With the Zionists in Gallipoli

by J. H. Patterson

Every yard in front of the trenches was guarded by barbed wire, sometimes left unrolled on the ground, where it naturally goes into coils and traps for the unwary, and sometimes interlaced on stakes, like a regular wire fencing, doubled many times. It was very dangerous work putting up this form of defence, and it was generally done at night, but even then the enemy could see our men by the light of the brilliant flares which were constantly sent up, for these remained in the air for several seconds, making everything as bright as day. The only chance of escape then was to lie flat down and remain perfectly still until the flare went out.

Then there was the constant arduous and dangerous labour of sapping, i. e., tunnelling underground from our trenches underneath the Turkish trenches, making a huge cavity there, filling it with explosives and blowing the trench and such Turks as were in it sky high. This was generally done when an attack was made, so as to throw the enemy into greater confusion.

At night it was usual to man the front trenches fairly strongly, one-third of the force always being awake and on the look-out for the enemy.

Of course, it was almost certain death for a man to stand up and show his head and shoulders above the parapet line, so the watch on the enemy was kept by men with periscopes, who could see every move in perfect safety. Even the periscopes were often shattered to pieces by the bullets of the Turks, which shows that some of them were good marksmen.

Telephone wires were laid everywhere in the trenches, and telephone operators and observing officers were scattered up and down the line. On the first sign of an enemy attack these officers communicated with their Batteries in the rear, and within two seconds a curtain of fire was rained on the advancing foe, which, in most cases, he found it quite impossible to get through. If he ever succeeded, however, the Infantry were by this time lining the parapets, ready to mow down the enemy with rifle and machine-gun fire, so the only marvel is that any of the assaulting force ever got through. A very rare occurrence—and those that did pierce the line never again got back to their own trenches.

One day I went up to visit Lieutenant Davidson, who was Forward Observing Officer, and he, having occasion to fire a gun, telephoned to the Battery; it was a distinctly weird feeling to hear the scream of the shell from the guns two miles back flying close over our heads into the Turkish trenches in front of us, almost before Davidson had ceased speaking! At that same observation post, on a previous day, another R. H. A. officer, Lieutenant Perceval, who also was a member of our little mess, had a very narrow escape. A Turkish shell came through, slightly bruised his shoulder, and killed his Bombardier, who was, at the moment, holding the telephone.

In the side of the trench next the enemy little niches were excavated where men could lie and sit fairly well sheltered from wind and rain. These recesses were often used by the Turks as burial places for their dead. I remember on one occasion I was walking along a piece of the line which we had just taken from the Turks when a shell exploded close to the trench. The concussion shook away some loose earth and out from the side of the trench popped a dead hand and arm!—just as if a policeman had put out his hand to stop the traffic. The dead Turk seemed to try, even in death, to bar the way to an enemy's approach.

A very disagreeable feature of trench life is the unpleasant odour of the dead, which penetrates everywhere, for, of course, when an attack is made by one side or the other hundreds may be killed close to the trenches, and as a rule it is impossible either to rescue the wounded or to bury the dead, because the enemy would inevitably shoot down any one attempting such a task.

One of the very worst trials of trench warfare is to see the dead body of a comrade lying out in the open, gradually fading away before one's eyes, a mummied hand still clutching the rifle, the helmet a little way off, looking ever so weird in its gruesome surroundings.

While in the trenches one is, of course, subject at all times to shells, rifle fire, mine explosions, poison gas, bombs, liquid fire, and other diabolical inventions. The Turks, however, did not use either poison gas or liquid fire, and, of course, neither did the British.