CHAPTER VI

NO MAN'S LAND

Our dugouts were located about a quarter of a mile inland from the edge of the Salt Lake. Somewhere at the other side of the Salt Lake was the cleverly concealed landing place of the aeroplane service. Commander Sampson, who had been in action since the beginning of the war, was in charge of the aeroplane squadron. One day, by clever manoeuvering he forced one of the enemy planes, a Taube, away from its own lines and back over the Salt Lake. Here after a spectacular fight in mid air, Sampson forced the other to surrender and captured his machine. The Taube he thereafter used for daily reconnaissance. Every afternoon we watched him hover over the Turkish lines, circle clear of their bursting shrapnel, poising long enough to complete his observations, then return to the Salt Lake with his report for our artillery and the navy. The day after Sam Lodge's burial, we watched two hostile 'planes chase Sampson back right to our trenches. When they came near enough, our men opened rapid fire that forced them to turn; but before Sampson reached his landing place at Salt Lake, we could see that he was in trouble. One of the wings of his machine was drooping badly. From the other side of the Salt Lake, a motor ambulance was tearing along towards the place where he was expected to land. The Taube sank gradually to the ground, the ambulance drew up to within about thirty feet of it, and turned about, waiting. We saw Sampson jump out of his seat, almost before the machine touched the ground, and walk to the waiting ambulance. The ambulance had just started, when a shell from a Turkish gun hit the prostrate aeroplane and tore a large hole in it. With marvelous precision, the Turkish battery pumped three or four shells almost on top of the first. In a few minutes, all that was left of the Taube was a twisted mass of frame work; of the wings, not a fragment remained.

But although Sampson had lost his 'plane, he had completed his mission. About half an hour later, the navy in the bay began a bombardment. We could see the men-o'-war lined up, pouring broadsides over our heads into the Turkish trenches. First, we saw the gray ships calmly riding the waves; then, from their sides came puffs of whitish gray smoke, and the flash of the discharge, followed by the jarring report of the explosion. Around the bend of Anafarta Bay, we saw creeping in a strange, low-lying, awkward-looking craft that reminded one of the barges one sees used for dredging harbors. It was one of the new monitors, the most efficiently destructive vessel in the navy. Soon the artillery on the land joined in. About four o'clock the bombardment had started; and all that afternoon the terrific din kept up. When we went into the firing line that evening at dark, the bombardment was still going on. About nine o'clock it stopped; but at three the next morning, it was resumed with even greater force. The part of the line we were holding was in a valley; to the right and left of us, the trenches ran up hill. From our position in the middle, we had a splendid view of the other parts of the line. All that morning the bombardment kept up. Our gunners were concentrating on the trenches well up the hill on the left. First we watched our shells demolish the enemy's front line trench. Immense shells shrieked through the air above our heads and landed in the Turks' firing line. Gradually but surely the huge projectiles battered down the enemy defenses. The Turks stuck to their ground manfully, but at last they had to give up. Through field glasses we could see the communication trenches choked with fleeing Turks. Some of our artillery, to prevent their escape, concentrated on the support trenches. This manoeuver served a double purpose: besides preventing the escape of those retreating from the battered front line trench, it stopped reinforcements from coming up. Still farther back, a mule train bringing up supplies, was caught in open ground in the curtain of fire. The Turks, caught between two fires, could not escape. In a short time all that was left of the scientifically constructed intrenchments was a conglomerate heap of sand bags, equipments, and machine guns; and on top of it all lay the mangled bodies of men and mules.

All through the bombardment, we had hoped for the order to go over the parapet. When we had been rushed to the firing line the night before, we thought it was to take part in the attack. Instead of this, we were held in the firing line. For the Worcesters on our left was reserved the distinction of making the charge. High explosives cleared the way for their advance, and cheering and yelling they went over parapet. The Turks in the front line trenches, completely demoralized, fled to the rear. A few, too weak or too sorely wounded to run, surrendered. While the bombardment was going on, our men stood in their trenches, craning their necks over the parapet. All through the afternoon, the excitement was intense. Men jumped up and down, running wildly from one point in the trench to another to get a better view. Some fired their rifles in the general direction of the enemy; "just a few joy guns," they said. Everybody was laughing and shouting delightedly. Down in the bay, the gray ships looked almost as small as launches in the mist formed by the smoke of the guns. The Newfoundlanders might have been a crowd rooting at a baseball game. Every few minutes, when the smoke in the bay cleared sufficiently to reveal to us a glimpse of the ships, the trenches resounded to the shouts of, "Come on, the navy," and "Good old Britain." And when the great masses of iron hurtled through the air and tore up sections of the enemy's parapet, we shouted delightedly, "Iron rations for Johnny Turk!"

