Trenching at Gallipoli; the personal narrative of a Newfoundlander with the ill-fated Dardanelles expedition

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TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

Dugouts

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

THE PERSONAL NARRATIVE OF A
NEWFOUNDLANDER WITH THE ILL-
FATED DARDANELLES EXPEDITION

BY
JOHN GALLISHAW

ILLUSTRATED WITH
PHOTOGRAPHS

Stf*^^^?^^

NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.

197

Copyright, 1916, by
The Century' Co.

Published, October, 1916

TO
PROFESSOR CHARLES TOWNSEND COPELAND

OF ALL THAT HARVARD HAS GIVEN ME I VALUE MOST
THE FRIENDSHIP AND CONFIDENCE OF "COPEY"

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I Getting There 3

II There 33

III Trenches 63

IV Dugouts 93

V Waiting for the War to Cease .... 123

VI No Man's Land 141

VII Wounded 164

VIII Homeward Bound 192

IX "Feenish" . 224

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

Dugouts Frontispiece

Lord Kitchener talking to some Australians at Anzac 9

Scene at Lancashire Landing, Cape Helles .... 27

Allies landing reinforcements under heavy fire of
Turks in Dardanelles 38

Troops at the Dardanelles leaving for the landing
beach 47

A remarkable view of a landing party in the Dar-
danelles 57

Australians in trench on Gallipoli Peninsula, using
the periscope 67

First line of Allies' trench zigzagging along parallel to
the Turkish trenches v 78

Washing day in war-time . 95

Cleaning up after coming down from the trenches at
Suvla 114

Landing British troops from the transports at the
Dardanelles under protection of the battleships . 131

Australians in the trenches consider clothes a super-
fluity 157

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

Some of the barbed wire entanglements near Seddul
Bahr are still in position 175

A British battery at work on the Peninsula . . . 186

With the French at Suddul Bahr 203

Where troops landed in Dardanelles, showing Fort
Sed-ne-behi battered to pieces by Allied Fleet . . 213

TRENCHING AT
GALLIPOLI

The reader is hereby cautioned against regard-
ing this narrative as in any way official.

It is merely a record of the personal experi-
ences of a member of the First Newfoundland
Regiment, but the incidents described all actu-
ally occurred.

TRENCHING AT
GALLIPOLI

CHAPTER I

GETTING THERE

GREAT BRITAIN is at War. "
The announcement came to Newfound-
land out of a clear sky. Confirming it, came the
news of the assurances of loyalty from the differ-
ent colonies, expressed in terms of men and equip-
ment. Newfoundland was not to be outdone.
Her population is a little more than two hun-
dred thousand, and her isolated position made
garrisons unneccessary. Her only semblance of
military training was her city brigades. People
remembered that in the Boer War a handful of
Newfoundlanders had enlisted in Canadian regi-
ments, but never before had there been any talk
of Newfoundland sending a contingent made up
entirely of her own people and representing her

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TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

as a colony. From the posting of the first no-
tices bearing the simple message, "Your King
and Country Need You," a motley crowd
streamed into the armory in St, John's. The
city brigades, composed mostly of young, beau-
tifully fit athletes from rowing crews, football
and hockey teams, enlisted in a body. Every
train from the interior brought lumbermen, fresh
from the mills and forests, husky, steel-muscled,
pugnacious at the most peaceful times, frankly
spoiling for excitement. From the outharbors
and fishing villages came callous-handed fisher-
men, with backs a little bowed from straining
at the oar, accustomed to a life of danger. Ev-
ery day there came to the armory loose- jointed,
easy-swinging trappers and woodsmen, simple-
spoken young men, who, in offering their keen-
ness of vision and sureness of marksmanship,
were volunteering their all.

It was ideal material for soldiers. In two days
many more than the required quota had presented
themselves. Only five hundred men could be pre-
pared in time to cross with the first contingent of
Canadians. Over a thousand men offered. A
corps of doctors asked impertinent questions
concerning men's ancestors, inspected teeth,

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GETTING THERE

measured and pounded chests, demanded gym-
nastic stunts, and finally sorted out the best for
the first contingent. The disappointed ones
were consoled by news of another contingent to
follow in six weeks. Some men, turned down
for minor defects, immediately went to hospital,
were treated, and enlisted in the next contingent.

Seven weeks after the outbreak of war the
Newfoundlanders joined the flotilla containing
the first contingent of Canadians. Escorted by
cruisers and air scouts they crossed the Atlantic
safely and went under canvas in the mud and
wet of Salisbury Plain, in October, 1914. To the
men from the interior, rain and exposure were
nothing new. Hunting deer in the woods and
birds in the marshes means just such conditions.
The others soon became hardened to it. They
had about settled down when they w^ere sent on
garrison duty, first to Fort George in the north
of Scotland, and then to Edinburgh Castle. Ten
months of bayonet-fighting, physical drill, and
twenty-mile route marches over Scottish hills
molded them into trim, erect, bronzed soldiers.

In July of 1915, while the Newfoundlanders
were under canvas at Stob's Camp, about fifty
miles from Edinburgh, I was transferred to Lon-

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TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

don to keep the records of the regiment for the
War Office. At any other time I should have
welcomed the appointment. But then it looked
like quitting. The battalion had just received
orders to move to Aldershot. While we were
garrisoning Edinburgh Castle, word came of the
landing of the Australians and New Zealanders
at Gallipoli. At Ypres, the Canadians had just
then recaptured their guns and made for them-
selves a deathless name. The Newfoundlanders
felt that as colonials they had been overlooked.
They were not militaristic, and they hated the
ordinary routine of army life, but they wanted to
do their share. That was the spirit all through
the regiment. It was the spirit that possessed
them on the long-waited-for day at Aldershot
when Kitchener himself pronounced them " just
the men I want for the Dardanelles."

That day at Aldershot every man was given a
chance to go back to Newfoundland. They had
enlisted for one year only, and any man that
wished to could demand to be sent home at the
end of the year; and when Kitchener reviewed
them, ten months of that year had gone. With
the chance to go home in his grasp, every man of
the first battalion reenlisted for the duration of

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GETTING THERE

the war. And it is on record to their eternal
honor, that during the week preceding their de-
parture from Aldershot, breaches of discipline
were unknown; for over their heads hung the
fear that they would be punished by being kept
back from active service. To break a rule that
week carried with it the suspicion of cowardice.
This was the more remarkable, because many of
the men were fishermen, trappers, hunters, and
lumbermen, who, until their enlistment had said
" Sir " to no man, and who gloried in the reputa-
tion given them by one inspecting oflScer as " the
most undisciplined lot he had ever seen." From
the day the Canadians left Salisbury Plain for
the trenches of Flanders, the Newfoundlanders
had been obsessed by one idea: they must get to
the front.

I was in London when I heard of the inspection
at Aldershot by Lord Kitchener, and of its re-
sults. I had expected to be able to rejoin my
battalion in time to go with them to the Darda-
nelles ; but when I applied for a transfer, I was
told that I should have to stay in London. I
tried to imagine myself explaining it to my
friends in No. 11 section who were soon to em-
bark for the Mediterranean. Apart altogether

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TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

from that, I had gone through nearly a year of
training, had slept on the ground in wet clothes,
had drilled from early morning till late after-
noon, and was perfectly fit. It had been pretty
strenuous training, and I did not want to waste
it in an office.

That evening I applied to the captain in charge
of the office for a pass to Aldershot to bid good-by
to my friends in the regiment. He granted it;
and the next morning a train whirled me through
pleasant English country to Aldershot. At the
station I met an English Tommy.

" I suppose you 're looking for the Newfound-
landers," he said, glancing at my shoulder badges.
I was still wearing the service uniform I had
worn in camp in Scotland, for I had not been
regularly attached to the office force in London.

" I '11 take you to Wellington Barracks," vol-
unteered the Englishman. " That 's where your
lot is."

We trudged through sand, on to a gravel road,
through the main street of the town of Aldershot,
and into an asphalt square, surrounded by brick
buildings, three storied, with iron-railed veran-
das. Men in khaki leaned over the veranda
rails, smoking and talking. A regiment was just

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GETTING THERE

swinging in tlirougli one of the gaps between the
lines.

" Company, at the halt, facing left, form close
column of platoons." Company B of the First
Newfoundland Regiment swung into position and
halted in the square just in front of their quar-
ters. " Company, Dismiss ! " Hands smacked
smartly on rifle stocks, heels clicked together,
and the men of B Company fell out. A gray-
haired, iron-mustached soldier, indelibly stamped
English regular, carrying a bucket of swill across
the square to the dump, stopped to w^atch them.

" Wonder who the new lot is? " said he to a
comrade lounging near. " I cawn't place their
bloomin' badge."

" 'Ave n't you 'eard? " said the other. " Blaw-
sted colonials ; Canydians, I reckon."

A tall, loose-jointed, sandy-haired youth who
approached the two was unmistakably a colonial ;
there was a certain ranginess that no amount of
drilling could ever entirely eradicate.

" Hello, Poppa," he greeted the gray -haired
one, who had now resumed his journey toward
the dump. " What will you answer when your
children say, ' Daddy, what part did you play in
the great war? ' "

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TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

He of the swill bucket spat contemptuously,
disdaining to answer. The sandy -haired youth
continued airily across the square and up the
stairs that led to his quarters. I followed him
up the stairs and through a door on which was
printed " Thirty -two men," and below, in chalk,
" B Company." We entered a long, bare-look-
ing room, down each side of which ran rows of
iron cots. Equipments were piled neatly on the
beds and on shelves above; two iron-legged, bar-
rack-room tables and a few benches completed
the furniture. At one of the tables sat two
young men. One of them, a massively built
young giant, looked up as the door opened.

" Hello, Art," he said to my conductor.
" You 're just the man we want. Don't you want
to join us in a party to go up to London? "

" No," answered Art ; " if you break leave this
week, you don't get to the front."

The big fellow stretched his massive frame in
a capacious yawn.

" I don't think we '11 ever get to the front," he
said. " This is n't a regiment. It 's an officers'
training corps. They gave out a lot more stripes
to-day, and one fellow got a star — made him a
second lieutenant. You 'd think this was the

12

GETTING THERE

American army ; it 's nothing but stars and
stripes. Soon 't will be an honor to be a private.
The worst of it is, they '11 come along to me and
say, ^What's your name and number?' The
only time they ever talk to me is to ask me my
name and number; and when I tell them, they
put me on crime for not calling them ' Sir,' and
when I don't they have me up for insolence."

Art laughed. " Cheer up, old boy," he said ;
" you '11 soon be at the front, and then you won't
have to call anybody ' Sir.' "

" What 's the latest news about the regiment? "
I inquired of my conductor.

" I suppose you know that the King and Lord
Kitchener reviewed us," he said, " and this after-
noon we are to be reviewed once more. It 's a
formality. We should leave this evening or to-
morrow for the front. I suppose we '11 go to
some seaport town and embark there."

While we were talking a bugle blew.
" There 's the cook-house bugle," said Art.
" Come along and have some dinner with us."
He took some tin dishes from the shelves above
the beds, gave me one, and we joined in the rush
down the stairs and across the square to the
cook house.

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TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

In the army, the cook house corresponds to
the (lining-room of civilization. B Company
cook house was a long, narrow, wooden build-
ing. On each side of a middle aisle that led to
the kitchen were plain Avooden tables, each ac-
commodating sixteen men, eight on each side.
When we arrived, the building was full. When
you are eating as the guest of the Government,
there is no hostess to reserve for you the choice
portions ; therefore it behooves you to come early.
In the army, if you are not there at the beginning
of a meal, you go hungry. Thus are inculcated
habits of punctuality. But if you are called and
the meal is not ready, you have your revenge.
Two hundred and sixty-two men of B Company
were showing their disapproval of the cooks' lack
of punctuality. Screeches, yells, and cat cries
rivaled the din of stamping feet and the bang-
ing of tin dishes. Occasionally the door of the
kitchen swung open and afforded a glimpse of
three sweating cooks and their group of help-
ers, working frenziedly. Sometimes the noise
stopped long enough to allow some spokesman to
express his opinion of the cooks, and their fitness
for their jobs, with that delightful simplicity and
charming candor that made the language of the

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GETTING THERE

First Newfoundland Regiment so refreshing.
Loud applause served the double purpose of en-
couraging the speakers and drowning the reply
of the incensed cooks. This was a pity, because
the language of an army cook is worth hearing,
and very enlightening. Men who formerly
prided themselves on their profanity have lis-
tened, envious and subdued, awed by the origi-
nality and scope of a cook's vocabulary, and
thenceforth quit, realizing their own amateurish-
ness. Occasionally, though, one of the cooks,
stung to retort, would appear, wiping his hands
on his overalls, and in a few well-chosen phrases,
cover some of the more recent exploits of the
one who had angered him, or endeavor to clear
his own character, always in language brilliant,
fluent, and descriptive.

But the longest wait must come to an end,
and at last the door of the kitchen swung open
and the helpers appeared. Some mysterious
mess fund had been tapped, and that day dinner
was particularly good. First came soup, then
a liberal helping of roast beef, with potatoes,
tomatoes, and peas, followed by plum pudding.
B Company soon finished. In the army, dinner
is a thing not of ceremony, but of necessity.

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TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

I did not wait for my sandy -liaired friend ; his
name, I gathered, was Art Pratt. He and a
neighbor were adjusting a difference regarding
the ownership of a combination knife, fork, and
spoon. I found my way back to the room marked
" Thirty-two men." Just as I entered, I heard
the bugle sound the " half-hour dress."

All about the room men were busy shining
shoes, polishing buttons, rolling puttees, and ad-
justing equipments. This took time, and the
half hour for preparation soon passed. In the
square below, at the sound of the " Fall In,"
eleven hundred men of the first battalion of the
First Newfoundland Regiment sprang briskly to
attention. After their commanding officer had
inspected them, the battalion formed into col-
umn of route. As the tail of the column swung
through the square, I joined in. A short march
along the Aldershot Road brought us to the
dusty parade ground. Here we were drawn up
in review order, to await the inspecting general.
When he arrived, he rode quickly through the
lines, then ordered the men to be formed into
a three-sided square. From the center of this
human stadium he addressed them.

" Men of the First Newfoundland Regiment,"

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GETTING THERE

said he, " a week ago you were reviewed by His
Majesty the King and by Lord Kitchener. On
that day, Lord Kitchener told you that you were
just the men he needed for the Dardanelles. I
have been deputed to tell you that you are to
embark to-night. You have come many miles to
help us; and when you reach the Dardanelles,
you will be opposed by the bravest fighters in
the world. It is my duty and my pleasure on
behalf of the British Government and of His
Majesty the King to thank you and to wish you
God-speed."

This was the moment the Newfoundlanders
had been waiting for for nearly a year. From
eleven hundred throats broke forth wave upon
wave of cheering. Then came an instant's hush,
the bugle band played the general salute, and
the regiment presented arms. Gravely the gen-
eral acknowledged the compliment, spurred his
horse, and rode rapidly away. The regiment re-
formed, marched back to barracks, and dis-
missed.

I joined the crowd that pressed around the
board on which were posted the daily orders.
My friend Art Pratt was acting as spokes-
man.

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TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

" A and B Companies leave here at eight this
evening," he said. " C and D Companies an
hour later. They march to Aldershot railway
station, and entrain there."

I left the gi'oup around the board and walked
over to the office of the adjutant. He was busy
giving instructions about his baggage.

"Well," he said, " what do you want?"

" I want to go with the battalion this even-
ing, sir," I said.

He questioned me ; and when he found out all
the facts, told me that I could n't go. I did n't
wait any longer. As I went out the door, I
could just hear him murmur something about my
not having the necessary papers. But I was n't
thinking of papers just then. I was wondering
how I could get away. I vowed that if I could
possibly do it I would go with the battalion. I
was passing one of the stairways when I heard
some one yell, " Is that you, Corporal Galli-
shaw? " I turned. It was Sam Hiscock, one of
my old section.

" Hello, Sam," I said. " I did n't know where
to look for old No. 11 section. They 've all been
changed about since they came here."

" Come up this way," said Sam, and I fol-

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GETTING THERE

lowed him up the stairs and into a room occu-
pied by the men of No. 11 section, my old sec-
tion at Stob's Camp in Scotland.

Disconsolately I told them my plight, and dis-
closed my plan guardedly. Sam Hiscock, faith-
ful and loyal to his section, voiced the sentiment.
" Come on with old No. 11 ; we '11 look after you.
All you have to do is hang around here, and
when we 're moving off just fall in with us, and
nobody '11 notice then ; 't will be dark."

" The big trouble is," I said, " I have no equip-
ment, no overcoat, no kit-bag; in fact, no any-
thing."

" You 've got a rain coat," said Pierce Power,
" and I 've got a belt you can have." Another
offered a piece of shoulder strap, and some one
else volunteered to show me where a pile of
equipments were kept in a room. I followed him
out to the room. In the corner a man was sit-
ting on the floor, smoking. He was the guard
over the equipments. He belonged to an Eng-
lish regiment, and so did the equipments. Sam
Hiscock engaged him in conversation for a few
minutes. The topic he introduced was a timely
one: beer. While Hiscock and the guard went
to the canteen to do some research work in

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TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

beverages, I took liis place guarding the equip-
ments. By the time the two returned I had
managed to acquire a passable looking kit. I
spent the rest of the afternoon going around
among my friends and telling them what I pro-
posed to do. At eight o'clock I joined the crowd
that cheered A and B Companies as they moved
away, in charge of the adjutant and the colonel.
When the major called C and D Companies to
attention, I fell in with my old section C Com-
pany. The lieutenant in charge of the platoon
I was with saw me, but in the dusk he could not
recognize my face. I was thankful for the con-
venient darkness ; and because it was fear of his
invention that caused it, I blessed the name of
Count Zeppelin.

" Where 's your rifle? " asked the lieutenant.

•* Have n't got one, sir," I said.

The lieutenant called the platoon sergeant.
" Sergeant," he snapped, " get that man a rifle."
The sergeant doubled back to the barracks and
returned with a rifle. The lieutenant moved
away, and I had just begun to congratulate my-
self, when disaster overtook me. The platoon
was numbered off. There was one man too many,
and of course I was the man. The lieutenant

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GETTING THERE

did not waste any time in vain controversy. He
ordered me out of bis platoon.

"Where shall I go?" I asked.

"As far as I am concerned," he answered,
" you can go straight to hell."

I left his platoon; but when I did, I carried
with me the precious rifle. The sergeant, a thor-
ough man, had been thoughtful enough to bring
with it a bayonet.

The time had now come to risk everything on
one throw. I did. In the army, all orders from
the commanding officer of a regiment are trans-
mitted through the adjutant. I knew that both
the colonel and the adjutant had gone an hour
ago, and could not now be reached. So I walked
up to Captain March, the captain of D Com-
pany, saluted, and told him that I had been or-
dered to join his company.

" Ordered by whom? " he asked.

" By the Adjutant," said I, brazenly.

" I have n't had any orders about that," said
Captain March.

Just then. Captain O'Brien, who had been my
company commander in camp, came up. I think
he must have known what I was trying to do.

" If the Adjutant said so, it 's all right," he

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TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

said, thus leaving the burden of proof on me.

" Go ahead then," said Captain March ; " fall
in."

I fell in. We formed up, and swung out of
the square and along the road that led to the
station. At intervals, where a street lamp threw
a subdued glare, crowds cheered us; for even
Aldershot, clearing house of fighting forces, had
not yet ceased to thrill at the sight of men leav-
ing for the front. Half an hour after we left
the barracks, we were all safely stowed away in
the train, ten men in each of the compartment
coaches. Just as we were pulling out, a soldier
went from coach to coach, shaking hands with
all the men. He came to our coach, put his head
in through the window, and shook hands with
each man. I was on the inside. " Good-by, old
chap," he said, then gasped in astonishment.
The train was just beginning to move. It was
well under way when he recovered himself.
" Gallishaw," he shouted, " you 're under arrest."
It was the sergeant-major of the Record Office
I had quitted in London.

During war time in England, troop trains have
the right of way over all others. All night our
train rattled along, with only one stop. That

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GETTING THERE

was at Exeter where we were given a lunch sup-
plied by the Mayoress and ladies of the town.
I spent the night under the seat; for I thought
the sergeant-major might telegraph to haye the
train searched for me. Early next morning, we
shunted onto a wharf in Devonport, alongside
the converted cruiser Megantic. Her sides were
already lined with soldiers ; another battalion of
eleven hundred men, the Warwickshire Regi-
ment, was aboard. As soon as our battalion had
detrained, I hid behind some boxes on the pier;
and when the last of the men were walking up
the gangplank. I joined them. A steward
handed each man a ticket, bearing the number of
his berth. I received one with the rest. Since I
was in uniform, the steward had no way of tell-
ing whether or not I belonged to the Newfound-
landers.

All that day the Megantic stayed in port, wait-
ing for darkness to begin the voyage. In the
afternoon, we pulled out into the stream; and
at sunset began threading our way between
buoys, down the tortuous channel to the open sea.
A couple of wicked-looking destroyers escorted
us out of Devonport; but as soon as we had
cleared the harbor, they steamed up and shot

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ahead of us. The next morning they had disap-
peared. The first night out I ate nothing, but
the next day I managed to secure a ticket to the
dining-room. With two battalions on board,
there was no room on the Mcgantic for drills;
the only work we had was boat drill once a day.
Each man was assigned his place in the life-
boats. At the stern of the ship a big 4.7 gun
was mounted; and at various other points were
placed five or six machine guns, in preparation
for a possible submarine attack. In addition,
we depended for escape on our speed of twenty-
three to twenty-five knots.

During the boat drills, I stayed below with
the Warwickshire Regiment, or, as we called
them, the Warwicks. This regiment was formed
of men of the regular army, who had been all
through the first gruelling part of the campaign,
beginning with the retreat from Mons, to the
battle of the Marne. They were the remnants
of " French's contemptible little army." Every
one of them had been wounded so seriously as
to be unable to return to the front. Ordinarily
they would have been discharged, but they were
men whose whole lives had been spent in the
army. Few of them were under forty, so they

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GETTING THERE

were now being sent to Khartum in the Sudan,
for garrison duty. At night, I came on deck.
In the submarine area ships showed no lights,
so I could go around without fear of discovery.
The only people I had to avoid were the officers,
and the caste system of the army kept them to
their own part of the ship. The men I knew
would sooner cut their tongues out than inform
on me.

Just before sunset of the third night out, be-
cause we passed several ships, we knew we were
approaching land. At nine o'clock, we were di-
rectly opposite the Rock of Gibraltar. After
we had left Gibraltar behind, all precautions
were doubled; we were now in the zone of sub-
marine operations. Ordinarily we steamed
along at eighteen or nineteen knots; but the
night before we fetched Malta, we zigzagged
through the darkness, with engines throbbing at
top speed, until the entire ship quivered and
shook, and every bolt groaned in protest. With
nearly three thousand lives in his care, our cap-
tain ran no risks. But the night passed without
incident. The next day, at noon, we were safe
in one of the fortified harbors of Malta.

After we left Malta, since I knew I could not

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TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

then be sent back to England, I reported myself
to the adjutant. He and the colonel were in
the orderly room, as the office of a regiment is
called. The sergeant-major in charge of the
orderly room had been taken ill two or three
days before, and the other men had been swamped
by the extra rush of clerical work, incident ou
the departure of a regiment for the front. Per-
haps this had a good deal to do with the lenient
treatment I received. The adjutant came to the
point at once. That is a characteristic of ad-
jutants.

" Gallishaw," he said, " do you w^ant to come
to work here? "

" Yes, sir," I answered.

" All right," he said ; " you 're posted to B
Company."

That night, it appeared in orders that " Lance-
Corporal Gallishaw has embarked with the bat-
talion, and is posted to B Company for pay."
The only comment the colonel made on the af-
fair was to say to the adjutant, " I 've often heard
of men leaving a ship when she is going on active
service, but I 've never heard of men stowing
away to get there." Thus I went to work in the
orderly room ; and in the orderly room I stayed

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GETTING THEKE

until we arrived at Alexandria, Egypt, and en-
trained for Cairo. At Heliopolis, on the desert
near Cairo, we went into camp. There I joined
my company and drilled with it, and bade
good-by to the orderly room and all its works.
We stayed in Egypt only ten days or so to
get accustomed to the heat, and to change our
heavy uniforms and hats for the light-weight
duck uniforms and sun helmets, suitable for the
climate on the Peninsula of Gallipoli. The heat
at Heliopolis was too intense to permit of our
drilling very much. In the very early morning,
before the sun was really strong, we marched
out a mile across the desert, skirmished about
for an hour or so, and returned to camp for
breakfast. The rest of the day we were free.
Ordinarily we spent the morning sweltering in
our marquees, saying unprintable and uncom-
plimentary things about the Egyptian weather.
In the late afternoon and evening, we went to
Cairo. About a mile from where we were
camped, a street car line ran into the city. To
get to it we generally rode across the desert on
donkeys. Every afternoon, as soon as we had
finished dinner, little native boys pestered us
to hire donkeys. They were the same boys who

29

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

poked their heads into our marquees each morn-
ing and implored us to buy papers. We needed
no reveille in Egypt. The thing that woke us
was a native yelling " Eengaleesh paper, veera
good; veera good, veera nice; fifty thousand
Eengaleesh killed in the Dardanelle; veera good,
veera nice."

