Trenching at Gallipoli: The personal narrative of a Newfoundlander with the ill-fated Dardanelles expeditionGallishaw, John
History
Trenching at Gallipoli: The personal narrative of a Newfoundlander with the ill-fated Dardanelles expedition
Gallishaw, John
World War, 1914-1918 -- Campaigns -- Turkey -- Gallipoli Peninsula; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, Canadian
At two o'clock, accompanied by an officer and a sergeant, we went down
the road a little way to where some Australians were conducting a
class in bomb throwing. A brown-faced chap from Sydney showed me the
difference between bombs that you explode by lighting a match, bombs
that are started by pulling out a plug, and the dinky little
three-second "cricket balls" that explode by pressing a spring. I
asked him about the attack the night before. He told me that they had
been for some time waiting for a chance to make a local advance that
would capture an important redoubt in the Turkish line. Every night at
exactly nine o'clock, the Navy had thrown a searchlight on the part of
the line the Anzacs wanted to capture. For ten minutes they kept up
heavy firing. Then, after a ten minutes' interval of darkness and
suspended firing, they began a second illumination and bombardment,
commencing always at twenty minutes past nine, and ending precisely
at half past. After a little while, the enemy, knowing just the exact
minute the bombardment was to begin, took the first beam of the
searchlight as a hint to clear out. But the night before, a crowd of
eager Australians had crept softly along in the shadow made doubly
dark by the glare of the searchlight, the noise of their advance
covered by the sound of the bombardment. As soon as the bombardment
ceased and the searchlight's beam was succeeded by darkness, they
poured into the Turkish position. They had taken the astonished Turks
completely by surprise.
"We didn't expect to make the attack for another week," said the
Australian; "but as soon as our boys heard that we were winning in
France, they thought they'd better start something. There hasn't been
any excitement over our way now for a long time," he said. "I'm about
fed up on this waiting around the trenches." He fingered one of the
little cricket-ball bombs caressingly. "Think of it," he said; "all
you do is press that little spring, and three seconds after you're a
casualty."
"Pressing that little spring," said I, "is my idea of nothing to do,
unless you're a particularly fast sprinter."
"By the Lord Harry, Newfoundland," said the Australian, with a
peculiar, excited glint in his eye, "that's an inspiration."
"What's an inspiration?" I asked, in bewilderment.
The Australian stretched himself on the ground beside me, resting his
chin in his cupped hands. "When I was in Sydney," he said slowly and
thoughtfully, "I did a hundred yards in ten seconds easily. Now if I
can get in a traverse that's only eight or nine yards long, and press
the spring of one of those little cricket balls, I ought to be able to
get out on the other side of the traverse before it explodes."
Art and Lew O'Dea passed along just then and I jumped up to go with
them. "Don't forget to look for me if you're over around the Fifteenth
Australians," said the Australian. "Ask for White George."
"I won't forget," I said, as I hurried away to join the others.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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