With the Zionists in Gallipoli

by J. H. Patterson

FLIES, DUST AND BATTLE

July was a scorching month, and to add to the discomfort of heat there was a plague of flies; flies, flies, flies everywhere, and I have no doubt that they were responsible for the serious epidemics which broke out among the troops. Doubtless it was the self-same pestilence which Homer tells us attacked the Grecian Army camped round Troy, and which they attributed to the anger of Apollo, though none of our mules suffered as did those of the Greeks.

These flies were disgusting, horrible pests, for they would come straight from the rotting corpses of the Turks, which lay in unburied hundreds in front of our trenches, and blacken every scrap of food on which they could obtain a foot-hold. The only way to get a clean bite into one's mouth, without taking the flies with it, was to blow vigorously all the time until the lips had actually closed on the morsel, and even then these pests would hover round, waiting for a chance opening to dart in and chase it down.

The dust, too, in these days was very trying, for the whole peninsula was now one vast dust heap, which the slightest wind would swirl about in blinding, choking clouds. I noticed that on several occasions our men had to do battle with this dust storm blowing directly in their eyes, so that it was impossible to see anything in front of them, while the Turks, with their backs to it, could see our men coming along plainly enough and could slate them at their leisure. I always found, as was to be expected, that when we foolishly attacked on such days as these we effected nothing beyond getting ourselves killed. The Turks must have marvelled at our blind folly.

I well remember that one of our most successful battles was fought on a day when the wind carried the dust into the faces of the Turks; towards the close of this fight I saw a couple of battalions go right through and over all the Turkish trenches within sight, and then get engulfed in a great ravine on the very slope of Achi Baba itself, where they were hidden from view, and then I saw thousands of Turks stream down through communication trenches on each side of our men, filling the trenches in their rear, as could be plainly seen by the bristling bayonets which showed above the parapets.

I felt that these two battalions were lost, as indeed they were for two or three days, but somehow or other, after some extraordinary hide-and-seek experiences among the Turkish trenches, they fought their way back again, clearing the Turks out of their path, in hand-to-hand fighting, as they hacked their way back to our own lines.

A friend of mine, Captain Braham of the 6th Manchesters, had a narrow escape on one occasion when he made an attempt to lead his men in an assault. Being short of ammunition for the guns, the Turkish trenches had not been properly bombarded; Turkish machine-guns and riflemen were still in position, ready to mow our men down the moment they leaped from their trenches. This was the fate which overtook the 6th Manchesters; they were practically cut to pieces before they had advanced more than a dozen yards from their lines, and the few survivors thought it wiser to get back to cover as quickly as possible. Captain Braham, however, tried to rally them out of the trench again, and at that moment, while standing on the parapet, a bullet struck his knapsack, cut through the buckle, a box of chocolate and a tin-opener. The tin-opener diverted the bullet out through the bottom of the haversack by his heels, but the impact of it was so great that it knocked him off the parapet into the trench, as if he had been struck with a sledge hammer. He told me afterwards that he did not know at the time what had knocked him over, and it was not until he had removed his haversack that the mystery was explained.

During one of these dog days Rolo and I went as far forward as it was possible to go, so that we might get a close view of a battle which was to begin at 11 A. M. on the 12th of July.

Punctually to the minute our guns crashed out along the line and pounded away steadily for an hour. Then we watched the attack, and what impressed me in this battle, as it did also in others, was the inadequate force with which we attempted to take the offensive. A line of our men would dash forward, take two or three Turkish trenches, losing perhaps half its effective strength in so doing, and then find itself too weak to do more than hold on, and very often they could not even do that. There seemed to be no regular system of sending line after line at intervals into the fight. I know that this was arranged for in orders, but it did not always come off, and the men who had, with such gallantry and at such a cost, taken the trenches, would be forced out of them in a counter-attack by overwhelming numbers of Turks, and, in getting back to their own lines, would again lose heavily.

To obtain a view of the battlefield from a different point we made our way along a communication trench, and here our interest in the fight in the front was abruptly switched off and centred on ourselves, for the Turks had spotted a Battalion of Lancashire Fusiliers coming along to reinforce the firing line, and they turned a most deadly and accurate fire upon us from the Turkish guns. Shells hopped from the parapets or broke them in all round us, crashed over our heads, and even plumped right into the trench itself, sending men flying in all directions.