About a quarter of a mile across the desert
from us was a camp for convalescent Australians
and New Zealanders. As soon as the Austra-
lians found that we were colonials like them-
selves, they opened their hearts to us in the
breezy way that is characteristically Australian.
There is a Canadian hospital unit in Cairo. One
medical school from Ontario enlisted almost en
masse. Professors and pupils carry on work
and lectures in Egypt just as they did in Canada.
It was not an uncommon thing to see on a Cairo
street a group composed of an Australian, a New
Zealander, a Canadian, and a Newfoundlander.
And once we managed to rake up a South Afri-
can. The clean-cut, alert-looking, bronzed Aus-
tralians, who impressed you as having been
raised far from cities, made a tremendous hit
with the Newfoundlanders. One chap who was
returning home minus a leg, gave us a young

30

GETTING THERE

wallaby that he had brought with him from
Australia. One of our boys had a small don-
key, not much larger than a collie dog, that he
bought from a native for a few shillings. The
men vied with each other in feeding the animals.
Some fellows took the kangaroo one evening, and
he acquired a taste for beer. The donkey's taste
for the same beverage was already well devel-
oped. After that, the two were the center of
convivial gatherings. The wallaby got drunk
faster, but the donkey generally got away with
more beer. When we were certain we were to
go to the front, a meeting was held in our mar-
quee. It was unanimously decided that not a
man was to take a cent with him — everybody
was to leave for the front absolutely broke — " to
avoid litigation among our heirs," the spokesman
said. The wallaby and the donkey benefited.
The night before we left the desert camp, they
were wined and dined. The next morning, the
kangaroo, bearing unmistakable marks of his de-
bauch, showed up to say good-by. We were not
allowed to take him with us, and he was rele-
gated to the Zoo in Cairo. The donkey, who had
been steadily mixing his drinks from four o'clock
the afternoon before, did not see us go. When

31

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

we moved off, he was lying unconscious under
one of the transport wagons.

Although we took advantage of every oppor-
tunity for pleasure, we had not lost sight of our
real object. We were grateful for a chance to
visit the Pyramids, and enjoyed our meeting with
the men from the Antipodes, but Egypt soon
palled. The Newfoundlanders' comment was al-
ways the same. " It 's some place, but it is n't
the front. We came to fight, not for sightsee-
ing."

32

CHAPTER II

THERE

IT was with eleven hundred eager spirits that
I lined up on a Sunday evening early in
August, 1915, on the deck of a troopship, in
Mudros Harbor, which is the center of the his-
toric island of Lemnos, about fifty miles from
Gallipoli. Around us lay all sorts of ships, from
ocean leviathans to tiny launches and rowboats.
There were gray and black-painted troopers,
their rails lined with soldiers, immense four-fun-
neled men-o'-war, and brightly lighted, white
hospital ships, with their red crosses outlined in
electric lights. The landing officer left us in a
little motor boat. We watched him glide slowly
shoreward, where we could faintly discern
through the dusk the white of the tents that were
the headquarters for the army at Lemnos. To
the right of the tents, we could see the hospital
for wounded Australians and New Zealanders.
A French battleship dipped its flag as it passed,
and our boys sang the Marseillaise.

33

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

A mail that had come that day was being
sorted. While we waited, each man was served
with his " iron ration." This consisted of a one-
pound tin of pressed corn beef — the much-hated
and much-maligned " bully beef " — a bag of bis-
cuits, and a small tin that held two tubes of
"Oxo," with tea and sugar in specially con-
structed air-and-damp-proof envelopes. This
was an emergency ration, to be kept in case of
direst need, and to be used only to ward off
actual starvation. After that, we were given
our ammunition, two hundred and fifty rounds
to each man.

But what brought home to me most the se-
riousness of our venture was the solitary sheet
of letter paper with its envelope, that was given
to every man, to be used for a parting letter
home. For some poor chaps it was indeed the
last letter. Then we went over the side, and
aboard the destroyer that was to take us to Suvla
Bay.

The night had been well chosen for a surprise
landing. There was no moon, but after a little
while the stars came out. Away on the port bow
we could see the dusky outline of land ; and once,
when we were about half way, an airship soared

34

THERE

phantom-like out of the night, poised over us a
short time, then ducked out of sight. At first
the word ran along the line that it was a hostile
airship, but a few inquiries soon reassured us.

Suddenly we changed our direction. We were
near Cape Hellas, which is the lowest point of
the Peninsula of Gallipoli. Under Sir Ian Ham-
ilton's scheme, it was here that a decoy party
was to land to draw the Turks from Anzac. Si-
multaneously, an overwhelming force was to land
at Suvla Bay and at Anzac, to make a surprise
attack on the Turks' right flank. Presently, we
were going up shore past the wrecked steamer
River Clyde, the famous " Ship of Troy," from
the side of which the Australians had issued after
the ship had been beached ; past the shore hitherto
nameless, but now known as Anzac. Australian,
New Zealand, Army Corps, those five letters
stand for; but to those of us who have been on
Gallipoli, they stand for a great deal more : they
represent the achievement of the impossible.
They are a glorious record of sacrifice, reckless
devotion, and unselfish courage. To put each
letter there cost the men from Australasia ten
thousand of their best soldiers.

And so we edged our way along, fearing mines,

35

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

or, even more disastrous than mines, discovery
by the enemy. From the Australasians over at
Anzac, we could hear desultory rifle fire. Once
we heard the boom of some big guns that seemed
almost alongside the ship. Four hours it took
us to go fifty miles, in a destroyer that could
make thirty-two knots easily. By one o'clock,
the stars had disappeared, and for perhaps three
quarters of an hour we edged our way through
pitch darkness. We gradually slowed down,
until w^e had almost stopped. Something
scraped along our side. Somebody said it was
a floating mine, but it turned out to be a buoy
that had been put there by the navy to mark the
channel. Out of the gloom directly in front
some one hailed, and our people answered.

"Who have you on board?" we heard the
casual English voice say. Then came the reply
from our colonel :

" Newfoundlanders."

There was to me something reassuring about
that cool, self-contained voice out of the night.
It made me feel that we were being expected
and looked after.

" Move up those boats," I heard the English
voice say, and from right under our bow a naval

36

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launch, with a middy in charge, swerved along-
side. In a little while it, with its string of
boats, was securely fastened.

Just before we went into the boats, the -ad-
jutant passed me.

" Well," he said, " you 've got your wish. In
a few minutes you '11 be ashore. Let me know
how you like it when you 're there a little while."

" Yes, sir," I said. But I never had a chance
to tell him. The first shrapnel shell fired at the
Newfoundlanders burst near him, and he had
scarcely landed when he was taken off the Penin-
sula, seriously wounded.

In a short time we had all filed into the boats.
There was no noise, no excitement ; just now and
then a whispered command. I was in a tug with
about twenty others who formed the rear guard.
The wind had freshened considerably, and was
now blowing so hard that our unwieldy tug dared
not risk a landing. We came in near enough
to watch the other boats. About twenty yards
from shore they grounded. We could see the
boys jump over the side and wade ashore.
Through the half darkness we could barely dis-
tinguish them forming up on the beach. Soon
they were lost to sight.

39

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

During the Turkish summer, dawn comes
early. We transhipped from our tug to a
lighter. When it grounded on the beach, day
was just breaking. Daylight disclosed a steeply
sloping beach, scarred with ravines. The place
where we landed ran between sheer cliffs. A
short distance up the hill we could see our bat-
talion digging themselves in. To the left I
could see the boats of another battalion. Even
as I watched, the enemy's artillery located them.
It was the first shell I had ever heard. It came
over the hill close to me, screeching through the
air like an express train going over a bridge at
night. Just over the boat I was watching it
exploded. A few of the soldiers slipped quietly
from their seats to the bottom of the boat. At
first I did not realize that anybody had been hit.
There was no sign of anything having happened
out of the ordinary, no confusion. As soon as
the boat touched the beach, the wounded men
were carried by their mates up the hill to a tem-
porary dressing station. The first shell was the
beginning of a bombardment. " Beachy Bill,"
a battery that we were to become better ac-
quainted with, was in excellent shape. Every
few minutes a shell burst close to us. Shrapnel

40

THERE

bullets and fragments of shell casing forced us
to huddle under the baggage for protection. A
little to the left, some Australians were severely
punished. Shell after shell burst among them.
A regiment of Sikh troops, mule drivers, and
transport men were caught half way up the
beach. Above the din of falling shrapnel and
the shriek of flying shells rose the piercing
scream of wounded mules. The Newfound-
landers did not escape. That morning " Beachy
Bill's " gunners played no favorites. On all
sides the shrapnel came in a shower. Less often
a cloud of thick black smoke, and a hole twenty
feet deep showed the landing place of a high
explosive shell. The most amazing thing was the
coolness of the men. The Newfoundlanders
might have been practising trench digging in
camp in Scotland. When a man was hit, some
one gave him first aid, directed the stretcher
bearers where to find him, and resumed digging.
About nine, I was told off to go to the beach
with one man to guard the baggage. We picked
our way carefully, taking advantage of every bit
of cover. About half way down, we heard the
warning shriek of a shell, and threw ourselves
on our faces. Almost instantly we were in

41

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

the center of a perfect whirlwind of shells.
" Beachy Bill " had just located a lot of Aus-
tralians, digging themselves in about fifty yards
away from us. The first few shells fell short,
but only the first few. After that, the Turkish
gunners got the range, and the Australians had
to move, followed by the shells. As soon as we
were sure that the danger was over, we contin-
ued to the beach, and aboard the lighter that
contained our baggage. We had not had a
chance to get any breakfast before we started,
but the sergeant of our platoon had promised
to send a corporal and another man to relieve
us in two hours. About twelve o'clock the
sergeant appeared, to tell me to wait until one
o'clock, when I should be relieved. He brought
the news that the adjutant had been wounded
seriously in the arm and leg. At the very be-
ginning of the bombardment, a shell had hit him.
About forty of our men had been hit, the ser-
geant said, and the regiment was preparing to
change its position. He showed us the new po-
sition, and told us to rejoin there as soon as
relieved.

About a hundred yards to the right of us rose
a cliff that prevented our boat being seen by the

42

THERE

enemy. The Turks were devoting their attention
to some boats landing well to the left of us. The
officer in charge of landing was taking advan-
tage of this and had a gang near us working on
dugouts for stores and supplies. Right under
the cliffs a detachment of engineers were build-
ing a landing as coolly as if they were at home.
Every fifteen or twenty minutes, to show us that
he was still doing business, " Beachy Bill " sent
over a few shells in our direction. The gunners
could not see us, but they wanted to warn us
not to presume too much. As soon as the first
shell landed near us, the officer in charge
shouted nonchalantly, " Take cover, everybody."
He waited until he was certain every man had
found a hiding place, then effaced himself. The
courage of the officers of the English army
amounts almost to foolhardiness. The men to
relieve us did not arrive at once, as promised.
The hot afternoon passed slowly. Each hour
was a repetition of the preceding one. " Beachy
Bill " was surpassing himself. From far out in
the bay our warships replied.

About five o'clock I espied one of the New-
foundland lieutenants a little way up the beach
in charge of a party of twenty men. I signaled

43

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

to him and he came down to our boat. The
party bad come to unload the baggage. When
I asked the lieutenant about being relieved, he
told me that he had sent a corporal and one
man down about one o'clock, and ordered me
back to the regiment to report to Lieutenant
Steele. Half way up the beach we found Lieu-
tenant Steele. The corporal sent down to re-
lieve me, he told me, had been hit by a shell just
after he left his dugout. The man with him
had not been heard from. I went back to the
beach, and found the man perched up on top
of the cliff to the right of the lighter. He had
been waiting there all the afternoon for the cor-
poral to join him.

Having solved the mystery of the failure of
the relief party, I returned to my platoon. Their
first stopping place had proved untenable. All
day they had been subjected to a merciless and
devastating shelling, and their first day of w^ar
had cost them sixty-five men. They were now
dug in in a new and safer position. They were
only waiting for darkness to advance to reinforce
the firing line that was now about four miles
ahead. Since to get to our firing line we had to
cross the dried-up bed of a salt lake, no move

44

THERE

could be made in daylight. That evening we
received our ration of rum, and formed up si-
lently in a long line two deep, beside our dug-
outs. I fell in with my section, beside Art
Pratt, the sandy-haired chap I had met in Alder-
shot. He had been cleaning his rifle that after-
noon when a shell landed right in his dugout,
wounded the man next him, knocked the bolt of
the rifle out of his hand, but left him unhurt.
He accepted it as an omen that he would come
out all right, and was grinning delightedly while
he confided to me his narrow escape, and was as
happy as a schoolboy at the thought of getting
into action.

Under cover of darkness we moved away si-
lently, until we came to the border of the Salt
Lake. Here we extended, and crossed it in open
order, then through three miles of knee high,
prickly underbrush, to where our division was
entrenched. Our orders were to reinforce the
Irish. The Irish sadlv needed reinforcing.
Some of them had been on the Peninsula for
months. Many of them are still there. From
the beach to the firing line is not over four
miles, but it is a ghastly four miles of graveyard.
Everywhere along the route are small wooden

45

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

crosses, mute record of advances. Where the
crosses are thickest, there the fighting was fierc-
est; and where the fighting was fiercest, there
were the Irish. On every cross, besides a man's
name and the date of his death, is the name of
his regiment. No other regiments have so many
crosses as the Dublins and the Miinsters. And
where the shrapnel flew so fast that bodies man-
gled beyond hope of identity were buried in a
common grave, there ^Iso are the Dublins and
the Munsters ; and the cross over them reads, " In
Memory of Unknown Comrades."

The line on the left was held by the Twenty-
ninth Division; the Dublins, the Munsters, the
King's Own Scottish Borderers, and the New-
foundlanders made up the Eighty-eighth Bri-
gade. The Newfoundlanders were reinforce-
ments. From the very first day of the Gallipoli
campaign, the other three regiments had formed
part of what General Sir Ian Hamilton in his
report calls " The incomparable Twenty-ninth
Division." When the first landing was made,
this division, with the New Zealanders, pene-
trated to the top of Achi Baba, the hill that
commanded the Narrows. For forty -eight hours
the result was in doubt. The British attacked

46

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with bayonet and bombs, were driven back, and
repeatedly reattacked. The New Zealanders
finally succeeded in reaching the top, followed
by the Eighty-eighth Brigade. The Irish fought
on the tracks of a railroad that leads into Con-
stantinople. At the end of forty-eight hours of
attacks and counter attacks, the position was
considered secure. The worn-out soldiers were
relieved and went into dugouts. Then the re-
lieving troops were attacked by an overwhelming
hostile force, and the hill was lost. A battery
placed on that hill could have shelled the Nar-
rows and opened to our ships the way to Con-
stantinople. The hill was never retaken. When
reinforcements came up it was too late. The re-
inforcements lost their way. In his report. Gen-
eral Hamilton attributes our defeat to " fatal in-
ertia." Just how fatal was that inertia was
known only to those who formed some of the
burial parties.

After the first forty-eight hours we 'settled
down to regular trench warfare. The routine
was four days in the trenches, eight days in rest
dugouts, four days in the trenches again, and so
forth, although three or four months later our
ranks were so depleted that we stayed in eight

49

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

days and rested only four. We had expected
four days' rest after our first trip to the firiug
line, but at the end of two days came word of
a determined advance of the enemy. We ar-
rived just in time to beat it off. Our trenches
instead of being at the top were at the foot of
the hill that meant so much to us.

The ground here was a series of four or five
hog-back ridges, about a hundred yards apart.
Behind these towered the hill that was our ob-
jective. From the nearest ridge, about seven
hundred yards in front of us, the Turks had all
that day coustantly issued in mass formation.
During that attack we were repaid for the havoc
wrought by Beachy Bill, As soon as the Turks
topped the crest, they were subjected to a de-
moralizing rain of shell from the navy and from
our artillery. Against the hazy blue of the sky-
line we could see the dark mass clearly silhou-
etted. Every few seconds, when a shell landed
in the middle of the approaching columns, the
sides of the column would bulge outward for an
instant, then close in again. Meanwhile, every
man in our trenches stood on the firing platform,
head and shoulders above the parapet, with fixed
bayonet and loaded rifle, waiting for the order

50

THERE

to begin firing. Still the Turks came on, big,
black, bewhiskered six footers, reforming ranks
and filling up their gaps with fresh men. Now
they were only six hundred yards away. But
still there was no order to open fire. It was un-
canny. At five hundred yards our fire was still
withheld. When the order came, " At four hun-
dred yards, rapid fire," everybody was tingling
with excitement. Still the Turks came on, mag-
nificently determined, but it was too desperate a
venture. The chances against them were too
great, our artillery and machine gun fire too de-
structively accurate. Some few Turks reached
almost to our trenches, only to be stopped by
rifle bullets. " Allah ! Allah ! " yelled the Turks,
as they came on. A sweating, grimly happy ma-
chine gun sergeant was shouting to the Turkish
army in general, " It 's not a damn bit of good
to yell to Allah now." Our artillery opened huge
gaps in their lines, our machine guns piled them
dead in the ranks where they stood. Our own
casualties were very slight; but of the waves of
Turks that surged over the crest all that day,
only a mere shattered remnant ever straggled
back to their own lines.

That was the last big attack the Turks made.

51

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

From that time on, it was virtually two armies
in a state of siege. That was the first night the
Newfoimdlanders went into the trenches as a
unit. A and B Companies held the firing line,
C and D were in the support trenches. Before
that, they filled up gaps in the Dublins or in the
Munsters, or in the King's Own Scottish Bor-
derers. These regiments were our tutors.
Mostly they were composed of veterans who had
put in years of training in Egypt or in India.
The Irish were jolly, laughing men with a soft
brogue, and an amazing sense of humor. The
Scotch were dour, silent men, who wasted few
words. Some of the Scotchmen were young fel-
lows who had been recruited in Scotland after
war broke out. One of these chaps shared my
watch with me the first night. At dark, sentry
groups were formed, three reliefs of two men
each ; these two men stood with their heads over
the parapet watching for any movement in the
no man's land between the lines; that accounts
for the surprisingly large number of men one
sees wounded in the head. The Scottie and I
stood close enough together to carry on a con-
versation in whispers. It turned out that he
had been training in Scotland at the same camp

52

THERE

where the Newfoundlanders were. He had been
on the Peninsula since April, and was all in
from dysentery and lack of food. " Nae meat/'
was the laconic way he expressed it. Like every
Scotchman since the world began, he answered
to the name of " Mac." He pointed out to me
the position of the enemy trenches.

" It 's just aboot fower hundred yairds," he
said, " but you '11 no get a chance to fire ; there 's
wurrkin' pairties oot the nicht." Then as an
afterthought, he added gloomily, " There 's no
chance of your gettin' hit either."

" Why," I asked him in astonishment, " you
don't want to get hit, do you? "

Mac looking at me pityingly. " Man," he
burst out, " when ye 're here as long as I 've been
here, ye '11 be prayin' fer a ' Blighty one.' "

Blighty is the Tommies' nickname for London,
and a " Blighty one " is a wound that 's serious
enough to cause your return to London.

For a few minutes Mac continued looking over
the parapet. Without turning his head, he said
to me : " I '11 gie ye five poond, if ye '11 shoot me
through the airm or the fut." When a Scotch-
man who is getting only a shilling a day offers
you five pounds, it is for something very desir-

53

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

able. Before I had a chance to take him up on
this handsome offer, my attention was attracted
by the appearance of a light just a little in front
of where Mac had said the enemy trench was
located. I grabbed my gun excitedly.

" Dinna fire, lad," cautioned Mac. " We have
a wurrkin' pairty oot just in front. Ye would na
hit anything if ye did. 'T is only wastin' bul-
lets to fire at night."

For almost an hour I continued to watch the
light as it moved about. It was a party of
Turks, Mac explained, seeking their dead for
burial. When I was relieved for a couple of
hours' sleep they were still there.

Just where I was posted, the trench was trav-
ersed ; that is, from the parapet there ran at right
angles, for about six feet, a barricade of sand-
bags, that formed the upright line of a figure T.
The angle made by this traverse gave some pro-
tection from the wind that swept through the
trench. Here I spread my blanket. The night
was bitterly cold, and I shivered for lack of an
overcoat. In coming away hurriedly from Lon-
don, I did not take an overcoat with me. In
Egypt, it had never occurred to me that I should
need one in Gallipoli ; and the chance to get one

54

THERE

I had lost. But I was too weary to let even the
cold keep me awake. In a few minutes I was
as sound asleep as if I had been far from all
thought of war or trenches.

It seemed to me that I had just got to sleep
when I was awakened by a hand shaking my
shoulder roughly, and by a voice shouting,
" Stand to, laddie." It was Mac. I jumped to
my feet, rubbing my eyes.

" What 's the matter? " I asked.

" Nothing 's the matter," said Mac. " Every
morning at daybreak ye stand to airms for an
hour."

I looked along the trench. Every man stood
on the firing platform with his bayonet fixed.
Daybreak and just about sunset are the times
attacks are most likely to take place. At those
times the greatest precautions are taken. Dawn
was just purpling the range of hills directly in
front when word came, " Day duties commence."
Periscopes were served out, and placed about
ten feet apart along the trench. These are plain
oblong tubes of tin, three by six inches, about
two feet high. They contain an arrangement of
double mirrors, one at the top, and one at the
bottom. The top mirror slants backward, and

55

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

reflects objects in front of it. The one at the
bottom slants forward, and reflects the image
caught by the top mirror. In the daytime, by
using a periscope, a sentry can keep his head be-
low the top of the parapet, while he watches the
ground in front. Sometimes, however, a bullet
strikes one of the mirrors, and the splintered
glass blinds the sentry. It is not an uncommon
thing to see a man go to the hospital with his face
badly lacerated by periscope glass.

During the daytime, the men who were not
watching worked at different " fatigues." Para-
pets had to be fixed up, trenches deepened, drains
and dumps dug, and bomb-proof shelters had to
be constructed for the officers. Every few min-
utes the Turkish batteries opened fire on us, but
with very poor success. The navy and our land
batteries replied, with what effect we could not
tell. Once or twice I put my head up higher
than the parapet. Each time I did, I heard the
ping of a bullet, as it whizzed past my ear. Once
a sniper put five at me in rapid succession.
Every one was within a few inches of me, but
fortunately on the outside of the parapet. Just
before landing in Egypt, we had been served out
with large W'hite helmets to protect us from the

56

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THERE

sun. It did not take us very long to discover
that on the Peninsula of Gallipoli these were
veritable death traps. Against the landscape
they loomed as large as tents ; they were simply
invitations to the enemy snipers. We soon dis-
carded them for our service caps. The hot sun
of a Turkish summer bored down on us, adding
to the torment of parched throats and tongues.
We were suffering very much from lack of water.
The first night we went into the firing line we
were issued about a pint of water for each man.
It was a week before we got a fresh supply. We
had not yet had time to get properly organized,
and our only food was hard biscuits, apricot jam,
and bully beef; a pretty good ration under
ordinary conditions, but, without water, most un-
palatable. The flies, too, bothered us inces-
santly. As soon as a man spread some jam on
his biscuits, the flies swarmed upon it, and be-
fore he could get it to his mouth it was black
with the pests.

These were not the only drawbacks. Directly
in front of our trenches lay a lot of corpses,
Turks who had been killed in the last attack.
In front of the line of about two hundred yards
held by B Company there were six or seven hun-

59

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

dred of them. We could not get out to bury
them, nor could we afford to allow the enemy to
do so. There they stayed, and some of the hordes
of flies that continually hovered about them, with
every change of wind, swept down into our
trenches, carrying to our food the germs of dys-
entery, enteric, and all the foul diseases that
threaten men in the tropics.

After two days of this life, we were relieved
and moved back about two miles to the reserve
dugouts for a rest, to get something to eat, and
depopulate our underwear; for the trenches
where we slept harbored not only rats but ver-
min and all manner of things foul.

The regiment that relieved us was an English
regiment, the Essex. They were some of
" Kitchener's Army." We stood down off the
parapet, and the Englishmen took our places.
Then with our entire equipment on our backs
we started our hegira. We had about four
miles to go, two down through the front line
trenches, then two more through winding, nar-
row communication trenches, almost to the edge
of the Salt Lake. Here in the partial shelter
afforded by a small hill were our dugouts. In
Gallipoli there was no attempt at the ambitious

60

THERE

dugout one hears of on the Western front. Our
dugouts resembled more nearly than anything
else newly made graves. Usually one sought a
large rock and made a dugout at the foot of it.
The soil of the Peninsula lent itself readily to
dugout construction. It is a moist, spongy clay,
of the consistency of thick mortar. A pickax
turns up large chunks of it; these are placed
around the sides. A few hours' sun dries out
the moisture, and leaves them as hard and solid
as concrete.

While we had been in the firing line, another
regiment had made some dugouts. There were
four rows of them, one for each company, B
Company's were nearest the beach. We filed
slowly down the line, until we came to the end.
A dugout was assigned to every two men. I
shared one with a chap named Stenlake. We
spread our blankets, put our packs under our
heads, and for the first time for a week, took off
our boots. Before going to sleep, Stenlake and I
chatted for a while. When war broke out, he
told me, he had been a missionary in Newfound-
land. He offered as chaplain, and was accepted
and given a commission as captain. Later some
difficulty arose. The regiment was made up of

61

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

three or four different denominations, about
equally divided. Each one wanted its own chap-
Iain, which was expensive; so they decided to
have no chaplain. Stenlake immediately re-
signed his commission, and enlisted as a private.
Our whisperings were interrupted by a voice
from the next dugout. " You had better get to
sleep as soon as you can, boys ; you have a hard
day before you, to-morrow." It was Mr. Nunns,
the lieutenant in command of our platoon.
Casting aside all caste prejudice, he was sleep-
ing in the midst of his men, in the first dug-
out he had found empty. He could have detailed
some men to build him an elaborate dugout, but
he preferred to be with his " boys." The Eng-
lish officers of the old school claim that this sort
of thing hurts discipline. If they had seen the
prompt and cheerful way in which No. 8 platoon
obeyed Mr. Nunns' orders, they would have been
enlightened.

62

CHAPTER III

TRENCHES

SOMEBODY has said that a change of occu-
pation is a rest. Whoever sent us into
dugouts for a rest, evidently had this definition
in mind. After breakfast the first morning we
were ordered out for digging fatigue just behind
the firing line. In this there was one consola-
tion. We did not have to carry our packs.
Each man took his rifle and either a pick or a
shovel. Communication trenches had to be dug
to avoid long tramps through the firing line ; and
connecting trenches had to be made between the
existing communication trenches. While we
were in dugouts we had eight hours of this work
out of every twenty-four ; four hours in the day-
time and four at night.

