WITH A B.-P. SCOUT IN GALLIPOLI—ON THE TURKISH FRONTIER
Reading edition
A Record of the Belton Bulldogs Told by Edmund Yerbury Priestman, Scoutmaster of the 16th (Westbourne) Sheffield Boy Scouts
These anecdotes and experiences are related in the letters written home by a scoutmaster serving as a subaltern. The author, at the outbreak of the War, officered the Boy Scouts who were guarding places of danger from spies in England. He took a commission in the 6th Battalion of the York and Lancaster Regiment, and shipped for Suvla Bay in the Dardanelles Campaign. Here this young English officer of twenty-five years of age fell in action on November 19th, 1915. His letters have been collected into a book under title "With a B.-P. Scout in Gallipoli." They form one of the few really humorous books the War has produced, with an irrepressible outburst of a youth who always saw the cheerful side of life. Some of these letters are here reproduced with courtesy of his American publishers, E. P. Dutton and Company, of New York. All rights reserved.
[12] I—STORY OF A DUGOUT UNDER JOHNNY TURK'S GUNS
Somewhere in Turkey.
I am sitting on a rolled-up valise, a sort of hold-all in a dugout on a hillside, while a weary "fatigue" party is digging more dugouts. Writing isn't easy, as I have to balance the paper on my knee, so pardon! This little hole in Europe (i.e. this dugout) appears to belong to a Second-Lieutenant Huggins—at least, that's the name of the valise—and taken all round it is quite a good hole to live in. Our life has become analogous to the life of a rabbit, and we vie with each other as to the security of our respective burrows against the little attentions paid us daily by the Turkish gunners. Mr. Huggins, so far as security goes, has done well, as his lair is dug some five feet deep and strongly built up with stone parapets. Lying at the bottom he (or the present occupier, E. Y. P.) would be fairly safe against either shrapnel or high explosive. But when he lays him down to sleep I guess Huggins will be one of the sickest soldiers on the Peninsula, for in the left-hand a party of some 1,000,000 ants are at this moment digging themselves in! Itchi koo! as the song says.
We are really reserve, resting at present, but it seems that we have to do all the dirty work for the fellows who have taken over our nice comfortable trenches, and we shan't be sorry to get back into them on Sunday next.
The great advantage of our present position is that the hill we are on runs down to the sea, and every day we can get a dip, so long as we stay here. After a week or two in the trenches we certainly need plenty of bathing, and I caught two of the minor horrors of war in my shirt yesterday. One of them (the hen-bird) won the prize offered by one of the subalterns for the biggest caught. Private Jones's boast that he had caught one "as big as a mule" failed to materialise when the time for weighing-in came. So mine (no larger than an average mouse) won easily.
At this point I will break off for a lunch of bully and biscuits.
To resume, having finished my lunch, using Mr. Huggins' valise as a table.
Away to the east, along this ridge of hills, somebody is firing machine-guns and artillery, but as I can only see the smoke of the shrapnel away up in the sky above the hilltops, I don't know whether they are our guns or Johnny Turk's. If they are his we shall soon have some over us here, as he has picked up the Hun's habit of having at least one daily "hate." Another shell has burst—nearer us this time. Yes, Johnny is out for blood, so I have moved the Huggins bundle and settled myself on the hard, cold floor of the Palace Huggins, where the shrapnel bullets will have more difficulty in finding me.
The system the gunners go on is to send an officer up a hill to a place where he can see the countryside. He observes through the 'scope where the places are that the enemy troops mostly use, paths, wells, dugouts, etc., and marks them on his map, probably numbering them points 1, 2, 3, and so on. He also has an accurate rangefinder and a telephone connecting him with the battery of guns. If he sees a party of men at a certain spot, he wires down: "Give 'em socks at point 17," or words to that effect, and we get a few shells along, while the observing officer scores the hits. Other days I rather suspect he puts all the numbers into a hat and shakes them up. Then he picks one out, and with luck the shell falls two miles away from anyone and wipes out an ant-hill with great slaughter.
He's a peculiar gentleman, old man Turk. One night when I was going my rounds in the trenches I noticed a general rush at a point where generally some of our liveliest boys want suppressing, so I listened, as everyone else seemed to be doing, and away from behind the Turks' trenches came a sound of a band, playing some real racy oriental music. We had quite a promenade concert. Coming from over the rugged top of a rocky hill and through the quiet starlit night it was quite weird, in a way, but we all enjoyed it. In France the Germans often have a bit of a concert before any big attack, but although we thought Johnny Turk might be going to do the same, no attack came off that night. We did have a mild attack once—see enclosed account[13]—but the enemy never got within very exciting distance of the section of the trench I was responsible for. Anyway, you can show this printed account round, and tell everyone that your son helped General Maxwell to hold the Turks back. What! What!
