Part 3 (1/2)
On the morning of 13th July a curious incident happened among certain troops in the firing line. The trouble began, as it so often does, with an indiscreet verbal message. One of the front trenches was over-crowded and the officer in charge wished to relieve the congestion by sending back a section. Without thinking of possible consequences he pa.s.sed along a message for No. ---- Section to retire, and, as this order was not complied with as rapidly as he expected, followed it up with a more peremptory message that the section was to retire at once. Scarcely ever does the simplest verbal message pa.s.sed along a line of men reach its intended recipient in the form in which it was despatched. The result is sometimes puzzling, sometimes amusing; on this occasion it was nearly tragic, as part of the firing line was left untenanted.
Captain John MacDonald, who had ”B” Company in Parsons Road as Permanent Garrison, as soon as he became aware of what was happening telephoned back for instructions. His message was somehow delayed, and receiving no reply to it he took the responsibility of acting on his own initiative.
Though the Permanent Garrison was detailed in orders to remain in Parsons Road, he pushed forward at once with his company and occupied the abandoned trenches before the enemy had time to make any move to secure them. This saved the situation.
Early in the forenoon vague and conflicting rumours began to come in about ”A” Company and the losses it had sustained. As we were anxious to get definite particulars of what really had happened and as to where the company now was and how it was faring, Major Jowitt set out to find it and obtain the desired information. He had not been long gone when a message arrived from Lieut. Beckett giving particulars of the losses.
The hours slipped past without any word from Major Jowitt and we began to fear that some mischance had befallen him. At last, towards three o'clock, word came from the 7th H.L.I. that he was lying wounded in a trench known as E12A a short distance in front of the Horse Shoe. On further enquiry we learned that his wounds did not appear to be serious, but that it would not be possible to get him out of the trench until after dark as all approaches to it were being heavily sniped. Colonel Galbraith, who had found him wounded, had made him as comfortable as was possible in the circ.u.mstances, and one of our own men, having heard where he was, had gone up to the trench to remain with him until he could be removed. As soon as it was dark enough to cross the intervening ground, Captains Simson and Neilson with our medical officer, Captain Kennedy, and a stretcher party went up and brought him down to a dressing station, where his wounds were attended to and he was sent down to an hospital s.h.i.+p. The report was that his wounds were not serious, although he was naturally in considerable pain after lying so long in the sun and after his trying pa.s.sage down from the front through narrow and winding trenches.
At a conference of C.O.'s held at Brigade Headquarters at 3.40, we were informed that a battalion of the Royal Naval Division was arriving to deliver an attack on the right of the 155th Brigade with the object of securing some gaps in the line between that Brigade and the French. This was preceded, at 4.30, by the usual bombardment. There would appear to have been some ghastly blundering in connection with the arrangements for this attack. We heard afterwards that the battalion was quite ignorant of the ground; that it only arrived a few minutes before the attack was timed to commence; and that it had difficulty in finding the trench from which it was to move on its objective. There must have been similar uncertainty about the objective itself, for the troops advanced across the open, suffering severely from sh.e.l.l-fire, into a trench already held by the 155th Brigade, a trench which--had they known it was so held--they might have walked into by a communication sap with little if any loss. Afterwards they pushed on some distance beyond this trench but found no other to take, and when they fell back on the existing front line the position remained exactly as it had been before the attack, except for the terrible casualties they had so unnecessarily sustained. In his published despatch, Sir Ian Hamilton, referring to this attack, explains its necessity by stating that ”about 7.30 a.m. the right of the 157th Brigade gave way before a party of bombers, and our grip upon the enemy began to weaken.” He must have been entirely misinformed as to the position, unless the ”giving way” to which he refers was the mistaken retirement from the trench which Captain John MacDonald had occupied, as previously narrated. If this is so, the officer who issued the orders to the Naval Battalion cannot have been informed that the ”giving way” was only temporary and that the 157th Brigade had almost immediately reoccupied its trenches and was actually holding them when this unfortunate attack was launched.
About four o'clock we received the bad news that Captain John MacDonald had been killed--shot through the head by a sniper's bullet--in the front trench which his company was still a.s.sisting to hold. This brought the total of our officers' casualties in the two days' fighting to seven; three killed (Captain MacDonald and Lieutenants Malcolm and May) one missing (Captain Morton), and three wounded (Majors Jowitt and Downie and Lieutenant J.G. Milne).
For two days after the battle all units were kept busy gathering up the arms, equipment and loose ammunition with which the terrain was littered, as well as maintaining the defence of the captured positions.
On the afternoon of July 15th, ”C” and ”D” Companies took over the trenches on the west of the Achi Baba nullah from the Plymouth Battalion, while ”A” Company relieved part of the Drake Battalion and the 6th H.L.I. on the east of the nullah. This relief had to be carried out after nightfall, as the position was as yet unsafe from Turkish marksmen who sniped the approaches by day. The sector included the famous Horse Shoe Trench which was then a death trap, although, after much labour had been expended upon it, it was latterly known as the safest position on the Peninsula.
That first night was an eerie one for ”A” Company, and for our Signalling Officer, Captain R.H. Morrison, who had to link up Battalion Headquarters in Wigan Road with the isolated company. Selecting a quiet interval about 11 p.m. he slipped out from F12 with a couple of his Headquarters signallers to run the line across. Working over almost unknown ground, with only a general idea of the direction and position of the enemy, their worst anxiety was lest in the dark they should lead their wire into a Turkish trench instead of the Horse Shoe. A few bullets were sweeping down the nullah as they crossed, but fortunately none of the little party was. .h.i.t. Breasting the slope on the further side they eventually landed safely in the Horse Shoe, much to the surprise of the sentries there. It did not take long to instal the instrument, and, leaving one of the signallers in charge of the new station, the party retraced its steps and got back to Headquarters shortly before midnight to report communication established.
