We were talking about Abdul Pasha's surrendering when we dropped off
to sleep. We must have been asleep about two hours when the insistent,
crackling sound of rapid fire, momentarily increasing in volume,
brought us to our feet. Away up on the right, where the Australians
were, the sky was a red glare from the flashing of many rifles.
Against this, we could see the occasional flare of different coloured
rockets that gave the warships their signals for shelling. Very soon
one of our officers appeared.
"Stand to arms for the Newfoundlanders," he said.
"What is it?" I asked.
"The Australians are advancing," he answered. "We'll go up as
reinforcements if we're needed. Tell your men to put on their
ammunition belts, and have their rifles ready. They needn't put on
their packs; but keep them near them so that they can slip them on if
we get the order to move away."
I went about among the men of my section, passing along the word.
Everybody was tingling with excitement. Nobody knew just what was about
to happen; but every one thought that whatever it was it would prove
interesting. For about half an hour the rapid fire kept up, then by
degrees died down.
"Did you see that last rocket?" said a man near me; "that means they've
done it. A red rocket means that the navy is to fire, a green to
continue firing, and a white one means that we've won."
In a few minutes Mr. Nunns walked toward us. "You can put your
equipments off, and turn in again," he said, "nothing doing to-night."
"What is all the excitement?" I asked.
"Oh, it's the Anzacs again," he said; "when they heard of the advance
at Loos, they went over across, and surprised the Turks. They've taken
two lines of trenches. They did it without any orders--just wanted to
celebrate the good news."
I was awakened the next morning by the sound of a whizz-bang flying
over our dugout. Johnny Turk was sending us his best respects. I shook
Art, who was sleeping heavily.
"Get up, Art," I said. I might as well have spoken to a stone wall. I
tried again. Putting my mouth to his ear, I shouted, "Stand to, Art.
Stand to."
Art turned over, sleeping. "I'll stand three if you like, but don't
disturb me," he muttered, and relapsed into coma.
In a few minutes, two or three more shells came along. They were well
over the ridge behind us, but were landing almost in the midst of
another line of dugouts. I stood gazing at them for a little while., A
man passed me running badly. "Come on," he gasped, "and yell for the
stretcher." I followed him without further question. "It's all right,"
he said, slowing up just before we came to the line of dugouts that had
just been shelled. "They've got him all right." We continued toward a
group that was crowded about a stretcher. A man was lying on it, with
his head raised on a haversack. He rolled his eyes slowly and surveyed
the group. "What the hell is the matter?" he said dazedly; then felt
himself over gingerly for wounds. Apparently he could find none. "What
hit me?" he asked, appealing to a grinning Red Cross man.
"Nothing," said the other, "except about a ton of earth. It's a lucky
thing some one saw you. That last shell buried you alive."
The whistle of a coming shell dispersed the grinning spectators. I went
back to my dugout, and found Art busily toasting some bread over the
sieve that I had commandeered the day before.
"What was the excitement?" he asked.
"Charlie Renouf," I said, "was buried alive."
"Heavens," said Art, "he's the postman; we can't afford to lose him.
That reminds me that I've got to write some letters."
While we were writing, the orderly sergeant, that dread of loafers,
who appoints all details for fatigue work, bore down upon our dugout.
"Two men from you, Corporal Gallishaw," he said, "for bomb throwers.
Give me their names as soon as you can. They're for practice this
afternoon."
"One here, right away," said Art, "and put Lew O'Dea down for the
other."
Lew O'Dea was a character. He was in the next dugout to me. The first
day on the Peninsula, his rifle had stuck full of sand, and some one
had stolen his tin canteen for cooking food. He immediately formed
himself into an anti-poverty society of one thereafter, and went around
like a walking arsenal. I never saw him with fewer than three rifles,
usually he carried half a dozen. He always kept two or three of them
spotlessly clean; so that no matter when rifle inspection came, he
always had at least one to show. He had been a little late in getting
his rifle clean once and was determined not to be caught any more. His
equipment always contained a varied assortment of canteens, seven or
eight gas masks, and his dugout was luxurious with rubber sheets and
blankets. "I inherited them," he always answered, whenever anybody
questioned him about them. With ammunition for his several rifles, when
he started for the trenches in full marching order, he carried a load
that a mule need by no means have been ashamed of.
"Do you want to go on bomb throwing detail this afternoon?" I called to
O'Dea across the top of the dugout.
"Sure," he answered; "does a duck want to swim?"
