CHAPTER VII
IN THE REST CAMP[ToC]
HOW THE LEINSTERS CAUGHT A GLIMPSE OF THE NARROWS
For five days and nights the Irish troops who took Chocolate Hill, or Dublin Hill, on Saturday, August 7th, lay in the captured Turkish entrenchments before they could be relieved. The men were in the highest spirits over their exploit. But they felt stiff and sore and very, very dirty. They had sand in their clothes, sand in their hair, sand in their eyes, sand in their mouths and nostrils, and their faces and hands were black with the grime of powder and the smoke of the bush fires. And now, upon all that, they had to endure the particular discomforts and hardships which attend a campaign in a dry and torrid land.
The greatest trouble arose from the scarcity of fresh water to mitigate the tropical heat. The wells were few and far between, and being within range of the Turkish guns, were, all of them, constantly shelled. The quantity of water that could be brought to Dublin Hill was totally inadequate to satisfy the demand. The supply was strictly reserved for drinking purposes. Water was too scarce and precious to be wasted on personal ablutions. Better a filthy face than a parched mouth. The dirtiest water was drunk with a relish. A Dublin Fusilier sighed for a draught of the cool and crystal water from the Wicklow hills. "Vartry water," exclaimed another; "I'd be quite content with a bucketful from the Liffey, even off the North Wall." Food was also hard to get. The commissariat had not yet been evolved out of the disorganisation attendant upon the landing. Under such a scorching sun the eating of the bully-beef in the men's ration bags was unthinkable. So their meals consisted chiefly of biscuits. Then there was the pest of myriads of flies. The Gallipoli flies were having the time of the life-history of their species. Big, ferocious, and insatiable freebooters, they would not be denied joining the troops at their meals and getting the bigger share of the scanty rations into the bargain. The worst affliction of all, however, was the stench of the half-buried and rapidly decomposing corpses in the captured trenches.
During the week which thus elapsed between the capture of Chocolate Hill and the still fiercer series of battles for the heights of Kiretsh Tepe Sirt, to the north, and of Sari Bair, to the south, which were to follow, regiments of the Irish Division were constantly engaged with the enemy on the foothills. Sari Bair was the strongest strategical position of the Turks in this part of Gallipoli. Like Achi Baba, towards the lower end of the Peninsula, it commands the Dardanelles, and especially the great military road along the shore of the Straits, over which the Turks were enabled quickly to send reinforcements of men, munitions, and stores from one point to another. One Irish Battalion actually gained a point on Sari Bair, from which they caught a glimpse of the Dardanelles. This was the 6th Royal Leinster Regiment of the 29th Brigade, which, as I have already mentioned, was separated from the 10th Division and sent south to co-operate with the forces from the Dominions. On Monday, August 9th, a party of New Zealanders had fought their way up to a ridge of Sari Bair, but were unable to hold it; and as they came retreating down to the place where the 6th Leinsters were in reserve, they shouted: "Fix your bayonets, lads; they're coming over the hill." Sergeant-Major T. Quinlan, of the Leinsters, lying wounded in hospital, tells the story. "Everyone ran for his rifle and fixed his bayonet, picked up a bandolier or two of ammunition, and charged up the hill like a pack of deers, some without boots or jackets. I bet you the Turks never ran so quick in their lives, for our rifle fire and plunging bayonets, as we charged, were too much for them to stand. We regained the lost position in almost twenty minutes." And down below them, to the east, they could see that narrow ribbon of water which was the object of all this horrible killing—the Dardanelles glistening in the sun.
The positions held by the Irish regiments around Chocolate Hill were regularly bombarded. On August 9th Lieutenant D.R. Clery, of the 6th Dublins (a fine young Dublin man, very popular as a footballer), was missed. Captain J.J. Carroll, of the battalion, writing to a relative, says: "I know that he was in the very front of the firing line on August 9th, and one of our men told me on the ship coming home of Dan's magnificent conduct in carrying man after man out of danger. The man I refer to said that in saving others Dan had seemed utterly regardless of danger to himself." It was also in one of these outbursts of Turkish artillery that on Tuesday, August 10th, Captain James Cecil Johnston, Adjutant of the 6th Royal Irish Fusiliers, was killed. Before the war Captain Johnston—a County Fermanagh man—was Master of the Horse to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Second Lieutenant R.S. Trimble, who was wounded on the same occasion, describes the incident in a letter to his father, Mr. W. Copeland Trimble, of Fermanagh. He was standing between his Colonel and his Adjutant in conversation when a shell came along. It tore the Colonel's arm to pulp, and though it passed Mr. Trimble, who was slightly out of the line of fire, the concussion of it dashed him violently to the ground, and then exploding, it blew Captain Johnston literally to pieces.