Prisoners taken in this engagement told us that the Turkish rank and file heartily hated their German officers. From the first, they had not taken kindly to underground warfare. The Turks were accustomed to guerrilla fighting, and had to be driven into the trenches by the German officers at the point of their revolvers. One prisoner said that he had been an officer; but since the beginning of the campaign, he had been replaced by a German. At that time, he told us, the Turks were officered entirely by Germans. For two or three days after that, at short intervals, one or two at a time, Turks dribbled in to surrender. They were tired of fighting, they said, and were almost starved to death. Many more would surrender, they told us, but they were kept back by fear of being shot by their German officers.

With the monotony varied occasionally by some local engagement like this, we dragged through the hot, fly-pestered days, and cold, drafty, vermin-infested nights of September and early October. By the middle of October, disease and scarcity of water had depleted our ranks alarmingly. Instead of having four days on the firing line and eight days' rest, we were holding the firing line eight days and resting only four. In my platoon, of the six noncommissioned officers who had started with us, only two corporals were left, one other and I. For a week after the doctor had ordered him to leave the Peninsula, the other corporal hung on, pluckily determined not to leave me alone. All this time, the work of the platoon was divided between us; he stayed up half the night, and I the other half. At last, he had to be personally conducted to the clearing station.

Just about the middle of October comes a Mohammedan feast that lasts for three or four days. During the days of the feast, while our battalion was in the firing line, some prisoners who surrendered told us that the Turks were suffering severely from lack of food and warm clothing. All sorts of rumors ran through the trench. One was that some one had reliable information that the supreme commander of the Turkish forces had sent to Berlin for men to reinforce his army. If the reinforcements did not come in four days, he would surrender his entire command. Men ordered off the Peninsula by the medical officer, instead of proceeding to the clearing station, sneaked back to their positions in the trench, waiting to see the surrender. But the surrender never came. Things went on in the same old dreary, changeless round. More than sickness, or bullets, the sordid monotony had begun to tell on the men. Every day, officers were besieged with requests for permission to go out between the lines to locate snipers. When men were wanted for night patrol, for covering parties, or for listening post details, every one volunteered. Ration parties to the beach, which had formerly been a dread, were now an eagerly sought variation, although it was a certainty that from every such party we should lose ten per cent. of the personnel. Any change, of any sort, was welcome. The thought of being killed had lost its fear. Daily intercourse with death had robbed it of its horror. Here was one case where familiarity had bred contempt. Most of the men had sunk into apathy, simply waiting for the day their turn was to come, wondering how soon would come the bullet that had on it their "name and number." Most of the men in talking to each other, especially to their sick comrades, spoke hopefully of the outcome; but those I talked with alone all had the same thought: only by a miracle could they escape alive; that miracle was a "cushy one."

One wave of hope swept over the Peninsula in that dreary time. The brigade bulletin board contained the news that it was expected that in a day or two at the most Bulgaria would come into the war on the side of the Allies. To us this was of tremendous importance. With a frontier bordering on Turkey, Bulgaria might turn the scale in our favor. Life became again full of possibilities and interest. Our interpreters printed up an elaborate menu in Turkish that recited the various good things that might be found in our trenches by Turks who would surrender. At the foot of the menus was a little note suggesting that now was the ideal time to come in, and that the ideal way to celebrate the feast was to become our guests. These menus we attached to little stakes and just in front of the Turkish barbed wire we stuck them in the ground. Several Turks came in within the next few days, but whether as a result of this or not, it was impossible to say. The feeling of renewed hope and buoyancy caused by the news of the imminence of Bulgaria's alliance with us was of short duration. A day or so afterwards came the alarming news that the Allied ministers had left Bulgaria; and the following day came word that Bulgaria had joined in the war, not with us, but with the Central Powers. Again apathy settled on the men. Now, too, the rainy season had set in in earnest. Torrents of rain poured down daily on the trenches, choking the drains, and filling the passageway with thick gray mud in which one slipped and floundered helplessly, and which coated uniforms and equipments like cement. One relief it did bring with it. Men who had not had a bath, or a shave in months, were able to collect in their rubber sheets enough rain water to wash and shave with. But the drinking water was still scarce. On other parts of the Peninsula there was plenty of it; but we had so few men available for duty that we could scarcely spare enough men to go for it. Also, there was the difficulty in securing proper receptacles for its conveyance. Most of the men were very much exhausted, and the trip of four or five miles for water would have been too much for them. Even when we did get water, it had to be boiled to kill the germs of disease, and to prevent men from being poisoned. The boiled water was flat and tasteless; and to counteract this, we were given a spoonful of lime juice about once a week. This we put in our water bottles. About every third day we were issued some rum. Twice a week, an officer appeared in the trench carrying a large stone jar bearing the magic letters in black paint, P.D.R., Pure Demerara Rum. This he doled out as if every drop had cost a million dollars. Each man received just enough to cover the bottom of his canteen, not more than an eighth of a tumbler. Just before going out on any sort of night fatigue on the wet ground, it was particularly grateful. We had long ago given up reckoning time by the calendar, and days either were or were not "Rum days." Men who were wounded on these days bequeathed their share to their particular pals or to their dugout mates. Some of the men were total abstainers with the courage of their convictions; they steadfastly refused to touch it. The other men canvassed these on rum days for their share of the fiery liquid, and in exchange did the temperance men's share of fatigue duty. During this time, there was very little fighting. Both sides were intrenched and prepared to stay there for the winter. In the particular section of trench we held, we knew that any attempt at an advance would be hopeless and suicidal. The ground in front was too well commanded by enemy machine guns. Still, we thought that some other parts of the line might advance and turn one of the flanks of the enemy. Nothing was impossible to the Dublins or the Munsters; and there was always faith in the invincible Australasians. We could not forget the way the Australasians a short time before had celebrated the news of the British advance at Loos.

