GALLIPOLI

The 42nd Division was soon in the midst of hard fighting, stormy weather and much privation. Casualties began early, though the first Battalion exploit under fire was happily bloodless. On the 9th May, 80 men were told off to fill water-bottles and carry them under fire over half-a-mile of broken ground to an Australian unit. They tracked cleverly across the moor, and were met by an eager Australian with the question: "Have you brought the water, cobbers?" On the 11th, the Battalion had a long, weary march to the front line. The trenches were full of water, and the gullies became almost impassable. On the 28th, Lockwood, our musketry expert, was severely wounded in the chest.

On the same day Lieutenant-Colonel Gresham was forced by ill-health to leave us. He was invalided to Malta, and thence to England. A year later he relinquished his command, without having been able to rejoin. He had served with the Battalion ever since 1890. He was known to suffer from chronic illness, but he let nothing interfere with the call of duty, and his hard work overseas set a fine example to all ranks. It is, indeed, still, in 1917, difficult to think of the Battalion with any other Commanding Officer. His departure was widely regretted, and the later achievements of his men in the War are the best tribute to the many years of labour he had given to their training and organisation.

His immediate successor in command was Major Staveacre. On the night of the 28th May the Battalion advanced, and B and D Companies dug themselves in under a full moon and in the face of the enemy, a platoon of C Company finishing the work on the following evening. In these operations fell Captains T.W. Savatard and R.V. Rylands, men of sterling character and capacity, and Lieut. T.F. Brown, a gallant boy, who, in the happier days of the threatened war in Ulster, had served in the West Belfast Loyalist Volunteers.

The advance of the 28th May was preliminary to the historic attack of the whole allied line from sea to sea, which had been timed for midday on the 4th June 1915. In this attack the Battalion advanced as the extreme right unit of our Infantry Brigade. On the left of the Manchesters was the 29th Division; on our right was the Royal Naval Division, and on their right were the French.

During the previous night the Turks, writes an eyewitness in the Sentry, gave us "our first taste of bombing. They crawled down a small gully and threw eight or nine bombs on to our gun emplacement, hurting no one, but putting the gun out for twenty minutes." Meanwhile they fired the gorse in front of the 29th Division.

gallipoli

GALLIPOLI.

At eight in the morning the British guns opened the bombardment. "At eleven-twenty our whole line from the sea to the Straits got up and waved their bayonets, pretending the attack was to start." At twelve, "with wild cheers" the assault was launched. A and C Companies rushed the first Turkish trench, and captured the surviving occupants, while along a front that stretched far away to the left, similar success was won by the whole British line. While A and C Companies consolidated the trench they had won, B and D Companies passed over it, in order to take the next Turkish line. Captain (afterwards Major) C.E. Higham, always resourceful and imperturbable, was shot in the foot while crossing the trench, but Captain (afterwards Lieutenant-Colonel) Fawcus led the attack a long way forward, and held a dummy trench in the heart of the Turkish position for many hours.

Subsequently the right flank of the Battalion was not only enfiladed but exposed to fire from their rear. The officers at this deadly point were Lieutenants H.D. Thewlis, W.G. Freemantle and F.C. Palmer. Palmer was badly wounded. Thewlis, a keen subaltern and expert in scientific agriculture, refused to retire, and was killed. Freemantle was of Quaker stock and, like Thewlis, a graduate of Manchester University. He was first shot through the right arm, and then through the left. He insisted on remaining with his men, though the pain was so intense that he broke his teeth while clenching them. He was then shot through the body, and died.

C Company on this right flank was in danger. Lieutenant G.C. Hans Hamilton, a prince of fighters, had organised a bombing party with Corporal Cherry, and did great work, but was now severely wounded. Leonard Dudley, an adventurous soul who had fought under Staveacre with the Cheshire Yeomanry in South Africa, was killed. Captain Cyril Norbury, who commanded the Company, had written to Major Staveacre for information, and he received this answer from Captain Creagh: "Regret to say Major Staveacre dead; also Thewlis and Freemantle. Do not know whereabouts of missing platoons. Fear most lost."

