GALLIPOLI
The 42nd Division was soon in the midst of hard fighting, stormy weather
and much privation. Casualties began early, though the first Battalion
exploit under fire was happily bloodless. On the 9th May, 80 men were
told off to fill water-bottles and carry them under fire over
half-a-mile of broken ground to an Australian unit. They tracked
cleverly across the moor, and were met by an eager Australian with the
question: "Have you brought the water, cobbers?" On the 11th, the
Battalion had a long, weary march to the front line. The trenches were
full of water, and the gullies became almost impassable. On the 28th,
Lockwood, our musketry expert, was severely wounded in the chest.
On the same day Lieutenant-Colonel Gresham was forced by ill-health to
leave us. He was invalided to Malta, and thence to England. A year later
he relinquished his command, without having been able to rejoin. He had
served with the Battalion ever since 1890. He was known to suffer from
chronic illness, but he let nothing interfere with the call of duty, and
his hard work overseas set a fine example to all ranks. It is, indeed,
still, in 1917, difficult to think of the Battalion with any other
Commanding Officer. His departure was widely regretted, and the later
achievements of his men in the War are the best tribute to the many
years of labour he had given to their training and organisation.
His immediate successor in command was Major Staveacre. On the night of
the 28th May the Battalion advanced, and B and D Companies dug
themselves in under a full moon and in the face of the enemy, a platoon
of C Company finishing the work on the following evening. In these
operations fell Captains T.W. Savatard and R.V. Rylands, men of sterling
character and capacity, and Lieut. T.F. Brown, a gallant boy, who, in
the happier days of the threatened war in Ulster, had served in the West
Belfast Loyalist Volunteers.
The advance of the 28th May was preliminary to the historic attack of
the whole allied line from sea to sea, which had been timed for midday
on the 4th June 1915. In this attack the Battalion advanced as the
extreme right unit of our Infantry Brigade. On the left of the
Manchesters was the 29th Division; on our right was the Royal Naval
Division, and on their right were the French.
During the previous night the Turks, writes an eyewitness in the
_Sentry_, gave us "our first taste of bombing. They crawled down a small
gully and threw eight or nine bombs on to our gun emplacement, hurting
no one, but putting the gun out for twenty minutes." Meanwhile they
fired the gorse in front of the 29th Division.
[Illustration: GALLIPOLI.]
At eight in the morning the British guns opened the bombardment. "At
eleven-twenty our whole line from the sea to the Straits got up and
waved their bayonets, pretending the attack was to start." At twelve,
"with wild cheers" the assault was launched. A and C Companies rushed
the first Turkish trench, and captured the surviving occupants, while
along a front that stretched far away to the left, similar success was
won by the whole British line. While A and C Companies consolidated the
trench they had won, B and D Companies passed over it, in order to take
the next Turkish line. Captain (afterwards Major) C.E. Higham, always
resourceful and imperturbable, was shot in the foot while crossing the
trench, but Captain (afterwards Lieutenant-Colonel) Fawcus led the
attack a long way forward, and held a dummy trench in the heart of the
Turkish position for many hours.
Subsequently the right flank of the Battalion was not only enfiladed but
exposed to fire from their rear. The officers at this deadly point were
Lieutenants H.D. Thewlis, W.G. Freemantle and F.C. Palmer. Palmer was
badly wounded. Thewlis, a keen subaltern and expert in scientific
agriculture, refused to retire, and was killed. Freemantle was of Quaker
stock and, like Thewlis, a graduate of Manchester University. He was
first shot through the right arm, and then through the left. He insisted
on remaining with his men, though the pain was so intense that he broke
his teeth while clenching them. He was then shot through the body, and
died.
C Company on this right flank was in danger. Lieutenant G.C. Hans
Hamilton, a prince of fighters, had organised a bombing party with
Corporal Cherry, and did great work, but was now severely wounded.
Leonard Dudley, an adventurous soul who had fought under Staveacre with
the Cheshire Yeomanry in South Africa, was killed. Captain Cyril
Norbury, who commanded the Company, had written to Major Staveacre for
information, and he received this answer from Captain Creagh: "Regret to
say Major Staveacre dead; also Thewlis and Freemantle. Do not know
whereabouts of missing platoons. Fear most lost."
