Made in Myrtle Street (Prequel) (11 page)

Chapter 5

The Trenches at Krithia

The battalion spent three busy days on ‘W’ beach. Edward and his friends helped the sappers, who had now arrived, to strengthen roads, dig ditches and to sink wells in the search for vital supplies of fresh water. They unloaded, under fire, the ships that came in and they helped the men of no.2 Transport to load the pack mules that took the supplies to dumps on the front lines. These transport men showed great initiative in finding mules, usually grazing in the fields where they had been left by the farmers, to replace those that had been killed.

The soldiers managed to have the promised swim but the shells dropping in the sea around them took the edge off the enjoyment. Rifle fire from snipers hidden in the woods meant the games of football were short and very fast. Any movement around the area was hazardous. The casualties mostly arose, though, when they were relaxed. They lay in shallow trenches or squeezed into crevices and the snipers watched for heads to appear over the edge of the shelter.

On the evening of the 11 May the order came through that they were to take over the front line trenches on the Krithia Nullah and the Krithia road. The nullah was another of the ravines that ran down the Peninsula from the village of Krithia and normally, unless there had been a heavy downpour, only a trickle of water flowed down it. Unfortunately, before it reached the Allied front line, the water had passed through the Turkish line and was dirty and contaminated. Although there was a deep pool which provided a decent bathing facility the water could not be used for drinking or cooking and there was a constant search for suitable supplies.

The battalion moved into their new positions during the night accompanied by the incessant rifle fire, the constant shelling and a heavy downpour of rain. Within a very short time the trickle of water had turned into a torrent which raged through the narrow channel carrying the debris of the higher valley – broken trees, uprooted bushes and the corpses of British and Turkish soldiers.

The bottom of the nullah rapidly turned into a quagmire and movement became increasingly difficult. Men took to the higher ground to avoid the mud but found that they were exposed to the Turkish riflemen. On the way up they passed dressing posts set up by the RAMC. Tarpaulins had been stretched over metal drums and a flag with a red cross hung damply from a pole. They saw the transport company, who were on their way down the gully, trying desperately to drive their mules through the thick, clinging mud.

By the next morning, the Salford soldiers, a few less than there had been the day before, were established in the trench and enjoying a welcome cup of tea and a bacon breakfast in the warming sun. The landscape here was different with a few disused smallholdings and the occasional small vineyard. There were some lines of trees and bushes but generally the area was more open and was splashed intermittently with vivid red patches of poppies.

As they ate their breakfasts they were joined by the flies that swarmed in their millions around them and then stayed all that day and every subsequent day. The food became rapidly covered with the insects, they clustered on every forkful en route to the mouth and were often eaten. Mugs of tea became full of them and they landed on every exposed part of the body. Some of the men sacrificed their piece of greasy bacon as a decoy for the flies in an endeavour to buy time to soak their hard biscuits in their mugs of tea. Corpses soon became a buzzing, heaving mass of flies and the injured would be plagued by them swarming on their open wounds. The only relief that they would ever get from this omnipresent nightmare was in the cold of the nights or during the misery of the heavy downpours of rain.

Crouched in their shallow trenches they heard an increased level of firing from various points along the lines and some heavy artillery fire to their left. The captain told them they would be involved later in these moves which were a distraction to support a big action that was planned.

The sun dried off their clothes that were still sodden from the previous night. They fired their limited ration of ammunition at the enemy lines, producing a heavy and disproportionate response from the Turks. A meal of bully beef and vegetables was brought up to them from the canteens on the beach by the struggling transport company and their hard pressed mules. Heavy fighting could be heard throughout the afternoon from the direction of Gully Spur to the west. The afternoon sun burned on their backs as they stood on the firing step watching through the sandbag parapet. Later in the day, they heard the wailing call to prayer from the enemy line and as darkness closed in they were gripped by the biting cold.

Sleep did not come readily or pleasantly to the tense, nervous soldiers waiting in the Spartan trenches. When the gold fingers of the morning sun began to feel their way through the night sky the men stretched their aching bodies in the restricted space. They straightened their kit and their uniforms and enjoyed delicious freshly baked bread from the newly constructed bakery on the beach. The bacon breakfast was transformed by it. They smoked, drank tea, swatted flies and listened to the constant whine of the shells grumbling under the raucous chattering of the rifle fire and speculated on the action that the captain had told them about the previous day. Frank Williams, the sergeant that Edward had followed over the top that long week ago, told them that the Ghurkhas had pulled off a brilliant attack on the hill above Gully Ravine. In a well planned move they had scrambled up the cliffs on the far side and had taken the hill with the Turkish trenches and the machine gun redoubts that had caused so much trouble. The Turks had been taken by surprise and most had fled terrified when they saw the Ghurkhas coming.

‘Don’t wonder,’ concluded the thoughtful Liam. ‘Fierce looking barmpots that lot. I told you what the old fella in the Railway said. They’d cut your throat as soon as shake your hand.’

***

Gallipoli

Turkey

16
^th
May 1915

Dear Pippin,

Happy Birthday Darling. Today is your 8th birthday and I am so sorry that I can’t be there to share it with you but I have been thinking about you all day. Your Mam wrote to me and told me that she had got some flour and she was going to bake a cake for you whilst you were all at school. She said that she had made some little coats and dresses for Dorothy so that would give you a nice surprise. I hope that Uncle Jim managed to make the cot for you. He is very clever at making furniture.

Pippin, now that you are growing up you will have to help to look after your Mam and the others for me because I can’t be there to help. If you see your Mam looking tired or sad then you give her a big squeeze and a kiss and say that Dad has sent it especially for her.