Just after the Turkish feast, we went into dugouts again for a few days, and back once more to the firing line. This time, we were up in the farm house district near Chocolate Hill. It was a place particularly exposed to shell fire; for the old skeletons of farm houses made good targets for the enemy's guns. Every afternoon, the Turks sent over about a dozen or so shells, just to show us that they knew we were there. After Bulgaria came in against us, it seemed to us that the Turks grew much more prodigal of their shells than formerly. Where before they sent over ten, they now fired twenty. It was rather grimly ironic to find, on examination of some of the shell casings, that they were shells made by Great Britain and supplied to the Turks in the Balkan War. There was a certain amount of sardonic satisfaction in knowing that the fortifications on Achi Baba were placed there by British engineers when we looked on the Turks as friends. No. 8 platoon was intrenched just in front of a field in which grew a number of apple trees. In the daytime we could not get to these, but at night some of the more venturesome spirits crawled out and returned with their haversacks full. A little further along was what had once been a garden. Even now there were still growing some tomatoes and some watermelons. The rest of it was a mass of battered stones that had once been fences. Here it was that the old gray bearded farmers who had been peacefully working in their fields had hung up their scythes and taken down from their hook on the wall old rusty muskets and fought in their dooryards to defend their homes. The oncoming troops had swept past them, but at a tremendous cost. For a whole day the battle had swayed back and forth. Where formerly had bloomed a luxuriant garden or orchard, was now a plowed field,--plowed not with farm implements but with shrapnel and high explosive shells. Dotting it here and there, were the little rough wooden crosses that gave the simple details of a man's regimental name, number, and date of death. Not a few of them were in memory of "Unknown Comrades." And once in a while one saw a cross that marked the resting place of the foe. Feeling toward the enemy differed with individuals; but we were all agreed that Johnny Turk was a good, clean, sporty fighter, who generally gave as good as we could send. Therefore, whenever we could we gave him decent burial, we stuck a cross up over him, although he did not believe in what it symbolized, and we took off his identification disk and personal papers. These we handed to our interpreters, who sent them to the neutral consuls at Constantinople; and they communicated through the proper channels with the deceased's various widows.

After a week or so in this district, we moved back again to our old quarters at Anafarta village. Here we took over a block house occupied by the Essex. The Dublins and the Munsters were on our right. The block house was an advanced post that we held in the morning and during the night. Every afternoon we left it for a few hours while the enemy wasted shells on it. A couple of Irish snipers were with us. The first day they were there, our Lieutenant, Mr. Nunns, spent the day with them; that day, he accounted for four Turks. This was the closest we had yet been to them. I stood up beside an Irish sniper and looked through a pair of field glasses to where he pointed out some snipers' dugouts. They were the same dugouts that Cooke, the Irish V.C. man, had shown me. While I was watching, I saw an old Turk sneaking out between his trench and one of the dugouts. He looked old and stooped and had a long whisker that reached almost to his waist and appeared to have difficulty in getting along. All about him were little canvas pockets that contained bombs and about his neck was a long string of small bombs. "Begob," said one of the Dublins, beside me, "'t is the daddy of them all. Get him, my son." I grasped my gun excitedly and aimed; but before I had taken the pressure of the trigger, I heard from a little distance to the right the staccato of a machine gun. The result was astonishing. One second, I was looking through my sights at the Turk; the next, he had disappeared, and in his place was the most marvelous combination of all colors of flames I have ever seen. Literally Johnny Turk had gone up in smoke. The Irishman beside me was standing open mouthed.

"Glory be to God," he said, "what does that make you think of?"

"It reminds me," I said, "of a Fourth of July celebration in the States; and I wish," I added heartily, "I was there now."

