Back Aa

Secret Battle, The

<h2>III</h2> So many men have written descriptions of trench life in France; there have been so many poems, plays, and speeches about it that the majority of our nation must have a much clearer mental picture of life on the Western Front than they have of life at the Savoy, or life in East Ham. But the Gallipoli Peninsula was never part of the Western Front, and no man came back from that place on leave; lucky, indeed, if he came at all. The campaign was never, for obvious reasons, an important item in official propaganda, and the various non-official agencies which now bring home the war to Streatham had not begun to articulate when the campaign came to an end. And so neither Streatham nor any one else knew anything about it. And though for a soldier to speak, however distantly, of the details of trench life in France, is now in some circles considered a solecism equivalent to the talking of 'shop,' I hope I may still without offence make some brief reference to the trenches of the Peninsula. For, in truth, it was all very different. Above all, from dawn to dawn it was genuine infantry warfare. In France, apart from full-dress attacks, an infantryman may live for many months without once firing his rifle, or running the remotest risk of death by a rifle bullet. Patiently he tramps, and watches, and digs, and is shelled, clinging fondly to his rifle night and day, but seldom or never in a position to use it; so that in the stagnant days of the past he came to look upon it as a mere part of his equipment, like his water-bottle, only heavier and less comforting; and in real emergencies fumbled stupidly with the unfamiliar mechanism. This was true for a long time of the normal, or 'peace-time,' sectors of France. But in those hill-trenches of Gallipoli the Turk and the Gentile fought with each other all day with rifle and bomb, and in the evening crept out and stabbed each other in the dark. There was no release from the strain of watching and listening and taking thought. The Turk was always on higher ground; he knew every inch of all those valleys and vineyards and scrub-strewn slopes; and he had an uncanny accuracy of aim. Moreover, many of his men had the devotion of fanatics, which inspired them to lie out behind our lines, with stores of food enough to last out their ammunition, certain only of their own ultimate destruction, but content to lie there and pick off the infidels till they too died. They were very brave men. But the Turkish snipers were not confined to the madmen who were caught disguised as trees in the broad daylight and found their way into the picture papers. Every trench was full of snipers, less theatrical, but no less effective. And in the night they crept out with unbelievable stealth and lay close in to our lines, killing our sentries, and chipping away our crumbling parapets. So the sniping was terrible. In that first week we lost twelve men each day; they fell without a sound in the early morning as they stood up from their cooking at the brazier, fell shot through the head, and lay snoring horribly in the dust; they were sniped as they came up the communication trench with water, or carelessly raised their heads to look back at the ships in the bay; and in the night there were sudden screams where a sentry had moved his head too often against the moon. If a periscope were raised, however furtively, it was shivered in an instant; if a man peered over himself, he was dead. Far back in the Reserve Lines or at the wells, where a man thought himself hidden from view, the sniper saw and killed him. All along the line were danger-posts where many had been hit; these places became invested with a peculiar awe, and as you came to them the men said, 'Keep low here, sir,' in a mysterious whisper, as though the Turk could hear them. Indeed, so uncanny were many of the deaths, that some men said the Turk could see impossibly through the walls of the trench, and crouched nervously in the bottom. All the long communication trenches were watched, and wherever a head or a moving rifle showed at a gap a bullet came with automatic regularity. Going down a communication-trench alone a man would hear the tap of these bullets on the parapet following him along, and break into a half-hysterical run in the bright sunlight to get away from this unnatural pursuit; for such it seemed to him to be. The fire seemed to come from all angles; and units bitterly accused their neighbours of killing their men when it seemed impossible that any Turk could have fired the shot. For a little, then, this sniping was thoroughly on the men's nerves. Nothing in their training had prepared them for it. They hated the 'blinded' feeling it produced; it was demoralizing always to be wondering if one's head was low enough, always to walk with a stoop; it was tiring to be always taking care; and it was very dangerous to relax that care for a moment. Something had to be done; and the heavy, methodical way in which these Tynesiders of ours learned to counter and finally overcome the sniper, is characteristic of the nation's effort throughout this war. The Turks were natural soldiers, fighting in their own country; more, they were natural scouts. Our men were ponderous, uncouth pitmen from Tyneside and the Clyde. But we chose out a small body of them who could shoot better than their fellows, and called them