So the Newfoundlanders felt that as colonials they had been overlooked.
They were not militaristic and hated the ordinary routine of army life,
but they wanted to do their share. That was the spirit all through the
regiment. It was the spirit that possessed them on the long-waited-for
day at Aldershot when Kitchener himself pronounced them "just the men I
want for the Dardanelles." That day at Aldershot every man was given a
chance to go back to Newfoundland. They had enlisted for one year only,
and could demand to be sent home at the end of the year; and when
Kitchener reviewed them ten months of that year had gone.
[Sidenote: Re-enlistment at Aldershot.]
[Sidenote: The desire to get to the front.]
With the chance to go home in his grasp, every man of the first
battalion reenlisted for the duration of war. And it is on record, to
their eternal honor, that during the week preceding their departure from
Aldershot breaches of discipline were unknown, for over their heads hung
the fear that they would be punished by being kept back from active
service. To break a rule that week carried with it the suspicion of
cowardice. This was the more remarkable because many of the men were
fishermen, trappers, hunters, and lumbermen who until their enlistment
had said "Sir" to no man, and who gloried in the reputation given them
by one inspecting officer as "the most undisciplined lot he had ever
seen." From the day the Canadians left Salisbury Plain to take their
places in the trenches in Flanders the Newfoundlanders were obsessed by
one idea: they had to get to the front.
[Sidenote: Troop-ships in Mudros Harbor.]
So it was with eleven hundred of such eager spirits that I lined up, on
a Sunday evening early in August, 1915, on the deck of the troop-ship in
Mudros Harbor, which is the center of the historic island of Lemnos,
about fifty miles from Gallipoli. Around us lay all sorts of ships, from
ocean leviathans to tiny launches and rowboats. There were
gray-and-black-painted troopers, their rails lined with soldiers;
immense four-funneled men-of-war; and brightly lighted, white hospital
ships, with their red crosses outlined in electric lights. The landing
officer left us in a little motor-boat. We watched him glide slowly
shoreward, where we could faintly discern through the dusk the white of
the tents that were the headquarters for the people at Lemnos; to the
right of the tents we could see the hospital for wounded Australians and
New-Zealanders. A French battleship dipped its flag as it passed, and
our boys sang "The Marseillaise."
[Sidenote: The Iron Ration.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account