In the Line of Battle: Soldiers' Stories of the War

by Unknown

While we were here our brigade lost a fair number of men; but of course the infantry suffered far more.

I am proud to say that our battery was the nearest to the Turks, and was constantly in action.

One night we had a report that the enemy was going to attack us in great force, and on the strength of the report we had to retire to a safer position. We withdrew, not without a lot of grousing among the boys, and when we reached our new point we were heavily bombarded; but no infantry attack followed, as we had been led to expect.

There was a good deal more grousing next morning when we moved forward again, because the Turks began to shell us heavily as we went along the road. This showed how well informed they were as to our movements even since the previous evening; but luckily our losses amounted to only two or three horses.

The next day the great retirement of the British forces began, and the whole of our infantry fell back about two miles to a point which we had nicknamed Clapham Junction, because the two main roads in the Peninsula join there. The artillery did not retire, being supported on the right and in the rear by French troops and the heavy guns.

Everybody knows now that if there had been enough men and ammunition our infantry, instead of retiring, would have taken Achi Baba and driven the Turks out of the Peninsula. Let us hope that if we did not manage to do that, our tremendous losses were not in vain, and helped to spoil any plans for marching on Egypt and India.

Early in June we started business again with the Turks, and that was when the great battle of Krithia took place. This fight lasted two days, but we did not make much headway, as the enemy had got big reinforcements and had prepared a defensive position of enormous strength.

I had several narrow escapes from death during that great fight.

During a lull I was standing behind a bank with two or three other men, watching the enemy’s artillery shelling a water-cart some distance away. The cart was going along a road, and we were wondering whether it would get clear or be blown up. While I was doing that, a shell burst right over us, making a horrible noise and peppering the air with pieces of shrapnel. I ducked my head instinctively, and so kept it on my shoulders. It was lucky for me that I did this, or I should have been killed, because the shell burst very low, so low that I got several shrapnel bullets through the back of my helmet, and the man nearest to me was seriously wounded by flying bits of metal. The third man received a good shaking up, but was otherwise unhurt.

A day or two later I had an even narrower shave with death—one of those extraordinary bits of luck that are so common in a war like this, that you take them almost as a matter of course.