Deeds of heroism and bravery : $b The book of heroes and personal daring
History
Deeds of heroism and bravery : $b The book of heroes and personal daring
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
“The Tenth had been badly battered in taking back from the woods
four British guns that had been captured. The gallant Colonel Boyle,
with seven machine-gun bullets in his body, had for two hours in the
darkness of the night lain in a shell-hole surrounded by his men and in
true Western style, with a revolver in each hand, had repelled repeated
attacks. Then he was carried away to die, and Major MacLarinthe,
second in command, leading the charge, was shot through the knee.
After crawling forward with his men to a little clump of woods which
he helped to capture he was shot through the head and killed. Major
Ormand, too, fell wounded. Four officers of the thirty-one were left
when it fell to the lot of Junior Lieutenant Guthrie, as he had become
in order to go to the Tenth, to lead the battalion.
“During the succeeding days the fighting surged back and forth over
Ypres’s hillsides, during which time the battalion suffered greatly
from the gas-clouds that were let loose now and then.
“One time, when leading his men, the Colonel fell with a bayonet wound
in the chin. On another occasion his nose was broken, but this did
not put him out of action. He suffered from the concussion of a shell
on another occasion and was knocked out for five hours. On another
day he was put out of business by a gas-shell which exploded near him
and he was dragged out of a ditch full of water by a British general,
who forced him to emit the gas by thrusting his fingers down his
throat. A scar on the knee shows where the Colonel was punctured with
a bayonet-point. His hand has been ripped open by a bayonet which he
held while grappling with an assailant. The outcome of it was that the
Canadians held the line at Ypres until reinforcements came.”
NOT SO UNSPEAKABLE
A Turk Whose Sense of Humor Made the Tommies His Friends at Gallipoli
War has its humor. Even though it appear arms locked with death, there
is a laugh on the side. It is probably true, as an old soldier once
said, that if there were not a funny side to war an army could never
get through its hell. The British troops on the Gallipoli Peninsula
did not find the situation teeming with the hilarious, but there were
moments of relief from the grim monster of trench fighting. Oddly
enough one of the provoking causes of much mirth, seasoned with a due
amount of vexation, was a rotund Turk in whom a sense of humor and
an impudent daring mingled in a way to win the regard of the Tommies
fighting in the trench opposite him. He alternated between tossing a
bunch of dates and hurling a bomb into the trench of the Tommies with
whom he exchanged laughter daily. Some of the Australians detected in
him reminders of an eccentric “publican” who dispensed beer at home. So
the Turk was dubbed “Fatty” Burns, the sobriquet of the keeper of the
“pub.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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