A TRIBUTE TO THE TURK
In his speech delivered in the House of Lords on September 15, the
Minister for War said: "It is only fair to acknowledge that, judged
from a humane point of view, the methods of warfare pursued by the
Turks are vastly superior to those which disgraced their German
masters."
The unanimous testimony of the Australasians supports this statement
of Lord Kitchener. The decency and fairness with which the Turk makes
war came as a pleasant surprise to the Australasians, who had been
led to expect something so entirely different that they landed on
Gallipoli with very stern resolves. My own cousin, a private in the
2nd Brigade, has told me that he and all his mates had determined
to end their lives, rather than fall into the hands of the Turks as
prisoners. A similar resolve was carried out by many an Australasian
soldier in the first weeks of the fighting. Yet the testimony of the
Australasians who fell into Turkish hands is now to hand and shows
that they are treated with remarkable consideration.
The rumours of Turkish atrocities were rapidly dissipated, and the
Australasian soldier soon got to respect the Turk as a brave man
and fair fighter. The fact that a hospital ship was always moored
off Anzac Cove within easy range of the Turkish guns, and was never
known to suffer, is prima facie evidence to the Australasians of
the honesty of Turkish intentions. The consideration shown to their
wounded general, mentioned elsewhere in this book, made a deep
impression in the Australasian ranks. The prevailing opinion of
the Turk is now a very favourable one; and I will let one of the
Australian friends I have made in British hospitals voice it on
behalf of his comrades.
"Foreign travel expands the mind," sententiously observed Trooper
Billy Clancy, of the Australian Light Horse. "I had to travel in a
troopship to Gallipoli to learn that all I thought I knew about the
Turk was not so. Many's the time I didn't know anything at all about
Turks. I expected to find a lot of jelly-bellies in baggy trousers
and turned-up slippers, with gaspipe guns and hooked noses. I thought
they'd be cruel cowards, rotten shots, and easy marks. I thought
I was going to serve it up hot to the men with the bull's-wool
whiskers. And that was just where I was wrong; I know better now.
"To begin with, my friend Bismillah is quite as well equipped as
anyone else for modern war. He has a better rifle than we have, if
anything. I have two scars on my left forearm that show he knows how
to use it. He carries plenty of cartridges, and in his pockets two or
three up-to-date bombs guaranteed to hurt the other fellow. Sometimes
he paints his face green and lets on that he is a tree. Sometimes he
quits his trench and pretends he is a mountain goat, trying for a
record in the hill-climbing class. But he's a soldier all the time--a
born soldier and a brave one. Fighting for home and country dear is
meat and drink to him.
"They used to say the Turks were cruel and tortured the wounded. No
Australian believes that at Anzac now. Why, there was a Turk in the
trenches opposite us at Russell's Top that we used to call Fatty
Burns. Of course, that was not his name, but we called him that
because he looked so much like Fatty Burns that kept the Ninety-mile
shanty on the road to Winton. He had the same short beard and Roman
nose, the same bright black eye and a benevolent expression as much
as to say, 'I wouldn't lamb a bushman down.' This Turk was the dead
spit of Fatty--like brothers they were.
"He was always sticking up his head and getting fired at. Then he
would signal a miss and laugh like one o'clock. You could hear him
quite plain, for the trenches were only twenty-five yards apart. At
last the fellows gave up shooting at him. 'It's only Fatty Burns,'
they used to say. We got to look for his cheerful grin, and sometimes
we used to fire just to hear him laugh.
"One morning early, we made a bit of a demonstration, and left two of
our boys wounded out on an open space between the trenches. No one
could go to them, and there they lay in the burning sun. Presently
somebody said, 'Here comes Fatty Burns.' The old chap puts his head
and shoulders out of the trench and salaams like a Cairo shopkeeper.
We were all struck dumb. Next he climbed out of the trench, which was
a bold thing to do, and walked over to our wounded. A dozen rifles
were covering him, and I expect he knew it. But Fatty just strolled.
"You could have heard a pin drop, as the saying is. We watched him
stroll over to the two men and lift up their heads and give them
a drink of water each. He tried to make them comfortable, with us
looking on, hardly able to believe our eyes. Then he strolled back
quite unconcerned; and we gave him a cheer. That's not all. Just
before dusk he came out again, and dragged both men over near a bit
of cover, so that we could get them in when dark came. And those are
the people that were supposed to be cruel!
"We always had too much bully beef, and when we left the firing line
we had to dispose of the surplus and leave the trench in order for
those who relieved us. This time we made up our minds to chuck the
beef--there were three four-pound tins of it--across to old Fatty
Burns. We did, and there was a terrible hullabaloo when it landed. I
suppose they thought they were some new-fangled bombs. But an hour or
so later some one threw a whole lot of fine dates into the trench,
and we reckoned it was Fatty. Some one said they might be poisoned,
but we risked that and enjoyed them fine.
