Читать книгу Trenching at Gallipoli - John Gallishaw - Страница 4

"Great Britain is at War."

The announcement came to Newfoundland out of a clear sky. Confirming it, came the news of the assurances of loyalty from the different colonies, expressed in terms of men and equipment. Newfoundland was not to be outdone. Her population is a little more than two hundred thousand, and her isolated position made garrisons unnecessary. Her only semblance of military training was her city brigades. People remembered that in the Boer War a handful of Newfoundlanders had enlisted in Canadian regiments, but never before had there been any talk of Newfoundland sending a contingent made up entirely of her own people and representing her as a colony. From the posting of the first notices bearing the simple message, "Your King and Country Need You," a motley crowd streamed into the armory in St. John's. The city brigades, composed mostly of young, beautifully fit athletes from rowing crews, football and hockey teams, enlisted in a body. Every train from the interior brought lumbermen, fresh from the mills and forests, husky, steel-muscled, pugnacious at the most peaceful times, frankly spoiling for excitement. From the outharbors and fishing villages came callous-handed fishermen, with backs a little bowed from straining at the oar, accustomed to a life of danger. Every day there came to the armory loose-jointed, easy-swinging trappers and woodsmen, simple-spoken young men, who, in offering their keenness of vision and sureness of marksmanship, were volunteering their all.

It was ideal material for soldiers. In two days many more than the required quota had presented themselves. Only five hundred men could be prepared in time to cross with the first contingent of Canadians. Over a thousand men offered. A corps of doctors asked impertinent questions concerning men's ancestors, inspected teeth, measured and pounded chests, demanded gymnastic stunts, and finally sorted out the best for the first contingent. The disappointed ones were consoled by news of another contingent to follow in six weeks. Some men, turned down for minor defects, immediately went to hospital, were treated, and enlisted in the next contingent.

Seven weeks after the outbreak of war the Newfoundlanders joined the flotilla containing the first contingent of Canadians. Escorted by cruisers and air scouts they crossed the Atlantic safely and went under canvas in the mud and wet of Salisbury Plain, in October, 1914. To the men from the interior, rain and exposure were nothing new. Hunting deer in the woods and birds in the marshes means just such conditions. The others soon became hardened to it. They had about settled down when they were sent on garrison duty, first to Fort George in the north of Scotland, and then to Edinburgh Castle. Ten months of bayonet-fighting, physical drill, and twenty-mile route marches over Scottish hills molded them into trim, erect, bronzed soldiers.

In July of 1915, while the Newfoundlanders were under canvas at Stob's Camp, about fifty miles from Edinburgh, I was transferred to London to keep the records of the regiment for the War Office. At any other time I should have welcomed the appointment. But then it looked like quitting. The battalion had just received orders to move to Aldershot. While we were garrisoning Edinburgh Castle, word came of the landing of the Australians and New Zealanders at Gallipoli. At Ypres, the Canadians had just then recaptured their guns and made for themselves a deathless name. The Newfoundlanders felt that as colonials they had been overlooked. They were not militaristic, and they 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 any man that wished to could demand to be sent home at the end of the year; and when Kitchener reviewed them, ten months of that year had gone. With the chance to go home in his grasp, every man of the first battalion reënlisted for the duration of the 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 for the trenches of Flanders, the Newfoundlanders had been obsessed by one idea: they must get to the front.

I was in London when I heard of the inspection at Aldershot by Lord Kitchener, and of its results. I had expected to be able to rejoin my battalion in time to go with them to the Dardanelles; but when I applied for a transfer, I was told that I should have to stay in London. I tried to imagine myself explaining it to my friends in No. 11 section who were soon to embark for the Mediterranean. Apart altogether from that, I had gone through nearly a year of training, had slept on the ground in wet clothes, had drilled from early morning till late afternoon, and was perfectly fit. It had been pretty strenuous training, and I did not want to waste it in an office.

That evening I applied to the captain in charge of the office for a pass to Aldershot to bid good-by to my friends in the regiment. He granted it; and the next morning a train whirled me through pleasant English country to Aldershot. At the station I met an English Tommy.