Staveacre had been shot through the back while passing ammunition to the
firing line. He said to Regimental Sergeant-Major H.C. Franklin (the
Acting Adjutant of our later days on Gallipoli): "Never mind me. Carry
on, Sergeant-Major," and died at once.
All day long the Turks counter-attacked the Manchesters without success.
Private Richardson won the D.C.M. by bombing feats, but the supply of
bombs ran out early. Their use was in its infancy, and their character
was primitive. C Company, among whom Sergeant M'Hugh, Corporal Basnett
and Private (afterwards Lieutenant) J.W. Sutherland were conspicuous,
was reinforced by some gallant bombers from another battalion of the
Manchesters under Captain James, who was killed after driving the Turks
from a trench, and later by some of the Lancashire Fusiliers. They held
their own, and a last Turkish counter-attack, on the morning of the 5th
June, was scattered by our machine guns and those of the Lancashire
Fusiliers, well handled by Captains Hayes and Bedson.
Fawcus brought back about nine survivors from his advanced position
after great feats of endurance, in which the Manchester units on our
left had fully shared. Lieutenant T.E. Granger, who had been left behind
dangerously wounded, was taken prisoner. Lieutenant Ward was killed.
Lieutenant Bateman was shot through the lungs; Lieutenant G. Norbury on
the scalp.
On the 4th June the Brigadier, General Noel Lee, was mortally wounded,
to the intense and universal sorrow of the whole Division. He died in
Malta. Lieutenant-Colonel Heys, on taking his place, was immediately
killed. The retreat from the more advanced trenches to the original
Turkish firing line, necessitated by enfilade fire and by the absence of
reinforcements, proved far deadlier than the advance. The battle, with
its preliminary operations, cost us some of our bravest sergeant-majors
and sergeants--Cookson, Arnott, Marvin, Mundy, Balfe, Webster. Sergeant
Lindsay lost his leg. Of them and of all the men of the 42nd Division,
who gave their lives in this action, any praise is superfluous.
A broad strip of land gained securely on a wide frontage, an immense
number of Turkish dead and prisoners, and a sense of great personal
ascendancy, were the measure of their success, and General Sir Ian
Hamilton's dispatch truly estimates its quality.
The survivors of the Battalion rested for a few days on Imbros after the
battle, and then returned to the Peninsula under the command of Captain
P.H. Creagh. On the 16th July the command was passed to
Lieutenant-Colonel A. Canning, a veteran of the Egyptian War of 1882,
who had previously commanded the Leinster Regiment at Cork. We could
have had no greater confidence in any possible Commanding Officer, and
while he acted as Brigadier of the Manchester Territorials his influence
was no less inspiring. The record of our later campaign on Gallipoli is
closely associated with his name and work.
All these early scenes of the expedition to the Dardanelles I had
missed. On the 17th March I had been invalided home on the Indian
hospital ship, _Glenart Castle_, Alexandria to Southampton, and the only
public meeting I witnessed during three years of warfare--a recruiting
rally in the Manchester Hippodrome--was a poor outlet for one's
activity. An offer of the command of the new 3rd line reserve unit at
Southport naturally failed to quench my keenness to rejoin the
Battalion, and after vexatious delays I at last sailed from Devonport
for the East, on the _Simla_, on the 13th July 1915.
