CHAPTER III[ToC]
TRENCHES
Somebody has said that a change of occupation is a rest. Whoever sent us into dugouts for a rest, evidently had this definition in mind. After breakfast the first morning we were ordered out for digging fatigue just behind the firing line. In this there was one consolation. We did not have to carry our packs. Each man took his rifle and either a pick or a shovel. Communication trenches had to be dug to avoid long tramps through the firing line; and connecting trenches had to be made between the existing communication trenches. While we were in dugouts we had eight hours of this work out of every twenty-four; four hours in the daytime and four at night.
The second day in dugouts when we came back from our morning's digging, we found some new arrivals making some dugouts about two hundred yards behind our lines. They were Territorials, who correspond to the militia in the United States. "The London Terriers," they called themselves. Mostly they were young fellows from eighteen to twenty-two years old. They had landed only that morning and were in splendid condition, and very eager for the coming of evening when they were to go to the firing line. The ground they had selected was sheltered from observation by the little ridge near our line of dugouts; but some of our men in moving about attracted the attention of the Turkish artillery observer. Instantly half a dozen shells came over the ridge, past our line, and bang! right in the midst of the Londons, working fearful destruction. Every ten or fifteen minutes after that, the Turks sent over some shells. Some regiments are lucky, others seem to walk into destruction everywhere they turn. The shells fired at the Newfoundlanders landed in the Londons. About two minutes' walk from our dugouts our cooks had built a fire and were preparing meals. A number of our men passed continually between our line and the cooks'. Not one of them was even scratched. The only two of the Londons who ventured there were hit; one fellow was killed instantly, the other, seriously wounded through the lungs, lay moaning where he had fallen. It was just dusk, and nobody knew he had been hit until one of our men, coming down, heard his hoarse whispering request to "get a doctor, for God's sake get a doctor." While somebody ran for the doctor, our stretcher bearers responded to the all too familiar shout, "Stretcher bearers at the double," but by the time they reached him he was beyond all need of doctor or stretcher bearers. Before the London Terriers even saw the firing line, they lost over two hundred men. They simply could not escape the Turkish shells. The enemy had a habit of sending over one shell, then waiting just a minute or less, and following it with another. The first shell generally wounded two or three men; the second one was sent over to catch the stretcher bearers and the comrades who hastened to aid those who were hit. Before they had completed their dugouts, the shrapnel caught them in the open; after they were dug in, it buried them alive. Never did a regiment leave dugouts with so much joy as did the London Terriers when they entered the trenches for the first time. Ordinarily a man is much safer in the firing line than in rest dugouts. Trenches are so constructed that even when a shell drops right in the traverse where men are, only half a dozen or so suffer. In open or slightly protected ground where the dugouts are, the burst of a shrapnel shell covers an area twenty-five by two hundred yards in extent.
A shell can be heard coming. Experts claim to identify the caliber of a gun by the sound the shell makes. Few live long enough to become such experts. In Gallipoli the average length of life was three weeks. In dugouts we always ate our meals, such as they were, to the accompaniment of "Turkish Delight," the Newfoundlanders' name for shrapnel. We had become accustomed to rifle bullets. When you hear the zing of a spent bullet or the sharp crack of an explosive, you know it has passed you. The one that hits you, you never hear. At first we dodged at the sound of a passing bullet, but soon we came actually to believe the superstition that a bullet would not hit a man unless it had on it his regimental number and his name. Then, too, a bullet leaves a clean wound, and a man hit by it drops out quietly. The shrapnel makes nasty, jagged, hideous wounds, the horrible recollection of which lingers for days in the minds of those who see them. It is little wonder that we preferred the firing line.
