Antwerp to Gallipoli: A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind ThemRuhl, Arthur
History
Antwerp to Gallipoli: A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them
Ruhl, Arthur
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
After excusing ourselves, though the amiable Turk said that he was in no
hurry, we were led to a sort of tent de luxe, lined in scarlet with
snaky decorations in white, and when the young aid discovered that we
had brought no beds with us, he sent out and in a moment had not only
cots and blankets, but mattresses and sheets and pillows and
pillow-cases. He asked if we had fathers and mothers alive at home, and
brothers and sisters, and if we, too, had been soldiers. It surprised
and puzzled him that we had not, and that our army was so small. He was
only twenty-two and a lieutenant, and he had a brother and father also
in the army. With a great air of mystery he had his orderly dig a bottle
of cognac out from his camp chest, and after we had drunk each other's
health, he gave us his card with his name in Turkish and French. He
brought a table and put on it a night candle in a saucer of water, a
carafe of drinking water, and gave me a pair of slippers--in short, he
did for us in that brush-covered camp in the Gallipoli hills everything
that could be done for a guest in one's own house.
You can scarcely know what this meant without having known the
difficulties of mere existence once you left Constantinople and got into
the war zone, and Colonel Shukri Bey and Lieutenant Ahmed Akif will be
remembered by at least two Americans when any one talks of the terrible
Turk.
I awoke shortly after daylight, thinking I heard an aeroplane strumming
in the distance, and was drowsily wondering whether or not it was fancy,
when a crash echoed up the valley. We both hurried out. It was sunup,
a delicious morning, and far up against the southern sky the little
speck was sailing back toward the west. There was a flash of silver just
under the flier--it was an English biplane--and a moment later another
crash farther away. Neither did any damage. A few minutes later we
were looking at the remains of the bomb and propeller-like wings, whose
whirling, as it falls, opens a valve that permits it to explode on
striking its mark. Until it had fallen a certain number of metres, we
were told, mere striking the ground would not explode it--a device to
protect the airman in case of accident to his machine or if he is forced
to make a quick landing. In the fresh, still morning, with the camp
just waking up and the curious Turkish currycombs clinking away over by
the tethered horses, our aerial visitor added only a pleasant excitement
to this life in the open, and we went on with our dressing with great
satisfaction, little dreaming how soon we were to look at one of those
little flying specks quite differently.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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