"I suppose you're looking for the Newfoundlanders," he said, glancing at my shoulder badges. I was still wearing the service uniform I had worn in camp in Scotland, for I had not been regularly attached to the office force in London.

"I'll take you to Wellington Barracks," volunteered the Englishman. "That's where your lot is."

We trudged through sand, on to a gravel road, through the main street of the town of Aldershot, and into an asphalt square, surrounded by brick buildings, three storied, with iron-railed verandas. Men in khaki leaned over the veranda rails, smoking and talking. A regiment was just swinging in through one of the gaps between the lines.

Lord Kitchener talking to some Australians at AnzacToList

"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."

While we were talking a bugle blew. "There's the cook-house bugle," said Art. "Come along and have some dinner with us." He took some tin dishes from the shelves above the beds, gave me one, and we joined in the rush down the stairs and across the square to the cook house.

In the army, the cook house corresponds to the dining-room of civilization. B Company cook house was a long, narrow, wooden building. On each side of a middle aisle that led to the kitchen were plain wooden tables, each accommodating sixteen men, eight on each side. When we arrived, the building was full. When you are eating as the guest of the Government, there is no hostess to reserve for you the choice portions; therefore it behooves you to come early. In the army, if you are not there at the beginning of a meal, you go hungry. Thus are inculcated habits of punctuality. But if you are called and the meal is not ready, you have your revenge. Two hundred and sixty-two men of B Company were showing their disapproval of the cooks' lack of punctuality. Screeches, yells, and cat cries rivaled the din of stamping feet and the banging of tin dishes. Occasionally the door of the kitchen swung open and afforded a glimpse of three sweating cooks and their group of helpers, working frenziedly. Sometimes the noise stopped long enough to allow some spokesman to express his opinion of the cooks, and their fitness for their jobs, with that delightful simplicity and charming candor that made the language of the First Newfoundland Regiment so refreshing. Loud applause served the double purpose of encouraging the speakers and drowning the reply of the incensed cooks. This was a pity, because the language of an army cook is worth hearing, and very enlightening. Men who formerly prided themselves on their profanity have listened, envious and subdued, awed by the originality and scope of a cook's vocabulary, and thenceforth quit, realizing their own amateurishness. Occasionally, though, one of the cooks, stung to retort, would appear, wiping his hands on his overalls, and in a few well-chosen phrases, cover some of the more recent exploits of the one who had angered him, or endeavor to clear his own character, always in language brilliant, fluent, and descriptive.

But the longest wait must come to an end, and at last the door of the kitchen swung open and the helpers appeared. Some mysterious mess fund had been tapped, and that day dinner was particularly good. First came soup, then a liberal helping of roast beef, with potatoes, tomatoes, and peas, followed by plum pudding. B Company soon finished. In the army, dinner is a thing not of ceremony, but of necessity.

I did not wait for my sandy-haired friend; his name, I gathered, was Art Pratt. He and a neighbor were adjusting a difference regarding the ownership of a combination knife, fork, and spoon. I found my way back to the room marked "Thirty-two men." Just as I entered, I heard the bugle sound the "half-hour dress."

All about the room men were busy shining shoes, polishing buttons, rolling puttees, and adjusting equipments. This took time, and the half hour for preparation soon passed. In the square below, at the sound of the "Fall In," eleven hundred men of the first battalion of the First Newfoundland Regiment sprang briskly to attention. After their commanding officer had inspected them, the battalion formed into column of route. As the tail of the column swung through the square, I joined in. A short march along the Aldershot Road brought us to the dusty parade ground. Here we were drawn up in review order, to await the inspecting general. When he arrived, he rode quickly through the lines, then ordered the men to be formed into a three-sided square. From the center of this human stadium he addressed them.

"Men of the First Newfoundland Regiment," said he, "a week ago you were reviewed by His Majesty the King and by Lord Kitchener. On that day, Lord Kitchener told you that you were just the men he needed for the Dardanelles. I have been deputed to tell you that you are to embark to-night. You have come many miles to help us; and when you reach the Dardanelles, you will be opposed by the bravest fighters in the world. It is my duty and my pleasure on behalf of the British Government and of His Majesty the King to thank you and to wish you God-speed."

