World War, 1914-1918 -- Campaigns -- Turkey -- Gallipoli Peninsula
We are issuing stores now from one depot for the whole Division, and
to all others who come. Way and Carver are running it. I simply hold a
watching brief for my Brigade, but give a hand when I can in helping
the business to run smoothly. Foley is up the coast a short way at “X”
Beach, running his own depot for the 87th Brigade, and wires constantly
come in from him indenting on us for stores he has not in stock. It
is just like a business store, and we are running short of supplies,
but a Supply ship has come in to replenish our stock and form a large
reserve depot. Our depot is the hot-bed of rumours and news, and we
feel the pulse of the Division through the news that the Quartermasters
and ration parties bring. Bad news has arrived this morning. Captain
Reid, to whom I was talking last night, has been killed, and Major Lee,
his C.O., with him. I inquired as to what time it happened, and learn
that it was at eleven o’clock. I was talking to him at ten. It appears
that shortly after I had left him, word was passed down the trench for
C.O.’s and Adjutants to go to the end of the trench to meet the Staff.
Major Lee, accompanied by Captain Reid, immediately went, and met two
officers dressed in khaki with Staff tabs. One of these officers fires
a revolver in Major Lee’s face, killing him instantly, while the other
murders Captain Reid. In their turn they were quickly bayoneted by
Lee’s and Reid’s orderlies. The line is attacked by some two hundred
Turks, who are met in the open by our men and quickly retire, getting
hell from the French “75’s” in doing so. The two officers dressed in
our Staff uniform proved to be Germans, and their action was an attempt
to break our line.
I hear also that Godfrey Faussett, Colonel of the Essex, has been
killed. This upsets me far more than danger, and I have the nightmare
question running in my head sometimes now, when talking to my friends
or seniors whom I knew so well in England, “I wonder if I shall see you
alive again.”
A few snipers have been caught, and they present a weird and uncanny
appearance. They wear uniforms of green cloth, to which in some cases
are attached or sewn sprigs of gorse-bush and small branches of trees.
Their rifles, hands, and faces are painted green, and they can be
passed unnoticed at but a few yards’ distance. Most of them have been
found in holes and dugouts underneath clusters of bushes, with two or
three boxes of ammunition, and enough bread and water to ration them a
fortnight.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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