TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI
CHAPTER I
GETTING THERE
"Great Britain is at War."
The announcement came to Newfoundland out of a clear sky. Confirming it, came the news of the assurances of loyalty from the different colonies, expressed in terms of men and equipment. Newfoundland was not to be outdone. Her population is a little more than two hundred thousand, and her isolated position made garrisons unnecessary. Her only semblance of military training was her city brigades. People remembered that in the Boer War a handful of Newfoundlanders had enlisted in Canadian regiments, but never before had there been any talk of Newfoundland sending a contingent made up entirely of her own people and representing her as a colony. From the posting of the first notices bearing the simple message, "Your King and Country Need You," a motley crowd streamed into the armory in St. John's. The city brigades, composed mostly of young, beautifully fit athletes from rowing crews, football and hockey teams, enlisted in a body. Every train from the interior brought lumbermen, fresh from the mills and forests, husky, steel-muscled, pugnacious at the most peaceful times, frankly spoiling for excitement. From the outharbors and fishing villages came callous-handed fishermen, with backs a little bowed from straining at the oar, accustomed to a life of danger. Every day there came to the armory loose-jointed, easy-swinging trappers and woodsmen, simple-spoken young men, who, in offering their keenness of vision and sureness of marksmanship, were volunteering their all.
It was ideal material for soldiers. In two days many more than the required quota had presented themselves. Only five hundred men could be prepared in time to cross with the first contingent of Canadians. Over a thousand men offered. A corps of doctors asked impertinent questions concerning men's ancestors, inspected teeth, measured and pounded chests, demanded gymnastic stunts, and finally sorted out the best for the first contingent. The disappointed ones were consoled by news of another contingent to follow in six weeks. Some men, turned down for minor defects, immediately went to hospital, were treated, and enlisted in the next contingent.
Seven weeks after the outbreak of war the Newfoundlanders joined the flotilla containing the first contingent of Canadians. Escorted by cruisers and air scouts they crossed the Atlantic safely and went under canvas in the mud and wet of Salisbury Plain, in October, 1914. To the men from the interior, rain and exposure were nothing new. Hunting deer in the woods and birds in the marshes means just such conditions. The others soon became hardened to it. They had about settled down when they were sent on garrison duty, first to Fort George in the north of Scotland, and then to Edinburgh Castle. Ten months of bayonet-fighting, physical drill, and twenty-mile route marches over Scottish hills molded them into trim, erect, bronzed soldiers.
In July of 1915, while the Newfoundlanders were under canvas at Stob's Camp, about fifty miles from Edinburgh, I was transferred to London to keep the records of the regiment for the War Office. At any other time I should have welcomed the appointment. But then it looked like quitting. The battalion had just received orders to move to Aldershot. While we were garrisoning Edinburgh Castle, word came of the landing of the Australians and New Zealanders at Gallipoli. At Ypres, the Canadians had just then recaptured their guns and made for themselves a deathless name. The Newfoundlanders felt that as colonials they had been overlooked. They were not militaristic, and they hated the ordinary routine of army life, but they wanted to do their share. That was the spirit all through the regiment. It was the spirit that possessed them on the long-waited-for day at Aldershot when Kitchener himself pronounced them "just the men I want for the Dardanelles."