Staveacre had been shot through the back while passing ammunition to the firing line. He said to Regimental Sergeant-Major H.C. Franklin (the Acting Adjutant of our later days on Gallipoli): "Never mind me. Carry on, Sergeant-Major," and died at once.

All day long the Turks counter-attacked the Manchesters without success. Private Richardson won the D.C.M. by bombing feats, but the supply of bombs ran out early. Their use was in its infancy, and their character was primitive. C Company, among whom Sergeant M'Hugh, Corporal Basnett and Private (afterwards Lieutenant) J.W. Sutherland were conspicuous, was reinforced by some gallant bombers from another battalion of the Manchesters under Captain James, who was killed after driving the Turks from a trench, and later by some of the Lancashire Fusiliers. They held their own, and a last Turkish counter-attack, on the morning of the 5th June, was scattered by our machine guns and those of the Lancashire Fusiliers, well handled by Captains Hayes and Bedson.

Fawcus brought back about nine survivors from his advanced position after great feats of endurance, in which the Manchester units on our left had fully shared. Lieutenant T.E. Granger, who had been left behind dangerously wounded, was taken prisoner. Lieutenant Ward was killed. Lieutenant Bateman was shot through the lungs; Lieutenant G. Norbury on the scalp.

On the 4th June the Brigadier, General Noel Lee, was mortally wounded, to the intense and universal sorrow of the whole Division. He died in Malta. Lieutenant-Colonel Heys, on taking his place, was immediately killed. The retreat from the more advanced trenches to the original Turkish firing line, necessitated by enfilade fire and by the absence of reinforcements, proved far deadlier than the advance. The battle, with its preliminary operations, cost us some of our bravest sergeant-majors and sergeants—Cookson, Arnott, Marvin, Mundy, Balfe, Webster. Sergeant Lindsay lost his leg. Of them and of all the men of the 42nd Division, who gave their lives in this action, any praise is superfluous.

A broad strip of land gained securely on a wide frontage, an immense number of Turkish dead and prisoners, and a sense of great personal ascendancy, were the measure of their success, and General Sir Ian Hamilton's dispatch truly estimates its quality.

The survivors of the Battalion rested for a few days on Imbros after the battle, and then returned to the Peninsula under the command of Captain P.H. Creagh. On the 16th July the command was passed to Lieutenant-Colonel A. Canning, a veteran of the Egyptian War of 1882, who had previously commanded the Leinster Regiment at Cork. We could have had no greater confidence in any possible Commanding Officer, and while he acted as Brigadier of the Manchester Territorials his influence was no less inspiring. The record of our later campaign on Gallipoli is closely associated with his name and work.

All these early scenes of the expedition to the Dardanelles I had missed. On the 17th March I had been invalided home on the Indian hospital ship, Glenart Castle, Alexandria to Southampton, and the only public meeting I witnessed during three years of warfare—a recruiting rally in the Manchester Hippodrome—was a poor outlet for one's activity. An offer of the command of the new 3rd line reserve unit at Southport naturally failed to quench my keenness to rejoin the Battalion, and after vexatious delays I at last sailed from Devonport for the East, on the Simla, on the 13th July 1915.