"But that's not all. A day or two after we returned to the firing
line we got one of our meat-tins back--with additions. I just had
time to throw my overcoat down on it when it exploded. The overcoat
was never any more good, and it wasn't Fatty Burns's fault that we
were sound after the meat-tin came back. He had put in a stick of
gelignite and filled up with the remains of an old clock and some
spare scraps of iron and things. The clock-wheels fair murdered my
overcoat. But what an old sport!
"There was a Maori up on Walker's Ridge who was a very fine swimmer
and diver; he could stay under water longer than any man I ever saw.
When he was spelling he _would_ go in swimming, no matter what the
shrapnel was like on the beach. And there was a Turkish sniper up on
'Baby 700' who was after his goat and used to fire at him all the
time he was swimming. That made a bit of fun for Te Patara, who used
to tantalize the sniper something cruel.
"But these Turks have a lot of time to think, and one day the sniper
turned up with a pal and a loader as well. They made it very hot for
the Maori gent, who found the bullets arriving two to the second in
one long stream. He kept under water and breathed through his ears,
or something. Anyhow, he got flustered and made a long dive for the
shelter of an iron barge that was stranded on the beach. He got the
cover all right and stood up behind the barge in about a foot of
water. Abdullah and Co. up in the hills made up their minds to keep
him there.
"I should say they got two rifles fixed on each end of the barge
and fired them at irregular intervals. And every now and then they
would bombard the barge, 'ping, ping,' just to let him know they were
watching. It wasn't a particularly warm day; there was a cold sea
breeze. Te Patara had no dressing-gown at all, and about two hundred
of the boys were down on the beach under cover giving him advice. It
was good enough advice, but it was dangerous to take it. He only got
away after dark, and then he was the chilliest Maori I ever saw. He
seemed to have lost some of his love for swimming, too.
"We reckoned the Turk would not stand up to the bayonet; and he
certainly ran away from it a good many times. Then the First Brigade
was sent out to take the trenches at Lonesome Pine, and got the
surprise of their lives. A good deal of the fighting was in roofed-in
trenches, where it was as dark as Jack Johnson. And there Bismillah
stood up and fought with the bayonet. He wasn't a bit particular;
if he couldn't use the point he used the butt, clubbing and hacking
like a madman. That rough-house in the dark, through 150 yards of
underground trenches, was one of the toughest fights of 1915. And the
Turk took all the beating the First Brigade could give him. He died
fighting, but he would not run.
"Between Anafarta Village and the big salt lake there was a wide
valley of agricultural land; the maps do not show how big it is.
Before the landing at Suvla Bay all this land was under cultivation,
and we used to watch the Turkish farmers at work. They were old boys
with big long beards, and we used to imagine them going about saying
to one another, 'By the beard of the Prophet,' and things like that.
But we decided they were quite harmless, and we let them get in
their crops without touching them in any way. A good many of us were
thinking of the crops ripening 8,000 miles away south, and us not
there to help get them in. So we let these farmers do as they pleased.
"Then came the landing at Suvla; and do you know these old boys
raked up great long Snider rifles from somewhere, that fired an
expanding bullet big enough to kill an elephant. One of my mates was
hit with one, and it blew the shoulder clean off him. And these old
boys fought as bitter as poison. Then the Regular Turkish Army came
there, and when the officers found out what these farmers were doing,
they kicked up an awful row and took the old guns away from them. We
noticed that they went out of use very suddenly, and a prisoner we
took told us how it happened. But it shows that the Turks want to
fight fair; and that was our experience always.
"This prisoner was a curious fellow. He spoke as good English as I
did, and he told me that he used to serve coffee at a big London
restaurant. He said he used to go round in a Turkish uniform with a
sort of truck, and make special Turkish coffee for those who wanted
it. Of course, I did not believe that; where's the sense of it? But
he told me a lot of things about the Turks I never knew before, and
put them in a new light to me. After all they are only fighting for
their own country, and every man ought to do that.
"Whoever planned their defences was a master hand. Every trench is
enfiladed from some other one, and the lines of defence fall back,
each one endangered to the attacker by that behind it. Some of their
trenches were nothing but deathtraps to anyone who might choose to
occupy them, so skilfully were their machine-guns and snipers posted.
I can tell you that we learned a lot about trench digging from our
despised brother Bismillah before we had been a month at Gallipoli.
"Yes, the Turk has taught us to respect him for a fair and brave
fighter and a dashed sight better man than the fat-faced Germans I've
seen driving him against our trenches with their revolvers and the
flat of their swords. He is a cunning beggar, is Bismillah; but we
bear him no malice for that. It is a pity he was dragged into this
scrap by those German beasts. They are the enemy we are all longing
to have a cut at. But when poor old Bismillah comes charging in
droves against our trenches we hardly like to shoot him down with
machine-guns. As one of our chaps said, 'It hardly seems fair to take
the money.'"
GURKHAS, WHITE AND BROWN