The second day in dugouts when we came back
from our morning's digging, we found some new
arrivals making some dugouts about two hun-

63

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

dred yards behind our lines. They were Terri-
torials, who correspond to the militia in the
United States. " The London Terriers," they
called themselves. Mostly they were young fel-
lows from eighteen to twenty-two years old.
They had landed only that morning and were in
splendid condition, and very eager for the com-
ing of evening when they were to go to the fir-
ing line. The ground they had selected was
sheltered from observation by the little ridge near
our line of dugouts ; but some of our men in mov-
ing about attracted the attention of the Turkish
artillery observer. Instantly half a dozen shells
came over the ridge, past our line, and bang!
right in the midst of the Londons, working fear-
ful destruction. Every ten or fifteen minutes
after that, the Turks sent over some shells.
Some regiments are lucky, others seem to walk
into destruction everywhere they turn. The
shells fired at the Newfoundlanders landed in the
Londons. About two minutes' walk from our
dugouts our cooks had built a fire and were pre-
paring meals. A number of our men passed
continually between our line and the cooks'.
Not one of them was even scratched. The only
two of the Londons who ventured there were

64

TRENCHES

hit; one fellow was killed instantly, the other,
seriously wounded through the lungs, lay moan-
ing where he had fallen. It was just dusk, and
nobody knew he had been hit until one of our
men, coming down, heard his hoarse whispering
request to " get a doctor, for God's sake get a
doctor." While somebody ran for the doctor,
our stretcher bearers responded to the all too fa-
miliar shout, " Stretcher bearers at the double,"
but by the time they reached him he was beyond
all need of doctor or stretcher bearers. Before
the London Terriers even saw the firing line,
they lost over two hundred men. They simply
could not escape the Turkish shells. The enemy
had a habit of sending over one shell, then wait-
ing just a minute or less, and following it with
another. The first shell generally wounded two
or three men; the second one was sent over to
catch the stretcher bearers and the comrades
who hastened to aid those who were hit. Be-
fore they had completed their dugouts, the shrap-
nel caught them in the open; after they were
dug in, it buried them alive. Never did a regi-
ment leave dugouts with so much joy as did the
London Terriers when they entered the trenches
for the first time. Ordinarily a man is much

65

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

safer in the firing line than in rest dugouts.
Trenches are so constructed that even when a
shell drops right in the traverse where men are,
only half a dozen or so suffer. In open or
slightly protected ground where the dugouts are,
the burst of a shrapnel shell covers an area
twenty-five by two hundred yards in extent.

A shell can be heard coming. Experts claim
to identify the caliber of a gun by the sound the
shell makes. Few live long enough to become
such experts. In Gallipoli the average length of
life was three weeks. In dugouts we always ate
our meals, such as they were, to the accompani-
ment of " Turkish Delight," the Newfound-
landers' name for shrapnel. We had become ac-
customed to rifle bullets. When you hear the
zing of a spent bullet or the sharp crack of an
explosive, you know it has passed you. The one
that hits you, you never hear. At first we
dodged at the sound of a passing bullet, but soon
we came actually to believe the superstition that
a bullet would not hit a man unless it had on
it his regimental number and his name. Then,
too, a bullet leaves a clean wound, and a man
hit by it drops out quietly. The shrapnel makes
nasty, jagged, hideous wounds, the horrible recol-

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lection of whicli lingers for days in the minds
of those who see them. It is little wonder that
we preferred the firing line.

Every afternoon from just behind our line of
dugouts an aeroplane buzzed up. At the tre-
mendous height it looked like an immense blue-
bottle fly. We always knew when it was two
o'clock. Promptly at that hour every afternoon
it winged its way over us and beyond to the
Turkish trenches. At first the enemy's aero-
planes came out to meet ours, but a few en-
counters with our men soon convinced them of
the futility of such attempts. After that, they
relied on their artillery. In the air all around
the tiny speck we could see white puffs of smoke
that showed where their shrapnel was explod-
ing. Sometimes those puffs were perilously
close to it ; at such times our hearts were in our
mouths. Everybody in the trench craned his
neck to see. When our aeroplane manoeuvered
clear, you could hear a sigh of relief from every
man.

After about the eighth day in dugouts we were
ordered back to the firing line. We had to take
over a part of the trench near Anafarta Village.
In this vicinity the Fifth Norfolks, a company

69

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

formed of men from the King's estate at Sand-
ringbam, had charged into the woods, about two
hundred and fifty strong, and had been com-
pletely lost sight of. This was the most com-
fortable trench we had yet been in. It had been
taken over from the Turks, and when we faced
toward them we had to build another firing plat-
form. This left their firing platform for us to
sleep on. After the cramped, narrow trenches
of the first couple of weeks, this roomy trench
was very pleasant. On both sides of the trench
were some trees that threw a grateful shade in
the daytime. Along the edge grew little bushes
that bore luscious blackberries, but to attempt to
get them was courting death. Nevertheless, the
Newfoundlanders secured a good many. Best
of all though was the " Block House Well." For
the first time we had a plenitude of water. But
by this time conditions had begun to tell on the
men. Each morning more and more men re-
ported for sick parade. They were beginning to
feel the enervating effect of the climate, and of
the lack of water and proper food. While we
were intrenched near the block house, the men
were sickening so fast that in our platoon we
had not enough men to form the sentry groups.

70

TRENCHES

The noncommissioned officers had to take their
place on the parapet, and the ordinary work of
the noncoms, changing sentries, waking reliefs,
and detailing working parties had to be done
by the commissioned officers. Just about an
hour before my turn to watch, I was suddenly
stricken by the fever that lurks on the Peninsula.
In the army, no man is sick unless so pronounced
by the medical officer. Each morning at nine
there is a sick parade. A man taken ill after
that has to wait until the next morning, and is
officially fit for duty. My turn came at eleven
o'clock at night. The man I was to relieve was
Frank Lind. He went on at nine. When eleven
o'clock came, I was burning up with fever. Lind
would not hear of my being roused to relieve him,
but continued on the parapet until one o'clock,
although in that part of the trench snipers had
been doing a lot of execution. Then he rested
for a couple of hours and at three o'clock re-
sumed his place on the parapet for the remainder
of the night. At daybreak he was still there. I
slept all through the night, exhausted by the
fever, and it was not till a few days after that
some one else told me what Lind had done.
From him I heard no mention of it. Whenever

71

TKENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

somebody says that war serves only to bring out
the worst in a man I think of Frank Lind. The
fever that had weakened me so, continued all
that day. I reported for sick parade and was
given a day olf duty. The next day I was given
light duty, and the following day the fever left
me and that night I was fit for duty again, and
was sent out to a detached post about halfway
between us and the enemy. The detached post
was an abandoned house about twenty feet
square. All the doors and windows had been
torn out, and now it was nothing but the merest
skeleton of a house. We had been there about
three hours when there occurred something most
extraordinary and unaccountable. It was a
pitch dark night, and working parties were out
from both sides. Ordinarily there would have
been no firing. Suddenly from away on the
right where the Australians were, began the
sharp crackling of rapid fire. A boy pulling a
wooden stick along an iron park railing makes
almost the same sound. The crackling swept
down the line right past the trench directly be-
hind us and away on to the left. The Turks,
fearing an attack, replied. Between the two

72

TRENCHES

fires we were caught. There were eight of us
in the blockhouse. Only two of us came from
No. 8 platoon, Art Pratt, my sandy-haired friend
of Aldershot days, and I. The sergeant in
charge was from another platoon. When the
rapid fire began, he became melodramatic. He
had the responsibility of seven other men's lives,
and the thing that seemed rather comic to us was
probably very serious to him. There was noth-
ing the matter, though, with the way in which he
handled the situation. There were eight open-
ings in the house for the missing doors and win-
dows. At each window^ he placed a man, and
stood at the door himself, then ordered us to fill
our magazines and fix our bayonets. But psy-
chologically he made a mistake. He turned to
me and said,

" Corporal, we 're in a pretty tight place. We
may have to sell our lives dearly. I want every
man to stand by me. Will you stand by me? "

When the thing had started I had just expe-
rienced a pleasant tingle of excitement, but at
this view of the situation I felt a little serious.
Before I had a chance to reply Art Pratt relieved
the situation by shouting,

73

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

"Did YOU say stand by you? I'll stand by
this window and I '11 bayonet the first damn Turk
I see."

There was a general laugh and the moment of
tension passed. In a few minutes the exchange
of rapid fire died down as suddenly as it had
started. The rest of the night passed unevent-
fully. Just before daybreak we returned to our
platoons.

We never found out the reason for the sudden
exchange of rapid fire. Some Australians away
on the right had started it. Everybody had
joined in, as the firing ran along the line of
trenches. As soon as the officers began an in-
vestigation it was stopped.

It seems to me that most of the time we were
in the blockhouse trench we spent our nights out
between the lines. Most of our work was done at
night. When we wished to advance our line, Ave
sent forward a platoon of men the desired dis-
tance. Every man carried with him three empty
sandbags and his intrenching tool. Temporary
protection is secured at short notice by having
every man dig a hole in the ground that is large
and deep enough to allow liim to lie flat in it.
The intrenching tool is a miniature pickax, one

74

TRENCHES

end of which resembles a large bladed hoe with
a sharpened and tempered edge. The pick end
is used to loosen hard material and to break up
large lumps; the other end is used as a shovel
to throw up the dirt. When used in this fash-
ion the wooden handle is laid aside, the pick end
becomes a handle, and the intrenching tool is
used in the same manner as a trowel. The whole
instrument is not over a foot long, and is car-
ried in the equipment.

Lying on our stomachs, our rifles close at hand,
we dug furiously. First we loosened up enough
earth in front of our heads to fill a sandbag.
This sandbag we placed beside our heads on the
side nearest the enemy. Out in no man's land
with bullets from rifle and machine guns patter-
ing about us, we did fast work. As soon as we
had filled the second and third sandbags we
placed them on top of the first. In Gallipoli
every other military necessity was subordinated
to concealment. Often we could complete a
trench and occupy it before the enemy knew of
it. In the daytime our aeroplanes kept their
aerial observers from coming out to find any
work we had done during the night. Sometimes
while we were digging, the Turks surprised us

75

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

by sending up star shells. They burst like
rockets high overhead. Everything was out-
lined in a strange, uncanny light that gave the
effect of stage fire. At first, when a man saw a
star shell, he dropped flat on his face ; but after a
good many men had been riddled by bullets, we
saw our mistake. The sudden, blinding glare
makes it impossible to identify objects before the
light fades. Star shells show only movement.
The first stir between the lines becomes the tar-
get for both sides. So, after that, even when a
man was standing upright, he simply stood still.
After the block-house trench, our next move
was to a part of the firing line that I have never
been able to identify. It was very close to the
Turks, and in this spot we lost a large number
of men. From one point, a narrow sap or rough
trench ran out at right angles very close to the
Turkish position. It may have been twenty-five
or thirty yards away. To hold this sap was
very important ; if the Turks took it, it gave them
a commanding position. About twenty men
were in it all the time, four or five of them bomb
throwers. The men holding this sap at the time
we were there were the Irish, the Dublin Fusi-

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liers or, as we knew them, the Dubs. The Turks
made several attempts to take it, but were re-
pulsed. When our men were not on sentry duty,
several of them spent their rest hours out in this
sap, talking to the Dubs. The Dubs were inter-
esting talkers. They had been in the thing from
the beginning, and spoke of the landings with
laughter and a fierce joy of slaughter.
Most of them had been on the Western front
before coming to GalliiDoli. From the Turkish
trenches directly in front of this sap, the enemy
signaled the effect of our shots. They used the
same signals that we used in target practice,
waving a stick back and forth to indicate outers,
inners, magpies, and bull's-eyes. Whoever did
it, had a sense of humor; because as soon as he
became tired, he took down the stick for an in-
stant, then raised it again and waved it back
and forth derisively, with a large red German
sausage on the end of it. This did not seem to
bear out very well the tales that the enemy was
slowly starving to death. Prisoners who sur-
rendered from time to time told us that at any
moment the entire Turkish army might surren-
der, as they were very short of food. One thing

79

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

we did know: the Turks felt the lack of shoes;
out between the lines we found numbers of our
dead with the boots cut off.

While we were in this place the Turks dug to
within ten or twelve yards of us before they were
discovered. One of the Dublins saw them first.
He seized some bombs, and jumped out, shout-
ing, " Look at Johnny Turrk. Let 's bomb him
to hell out of it." But Johnny Turk was obsti-
nate; he stayed where he was in spite of our
bombs. One of our fellows, the big chap whom I
had heard at Aldershot complaining about being
asked for his name and number, had crawled into
the sap. He made his way through the smoke
and dirt to the end of the sap where only a few
yards separated him from the Turks. In one
item of armament the British beat the Turks.
We use bombs that explode three seconds after
they are thrown; the Turks' don't explode for
five seconds. The difference of only two seconds
seems slight, but that day in the sap-head it was
of great importance. For a short while the sup-
jjly of bombs for our side ran out. The man who
was trying to get the cover off a box of them
found dififlculty in doing it. The men in the sap-
head were without bombs. Meanwhile the Turks

80

TRENCHES

kept up an uninterrupted throwing of bombs.
Most of tliem landed in the sap. The big New-
foundlander who had crawled out looking for
excitement found it. As soon as the supply of
bombs ran out, instead of getting back into
safety, he stood his ground. The first bomb that
came over dropped close to him. He was swear-
ing softly, and his face was glowing with pleas-
ure. He bent down coolly, picked up the bomb
and threw it back over the parapet at the Turks
w^ho had sent it. With our bombs he could not
have done it, but the extra two seconds were just
enough. Five or six of the bombs came in and
were treated in the same way, before our supply
was resumed. A brigade officer, who had come
out into the sap, stood gazing awe-struck at the
big Newfoundlander. Open-mouthed, with mon-
ocle in hand, the officer was the picture of amaze-
ment. At last he spoke, wdth that slow^, imper-
sonal English drawl :

" I say, my man, what is your name and num-
ber."

The look on the Newfoundlander's face was a
study. He knew he should not have come out
into that sap, and every time that question had
been shot at him before it had meant a repri-

81

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

mand. At last he shrugged his shoulders, then
with a resigned expression, answered the officer
in a fashion not entirely confined to Newfound-
landers— by asking a question: "What in hell
have I done now? "

Without a word the officer turned on his heel
and left the sap. The big fellow waited until
he felt the officer was well out of sight, then de-
parted for his proper place in the trench. One
of the Dubs looking after him, said to me :

" There 's a man that would have been recom-
mended for a Distinguished Conduct Medal if
he 'd answered that officer right."

That Irishman was a man of wide experience.

" I 've been seventeen years in the army, and
I 've been in every war that England fought in
that time," said he, " and I '11 tell you now, the
real Distinguished Conduct Medal men and the
real V. C. heroes never get them. They 're under
the ground." Coming from the man it did, this
expression of opinion was interesting, for he was
Cooke, the man who had been given a Distin-
guished Conduct Medal for his work on the West-
ern front. Since coming to the Peninsula he
had been acting as a sharpshooter, and had been
recommended for the V. C, the Victoria Cross,

82

TRENCHES

whicli is the highest reward for valor in the Brit-
ish army. He was only waiting then, for word
to go to London, to get the cross pinned on by
the King,

" There 's one man on this Peninsula,'- contin-
ued Cooke, " who 's won the V. C. fifty times
over ; that 's the donkey-man."

The man Cooke meant was an Australian, a
stretcher-bearer. His real name was Simpson,
but nobody ever called him that. Because he
was of Irish descent, the Australians, who dearly
love nicknames, called him Murphy, or, Moriarty,
or Dooley, or whatever Irish name first occurred
to them. More generally, though, he was called
the Man with the Donkey, and by this name he
was known all over the Peninsula. In the early
days, the Anzacs had captured some booty from
the Turks and in it were some donkeys. It was
in the strenuous time when men lay in all sorts
of inaccessible places, dying and sorely wounded,
Simpson in those days seemed everywhere. As
soon as he heard of the capture he went down,
looked appraisingly over the donkeys, and com-
mandeered two of them. On one donkey he
painted F. A. No. 1, and on the other, F. A. No.
2 ; F. A. being his abbreviation for Field Ambu-

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TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

lance. Day and night after that Simpson could
be seen going about among the wounded, here giv-
ing a man first aid, there loosening the equip-
ment and making easier the last few minutes for
some poor fellow too far gone to need any medical
care. The wounded men who could not walk or
limp down to the dressing station he carried
down, one on each of the donkeys and one on his
back or in his arms. He talked to the donkeys as
they plodded slowly along, in a strange mixture
of English, Arabic profanity, and Australian
slang. Many an Australian or New Zealander
who has never heard of Simpson remembers
gratefully the attentions of a strangely gentle
man who drove before him two small gray don-
keys each of which carried a wounded soldier.
In Australia long after this war is over men will
thrill at the mention of the Man wdth the Don-
key. I agreed with Cooke that this man had won
the V. C. fifty times over.

Cooke was going out that night, he told me,
to stay for three or four days, sniping, between
the lines. As soon as he came back he expected
to go to London.

" Before I go out," he said, " I '11 show you a

84

TRENCHES

good place where you can get a shot at Abdul
Pasha."

I followed Cooke out through the sap and up
the trench a little way to where it turned sharply
to avoid a large boulder. Just in front of this
boulder was some short, prickly underbrush.
Cooke parted the bushes cautiously with his
hand, and motioned me to come closer, I did
and through the opening he pointed out the en-
emy trench about four hundred yards away, and
about thirty yards in front of it a little clump of
bushes.

" Just in front of those bushes," said Cooke,
" there 's a sniper's dugout. Keep your eyes
open to-morrow and you ought to get some of
them."

I noted the place for the next day, and walked
down to the sap with Cooke. There I shook
hands with him, wished him good luck, and re-
turned to my platoon.

That night I had to go out on listening patrol
between the lines. At one o'clock my turn came.
An Irish sergeant came along the trench for me
to guide me out to the listening post. I went
with him a short distance along the trench,

85

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TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

picked up four others, then with a shoulder from
a comrade, we got over the parapet. The listen-
ing post was about a hundred yards away. We
had gone only a few yards when we heard firing
coming from that direction, first one shot fol-
lowed by twenty or thirty in quick succession,
then silence. A man stumbled out of the dark-
ness immediately in front of us. He was pant-
ing and excited. It was a messenger from the
corporal that we were going to relieve. He had
been walking along without the least suspicion
of danger when he had run full tilt into a party
of fifteen or sixteen of the enemy. He had
dropped down immediately and yelled to one of
his men to go back to the trench with word. We
followed the panting messenger to the post. The
enemy had now disappeared. We opened rapid
fire in the direction in which they had gone.
Evidently it was right, for in a few seconds they
returned it, wounding one man. For about five
minutes we kept up firing, with what success we
could not tell, but at any rate we had the satis-
faction of driving off a superior force. Those
two hours straining through the darkness were
not particularly pleasant. I did not know what
moment or from what direction the enemy might

86

TRENCHES

come, and I knew that if he did come it would be
in force. Apparently the whole thing was un-
planned, because during the remainder of my two
hours, although I peered unceasingly in all direc-
tions, I could see nothing, nor could I hear the
slightest sound. Evidently Johnny Turk was
willing to let well enough alone. That night
when I returned to the trench I was told that the
next night at dark we were to go into dugouts.

Ordinarily the thought of dugouts was dis-
tasteful, but it seemed years since I had taken
my boots off. Our platoon had lost heavily,
mostly from disease. All the novelty had worn
off the trench life. Instead of six noncoms, there
were only three. Each of us was doing the work
of two men. Our ration had been the eternal
bully beef, biscuit, and jam. Our cooks did their
best to make it palatable by cooking the beef in
stew with some desiccated vegetables, but these
were hard and tasteless. Most of us had got to
the stage where the very sight of jam made us
sick. That night, looking down through the ra-
vine, I saw, winking and blinking cheerfully, the
only light that brightened the Stygian darkness,
the Eed Cross of the hospital ships. I have won-
dered since if the entrance to heaven is illumi-

87

tke:nching at gallipoli

nated with an electric Red Cross. There was not
a man in the whole battalion who was really fit.
Most of them had had a touch of one or more of
the prevalent diseases.

Stenlake, the young clergyman, who had been
my dugout mate, was scarcely able to drag him-
self about the trench. And by this time we had
the weather to contend with. It was nearing
the middle of October, and the rainy season
was almost upon us. Occasionally the sky dark-
ened up to a heavy grayness that seemed to cover
everything as Avith a pall. Following this came
heavy, sudden squalls that swept through the
trenches, drenching everything, and tearing
blankets and equipments w4th them. Although
the sun still continued to bore down unremit-
tingly in the daytime, the nights had become bit-
terly cold, and to the tropical diseases were
added rheumatism and pneumonia. On the men
from Newfoundland the climate was especially
telling. We had ceased to wonder at the crowd
of men who reported sick each morning, and
simply marveled that the number was not
greater.

All over the Peninsula disease had become
epidemic until the clearing stations and the

88

TRENCHES

beaclies were choked with sick. The time we
should have been sleeping was spent in digging,
but still the men worked uncomplainingly.
Some, too game to quit, would not report to the
doctor, working on courageously until they
dropped, although down in the bay beckoned the
Red Cross of the hospital ship, with its assurance
of cleanliness, rest, and safety. By sickness and
snipers' bullets w^e were losing thirty men a day.
Nobody in the front line trenches or on the shell-
swept area behind ever expected to leave the
Peninsula alive. Their one hope was to get off
wounded. Every night men leaving the trenches
to bring up rations from the beach shook hands
wdth their comrades. From every ration party
of twenty men we always counted on losing two.
Those who were wounded were looked on as
lucky. The best thing we could wish a man was
a " cushy wound," one that would not prove fatal,
or a " Blighty one." But no one wanted to quit.
Men hung on till the last minute. Often it was
not till a man dropped exhausted that we learned
from his comrades that he had not eaten for
days. The only men in my platoon who seemed
to be nearly fit were Art Pratt, and a young chap
named Hayes. Art seemed to be enjoying the

89

TEENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

life tliorougbly. He went about the trench,
cheerfully, grinning and whistling, putting heart
into the others. Whenever there was any spe-
cially dangerous work to be done. Art always vol-
unteered. He spent more time out between the
lines than in the trench. Whenever a specially
reliable, cool man was needed, Art was selected.
Young Hayes was a small chap who had been in
my platoon at Stob's Camp in Scotland. He had
made a record for being absent from parade, and
was always in trouble for minor offenses. I took
him in hand and did my best to keep him out of
trouble. Out in the trenches he remembered it,
and followed me around like a shadow. When-
ever I was sent in charge of a fatigue party he
always volunteered. The men all did their best
to make the work of the noncoms easy. As a
study in the effects of colonial discipline it would
have been enlightening for some of the English
officers. The men called their corporals and ser-
geants. Jack, or Bill, or Mac, but there never
was the slightest question about obeying an or-
der. Everybody knew that everybody else was
overworked and underfed, and every man tried
to give as little trouble as possible. Such con-
duct from the Newfoundlanders was astonishing,

90

TRENCHES

as in training tliey simply loved to make trouble
for the noncoms, and the most unenviable job in
the regiment was that of corporal or sergeant.
Such were the conditions the next afternoon
when we moved from the firing trench to rest near
some dugouts that had been forsaken by the
Royal Scots. They had been relieved, some said,
to go to the island of Imbros, about fifteen miles
away, for a rest. At Imbros, rumor said, you
could buy, in the canteen, eggs and butter, and
other heavenly things that we had almost forgot-
ten the taste of. At Imbros, too, you were free
from shell fire, and drilled every day just as you
did in training. It was whispered, too, but
scornfully discredited, that Imbros boasted
shower baths, and ovens for the disinfecting of
clothing. Others claimed that the Royal Scots
had been withdrawn from the Peninsula and
were going to the Western front. They were the
first regiment to leave of the Twenty-ninth Di-
vision. The whole division was to be withdrawn
gradually. The Tw^enty-ninth w^as our division,
and we were to go with it to England. We were
to winter in Scotland and after we had been
recruited up to full strength were to go to France
in the spring. An examination of the empty

91

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

dugouts strengthened this belief. Blankets, rub-
ber sheets, belts, pieces of equipment, and even
overcoats were lying around. In one of the dug-
outs I found a copy of the Odyssey, and half a
dozen other books. A few dugouts away I came
upon one of our fellows gazing regretfully upon
an empty whisky bottle. As I approached him,
I overheard him murmur abstractedly, " My fa-
vorite brand too, my favorite brand." I passed
on without interrupting him. It was too sacred
a moment.

92

CHAPTER ly

DUGOUTS

THE afternoon sun poured down steadily on
little groups of men preparing dugouts for
habitation. I had a good many details to attend
to before I could look about for a suitable place
for a dugout. Men had to be told off for differ-
ent fatigues. Men for pick and shovel work
that night were placed in sections so that each
group would get as much sleep as possible. All
the available dugouts had been taken up by the
first comers. The location here was particu-
larly well suited for dugouts. A mule path to
the beach ran along the bottom of a narrow ra-
vine. On one side of the path the ground
shelved gradually up till it merged into a plain,
covered with long grass, overgrown and neg-
lected. On the other side, a ridge sloped up
sharply and formed a natural protection before
it also merged into a " gorse " covered plateau.
Small evergreen bushes served the double pur-
pose of hiding our movements from the enemy

93

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

and affording some shade from the broiling sun.
At the foot of the ridge we made our line of
dugouts. The angle of the ridge was so steep
that an enemy shell could not possibly drop on
our dugouts. A little further away some of A
Company's dugouts were in the danger zone.
After much hunting, I found a likely looking
place. It was about seven feet square, and where
I planned to put the head of my dugout a large
boulder squatted. It was so eminently suitable
that I wondered that no one else had preempted
it. I took off my equipment, threw my coat on
the ground, and began digging. It was soft
ground and gave easily.