I’m sorry but I don’t think that I will be home for the summer holidays. I know that this will upset you but things are a bit tricky out here at the moment. We are doing a lot of digging to find water and to make places where we can stay. We sometimes catch chickens to cook but often we have difficulty finding enough firewood to cook things. It makes my fingers ache as well plucking the feathers off.

I told Billy Murphy’s Dad about Edward saying that we were coming down Cross Lane on camels and he laughed. He said that he would bring one home with him but the backyard would not be big enough to keep it in.

Keep on working hard at school, Laura, because it will be important for you when you get older.

Sending big hugs and kisses for all of you,

Love

Dad

***

By the end of May the Salford battalion had settled into a routine and a pattern of manning the lines. They would firstly spend three days in the front line from which attacks could be mounted and which provided the first line of defence in the event of enemy attack. This would be followed by three days in the support trench, from where troops could be fed into the front line assault, and from where they moved equipment and supplies into the front line. Finally they would spend the last three days of the cycle in reserve where, despite the commitments of engineering work and other duties, they were able to relax a little more.

Like all his pals, Edward enjoyed the reserve trench phase the most. They got more exercise, played a little football, had a yarn with their mates and attended to their personal hygiene. There were often casualties, as the Turkish snipers watched for men who were momentarily off their guard, but now they were more careful. The unfortunates who were hit were helped or taken away and those that were left got on with whatever they were doing.

Edward knew that the situation in Gallipoli, after a month of futile warfare and over 38,000 casualties for the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, had not improved in any way. They had failed to achieve any of the initial targets that had been defined and the blood stained few miles of Turkish fields that they now occupied was only a tenuous toehold onto the Peninsula. Now, because of the collapse of the Russian campaign further north, freed up Turkish troops were pouring into Gallipoli as reinforcements.

Edward and his friends only saw what was happening in the area that they were operating in but they heard a lot of both news and gossip through the daily exchanges with the transport company. He heard about the failure to take any more ground, about the casualties, about the lack of supplies and the small number of replacement troops coming in. From the sailors on the supply ships they heard that the campaign on the Western Front was not going well, either, and that there had been a huge loss of lives.

Edward had already seen so many of his Salford mates go down that his mind now refused to contemplate the horror of it. The whine of the shells followed by the explosions and the crack of the rifle fire had become a background noise that went on night and day. His brain had built a protective barrier that insulated his mind against the claustrophobic din of warfare along with the need to think about the deaths and the mutilations.

They moved away the bodies of their friends and played their game of football.

Chapter 6

A New Strategy

On the 1 June 1915 the battalion was warned that they should be prepared to move and two days later the orders for the attack were issued. This time the strategy had been more thoughtfully prepared and the target – to move the line forward by half a mile – was more achievable. Edward’s division was in the centre of the Peninsula on the road that came down from Krithia and beyond the valley, or nullah, to their left would be the 88th Brigade. Beyond them, on the other side of Gully Ravine and down to the Aegean Sea, would be the Indian Brigade. To Edward’s right there would be the Royal Naval Division and to their right, and reaching out to the Dardanelles Straits, would be the French Colonial troops.

The Turks had realized that an attack was threatened and they spent the night shooting even more nervously at shadows in the darkness of no-man’s land. For Edward and his pals it was another long, cold, almost sleepless night spent smoking and occasionally chatting but mostly they were lost deep in their own thoughts.

‘Do you remember that coalman, Joe, who had a yard on Ellor Street?’ Big Charlie’s question broke into their thoughts. ‘Bit of an odd name for a coalman, wasn’t it? Joseph Coke Wood.’

‘Aye, you’re not wrong there,’ Liam chuckled. ‘I don’t know whether it was his real name or not but we managed to earn a few coppers through him. Do you remember when Dirty Lil gave us that pram and asked us to go to Joe’s and get it filled up with coal because his horse had taken bad.’

‘I remember that,’ Edward said. ‘We finished up with the pram and went round all the houses to see who else needed any.’

‘And it was me that did all the lugging while you two ponced around knocking on doors,’ grumbled Big Charlie.

‘Well, it was a good job that we did,’ Liam answered. ‘You wanted to do it all for nothing. That Joe would have thought that he was on a right good number there. Us running around the streets, working our goolies off while he sat there drinking his pints of tea.’

‘It might have been a bit more than tea. He always seemed a bit jolly at the end of the day,’ Edward added.

‘He might well have felt a bit jolly,’ Liam retorted. ‘Three skivvies running round while he sat there with his feet up.’

‘There was that place next door, what was it called? Made shoes for the posh people up Langworthy Road,’ Edward said.

‘Well, that would leave me out,’ Liam snorted. ‘I was only ever sent to that Kettley’s for a pair of clogs. And then I only ever had one new pair. The rest of the time they were hand-me-downs from our kid.’

‘It was called Thomas Preston’s. They were right good shoes. Mine lasted for ages.’

Edward and Liam stared incredulously at Big Charlie. ‘Just listen to the Duke of Salford over there. What were you doing patronising a place like that? Humble peasants like me and Eddie were never allowed to cross the threshold.’

‘My Grandad treated me once. Said that I had to have a change from wearing clogs at Whit Week. Got me a size too big because I was growing too quick.’

‘I remember the shop near there that used to sell ladies’ underwear,’ Liam enthused. ‘That was an important part of my sexual education – sneaking up there with the other spotty faced youths when it was going dark to have a quick snigger.’

‘There wasn’t that much to look at,’ Big Charlie pointed out. ‘They were all corsets. All whalebone and wobble my Mam used to say.’

‘There was the occasional glimpse of some rather large pantaloons,’ Edward said helpfully.

‘It’s all right you mocking but we weren’t even allowed to think about such things at the catholic school. Looking in that shop window was the nearest that I could get to a bit of sin.’