"The one at Aldershot," he answered, as he completed his signature. I smiled noncommittally, but did not answer him.
Looking back now it seems to me that catching that train is one thing I have never regretted. I was convinced of it that day in Ayr. For a few weeks past convalescents of the First Battalion had been dribbling into Ayr. You could tell them by their wan, fever-wasted faces, and by the little ribbons of claret and white that they wore on the sleeves of their coats, the claret and white that marked them as the "service battalion." And there was in their faces, too, the calm, confident look of men who had hobnobbed with death, and had come away unafraid. Every one of them had the same tale. "We're tired of the depot already. They're a new bunch here, and we want to get back with the crowd we know." There was no talk of patriotism, or duty; all this had given place to the pride of local achievement. To those men, my little claret and white ribbon was all the introduction I needed. I was a member of the First Battalion. As I hobbled along the main street of Ayr, a crowd of them bore down on me. A heterogeneous bunch they were, bored to death with the quietness of the Scottish town, shouting boisterous greetings long before they reached me. The lot of us took dinner together and afterwards went in a body to the theater. The theater proprietor refused unconditionally to take any money from us. We were "returned wounded," and the best seats in the house were ours. Four or five of our party had just returned from Edinburgh, where they had spent their furloughs. They had been received royally. The civic authorities had made arrangements with the owners of the Royal Hotel in Edinburgh to put the Newfoundlanders up free of cost during their stay. The First Battalion had spent their money freely while they were garrisoning Edinburgh Castle, and the authorities had not forgotten it.
I hated to leave those men of the First Battalion, who welcomed me so heartily. I was glad at the thought of getting back to the States again; but it was strange to think that I was no longer a soldier, that my days of fighting were over. An inexpressible sadness came over me as I bade good-by to them. Some of their names I do not know, but they were all my friends. There are others like them in various hospitals in England and Egypt; and also in a shady, tree-dotted ravine on the Peninsula of Gallipoli there is a row of graves, where also are my friends of the First Newfoundland Regiment.
The men our regiment lost, although they gladly fought a hopeless fight, have not died in vain. Constantinople has not been taken, and the Gallipoli campaign is fast becoming a memory, but things our men did there will not soon be forgotten. The foremost advance on the Suvla Bay front is Donnelly's Post on Caribou Ridge, made by the Newfoundlanders. It is called Donnelly's Post because it is here that Lieutenant Donnelly won his Military Cross. The hitherto unknown ridge from which the Turkish machine guns poured their concentrated death into our trenches stands as a monument to the initiative of the Newfoundlanders. It is now Caribou Ridge as a recognition of the men who wear the deer's head badge. From Caribou Ridge the Turks could enfilade parts of our firing line. For weeks they had continued to pick off our men one by one. You could almost tell when your turn was coming. I know, because from Caribou Ridge came the bullet that sent me off the Peninsula. The machine guns on Caribou Ridge not only swept part of our trench, but commanded all of the intervening ground. This ground was almost absolutely devoid of cover. Several attempts had been made to rush those guns. All these attacks had failed, held up by the murderous machine-gun fire. Whole companies had essayed the task, but all had been repulsed, and almost annihilated. It remained for Lieutenant Donnelly to essay the impossible. Under cover of darkness, Lieutenant Donnelly, with only eight men, surprised the Turks in the post that now bears his name. The captured machine gun he turned on the Turks to repulse constantly launched bomb and rifle attacks. Just at dusk one evening Donnelly stole out to Caribou Ridge and took the Turks by storm. They had been accustomed before that to see large bodies of men swarm over the parapet in broad daylight, and had been able to wipe them out with machine-gun fire. All that night the Turks strove to recover their lost ground. The darkness that confused the enemy was the Newfoundlanders' ally. One of Donnelly's men, Jack Hynes, crawled away from his companions to a point about two hundred yards to the left. All through the night he poured a rapid stream of fire into the flank of the enemy's attacking party. So steadily did he keep it up that the Turks were deluded into thinking we had men there in force. When reinforcements arrived, Donnelly's eight men were reduced to two. Dawn showed the havoc wrought by the gallant little group. The ground in front of the post was a shambles of piled up Turkish corpses. But daylight showed something more to the credit of the Newfoundlanders than the mere taking of the ridge. It showed Jack Hynes purposely falling back over exposed ground to draw the enemy's attention from Sergeant Greene, who was coolly making trip after trip between the ridge and our lines, carrying a wounded man in his arms every time until all our wounded were in safety. Hynes and Greene were each given a Distinguished Conduct Medal. None was ever more nobly earned.
The night the First Newfoundland Regiment landed in Suvla Bay there were about eleven hundred of us. In December when the British forces evacuated Gallipoli, to our regiment fell the honor of being nominated to fight the rearguard action. This is the highest recognition a regiment can receive; for the duty of a rear guard in a retreat is to keep the enemy from reaching the main body of troops, even if this means annihilation for itself. At Lemnos Island the next day when the roll was called, of the eleven hundred men who landed when I did, only one hundred and seventy-one answered "Here."
After the First Newfoundland Regiment left the Peninsula, they went to Egypt to guard the Suez Canal from the long-expected attack of the Turks. After they had been rested a little while, they were recruited up to full fighting strength, again, and were sent to France. In the recent drive of the Allies against the German positions on the Somme, the regiment has won for itself fresh laurels. The "Times" correspondent at British headquarters in France sent the following on July 13th:
"The Newfoundlanders were the only overseas troops engaged in these operations. The story of their heroic part cannot yet be told in full, but when it is it will make Newfoundland very proud. The battalion was pushed up as what may be called the third wave in the attack on probably the most formidable section of the whole German front through an almost overwhelming artillery fire and a cross-ground swept by an enfilading machine-gun fire from hidden positions. The men behaved with completely noble steadiness and courage."