A short distance away, I could see Art Pratt,
digging. He was finding it hard work to make
any impression. He saw me, stopped to mop
his brow, and grinned cheerfully.

" You should take soft ground like this, Art,"
I yelled.

" I 've gone so far now," said Art, " that it 's
too late to change," and we resumed our work.

After a few more minutes' digging, my pick
struck something that felt like the root of a tree,
but I knew there was no tree on that God-for-
saken spot large enough to send out big roots.

94

Washing day in war-time

DUGOUTS

I disentangled the pick and dug a little more,
only to find the same obstruction. I took my
small intrenching tool, scraped away the dirt I
had dug, and began cleaning away near the base
of a big boulder. There were no roots there,
and gradually I worked away from it. I took
my pick again, and at the first blow it stuck.
Without trying to disengage it I began straining
at it. In a few seconds it began to give, and I
withdrew it. Clinging to it was part of a Turk-
ish uniform, from which dangled and rattled the
dried-up bones of a skeleton. Nauseated, I hur-
riedly filled in the place, and threw myself on
the ground, physically sick. While I was lying
there one of our men came along, searching for
a place to bestow himself. He gazed inquir-
ingly at the ground I had just filled in.

"Is there anybody here?" he asked me, in-
dicating the place with a pick-ax.

" Yes," I said, with feeling, " there is."

" It looks to me," he said, " as if some one be-
gan digging and then found a better place. If
he don't come back soon I '11 take it."

For about fifteen minutes he stood there, and
I lay regarding him silently. At last he spoke
again.

97

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

" I think I '11 go ahead," he said. " Possession
is nine points of the law, and the fellow has n't
been here to claim it."

" I would n't if I were you," I said. " That
fellow 's been there a hell of a long while."

I left him there digging, and crawled away to
a safe distance. In a few minutes he passed me.

" Why did n't you tell me? " he demanded, re-
proachfully.

" Because half of the company saw me digging
there and did n't tell me," I said.

I was prospecting around for another place
when Art Pratt hailed me. " Why don't you
come with me," he said, " instead of digging an-
other place? "

I went to where he was and looked at the
dugout. It was n't very wide, and I said so.
Together we began widening and deepening the
dugout, until it was big enough for the two of
us. It was grueling work, but by supper time
it was done. The night before, a fatigue party
had gone down to the beach and hauled up a big
field kitchen. Our cooks had made some tea,
and we had been issued some loaves of bread.
Art unrolled a large piece of cloth, with all the
pomp and ceremony of a man unveiling a mouu-

98

DUGOUTS

ment. He did it slowly and carefully. There
was a glitter in his eyes that one associates with
an artist exhibiting his masterpiece. He gave
a triumphant switch to the last fold and held
toward me a large joiece of fresh juicy steak.

" Beefsteak ! " I gasped. " Sacred beefsteak !
Where did you get it?"

Art leaned toward me mysteriously. " Of-
ficers' mess/' he whispered.

" I 've got salt and pepper," I said, " but how
are you going to cook it ? "

" I don't know," said Art, '' but I 'm going up
to the field kitchen ; there 's some condensed milk
that I may be able to get hold of to spread on our
bread."

While Art was gone, I strolled down the ra-
vine a little way to where some of the Royal En-
gineers were quartered. The Eoyal Engineers
are the men who are looked on in training as a
noncombatant force, with safe jobs. In war-
time they do no fighting, but their safe jobs con-
sist of such harmless work as fixing up barbed
wire in front of the parapet and setting mines
under the enemy's trenches. For a rest they are
allowed to conduct parties to listening posts and
to give the lines for advance saps. Sometimes

99

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

thej make loopholes in the parapet, or bolster
up some redoubt that is being shelled to pieces.
The Turks were sending over their compliments
just as I came abreast of the Engineers' lines.
One of the engineers was sifting some gravel
w^hen the first shell landed. He dropped the
sieve, and turned a back somersault into some
gorse-bushes just behind him. The sieve rolled
down, swayed from side to side, and settled close
to my head, in the depression where I was con-
scientiously emulating an ostrich. I gathered
it to my bosom tenderly and began crawling
away. From behind a boulder I heard the engi-
neer bemoaning to an officer the loss of his sieve,
and he described in detail how a huge shell had
blown it out of his hands. Joyfully I returned
to Art with my prize.

" What 's that for? " said Art.

" Turn it upside down," I said, " and it 's a
steak broiler."

" Where did you get it? " said Art,

I told him, and related how the engineer had
explained it to his officer.

Up at the field kitchen a group was standing
around.

" What 's the excitement? " I asked Art.

100

DUGOUTS

" Those fellows are a crowd of thieves," an-
swered Art, virtuously. " They 're looking about
to see what they can steal. I was up there a few
minutes ago and saw a can of condensed milk
lying on the shaft of the field kitchen. They
were watching me too closely to give me a chance,
but you might be able to get away with it."

The two of us strolled up slowly to where Hebe
Wheeler, the creative artist who did our cooking,
was holding forth to a critical audience.

" It 's all very well to talk about giving you
things to eat, but I can't cook pancakes without
baking powder. You can't get blood out of a
turnip. I 'd give you the stuff if I got it to cook,
but I don't get it, do I, Corporal? " said Hebe, ap-
pealing to me.

I moved over and stood wath my back to the
shaft on which rested the tin of condensed milk.

" No, Hebe," I said, " you don't get the things ;
and when you do get them, this crowd steals them
on you."

" By God," said Hebe, " that 's got to be put
a stop to. I '11 report the next man I find steal-
ing anything from the cookhouse."

I put my hand cautiously behind my back, un-
til I felt my fingers close on the tin of milk.

101

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

" You let me know, Hebe," I said, as I slipped the
tin into the roomy pocket of my riding breeches,
" and I '11 make out a crime sheet against the
first man whose name you give." I stayed about
ten minutes longer talking to Hebe, and then
returned to my dugout. Art had finished broil-
ing the piece of steak, and we began our supper.
I put my hand in my breeches' pocket to get the
milk. Instead of grasping the tin, my fingers
closed on a sticky, gluey mass. The tin had been
opened when I took it and I had it in my pocket
upside down. About half of it had oozed over
my pocket. Art was just pouring the remainder
on some bread when some one lifted the rubber
sheet and stuck his head into our dugout. It
was the enraged Hebe Wheeler. As soon as he
had missed his precious milk he had made a
thorough investigation of all the dugouts. He
looked at Art accusingly,

" Come in, Hebe," I said pleasantly. " We
don't see you very often."

Hebe paid no attention to my invitation, but
glared at Art.

" I 've caught you with the goods on," he said.
" Give me back that milk, or I '11 report you to
the platoon officer."

102

DUGOUTS

" You can report me to Lord Kitchener if you
like," said Art, calmly, as he drained the can;
" but this milk stays right here."

Hebe disappeared, breathing vengeance.

After supper that night a crowd sat around the
dying embers of one of the fires. This was one
of the first positions we had been in where there
w^as cover suflficient to warrant fires being
lighted. A mail had been distributed that day,
and the men exchanged items of news and
swapped gossip. There were men there from all
parts of Newfoundland. They spoke in at least
thirty different accents. Any one who made a
study of it could tell easily from each man's ac-
cent the district he came from. Much of the
mail was intimate, and necessitated private peru-
sal, but much more was of interest to others.
It was interesting to hear a man yell to a friend
who came from his same " bay " that another
man had enlisted from Eobinson's, making up
eighteen of the nineteen men of fighting age in
the place. Sometimes the new^s was that " Half
has volunteered, and Hed was turned down by
the doctor."

This from some resident of the northern parts
where the fog is not, and where aspirates are of

103

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

little consequence. This news gives rise to the
opinion that "that's the hend o' Half." This
with much discussion and ominous shaking of
the head. Sometimes a friend of the absent
" Half " would tell of Half's exploit of stealing
a trolley from the Reid Newfoundland Railway
Company and going twenty miles to see a girl.
Sometimes the hero was a married man. Then
it was opined that his conjugal relations w^ere
not happy, and the reason he enlisted was that
"he had heard something." All these opinions
and suggestions were voiced with that beautiful
freedom from restraint so characteristic of the
ordinary conversation of the members of our reg-
iment. Much was made of the arrival of a mail.
It did not happen often, and the letters that came
were three or four months old. " As cold wa-
ters to a thirsty soul," says Solomon, " so is good
news from a far country." The Newfoundland-
ers in that barren, scorched country caught eag-
erly at every shred of news from that distant
Northern country that they loved enough to risk
their lives for. With such a setting it is little
wonder that tlie talk was much of home. Be-
hind the persiflage of the talk there was a poign-
ant longing for those dark, cool forests of pine

104

DUGOUTS

where the caribou roam, and the broad-bosomed
lakes and rivers that were the highways for the
monsters of the Northern forests on their jour-
ney to the mills. The lumbermen of Notre Dame
Bay and Green Bay told fearsome and wondrous
tales of driving and swamping, of teaming and
landing, until one almost heard the blows of the
ax, the " gee " and " haw " of the teamsters, and
smelt the pungent odor of new-cut pine. The
Reid Newfoundland Railway, the single narrow
gage road that twists a picturesque trail across
the Island, had given largely of its personnel to-
ward the making of the regiment. Firemen and
engineers, brakemen and conductors, talked
reminiscently of forced runs to catch expresses
with freight and accommodation trains. There
is an interesting tale of two drivers who blew
their whistles in the Morse code, and kept up
communication with each other, until a girl
learned the code and broke up the friendship.
A steamship fireman contributed his quota with
a story of laboring through mountainous seas
against furious tides when the stokers' utmost
efforts served only to keep steamers from losing
way. By comparison with the homeland, Tur-
key suffered much; and the things they said

105

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

about Gallipoli were lamentable. From the
gloom on the other side of the fire a voice chanted
softly, " It 's a long, long way to Tipperary, It 's
a long way to go." Gradually all joined in.
After Tijjperary, came many marching songs.
"Are we downhearted? NO," with every one
booming out the " No." " Boys in Khaki, Boys
in Blue," and at last their own song; to the tune
of " There is a tavern in the town."

And when those Newfoundlanders start to yell, start to yell,
Oh, Kaiser Bill, you '11 wish you were iu hell, were in hell ;
For they '11 hang you high to your Potsdam palace wall,
You 're a damn poor Kaiser, after all.

The singing died down slowly. The talk turned
to the trenches and the chances of victory, and
by degrees to personal impressions.

" I 'd like to know," said one chap, " why we
all enlisted."

" When I enlisted," said a man with an
accent reminiscent of the Placentia Bay, " I
thought there 'd be lots of fun, but with weather
like this, and nothing fit to eat, there 's not much
poetry or romance in war any more."

" Right for you, my son," said another ; " your
King and Country need you, but the trouble is
to make your King and Country feed you."

106

DUGOUTS

" Don't you wish you were in London now,
Gal?" said one cliap, turning to me. "You'd
have a nice bed to sleep in, and could eat any-
where you liked."

" Well," I said, " enough people tried to per-
suade me to stop. One fellow told me that the
more brains a man had, the farther away he was
from the firing-line. He 'd been to the front too.
I think," I added, " that General Sherman had
the right idea."

" I wish you fellows would shut up and go to
sleep," said a querulous voice from a nearby dug-
out.

" You don't know what you 're talking about.
Gal; General Sherman was an optimist."

" It does n't do any good to talk about it now,"
said Art Pratt, in a matter of fact voice. " Some
of you enlisted so full of love of country that
there was patriotism running down your chin,
and some of you enlisted because you w^ere dis-
appointed in love, but the most of you enlisted
for love of adventure, and you 're getting it."

Again the querulous subterranean voice inter-
rupted : " Go to sleep, you fellows — there 's
none of you knows what you 're talking about.
There 's only one reason any of us enlisted, and

107

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

that 's pure, low down, unmitigated ignorance."
Amid general laughter the class in applied psy-
chology broke up, and distributed themselves in
their various dugouts.

Halfway down to my dugout, I was arrested
by the sound of scuffling, much blowing and puff-
ing, and finally the satisfied grunt that I knew
proceeded from Hebe Wheeler.

" I 've got a spy," he yelled. " Here 's a bloody
Turk."

" Turk nothing," said a disgusted voice.
" Don't you know a man from your own com-
pany?"

Hebe relinquished his hold on his captive and
subsided, grumbling. The other arose, shook
himself, and went his way, voicing his opinion
of people who built their dugouts flush with the
ground.

" What do you think of the news from the
Western front? " said Art, when I located him.

"What is it? "I asked.

" The enemy are on the run at the Western
front. The British have taken four lines of Ger-
man trenches for a distance of over five miles in
the vicinity of Loos. The bulletin board at

108

DUGOUTS

Brigade headquarters says that they have cap-
tured several large guns, a number of machine
guns, and seventeen thousand unwounded
prisoners. If they can keep this up long enough
for the Turks to realize that it is hopeless to ex-
pect any help from that quarter, Abdul Pasha
will soon give in."

We were talking about Abdul Pasha's sur-
rendering when we dropped off to sleep. We
must have been asleep about two hours when the
insistent, crackling sound of rapid fire, momen-
tarily increasing in volume, brought us to our
feet. Away up on the right, where the Austra-
lians were, the sky was a red glare from the flash-
ing of many rifles. Against this, we could see
the occasional flare of different colored rockets
that gave the warships their signals for shelling.
Very soon one of our officers appeared.

" Stand to arms for the Newfoundlanders," he
said.

"What is it?" I asked.

*' The Australians are advancing," he an-
swered. " We '11 go up as reinforcements if
we 're needed. Tell your men to put on their
ammunition belts, and have their rifles ready.

109

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

They need n't put on their packs ; but keep them
near them so that they can slip them on if we
get the order to move away."

I went about among the men of my section,
passing along the word. Everybody was tin-
gling with excitement. Nobody kncAV just what
was about to happen ; but every one thought that
whatever it was it would prove interesting. For
about half an hour the rapid fire kept up, then by
degrees died down.

" Did you see that last rocket? " said a man
near me ; " that means they 've done it. A red
rocket means that the navy is to fire, a green to
continue firing, and a white one means that
we 've won.''

In a few minutes Mr. Nunns walked toward
us. " You can put your equipments off, and turn
in again," he said, " nothing doing to-night."

" What is all the excitement? " I asked.

" Oh, it 's the Anzacs again," he said ; " when
they heard of the advance at Loos, they went over
across, and surprised the Turks. They 've taken
two lines of trenches. They did it without any
orders — just wanted to celebrate the good
news.''

I was awakened the next morning by the sound

110

DUGOUTS

of a whizz-bang flying over our dugout. Johnny
Turk was sending us his best respects. I shook
Art, who was sleeping heavily.

" Get up, Art," I said. I might as well have
spoken to a stone wall. I tried again. Putting
my mouth to his ear, I shouted, " Stand to. Art.
Stand to."

Art turned over, sleeping. " I '11 stand three
if you like, but don't disturb me," he muttered,
and relapsed into coma.

In a few minutes, two or three more shells
came along. They were well over the ridge be-
hind us, but were landing almost in the midst of
another line of dugouts. I stood gazing at them
for a little while. A man passed me running
madly. " Come on," he gasped, " and yell for
the stretcher." I followed him without further
question. " It 's all right," he said, slowing up
just before we came to the line of dugouts that
had just been shelled. " Thej 've got him all
right." We continued toward a group that
crowded about a stretcher. A man was lying on
it, with his head raised on a haversack. He
rolled his eyes slowly and surveyed the group.
" What the hell is the matter? " he said dazedly;
then felt himself over gingerly for wounds. Ap-

111

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

parently lie could find none. " What hit me? '*
he asked, appealing to a grinning Red Cross man.

" Nothing," said the other, " except about a
ton of earth. It 's a lucky thing some one saw
you. That last shell buried you alive."

The whistle of a coming shell dispersed the
grinning spectators. I went back to my dugout,
and found Art busily toasting some bread over
the sieve that I had commandeered the day before.

" What was the excitement? " he asked.

" Charlie Renouf," I said, " was buried alive.''

" Heavens," said Art, " he 's the postman ; we
can't afford to lose him. That reminds me that
I 've got to write some letters."

After we had finished breakfast, Art produced
some writing paper and an indelible pencil. I
did not have any writing paper, but I contributed
a supply of service postcards, that bear such
meager information as " I am quite well," " I am
sick," " I am wounded," " I am in hospital and
doing well," " I am in hospital and expect to be
discharged soon," " I have not heard from you
for a long time," " I have had no letter from you

since ," " I have your letter of ," " I

have received your parcel of ," and a space

for the date and the signature. When a man

112

3
<J1

V

ja
o
a

4)

a

o

u

o
a

'a

o

a

3

tic
a

"a

OS

a>

DUGOUTS

writes home from the front, he crosses out all
but the sentences he wants read, puts in the date,
and adds his signature. This is the ordinary
means of communication. About once a week a
man is allowed to write some letters; but these
are censored by his platoon officer, who seals
them, and signs his name as a record of their
having been passed by him. Sometimes the cen-
sor at the base opens a few of them. Perhaps
once a fortnight a few privileged characters are
given large blue envelopes, that have printed in
the corner:

Note. —
Correspondence in this envelope need not be censored

Regimentally. The contents are liable to examination at

the Base.

The following Certificate must be signed by the writer :
/ certify on my honour that the contents of this envelope

refer to nothng but private and family matters.

Signature

(Name only)

While we were writing, the orderly sergeant,
that dread of loafers, who appoints all details
for fatigue work, bore down upon our dugout.
" Two men from you. Corporal Gallishaw," he
said, " for bomb throwers. Give me their names
as soon as you can. They 're for practice this
afternoon."

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TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

" One here, right away," said Art, " and put
Lew O'Dea down for the other."

Lew O'Dea was a character. He was in the
next dugout to me. The first day on the Penin-
sula, his rifle had stuck full of sand, and some
one had stolen his tin canteen for cooking food.
He immediately formed himself into an anti-
poverty society of one thereafter, and went
around like a walking arsenal. I never saw him
with fewer than three rifles, usually he carried
half a dozen. He always kept two or three of
them spotlessly clean; so that no matter when
rifle inspection came, he always had at least one
to show. He had been a little late in getting his
rifle clean once and was determined not to be
caught any more. His equipment always con-
tained a varied assortment of canteens, seven or
eight gas masks, and his dugout was luxurious
with rubber sheets and blankets. " I inherited
them," he always answered, whenever anybody
questioned him about them. With ammunition
for his several rifles, when he started for the
trenches in full marching order, he carried a load
that a mule need by no means have been ashamed
of.

" Do you want to go on bomb throwing detail

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DUGOUTS

this afternoon? " I called to O'Dea across the top
of the dugout.

" Sure," he answered ; " does a swim want to
duck?"

" Fine," I said ; " report here at two o'clock."
At two o'clock, accompanied by an offlcer and
a sergeant, we went down the road a little way
to where some Australians were conducting a
class in bomb throwing. A brown-faced chap
from Sydney showed me the difference between
bombs that you explode by lighting a match,
bombs that are started by pulling out a plug,
and the dinky little three-second " cricket balls "
that explode by pressing a spring. I asked him
about the attack the night before. He told me
that they had been for some time waiting for
a chance to make a local advance that would
capture an important redoubt in the Turkish
line. Every night at exactly nine o'clock, the
Navy had thrown a searchlight on the part
of the line the Anzacs wanted to capture. For
ten minutes they kept up heavy firing. Then,
after a ten minutes' interval of darkness and
suspended firing, they began a second illumina-
tion and bombardment, commencing always at
twenty minutes past nine, and ending precisely

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TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

at half past. After a little while, the enemy,
knowing just the exact minute the bombardment
was to begin, took the first beam of the search-
light as a hint to clear out. But the night before,
a crowd of eager Australians had crept softly
along in the shadow made doubly dark by the
glare of the searchlight, the noise of their advance
covered by the sound of the bombardment. As
soon as the bombardment ceased and the search-
light's beam was succeeded by darkness, they
poured into the Turkish position. They had taken
the astonished Turks completely by surprise.

" We did n't expect to make the attack for an-
other week," said the Australian ; " but as soon
as our boys heard that we w^ere winning in
France, they thought they 'd better start some-
thing. There has n't been any excitement over
our way now for a long time," he said. " I 'm
about fed up on this waiting around the
trenches." He fingered one of the little cricket-
ball bombs caressingly. " Think of it," he said ;
" all you do is press that little spring, and three
seconds after you 're a casualty."

" Pressing that little spring," said I, " is my
idea of nothing to do, unless you 're a particu-
larly fast sprinter."

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DUGOUTS

'' By the Lord Harry, Newfoundland," said
the Australian, with a peculiar, excited glint in
his eye, " that 's an inspiration."

"What's an inspiration?" I asked, in bewil-
derment.

The Australian stretched himself on the
ground beside me, resting his chin in his cupped
hands. " When I was in Sydney," he said
slowly and thoughtfully, " I did a hundred yards
in ten seconds easily. Now if I can get in a
traverse that 's only eight or nine yards long, and
press the spring of one of those little cricket
balls, I ought to be able to get out on the other
side of the traverse before it explodes."

Art and Lew O'Dea passed along just then and
I jumped up to go with them. " Don't forget to
look for me if you 're over around the Fifteenth
Australians," said the Australian. "Ask for
White George."

" I won't forget," I said, as I hurried away to
join the others.

We were about half way to our dugouts when
we passed a string of our men carrying about
twenty mail bags. It was the second instalment
of a lot of mail that had been landed the day be-
fore. We followed the sweating carriers up the

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TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

road to the quarter-master sergeant's dugout,
and waited around humbly while that autocrat
leisurely sorted out the mail, making remarks
about each letter and waiting after each remark
for the applause he felt it deserved. With mad-
dening deliberation he scanned each address.
" Corporal W. P. Costello." '' He 's at the base,"
some one answered. Corporal Costello's letter
was put aside. " Private George Butler."
Private Butler, on the edge of the crowd, pushed
and elbowed his way toward the quarter-master
sergeant. "Here you are; letter for Butler."
The august Q. M. S. placed the letter beside his
elbow. " Wait till the lot 's sorted, and you '11
get them all together." Private Butler, with ill-
restrained impatience, resumed his place on the
outside. After the letters, the parcels had to be
sorted. Some enterprising person at the base
had opened a lot of them. One fellow received
a large box of cigarettes that he would have en-
joyed smoking if the man at the base had not
seen them first. Art Pratt drew a lot of mail,
including a parcel, intact except for the contents.
A diligent search in a box a foot square failed to
locate anything more than a pair of socks, which
Art presented to me with his compliments.

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DUGOUTS

Some papers, two months old, with some casualty
lists of the First Newfoundland Regiment, had
no address; the wrapper had gone before, some-
where between Newfoundland and the Darda-
nelles. Everybody claimed the papers. Vari-
ous proofs were offered to show the ownership.
One fellow knew by the way they were rolled
up that they were from his family. Another,
more original than the rest, was certain they
were his, because he had written for papers of
those dates, in order to see the announcement
of the casualty of a friend. It was pointed out
derisively that a letter written after that cas-
ualty had occurred would only then have reached
Newfoundland; and to get a lot of papers in
reply would be a physical impossibility. The
claimant, in no wise abashed, suggested that lots
be drawn. This was pooh-poohed. At last, to
avoid discussion, the quarter-master sergeant
took the papers himself, and put them in his
greatcoat. " I '11 distribute them after I 've
read them," he announced, and pulled the rubber
sheet across the top of his dugout, as a delicate
hint that the interview was finished. The crowd
slowly melted away. I received one letter, and
was sitting on the edge of my dugout reading it

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TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

when one of our men passing along, yelled to
me. " Hey," lie said, " you come from the
United States, don't you?"

" Yes," I said ; " what do you want to know
that for? "

" I 've got something here," he said, stopping,
" that comes from there too." He dived into his
pocket, and produced a medley of articles.
From these he selected a small paper-wrapped
parcel.

"What's that? "I said.

" It 's chewing gum," he answered ; " real
American chewing gum like the girls chew in
the subway in New York." He unwrapped it,
selected a piece, placed it in his mouth, and began
chewing it with elaborated enjoyment. After a
few minutes, he came nearer. " By golly," he
said, with an exaggerated nasal drawl, " it 's
good gum, I '11 soon begin to feel like a bloom-
ing Yank. I 'm talking like a Yank already.
Don't you wish you had some of this? "

" I '11 make you a sporting offer," I answered.
" I '11 fight you for the rest of what you 've got."

" No, you won't," he answered nasally ; " it 's
made me feel exactly like a Yank ; I 'm too proud
to fight."

122

CHAPTER V

WAITING FOR THE WAR TO CEASE

WE were still in dugouts when Art Pratt
woke me one morning with a vicious kick,
to show me my boots lying outside of the dugout,
filled with rain water. All the night before it
had poured steadily, but now it was clearing
nicely. The Island of Imbros, fifteen miles
away, that seemed to draw a great deal nearer
before every rainstorm, had retreated to its nor-
mal position. The sky was still gray, but it was
the leaden gray of a Turkish autumn day. From
Suvla Bay the wind blew keen and piercing. I
salved the boots from the rain puddle, emptied
them, dried them out as best I could with my
puttees, and put them on. Art, in his own
inimitable way, said unprintable things about a
rifle that had been left outside, and that now
necessitated laborious cleaning, in time for rifle
inspection. All through breakfast, Lew O'Dea
elaborated on the much-quoted remarks of the

123

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

Governor of North Carolina to the Governor of
South Carolina. Rum had not been issued as
per schedule the evening before. Art began a
maliciously fabricated story of a conversation he
had heard in which a senior oflBcer had stated
that now that the cold weather had come, there
would be no more rum. Just then, some one
shouted, to " Look up in the sky," From the
direction of the trenches a dark cloud was com-
ing rapidly toward us. (A few nights before,
while we were in trenches, w^e had been ordered
to put on our gas masks; for, a little to the
right of us, the Turks had turned the poison gas
on the Gurkhas. ) At first, the dark mass in the
sky appeared to some to be poison gas. They
immediately dived for their gas masks. As it
came nearer, however, we were able to distin-
guish that it was not a cloud, but a huge flock
of wild geese, beginning their southern migra-
tion. O'Dea selected a rifle from his collection,
loaded it, and waited till the geese were almost
directly overhead; then, amid derisive cheering,
he fired ten rounds at them. They were much
too high in air for a successful shot, even if he
had used gunshot; but even after they were al-
most over Imbros Island, Lew continued firing.

