Troops at the Dardanelles leaving for the landing beach[ToList]
After the first forty-eight hours we settled down to regular trench warfare. The routine was four days in the trenches, eight days in rest dugouts, four days in the trenches again, and so forth, although three or four months later our ranks were so depleted that we stayed in eight days and rested only four. We had expected four days' rest after our first trip to the firing line, but at the end of two days came word of a determined advance of the enemy. We arrived just in time to beat it off. Our trenches instead of being at the top were at the foot of the hill that meant so much to us.
The ground here was a series of four or five hog-back ridges, about a hundred yards apart. Behind these towered the hill that was our objective. From the nearest ridge, about seven hundred yards in front of us, the Turks had all that day constantly issued in mass formation. During that attack we were repaid for the havoc wrought by Beachy Bill. As soon as the Turks topped the crest, they were subjected to a demoralizing rain of shell from the navy and from our artillery. Against the hazy blue of the skyline we could see the dark mass clearly silhouetted. Every few seconds, when a shell landed in the middle of the approaching columns, the sides of the column would bulge outward for an instant, then close in again. Meanwhile, every man in our trenches stood on the firing platform, head and shoulders above the parapet, with fixed bayonet and loaded rifle, waiting for the order to begin firing. Still the Turks came on, big, black, bewhiskered six footers, reforming ranks and filling up their gaps with fresh men. Now they were only six hundred yards away. But still there was no order to open fire. It was uncanny. At five hundred yards our fire was still withheld. When the order came, "At four hundred yards, rapid fire," everybody was tingling with excitement. Still the Turks came on, magnificently determined, but it was too desperate a venture. The chances against them were too great, our artillery and machine gun fire too destructively accurate. Some few Turks reached almost to our trenches, only to be stopped by rifle bullets. "Allah! Allah!" yelled the Turks, as they came on. A sweating, grimly happy machine gun sergeant was shouting to the Turkish army in general, "It's not a damn bit of good to yell to Allah now." Our artillery opened huge gaps in their lines, our machine guns piled them dead in the ranks where they stood. Our own casualties were very slight; but of the waves of Turks that surged over the crest all that day, only a mere shattered remnant ever straggled back to their own lines.
That was the last big attack the Turks made. From that time on, it was virtually two armies in a state of siege. That was the first night the Newfoundlanders went into the trenches as a unit. A and B Companies held the firing line, C and D were in the support trenches. Before that, they filled up gaps in the Dublins or in the Munsters, or in the King's Own Scottish Borderers. These regiments were our tutors. Mostly they were composed of veterans who had put in years of training in Egypt or in India. The Irish were jolly, laughing men with a soft brogue, and an amazing sense of humor. The Scotch were dour, silent men, who wasted few words. Some of the Scotchmen were young fellows who had been recruited in Scotland after war broke out. One of these chaps shared my watch with me the first night. At dark, sentry groups were formed, three reliefs of two men each; these two men stood with their heads over the parapet watching for any movement in the no man's land between the lines; that accounts for the surprisingly large number of men one sees wounded in the head. The Scottie and I stood close enough together to carry on a conversation in whispers. It turned out that he had been training in Scotland at the same camp where the Newfoundlanders were. He had been on the Peninsula since April, and was all in from dysentery and lack of food. "Nae meat," was the laconic way he expressed it. Like every Scotchman since the world began, he answered to the name of "Mac." He pointed out to me the position of the enemy trenches.
"It's just aboot fower hundred yairds," he said, "but you'll no get a chance to fire; there's wurrkin' pairties oot the nicht." Then as an afterthought, he added gloomily, "There's no chance of your gettin' hit either."
"Why," I asked him in astonishment, "you don't want to get hit, do you?"
Mac looking at me pityingly. "Man," he burst out, "when ye're here as long as I've been here, ye'll be prayin' fer a 'Blighty one.'"
Blighty is the Tommies' nickname for London, and a "Blighty one" is a wound that's serious enough to cause your return to London.