This was the moment the Newfoundlanders had been waiting for for nearly a year. From eleven hundred throats broke forth wave upon wave of cheering. Then came an instant's hush, the bugle band played the general salute, and the regiment presented arms. Gravely the general acknowledged the compliment, spurred his horse, and rode rapidly away. The regiment reformed, marched back to barracks, and dismissed.

I joined the crowd that pressed around the board on which were posted the daily orders. My friend Art Pratt was acting as spokesman.

"A and B Companies leave here at eight this evening," he said. "C and D Companies an hour later. They march to Aldershot railway station, and entrain there."

I left the group around the board and walked over to the office of the adjutant. He was busy giving instructions about his baggage.

"Well," he said, "what do you want?"

"I want to go with the battalion this evening, sir," I said.

He questioned me; and when he found out all the facts, told me that I couldn't go. I didn't wait any longer. As I went out the door, I could just hear him murmur something about my not having the necessary papers. But I wasn't thinking of papers just then. I was wondering how I could get away. I vowed that if I could possibly do it I would go with the battalion. I was passing one of the stairways when I heard some one yell, "Is that you, Corporal Gallishaw?" I turned. It was Sam Hiscock, one of my old section.

"Hello, Sam," I said. "I didn't know where to look for old No. 11 section. They've all been changed about since they came here."

"Come up this way," said Sam, and I followed him up the stairs and into a room occupied by the men of No. 11 section, my old section at Stob's Camp in Scotland.

Disconsolately I told them my plight, and disclosed my plan guardedly. Sam Hiscock, faithful and loyal to his section, voiced the sentiment. "Come on with old No. 11; we'll look after you. All you have to do is hang around here, and when we're moving off just fall in with us, and nobody'll notice then; 't will be dark."

"The big trouble is," I said, "I have no equipment, no overcoat, no kit-bag; in fact, no anything."

"You've got a rain coat," said Pierce Power, "and I've got a belt you can have." Another offered a piece of shoulder strap, and some one else volunteered to show me where a pile of equipments were kept in a room. I followed him out to the room. In the corner a man was sitting on the floor, smoking. He was the guard over the equipments. He belonged to an English regiment, and so did the equipments. Sam Hiscock engaged him in conversation for a few minutes. The topic he introduced was a timely one: beer. While Hiscock and the guard went to the canteen to do some research work in beverages, I took his place guarding the equipments. By the time the two returned I had managed to acquire a passable looking kit. I spent the rest of the afternoon going around among my friends and telling them what I proposed to do. At eight o'clock I joined the crowd that cheered A and B Companies as they moved away, in charge of the adjutant and the colonel. When the major called C and D Companies to attention, I fell in with my old section C Company. The lieutenant in charge of the platoon I was with saw me, but in the dusk he could not recognize my face. I was thankful for the convenient darkness; and because it was fear of his invention that caused it, I blessed the name of Count Zeppelin.

"Where's your rifle?" asked the lieutenant.

"Haven't got one, sir," I said.

The lieutenant called the platoon sergeant. "Sergeant," he snapped, "get that man a rifle." The sergeant doubled back to the barracks and returned with a rifle. The lieutenant moved away, and I had just begun to congratulate myself, when disaster overtook me. The platoon was numbered off. There was one man too many, and of course I was the man. The lieutenant did not waste any time in vain controversy. He ordered me out of his platoon.

"Where shall I go?" I asked.

"As far as I am concerned," he answered, "you can go straight to hell."

I left his platoon; but when I did, I carried with me the precious rifle. The sergeant, a thorough man, had been thoughtful enough to bring with it a bayonet.

The time had now come to risk everything on one throw. I did. In the army, all orders from the commanding officer of a regiment are transmitted through the adjutant. I knew that both the colonel and the adjutant had gone an hour ago, and could not now be reached. So I walked up to Captain March, the captain of D Company, saluted, and told him that I had been ordered to join his company.

"Ordered by whom?" he asked.

"By the Adjutant," said I, brazenly.