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WAITING

When an officer, arrived, demanding sarcasti-
cally if Lew O'Dea would n't sooner send some
written invitations to the Turks to shell us, he
subsided, and began cleaning his artillery. Un-
til then, we had been wearing thin khaki duck
uniforms with short pants that made us look
like boy scouts. We had found these rather cool
at night ; but in the hot days w^e preferred them
to the heavy khaki drill uniforms that w^ere kept
in kit bags at the beach. I had landed without
a kit bag, and the change of uniform I kept in
the pack I carried on my back. A little while
before, I had put on the heavy uniform and
thrown away the light weight one. On the Pe-
ninsula, when you have to w^alk with all your
possessions on your back, each additional ounce
counts for much. As soon as we found that it
was impossible to get water to wash or shave in,
we threw away our towels and soap. A few kept
their razors. The only thing I hung on to was
my tooth brush — not for its legitimate purpose,
but to clean the sand and grit out of my rifle.

" Go over and ask Mr. Nunns," said Art to
me, while w^e were cleaning our rifles, " if he '11
give us a pass to go down to the beach to find my
kit bag. 1 11 finish cleaning your rifle while you

125

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

go over." I banded tlie rifle to Art, and went
over to look for Mr. Nunns. When I found him
he was censoring some letters.

" You 'd better wait till this afternoon, before
going," he said. " I want you to take twenty
men and carry up ten boxes of ammunition to
the firing line, where A Company are. They 're
coming out to-morrow night and we 're to relieve
them. He gave me a pass, and I took it over to
Art.

" You can go down this morning if you like,"
I said, " or you can wait till I get back from this
ammunition detail."

" If you 're not later than two o'clock," said
Art, " I '11 wait for you."

I found the detail of twenty men for ammuni-
tion-carrying waiting for me near the field
kitchen. We crawled cautiously along some
open ground, past the quarter-master's dugout
and the dugouts that were dignified by the name
of orderly room, where the colonel and adjutant
conducted the clerical business of the battalion,
issued daily orders, and sentenced defaulters.
" Napoleon knew what was what," said the man
near me, as he wriggled along, " when he said
that an army fights on its stomach. I 've been

126

WAITING

on my stomach half the time since I 've been in
Gallipoli." We straightened up when we came
to the communication trench that gave us cover
from snipers. Ordinarily we walked upright
when we were behind the lines, but for a few
days past enemy snipers had T3een extraordi-
narily active. The Turkish snipers were the
most effective part of their organization. Each
sniper was armed with a rifle with telescopic
sights. With a rifle so equipped, a good shot can
hit a man at seven hundred yards, just as easily
as the ordinary soldier can shoot at one hun-
dred.

The ten boxes of ammunition were very heavy,
and the heat of the day necessitated a great many
rests, before we reached the part of the line held
by A Company. A Company had been losing
heavily for a day or two because of snipers. A
couple of the men were talking about it when
I came along.

" I don't see," one of them was saying, " how
they can get us at night."

" It 's this way," explained the other. " The
cigarette makers send their snipers out some-
time at night. Instead of going back that night
they stay out for a week, or longer. All the ra-

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TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

tion Johnny Turk needs is a swallow of water,
some onions, or olives, and a biscuit or two."

" How is it," I asked, " we don't see them in
the daytime?"

" It 's this way," said the A Company man.
"He paints himself, his rifle, and his clothes
green. Then he twists some twigs and branches
around him and kids you he 's a tree."

" The way they do in this part of the trench,"
said another man who had been listening to the
conversation, " is to work in pairs. They get a
dugout somewhere where they can get a pretty
good view of our trenches. They see where we
move about most, and aim their machine gun at
the top of the parapet. Then they clamp it
down. At night when the sentries are posted,
they simply press the trigger, and there are some
more casualties."

" You 've got to hand it to Johnny Turk, just
the same," said the first man. " One of them
will stand up in his dugout in broad daylight,
exposed from his waist up, and give you a chance
to pot him, so that his mate can get you. We
used to lose men that way first. As soon as we
aimed, the second sniper turned his machine gun
on us and got our man. Now we 've found a

128

WAITING

better way. We stick a helmet up on top of a
rifle just above the parapet, and fire from an-
other part of the trench."

" We 've been having trouble with them down
In dugouts," I said. " Some of the fellows say
it 's stray bullets, but it seems to me that they 're
going too fast to be spent. You can tell a bullet
that 's spent by the sound."

One of the A Company sergeants who had been
listening to discussion joined in. " It 's snipers
all right," he said. " It 's easy enough for a
German oflflcer to get into our trenches. Men
are coming in all the time from working parties,
and night patrols, and the engineers go back and
forth every hour or so fixing up the barb wire.
Only a little while ago they found one fellow.
He had stripped a uniform from one of our dead,
dressed himself in it, and walked up to our para-
pet one night. The sentry did n't know the dif-
ference, because the other fellow spoke good Eng-
lish, so he let him pass. All they have to do is
say ' What ho,' or, ' Where 's the Dublin's sec-
tion of trench? ' They can get by all right."

The officer to whom I had delivered the am-
munition sent word that it had been checked and
that we could return to our company. We were

129

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

only a short distance down the communication
trench when a party of officers came along. We
drew a little to one side, and stopped to let them
pass. Not one of them was under the rank of
lieutenant-colonel, and one of them was a gen-
eral. He was a rather tall, spare man, with a
drooping brown mustache. He was most unlike
the usual type of gruff, surly general officers in
charge. His eyes had a kindly, friend-of-the-
family sort of twinkle. His type was more like
a superintendent of construction, or a kindly old
family physician. " Look at the ribbons on the
old boy's chest," said the man near me. " He 's
got enough medals to make a keel for a battle-
ship." In the British army, those who have seen
previous service wear on the breast of their
tunics the ribbons for each campaign. The gen-
eral halted his red-tabbed staff where we stood.

"Are you Newfoundlanders, Corporal?" he
said to me.

" Yes, sir," I answered.

" They 've made it pretty warm for you since
you 've been here," he added, with a smile.
" Your men are most efficient trench diggers. If
I had an army like them, we 'd dig our way to
Constantinople." With that he passed on with

130

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WAITING

a smile. A pompous-looking sergeant brought
up the rear of the general's escort.

" Who was that, that just spoke to us, Ser-
geant?" I asked.

The sergeant surveyed me contemptuously.
" Is it possible that you don't know 'im. 'E 's
General Sir Ian Hamilton, General Commander-
in-Chief of the Mediterranean Force, 'e is."

General Sir Ian Hamilton has won the un-
questioned devotion of the First Newfoundland
Regiment. Many times after that, he visited the
front line trenches and stopped to exchange a
few words with men here and there. It is a cu-
rious thing that while the young subaltern lieu-
tenants held themselves very much aloof, the
senior officers chatted amiably with our men.
The Newfoundlanders, democratic to the core,
hated anything that in the least savored of
" side," and they admired the courage of a gen-
eral officer who took his chances in the firing
line.

Art was waiting for me when I reached the
dugout after my ammunition fatigue. I accom-
panied him down the mule path that led along
the edge of the Salt Lake to West Beach, where
we had made our landing the first night. The

133

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

place looked very different now. Under the
shelter of the beetling cliffs, the engineers had
constrncted dugouts of all sorts. The beach was
piled high with boxes of beef, biscuits, jam, lime
juice, and rum. At the top of the hill, a tem-
porary dressing station for the wounded had been
built; and nearer the beach was a clearing sta-
tion, from which the wounded were taken by
motor ambulance to the hospital ship. At dif-
ferent points along the beach, piers had been
built for the landing of supplies and troops, and
for the loading of wounded into lighters to be
taken to the hospital ships waiting out in deeper
w^ater. The Australians had put up a wire fence
around a part of beach and used it for a grave-
yard. We found the man in charge of the kit
bags of the Newfoundlanders, and after much
search located Art's bag, and took out the stuff
we wanted. On the way back, in a little ravine
just on the edge of the Salt Lake, we came upon
two horsemen. They were General Hamilton
and his aide. The general returned our salute
smilingly.

"Who is it?" said Art.

'* It 's Sir Ian Hamilton," I said. " Does n't

134

WAITING

he look like the sort of man it would be wise to
confide in? "

" Yes, he does," said Art. " Evidently he has
confidence in our troops' ability to hold their
own/' added Art. " The Turks have four lines of
trenches to fall back on ; we have only one firing-
line."

There was the same group around the field
kitchen when we arrived back at our lines. They
were swapping yarns and telling stories with a
lurid intermixture of profanity and a liberal
sprinkling of trench slang. To me, one of the
most interesting side lights of the war is the
slang that forms a great part of the vocabulary
of the trenches. Early morning tea, when we
got it, was "gun-fire." A Turk was never a
Turk. He was a Turkey, Abdul Pasha, or a
cigarette maker. A regiment is a " mob." A
psychologist would have been interested to see
that nobody ever spoke of a comrade as having
died or been killed, but had " gone west." All
the time I was at the front, I never heard one
of our men say that another had been killed. A
man who was killed in our regiment had " lost
his can," although this referred most particu-

135

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

larly to men shot through the head. Ordinarily
a dead man was called a " washout " ; or it was
said that he had " copped it." The caution to
keep your head down always came, " Keep your
napper down low." To get wounded with one of
our own bullets was to get a " dose of three-o
three." The bullet has a diameter of three-hun-
dred-and-three thousandths of an inch.

Mr. Nunus came toward the group, looking
for Stenlake. It was Sunday afternoon, and he
thought it would be well to have a service. Sten-
lake was found, and a crowd trailed after him
to an empty dugout, where he gathered them
about him and began. It was a simple, sincere
service. Out there in that barren country, it
seemed a strange thing to see those rough men
gathered about Stenlake while he read a passage
or led a hymn. But it was most impressive.
The service was almost over, and Stenlake was
offering a final prayer, when the Turkish batter-
ies opened fire. Ordinarily at the first sound of
a shell, men dived for shelter; but gathered
around that dugout, where a single shell could
have wrought awful havoc, not a man stirred.
They stayed motionless, heads bowed reverently,
until Stenlake had finished. Then quietly they

136

WAITING

dispersed. As a lesson in faith it was most il-
luminating.

It was strange to see week by week the psy-
chological change that had come over the men.
Most of all I noticed it in the songs they sang.
At first the songs had been of a boisterous char-
acter, that foretold direful things that would
happen to the Kaiser and his family " As we go
marching through Germany." These had all
given place to songs that voiced to some extent
the longing for home that possessed these volun-
tary exiles. " I want to go back to Michigan "
was a favorite. Perhaps even more so was
" The little gray home in the West." " Tipper-
ary " was still in demand, not because of the
lilt of a march that it held, but for the pathetic
little touch of " my heart 's right there," and
perhaps for the reference to "the sweetest girl
I know."

Perhaps it may have been the effect of Sten-
lake's service, or it may have been the news that
we were to go into the firing line the next day,
that made the men seek their dugouts early that
Sunday evening. But there was something
heavy in the air that night. For almost a week
we had been comparatively safe in dugouts. To-

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TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

morrow we were again to go into the firing line
and wait imi^otentlj while our number was re-
duced gradually but pitilessly. The hopeless-
ness of the thing seemed clearer that evening
than any other time we had been there. Simp-
son, " the Man with the Donkeys," had been
killed that day. After a whole summer in which
he seemed to be impervious to bullets, a stray
bullet had caught him in the heart on his way
down Shrapnel Valley with a consignment of
wounded. Simpson had been so much a part of
the Peninsular life that it was hard to realize
that he had gone to swell the list of heroes that
Australia has so much cause to be proud of. A
Company had suffered heavily in the front line
trenches that day. A number of stretchers had
passed down the road that ran in front of our
dugouts, with A Company men for the dressing
station on the beach. Snipers had been busy.
From the A Comj^any stretcher-bearers came
news that others had been killed. One piece of
news filtered slowly down to us that evening,
that had an unaccountably strange effect on the
men of B Company. Sam Lodge had been killed.
Sam Lodge was perhaps the most widely known
man in the whole regiment. There were very

138

WAITING

few Newfoundlanders who did not think kindly
of the big, quiet, reliable looking college man.
He had enlisted at the very first call for volun-
teers. Other men had been killed that day ; and
since the regiment had been at Gallipoli, men
had stood by while their dugout mates were torn
by shrapnel or sank down moaning, with a
sniper's bullet in the brain ; but nothing had ever
had the same effect, at any rate on the men of
our company, as the news that Sam Lodge had
been killed that day. Perhaps it was that every-
body knew him. Other nights men had crowded
around the fire, telling stories, exchanging gos-
sip, or singing. To-night all was quiet; there
was not even the sound of men creeping about
from dugout to dugout, visiting chums. Sud-
denly, from away up on the extreme right end
of the line of dugouts, came the sound of a clear
tenor voice, singing, " Tenting To-night on the
Old Camp Ground." Never have I heard any-
thing so mournful. It is impossible to describe
the penetrating pathos of the old Civil War song.
Slowly the singer continued, amidst a profound
hush. His voice sank, until one could scarcely
catch the words when he sang, " Waiting for the
war to cease." At last he finished. There was

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TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

scarcely a stir, as the men dropped off to sleep.
It was a quiet, sober lot of men who filed into
a shady, tree-dotted ravine the next day behind
the stretcher that bore the remains of Private
Sam Lodge. Stenlake read the burial service.
Everybody who could turned out to pay their
last respects to the best liked man in the regi-
ment. After the brief service. Colonel Burton,
the commanding officer. Captain Carty, Lodge's
company commander, a group of senior and
junior officers, and a number of profoundly af-
fected soldiers gathered about the grave while
the body was lowered into it. In the shade of
a spreading tree, within sound of the mournful
wash of the tide in Suvla Bay, lies poor Sam
Lodge, a good, cheerful soldier, uncomplaining
always, a man whose last thought was for others.
'' Don't bother to lift me down off the parapet,
boys," he had said when he was hit ; " I 'm fin-
ished.'^

140

CHAPTER VI

NO man's land

OUR dugouts were located about a quarter of
a mile inland from the edge of the Salt
Lake. Somewhere at the other side of the Salt
Lake was the cleverly concealed landing place of
the aeroplane service. Commander Sampson,
who had been in action since the beginning of the
war, was in charge of the aeroplane squadron.
One day, by clever manoeuvering he forced one
of the enemy planes, a Taube, away from its own
lines and back over the Salt Lake. Here after a
spectacular fight in mid air, Sampson forced the
other to surrender and captured his machine.
The Taube he thereafter used for daily recon-
naissance. Every afternoon we watched him
hover over the Turkish lines, circle clear of their
bursting shrapnel, poising long enough to com-
plete his observations, then return to the Salt
Lake with his report for our artillery and the

141

TKENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

navy. The day after Sam Lodge's burial, we
watched two hostile 'planes chase Sampson back
right to our trenches. When they came near
enough, our men opened rapid fire that forced
them to turn; but before Sampson reached his
landing place at Salt Lake, we could see that he
was in trouble. One of the wings of his machine
was drooping badly. From the other side of the
Salt Lake, a motor ambulance was tearing along
towards the place where he was expected to land.
The Taube sank gradually to the ground, the am-
bulance drew up to within about thirty feet of
it, and turned about, waiting. We saw Sampson
jump out of his seat, almost before the machine
touched the ground, and walk to the waiting am-
bulance. The ambulance had just started, when
a shell from a Turkish gun hit the prostrate
aeroplane and tore a large hole in it. With
marvelous precision, the Turkish battery pumped
three or four shells almost on top of the first.
In a few minutes, all that was left of the Taube
was a twisted mass of frame work ; of the wings,
not a fragment remained.

But although Sampson had lost his 'plane, he
had completed his mission. About half an hour
later, the navy in the bay began a bombardment.

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NO MAN'S LAND

We could see the men-o'-war lined up, pouring
broadsides over our heads into the Turkish
trenches. First, we saw the gray ships calmly
riding the waves; then, from their sides came
puffs of whitish gray smoke, and the flash of the
discharge, followed by the jarring report of the
explosion. Around the bend of Anafarta Bay,
we saw creeping in a strange, low-lying, awk-
ward-looking craft that reminded one of the
barges one sees used for dredging harbors. It
was one of the new monitors, the most efiflciently
destructive vessel in the navy. Soon the artil-
lery on the land joined in. About four o'clock
the bombardment had started ; and all that after-
noon the terrific din kept up. When we went
into the firing line that evening at dark, the bom-
bardment was still going on. About nine o'clock
it stopped ; but at three the next morning, it was
resumed with even greater force. The part of
the line we were holding was in a valley ; to the
right and left of us, the trenches ran up hill.
From our position in the middle, we had a splen-
did view of the other parts of the line. All that
morning the bombardment kept up. Our gun-
ners were concentrating on the trenches well up
the hill on the left. First Ave watched our shells

143

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

demolish the enemy's front line trench. Im-
mense shells shrieked through the air above our
heads and lauded in the Turks' firing line.
Gradually but surely the huge projectiles bat-
tered down the enemy defenses. The Turks
stuck to their ground manfully, but at last they
had to give up. Through field glasses we could
see the communication trenches choked with
fleeing Turks. Some of our artillery, to prevent
their escape, concentrated on the support
trenches. This manceuver served a double pur-
pose: besides preventing the escape of those re-
treating from the battered front line trench, it
stopped reinforcements from coming up. Still
farther back, a mule train bringing up supplies,
was caught in open ground in the curtain of fire.
The Turks, caught between two fires, could not
escape. In a short time all that was left of the
scientifically constructed intrenchments was a
conglomerate heap of sand bags, equipments, and
machine guns ; and on top of it all lay the man-
gled bodies of men and mules.

All through the bombardment, we had hoped
for the order to go over the parapet. When we
had been rushed to the firing line the night be-
fore, we thought it was to take part in the at-

144

NO MAN'S LAND

tack. Instead of this, we were held in the firing
line. For the Worcesters on our left was re-
served the distinction of making the charge.
High explosives cleared the way for their ad-
vance, and cheering and yelling they went over
parapet. The Turks in the front line trenches,
completely demoralized, fled to the rear. A few,
too weak or too sorely wounded to run, surren-
dered. While the bombardment was going on,
our men stood in their trenches, craning their
necks over the parapet. All through the after-
noon, the excitement was intense. Men jumped
up and down, running wildly from one point in
the trench to another to get a better view. Some
fired their rifies in the general direction of the
enemy ; " just a few joy guns," they said. Every-
body was laughing and shouting delightedly.
Down in the bay, the gray ships looked almost
as small as launches in the mist formed by the
smoke of the guns. The Newfoundlanders
might have been a crowd rooting at a baseball
game. Every few minutes, when the smoke in
the bay cleared sufficiently to reveal to us a
glimpse of the ships, the .,i.'enches resounded to
the shouts of, " Come on, the navy," and " Good
old Britain." And when the great masses of

145

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

iron hurtled through the air and tore up sections
of the enemy's parapet, we shouted delightedly,
*' Iron rations for Johnny Turk ! "

Prisoners taken in this engagement told us
that the Turkish rank and file heartily hated
their German officers. From the first, they had
not taken kindly to underground warfare. The
Turks were accustomed to guerilla fighting, and
had to be driven into the trenches by the German
officers at the point of their revolvers. One
prisoner said that he had been au officer; but
since the beginning of the campaign, he had been
replaced by a German. At that time, he told us,
the Turks were officered entirely by Germans.
For two or three days after that, at short inter-
vals, one or two at a time, Turks dribbled in to
surrender. They were tired of fighting, they
said, and were almost starved to death. Many
more would surrender, they told us, but they
were kept back by fear of being shot by their
German officers.

With the monotony varied occasionally by
some local engagement like this, we dragged
through the hot, fly-pestered days, and cold,
drafty, vermin-infested nights of September and
early October. By the middle of October, dis-

146

NO MAN'S LAND

ease and scarcity of water had depleted our
ranks alarmingly. Instead of having four days
on the firing line and eight days' rest, we were
holding the firing line eight days and resting
only four. In my platoon, of the six noncom-
missioned officers who had started with us, only
two corporals were left, one other and I. For
a week after the doctor had ordered him to leave
the Peninsula, the other corporal hung on,
pluckily determined not to leave me alone. All
this time, the work of the platoon w^as divided
between us; he stayed up half the night, and I
the other half. At last, he had to be personally
conducted to the clearing station.

Just about the middle of October comes a
Mohammedan feast that lasts for three or four
days. During the days of the feast, while our
battalion was in the firing line, some prisoners
who surrendered told us that the Turks were
suffering severely from lack of food and warm
clothing. All sorts of rumors ran through the
trench. One was that some one had reliable in-
formation that the supreme commander of the
Turkish forces had sent to Berlin for men to
reinforce his army. If the reinforcements did
not come in four days, he would surrender his

147

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

entire command. Men ordered off the Peninsula
by the medical officer, instead of proceeding to
the clearing station, sneaked back to their posi-
tions in the trench, waiting to see the surrender.
But the surrender never came. Things went on
in the same old dreary, changeless round. More
than sickness, or bullets, the sordid monotony
had begun to tell on the men. Every day, of-
ficers were besieged with requests for permission
to go out between the lines to locate snipers.
When men were wanted for night patrol, for
covering parties, or for listening post details,
every one volunteered. Ration parties to the
beach, which had formerly been a dread, were
now an eagerly sought variation, although it
was a certainty that from every such party we
should lose ten per cent, of the personnel. Any
change, of any sort, was welcome. The thought
of being killed had lost its fear. Daily inter-
course with death had robbed it of its horror.
Here was one case where familiarity had bred
contempt. Most of the men had sunk into
apathy, simply waiting for the day their turn
was to come, wondering how soon would come
the bullet that had on it their " name and num-
ber.'^ Most of the men in talking to each other,

148

NO MAN'S LAND

especially to their sick comrades, spoke hopefully
of the outcome ; but those I talked with alone all
had the same thought: only by a miracle could
they escape alive ; that miracle was a " cushy
one."

One wave of hope swept over the Peninsula in
that dreary time. The brigade bulletin board
contained the news that it was expected that in
a day or two at the most Bulgaria would come
into the war on the side of the Allies. To us
this was of tremendous importance. With a
frontier bordering on Turkey, Bulgaria might
turn the scale in our favor. Life became again
full of possibilities and interest. Our inter-
preters printed up an elaborate menu in Turkish
that recited the various good things that might
be found in our trenches by Turks who would
surrender. At the foot of the menus was a little
note suggesting that now was the ideal time to
come in, and that the ideal way to celebrate the
feast was to become our guests. These menus
we attached to little stakes and just in front of
the Turkish barbed wire w^e stuck them in the
ground. Several Turks came in within the next
few days, but whether as a result of this or not,
it was impossible to say. The feeling of re-

149

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

newed Lope and buoyancy caused by the news
of the imminence of Bulgaria's alliance with us
w^as of short duration. A day or so afterwards
came the alarming news that the Allied min-
isters had left Bulgaria; and the following day
came word that Bulgaria had joined in the war,
not with us, but with the Central Powers.
Again apathy settled on the men. Now, too, the
rainy season had set in in earnest. Torrents
of rain poured down daily on the trenches, chok-
ing the drains, and filling the passageway with
thick gray mud in which one slipped and floun-
dered helplessly, and which coated uniforms and
equipments like cement. One relief it did bring
with it. Men who had not had a bath, or a
shave in months, were able to collect in their
rubber sheets enough rain water to wash and
shave with. But the drinking water was still
scarce. On other parts of the Peninsula there
was plenty of it; but we had so few men avail-
able for duty that we could scarcely spare
enough men to go for it. Also, there w^as the
difficulty in securing proper receptacles for its
conveyance. Most of the men were very much
exhausted, and the trip of four or five miles for
water would have been too much for them.

150

NO MAN'S LAND

Even when we did get water, it had to be boiled
to kill the germs of disease, and to prevent men
from being poisoned. The boiled water was flat
and tasteless; and to counteract this, we were
given a spoonful of lime juice about once a week.
This we put in our water bottles. About every
third day we were issued some rum. Twice a
week, an officer appeared in the trench carrying
a large stone jar bearing the magic letters in
black paint, P. D. R., Pure Demerara Rum.
This he doled out as if every drop had cost a
million dollars. Each man received just enough
to cover the bottom of his canteen, not more than
an eighth of a tumbler. Just before going out
on any sort of night fatigue on the wet ground,
it was particularly grateful. We had long ago
given up reckoning time by the calendar, and
days either were or were not " Rum days." Men
who were wounded on these days bequeathed
their share to their particular pals or to their
dugout mates. Some of the men were total ab-
stainers with the courage of their convictions;
they steadfastly refused to touch it. The other
men canvassed these on rum days for their share
of the fiery liquid, and in exchange did the
temperance men's share of fatigue duty. Dur-

151

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

ing this time, there was very little fighting.
Both sides were intrenched and prepared to stay
there for the winter. In the particular section
of trench we held, we knew that any attempt at
an advance would be hopeless and suicidal.
The ground in front was too well commanded by
enemy machine guns. Still, we thought that
some other parts of the line might advance and
turn one of the flanks of the enemy. Nothing
was impossible to the Dublins or the Munsters;
and there was always faith in the invincible
Australasians. We could not forget the way the
Australasians a short time before had celebrated
the news of the British advance at Loos.