We reached Alexandria on the 25th, and the crowded harbour of Mudros
early on the 29th. The boat was full of drafts for the 29th
Division--Essex and Hampshire men, Inniskillings, Munsters, Royal and
Lancashire Fusiliers, Worcesters--and rumours of the intended Suvla
expedition were in the air. Our optimism was, however, chastened by the
opinions of one experienced soldier on board, who insisted that we ought
never to have landed at Cape Helles, but on the Gulf of Saros behind the
lines of Bulair, and made straight for Constantinople with a large army,
without trying to force the Dardanelles. He believed that the Germans
would still take Warsaw, and thought Holland's co-operation essential to
any plan of early success. The War was still at a stage when men did not
mind talking about it, and the general assumption was that it could not
last long. One sailor told me a story typical of the German's ignorance
of sportsmanship. A captured naval officer was courteously allowed the
use of the British captain's cabin. A few moments later a crash
announced that he had requited chivalry by breaking everything he could
lay his hands on. Other passengers on the _Simla_ were nursing sisters
in dainty scarlet and grey, naval airmen who disembarked at Valetta, and
the whole staff of an Australian General Hospital bound for
Mudros--expert specialist officers and splendid men, with songs cheery
and robust:
"When the beer's on the table, we'll be there."
Perhaps my most vivid memories, however, are of the keen young officers
conducting drafts, who were so soon to fall in the great attempt at
Suvla.
The fate of one of these, J.R. Lingard, then in charge of some
Lancashire Fusiliers, was one of the unsolved mysteries of the
Dardanelles campaign. A brave and popular officer, he was severely
wounded on the 21st August. He was carried out of action and placed on a
stretcher for conveyance across Suvla Beach to a hospital ship. At this
point all trace of him disappeared. His fate is unknown.
In the late afternoon of the 30th July 1915 we neared Cape Helles and
heard the thunder of the guns. We landed laboriously about midnight, and
were led by guides to a rendezvous of the 29th Division at a point some
three miles along the coast on the northern side of the Peninsula.
Brilliant moonlight shone upon a sleeping French force close to the
landing-place on "V" Beach. The country looked unspeakably dry and bare.
At six o'clock the following morning we were divided into details for
our various units, and sleepless, unshaven and hungry, I was again
guided to where the 42nd Division had its headquarters--a spot to the
south of the 29th, and, roughly, in the left centre of the short line of
the Allies. The narrowness and shallowness of the area of our occupation
struck all observers at once. The great ridge of Achi Baba, some six
hundred feet above sea-level, barring our advance upon Turkey,
confronted us the very moment that we climbed to the top of the cliffs
that enclosed every landing-place. We were shelled as we struck across
the moorland, and then I found myself once more in East Lancashire.
A long wait at Divisional Headquarters was followed by a delightful
welcome at the Quartermaster's dump of the Battalion, where, in blazing
sunshine, I enjoyed my first food and shave on enemy soil, and abundant
news of the unit. A friendly sergeant then led me up to the fire
trenches some two miles forward, where the Manchesters held both sides
of Krithia nullah, a ravine running up into a sloping heath, where the
Turks had lain dug in for the last two months. Our way, after passing
"Clapham Junction," was fringed with the graves of the fallen. I noticed
Staveacre's.
It was pleasant to reach the cool burrow, which served as our Battalion
Headquarters. Here I found Colonel Canning, P.H. Creagh and Fawcus
sitting on the yellow, dusty ground beneath a tarpaulin. It was
thrilling once again to walk among our Manchester men, now very thin and
sunburnt, in shirt-sleeves and shorts, making the best of life in narrow
trenches, and watching day after day the serried Turkish lines and
broad, brown mass of Achi Baba. Next day (1st August), in mid-afternoon,
we moved into the most advanced fire trenches, and I became O.C. of our
Battalion's firing line, with a small dug-out of my own in the centre of
our sector. This sector was within forty or fifty yards of the Turkish
position, and in the early morning, as the sun rose over Asia, we heard
the _muezzin_ calling the faithful to prayer. There was a lull at this
time in warfare. Casualties were few, and the periscope disclosed little
beyond the vista (soon too familiar) of arid heath, broken only by
patches of wild thyme, and of the intricate lacework of sandbagged
trenches stretching from the tip of Cape Helles behind us to the top of
Achi Baba. But for the constant booming of the guns and the plague of
flies, these first days on Gallipoli were days of peace and happiness
under a quiet, blue sky. Our men were hopeful, and a stray memorandum of
mine of the 3rd August records that "P.H. Creagh bets Fawcus L1 that the
Turks will be driven out of the Peninsula within a month." Our faith was
great in those days.