinforce the firing line, and they turned a most deadly and accurate fire upon us from the Turkish guns. Shells hopped from the parapets or broke them in all round us, crashed over our heads, and even plumped right into the trench itself, sending men flying in all directions.
The Lancashire Fusiliers had, therefore, to halt and take cover under the lee of the parapet, and during this time one of the men asked Claude Rolo what his job was in these parts, for, being in our shirt-sleeves, and pretty grimy with dust and with climbing about the trenches, he could not make out who or what we were.
When Rolo replied: "Oh, I've only come to see the show," "Oh, Hell,"