Just after the Turkish feast, we went into dug-
outs again for a few days, and back once more
to the firing line. This time, we were up in the
farm house district near Chocolate Hill. It was
a place particularly exposed to shell fire ; for the
old skeletons of farm houses made good targets
for the enemy's guns. Every afternoon, the
Turks sent over about a dozen or so shells, just
to show us that they knew we were there. After
Bulgaria came in against us, it seemed to us that
the Turks grew much more prodigal of their
shells than formerly. Where before they sent

152

NO MAN'S LAND

over ten, they now fired twenty. It was rather
grimly ironic to find, on examination of some of
the shell casings, that they were shells made by
Great Britain and supplied to the Turks in the
Balkan War. There was a certain amount of
sardonic satisfaction in knowing that the fortifi-
cations on Achi Baba were placed there by
British engineers when we looked on the Turks
as friends. No. 8 platoon was intrenched just
in front of a field in which grew a number of
apple trees. In the daytime we could not get
to these, but at night some of the more venture-
some spirits crawled out and returned with their
haversacks full. A little further along was what
had once been a garden. Even now there were
still growing some tomatoes and some water-
melons. The rest of it was a mass of battered
stones that had once been fences. Here it was
that the old gray bearded farmers who had been
peacefully working in their fields had hung up
their scythes and taken down from their hook
on the wall old rusty muskets and fought in their
dooryards to defend their homes. The oncoming
troops had swept past them, but at a tremendous
cost. For a whole day the battle had swayed
back and forth. Where formerlv had bloomed a

153

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

luxuriant garden or orchard, was now a plowed
field, — plowed not with farm implements but
with shrapnel and high explosive shells. Dot-
ting it here and there, were the little rough
wooden crosses that gave the simple details of
a man's regimental name, number, and date of
death. Not a few of them were in memory of
" Unknown Comrades." And once in a while one
saw a cross that marked the resting place of the
foe. Feeling toward the enemy differed with in-
dividuals; but we were all agreed that Johnny
Turk was a good, clean, sporty fighter, who gen-
erally gave as good as we could send. There-
fore, whenever we could we gave him decent
burial, we stuck a cross up over htm, although
he did not believe in what it symbolized, and we
took off his identification disk and personal
papers. These we handed to our interpreters,
w^ho sent them to the neutral consuls at Con-
stantinople ; and they communicated through the
proper channels with the deceased's various
widows.

After a week or so in this district, we moved
back again to our old quarters at Anafarta vil-
lage. Here we took over a block house occupied
by the Essex. The Dublins and the Munsters

154

NO MAN'S LAND

were on our right. The block house was an ad-
vanced post that we held in the morning and
during the night. Every afternoon we left it for
a few hours while the enemy wasted shells on it.
A couple of Irish snipers were with us. The
first day they were there, our Lieutenant, Mr.
Nunns, spent the day with them; that day, he
accounted for four Turks. This was the closest
we had yet been to them. I stood up beside an
Irish sniper and looked through a pair of field
glasses to where he pointed out some snipers'
dugouts. They were the same dugouts that
Cooke, the Irish V, C. man, had shown me.
While I was watching, I saw an old Turk sneak-
ing out between his trench and one of the dug-
outs. He looked old and stooped and had a
long whisker that reached almost to his waist
and appeared to have difficulty in getting along.
All about him were little canvas pockets that
contained bombs and about his neck was a long
string of small bombs. " Begob," said one of the
Dublins, beside me, " 't is the daddy of them all.
Get him, my son." I grasped my gun excitedly
and aimed; but before I had taken the pressure
of the trigger, I heard from a little distance to
the right the staccato of a machine gun. The

155

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

result was astonishing. One second, I was look-
ing through my sights at the Turk; the next, he
had disappeared, and in his place was the most
marvelous combination of all colors of flames I
have ever seen. Literally Johnny Turk had gone
up in smoke. The Irishman beside me was
standing open mouthed.

" Glory be to God," he said, " what does that
make you think of? "

" It reminds me," I said, " of a Fourth of July
celebration in the States; and I wish," I added
heartily, " I was there now."

" It makes me think, my son," said the Irish-
man, " of the way ould Cooke killed a lot of the
sausage-makers over on the other side. He
threw a bomb in among tin of 'em and then fired
his rifle at it and exploded it. Killed every
damn one of 'em, he did. 'T was the same time
he got the V. C."

" I suppose," I said, " Cooke 's in London now
getting his medal from the King. He 's through
with this Peninsula."

" Thrue for you, my son," said the Irishman,
" he 's through with this Peninsula, but he 's not
in London. 'T was just three nights ago that I
went out yonder, and tin yards in front of that

156

I Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.

Australians in the trenches consider clothes a superfluity

NO MAN'S LAND

dugout I found ould Cooke's body. The Turrk
got him right through the cap badge and blew
the top clean off his head. 'T is just luck. Some
has it one way, and some has it another; but
whichever way you have it, it don't do you no
good to worry over it."

Having delivered himself of this satisfying
philosophy, he resumed his survey of the ground
in front.

About ten yards outside the block house we
were holding, the Turks had, under cover of
darkness, almost completed a sap, with the ob-
ject of surrounding the block house. A detach-
ment of the Dublins with three or four bomb
throwers sapped out to the left of the sap the
enemy was digging, after a short but exciting
engagement, bombed them out of it, and took the
sap at the point of the bayonet. They found it
occupied by only two Turks, who surrendered.
The rest were able to get back to their own
trench. We cut the corner off this sap, rounded
it off to surround our block house, and occupied
it. It brought us to within fifty yards of the
enemy firing line. We could hear them talking
at night ; and in the daytime we could see them
walking about their trenches. At this point,

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TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

they had in their lines a number of animals,
chiefly dogs. In addition, they had a brass band
that played timeless, wailing music nearly every
night, to the accompaniment of the howling and
barking of dogs. Some of the men claimed that
the dogs were trained animals who carried food
to snipers and who were taught to find the Turk-
ish wounded. This may have been true; but I
have always believed that their chief use was to
cover the noise of secret operations. This seems
likely, for they were able to get their sap almost
finished without our hearing them.

The block house we held stood just in the
center of the line that the Fifth Norfolks had
charged into early in August, and from which
not one man had emerged. The second or third
day we occupied it, a detachment of engineers
was sent in to make loopholes and prepare it for
a stubborn defense. In the wall on the left they
made a large loophole. The sentry posted there
the first morning saw about twenty feet away
the body of a British soldier, partly buried.
Two volunteers to bury the body were asked for.
Half a dozen offered, although it was broad day-
light and the place the body lay in offered no
protection.

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NO MAN'S LAND

Before any one could be selected, Art Pratt
and young Hayes made the decision by jumping
up, taking their picks and shovels, and vaulting
over the wall of the block house. They walked
out to where the body lay. It had been torn in
pieces by a shell the previous afternoon. At
first a few bullets tore up little spurts of ground
near the two men, but as soon as they
reached the body, this stopped. The Turks
never fired on burial parties; and men on the
Peninsula, wounded by snipers, tell strange
stories of dark-skinned visitors who crept up to
them after dark, bound up their wounds, gave
them water, and helped them to within shouting
distance of their own lines, where at daylight
the next morning their comrades found them.
Once one of our batteries was very near a dress-
ing station when a stray shell, fired at the bat-
tery, hit the dressing station. The Turkish ob-
server heliographed over and ai)ologized. That
is why we respected the Turk. When we tried
to shoot him, he chuckled to himself and sniped
us from trees and dugouts ; and when we reviled
him and threw tins of apricot jam at him, he
gave thanks to Allah, and ate the jam. The
empty tins he filled with powder ,and returned

161

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

to us in the shape of bombs. Only once did he
really lose his temper. That was when under
his very eyes we deliberately undressed on his
beach and disported ourselves in the ^gean Sea.
Then he sent over shells that shrieked at us to
get out of his ocean. But in his angriest mo-
ments he respected the Red Cross and never ill
treated our wounded. One chap, an English-
man, w^as wounded in the head just as he reached
the Turkish trench during a charge. The bullet
went in the side of his head, ruining both his
eyes. He was captured as he toppled over into
the trench, was taken to Constantinople, well
treated in hospital there, and returned in the
first batch of exchanged prisoners. When I met
him in Egypt, he had nothing but kind words
for the Turks. When the enemy saw the object
of the little expedition, they allowed Art and
Hayes to proceed unmolested. We watched
them dig a grave beside the corpse; and when
they had finished, with a shovel they turned the
body into it. Before doing it, they searched the
man for personal papers and took off his identifi-
cation disk. These bore the name, " Sergeant
Colder, Fifth Norfolk Regiment." That was in
the last part of October ; and since August 10th

162

NO MAN'S LAND

not a word had been heard of the missing Nor-
folk regiment. To this day, the whole affair re-
mains a mystery. The regiment disappeared as
if the ground had swallowed them up. On the
King's Sandringham estate, families are still
hoping against hope that there may sometime
come word that the men are prisoners in Turkey.
Neutral consuls in Constantinople have been ap-
pealed to, and have taken the matter up with the
Turkish Government. The most searching in-
quiries have elicited nothing new. The answer
has always been the same. The Turkish au-
thorities know no more about it than the Eng-
lish. Two hundred and fifty men were given the
order to charge into a wood. The only sign that
they ever did so, is the little wooden cross that
reads

IN MEMORY OF

Sergeant J. Golder

FIFTH NORFOLK REGIMENT
KILLED IN ACTION

163

CHAPTER VII

WOUNDED

THE gorgeous tropical sunset had given place
to the inky darkness of a Turkish night,
when we moved into trenches well up on the side
of a hill that overlooked Anafarta Plain. Here
an advance had been unsuccessful, and the Turks
had counter attacked. Half way, the British
had dug in hastily, in hard limestone that re-
sisted the pick. No. 8 platoon held six traverses.
Four of these were exposed to enfilade fire.
About two hundred yards away, at an angle on
the left front, a number of snipers had built some
dugouts on Caribou Ridge. These they manned
with machine guns. From this elevation, they
could pour their fire into our trenches. Several
attempts had been made to dislodge them; but
their machine guns commanded the intervening
ground and made an advance impossible. Their
first line trench was about two hundred yards in
front of us. Thirty or forty yards nearer us

164

WOUNDED

they were building a sap that ran parallel with
their lines for about five hundred yards. At
that point it took a sharp V turn inward toward
us. The proximity of the enemy, and the con-
tour of the ground so favorable to them, made
it necessary to take extra precautions, espe-
cially at night. Each night, at the point where
the enemy sap turned toward us, we sent out a
listening patrol of two men and a corporal. The
fourth night, my turn came. That day it had
rained without cessation; and in the early part
of the evening I had tried to sleep, but my wet
clothes and the pouring rain had made it impos-
sible. I felt rather glad w^hen I was told that
at one-thirty I was to go out for two hours on
listening patrol. That night we had been is-
sued some rum, and I had been fortunate enough
to get a good portion. I decided to reserve it
until I went out. About ten o'clock I gave up
attempting to sleep, and walked down the trench
a little way to where a collection of trees and
brush had been laid across the top. Some one,
with memories of London's well-known meeting
place, had christened it the Marble Arch. I
stood under this arch, where the rain did not
penetrate, and talked with the corporal of an

165 - •

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

English regiment who were holding the line on
the other side of the Marble Arch. A Sergeant
Manson, who had been loaned to us from another
platoon, came along and we talked for a while.
He had received some chocolate that evening, and
the next morning he was going to distribute it
among the men. It was in a haversack under
his head, he said, and he was going to sleep on
it to prevent it from being stolen. About eleven
he returned to his place on the firing platform
and went to sleep. I was ravenously hungry,
and had nothing to eat. I could not find even a
biscuit. I did find some bully beef, and ate some
of it, washing it down with a swallow of the pre-
cious rum from my water bottle. Then I re-
membered the chocolate under Sergeant Man-
son's head, and went over to where he was lying.
He was breathing heavily in the deep sleep of
exhaustion. Quietly I slipped my hand into the
haversack, and took out four or five little cubes
of chocolate about an inch long. Manson
stirred sleepily and murmured, "What do you
want? " then turned over and again began breath-
ing regularly. It was now almost time to start
for the listening post. SO' I went along the
trench to where I knew young Hayes was sleep-

166

WOUNDED

ing. He had volunteered as one of the men to
accompany me, and from D Company I got the
second man. My platoon by this time had been
reduced to eighteen men, and I was the only non-
com. We had to get men from D Company to
take turns on the parapet at night, although they
were supposed to be resting at the time. Be-
tween us and the Turkish sap a small rise cov-
ered with short evergreen bushes prevented us
from seeing them. To get to this we had to cross
about fifty yards of gTound with fairly good
cover, and another fifty yards of bare ground.
Where the bare ground began, a ditch filled with
dank, wet grass served as our listening post. A
large tree with spreading boughs gave us some
shelter. From behind this we could watch the
rising ground in front. Any of the enemy at-
tempting an advance had to appear over this rise.
Our instructions were to watch this, and report
any movement of the enemy, but not to fire. I
left young Hayes about half way between this
tree and the trench, and the other man and I
spread a rubber sheet under the tree and made
ourselves as comfortable as possible. The rain
was still coming down with a steadiness that
promised little hope of stopping. After a little

167

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

while I became numbed, and decided to move
about a little. When I came on the Peninsula,
I had no overcoat, but a little time before had
secured a very fine gray woolen great-coat from
a Turk. It had been at one time the property of
a German officer, and was very warm and com-
fortable, with a large collar and deep thick cuffs.
I had worn it about the trench and it had been
the subject of much comment. That night I
wore it, and over it a raincoat. So that my
movements might be less constricted, I took off
the raincoat, and left it with the D Company
man, who stayed under the tree. It was pitch
dark, and I got across the open space to the ever-
green-covered rise without being seen. Here I
dropped on my stomach and wriggled between
wet bushes that pricked my face, up to the top.
It was only about thirty feet, but it took me al-
most an hour to get up there. By the time I had
reached the top it had stopped raining and stars
had come out. I crawled laboriously a short dis-
tance down the other side of the little hill; I
parted the bushes slowly and was preparing to
draw myself a little further when I saw some-
thing that nearly turned me sick with horror.
Almost under my face were the bodies of two

168

WOUNDED

men, one a Turk, the other an Englishman.
They were both on their sides, and each of them
were transfixed with the bayonet of the other.
I don't know how long I stayed there. It seemed
ages. At last I gathered myself together, and
withdrew cautiously, a little to the right. My
nerves were so shaken by what I had just seen
that I decided to return at once to the man under
the tree. When I had gone back about ten feet
I was seized with an overwhelming desire to go
back and find out to what regiment the dead
Englishman belonged. At the moment I turned,
my attention was distracted by the noise of men
walking not very far to the front. I crawled
along cautiously and peered over the toj) of the
rise where I could see the enemy sap. The noise
was made by a digging party who were just
filing into the sap. For almost an hour I lay
there watching them. It gave me a certain sat-
isfaction to aim my rifle at each one in turn and
think of the effect of a mere pressure of the trig-
ger. But my orders were not to fire. I was on
listening patrol, and we had men out on differ-
ent working parties, who might be hit in the re-
sulting return fire. At intervals I could hear
behind me the report of a rifle, and wondered

169

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

what fool was shooting from our lines. When I
thought it was time to go back I crawled down
the hill, and found to my consternation that the
moon was full, and the space between the foot of
the little rise and the tree was stark white in the
moonlight. I had just decided to make a sharp
dash across when the firing that I had heard be-
fore recommenced. Instead of being from our
lines it came from a tree a short distance to the
left, at the end of the open space. It was Johnny
Turk, cozily ensconced in a tree that overlooked
our trench. Whenever he saw a movement he
fired. He used some sort of smokeless powder
that gave no flash, and it was most fortunate
for me that I happened to be at the only angle
that he could be seen from. I resumed my wrig-
gling along the edge of the open space to where
it ended in thick grass. Through this I crawled
until I had come almost to the edge of the ditch
in which I had left the other man. But to reach
it I had to cross about ten feet of perfectly bare
ground that gave no protection. Had the Turk
seen me he could have hit me easily. I decided
to crawl across slowly, making no noise. I put
my head out of the thick grass and with one knee
and both hands on the ground poised as a run-

170

WOUNDED

ner does at the start of a race. Against the clear
white gTOimd I must have loomed large, for al-
most at once a bullet whizzed through the top of
the little brown woolen cap I was wearing. Just
then the D Company man caught sight of me,
and raised his gun. " Who goes there? " he
shouted. I did some remarkably quick thinking
then. I knew that the bullet through my cap
had not come from the sniper, and that some one
one of our men had seen my overcoat and mis-
taken me for a Turk. I knew the sniper was in
the tree, and the D Company's man's challenge
would draw his attention to me ; also I knew that
the Newfoundlander might shoot first and es-
tablish my identity afterwards. He was wrong
in challenging me, as his instructions were to
make no noise. But that was a question that I
had to postpone settling. I decided to take a
chance on the man in the listening post. I
shouted, just loud enough for him to hear me,
" Newfoundland, you damn fool, Newfound-
land," then tore across the little open space and
dived head first into the dank grass beside him.
When I had recovered my breath, with a vocabu-
lary inspired by the occasion, I told him, clearly
and concisely, what I thought of him. While it

171

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

may not have been complimentary it was beyond
question candid. When I had finished, I sent
him back to relieve j^oung Hayes with instruc-
tions to send Hayes out to me. In a few min-
utes Hayes came.

" Do you know, Corporal," he said as he came
up beside me, " I almost shot you a few minutes
ago. I should have when the other fellow chal-
lenged you if you had n't said ' Newfoundland.'
I fired at you once. I saw you go out one way,
and when you came back I could just see your
Turkish overcoat. ' Here,' says I to myself, ' is
Abdul Pasha trying to get the Corporal, and I '11
get him.' Instead of that I almost got you."

Whether or not the noise I made caused the
sniper to become more cautious I don't know,
but I heard no further shots from him from then
until the time I was relieved.

The arrival of a relief patrol prevented my
replying to young Hayes. I went back to my
place in the trench, but try as I might I could
not sleep; I twisted from side to side, took off
my equipment and cartridge pouches, adjusted
blankets and rubber sheet, tried another place on
the firing platform ; I threw myself down flat in
the bottom of the trench. Still I could not get

172

WOUNDED

asleep. At last I abandoned the attempt, took
from my haversack a few cigarettes, lit one, and
on a piece of coarse paper began making a little
diagram of the ground I had covered that night,
and of the position of the sniper I had been
watching. By the time I had completed it day-
light had come, and with it the familiar " Stand
to." After " Stand to," I crawled under a rub-
ber sheet and snatched a few hours' sleep before
breakfast. Just after breakfast, a man from A
Company came through the trench, munching
some fancy biscuits and carrying in his hand a
can of sardines. The German Kaiser could not
have created a greater impression. " Where had
he got them, and how?" He explained that a
canteen had been opened at the beach. Here
you could get everything that a real grocery store
boasts, and could have it charged on your pay-
book. " A Company men," he said, " had all
given orders through their quarter-master ser-
geant, and had received them that morning."
Then followed a list of mouth-watering delica-
cies, the very names of which we had almost for-
gotten. A deputation instantly waited on Mr.
Nunns. He knew nothing of the thing, and was
incensed that his men had not been allowed to

173

TKENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

participate in the good things. He deputed me
to go down and make inquiries at A Company's
lines. I did so, and found that the first man had
been perfectly correct. A Company was revel-
ing in sardines, white bread, real butter, drip-
ping from roast beef, and tins of salmon and lob-
ster. If we gave an order that day, I was told,
we should get it filled the next. Elated, I re-
turned to B Company's lines with the news.
The dove returning to the ark with the olive
branch could not have been more welcome. Mr.
Nunns fairly beamed satisfaction. A few of the
more pessimistic reflected aloud that they might
get killed before the things arrived.

Just before uine o'clock I went down to see the
cooks about dinner for my section. On my way
back I passed a man going down the trench on
a stretcher. One of the stretcher bearers told me
that he had been hit in the head while picking up
rubbish on top of the parapet. He hoped to get
him to the dressing station alive. As I came into
our own lines another stretcher passed me. The
man on this one was sitting up, grinning,

" Hello, Gal," he yelled. " I 've stopped a
cushy one."

I laughed. "How did it happen?" I asked.

174

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WOUNDED

" Picking up rubbish on top of the parapet."

He disappeared around the curve of the trench,
delightedly spreading the news that he had
stopped a cushy one in the leg. I kept on back
to my own traverse, and showed the diagram I
had made the night before to Art Pratt. Mr.
Nunns had granted us leave to go out that day
to try to get the sniper in the tree. Art was de-
lighted at the chance of some variety. While
Art and I were making out a list of things we
wanted at the canteen, a man in my section came
down the trench.

" Corporal Gallishaw," he said, " the Brigade
Major passed through the lines a few minutes
ago, and he 's raising hell at the state of the
lines ; you 've got to go out with five men, picking
up rubbish on top of the parapet."

Instantly there came before my eyes the vision
of the strangely limp form I had met only a few
minutes before that had been hit in the head
" picking up rubbish on top of the joarapet."
But in the army one cannot stop to think of such
things long; orders have to be obeyed. Since
coming into the trench we had constructed a
dump, but the former occupants of the trench
had thrown their refuse on top of the parapet.

177

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

My job with the five men was to collect this rub-
bish and put it in our dump. At nine o'clock in
the morning we mounted the parapet and began
digging. There was no cover for men standing;
the low bushes hid men sitting or lying. Every
few minutes I gave the men a rest, making them
sit in the shelter of the underbrush. The sun
was shining brightly ; and after the wet spell we
had just passed through, the warmth was pe-
culiarly grateful. The news that the canteen
had been opened on the beach made most of the
men optimistic. With good things to eat in sight
life immediately became more bearable. Never
since the first day they landed had the men
seemed so cheerful. Up there where we were the
sun was very welcome, and we took our time over
the job. One chap had that morning been given
fourteen days' field punishment, because he had
left his post for a few seconds the night before.
He wanted to get a pipe from his coat pocket,
and did not think it worth while to ask any one
to relieve him. It was just those few seconds
that one of the brigade officers selected to visit
our trench. When he saw the post vacaut, he
waited until the man returned, asked his name,
then reported him. Field punishment meant

178

WOUNDED

that in addition to his regular duties the man
would have to work in every digging party or
fatigue detail. I asked him why he had not sent
for me, and he told me that it had happened
while I was out in the listening patrol. He was
not worrying about the punishment, but feared
that his parents might hear of it through some
one writing home. But after a little while even
he caught the spirit of cheerfulness that had
spread amongst us at the news of the new can-
teen. To the average person meals are like the
small white spaces in a book that divide the para-
graphs ; to us they had assumed the proportions
of the paragraph themselves. The man who had
just got field punishment told me the things he
had ordered at the canteen, and we compared
notes and made suggestions. The ubiquitous
Hayes, working like a beaver with his entrench-
ing tool, threw remarks over his shoulder anent
the man who had delayed the information that
the canteen had been established, and offered
some original and unique suggestions for that in-
dividual's punishment. When we had the rub-
bish all scraped up in a pile, we took it on shovels
to the dump we had dug. To do this we had to
walk upright. We had almost finished when the

179

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

snipers on Caribou Ridge began to bang at us. I
jumped to a small depression, and yelled to the
men to take cover. They were ahead of me, tak-
ing the last shovelful of rubbish to the trench.
At the warning to take cover, they separated and
dived for the bushes on either side. That is,
they all did except Hayes, w^ho either did not
hear me or did not know just where to go. I
stepped up out of the depression and pointed
with outstretched arm to a cluster of under-
brush. " Get in there, Hayes ! " I yelled. Just
then I felt a dull thud in my left shoulder blade,
and a sharp pain in the region of my heart. At
first I thought that in running for cover one of
the men had thrown a pick-ax that hit me. Un-
til I felt the blood trickling down my back like
warm water, it did not occur to me that I had
been hit. Then came a drowsy, languid sensa-
tion, the most enjoyable and pleasant I have ever
experienced. It seemed to me that my backbone
became like pulp, and I closed up like a concer-
tina. Gradually I felt my knees giving wa;y
under me, then my head dropped over on my
chest, and down I went. In Egypt I had seen
Mohammedans praying with their faces toward
Mecca, and as I collapsed I thought that I must

180

WOUNDED

look exactly as they did when they bent over and
touched their heads to the ground, worshiping
the Prophet. Connecting the pain in my chest
with the blow in my back, I decided that the
bullet had gone in my shoulder, through my left
lung, and out through my heart, and I concluded
I was done for, I can distinctly remember
thinking of myself as some one else. I recollect
saying, half regretfully, " Poor old Gal is out
of luck this morning," then adding philosophi-
cally, " Well, he had a good time while he was
alive, anyway." By now things had grown very
dim, and I felt everything slipping away from
me. I was myself again, but I said to that other
self who was lying there, as I thought, dying,
" Buck up, old Gal, and die like a sport." Just
then I tried to say, " I 'm hit." It sounded as if
somewhere miles away a faint echo mocked me.
I must have succeeded in making myself heard,
because immediately I could hear Hayes yell
with a frenzied oath, " The Corporal 's struck.
Can't you see the Corporal 's struck? " and heard
him curse the Turk who had fired the shot. Al-
most instantly Hayes was kneeling beside me,
trying to find the wound. He was much more
excited over it than I.

181

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

" Don't you try to bandage it here," I said ;
" yell for stretcher bearers."'

Hayes jumped up, shouting lustily, " Stretcher
bearers at the double, stretcher bearers at the
double ! " then added as an after-thought, " Tell
Art Pratt the Corj^oral 's struck."