snipers, and behold, they were snipers. We gave them telescopes, and periscopes, and observers, and set them in odd corners, and told them to snipe. And by slow degrees they became interested and active and expert, and killed many Turks. The third time we came to those trenches we could move about with comparative freedom. In all this Harry took a leading part, for the battalion scout officer was one of the first casualties, and Harry, who had had some training as a scout in the ranks, was appointed in his place. In this capacity he was in charge of the improvised snipers, and all day moved about the line from post to post, encouraging and correcting. All this he did with characteristic energy and enthusiasm, and tired himself out with long wanderings in the scorching sun. In those trenches all movement was an intense labour. The sun blazed always into the suffocating ditch, where no breath of air came; the men not on duty lay huddled wherever they could steal an inch of shade, with the flies crawling about their eyes and open mouths. Progress was a weary routine of squeezing past men, or stepping over men, or running into men round corners, as one stooped to escape death. In little niches in the wall were mess-tins boiling over box-wood fires, so that the eyes smarted from their smoke, and the air was full of the hot fumes; and everywhere was the stuffy smell of human flesh. In the heat of the day these things produced in the healthiest man an intolerable irritation and fatigue: to a frail, sensitive youth like Harry his day-long rambles must have been torture; but though he too became touchy he pursued his task with determination, and would not be tempted away. The rest of us, when not on watch, lay torpid all the hot hours in the shallow holes we had scratched behind the trench, and called Company Headquarters. These places were roofed only with the inevitable waterproof sheet, and, had there been any serious shelling, would have been death-traps. Into these dwellings came many strange animals, driven from their nests among the roots of the scrub—snakes, lizards, and hideous centipedes. Large, clumsy, winged things, which some said were locusts, fell into the trench, and for a few hours strove vainly to leap out again till they were trampled to death; they had the colour of ivory, and shone with bright tints in the sun like shot silk. The men found tortoises derelict in near shell-holes, and set them to walk in the trench, and they too wandered sadly about till they disappeared, no man knew where. The flies were not yet at full strength, but they were very bad; and all day we wrestled with thirst. He was a lucky man who could sleep in the daylight hours, and when the cool evening came, beckoning him to sleep, he must rise and bestir himself for the work of the night. Then all the line stirred with life again, with the cleaning of rifles thick with heavy dust, and the bustle of men making ready to 'Stand to Arms.' Now, indeed, could a man have slept when all the pests of the day had been exorcized by the cool dusk, and the bitter cold of the midnight was not yet come. But there was no sleep for any man, only watching and digging and carrying and working and listening. And so soon as Achi Baba was swathed in shadow, and the sun well down behind the westward islands, the Turk began his evening fusillade of rapid fire. This was an astonishing performance. Night after night at this hour every man in his trench must have blazed away till his rifle would do its work no more. 'Rapid fire' has been a speciality of the Turkish infantryman since the days of Plevna, and indeed he excels in it. Few English units could equal his performance for ten minutes; but the Turk kept up the same sustained deafening volume of fire for hours at a stretch, till the moon came up and allayed his fears. For it was an exhibition of nervousness as well as musketry: fearful of a stealthy assault in the dark, he would not desist till he could see well across his own wire. Captured orders by the Turkish High Command repeatedly forbade this reckless expenditure of ammunition, and sometimes for two nights he would restrain himself, but in the early days never for more. Our policy was to lie down in the trench, and think sardonically of the ammunition he was wasting; but even this was not good for men's minds. Most of the fire was high and whizzed over into the gullies, but many hundreds of all those thousands of bullets hit the parapet. There was a steady, reiterant rap of them on the sand-bags, very irritating to the nerves, and bits of the parapet splashed viciously into the trench over the crouching men. In that tornado of sound a man must shout to make himself heard by his friends, and this produced in his mind an uncomfortable sense of isolation; he seemed cut off from humanity, and brooded secretly to himself. Safe he might be in that trench, but he could not long sit alone in that tempestuous security without imagining himself in other circumstances—climbing up the parapet—leaving the trench—walking into THAT. So on the few murky nights when the moon would not show herself but peeped temptingly from behind large bolsters of cloud, so that even the Turks diminished their fire, and then with a petulant crescendo continued, men lay in the dust and prayed for the moon to come. So demoralizing was this fire that it was not easy to induce even