The Tale of a Trooper

by Clutha N. Mackenzie

Arrived in a ravine which cut the ridge, they found the Turks in a position too strong to be attacked in daylight by so small a force. Eventually it was decided to await nightfall and strong reinforcements before attempting to force a passage through the Turkish lines to the beleaguered garrison of the outpost. They gathered in shady corners of the dried water-course, and yarned and smoked the long hot hours away. Shrapnel came screaming across the scrub in the afternoon, but spent itself harmlessly in desert spots.

It was decided that the outpost was too isolated a position to hold, and that, after nightfall, the enemy, who had entrenched, should be forced back, the besieged with their wounded withdrawn, and a retreat made to the old position. This was all successfully carried out. Mac took his fortunes with a covering party on the right flank. He could follow little of what was taking place up at the outpost itself. There was a good deal of rifle-fire and bombing, and a certain amount of shell-fire, whose great white flashes lit up the wild ravine in fleeting visions of weird beauty.

At midnight the order for retreat found Mac almost asleep, for he was very weary from long wakefulness. They passed silently down the valley, being apparently the last to go. The Turks were following the retirement, for they were chanting their weird invocations to Allah not very far distant.

At the foot of the ravine, near the ruins of a solitary fisherman's hut, he and half a dozen others were instructed to take up a position and to stick to it till the last. He expected that, when the Turks emerged from the dried-up watercourse, there would be some fun, but, though their cries to Allah floated down the ravine, along with some indiscriminate firing, they themselves did not choose to come. During the long wait here, the padre, heedless of danger from spattering bullets, which flicked fire when they struck the dust, and despite the dysentery which racked his frame, and the long days and nights without sleep, went right along the scattered exposed firing line, taking cheese, biscuits and water to the weary, thirsty troopers. Wherever they went in action there was their quiet old padre, always working among the wounded, and, if these lacked, he would join in some other good work, bringing up water and provisions, or the like.

The Turks had attacked heavily the summit of a ridge about one hundred yards to Mac's right, and here he was sent now to bring in wounded, one of whom three of them were instructed to carry round to Anzac Cove. It was a long and weary journey, stumbling over scrubby hillocks and then away along the stony beach. This bad going in the dark was pretty rough on the wounded man, but, like most in his condition, he stuck it splendidly, and was deeply grieved he was such a burden to his cobbers.

At length they reached the dressing-station at the Cove, and placed him on a table in a room with sandbag walls. Several medical men examined the wound and spoke technically thereon. The stretcher-party asked anxiously after his condition, and sought tidings also of cobbers who had been brought back earlier. Then they set off for the firing-line once more.

The third dawn in this outpost affair was now lighting the eastern sky, beyond the hills where the night's fighting had taken place. Half-way back near the poppy-patch, one glorious riot of red summer flowers, they met their regiment returning. They had done their work, the Turks had ceased attacking and the weary regiment which had been kept busy the long, hot days in this outpost skirmish had been relieved. The tired troopers trailed homewards, carelessly tramping the dewy wild poppy heads on their way. A bathe and a drink, and then a long, long sleep.

The three days' skirmish had been an interesting little engagement. Mac thought that the establishment of an outpost so far beyond the Anzac territory had been undertaken rather too lightly. The cutting off of the garrison thirty hours from the time of capture, the relief of the besieged twenty-four hours later and the subsequent retreat were actions which had brought many anxious moments, plenty of hard work in the blazing sun, and the lives of some fine officers and men. The Turks, too, had suffered many casualties. The only tactical result of the operation was that the enemy chose to make the outpost of contention a strong, almost impregnable position, which was captured three months later only by a ruse and hard fighting.

Altogether it had been a pleasant scrap in the open, and Mac was not dissatisfied that he had gone through the experience. Anyhow as, profoundly and delightfully weary, he lay down on the hard clay floor of his bivouac, he felt a satisfied contentment with life.

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