On the 16th we took over from the Manchester a small stretch of trenches on our left, and ”C” Company salved fifteen asphyxiating bombs from a pent-house in one of the nullah trenches. A captured Turkish officer, evidently disapproving of these innovations by his German masters, had given information as to where they would be found. Packed in two cases marked RAKATEN, they were long, slender, uncanny-looking projectiles evidently intended for discharge from a trench-mortar.
For the next two days and nights we laboured almost unceasingly, dog-tired and hardly able to keep awake, improving our defences.
The R.E. wired our front across the nullah, and we ourselves extended F12A and F12 down to the bed of the stream as a first step towards joining up with the Horse Shoe.
Over forty Turks were buried at this time between F11 and F12. F11 itself was so densely packed with corpses that it had to be filled in.
After dark on the 17th, ”B” Company, now commanded by Lieut. N.R.
Campbell, relieved ”A” in the Horse Shoe. ”A” had several casualties during its tour of duty there, some men having been hit in the trench itself, others while going back for water.
On the west side of the nullah Pte. A. Heron was killed, and the bombers holding the barricade which had been thrown up on the 12th had casualties also. Our snipers gave a good account of themselves, one having seven observed hits to his credit and another five on the same day. There was a well about 400 yards off, round which occasional parties of Turks could be easily observed until they realised that the recent advance had exposed the place to our view.
On July 18th, ”A,” ”C,” and ”D” Companies were relieved by the 6th East Lancs, and painfully dragged their weary way back to rest. The journey of less than three miles took us fully four hours, for we were all pretty well played out after nine such days and nights as we had just come through, and the scorching heat necessitated many a halt by the way. How we revelled in that drink as we paused at Romano's Well!--the only spot on the Peninsula where we could get a draught of real, cold, unchlorinated water!
About 6 p.m. we reached our destination, a series of holes in the ground lying between the Pink Farm Road and ”X” Beach, and about a mile behind the Farm itself. The Quarter-Master, Lieut. T. Clark, and his satellites had a good meal of hot stew and potatoes ready for us, and lots of tea, after which we stretched our blankets on the ground, lay down and fell asleep.
It was not till 5.30 next morning that ”B” Company rolled up, absolutely ”cooked.” They had not been relieved until 2.30 a.m., the Lancas.h.i.+res not having considered it safe to move up their company until a communication trench, on which we had been working for some days, had been completed.
CHAPTER IV
GALLIPOLI (_contd._).
The Battalion remained in ”Rest Camp” for twenty-one days.
The words ”Rest Camp” conjure up a mental picture of shady trees and green, close-cropped meadows sloping to a winding river, of ordered rows of tents or huts, of a place where the horrors of the trenches can be forgotten and war-jangled nerves re-attuned in a placid atmosphere of peace and innocent recreation--not to mention baths and long cool drinks. Nothing could be more unlike this ideal than the reality of a Rest Camp on the Peninsula. We used often to exercise our imaginations in seeking the reason for christening these delectable abiding places Rest Camps. Was it in a fine spirit of official irony, or on the _lucus a non lucendo_ principle, or was it in respectful but rather slavish imitation of the organisation of the Expeditionary Force in France? They had Bomb Schools, Training Camps, Rest Camps and all sorts of luxuries.
We on Gallipoli must therefore have the same. So we inst.i.tuted Bomb Schools on the Peninsula and a Training Camp at Mudros to which our weak battalions had regularly to send parties of officers and men who could ill be spared from duty in the trenches. We must therefore also have Rest Camps in name if not in actuality. They were not camps, and were not conspicuously restful, but we knew them officially as Rest Camps. At the time of which we are writing they were sometimes referred to as Rest Trenches. This was, if anything, less appropriate. In no military sense could they be regarded as trenches.
Having explained what a Rest Camp was not, let us now attempt to convey some idea of what it was by describing the fairly typical example in which we found ourselves planted. Imagine then, a bare expanse of clayey soil from which all signs of vegetation--if there ever was any--have been obliterated. The surface is trodden fairly hard and is powdered with a thin layer of heavy dust, which the slightest shower of rain converts into mud tenacious as tar. The ”Camp” is bounded on the North (_i.e._ the extremity nearest the enemy) by the remains of a ragged hedge, in the thickest clumps of which an intrepid explorer may discover a few dusty, juiceless, brambles. The previous tenants have been superficial in their methods of tidying up their lines, for the hedge also shelters a miscellaneous a.s.sortment of discarded clothing, empty meat and jam-tins and all the odd items of rubbish which, in a well disciplined unit, disappear in the incinerator. South of the hedge the ground falls with a very gradual slope for perhaps 200 yards, to the dry bed of a ditch or streamlet just beyond which a row of trees serves to conceal partially the dug-outs in which our Divisional Staff have their permanent quarters. Beyond this again the surface is almost level for a s.p.a.ce, then it rises again with increasing gradient, past the lines of the 1st Lowland Field Ambulance, to the ridge half a mile away, behind which it drops precipitously to the sea.
In one of his earlier despatches, Sir Ian Hamilton very aptly likens the configuration of the Peninsula between Achi Baba and Cape h.e.l.les to the bowl of a huge spoon, with Achi Baba at the heel of the bowl and the Cape at its toe. This Rest Camp of ours was near the toe and rather to the left of the centre line; in full view of Achi Baba itself, but screened to some extent from its lower slopes by an insignificant intermediate crest-line about 200 yards to our front.
The so-called ”trenches” as we found them, bore more resemblance to hastily constructed strings of golf bunkers than to anything else on earth. They did not appear to have been laid out on any definite plan.