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
"Company, at the halt, facing left, form close column of platoons."
Company B of the First Newfoundland Regiment swung into position and
halted in the square just in front of their quarters. "Company,
Dismiss!" Hands smacked smartly on rifle stocks, heels clicked
together, and the men of B Company fell out. A gray-haired,
iron-mustached soldier, indelibly stamped English regular, carrying a
bucket of swill across the square to the dump, stopped to watch them.
"Wonder who the new lot is?" said he to a comrade lounging near. "I
cawn't place their bloomin' badge."
"'Aven't you 'eard?" said the other. "Blawsted colonials; Canydians, I
reckon."
A tall, loose-jointed, sandy-haired youth who approached the two was
unmistakably a colonial; there was a certain ranginess that no amount
of drilling could ever entirely eradicate.
"Hello, Poppa," he greeted the gray-haired one, who had now resumed
his journey toward the dump. "What will you answer when your children
say, 'Daddy, what part did you play in the great war?'"
He of the swill bucket spat contemptuously, disdaining to answer. The
sandy-haired youth continued airily across the square and up the
stairs that led to his quarters. I followed him up the stairs and
through a door on which was printed "Thirty-two men," and below, in
chalk, "B Company." We entered a long, bare-looking room, down each
side of which ran rows of iron cots. Equipments were piled neatly on
the beds and on shelves above; two iron-legged, barrack-room tables
and a few benches completed the furniture. At one of the tables sat
two young men. One of them, a massively built young giant, looked up
as the door opened.
"Hello, Art," he said to my conductor. "You're just the man we want.
Don't you want to join us in a party to go up to London?"
"No," answered Art; "if you break leave this week, you don't get to
the front."
The big fellow stretched his massive frame in a capacious yawn.
"I don't think we'll ever get to the front," he said. "This isn't a
regiment. It's an officers' training corps. They gave out a lot more
stripes to-day, and one fellow got a star--made him a second
lieutenant. You'd think this was the American army; it's nothing but
stars and stripes. Soon 't will be an honor to be a private. The worst
of it is, they'll come along to me and say, 'What's your name and
number?' The only time they ever talk to me is to ask me my name and
number; and when I tell them, they put me on crime for not calling
them 'Sir,' and when I don't they have me up for insolence."
Art laughed. "Cheer up, old boy," he said; "you'll soon be at the
front, and then you won't have to call anybody 'Sir.'"
"What's the latest news about the regiment?" I inquired of my
conductor.
"I suppose you know that the King and Lord Kitchener reviewed us," he
said, "and this afternoon we are to be reviewed once more. It's a
formality. We should leave this evening or to-morrow for the front. I
suppose we'll go to some seaport town and embark there."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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