"I haven't had any orders about that," said Captain March.

Just then, Captain O'Brien, who had been my company commander in camp, came up. I think he must have known what I was trying to do.

"If the Adjutant said so, it's all right," he said, thus leaving the burden of proof on me.

"Go ahead then," said Captain March; "fall in."

I fell in. We formed up, and swung out of the square and along the road that led to the station. At intervals, where a street lamp threw a subdued glare, crowds cheered us; for even Aldershot, clearing house of fighting forces, had not yet ceased to thrill at the sight of men leaving for the front. Half an hour after we left the barracks, we were all safely stowed away in the train, ten men in each of the compartment coaches. Just as we were pulling out, a soldier went from coach to coach, shaking hands with all the men. He came to our coach, put his head in through the window, and shook hands with each man. I was on the inside. "Good-by, old chap," he said, then gasped in astonishment. The train was just beginning to move. It was well under way when he recovered himself. "Gallishaw," he shouted, "you're under arrest." It was the sergeant-major of the Record Office I had quitted in London.

During war time in England, troop trains have the right of way over all others. All night our train rattled along, with only one stop. That was at Exeter where we were given a lunch supplied by the Mayoress and ladies of the town. I spent the night under the seat; for I thought the sergeant-major might telegraph to have the train searched for me. Early next morning, we shunted onto a wharf in Devonport, alongside the converted cruiser Megantic. Her sides were already lined with soldiers; another battalion of eleven hundred men, the Warwickshire Regiment, was aboard. As soon as our battalion had detrained, I hid behind some boxes on the pier; and when the last of the men were walking up the gangplank. I joined them. A steward handed each man a ticket, bearing the number of his berth. I received one with the rest. Since I was in uniform, the steward had no way of telling whether or not I belonged to the Newfoundlanders.

All that day the Megantic stayed in port, waiting for darkness to begin the voyage. In the afternoon, we pulled out into the stream; and at sunset began threading our way between buoys, down the tortuous channel to the open sea. A couple of wicked-looking destroyers escorted us out of Devonport; but as soon as we had cleared the harbor, they steamed up and shot ahead of us. The next morning they had disappeared. The first night out I ate nothing, but the next day I managed to secure a ticket to the dining-room. With two battalions on board, there was no room on the Megantic for drills; the only work we had was boat drill once a day. Each man was assigned his place in the lifeboats. At the stern of the ship a big 4.7 gun was mounted; and at various other points were placed five or six machine guns, in preparation for a possible submarine attack. In addition, we depended for escape on our speed of twenty-three to twenty-five knots.

During the boat drills, I stayed below with the Warwickshire Regiment, or, as we called them, the Warwicks. This regiment was formed of men of the regular army, who had been all through the first gruelling part of the campaign, beginning with the retreat from Mons, to the battle of the Marne. They were the remnants of "French's contemptible little army." Every one of them had been wounded so seriously as to be unable to return to the front. Ordinarily they would have been discharged, but they were men whose whole lives had been spent in the army. Few of them were under forty, so they were now being sent to Khartum in the Sudan, for garrison duty. At night, I came on deck. In the submarine area ships showed no lights, so I could go around without fear of discovery. The only people I had to avoid were the officers, and the caste system of the army kept them to their own part of the ship. The men I knew would sooner cut their tongues out than inform on me.

Just before sunset of the third night out, because we passed several ships, we knew we were approaching land. At nine o'clock, we were directly opposite the Rock of Gibraltar. After we had left Gibraltar behind, all precautions were doubled; we were now in the zone of submarine operations. Ordinarily we steamed along at eighteen or nineteen knots; but the night before we fetched Malta, we zigzagged through the darkness, with engines throbbing at top speed, until the entire ship quivered and shook, and every bolt groaned in protest. With nearly three thousand lives in his care, our captain ran no risks. But the night passed without incident. The next day, at noon, we were safe in one of the fortified harbors of Malta.

