V
Roland put the horn to his mouth, gripped it hard and with great heart blew it. The hills were high and the sound went very far: thirty leagues wide they heard it echo. Charles heard it and all his comrades; so the King said, "Our men are fighting." Count Guenes answered: "If any other said that, I should call him a liar."
Count Roland in pain and woe and great weakness blew his horn. The bright blood was running from his mouth and the temples of his brains were broken. But the noise of the horn was very great. Charles heard it as he was passing at the ports; Naimes heard it, the Franks listened to it. So the King said, "I hear the horn of Roland; he would never sound it if he were not fighting." Guenes answered, "There is no fighting. You are old and white and hoary. You are like a child when you say such things."
Count Roland's mouth was bleeding; the temples of his brain were broken. He blew his horn in weakness and pain. Charles heard it and his Franks heard it. So the King said: "That horn has long breath." Duke Naimes answered, "Roland is in trouble. He is fighting, on my conscience. Arm yourself. Cry your war-cry. Help the men of your house. You hear plainly that Roland is in trouble."
The Emperor made sound his horns.... All the barons of the army mounted their chargers. But what use was that? They had delayed too long. What use was that? It was worth nothing; they had stayed too long; they could not be in time.
Then Roland said, "Here we shall receive martyrdom, and now I know well that we have but a moment to live. But may all be thieves who do not sell themselves dearly first. Strike, knights, with your bright swords; so change your deaths and lives, that sweet France be not shamed by us. When Charles comes into this field he shall see such discipline upon the Saracens that he shall not fail to bless us."
The Song of Roland.
The Cape Helles attack, designed to keep the Turks to the south of Kilid Bahr from reinforcing those near Anzac, became a very desperate struggle. The Turk trenches there were full of men, for the Turks had been preparing a strong attack upon ourselves, which we forestalled by a few hours. The severe fighting lasted for a week along the whole Cape Helles front, but it was especially bloody and terrible in the centre, in a vineyard to the west of the Krithia road. It has often happened in war, that some stubbornness in attack or defence has roused the same quality in the opposer, till the honour of the armies seems pledged to the taking or holding of one patch of ground, perhaps not vital to the battle. It may be that in war one resolute soul can bind the excited minds of multitudes in a kind of bloody mesmerism; but these strange things are not studied as they should be. Near Krithia, the battle, which began as a containing attack, a minor part of a great scheme, became a furious week-long fight for this vineyard, a little patch of ground "200 yards long by 100 yards broad."
From the 6th-13th of August, the fight for this vineyard never ceased. Our Lancashire regiments won most of it at the first assault on the 6th. For the rest of the week they held it against all that the Turks could bring against them. It was not a battle in the military textbook sense: it was a fight man to man, between two enemies whose blood was up. It was a week-long cursing and killing scrimmage, the men lying down to fire and rising up to fight with the bayonet, literally all day long, day after day, the two sides within easy bombing distance all the time. The Turks lost some thousands of men in their attacks upon this vineyard after a week of fighting, they rushed it in a night attack, were soon bombed out of it and then gave up the struggle for it. This bitter fighting not only kept the Turks at Cape Helles from reinforcing those at Anzac; it caused important Turk reinforcements to be sent to the Helles sector.