We reached Alexandria on the 25th, and the crowded harbour of Mudros early on the 29th. The boat was full of drafts for the 29th Division—Essex and Hampshire men, Inniskillings, Munsters, Royal and Lancashire Fusiliers, Worcesters—and rumours of the intended Suvla expedition were in the air. Our optimism was, however, chastened by the opinions of one experienced soldier on board, who insisted that we ought never to have landed at Cape Helles, but on the Gulf of Saros behind the lines of Bulair, and made straight for Constantinople with a large army, without trying to force the Dardanelles. He believed that the Germans would still take Warsaw, and thought Holland's co-operation essential to any plan of early success. The War was still at a stage when men did not mind talking about it, and the general assumption was that it could not last long. One sailor told me a story typical of the German's ignorance of sportsmanship. A captured naval officer was courteously allowed the use of the British captain's cabin. A few moments later a crash announced that he had requited chivalry by breaking everything he could lay his hands on. Other passengers on the Simla were nursing sisters in dainty scarlet and grey, naval airmen who disembarked at Valetta, and the whole staff of an Australian General Hospital bound for Mudros—expert specialist officers and splendid men, with songs cheery and robust:

"When the beer's on the table, we'll be there."

Perhaps my most vivid memories, however, are of the keen young officers conducting drafts, who were so soon to fall in the great attempt at Suvla.

The fate of one of these, J.R. Lingard, then in charge of some Lancashire Fusiliers, was one of the unsolved mysteries of the Dardanelles campaign. A brave and popular officer, he was severely wounded on the 21st August. He was carried out of action and placed on a stretcher for conveyance across Suvla Beach to a hospital ship. At this point all trace of him disappeared. His fate is unknown.

In the late afternoon of the 30th July 1915 we neared Cape Helles and heard the thunder of the guns. We landed laboriously about midnight, and were led by guides to a rendezvous of the 29th Division at a point some three miles along the coast on the northern side of the Peninsula. Brilliant moonlight shone upon a sleeping French force close to the landing-place on "V" Beach. The country looked unspeakably dry and bare.

At six o'clock the following morning we were divided into details for our various units, and sleepless, unshaven and hungry, I was again guided to where the 42nd Division had its headquarters—a spot to the south of the 29th, and, roughly, in the left centre of the short line of the Allies. The narrowness and shallowness of the area of our occupation struck all observers at once. The great ridge of Achi Baba, some six hundred feet above sea-level, barring our advance upon Turkey, confronted us the very moment that we climbed to the top of the cliffs that enclosed every landing-place. We were shelled as we struck across the moorland, and then I found myself once more in East Lancashire.

A long wait at Divisional Headquarters was followed by a delightful welcome at the Quartermaster's dump of the Battalion, where, in blazing sunshine, I enjoyed my first food and shave on enemy soil, and abundant news of the unit. A friendly sergeant then led me up to the fire trenches some two miles forward, where the Manchesters held both sides of Krithia nullah, a ravine running up into a sloping heath, where the Turks had lain dug in for the last two months. Our way, after passing "Clapham Junction," was fringed with the graves of the fallen. I noticed Staveacre's.

It was pleasant to reach the cool burrow, which served as our Battalion Headquarters. Here I found Colonel Canning, P.H. Creagh and Fawcus sitting on the yellow, dusty ground beneath a tarpaulin. It was thrilling once again to walk among our Manchester men, now very thin and sunburnt, in shirt-sleeves and shorts, making the best of life in narrow trenches, and watching day after day the serried Turkish lines and broad, brown mass of Achi Baba. Next day (1st August), in mid-afternoon, we moved into the most advanced fire trenches, and I became O.C. of our Battalion's firing line, with a small dug-out of my own in the centre of our sector. This sector was within forty or fifty yards of the Turkish position, and in the early morning, as the sun rose over Asia, we heard the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer. There was a lull at this time in warfare. Casualties were few, and the periscope disclosed little beyond the vista (soon too familiar) of arid heath, broken only by patches of wild thyme, and of the intricate lacework of sandbagged trenches stretching from the tip of Cape Helles behind us to the top of Achi Baba. But for the constant booming of the guns and the plague of flies, these first days on Gallipoli were days of peace and happiness under a quiet, blue sky. Our men were hopeful, and a stray memorandum of mine of the 3rd August records that "P.H. Creagh bets Fawcus £1 that the Turks will be driven out of the Peninsula within a month." Our faith was great in those days.