After a week or so in this district, we moved back again to our old quarters at Anafarta village. Here we took over a block house occupied by the Essex. The Dublins and the Munsters were on our right. The block house was an advanced post that we held in the morning and during the night. Every afternoon we left it for a few hours while the enemy wasted shells on it. A couple of Irish snipers were with us. The first day they were there, our Lieutenant, Mr. Nunns, spent the day with them; that day, he accounted for four Turks. This was the closest we had yet been to them. I stood up beside an Irish sniper and looked through a pair of field glasses to where he pointed out some snipers' dugouts. They were the same dugouts that Cooke, the Irish V.C. man, had shown me. While I was watching, I saw an old Turk sneaking out between his trench and one of the dugouts. He looked old and stooped and had a long whisker that reached almost to his waist and appeared to have difficulty in getting along. All about him were little canvas pockets that contained bombs and about his neck was a long string of small bombs. "Begob," said one of the Dublins, beside me, "'t is the daddy of them all. Get him, my son." I grasped my gun excitedly and aimed; but before I had taken the pressure of the trigger, I heard from a little distance to the right the staccato of a machine gun. The result was astonishing. One second, I was looking through my sights at the Turk; the next, he had disappeared, and in his place was the most marvelous combination of all colors of flames I have ever seen. Literally Johnny Turk had gone up in smoke. The Irishman beside me was standing open mouthed.
"Glory be to God," he said, "what does that make you think of?"
"It reminds me," I said, "of a Fourth of July celebration in the States; and I wish," I added heartily, "I was there now."
"It makes me think, my son," said the Irishman, "of the way ould Cooke killed a lot of the sausage-makers over on the other side. He threw a bomb in among tin of 'em and then fired his rifle at it and exploded it. Killed every damn one of 'em, he did. 'T was the same time he got the V.C."
"I suppose," I said, "Cooke's in London now getting his medal from the King. He's through with this Peninsula."
"Thrue for you, my son," said the Irishman, "he's through with this Peninsula, but he's not in London. 'T was just three nights ago that I went out yonder, and tin yards in front of that dugout I found ould Cooke's body. The Turrk got him right through the cap badge and blew the top clean off his head. 'T is just luck. Some has it one way, and some has it another; but whichever way you have it, it don't do you no good to worry over it."
© Underwood & Underwood, N.Y.
Australians in the trenches consider clothes a superfluity[ToList]