II—WHEN THE GENERAL VISITS THE BOYS
Talking about generals: we all came out of the trenches feeling very sorry for ourselves when we were relieved a week ago. Certainly we were dog-tired and inexpressibly dirty. The day following our Divisional General elected to inspect us. Thought we to ourselves: "This means that he is going to see what is left of us, just to see if we are even good enough to go as a garrison to, say, Malta." Someone even whispered "India." Certainly no one would for one moment have suggested the possibility of our being of the least use as a fighting unit ever again. As a matter of fact, in numbers, health, and morale we were pretty weak. The General looked on the brighter side, however, and our dreams of Bombay were shattered pretty quickly. The General made a speech. He said that probably not since the days of the Peninsular War had troops such a hard time as we had during the past month. (We sighed solemn approval.) We had come through well. He told us that our hardships had apparently left us little the worse. (At this point a private fell forward in a faint—for which piece of acting I firmly believe he had been subsidised by his fellow-men! The body having been ostentatiously removed, the General continued.) There were other hard times ahead for us, he said (exit dream of India), but for several days yet we should continue to rest. ("Fall in, those fifty men with picks and shovels!" came the voice of a sergeant-major some distance away.) "And here y'are," concluded the General, looking round at the circle of faces ingrained with brown dust and looking swarthy in consequence, "here y'are all looking as fit as can be!" He ended by saying that when he had got our reinforcements out from home he felt sure we should be as good a fighting force as ever—which I suppose we shall be. All the same, we shall have earned a rest soon, I hope.
The ridge of hills we're on is very much the shape (and nearly the height) of the Maiden Moor and Catbells ridge. First comes a place like Eel Crags, all covered with dugouts on the Newlands side and occupied by hundreds of troops. Then you come on, still on the same side, by a footpath to about the middle of Maiden Moor. Here you will find us, only instead of our homes looking down into the valley, they look down on to the sea-shore and away out to sea, where we can see one or two rocky islands and far away the coast of the mainland of Turkey, a bit of Bulgaria, and a bit of Greece. Over on the other side we can see right away down the Peninsula and pick out all the positions you read about in the papers. Following on the ridge, you come to a dip before reaching the hill corresponding to Catbells, and here is our trench, running over the saddle of the hill. Beyond, on the slope, is the Turkish trench, and somewhere about where that old "skeleton" is that we used to see from the lake as we rowed to Keswick, the Turks have their guns. They also have one beyond the end of the ridge, about where Crossthwaite is. Well, that gives you the general situation of our part of the line, without saying too much.
The trouble at present is that they can't locate the exact position of the Turks' big gun, which is very cleverly hidden. The Navy, the artillery, and the airmen have all been hunting for weeks, but so far none of them have put it out of action, and "Striking Jimmy," as we call him, goes on calmly dropping nine-inch high explosives about the hills. Fortunately he doesn't often hit anything really important (touch wood!—he's just sent a shell in our direction).
I met Owen quite unexpectedly on the beach the other day. His section is stationed some miles from here, so I sha'n't be likely to run across him again. It was very lucky seeing him at all. He was very busy making pumping arrangements for the water supply, and I (as usual, in charge of a fatigue-party) was asleep under one of his water-tanks, when he began to curse me for being on prohibited premises. It was quite funny! Then he recognized me, and we had a whole afternoon together. He's had some pretty rough times and narrow escapes, just as I have, but we've both got so far and quite hope to finish all safe now.
Don't ask me how things are going here. You, who see the newspapers, know far more than we do.
III—"WHISTLING WILLIE"—AND THE HUMAN GUNS
When you have lived for ten days in a region where they wander whistling overhead, where they somersault eccentrically in circles, where they drop bits of themselves with the buzz of a drunken bumblebee, where, in fact, they do everything but burst, you come to know the projectile family fairly intimately. In fact, some poetically constructed Bulldog has christened the various members of the family.
