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
At six o’clock he died, and was buried the same night, after sundown,
at the place where we were, and that was a big cutting called Chatham’s
Post, named after one of the officers. It was a deep cutting in the
side of the hill. These two chaps were lying there on stretchers, and
it was very hard for a bullet to hit them. Scottie was just taken to
the back of the parade at the back of Chatham’s Post, a place called
Shrapnel Green. It was a green field when we first went, but it was
soon trodden down and made bare by gun and rifle fire. And there
Scottie was laid to rest.
From the burial we went back to the dressing-station and carried the
wounded trooper--Lane, they called him--down to the beach. The padre
asked Lane if he would like a “wad,” that is a pannikin, of tea, and
Lane said he would. I helped him to sit up, and I held the “wad” for
him. He drank the tea cheerfully, though he must have been in awful
agony. They took him along the beach. He did not say much, but never
complained. When he did speak it was to ask, “Who’s that lying there?”
or “How is he getting on?” He was the best I saw the whole time I was
there.
On the way to the beach there were wire entanglements, to stop the
Turkish patrols. The stretcher-bearers fell into the entanglements and
dropped Lane; but he never thought about himself. What he said was,
“Are _you_ hurt?” I am glad to say that he is here in England, like me,
and has pretty well got over it, though he has lost his foot. Seventeen
men were hit by the shell that knocked Lane out.
We settled down again to the fighting game with the Turks, who kept us
very lively, especially with a gun that we called “Beachy Bill.” This
gun played on the beach whenever there was a sign of our movements, and
it became a common thing to say, “Beachy Bill’s got somebody again.”
That Turkish gun caused more casualties than all the rest put together.
The monitors used to go for it, and I believe they bombarded it out
of existence more than once. A new gun was soon at work again, but to
us it was always “Beachy Bill.” When we first got to Gallipoli we did
not know the tricks of the trade, but everybody soon got fly, and that
helped us a lot in tackling “Beachy Bill” and lessening his bag.
There’s a lot more to say, but I will only tell you about one more
thing, and that is the blowing up of some Turks. Our trenches and those
of the Turks almost met in places, and bombs were thrown from one to
the other. That was a lively exchange of greetings, but it didn’t lead
to much. Something more definite was wanted, and so our people began to
dig a tunnel at a very narrow junction, so as to blow up the Turkish
trenches, and make our own trench-line straight, instead of being, as
it was, twisting and zigzag.
It was a real Turk hunt, and just the sort of work that our chaps
revelled in.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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