With Manchesters in the East

by Sir Gerald B. Hurst

Fawcus brought back about nine survivors from his advanced position after great feats of endurance, in which the Manchester units on our left had fully shared. Lieutenant T.E. Granger, who had been left behind dangerously wounded, was taken prisoner. Lieutenant Ward was killed. Lieutenant Bateman was shot through the lungs; Lieutenant G. Norbury on the scalp.

On the 4th June the Brigadier, General Noel Lee, was mortally wounded, to the intense and universal sorrow of the whole Division. He died in Malta. Lieutenant-Colonel Heys, on taking his place, was immediately killed. The retreat from the more advanced trenches to the original Turkish firing line, necessitated by enfilade fire and by the absence of reinforcements, proved far deadlier than the advance. The battle, with its preliminary operations, cost us some of our bravest sergeant-majors and sergeants—Cookson, Arnott, Marvin, Mundy, Balfe, Webster. Sergeant Lindsay lost his leg. Of them and of all the men of the 42nd Division, who gave their lives in this action, any praise is superfluous.

A broad strip of land gained securely on a wide frontage, an immense number of Turkish dead and prisoners, and a sense of great personal ascendancy, were the measure of their success, and General Sir Ian Hamilton's dispatch truly estimates its quality.

The survivors of the Battalion rested for a few days on Imbros after the battle, and then returned to the Peninsula under the command of Captain P.H. Creagh. On the 16th July the command was passed to Lieutenant-Colonel A. Canning, a veteran of the Egyptian War of 1882, who had previously commanded the Leinster Regiment at Cork. We could have had no greater confidence in any possible Commanding Officer, and while he acted as Brigadier of the Manchester Territorials his influence was no less inspiring. The record of our later campaign on Gallipoli is closely associated with his name and work.

All these early scenes of the expedition to the Dardanelles I had missed. On the 17th March I had been invalided home on the Indian hospital ship, Glenart Castle, Alexandria to Southampton, and the only public meeting I witnessed during three years of warfare—a recruiting rally in the Manchester Hippodrome—was a poor outlet for one's activity. An offer of the command of the new 3rd line reserve unit at Southport naturally failed to quench my keenness to rejoin the Battalion, and after vexatious delays I at last sailed from Devonport for the East, on the Simla, on the 13th July 1915.

We reached Alexandria on the 25th, and the crowded harbour of Mudros early on the 29th. The boat was full of drafts for the 29th Division—Essex and Hampshire men, Inniskillings, Munsters, Royal and Lancashire Fusiliers, Worcesters—and rumours of the intended Suvla expedition were in the air. Our optimism was, however, chastened by the opinions of one experienced soldier on board, who insisted that we ought never to have landed at Cape Helles, but on the Gulf of Saros behind the lines of Bulair, and made straight for Constantinople with a large army, without trying to force the Dardanelles. He believed that the Germans would still take Warsaw, and thought Holland's co-operation essential to any plan of early success. The War was still at a stage when men did not mind talking about it, and the general assumption was that it could not last long. One sailor told me a story typical of the German's ignorance of sportsmanship. A captured naval officer was courteously allowed the use of the British captain's cabin. A few moments later a crash announced that he had requited chivalry by breaking everything he could lay his hands on. Other passengers on the Simla were nursing sisters in dainty scarlet and grey, naval airmen who disembarked at Valetta, and the whole staff of an Australian General Hospital bound for Mudros—expert specialist officers and splendid men, with songs cheery and robust:

"When the beer's on the table, we'll be there."

Perhaps my most vivid memories, however, are of the keen young officers conducting drafts, who were so soon to fall in the great attempt at Suvla.

The fate of one of these, J.R. Lingard, then in charge of some Lancashire Fusiliers, was one of the unsolved mysteries of the Dardanelles campaign. A brave and popular officer, he was severely wounded on the 21st August. He was carried out of action and placed on a stretcher for conveyance across Suvla Beach to a hospital ship. At this point all trace of him disappeared. His fate is unknown.

In the late afternoon of the 30th July 1915 we neared Cape Helles and heard the thunder of the guns. We landed laboriously about midnight, and were led by guides to a rendezvous of the 29th Division at a point some three miles along the coast on the northern side of the Peninsula. Brilliant moonlight shone upon a sleeping French force close to the landing-place on "V" Beach. The country looked unspeakably dry and bare.