After we left Malta, since I knew I could not then be sent back to England, I reported myself to the adjutant. He and the colonel were in the orderly room, as the office of a regiment is called. The sergeant-major in charge of the orderly room had been taken ill two or three days before, and the other men had been swamped by the extra rush of clerical work, incident on the departure of a regiment for the front. Perhaps this had a good deal to do with the lenient treatment I received. The adjutant came to the point at once. That is a characteristic of adjutants.

"Gallishaw," he said, "do you want to come to work here?"

"Yes, sir," I answered.

"All right," he said; "you're posted to B Company."

That night, it appeared in orders that "Lance-Corporal Gallishaw has embarked with the battalion, and is posted to B Company for pay." The only comment the colonel made on the affair was to say to the adjutant, "I've often heard of men leaving a ship when she is going on active service, but I've never heard of men stowing away to get there." Thus I went to work in the orderly room; and in the orderly room I stayed until we arrived at Alexandria, Egypt, and entrained for Cairo. At Heliopolis, on the desert near Cairo, we went into camp. There I joined my company and drilled with it, and bade good-by to the orderly room and all its works.

Scene at Lancashire Landing, Cape HellesToList

We stayed in Egypt only ten days or so to get accustomed to the heat, and to change our heavy uniforms and hats for the light-weight duck uniforms and sun helmets, suitable for the climate on the Peninsula of Gallipoli. The heat at Heliopolis was too intense to permit of our drilling very much. In the very early morning, before the sun was really strong, we marched out a mile across the desert, skirmished about for an hour or so, and returned to camp for breakfast. The rest of the day we were free. Ordinarily we spent the morning sweltering in our marquees, saying unprintable and uncomplimentary things about the Egyptian weather. In the late afternoon and evening, we went to Cairo. About a mile from where we were camped, a street car line ran into the city. To get to it we generally rode across the desert on donkeys. Every afternoon, as soon as we had finished dinner, little native boys pestered us to hire donkeys. They were the same boys who poked their heads into our marquees each morning and implored us to buy papers. We needed no reveille in Egypt. The thing that woke us was a native yelling "Eengaleesh paper, veera good; veera good, veera nice; fifty thousand Eengaleesh killed in the Dardanelle; veera good, veera nice."

About a quarter of a mile across the desert from us was a camp for convalescent Australians and New Zealanders. As soon as the Australians found that we were colonials like themselves, they opened their hearts to us in the breezy way that is characteristically Australian. There is a Canadian hospital unit in Cairo. One medical school from Ontario enlisted almost en masse. Professors and pupils carry on work and lectures in Egypt just as they did in Canada. It was not an uncommon thing to see on a Cairo street a group composed of an Australian, a New Zealander, a Canadian, and a Newfoundlander. And once we managed to rake up a South African. The clean-cut, alert-looking, bronzed Australians, who impressed you as having been raised far from cities, made a tremendous hit with the Newfoundlanders. One chap who was returning home minus a leg, gave us a young wallaby that he had brought with him from Australia. One of our boys had a small donkey, not much larger than a collie dog, that he bought from a native for a few shillings. The men vied with each other in feeding the animals. Some fellows took the kangaroo one evening, and he acquired a taste for beer. The donkey's taste for the same beverage was already well developed. After that, the two were the center of convivial gatherings. The wallaby got drunk faster, but the donkey generally got away with more beer. When we were certain we were to go to the front, a meeting was held in our marquee. It was unanimously decided that not a man was to take a cent with him—everybody was to leave for the front absolutely broke—"to avoid litigation among our heirs," the spokesman said. The wallaby and the donkey benefited. The night before we left the desert camp, they were wined and dined. The next morning, the kangaroo, bearing unmistakable marks of his debauch, showed up to say good-by. We were not allowed to take him with us, and he was relegated to the Zoo in Cairo. The donkey, who had been steadily mixing his drinks from four o'clock the afternoon before, did not see us go. When we moved off, he was lying unconscious under one of the transport wagons.

Although we took advantage of every opportunity for pleasure, we had not lost sight of our real object. We were grateful for a chance to visit the Pyramids, and enjoyed our meeting with the men from the Antipodes, but Egypt soon palled. The Newfoundlanders' comment was always the same. "It's some place, but it isn't the front. We came to fight, not for sightseeing."