A Rampageous, Self-Willed Old Thing Fondly Remembered by Her
Non-Commander
Captain David Fallon is a young Irishman, but an old soldier. Before
1914 he had fought against the hillmen in India, and had won the Indian
Field Medal. At the opening of the war he was physical instructor and
bayonet drill master at the Royal Military College. So expert a teacher
was he that the authorities decided to keep him at his post training
new officers. Dave Fallon couldn’t “see it” that way. He remonstrated
strenuously. There were other men—older men—professional soldiers, he
insisted, just as capable of training men as he was. Anyway he couldn’t
stay out of the “big fight.” He pointed to his long service record, his
Frontier Medal. He would be more valuable at the front. The authorities
finally gave in.
Fallon had no wild dreams of glory and distinction. “It is your amateur
soldier,” he says, “who is most filled with such aspirations. Not that
he hasn’t a right to entertain them, and try to act on them, for they
have led many new-made soldiers into great and brave accomplishments.
I don’t mean that such dreams are bad for a man. They are distinctly
good. I only mean that with regulars soldiering is a cold, hard
business and one isn’t given to enhancing it with romantic imaginings.”
Little did Fallon think when he was urging himself on the military
authorities for active duty that when the war was over there would be
few soldiers with adventures more thrilling and perilous than fell to
his lot.
He went through the entire terrible campaign at Gallipoli. He was in
numerous fierce trench battles. He served as an aerial observer, and
fought enemy planes. On the road to Thiepval he had a shoulder smashed
by shrapnel, but he remained in command of his men behind barricades
made of the dead bodies around them in “No Man’s Land.” For twenty-two
hours they kept the Germans off. Then reinforcements came. On scout
duty he frequently penetrated German trenches and gun positions in
the night. At last he was detected in the enemy trenches. A bomb duel
ensued. He was frightfully injured but managed to escape.
[Illustration:
_Photo, by International Film Service_