I was now quite clear headed again and told
Hayes to shout for " B Company stretcher bear-
ers." On the Peninsula messages were sent
along the trench from man to man. Sometimes
when a traverse sex)arated two men, the one re-
ceiving the message did not bother to step
around, but just shouted the message over.
Often it was not heard, and the message stopped
right there. One message there was though, that
never miscarried, the one that came most fre-
quently, " Stretcher bearers at the double." Un-
less the bearers from some particular company
were specified, all Avho received the message re-
sponded . It was to avoid this that I told Hayes
to yell for B Company stretcher bearers. Ap-
parently some one had heard Hayes yell, " Tell
Art Pratt the Corporal 's struck," because in a
few minutes Art was bending over me, talking
to me gently. Three other men whom I could
not see had come with him ; they had risked their

182

WOUNDED

lives to come for me under fire. " We must get
liim out of this," I heard Art say. In that mo-
ment of danger his thought was not for himself,
but for me. I was able to tell them how to lift
me. No women could have been more gentle or
tender than those men, in carrying me back to
the trench. Although bullets were pattering
around, they walked at a snaiFs pace lest the least
hurried movement might jar me and add to my
pain. The stretcher bearers had arrived by the
time we reached the trench, and were unrolling
bandages and getting iodine ready. At first
there was some diflflculty in getting at the wound.
It had bled so freely that the entire back of my
coat was a mass of blood. The men who had car-
ried me looked as if they had been wounded, so
covered with blood were they. The stretcher
bearer's scissors would not work, and Art angrily
demanded a sharp knife, which some one pro-
duced. The stretcher bearer ripped up my cloth-
ing, exposing my shoulder, then began patching
up my right shoulder. I cursed him in fraternal
trench fashion and told him he was working on
the wrong shoulder; I knew I had been hit in
the left shoulder and tried to explain that I had
been turned over since I was hit. The stretcher

' 183

TKENCniNG AT GALLIPOLI

bearer thought I was delirious aud continued
working away. I thought he was crazy, and told
him so. At last Art interrupted to say, " Just
look at the other shoulder to satisfy him." They
looked, and, as I knew they would, found the
hole the bullet had entered. To get at it they
turned me over, and I saw that a crowd had
gathered around to watch the dressing and make
remarks about the amount of blood, I became
quite angry at this, and I asked them if they
thought it was a nickel show. This caused them
all to laugh so heartily that even I joined in.
This was when I felt almost certain that I was
dying. I can't remember even feeling relieved
when they told me that the bullet had not gone
through my heart. The pain I felt there when
I was first hit was caused by the tearing of the
nerves which centered in my heart when the
bullet tore across my back from shoulder to
shoulder. Never as long as I live shall I forget
the solicitude of my comrades that morning.
The stretcher bearers found that the roughly
constructed trench was too narrow to allow the
stretcher to turn, so they put me in a blanket
and started away. Meanwhile the word had run
along the trench that " Gal had copped it." I

184

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WOUNDED

did not know until that morning that I had so
many friends. A little way down the trench I
met Sergeant Manson. He was carrying some
sticks of chocolate for distribution among the
men. I asked him for a piece. To do so on the
Peninsula was like asking for gold, but he put
it in my mouth with a smile. Hoddinott and
Pike, the stretcher bearers, stopped just where
the communication trench began. The doctor
had come up. He asked me where I was hit, and
I told him. He examined the bandages, and told
the stretcher bearers to take me along to the
dressing station. Captain Alexander, my com-
pany commander, came along, smiled at me, and
wished me good-by. Hoddinott asked me if I
wanted a cigarette, and when I said, " Yes,"
placed one in my mouth and lit it for me. I
had never realized until then just how difficult
it is to smoke a cigarette without removing it
from your mouth. Poor Stenlake, w^ho by this
time was worn to a shadow, was in the support
trench, waiting with some other sick men, to go
to hospital. He came along and said good-by.
A Eed Cross man gave me a postcard to be sent
to some organization that would supply me with
comforts while I was in hospital. " You '11 eat

187

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

your Christmas dinner in London, old chap," he
said.

We had to go two miles before the stretcher
bearers could exchange the blanket for the regu-
lar stretcher. The trenches were narrow, and
on one side a little ditch had been dug to drain
them. The recent wet weather had made the
bottom of the trench very slippery, and every
few minutes one of the bearers would slide side-
ways and bring up in the ditch. When he did
the blanket swayed with him, and my shoulders
struck against the jagged limestone on the sides.
To avoid this as much as possible the bearers
had to proceed very slowly. Those two miles to
me seemed endless. I had now become com-
pletely paralyzed, all control of my muscles was
gone, and I slipped about in the blanket. Every
few yards I would ask Hoddinott, " Is it very
much farther?" and every time he would turn
around and grin cheerfully, and answer, as one
would answer a little child, " Not very much
farther now. Gal."

At last we emerged into a large wdde communi-
cation trench, with the landmarks of which I was
familiar. I was suffering severely now, and was
beginning to worry over trifles. Suddenly it

188

WOUNDED

came to me that I was still a couple of miles from
the dressing station, and when we came out of
the communication trench on to open ground
that had been torn up by shrapnel, I was con-
sumed with fear that at any moment I might be
hit by another shell, and might not get aboard
the hospital after all, for by this time my mind
had centered on getting into a clean bed. A
dozen different thoughts chased through my
mind. I was grieved to think that in order to
get at the wound it had been necessary to cut the
fine great -coat that I had so much wanted to take
home as a souvenir. I asked Hoddinott what
they had done with it, and he told me that part
of it was under my head as a pillow, but that it
was so besmeared with blood that it would be
thrown away as soon as I arrived at the dressing
station. From thinking of the great-coat, I re-
membered that before I went out with the dig-
ging party I had taken off my raincoat and left
it near my haversack in the trench, and in the
pocket of it was the little diagram I had drawn
of the position of the sniper I had seen the night
before. Again I called for Hoddinott, and again
he came, and answered me patiently and gently.
"Yes, he would tell Art about the little dia-

189

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

gram." Where a fringe of low bushes bordered
the pathway at the end of the open space, Hod-
diuott and Pike turned. For the distance of
about a city block they carried the stretcher
along a road cut through thick jungle. At the
end of it stood a little post from which drooped
a white flag with a red cross. It was the end of
the first stage for the stretcher bearers. A great
wave of loneliness swept over me when I realized
that I was to see the last of the men with whom I
had gone through so much. I was almost crying
at the thought of leaving them there. Somehow
or other it did not seem right for me to go.
I felt that in some way I was taking an unfair
advantage of them. Hoddinott and Pike slipped
the straps from their shoulders and lowered the
stretcher gently. Under the blanket Hoddinott
sought my hand." " Good-by, Gal," he said.
" Is there any message I can take back to Art? "
" Yes," I said, " tell him to keep my raincoat."
Since the moment I had been hit, I had been
afraid of one thing — that I should break down,
and not take my punishment like a man. I was
tensely determined that no matter how much I
suffered I would not whine or cry. In our regi-
ment it had become a tradition that a man must

190

WOUNDED

smile when he was wounded. One thing more
than anything else kept me firm in my determina-
tion. Art Pratt had walked just behind the
blanket until we came to the communication
trench. Even then he was loath to leave me.
He could not trust himself to speak when I said,
" Good-by, Art, old pal." He grasped my hand,
and holding it walked along a few feet. Then
he dropped my hand gently. There are some
things in life that stand out ineffably sweet and
satisfying. For me such a one was that last mo-
ment of farewell to Art. I had always consid-
ered him the most fearless man in a regiment
whose name was a byword for reckless courage.
Of all men on the Peninsula I valued his opinion
most. No recommendation for promotion, no
award for valor, not even the coveted V. C, could
have been half so sweet as the few words I heard
Art say. With eyes shining, he turned to the
man beside him and said, almost savagely, " By
God, he 's a brick."

191

CHAPTER VIII

HOMEWARD BOUND

AS soon as Hoddinott and Pike had left me,
two other stretcher bearers carried me
about two hundred yards farther to a rough
shelter made of poles laid across supports com-
posed of sandbags. This was the dressing sta-
tion. On top of the poles, sandbags made it im-
pervious to overhead shelling. On three sides
it was closed in, but the side nearest the beach
was open. From where my stretcher was placed
I could just catch a glimpse of the JEgean Sea
and of the ships. Men on stretchers were lined
up in rows on the ground. Here and there a man
groaned, but most of the men were gazing at the
roof, with set faces. Some who were only slightly
wounded were sitting up on stretchers while Red
Cross men bandaged up their legs or feet. A
doctor was working away methodically and rap-
idly. A little to the right another shelter housed
the men who were being sent to hospital with

192

HOMEWAED BOUND

dysentery, enteric, or typhoid. As soon as I
was brought in, the doctor came to me. " I '11 do
this one right away," he said to one of his as-
sistants. The assistant stripped the blanket
from me and cut off the portions of the blood-
stained shirt still remaining. As he did so, some-
thing dropped on the ground. The Red Cross
man picked it up.

"Here's the bullet that hit you," he said,
putting it beside me on the stretcher. " It
dropped out of your shirt. It just got through
you and stuck in your shirtsleeve."

" You 'd better get him a little bag to keep his
things in," said the doctor.

The Eed Cross man produced a bag, took my
pay book, and everything he found in my pocket,
and put them in it, then tied them to the
stretcher. By this time I was ready for the doc-
tor to begin work. That doctor knew his busi-
ness. In a very few minutes he had probed and
cut and cleaned the wound, and adjusted a new
bandage. The bleeding had stopped by this
time. He asked me the circumstances of being
hit. He told me to grip his hand and squeeze.
I tried it with my right hand but could do noth-
ing; then I tried the left hand and succeeded a

193

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

little better. The doctor looked grave when I
failed to grip with my right hand, but brightened
a little when I gripped with my left. All the
time he talked to me genially. That did me
nearly as much good as the surgical attention he
gave me. He was a Canadian, he told me. At the
outbreak of the war he had been taking post-
graduate courses at Cambridge University in
England. The University sent several hospital
units to the front, and he had come with this one.
He knew Canada and the States pretty thor-
oughly.

" Where do you come from? " he asked me.

" Newfoundland," I told him. " But I live in
the United States."

"What part?" he asked.

" Cambridge, Massachusetts," I told him.

"Oh," he said, "that's where Harvard Uni-
versity is."

" Yes," I said, " I was a student there when I
enlisted."

The doctor called to a couple of the Red Cross
men. "Here's a chap from Harvard Univer-
sity in Cambridge, over in the United States."
The two Red Cross men came and told me they
were students at Cambridge. They talked to me

194

HOMEWARD BOUND

for quite a little while. Before they left me to
attend to some more wounded, they made me
promise to ask to be sent to Cambridge, England,
to hospital. The University had established a
very large and thoroughly equipped hospital
there. All I had to do, they said, was tell the
people that I had been a student at the other
Cambridge, and I should be an honored guest.
They persisted in calling Harvard, Cambridge,
and when they went away said that they were
overjoyed to have seen a man from the sister
university.

The doctor came back in a few minutes.

" How are you feeling now? " he said.

" I feel pretty well now," I answered, " but it 's
very close in here with all these wounded men,
and the place smells of chloroform. Can't I be
moved outside? "

" I '11 move you outside if you say so," said
the doctor, " but you 're taking a chance. Occa-
sionally a stray shell comes over this way. The
Turks are trying to locate a battery close to this
place. Sometimes a shell bursts prematurely,
and drops around here."

On the Peninsula, officers who gave men leave
to go on dangerous missions salved their con-

195

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

sciences by first warning the men that in doing
it " they were taking a chance." The caution
had come to mean nothing.

"All right, doctor," I said. "I'll take a
chance."

Two stretcher bearers came, and lifted me out-
side the shelter, where the wind blew, fresh and
invigorating. Just as they turned, I heard the
old familiar shriek that signaled the coming of a
shell. It burst almost overhead. Most of the
missiles it contained dropped on the other side
of the shelter, but a few tiny pieces flew in my
direction. Three of them hit me in the right
arm, a fourth landed in my leg.

"Is anybody hit?" yelled a Red Cross man,
whose accent proclaimed him as an inhabitant
of the country north of the Clyde.

" I 've got a couple of splinters," I said.

I was lifted inside quickly. The Scotchman
who put on some bandages on the little cuts
looked at me accusingly.

" Ye were warned, before ye went," he said.
"Ye desairved it. But then," he added, "ye
might hae got it worse. Ye 're lucky ye did not
get it in the guts."

After a little while mv arms and back began

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HOMEWARD BOUND

to ache violently. Two Red Cross men came
along and moved me to another shelter similar to
the first. This was the clearing station. From
here motor ambulances carried the wounded to
the shore. I knew from the burring speech of
the big sergeant in charge that he hailed
from Scotland. I asked him where he came
from, and he told me that he came from Inver-
ness.

" Our regiment trained near there for a while/ ^
I said. " They garrisoned Fort George."

" Ye '11 no' be meanin' the Seaforth Highland-
ers, laddie," said he.

^' No, I said, " we 're Newfoundlanders, the
First Newfoundland Regiment."

" Oh, I ken ye well, noo," he said, gloomily.
" Ye 're a bad lot ; it took six policemen to ar-
rest one o' your mob. On the Peninsula they
call ye the Never Failing Little Darlings." After
that he thawed quite a little. " I '11 look at your
wound noo, laddie," he said, after a few minutes.
" Ye 're awfu' light, laddie," he said as he raised
me. " Puir laddie," he added, pityingly. " Puir
laddie. Ye 're stairved. I '11 get ye Queen
Mary's ration."

" What 's Queen Mary's ration? " I asked.

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TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

" ' T 's Queen Mary's gift to the wounded.
I '11 get it for ye right away." He went outside
the clearing station and returned in a few min-
utes with a cup of warm malted milk. " ' T will
help ye some till ye get aboard the hospital ship.
Here 's the ambulance noo."

A fleet of motor ambulances swayed over the
uneven ground and rolled up close to the clearing
station. The drivers and helpers began loading
the stretchers aboard and one by one started
awa3^ Before I was put into one, the big Scotch-
man took a large syringe and injected a strong
dose of morphia into my chest.

" Ye '11 find it hard," he said, " bumping over
the hill, but ye' 11 soon be all right and com-
fortable."

" Tell me," I said, " shall I get into a real bed
on the ship?"

He laughed. " Sure ye will, laddie. The best
bed ye 've had since ye 've been in the airmy.
Good luck to ye, laddie."

Each of the motor ambulances carried four
men, two above and two below. I was put on
top, and the door flap pulled over. We jolted
and pitched and swayed. Once we turned short
and skidded at a curve. I knew just the very

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HOMEWARD BOUND

place, although it was dark in the ambulance. I
had gone over the road often with ration parties.
Fortunately the morphia was beginning to take
effect, and dulled the pain to some extent. At
last the ambulance stopped, somebody pulled
the curtain back, and we were lifted out. We
were on West Beach. A pier ran out into the
sea. A man-o'-war launch towing a string of
boats glided in near enough to let her first boat
come close to the pier. The breeze was quite
fresh, and made me shiver. The stretchers were
laid across the boats, close to each other. Soon
all the boats were filled. I could see the man on
the stretcher to the right of me, but the one on
the other side I could not see. I tried to turn
my head but could not. The eyes of the man
next me were large with pain. I smiled at him,
but instead of smiling back at me, his lip curled
resentfully, and he turned over on his side
so that he could face away from me. As he did,
the blanket slipped from his shoulder, and I saw
on his shoulder strap the star of a second lieu-
tenant. I had committed the unpardonable sin.
I had smiled at an officer as if I had been an
equal, forgetting that he was not made of common
clay. Once after that, when he turned his head,

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TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

his eyes met mine disdainfully. That time I did
not smile. I have often laughed at the incident
since, but there on that boat I was boiling with
rage. Not a word had passed between us, but
his expression in turning away had been elo-
quent. I cursed him and the system that pro-
duced him, and swore that never again would I
put on a uniform. Gradually I calmed down;
the morphia had got in its work. In a little
while I had sunk into a comatose condition. I
remember, in a hazy sort of way, being taken
aboard a large lighter. There were tiers of
stretchers on both sides. This time I was in the
lower tier, and was wondering how soon the man
above me would fall on me. At last I went
to sleep. When I awoke, I was alone and in mid-
air. All about me was black. By that time I
was completely paralyzed from the waist up. I
could see only directly above my head. It was
night, and the sky was dotted with twinkling
stars. I could feel no movement, but the stars
came slowly nearer and nearer. " What was I
doing here in mid-air?" Subconsciously I
thought of the body of Mohammed, suspended
between earth and heaven. Now I felt I had hit
on the answer. I was going to heaven, and the

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HOMEWARD BOUND

thought was very comforting. Suddenly the
stars stopped, and after a pause began receding.
A face appeared above me, then the head and
shoulders of a man dressed in the uniform of a
naval officer. This suggested something else to
me. The officers of the Flying Corps wear naval
uniforms. I decided that while I was asleep I
had been transferred to the Flying Corps.

" Hello, old chap," said the naval officer.
" Do you know where you are? "

" No,'' I said. " Am I going to heaven, or have
I joined the Flying Corps?"

" No," said the officer. " You 're on the
stretcher being hoisted aboard the hospital ship."

Two big, strapping, bronzed sailors approached
and lifted the stretcher on to an elevator; they
stepped on and the elevator descended. We
stopped at the end of a short white-walled pas-
sage-way, lighted by electricity. The sailors
grasped the stretcher as lightly as if it had been
empty, walked along to the end of the passage-
way into a ward. It had formerly been a dining
saloon. Large square windows looked out upon
the sea, everything was white and clean and or-
derly. After the dirt and filth of the Peninsula
it was like a beautiful dream. The sailors lifted

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TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

me gently into a bed and stood there waiting for
orders from the nurse. As I looked at them I
thought of our boys standing in the trenches
during a bombardment and yelling, " Come on,
the navy," and I murmured, " Come on, the
navy ; " and then when I looked at the calm, self-
possessed, capable-looking nursing sister, moving
about amongst the wounded, I said, and never
had it meant so much to me, " Good old Britain."

The string of boats in which I had come was
the batch that filled the quota of the patients of
the hospital ship. In about half an hour she
began to move. An orderly came around with
meals. The doctor came in after a little while
and began examining the patients. From some
part of the ship not far from where I was came
the sound of voices singing hymns. It was the
last touch needed to emphasize the difference be-
tween the hospital ship and the Peninsula. Sun-
day evening on the Peninsula had meant no more
than any other. The ship moved along so quietly
that she seemed scarcely to stir. The doctor and
the nurse worked noiselessly; over everything
hung the spirit of Sabbath calm. Gallipoli
might have been as far away as Mars.

It must have been about nine o'clock when an

202

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e

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tr

w

a-

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HOMEWARD BOUND

orderly came around and turned out all the
lights except a reading lamp over the desk where
the night sister sat. All that night I could not
sleep. About midnight the night sister gave me
a sleeping draught, but it did no good. I was
suffering the most intense pain, but I was so glad
to be away from the dirt of the trenches that I
felt nothing else counted. The next day I was
a great deal weaker, and could scarcely talk.
When the doctor came around to dress my
wounds, I could only smile at him. All that day
the sister came to my bed at frequent intervals.
I was too weak then to eat. Two or three times
she gave me some sort of broth through a little
feeding bowl. In the evening I had sunk into
apathy. The sister sent for the doctor. He
came, felt my pulse, took my temperature, then
turned and whispered to the sister. She called
an orderly, and I heard her say, " Bring the
screens for this man." The orderly went away
and in a few minutes returned with two screens
large enough to entirely conceal my bed. When
the screens had been put in position, the sister
came in, wiped my mouth and forehead, and went
away. On the other side of the screen I heard
her speaking softly to the doctor. The whole

205

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

thing seemed to me something entirely apart
from me. I felt that I was watching a scene
in a play, and that I found it of little interest.
After about an hour the doctor and the sister
came in again.

" Feeling all right, old man? " said the doctor.

" Yes," I said. " Fine."

" Sister," said the doctor, " give this man any-
thing he wants."

The sister bent over me. She was a woman
between thirty and thirty-five, of the type that
inspires confidence; every word and movement
reflected poise, and there was a calmness and se-
renity about her that you knew she could have
acquired only as a result of having seen and eased
much human suffering.

" If there is anything you would care to have,
please ask for it, and if it is at all possible we
will get it for you," she said, in a softly modu-
lated voice, with the slightest suspicion of a
drawl ; it was the voice of a cultivated English-
woman; after the Peninsula, a woman's voice
was like a tonic.

'^ Yes," I said, " I want chicken and wine."

I had not the slightest desire for chicken and
wine just then, but I felt that I had to ask for

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HOMEWARD BOUND

something, and the best I could think of was
chicken and wine. She smiled at me, went away,
and in about fifteen minutes she returned with a
little tray. She had brought the chicken and
wine. She had minced up the chicken, and she
fed me little pieces of it with a spoon. In a little
cup with a spout she had the wine. When I had
eaten a little of the chicken, she put the spout
between my lips ; I had expected some port wine,
but when I tasted, it was champagne. I drank
it to the very last drop.

" How do you feel now? " said the sister.

'^ Never felt better,'' I answered.

" That 's very nice," she said. " I hope you '11
get to sleep soon."

Then she went away, and in a few minutes the
night sister came on. She peeped in at me,
smiled, and went away. All that night I looked
up at a tiny spot on the ceiling. In the board
directly above my eyes, there was a curious knot.
A little flaw ran across the center of it. It re-
minded me of a postman carrying his bag of let-
ters. It seemed to me that night that I could
stand the pain no longer. My back seemed to be
tearing apart, as if a man was pulling on each
shoulder, trying to separate them from the spine.

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TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

I tried to jump up from the bed but could not
move a muscle. I felt that it would be better to
tear my back apart myself at once and have it
over, but when I tried to move my arms I found
them useless. It must have been well into the
morning when the night sister came around
again. The doctor was with her. He had a
large syringe in his hand. He said nothing.
Neither did I. I closed my eyes. I wanted to
be alone. I felt him oj^en my shirt at the neck
and rub some liquid on my chest. I opened my
eyes. He was putting the needle of the long
syringe into my chest where he had rubbed it
with iodine. The skin was leathery and at first
the needle would not penerate. At last it went
in with a rush. It seemed at least a foot long.
He rubbed another spot, and plunged the needle
in a second time. " We 've got to get him
asleep," he said to the night sister. " If he 's
not asleep in an hour, call me again." Very soon
a drowsiness crept over me. Nothing seemed to
matter. I wanted to rest. In a short time I
was asleep. When I woke, it was broad daylight.
The day sister was standing by my bed, smiling.
She turned around and beckoned to some one.

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The doctor came close to the bed, felt my pulse,
took my temperature again, and smiled. '' Quite
all right, sister," he said.

An orderly came in, lifted me up in bed,
washed my face and hands, and brought in a tray
with chicken. There was the same little feeding
cup. This time it had port wine in it. The or-
derly propped me up in bed, putting cushions
carefully behind my back and shoulders. The
sister and the doctor superintended while he was
doing it. Lifting a wounded man is a science.
An unskilful person, no matter how well inten-
tioned, may sometimes do incalculable damage.
Putting a strain on the wrong muscle may undo
the work of the doctor. I could see out one of
the large windows now, and I noticed that we
were passing a good many ships, mostly vessels of
war. They seemed to increase in number every
few minutes; and by the time I had finished
breakfast, we were in the midst of a forest of
funnels and rigging. Soon the engines stopped.
When the doctor came around to dress my back,
I asked him where we were.

" We 're in Alexandria, now," he said. " In an
hour's time we '11 have unloaded. You 're the

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TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

last patient to be dressed. We 're doing you last
so that you won't have so long to wait before the
bandages are changed."

"■ Doctor," I asked, " how long will it be be-
fore this wound gets better? "

" I don't know," he said. " It 's impossible to
tell until you 've been X-rayed. Last night we
were certain you were dying, but this morning
you are perfectly normal."

In a short time the ward filled with men from
the shore, landing officers, orderlies with mes-
sages, sergeants in charge of ambulance corps,
and an army of stretcher bearers. The orderlies
of the hospital ship began putting out the kits of
the wounded at the foot of their beds. The dis-
embarkation began as soon as the doctor had com-
pleted his dressing. I was propped up in bed,
and could see a long line of motor ambulances
on the pier. The less seriously wounded cases
were taken off first. The sister told me that
these were going by train to Cairo. Those who
could not stand the train journey were going to
different hospitals in Alexandria. I was to go
to Alexandria, she said. A middle-aged man
passed us on a stretcher. He was hit in the leg,
and sat on the stretcher, smiling contentedly,

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HOMEWARD BOUND

and looking about him interestedly. When he
saw the sister, his eyes lighted up.

" Good-by, sister," he shouted. " I '11 see you
again, the next time I 'm wounded."

The sister returned his good-by. Then sh^e
turned to me, and said : " That man was on the
hospital train that left Antwerp the day the
Germans shelled it in 1914. When he came in
the other night I did n't recognize him, but he re-
membered me."

While I waited for my turn the sister told
me that she had been in the first batch of nurses
to cross the Channel at the beginning of the war.
She had been in the hospitals in Belgium that
were shelled by the Germans. At eight o'clock
in the morning she had left Antwerp on the last
hospital train, and at nine o'clock the Germans
occupied the town. She had been on different
hospital ships and trains ever since. Once only
had she had a rest. That was some time in the
summer of 1915. She expected a week off in
London at Christmas, when the ship she was now
attached to laid up for repairs. The boat I was
on, she said, carried ordinarily seven hundred
and fifty wounded. At present she carried nine
hundred. They generally arrived in Suvla Bay

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TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

in the morning, and left that night, filled with
wounded. At the time of the first landing at
Auzac an hour after the assault began they
left with twelve hundred wounded Australians.
The sisters were sent out from a central
depot in England, and went to the various fronts.
When the stretcher bearers came to take me
away, the sister gathered up my belongings in
a little bag, tied it to the stretcher, put a
pillow under my head, and nodded a bright
good-by.

