World War, 1914-1918 -- Campaigns -- Turkey -- Gallipoli Peninsula
Our Brigade has now moved up about three-quarters of a mile in front
of Pink Farm, and I go up this morning to find them. I ride up to, and
leave my horse at, Pink Farm, and walk the rest of the way down past
a ruined house, on over a small nullah, along the road past a battery
up to a white house called Church Farm, where I think it is about time
to halt and inquire the way. A few Tommies encamped in this house tell
me Brigade H.Q. is two hundred yards further on in the trenches, and I
walk on. I notice a Tommy walking in the same direction with a biscuit
tin on his shoulder, which he has rubbed over with mud to prevent the
sun glittering on it. I continue on in the direction indicated, and
hear a few “pings” past my head, but thinking they are the usual spent
bullets, take no notice. Suddenly something “zips” past my head, making
a row like a huge bee flying at high speed; the noise being unlike the
usual “ping” of a bullet passing harmless overhead, I conclude that I
am being deliberately fired at by a sniper, and so bend double, and
steering a zigzag course, jog-trot across the remaining fifty yards to
a nice deep trench. On arrival, I inquire where Brigade H.Q. is, and am
directed to a communication trench, which I go along and find myself at
length in a square dugout with no roof, in which are General Williams,
busy at work with a spade, Thomson, Farmer, and Reave. Concluding my
business, and being instructed that the little ruined house in front of
Pink Farm is to be the dump for rations, I say good-bye. Thomson says,
“Now, Gillam, run like a bunny,” but, those bullets being a bit free at
present over the trenches, I follow my own route back and walk along
the hindmost trench, which I am told leads to a nullah which goes back
in the direction of Pink Farm.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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