"Fine," I said; "report here at two o'clock."
At two o'clock, accompanied by an officer and a sergeant, we went
down the road a little way to where some Australians were conducting
a class in bomb throwing. A brown-faced chap from Sydney showed me
the difference between bombs that you explode by lighting a match,
and bombs that are started by pulling out a plug, and the dinky little
three-second "cricket balls" that explode by pressing a spring. I asked
him about the attack the night before. He told me that they had been
for some time waiting for a chance to make a local advance and that
would capture an important redoubt in the Turkish line. Every night at
exactly nine o'clock, the Navy had thrown a searchlight on the part
of the line the Anzacs wanted to capture. For ten minutes they kept
up heavy firing. Then, after a ten minutes' interval of darkness and
suspended firing, they began a second illumination and bombardment,
commencing always at twenty minutes past nine, and ending precisely
at half past. After a little while, the enemy, knowing just the exact
minute the bombardment was to begin, took the first beam of the
searchlight as a hint to clear out. But the night before, a crowd of
eager Australians had crept softly along in the shadow made doubly dark
by the glare of the searchlight, the noise of their advance covered by
the sound of the bombardment. As soon as the bombardment ceased and
the searchlight's beam was succeeded by darkness, they poured into the
Turkish position. They had taken the astonished Turks completely by
surprise.
"We didn't expect to make the attack for another week," said the
Australian; "but as soon as our boys heard that we were winning in
France, they thought they'd better start something. There hasn't been
any excitement over our way now for a long time," he said. "I'm about
fed up on this waiting around the trenches." He fingered one of the
little cricket-ball bombs caressingly. "Think of it," he said; "all
you do is press that little spring, and three seconds after you're a
casualty."
"Pressing the little spring," said I, "is my idea of nothing to do,
unless you're a particularly fast sprinter."
"By the Lord Harry, Newfoundland," said the Australian, with a
peculiar, excited glint in his eye, "that's an inspiration."
"What's an inspiration?" I asked, in bewilderment.
The Australian stretched himself on the ground beside me, resting his
chin in his cupped hands. "When I was in Sydney," he said slowly and
thoughtfully, "I did a hundred yards in ten seconds easily. Now if I
can get in a traverse that's only eight or nine yards long, and press
the spring of one of those little cricket balls, I ought to be able to
get out on the other side of the traverse before it explodes."
Art and Lew O'Dea passed along just then and I jumped up to go with
them. "Don't forget to look for me if you're over around the Fifteenth
Australians," said the Australian. "Ask for White George."
"I won't forget," I said, as I hurried away to join the others.
We were about half way to our dugouts when we passed a string of our
men carrying about twenty mail bags. It was the second instalment of
a lot of mail that had been landed the day before. We followed the
sweating carriers up the road to the quarter-master sergeant's dugout,
and waited around humbly while that autocrat leisurely sorted out the
mail, making remarks about each letter and waiting after each remark
for the applause he felt it deserved. With maddening deliberation he
scanned each address. "Corporal W. P. Costello." "He's at the base,"
some one answered. Corporal Costello's letter was put aside. "Private
George Butler." Private Butler, on the edge of the crowd, pushed and
elbowed his way toward the quarter-master sergeant. "Here you are;
letter for Butler."
I received one letter, and was sitting on the edge of my dugout
reading it when one of our men passing along, yelled to me. "Hey," he
said, "you come from the United States, don't you?"
"Yes," I said; "what do you want to know that for?"
"I've got something here," he said, stopping, "that comes from there
too." He dived into his pocket, and produced a medley of articles. From
these he selected a small paper-wrapped parcel.
"What's that?" I said.
"It's chewing gum," he answered; "real American chewing gum like the
girls chew in the subway in New York." He unwrapped it, selected a
piece, placed it in his mouth, and began chewing it with elaborated
enjoyment. After a few minutes, he came nearer. "By golly," he said,
with an exaggerated nasal drawl, "it's good gum, I'll soon begin to
feel like a blooming Yank. I'm talking like a Yank already. Don't you
wish you had some of this?"
"I'll make you a sporting offer," I answered. "I'll fight you for the
rest of what you've got."
"No, you won't," he answered nasally; "it's made me feel exactly like
a Yank; I'm too proud to fight."
(This Newfoundland soldier-boy here tells about his experiences in
"No Man's Land"; his fights with the Turks; how he was wounded and
sent his last message "home"; how he finally recovered and returned to
America.--EDITOR.)