Just at dusk one evening Donnelly stole out to Caribou Ridge and
surprised the Turks. All night the Turks strove to recover their lost
ground. Darkness was the Newfoundlanders' ally. When reinforcements
arrived, Donnelly's eight men were reduced to two. Dawn showed the havoc
wrought by the gallant little group. The ground in front of the post was
a shambles of piled-up Turkish corpses. But daylight showed something
more to the credit of the Newfoundlanders than the mere taking of the
ridge. It showed one of Donnelly's men, Jack Hynes, who had crawled away
from his companion to a point about two hundred yards to the left. From
here he had all alone kept up through the whole night a rapid fire on
the enemy's flank that duped them into believing that we had men there
in force. It showed Hynes purposely falling back over exposed ground to
draw the enemy's attention from Sergeant Greene, who was coolly making
trip after trip between the ridge and our lines, carrying a wounded man
in his arms every time until all our wounded were in safety. Hynes and
Greene were each given a distinguished-conduct medal. None was ever more
nobly earned.
One Saturday morning near the end of October, 1915, the brigade major
passed through our lines. Before we took over the trench the occupants
of the firing-line threw their refuse over the parapet into the short
underbrush. Since coming in we had made a dump for it. I was sent out
with five men to remove the rubbish from the underbrush to the dump, and
this despite the fact that a short distance to our right we had just
lost two men sent over the parapet in broad daylight to pick up some
cans.
[Sidenote: The writer is wounded.]
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