I don't pretend to describe that struggle. No man could. It was grit,
tenacity, and gameness opposed to overwhelming numbers. A battle of
giants. It was sickening; brutal--and yet splendid. Men fought that
day stripped to the waist; fought till their rifles jammed, picked
up another--and went on fighting. Men with broken legs refused to
leave the trench, cursing those who would have assisted them--went
on firing until a second bullet crippled their rifle arm. Yet still
they clung on, handing up clips of cartridges to their mates, all the
time imploring them to "give the sons of ---- hell!" They weren't
Sunday-school models, those big-hearted, happy-go-lucky toughs from
the Back of Beyond. But they knew how to fight--and die. They were men
right through, not kid-glove soldiers. They lived hard, fought hard,
and died hard. And what if they did die with curses on their lips! Who
shall dare to judge them, dying as _they_ died? And it may be that the
Big Padre up aloft turned a deaf ear to those oaths begotten of the
life they had lived--or perhaps He failed to hear them in the noise of
battle!
The Turks attacked gamely, like the big, brave soldiers they are
and always were. Led by their splendid officers, they came on in
masses, shoulder to shoulder, and did all that in them lay to rush our
trenches. They were met by a storm of bullets that would have staggered
anything born of woman. It did stagger them: they recoiled before
that leaden blast that piled their dead and wounded up in ghastly
heaps and ridges like broken-down walls--before that smashing fire
delivered at twenty yards range. They recoiled--yes. But run--no! They
charged, charged right through that hurricane of machine-gun and rifle
fire--charged right up to our parapets.
And now it was our turn. Like one man the colonial infantry leaped
from their cover. _Crash!_ They were into the Turks. Followed a wild
hurly-burly of hacking and stabbing while one might count twenty
slowly; then the enemy were beaten back, and the defenders ran, limped,
and crawled back to their trenches and took to their rifles again.
Thus it went on from before dawn till towards evening. Charge and
counter-charge, till men reeled from sheer exhaustion, and their
blood-clotted weapons slipped from hands sticky with the same red
paint. I am not exaggerating! those who were present on that awful
Tuesday will bear me out.
We were hard pressed. The strongest men in the world are only human.
Loss of sleep, insufficient food, and practically no water, combined
with the exertions we had already gone through, began to tell their
tale. Our losses were also very heavy; and owing to the slippery state
of the clay soil, following on an all-night of rain, our reserves could
not get up quickly enough. Thus yards and yards of trench were at times
empty of all save dead and wounded men, and in some cases the Turks
effected a footing in them; they were always driven out again, however,
or bayoneted to a man. Our fellows were simply magnificent; budge they
would not. To capture those trenches meant the killing of the men who
held them; you couldn't _drive_ them out. And the officers were just
the same.