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 reconnaissance. Every
afternoon we watched him hover over the Turkish lines, circle clear of
their bursting shrapnel, poising long enough to complete his
observations, then return to the Salt Lake with his report for our
artillery and the 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 ambulance 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 ambulance. 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. 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, awkward-looking craft that reminded
one of the barges one sees used for dredging harbors. It was one of
the new monitors, the most efficiently destructive vessel in the navy.
Soon the artillery on the land joined in. About four o'clock the
bombardment had started; and all that afternoon the terrific din kept
up. When we went into the firing line that evening at dark, the
bombardment 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 splendid view of the other parts of the line. All that
morning the bombardment kept up. Our gunners were concentrating on the
trenches well up the hill on the left. First we watched our shells
demolish the enemy's front line trench. Immense shells shrieked
through the air above our heads and landed in the Turks' firing line.
Gradually but surely the huge projectiles battered 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 manoeuver
served a double purpose: besides preventing the escape of those
retreating 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 mangled 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 before,
we thought it was to take part in the attack. Instead of this, we
were held in the firing line. For the Worcesters on our left was
reserved the distinction of making the charge. High explosives cleared
the way for their advance, 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,
surrendered. While the bombardment was going on, our men stood in
their trenches, craning their necks over the parapet. All through the
afternoon, 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 rifles in the general direction of the enemy; "just a
few joy guns," they said. Everybody 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 trenches resounded to the
shouts of, "Come on, the navy," and "Good old Britain." And when the
great masses of 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
guerrilla 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 an 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 intervals, 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, disease 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 noncommissioned 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 was 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 information 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
entire command. Men ordered off the Peninsula by the medical officer,
instead of proceeding to the clearing station, sneaked back to their
positions 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, officers 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
intercourse 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 number."
Most of the men in talking to each other, 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
interpreters 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 we 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 renewed hope and buoyancy caused by the news of the
imminence of Bulgaria's alliance with us was of short duration. A day
or so afterwards came the alarming news that the Allied ministers 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, choking
the drains, and filling the passageway with thick gray mud in which
one slipped and floundered 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 available for duty that we
could scarcely spare enough men to go for it. Also, there was 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. 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 abstainers
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. During 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 dugouts 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 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 fortifications 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 venturesome 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
watermelons. 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 formerly had bloomed a
luxuriant garden or orchard, was now a plowed field,--plowed not with
farm implements but with shrapnel and high explosive shells. Dotting
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 individuals; but we were all
agreed that Johnny Turk was a good, clean, sporty fighter, who
generally gave as good as we could send. Therefore, whenever we could
we gave him decent burial, we stuck a cross up over him, 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, who sent them to the neutral consuls at Constantinople;
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 village. Here we took over a block house occupied
by the Essex. The Dublins and the Munsters were on our right. The
block house was an advanced 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 sneaking out
between his trench and one of the dugouts. 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 result was astonishing. One second, I was looking 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 Irishman, "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 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."
[Illustration: Underwood & Underwood, N.Y.
Australians in the trenches consider clothes a superfluity]
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 object
of surrounding the block house. A detachment 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, they had in their lines a number of animals,
chiefly dogs. In addition, they had a brass band that played tuneless,
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 Turkish 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 daylight and the place the body lay in offered no protection.
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 dressing station when a stray shell, fired at the battery,
hit the dressing station. The Turkish observer heliographed over and
apologized. 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 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 AEgean Sea. Then
he sent over shells that shrieked at us to get out of his ocean. But
in his angriest moments he respected the Red Cross and never ill
treated our wounded. One chap, an Englishman, was 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
identification disk. These bore the name, "Sergeant Golder, Fifth
Norfolk Regiment." That was in the last part of October; and since
August 10th not a word had been heard of the missing Norfolk
regiment. To this day, the whole affair remains 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 appealed to, and have
taken the matter up with the Turkish Government. The most searching
inquiries have elicited nothing new. The answer has always been the
same. The Turkish authorities know no more about it than the English.
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