sentries to keep an effective watch. Not unnaturally, they did not like lifting their heads to look over, even for the periodical peeps which were insisted upon. An officer on his rounds would find them standing on the firestep with their heads well below the parapet, but gazing intently into the heart of a sand-bag, with the air of a man whom no movement of the enemy can escape. The officer must then perform the melancholy rite of 'showing the man how safe it is.' This consisted in climbing up to the firestep, and exposing an immoderate amount of his head; gazing deliberately at the Turks, and striving to create an impression of indifference and calm. He then jumped down, shouting cheerily, 'That's the way, Thompson,' and walked off, thanking God. Personally I did not like this duty. At the best it was an hypocrisy. For the reluctance of the officer to look over was no less acute than the man's; and it was one thing to look for a moment or two and pass on, and another to stand there and repeat the process at brief intervals. Officers performed this rite according to their several characters: Eustace, for example, with a cynical grin which derided, with equal injustice, both himself and his action; he was notably courageous, and his nonchalance on the parapet would have been definitely reassuring to the nervous sentry. But his expression and attitude said clearly: 'This is all damned nonsense, my good man; you don't like standing up here, neither do I, and neither of us is deceiving the other at all.' Burnett did it with genuine and ill-concealed distaste, too hasty to be convincing. Harry, alone, did it with a gallant abandon, like a knight throwing down his challenge to the enemy; and he alone can have been really inspiring to the reluctant sentry. He had a keen dramatic instinct, and in these little scenes rather enjoyed the part of the unperturbed hero calming the timorous herd. Watching him once or twice I wondered how much was acting and how much real fearlessness; if it was acting he was braver then than most of us—but I think it was the other just then. There were five or six hours between the end of the rapid fire and the 'Stand to' before dawn. During these hours three of the company officers were always on duty. We split the time in two, and it was a weary three hours patrolling the still trench, stumbling over sleeping men, sprawled out like dead in the moonlight, and goading the tired sentries to watchfulness. Terrible was the want of sleep. The men fell asleep with their heads against the iron loopholes, and, starting up as the officer shook them, swore that they had never nodded. Only by constant movement could the officer be sure even of himself; he dared not sit for a moment or lean in the corner of the traverse, though all his limbs ached for rest, lest he, too, be found snoring at his post, and he and all his men be butchered in their guilty sleep. And so he drags his sore feet ceaselessly backwards and forwards, marvelling at the stillness and the stars and the strange, musky night smell which has crept out of the earth. Far away he can see the green lights of a hospital ship, and as he looks they begin to move and dwindle slowly into the distance, for she is going home; and he thinks of the warmth and light and comfort in that ship, and follows her wistfully with his eyes till she is gone. Turning back he sees a sentry, silent above him; he, too, is watching the ship, and each man knows the other's thoughts, but they do not speak. At last comes the officer relieving him; cold and irritable from his brief sleep. He is a little late, and they compare watches resentfully; and unless they be firm friends, at that moment they hate each other. But the one who is relieved goes down to the dug-out in the Support Line, a little jauntily now, though his feet are painful, feeling already that he could watch many hours more. And suddenly the moon is beautiful, and the stars are friendly—for he is going to sleep. But when he comes to the little narrow hole, which is the dug-out, there are two officers already filling most of the floor, noisily asleep. One of them is lying on his waterproof sheet: he tugs angrily at it, but it is caught in something and will not come away. He shakes the man, but he does not wake. Too tired to continue he lies down awkwardly in the crooked space which is left between the legs and arms and equipment of the others. He draws his meagre trench-coat over his body, and pulls his knees up that they, too, may be covered; there is nothing over his feet, and already they are cold. His head he rests on a rough army haversack. In the middle of it there is a hard knob, a soap-tin, or a book, or a tin of beef. For a little he lies uncomfortably like this, hoping for sleep; his ear is crushed on the hard pillow; there is something knobbly under his hip. He knows that he ought to get up and re-arrange himself—but he lacks the necessary energy. Finally he raises himself on his elbow and tugs at the towel in his haversack to make him a pillow; the strap of the haversack is fastened, and the towel will not emerge. He unfastens the haversack, and in desperation pulls out the whole of its contents with the towel. His toothbrush and his sponge and his diary are scattered in the dust. Some of the pages of the diary are loose, and if he leaves it they will be lost; he feels in the darkness for