The stretcher bearers, two stalwart Austra-
lians, took me to the elevator, across the deck,
and out onto the pier. It was now getting to-
ward evening. A lady stopped the stretcher be-
tween the pier and the ambulance, and handed
one of the bearers a little white packet contain-
ing a towel, soap, tooth-brush and tooth-powder.
Without waiting to be thanked she went on
to intercept another stretcher. The stretcher
bearer put the package under my pillow.
" Ready, Bill," said one of the bearers with the
nasal twang of the Bushman. " Lift away," said
Bill, and they lifted the stretcher up on the top
tier of the ambulance wagon, without stepping
up from the ground. They did it with the same

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HOMEWARD BOUND

motion as when two men swing a bag of grain.
But it was not in the least uncomfortable for me.
These Australian stretcher bearers who meet the
incoming hospital ships are amazingly strong.
There is an easy gracefulness in the way they
swing along with a stretcher that makes you
trust them. I was the last man to go in that am-
bulance w^agon, and in a few minutes we were
whirling smoothly along good roads amid the
familiar smells of Egyptian bazaars. This am-
bulance drive was a good deal different from
the one on the Peninsula just after I had been
wounded. After about half an hour the ambu-
lance swerved off the smooth asphalt road onto a
gravel road, slowed down, and ran into a yard.
The Australians reappeared, opened the flaps,
and began unloading. We were in the square of
a large hospital. All around us were buildings.
A fine-looking, bronzed man, with the uniform
of a colonel, was directing some Sikhs who were
carrying the stretchers from the ambulances into
the different buildings. All the stretchers were
lying on the ground in a long row. As soon as
each one was inspected by the colonel, he told
the stretcher bearers where to take it. When he
came to mine, he said, " Dangerously wounded,

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TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

Ward three. Then, to the stretcher bearers,
" Careful, very careful."

Ward three was a long ward with stone floor
and plaster walls; it contained about fifty beds.
More than half of the beds had little " cradles "
at the foot; when I came to know hospitals, I
learned that these were to iDrevent the bedclothes
from irritating wounded legs. In a few min-
utes a doctor came around, gave orders, and the
night sister began bandaging up the wounds of
the men who had come in. The sister who ar-
ranged my bandages was Scotch, and the burr of
her speech was pleasant in my ears. She came
back about ten o'clock and gave me a sleeping
potion. The change from the hospital ship must
have been too much excitement for me, because
I could not get asleep that night. But I did
not feel as I had felt on the hospital ship. I
have very seldom experienced such joy as I did
that night when I found that I could move my
head. I did it very slowly, and with great pain,
and rested a long time before I tried to
turn it back again. The door was right oppo-^
site my bed. I could see the sand shining white
in the moonlight in the square, and right ahead
of me a large marquee where, I found out later,

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HOMEWARD BOUND

some of the convalescent men slept. A man
about four beds away from mine was dying.
When I had first come in he had been groaning
at intervals, but now he was silent. About one
or two o'clock an orderly came running softly
in rubber-soled shoes to tell the sister that the
man had died. Half an hour later two men with
a particularly long stretcher, appeared in the
w^ard. They stepped quietly, trying not to dis-
turb the sleepers. I saw them walk along to the
bed of the dead man, and go in behind the screen.
After a litle while the ward orderly moved the
screens back, and the stretcher bearers reap-
peared. Over the burden on the stretcher was
draped a Union Jack. Often after that while I
was in Ward three I saw the same soft-step-
ping men come in at night and depart silently
with the flag-draped stretcher. Many of the
wounded left the ward in that way, but their
places were soon filled by incoming wounded.

The first morning I was in Ward three the doc-
tor ordered me to be X-rayed. The X-ray ap-
paratus was in another building. To get to it
I had to pass through the square. The sun was
too hot in the morning for us to cross the square.
We therefore skirted it under the shade of the

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TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

long portico that runs along the outside of nearly
all buildings in Egypt. In beds outside the
building were men with dysentery. At the cor-
ner of the square a plank gangway led to the
quarters of the enteric patients. Just before I
reached the X-ray room, a man hailed me from
one of the beds. It was Tom Smythe, a boy I
had known since I was able to walk. All the
time I had been on the Peninsula I had not seen
him, nor had I heard any news of him. On the
way back from the X-ray room, the stretcher
bearers stopped near his bed while I talked with
him. He had been in the hospital about two
weeks, he said, and hoped to get to England on
the next boat. He promised to come to see me
in my ward as soon as he was allowed up. The
next day he came, although he w^as not supposed
to be up, and brought with him a chap named
Varney. Varney had been in the section next
mine at Stob's Camp in Scotland, he told me,
Smythe and Varney vied with each other after
that in trying to make me comfortable. To me
that has always been the most remarkable thing
about our regiment: their loyalty to a com-
rade in trouble. I have known Newfoundlanders
to light with each other, using every weapon from

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HOMEWARD BOUND

profanity to tent mallets while in camp ; on the
Peninsula I have seen these same men carrying
each other's packs, digging dugouts, and taking
the other man's fatigue work. Varney was very
much distressed to see the condition I was in.
He knew I was fond of reading, and searched all
over the place for books and magazines. Once
he brought me three American magazines, one
Saturday Evening Post and two Munsey's.
They were nearly two years old, but I read them
as eagerly as if they had just been published.
During the six weeks I was in hospital in Alex-
andria, I improved wonderfully. The doctor in
charge of the ward took a special interest in my
progress, and seemed to pride himself on hav-
ing handled the case successfully. Every day
or so he brought in a doctor from some other
ward to show him my wounds and the X-ray
plates. He was very careful and tried in dress-
ing to cause me as little pain as possible. " Poor
old chap," he would say, when he saw me wince,
" poor old chap." I think there was a great deal
of psychology in my getting w^ell. In this Twen-
ty-first General Hospital nothing was omitted
that could make one comfortable. Every morn-
ing an orderly w^ashed me. The orderlies were

219

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

all very considerate, except one. He did not last
very long in our ward. He began washing the
l^atients at four o'clock in the morning. He al-
ways made me think of a hostler washing a car-
riage. When he had washed my arms he always
let them drop in a way that reminded me of the
shafts of a wagon. He was soon replaced by a
chap who did not begin his work until seven.
At eight we had breakfast : fruit, cereal, and eggs.
At eleven we had soda water and crackers or
sweet biscuits. At one came dinner: soup,
chicken, and vegetables, half a chicken to each
man, with a dessert of pudding or custard. At
four we had tea, with fish, and at eight came
supper: cocoa and bread and butter, with jelly.
In the morning visitors came in and brought us
the daily papers. Sisters of the V. A. D. — Vol-
untary Aid Detachment — came in each afternoon
to relieve the regular nursing sisters. They
were mostly Englishwomen resident in Egypt.
Most of their men folks were at one of the fronts.
They read to the men who could not hold books
in their hands, talked to us cheerfully, and wrote
letters for us. Some of them brought us little
delicacies: grapes and chocolate. Men in hos-
pital have no money. Any money they have is

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taken away when they arrive and refunded when
they leave. Like most of the rules in the army
to-day, this was made for the old regulars.
When the regulars felt they needed a rest they
went into hospital; the only way they could be
stopped was to keep all their money away from
them. To-day two million men suffer as a result.
Ever since the day I left the Peninsula I had
wanted chocolate. Biit I had no money, and for
a long time I had to go without it. At last
young Varney got me some. He had gone er-
rands for a wounded Australian, who had been
given some money from outside, and the Aus-
tralian had given him some ; he could hardly wait
to get to me with it.

As soon as a man was sufficiently recovered to
travel, he was sent to England. New men were
always coming in to take the places of the old.
A lot of them were Australians. I kept asking
them all as they came in if they could tell me
anything of my friend White George. Of course
a nickname is very little to go on. A man who
w^as White George in one part of the trench might
be Queensland Harry in another. All I knew
about him was that he was in the Fifteenth
Battalion, and that he had a beard. At last a

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TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

chap did come in oue evening from the Fifteenth
Battalion. I was in bed at the time, and
could not get a chance to ask him about White
George. The next day the poor chap was writh-
ing and screaming in the terrible spasms of tet-
anus, and for two days the screens were around
his bed. On the third day he was better. As
soon as Varney came in, he wheeled me up to the
Australian's bed. I asked him what was the
matter with him, and he told me that he had a
flesh wound in the head that did n't bother him,
but that his left leg was off at the knee.

"Are you from the Fifteenth Battalion?" I
asked.

" Yes," he said.

'' Do you know a chap in that battalion," I
said, " that they call White George? "

The w^ounded Australian looked at me in a
quizzical way. Then he drawled slowly, " Well,
I think I do. Why, damn it, man, I 'm White
George."

Then he recognized me. " Why, it 's the New-
foundland Corporal. Hello, Corporal. You 're
just the man I wanted to see," he said. " I
stood on that bomb all right, and got away with
it — once. When I tried it a second time, I put

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HOMEWARD BOUND

the bomb on the firing platform, and when I
stepped on it, my head was over the parapet;
Johnny Turk got me in the head, and the bomb
did the rest."

" Don't you wish now you had n't tried the ex-
periment? " I said.

" No," said White George, " I feel perfectly
satisfied."

" By the way," I said, as I was leaving him,
"why do they call you White George? Your
hair is dark."

" My real name," he said, " is George White,
but on the regimental roll it reads * White,
George.' "

223

CHAPTER IX

" FEENISH "

IT must have been about the sixth week that
I was iu Egypt that one of the Australians
came over to my bed and told me that my name
was on the list of men to go to England by the
next boat. I was allowed up for two hours in
the afternoon ; and when I got up I looked at the
list, and found my name there. An orderly from
the stores came in and asked me for a list of
clothing I needed. He came back in about an
hour with a complete uniform and kit. The sis-
ter told me that I was to go to England the next
morning. At ten o'clock the next day I was
taken out to the little clearing station in the
square, and put in with a lot of other men on
stretchers. An officer came around and in-
spected our kits. A little later a sergeant from
the pay office gave each man an advance of
twelve shillings. After that the loading began.
A line of about twenty ambulances filed out of

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"FEENISH"

the yard and through the malodorous byways of
Alexandria to the waterfront. Here we were
put aboard the hospital ship Rewa, an old rocky
tub that had been an Indian troopship before the
war. I learned this from an old English regu-
lar in the stretcher next me. He had seen her
often before, and had made a trip from England
to India in her once. The Rewa was so full of
men that the latest arrivals had to go on deck in
hammocks. The thought of a trip across the Bay
of Biscay as deck passenger on the Rewa was not
very attractive, but our fears on this point were
soon allayed by one of the ship's officers. We
were not going to England on the Reica, he said.
We were going to Lemnos Island, and in Mudros
Bay we should transship into the Aquitania.
When we had cleared Alexandria Harbor, the
wind had freshened considerably. All that night
and the next day we pitched and rolled heavily.
The second night, when we had expected to reach
Mudros Bay, we were still twenty-four hours
away from it. Canvas sheets had to be rigged
above the bulwarks to prevent the spray from
drenching the men in the stretchers on deck.
The next day a good many men were sea sick,
and it was not till the next evening that the storm

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TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

abated. Even then it was too rough to get close
to the big ship. We did try to get near her once,
and succeeded in getting one hawser fast, but the
wind and tide drove us so hard against her, that
the captain of the Aquitania would take no more
risks and ordered us ofif. We had to lay to all
that evening, and the next morning. At noon
the wind died down enough to begin the trans-
shipment from the smaller ships. We waited
while seven other hospital ships transferred their
human freight, and then moved up near enough
to put gangways between the two boats. The
change was effected very expeditiously. We
were soon transferred, and settled in our new
quarters. I was in a ward with some Australian
troops on the top deck. Board petitions had
been run up from it to the promenade deck, mak-
ing a long bright, well ventilated corridor.
There was only one drawback on the Aquitania.
The sister in charge of our ward did not like
Colonials, and made it pretty plain. She was
rather a superior person who did not like to dress
wounds. We were to make two stops before we
arrived in England, I was told ; one at Salonica
to take on some sick, the other at Naples for
coal. The Salonica stop took place at night.

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"FEENISH"

We did not go into the harbor; probably it was
not deep enough for the Aquitania. The sick
were taken aboard outside. We came to Naples
early one fine Sunday morning. As we went into
the harbor, I could see through the window Mt.
Vesuvius, smoking steadily. We were in Naples
at the same time as the big Olympic , and the
Mauretania, the sister ship of the Lusitania. It
was the time that the Germans had protested
that the British hospital ships carried troops to
the Dardanelles on the return trip. The neutral
consuls in Naples went aboard the Olympic and
Mauretania that Sunday and investigated. The
charge, of course, was unfounded. An Italian
general and his staff came aboard our ship and
were shown around the wards. He was a dapper
little man, who gesticulated vehemently and
bowed to all the sisters. The sister who did not
like Colonials was speaking to him when he came
through our ward. She was trying to impress
him with the excellent treatment our wounded
received. She pointed out each man to him, in
the same way a keeper does at the zoological gar-
dens.

" They get this every evening," she said, indi-
cating the supper we were eating. " And what

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TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

is this?" she said, looking at some apricot jam
on a saucer on my bed.

" Apricot jam, sister," I said, then added
sweetly, in my best society fashion, " We get it
every evening." I might have told her that I
had had it not only every evening, but every noon
and morning while I was on the Peninsula.

" And what is this? " she said, pointing to the
cup in my hand. " Is it tea or cocoa? "

" It 's tea," I said. " We get it every even-
ing,— just as if we were human beings, and
not Colonials." After that I think she liked Co-
lonials even less.

The Bay of Biscay was just a little rough when
we went through it, but it did not affect the
Aquitania very much.

When the word went around on the day that
land had been sighted, every man that could
hobble went on deck to get a first glimpse of
England. We could not see very far because of
the thick mist of an English December. About
ten o'clock we were at the entrance to South-
ampton, but the tide was out, or the chief engi-
neer was out, so we could not go up until that
evening. That last day was a tedious one.
Every one was eager to get ashore. To most of

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"FEENISH"

the men, England was home; and after the
trenches and the hospitals, home meant much.

As soon as we landed, a train took us to a
place near London. It was twenty-five miles
from the hospital that was our destination.
Here we were met by automobiles that took us
to the hospital for Newfoundlanders at Wands-
w^orth Common, London. There were only half
a dozen of us from Newfoundland. At first the
doctor on the Aqidtania persisted in calling us
Canadians, and wanted to send us to Walton-on-
Thames. It took us two hours to convince him
that Newfoundland had no connection with Can-
ada. Two automobiles were enough for our lit-
tle party. The man who drove me in told me
that he had come a hundred miles to do it. All
the automobiles that met the hospital trains were
loaned by people who wanted to do whatever they
could to help the cause. He was a dairy farmer,
he said, and gave me uninteresting statistical in-
formation about cows and the amount of milk he
sold in London each day. But apart from that,
I enjoyed the smooth drive over the faultless
roads.

The Third London hospital at Wandsworth
fJommon is a military hospital ; and although the

229

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

discipline is strict, everything possible is done
for the comfort of the patients. Concerts are
given every few evenings ; almost every afternoon
people send around automobiles to take the
wounded men for a drive. Twice a week visitors
come in for three hours in the afternoon. At
Wandsworth I stayed only a very few days.
Two days before Christmas I was sent to Esher
to the convalescent home run by the V. A. D.
Sisters. Nobody at this hospital received any
remuneration. Esher is in Surrey, not many
miles from London. Even in the winter the
weather was pleasant. Here we had a great
deal of liberty, being allowed out all day until
six at night. Only thirty men were in Esher at
one time. The hospital contained a piano, vic-
trola, pool table, and materials for playing all
sorts of games. At Esher one felt like an indi-
vidual, and not like a cog in a machine. Paddy
Walsh, the corporal, who had hesitated so long
about leaving me on the Peninsula, was at Esher
when I arrived. He was almost well now, he
told me, and was looking forward to a furlough.
After his furlough he was going back, he said, in
the first draft. " No forming fours for me,
around Scotland," said Walsh, " drilling a bunch

230

"FEENISH"

of rookies. I want to get back with the boys."
After two weeks, Esher closed for repairs.
We all went back to the hospital at Wandsworth.
News had just come of the evacuation of the
Peninsula. In the ward I was sent to w^ere half
a dozen of our boys. I asked them what was the
trouble, and they told me frozen feet. " Frozen
feet,'' I said, "in Gallipoli? You're joking."
They assured me that they were not and referred
me to their case sheets that hung beside the beds.
Shortly before the evacuation a storm had swept
over the Peninsula. First it had rained for two
days, the third day it snowed, and the next it
froze. A torrent of water had poured down the
mountain side, flooding the trenches, and carry-
ing with it blankets, equipments, rifles, portions
of the parapet, and the dead bodies of men who
had been drowned while they were sleeping.
The men who were left had to forsake their
trenches and go above ground. Turks and Brit-
ish alike suffered. The last day of the storm,
while some of our men were waiting on the beach
to be taken to the hospital ship, they told me they
saw the bodies of at least two thousand men,
frozen to death. Our regiment stood it perhaps
better than any of the others. It was the sort

231

TKENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

of climate they were accustomed to. The Aus-
tralasians suffered tremendously. I met one
man who had been on the Peninsula during the
evacuation. They had got away with the loss of
two men killed and one wounded for the entire
British force. The i:)apers that day said that the
Turks claimed to have driven the entire British
army into the sea, and to have gained an immense
amount of booty. The booty gained, our men
said, was bully beef and biscuits. Far from
being driven into the sea, the British got off in
two hours without the Turks suspecting at all;
and it was not till the second day after that the
Turks really found out. It had taken a great
deal of ingenuity to devise a scheme that would
let the evacuation take place secretly. The dis-
tance from the shore was about four miles. As
soon as the troops knew they were to leave, they
ripped up the sand bags on the parapets, and
broke the glass in the periscopes, so they would
be useless to the enemy. Then they attached the
broken periscopes to the parapets, so that the
Turks looking over would see the periscopes
above the trench, just as they would any ordinary
day at the front. Only one problem remained
unsolved. As soon as the Turks heard the firing

232

"FEENISH"

cease entirely, tliey would think something was
not as it should be. If they began to investigate
before the troops got away, it might mean an-
nihilation. At first it w^as planned to leave a
small party scattered through the trenches, but
this meant that they would have to be sacrificed
in order to allow their comrades to escape. An
Australian devised a scheme. He took a number
of rifles, placed them at different points along
the parapest, and lashed them to it. In each
one he put a cartridge. From the trigger he sus-
pended a bully beef tin, weighted with sand.
This was not quite heavy enough to pull the
trigger. On top of the rifle he placed another
tin, filled with water, and pierced a small hole
in the bottom of it. After a while the water,
dripping slowly from the top tin, made the lower
one heavy enough to pull the trigger. Some of
the tins were heavier than the others, and the
rifles did not all go off at once. As soon as
things were ready, the troops moved off silently,
" Just as if they were going into dugouts," Art
Pratt wrote me. They got aboard the warships
waiting for them in the bay, and went to Mud-
ros and Imbros. The evacuation was facilitated
by the fact that the Salt Lake that had been

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TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

dried up when I was there was swollen high by
the rain of the previous weeks. All that night
the firing continued at intervals, and kept up all
through the next day. The Turks, taking the
usual cautious survey of the enemy trenches, saw,
as they did every other day, periscopes sticking
up over the parapets and heard the ordinary re-
ports of rifle fire ; to them it looked like what the
official reports call a " quiet day on the Eastern
front."

One other item of news I received that pleased
me very greatly. Art Pratt had taken my place
as corporal of the section, and had sent me w^ord
that he had got the sniper who shot me.

After I had been back in the Wandsworth
Common hospital a few days, I was " boarded."
That is, I was sent up to be examined by a board
of doctors. They found me " unfit for further
service," and I was sent to my depot in Scotland
for disposal. The next day I w^as given all my
back pay and took the train for Ayr, Scotland.
There I w'as given my discharge " in consequence
of wounds received in action in Gallipoli."
Major Whitaker, the officer in charge, paused and
looked at me, w'hile he was signing the discharge
paper.

234

"FEENISH"

" I imagine," he said, " you feel rather sorry
that you caught that train, Corijoral."

" What train is that, sir? " I said.

" The one at Aldershot," he answered, as he
completed his signature. I smiled noncommit-
tally, but did not answer him.

Looking back now it seems to me that catch-
ing that train is one thing I have never regretted.
I was convinced of it that day in Ayr. For a
few weeks past convalescents of the First Bat-
talion had been dribbling into Ayr. You could
tell them by their wan, fever-wasted faces, and by
the little ribbons of claret and white that they
wore on the sleeves of their coats, the claret and
white that marked them as the "service bat-
talion." And there was in their faces, too, the
calm, confident look of men w^ho had hobnobbed
with death, and had come away unafraid. Every
one of them had the same tale. "We're tired
of the depot already. They're a new bunch
here, and we want to get back with the crowd we
know." There was no talk of patriotism, or
duty; all this had given place to the pride of
local achievement. To those men, my little
claret and white ribbon was all the introduction
I needed. 1 was a member of the First Bat-

235

TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

talion. As I hobbled along the main street of
Ayr, a crowd of them bore down on me. A
heterogeneous bunch they were, bored to death
with the quietness of the Scottish town, shouting
boisterous greetings long before they reached me.
The lot of us took dinner together and afterwards
went in a body to the theater. The theater pro-
prietor refused unconditionally to take any
money from us. We were " returned wounded,"
and the best seats in the house were ours. Four
or five of our party had just returned from Edin-
burgh, where they had spent their furloughs.
They had been received royally. The civic au-
thorities had made arrangements with the owners
of the Royal Hotel in Edinburgh to put the New-
foundlanders up free of cost during their stay.
The First Battalion had spent their money
freely while they were garrisoning Edinburgh
Castle, and the authorities had not forgotten it.
I hated to leave those men of the First Bat-
talion, who welcomed me so heartily. I was glad
at the thought of getting back to the States
again; but it was strange to think that I was no
longer a soldier, that my days of fighting were
over. An inexpressible sadness came over me as
I bade good-by to them. Some of their names I

236

"FEENISH"

do not know, but they were all my friends.
There are others like them in various hospitals
in England and Egypt ; and also in a shady, tree-
dotted ravine on the Peninsula of Gallipoli there
is a row of graves, where also are my friends of
the First Newfoundland Regiment.

The men our regiment lost, although they
gladly fought a hopeless fight, have not died in
vain. Constantinople has not been taken, and
the Gallipoli campaign is fast becoming a
memory, but things our men did there will not
soon be forgotten. The foremost advance on the
Suvla Bay front is Donnelly's Post on Caribou
Ridge, made by the Newfoundlanders. It is
called Donnelly's Post because it is here that
Lieutenant Donnelly won his Military Cross.
The hitherto unknown ridge from which the
Turkish machine guns poured their concentrated
death into our trenches stands as a monument to
the initiative of the Newfoundlanders. It is now
Caribou Ridge as a recognition of the men who
wear the deer's head badge. From Caribou
Ridge the Turks could enfilade parts of our firing
line. For weeks they had continued to pick off
our men one by one. You could almost tell when
your turn was coming. I know, because from

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TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

Caribou Ridge came the bullet that sent me off
the Peuinsula. The machine guns on Caribou
Ridge not only swept part of our trench, but
commanded all of the intervening ground. This
ground was almost absolutely devoid of cover.
Several attempts had been made to rush
those guns. All these attacks had failed, held
up by the murderous machine-gun fire. Whole
companies had essayed the task, but all had been
repulsed, and almost annihilated. It remained
for Lieutenant Donnelly to essay the impossible.
Under cover of darkness, Lieutenant Donnelly,
with only eight men, surprised the Turks in the
post that now bears his name. The captured
machine gun he turned on the Turks to repulse
constantly launched bomb and rifle attacks.
Just at dusk one evening Donnelly stole out to
Caribou Ridge and took the Turks by storm.
They had been accustomed before that to see
large bodies of men swarm over the parapet in
broad daylight, and had been able to wipe them
out with machine-gun fire. All that night the
Turks strove to recover their lost ground. The
darkness that confused the enemy was the New-
foundlanders' ally. One of Donnelly's men,
Jack Hynes, crawled away from his companions

238

"FEENISH"

to a point about two hundred yards to the left.
All through the night he poured a rapid stream
of fire into the flank of the enemy's attacking
party. So steadily did he keep it up that the
Turks were deluded into thinking we had men
there in force. When reinforcements arrived,
Donnelly's eight men were reduced to two.
Dawn showed the havoc wrought by the gallant
little group. The ground in front of the post
was a shambles of piled up Turkish corpses.
But daylight showed something more to the
credit of the Newfoundlanders than the mere
taking of the ridge. It showed Jack Hynes pur-
posely falling back over exposed ground to draw
the enemy's attention from Sergeant Greene, who
w^as coolly making trip after trip between the
ridge and our lines, carrying a wounded man in
his arms every time until all our wounded were
in safety. Hynes and Greene were each given
a Distinguished Conduct Medal. None was ever
more nobly earned.

The night the First Newfoundland Regiment
landed in Suvla Bay there were about eleven
hundred of us. In December when the British
forces evacuated Gallipoli, to our regiment fell
the honor of being nominated to fight the rear-

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TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI

guard action. This is the highest recognition
a regiment can receive; for the duty of a rear
guard in a retreat is to keep the enemy from
reaching the main body of troops, even if this
means annihilation for itself. At Lemnos
Island the next day when the roll was called, of
the eleven hundred men who landed when I did,
only one hundred and seventy-one answered
" Here."

After the First Newfoundland Regiment left
the Peninsula, they went to Egypt to guard the
Suez Canal from the long-expected attack of the
Turks. After they had been rested a little while,
they were recruited up to full fighting strength,
again, and were sent to France. In the recent
drive of the Allies against the German positions
on the Somme, the regiment has won for itself
fresh laurels. The " Times " correspondent at
British headquarters in France sent the follow-
ing on July 13th :

" The Newfoundlanders were the only overseas
troops engaged in these operations. The story
of their heroic part cannot yet be told in full,
but when it is it will make Newfoundland very
proud. The battalion was pushed up as what
may be called the third wave in the attack on

240

"FEENISH"

probably the most formidable section of the
whole German front through an almost over-
whelming artillery fire and a cross-ground swept
by an enfilading machine-gun fire from hidden
positions. The men behaved with completely
noble steadiness and courage."

THE END

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