First, there is Whistling Willie, a bustling soul, who does his journey, between the boom of leaving his front door and the moment when he sneezes up a cloud of dust in front of our parapet, in about four and a half seconds. You can almost hear him saying to the Turkish gunners: "Now then, you chaps, come on, buck up, look alive! That's it, off we go, booooom! zizzzzz! Here we are—tishoo!" Yes, he's a brisk, pushing lad, is Willie, but rather superficial really. There's more swagger and dust about him than the result justifies—although it's only fair to say that he once threw up a stone large enough to upset the Adjutant's tea. Probably the war will end (if ever) with that deed of questionable military significance to his credit, and no more.
Willie's cousin, Whispering Walter, also of Ottoman origin, is a fellow of infinitely more worth and solidity. Though he takes longer over his trip from the muzzle to the mark he makes up for lost time when he gets there. It is rather as though he gave his gunners instructions to push him off slowly so as to give him time to pick a good place to drop. "Very good," they say to him, "off yer goes!" Booooom! A pause. Then Walter comes into our area—"Whizzlizzlizzle," he whispers to himself confidentially, as much as to say, "Now where, down below, is a good fat Brigadier, or a mountain battery, or a pile of stores (dash it, I must hurry up and spot something; I'm nearly exhausted)—oh, a girls' school, a cabbage-patch—anything!" And down he comes—whang!—as often as not half a mile from anything he could damage. There is a lesson on the futility of procrastination in Walter's methods.
Walter has two brothers, Clanking Claud and Stumer Steve. Claud always sets out, like his elder brother, in a meditative mood. Having traveled a sufficient distance and found nothing worthy of his mettle, he decides, apparently, to show his independence by never coming down from his airy height to earth at all. So "Kerlank!" he says, and disappears ostentatiously in a cloud of white smoke some fifty yards above us. True, he showers a lot of little leaden marbles, but that merely shows his spiteful nature.
And then there is poor Stumer Steve. "If ye have tears, prepare to shed them now," for Stephen is both blind and dumb. Though he sets out full as his brothers of resolution, though, like Walter, he whispers promises of daring deeds, like Claud, passes with discriminating deliberation over the ground below, yet his final descent is a hollow and meaningless affair, though pathetic withal, "Plunk!" In a word the requiem of Steve. A young and apparently vigorous life robbed of its final destiny, a career despoiled of its rightful goal. Often we find he is filled with—sawdust! Sawdust! Like any sixpence-halfpenny doll! Sometimes he is empty altogether. Poor Steven, the best that can be said of him, even when in desperation he lands upon a stone and goes hurtling away in spiral somersaults, is—"stumer," and even that's an American word!
Quite another kettle of fish is Greasy Gregory. There is a solemnity, a grandeur, and a determination about Greg that inspires respect. Also he is just about twice the size of his fellows and takes quite twice as long in making his way to earth. The mysterious and rather awe-inspiring feature of his performance is that you never hear him start! Possibly you are sitting over a slice of bacon or a savoury, bully stew when he makes his advent known. Just a greasy flutter overhead and then "Crash!" Gregory has come.
Everything gets up and changes places in a cloud of yellow dust and smoke. The atmosphere being thick, things that have no sort of right there get into intimate and inconvenient places (tea-pots, tunic pockets, etc.), and I have spent as much as twenty minutes in a time of famine separating Gallipoli Peninsula from raspberry-jam after one of Gregory's little jokes.
Last, and least, comes the clown of the party—Airy Archibald. His specialty is aeroplanes, and his efforts are acknowledged to be purely humorous by both sides. His methods are something like this. On some still, cloudless afternoon a distant buzzing sound is heard, heralding the approach of an aeroplane. Instantly Archibald springs into life. Whoop-pop!
Somewhere (it generally takes a good deal of finding) a tiny puff of smoke appears against the blue. Never by any chance is it in the same quarter of the sky as the aircraft. Whoop-pop! Whoop-pop! One after another they leap up to have a look. The airman never takes the smallest notice, but sails serenely on, and never yet have I seen Archibald get within a thousand yards of his object. Once, so rumor has it, he did get nearer, so near, in fact, that two of his bullets hit a wing of the machine. But the shock of success was too great, and Archie's empty shell falling to earth put two of his own gunners out of action! This story I cannot vouch for, but this I know, that after a monoplane has actually disappeared over the horizon I have seen Archibald jump viciously at him four times and every time miss him by quite three miles! Well, here's to you, my comic friend. You add a humor to life, and I wish the others could follow your lead, and, taking life less seriously, give us as wide a miss.
(Four weeks later, the writer of this narrative fell in the trenches a victim of these Turkish guns.)