War has its humor. Even though it appear arms locked with death, there
is a laugh on the side. It is probably true, as an old soldier once
said, that if there were not a funny side to war an army could never
get through its hell. The British troops on the Gallipoli Peninsula
did not find the situation teeming with the hilarious, but there were
moments of relief from the grim monster of trench fighting. Oddly
enough one of the provoking causes of much mirth, seasoned with a due
amount of vexation, was a rotund Turk in whom a sense of humor and
an impudent daring mingled in a way to win the regard of the Tommies
fighting in the trench opposite him. He alternated between tossing a
bunch of dates and hurling a bomb into the trench of the Tommies with
whom he exchanged laughter daily. Some of the Australians detected in
him reminders of an eccentric “publican” who dispensed beer at home. So
the Turk was dubbed “Fatty” Burns, the sobriquet of the keeper of the
“pub.”
A correspondent of the New York _Globe_ tells the story as he got it
from Trooper Clancy, one of the men in the trench opposite the merry
Turk, at Russell’s Top, on Gallipoli, the two trenches being separated
by less than twenty-five yards.
“One old topper in the trench opposite me was a fair treat,” said
Clancy. “He was so. My word! Used to pop up his head above the trenches
and laugh at us. Then he’d pop down again. All along our side the boys
would be taking shots at him, and they never hit. Then we could hear
him laugh. We got so we liked him.
“‘Don’t shoot at the old orphan,’ the boys would say. ‘He looks like
“Fatty” Burns.’”
One morning the Light Horse had made a demonstration in order to keep
the Turks from thinking of what was going on somewhere else. They were
chased back to the trenches when they had done their part, but they
left two men behind them. The sun was cruel hot, Clancy says. His
rifle-barrel fair blistered his fingers. These poor chaps were lying
there with their faces in the grizzling sand. The Australians could not
reach them. It would have been suicide to try.
“Here comes ‘Fatty’ Burns,” said some one.
The Australians in stupefaction watched the old Turk. He had thrown
aside his rifle and stood up at full length on the parapet of the
trench. Anyone could have potted him at that range. Clancy doesn’t
understand yet why no one did, except that they were all fond of the
old blighter. “Fatty” Burns crawled into the open in a lazy sort of way
and walked over to the two wounded men.
“Gave them a drink of water, he did,” said Clancy, “and wiped their
lips and then lugged them over to a bit of cover so we could go out
and get them after night came. We gave a cheer for old ‘Fatty’ and he
laughed at us before he went back into his hole. My word! How his white
teeth did shine.”
The Australians had more bully-beef than they needed. The cans got to
be a nuisance. They were not permitted to refuse the stated allowance
of bull each day. Until lately a British ration has been a fixed and
immutable thing. One day it occurred to some one that “Fatty” Burns
might like some meat. So they tossed three cans into his trench.
“There was a terrible hullaballo, when they landed,” said Clancy. “I
suppose they thought it was some new-fangled kind of bomb. But an hour
or so later some Turk threw us a lot of fine, fresh dates. We always
reckoned it was ‘Fatty’ Burns.”
Three or four days afterward “Fatty” Burns thrust head and shoulders
above the trench-top again and laughed like sin. Then he threw
something into Clancy’s trench.
“I just had time to get my overcoat down on it before it went off,”
said he. “‘Fatty’ had scooped out the meat from one of our tins and
filled it up with melinite and pieces of scrap-iron. It fair murdered
my coat. I held it up above the parapet and shook it at ‘Fatty.’ He
laughed until he choked.”
“A bully old sport was ‘Fatty’ Burns.”