It is a fact that the German spy system even invaded the very personnel of the British army. My platoon sergeant, Merrifield, summarily accounted for one of these spies. This was some weeks later, at the attack at Lone Pine. We had won the position and we were consolidating, improving upon the trenches and the strongholds which we had captured when the order come down from the left, “Retire! to the first line.”
I shouted “Stick where you are! Who gave that damned order?”
I sent up Merrifield to make inquiries and as he was making his way along the line asking the men where the order had come from, it was pointed out to him that a man on the left started the order. Merrifield went up to him and asked who gave that order to retire. This man replied “Lieutenant Wilhelm.” We had seen enough of spy work since we left Australia and Merrifield, rushing up, faced Wilhelm. He did not stop to question him. He read in the man’s countenance the appearance of a Teuton, the broad face, high cheek-bones and broad neck. And Merrifield took long chances but was too enraged to consider that. “You damned square-head,” he shouted, and with the utterance of the words killed the lieutenant with his bayonet. Wilhelm’s attempted treachery not only cost him his life, but did not gain its end, for the order never got any farther. On examining his person, we found letters, photographs and a signal code, all going to show that however recklessly he had acted, Merrifield had made no mistake.
The night of the second day found us in positions higher up among the sandy table lands and ridges and dug into positions that we were to hold for a few weeks waiting for reinforcements, which were coming up from Egypt.
The Turkish snipers occupied a great deal of our attention all this time and they were a cunning lot. They were adepts in the art of camouflage—an art which was new to battlefields at this time. Their favorite method of deception was to paint their bodies green, to shroud their heads with the natural foliage of the country, moss and holly-bush twigs. With this arrangement they could conceal themselves as neatly and completely as snakes in the grass. They not only hid in the shrubbery, but successfully concealed themselves in the stunted trees that grew among the rocky crevices. The cliffs themselves gave them a tremendous advantage. In this they had drilled shooting boxes—holes in all manner of secret recesses large enough to hold their bodies.
But we did not permit them to pot us wholly undisturbed. Many of our men made night expeditions that silenced forever our hidden hunters. One of my bush men came back from such an expedition with a startling souvenir. It was nothing less than a head of one of the Turkish snipers—the face of the ghastly object painted green, twigs enmeshed in the hair and sticking out of the ears.
But after a while we were to meet the Turk and find him not such a bad fellow. I asked the prisoners we captured why they were fighting. They said, they didn’t know what they were fighting for, but they just wanted to have a fight. A rejoinder which an Irishman like myself could appreciate. In a conversation with an educated Turk I asked him why they allowed the Germans to be the master. He replied that the Germans had for the last forty years over-run his country and taken over the direction of the civil, the military and the naval affairs of his nation, and they were so strong, dealt with the Turks with such an iron hand, that there was no commencing a mutiny. It had been tried and proved a fiasco.
During the months of July and August when the sun was very hot and the ground very dry, and the flies and the mosquitoes were everywhere, water became scarce, for it was a waterless land we were on. The Turkish prisoners, so friendly did they become with us, went back to their own lines and brought us water. We sent others back to try and persuade their kind to come over and give themselves up. We fed them well, gave them the best that we had, and made jolly good fellows of them, as they were indeed. They had given us a good fight and we appreciate a good fighter. Though they went back to their own lines they would always return and brought us frequently gourds of fresh water. The water that we got ourselves was coming from Murdos and Lemnos Islands. It was brackish and it stunk. We were only allowed one pint per man a day, a stingy ration under a tropic sun. The Turks said they brought us water because when wounded Turks lay gasping for water, we had given them of our own.
Then the time came when we were getting an extra supply of jam, and there were only two kinds of jam issued—plum and an apple and apricot combination. Of course, that set us all grumbling, soldier-like, because we didn’t get strawberry. One day one of the men hit upon the idea of exchanging this jam with wine with which the French soldiers over Suvla Bay way were liberally supplied. This exchange went on for about a fortnight, and there were happy times in the trenches. Then the French got fed up with this sameness of jam and our stocks dropped below zero. So we had to look out for another customer. One of our boys hit upon the idea of exchanging the jam with the Turks. During the day we put up our articles of exchange—jam and bully beef on bayonets and held them up in prominent positions on the front line trenches. And we waited anxiously as to what was going to happen, and lo! at night we heard and saw the Turks crawling through the brushwood and scrub, growling and muttering to themselves as their whiskers were caught on the twigs of the bushes. When they reached the front-line trenches they took off the articles of exchange and put in their place wines, cigarettes and Turkish “delight,” as we always called the tobacco. That showed us that they didn’t want war and we knew we didn’t want war, but the Germans wanted it and as long as they wanted it we had to keep going.
Likewise we had other experiences that were not all grim, but they were exciting. For instance, our bathing parties on the beach. We didn’t have to bother with bathing suits or summer-resort regulations, but we had the novelty of bathing to the accompaniment of shell fire. When we saw shells diving we dived to get out of the way.