The Territorial's thoughts turn to home far more often than do those of the Regular, for to him the family has always been more important than the regiment. H.C. Franklin, who took P.H. Creagh's place as our Adjutant at the end of August, and was an old Regular soldier of the Manchester Regiment, often said that the week's mail of a Territorial battalion is as large as six months' mails for a unit of the old Army. He told, too, a good story, which shows the perceptiveness of Indians. He was standing near to some Indian muleteers when the Manchester Territorial Brigade disembarked on Gallipoli. He heard them say in Hindustani: "Here is another of the regiments of shopkeepers." One pointed to Captain P.H. Creagh, our Adjutant and only Regular officer. He said: "But he is a soldier." Another said of Staveacre: "A fine, big man, but he also is of the shopkeepers."
The story of trench warfare during these months on Gallipoli is undramatic. A record of their little episodes is almost trivial. Yet this want of movement and initiative is true to life, and was the common lot of the three or four British Divisions then responsible for operations at Cape Helles. The campaign, in fact, came to a standstill on the failure of the great offensive in August. The objects of the Army were simply to hold the ground so hardly won in the first two months of the expedition, and to contain as large as possible a Turkish force on Gallipoli for the benefit of our Russian Allies in the Caucasus and elsewhere. The first of these objects was attained in spite of the thinness of our line, the universal inferiority of our positions to those of the enemy, and the gradual improvement of their guns and aircraft. The Nizam—i.e. the Regular first-line Turkish troops—had been practically destroyed. The remainder lacked the offensive spirit after their heavy losses in August, and perhaps their hearts were not sufficiently in the struggle to welcome further sacrifice of life, with time already running in their favour. We heard of one British officer who had acted as a hostage during a short armistice at Anzac. The Turks loaded him with presents of fruit, and, pointing to their dead on the battle-field, said: "So much for your diplomatists and diplomacy!"
Our second object, also, is believed to have been gained, so far as was possible, having regard to our inadequate numbers and to the limitations of our technique of the period. Bombing used at this time to be practised by small sections in each battalion, who occupied dangerous salients called "bird-cages" in the fire trenches. Here in our Battalion, G. Ross-Bain and W.H. Barratt among the officers, S. Clough and T. Hulme among the N.C.O.'s—all valiant men—won a modest measure of fame. On one occasion Hulme picked up a live bomb thrown by the enemy and saved his comrades' lives by throwing it over the parapet with splendid self-devotion. Our British sappers became more proficient in mining, special corps being formed from among the Wigan colliers of the Manchesters and the Lowland Scots. The guns were always active, and their co-operation with the infantry was perfected. Those who remember passing by night along the winding length of Inniskilling Inch will recall the red lamp that marked the artillery forward observation officer's post at the corner of Burlington Street, and the well-hidden gun emplacement, where Greenheys Lane ran out of the Mule Sap. The familiar street signs carried men's minds back to Manchester.
CHAPTER VI
In the second week of October, 1915, the Army at Cape Helles was reinforced by dismounted Yeomanry from East and West Kent, Surrey and Sussex, and by some Royal Fusilier Territorial units from Malta, who were lent to the Royal Naval Division. Many West Kent officers and N.C.O.'s were for a time attached to the Battalion, and proved admirable comrades. The 42nd Division received some scanty drafts on the 23rd October. These came from the 3rd line units at Codford on Salisbury Plain, and were of excellent quality. Our draft was under Lieutenant C.S. Wood, a very able signaller.
I noted on the 21st October that of the 300 men of the Battalion then in the field, nearly 100 were on detached jobs—signallers, machine gunners and details attached to various headquarters.
The result of the shrinkage in strength was a great strain upon the survivors. "We never sleep," the Battalion's motto, was adopted grudgingly as a rule of life. The necessities of the firing line required vigilance by day and night, and the long frontages allotted to the various units of the 42nd Division entailed broken nights and laborious days for all. The men's physique became lowered. Septic sores were general; bad eyes, not infrequent; jaundice of a type indicating para-typhoid was common; amœbic dysentery very prevalent. Loss of health meant loss of vigour. Limited to one bottle of water a day for all purposes, and perpetually a prey to flies, heat, diarrhœa and want of rest, the soldier had a trying time. Rations of a type welcome in a northern climate were unpalatable in Turkey. In July and August we were liberally supplied with vegetables and raisins, and with much-prized golden syrup for our porridge; but the latter luxury then disappeared, while for several months our only vegetables were onions, which do not appeal to every palate. Jams, even when the pots were adorned with pictures of one Sir Joseph Paxton, had very diminishing attractions. The only strawberry jam we ever had on the Peninsula came to us in tins, from which the labels had been stripped by some kindly act of Providence. In the expedition's early days our men had been able to exchange English jams for dainties procurable by the French and Senegalese, but the monotonous and indefinable "plum and apple" of the later summer killed the trade and extinguished all foreign admiration of British jam-making. Only the flies were fascinated.
Our East Lancashire Territorials did all that was possible to relieve the strain. We had a most able medical officer in Captain J.J. Hummel, of Glasgow, who had temporarily succeeded Captain J.F. Farrow (our own veteran M.O.) in July, but indeed all the units were happy in their doctors, and emetine in dysentery cases was a gift of gold. Nor could a Brigade have had a more gallant and untiring padre than Captain E.T. Kerby. He and Captain Farrow both won the Military Cross. Kerby must have said the burial service over the graves of nearly a thousand Manchesters on Gallipoli.