In the Line of Battle: Soldiers' Stories of the War
History
In the Line of Battle: Soldiers' Stories of the War
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
We were constantly seeing strange sights and learning how cunning the
Turks were. One morning I saw some Australians bring in a Turk who was
wearing one of our uniforms. The tunics had white patches on them,
so that our artillery could distinguish us, and it was one of these
that the fellow wore. He had no doubt taken it from a dead British
soldier, and so dressed, he had joined a party of Australians who
were drawing water at a well. He kept his mouth shut, and might have
gone undiscovered, but he and an Australian began quarrelling, then
fighting, and that gave him away, because he could not speak English.
They shot him, as a spy, the following morning.
At the same place--I am now speaking of W Beach, where we were
resting--we saw a Turkish sniper on the top of a hill. We sent out
two or three times to try and get him, but failed; but at last he was
caught while robbing one of our fellows who was dead. The sniper had
shot him, and now he was out for plunder. When we had this sniper in
hand we found that we had got hold of a very dangerous customer, a man
who had done a lot of mischief amongst our fellows. He had gone about
his sniping in a very business-like way, and had established himself
in a spot which commanded points which had to be continually passed by
our stretcher-bearers and working parties. A good many of the R.A.M.C.
chaps were hit, and it was curious that most of the wounds were about
the knee. We discovered that these wounds were the result of the
sniper’s low firing--he was very near the ground and had pretty nearly
complete control of this particular spot. Our fellows used to double
round it for all they were worth, but they were not fast enough to
dodge the Turk’s bullets. When we examined his dug-out we found three
rifles fixed on tripods, which were always trained on the spots where
our fellows had to pass. In addition to that he had a machine-gun, and
this he used for firing on our men when he knew that it was meal-time
and that they were in clusters. It was a great relief when his account
was settled.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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