History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0452/04522.txt

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$Pretitle{}
$Title{True Stories Of The Great War
With A B.P. Scout In Gallipoli - On The Turkish Frontier}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Priestman, Edmund Yerbury}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{away
general
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time
come
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guns
huggins
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$Date{1916}
$Log{}
Title:       True Stories Of The Great War
Book:        With A B.P. Scout In Gallipoli - On The Turkish Frontier
Author:      Priestman, Edmund Yerbury
Date:        1916

With A B.P. Scout In Gallipoli - On The Turkish Frontier

I - Story Of A Dugout Under Johnny Turk's Guns

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 writthe 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.]

[Footnote *: All numerals relate to stories herein told - not to chapters in
the original sources.]

     I am sitting on a rolled-up valise, a sort of hold-all in a dug-out on
a hillside, while a weary "fatigue" party is digging more dug-outs.  Writing
isn't easy, as I have to balance the paper on my knee, so pardon!  This
little hole in Europe (i.e. this dug-out) 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 large 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, dug-outs, etc.,
and marks them on his map, probably numbering them points 1, 2, 3, and so on.
He also has an accurate range-finder 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 Turk's 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^* -
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!

[Footnote *: A sudden attack was made on the right of the 11th Division and
upon the extreme left of the 29th Division about 2 o'clock on the night of
the 1st instant.  It commenced with shell, machine gun, and rifle fire on
Jephson's post and along Keretch Tepe Sirt ridge.  Brigadier-General Maxwell
was holding the right section of the 11th Division when a body of the enemy
attempted a bomb and bayonet assault under cover of their bombardment.  There
was no heart, however, in the attack, and it was easily repulsed with loss
to the enemy.

     The Navy, as usual on such occasions, were prompt with their assistance,
and the flanking torpedo-boat destroyer with her searchlight lit up the
northern slopes of Keretch Tepe and effectively stopped the enemy from
pressing in along the coast.]

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 dug-outs on the Newlands side and occupied by
hundreds of troops.  Then you come on, still on the same side, by a foot-path
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.)