John Turk had stolen a march on us by placing a machine-gun away out on his extreme flank where he could to a certain extent enfilade us. That sort of thing could not be allowed to last, as we had to bury our noses in the ground each time the confounded gun opened up. Our covering party, being out ahead of us, escaped the hail of bullets better than we did. The place was now becoming too hot to stay in, so the order came along to retire independently to our trenches, until something could be done to stop the machine-gun.
When we mustered again in the trenches, we found that one man of the covering party was missing. The man was Icy. As we were talking about him—wondering who should go back to look for him—there came the noise of a commotion from the direction of the Turkish machine-gun. Bang! bang! went a couple of bombs, followed by cries and shouts from Abdul, and above it all we were certain we heard fragments of language, of the category known in Australia as “bullocky.”[18] What could it mean? By this time the alarm had spread along the whole of Abdul’s front trenches, which belched forth liquid fire. In our own trenches everyone had mechanically sprung to arms; and we stood there wondering while for fifteen minutes the Turks fired without ceasing. Gradually the noise subsided—and we noticed that for some reason the machine-gun away on the left was strangely quiet.
An hour later we were stealing out again to have another attempt at completing our new trenches when I stumbled over the form of a man lying prone. Bending over to see him, I found it was Icy. His clothes were wet and sticky with blood, and half underneath his body there showed the muzzle of a machine-gun. As we lifted him up, we saw that the gun was there complete, tripod and all.
We took him into the lines and handed him over to the dressing-station; and just before we came away he opened his eyes and told enough for us to realise that Icy had sneaked over and stolen that Turkish gun. To this day we don’t quite know how he did it, as he never will talk about it; but before they took him on to the hospital ship next day—with his sixteen bullet wounds and scratches all told—there went down to see him a crowd in which I was amongst the foremost, which apologised to Icy very humbly.
And, do you know, he only smiled back at us in that funny old way of his.
E. A. M. W.
FOOTNOTES:
[17] The Turks had a battery of French “75’s” at Anzac, seized as the guns were coming from France during the blockade of Servia in the Balkan War.
[18] Bullocky—stands both for the bullock driver and for his chief gift.