VISITS TO THE TRENCHES
During one of the hot June days Gye and I paid a visit to Colonel Bruce
and his Gurkhas, who were holding the left of the line down by the Ægean
Sea.
The Gurkhas have done some splendid work in the Peninsula. They are in
their element when out at night doing reconnoitring work. Bruce told me
of the valuable report brought in by one of his N. C. O.'s, on the
strength of which he took his men up the side of a cliff and was able to
surprise and drive the Turks out of a very strong position which it was
of prime importance we should hold. Other troops had several times
attempted this feat, but failed because they attacked in the open, while
the Gurkhas succeeded owing to good reconnoitring work.
The night previous to our visit the Turks had made a most determined
attack on the Gurkhas, and the Gurkhas asked for no better sport.
Flares, shot up by our officers, showed the Turks advancing in regular
parade formation in line of columns. As soon as the Turks saw that they
had been observed, they charged, yelling their war cry: "Allah, Allah!"
The Gurkhas waited patiently, lining the trenches as thickly as they
could stand. They allowed the Turks to approach within about fifty yards
of them and then opened such a hurricane of rifle and machine-gun fire
that the Turks were absolutely crumpled up in ranks as they stood. The
fury of the Gurkhas was now thoroughly aroused and, the reserves having
been brought up, the whole brigade made such an onslaught that
practically not a single Turk out of that huge attacking force ever got
back to his own trench.
When Rolo and I viewed the battlefield within a few hours of the fight,
there were still some wounded to be seen in the intervening ground
between the two forces, while in regular battle array lay line upon line
of Turkish dead, silent witnesses to the terribly accurate fire poured
into them by the Gurkhas. They are brave fellows, those Turks, and it
was a sad sight to see so many gallant men laid low.
No doubt in revenge for the defeat they had suffered the previous night,
the Turks were bombarding the Gurkha lines vigorously, and while I was
there they landed a big "Black Maria" shell underneath a little fellow
who was squatting on his heels outside his dug-out. It was an
extraordinary sight to see him shoot down the hill in this position and
land some forty feet away in a clump of bushes, from which he emerged
not much the worse for his involuntary flight.
The Gurkhas, in one of their previous attacks on the heights occupied by
the Turks, were held up by some barbed wire and had to retire. A private
soldier, however, chose to remain behind, ensconced under the scanty
protection of a couple of knapsacks, which he pulled together from those
strewn round, thinking that he could hold his own until another assault
was delivered by his comrades, when he would join them. No comrades
came, however, so he found himself unable to move without being
observed. He therefore pretended to be dead and lay absolutely still for
hours, not even daring to move his head, except when his neck got very
stiff, and then only by pushing his hat up a fraction of an inch, so
that he might slowly twist his head inside it without showing any
movement. At last he could stand the strain no longer, so he leaped up,
raced in a zig-zag to his own trenches amid a hail of bullets, and,
carefully avoiding a low spot where the Turks had concentrated their
fire, expecting him to go in that way, he leaped over the highest part
of the parapet and escaped scot-free.
I saw this little fellow a few hours after his exploit and he looked as
though he had thoroughly enjoyed the adventure.
A few days after the big Turkish assault I was again on my way to this
part of the line, when I happened to meet General de Lisle, and, on
mentioning that I was going to see Colonel Bruce, he told me I would not
find him, for he had been wounded on the previous night by a bomb, while
gallantly leading his men.
I had several friends in the Inniskilling Fusiliers and frequently I
came across them in my journeys to and from the Gurkha lines. As a rule,
they held the trenches to the right of the little brown men from Nepaul.
I always made a point, when I was anywhere near, of looking up Captain
Gordon Tillie. He was now practically the only officer left of the
Inniskillings who had taken part in the original landing and had, so
far, escaped scot-free. I was hopeful that his luck would see him
through, because he had only been married a few days before he left
England for the front, and I knew his wife very well, and had promised
her to look him up whenever I had an opportunity.
Just before the 29th Division went to Suvla, Gye and I paid him a visit,
while he was holding the front trenches, and, sad to say, this was the
last occasion on which I ever saw Gordon Tillie. He took us along that
portion of the trench for which his company was responsible, and showed
us the various points of interest in the Turkish line, which, at this
particular place, was sometimes parallel, and sometimes almost at right
angles to our trenches, and in places only a dozen yards distant. When I
was leaving him he cautioned me to be careful of a certain part of the
trench we should have to pass through, as he said it was exposed to the
Turkish guns and they often gave it a "strafing." My parting remark to
him was: "Take care they don't 'strafe' you."
Of course, shells were dropping here and there all the time from the
Turkish guns, and they were paying some attention to the piece of
dangerous trench which Gye and I were bound to go through, so, saying to
him: "Let's make a bolt for it," we started off at our best pace, but
before we got through we had to lie down in the bottom of the trench to
escape a couple of shells which burst all round us and knocked to pieces
the sandbag parapet protecting our heads.
Gordon Tillie's friendly warning may have saved our lives, and it is a
nice thought, for, soon afterwards, the 29th Division were sent to
Suvla, and there Captain Tillie was killed while gallantly leading his
company up the slopes of Sari Bair--a brave soldier, as Sir Ian Hamilton
testifies in his Suvla Bay Despatch.
I often made an expedition to visit a friend, only to find, when I got
there, that he had perhaps been killed the day before, or else had been
sent off to hospital badly wounded, and it was sad to see how one's
friends gradually got thinned off. Many of them lay buried all round.
One would suddenly be startled by coming across a freshly-dug grave in
some sheltered little nook by the wayside and learn for the first time,
from the rude cross erected over it, that one's friend lay there. But
war is war, and as a shell or bullet may come at any moment and bring
sudden death with it to one's self, one gets used to the idea, and
somehow it does not seem so dreadful. Many of us often escaped by the
merest chance. In my own case the turning aside to pluck a flower, or
straying a little from the path to get a better view of a sunset, was
the chance that prevented Death from finding me, because more than once
I have seen a shell explode and excavate a huge hole on the exact spot
where, had I not turned aside, I would undoubtedly have been standing.
Yes, indeed, in those days, one often heard, sounding softly in one's
ears, the faint rustle of the wings of the Angel of Death.
I do not know whether the Turks had any particular spite against my
Zionists, but they certainly gave us more than our fair share of shells.
One afternoon they began a bombardment and plumped a shell into a bank
on which sat a Zion man, Private Scorobogaty. The explosion sent him
some feet into the air, but, beyond the bruise and shock, he suffered no
damage. The next shell dropped plump in the middle of our little supply
of stores, within six feet of the door of our dug-out, and sent
everything flying through space. A third shot plunged into the roots of
a tree which stood close to our lines, by which the trumpeter of L
Battery, R. H. A., was standing. He heard the shell coming, and, without
any particular reason, but luckily for him, he made a dive to the right
instead of to the left, and so escaped for the moment. Next afternoon at
tea-time another shell came, cut the same tree clean in two, wounding
the trumpeter and two other men of L Battery, who were having their tea
in its shade.