his electric torch, and curses because he cannot find it. He has lent it to the damned fool who relieved him. Why can't people have things of their own? Painfully groping he gathers his belongings and puts them, one by one, in the haversack, arranging his towel on the top. His elbow is sore with leaning on it, but the pillow is ready. Lying down again he falls quickly to sleep. Almost at once there is a wild din in his dreams. Rapid fire again. Springing up, he rushes into the trench with the others. It is an attack. Who is attacking? The men in the trench know nothing. It started on the right, they say, and now the whole line is ablaze again with this maddening rifle-fire. Running back to the dug-out he gropes in the wreckage of coats and equipment for his belt and revolver. He must hurry to the front line to take charge of his platoon. There are no telephones to the firing-line. What the hell is happening? When he is halfway up the communication trench, cannoning into the walls in his haste and weariness, the firing suddenly stops. It was a wild panic started by the Senegalese holding the line on our right. Damn them—black idiots! He goes back swearing with the other officers, and they lie down anyhow; it is too late now to waste time on fussy arrangements. When he wakes up again there is already a hint of light in the East. It is the 'Stand to Arms' before dawn. His feet are numb and painful with cold, his limbs are cramped and aching, and his right forearm has gone to sleep. The flesh of his legs is clammy, and sticks to the breeches he has lived and slept in for five days: he longs for a bath. Slowly with the others he raises himself and gropes weakly in the muddle of garments on the floor for his equipment. He cannot find his revolver. Burnett has lost his belt, and mutters angrily to himself. All their belongings are entangled together in the narrow space; they disengage them without speaking to each other. Each one is in a dull coma of endurance; for the moment their spirit is at its lowest ebb; it is the most awful moment of warfare. In a little they will revive, but just now they cannot pretend to bravery or cheerfulness, only curse feebly and fumble in the darkness. They go out into the trench and join their platoons. The N.C.O.'s are still shaking and bullying the men still asleep; some of these are almost senseless, and can only be roused by prolonged physical violence. The officer braces himself for his duties, and by and by all the men are more or less awake and equipped, though their heads droop as they sit, and their neighbours nudge them into wakefulness as the officer approaches. Mechanically he fills and lights a pipe, and takes a cautious sip at his water-bottle; the pipe turns his empty stomach, and an intolerable emptiness assails him. He knocks out the pipe and peers over the parapet. It is almost light now, but a thin mist hides the Turkish trench. His face is greasy and taut with dirt, and the corners of his eyes are full of dust; his throat is dry, and there is a loathsome stubble on his chin, which he fingers absently, pulling at the long hairs. Steadily the light grows and grows, and the men begin to chatter, and suddenly the sun emerges over the corner of Achi Baba, and life and warmth come back to the numb souls of all these men. 'Stand to' is over; but as the men tear off their hateful equipment and lean their rifles against the wall of the trench there is a sudden burst of shelling on the right. Figures appear running on the skyline. They are against the light, and the shapes are dark, but there seems to be a dirty blue in their uniforms. No one quite knows how the line runs up there; it is a salient. The figures must be Turks attacking the French. The men gape over the parapet. The officer gapes. It is nothing to do with them. Then he remembers what he is for, and tells his men excitedly to fire on the figures. Some of the men have begun cooking their breakfast, and are with difficulty seduced from their task. A spasmodic fire opens on the running figures. It is hard to say where they are running, or what they are doing. The officer is puzzled. It is his first glimpse of battle, and he feels that a battle should be simple and easy to understand. The officer of the next platoon comes along. He is equally ignorant of affairs, but he thinks the figures are French, attacking the Turks. They, too, wear blue. The first officer rushes down the line telling the men to 'cease fire.' The men growl and go back to their cooking. It is fairly certain that none of them hit any of the distant figures, but the officer is worried. Why was nobody told what was to happen? What is it all about? He has been put in a false position. Presently a belated chit arrives to say that the French were to attack at sunrise, but the attack was a fiasco, and is postponed. And now all the air is sickly with the smell of cooking, and the dry wood crackles in every corner; little wisps of smoke go straight up in the still air. All the Peninsula is beautiful in the sunlight, and wonderful to look upon against the dark blue of the sea; the dew sparkles on the scrub; over the cypress grove comes the first aeroplane, humming contentedly. Another day has begun; the officer goes down whistling to wash in a bucket. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2

Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.