Australians in trench on Gallipoli Peninsula, using the periscope
Note the different shaped hats worn by the men, five kinds appearing in the little group[ToList]
Every afternoon from just behind our line of dugouts an aëroplane buzzed up. At the tremendous height it looked like an immense blue-bottle fly. We always knew when it was two o'clock. Promptly at that hour every afternoon it winged its way over us and beyond to the Turkish trenches. At first the enemy's aëroplanes came out to meet ours, but a few encounters with our men soon convinced them of the futility of such attempts. After that, they relied on their artillery. In the air all around the tiny speck we could see white puffs of smoke that showed where their shrapnel was exploding. Sometimes those puffs were perilously close to it; at such times our hearts were in our mouths. Everybody in the trench craned his neck to see. When our aëroplane manœuvered clear, you could hear a sigh of relief from every man.
After about the eighth day in dugouts we were ordered back to the firing line. We had to take over a part of the trench near Anafarta Village. In this vicinity the Fifth Norfolks, a company formed of men from the King's estate at Sandringham, had charged into the woods, about two hundred and fifty strong, and had been completely lost sight of. This was the most comfortable trench we had yet been in. It had been taken over from the Turks, and when we faced toward them we had to build another firing platform. This left their firing platform for us to sleep on. After the cramped, narrow trenches of the first couple of weeks, this roomy trench was very pleasant. On both sides of the trench were some trees that threw a grateful shade in the daytime. Along the edge grew little bushes that bore luscious blackberries, but to attempt to get them was courting death. Nevertheless, the Newfoundlanders secured a good many. Best of all though was the "Block House Well." For the first time we had a plenitude of water. But by this time conditions had begun to tell on the men. Each morning more and more men reported for sick parade. They were beginning to feel the enervating effect of the climate, and of the lack of water and proper food. While we were intrenched near the block house, the men were sickening so fast that in our platoon we had not enough men to form the sentry groups. The noncommissioned officers had to take their place on the parapet, and the ordinary work of the noncoms, changing sentries, waking reliefs, and detailing working parties had to be done by the commissioned officers. Just about an hour before my turn to watch, I was suddenly stricken by the fever that lurks on the Peninsula. In the army, no man is sick unless so pronounced by the medical officer. Each morning at nine there is a sick parade. A man taken ill after that has to wait until the next morning, and is officially fit for duty. My turn came at eleven o'clock at night. The man I was to relieve was Frank Lind. He went on at nine. When eleven o'clock came, I was burning up with fever. Lind would not hear of my being roused to relieve him, but continued on the parapet until one o'clock, although in that part of the trench snipers had been doing a lot of execution. Then he rested for a couple of hours and at three o'clock resumed his place on the parapet for the remainder of the night. At daybreak he was still there. I slept all through the night, exhausted by the fever, and it was not till a few days after that some one else told me what Lind had done. From him I heard no mention of it. Whenever somebody says that war serves only to bring out the worst in a man I think of Frank Lind. The fever that had weakened me so, continued all that day. I reported for sick parade and was given a day off duty. The next day I was given light duty, and the following day the fever left me and that night I was fit for duty again, and was sent out to a detached post about halfway between us and the enemy. The detached post was an abandoned house about twenty feet square. All the doors and windows had been torn out, and now it was nothing but the merest skeleton of a house. We had been there about three hours when there occurred something most extraordinary and unaccountable. It was a pitch dark night, and working parties were out from both sides. Ordinarily there would have been no firing. Suddenly from away on the right where the Australians were, began the sharp crackling of rapid fire. A boy pulling a wooden stick along an iron park railing makes almost the same sound. The crackling swept down the line right past the trench directly behind us and away on to the left. The Turks, fearing an attack, replied. Between the two fires we were caught. There were eight of us in the blockhouse. Only two of us came from No. 8 platoon, Art Pratt, my sandy-haired friend of Aldershot days, and I. The sergeant in charge was from another platoon. When the rapid fire began, he became melodramatic. He had the responsibility of seven other men's lives, and the thing that seemed rather comic to us was probably very serious to him. There was nothing the matter, though, with the way in which he handled the situation. There were eight openings in the house for the missing doors and windows. At each window he placed a man, and stood at the door himself, then ordered us to fill our magazines and fix our bayonets. But psychologically he made a mistake. He turned to me and said,