"It makes me think, my son," said the Irishman, "of the way ould Cooke killed a lot of the sausage-makers over on the other side. He threw a bomb in among tin of 'em and then fired his rifle at it and exploded it. Killed every damn one of 'em, he did. 'T was the same time he got the V.C."

"I suppose," I said, "Cooke's in London now getting his medal from the King. He's through with this Peninsula."

"Thrue for you, my son," said the Irishman, "he's through with this Peninsula, but he's not in London. 'T was just three nights ago that I went out yonder, and tin yards in front of that dugout I found ould Cooke's body. The Turrk got him right through the cap badge and blew the top clean off his head. 'T is just luck. Some has it one way, and some has it another; but whichever way you have it, it don't do you no good to worry over it."

Having delivered himself of this satisfying philosophy, he resumed his survey of the ground in front.

About ten yards outside the block house we were holding, the Turks had, under cover of darkness, almost completed a sap, with the object of surrounding the block house. A detachment of the Dublins with three or four bomb throwers sapped out to the left of the sap the enemy was digging, after a short but exciting engagement, bombed them out of it, and took the sap at the point of the bayonet. They found it occupied by only two Turks, who surrendered. The rest were able to get back to their own trench. We cut the corner off this sap, rounded it off to surround our block house, and occupied it. It brought us to within fifty yards of the enemy firing line. We could hear them talking at night; and in the daytime we could see them walking about their trenches. At this point, they had in their lines a number of animals, chiefly dogs. In addition, they had a brass band that played tuneless, wailing music nearly every night, to the accompaniment of the howling and barking of dogs. Some of the men claimed that the dogs were trained animals who carried food to snipers and who were taught to find the Turkish wounded. This may have been true; but I have always believed that their chief use was to cover the noise of secret operations. This seems likely, for they were able to get their sap almost finished without our hearing them.

The block house we held stood just in the center of the line that the Fifth Norfolks had charged into early in August, and from which not one man had emerged. The second or third day we occupied it, a detachment of engineers was sent in to make loopholes and prepare it for a stubborn defense. In the wall on the left they made a large loophole. The sentry posted there the first morning saw about twenty feet away the body of a British soldier, partly buried. Two volunteers to bury the body were asked for. Half a dozen offered, although it was broad daylight and the place the body lay in offered no protection.

Before any one could be selected, Art Pratt and young Hayes made the decision by jumping up, taking their picks and shovels, and vaulting over the wall of the block house. They walked out to where the body lay. It had been torn in pieces by a shell the previous afternoon. At first a few bullets tore up little spurts of ground near the two men, but as soon as they reached the body, this stopped. The Turks never fired on burial parties; and men on the Peninsula, wounded by snipers, tell strange stories of dark-skinned visitors who crept up to them after dark, bound up their wounds, gave them water, and helped them to within shouting distance of their own lines, where at daylight the next morning their comrades found them. Once one of our batteries was very near a dressing station when a stray shell, fired at the battery, hit the dressing station. The Turkish observer heliographed over and apologized. That is why we respected the Turk. When we tried to shoot him, he chuckled to himself and sniped us from trees and dugouts; and when we reviled him and threw tins of apricot jam at him, he gave thanks to Allah, and ate the jam. The empty tins he filled with powder and returned to us in the shape of bombs. Only once did he really lose his temper. That was when under his very eyes we deliberately undressed on his beach and disported ourselves in the AEgean Sea. Then he sent over shells that shrieked at us to get out of his ocean. But in his angriest moments he respected the Red Cross and never ill treated our wounded. One chap, an Englishman, was wounded in the head just as he reached the Turkish trench during a charge. The bullet went in the side of his head, ruining both his eyes. He was captured as he toppled over into the trench, was taken to Constantinople, well treated in hospital there, and returned in the first batch of exchanged prisoners. When I met him in Egypt, he had nothing but kind words for the Turks. When the enemy saw the object of the little expedition, they allowed Art and Hayes to proceed unmolested. We watched them dig a grave beside the corpse; and when they had finished, with a shovel they turned the body into it. Before doing it, they searched the man for personal papers and took off his identification disk. These bore the name, "Sergeant Golder, Fifth Norfolk Regiment." That was in the last part of October; and since August 10th not a word had been heard of the missing Norfolk regiment. To this day, the whole affair remains a mystery. The regiment disappeared as if the ground had swallowed them up. On the King's Sandringham estate, families are still hoping against hope that there may sometime come word that the men are prisoners in Turkey. Neutral consuls in Constantinople have been appealed to, and have taken the matter up with the Turkish Government. The most searching inquiries have elicited nothing new. The answer has always been the same. The Turkish authorities know no more about it than the English. Two hundred and fifty men were given the order to charge into a wood. The only sign that they ever did so, is the little wooden cross that reads

IN MEMORY OF SERGEANT J. GOLDER FIFTH NORFOLK REGIMENT KILLED IN ACTION