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With Manchesters in the East

Chapter 6 THE STRAIN

Word Count: 2168    |    Released on: 06/12/2017

alta, who were lent to the Royal Naval Division. Many West Kent officers and N.C.O.'s were for a time attached to the Battalion, and proved admirable comrades. The 42nd Division received some sc

n then in the field, nearly 100 were on detached jobs-signaller

alth meant loss of vigour. Limited to one bottle of water a day for all purposes, and perpetually a prey to flies, heat, diarrh?a and want of rest, the soldier had a trying time. Rations of a type welcome in a northern climate were unpalatable in Turkey. In July and August we were liberally supplied with vegetables and raisins, and with much-prized golden syrup for our porridge; but the latter luxury then disappeared, while for several months our only vegetables were onions, which do not appeal to every palate. Jams, even when the pots wer

F. Farrow (our own veteran M.O.) in July, but indeed all the units were happy in their doctors, and emetine in dysentery cases was a gift of gold. Nor could a Brigade have had a more gallant an

rable friends and national and local organisations. One mother of two boys of the Battalion who had lost their lives wrote to me, while sending parcels for their surviving comrades: "I dare say that life is dreary for them, poor lads. God in His me

despair while she

and humour. A chorus starting with: "We are the M.G." proclaimed the jollity of our Machine Gun Section and the ingenuity of Sergeant W. Harrison. A Machine Gun Corps of the larger type, organised under the energetic command of Captain Hayes, was a thing of the future. A long list of singers and performers-Hartnett, Mort, Addison (of ragtime celebrity), Wheelton, Holbrook, Hoyle,

are not brought up to read; the Sentry writers were exceptional. When I once came upon a man reading the Golden Treasury, in Hardship Avenue, I knew he could not be a Manchester man. He was

ked out from these lonely places in the midst of No Man's Land upon scattered heaps of corpses, and in their front upon the well-built Turkish trenches, substantially wired in and full of cleverly disguised loopholes. Two sentries were placed in each "T-head." The man on watch was exposed to oblique fire from all directions, as both British and Turkish lines curved to right and left, while the co

utherly side, perhaps a thousand yards from the enemy's front line. We saw them shot, one by one, within a minute. As the Turks enjoyed the possession of higher ground everywhere

the numberless little jobs included in the term "trench duties," as if nothing else mattered. Such tasks are familiar to-day to so many milli

d old political opponent of my own, and another sergeant, whose name I cannot now recall, but who had been the petty officer of a South American liner sunk by the Karlsruhe in the early days of the War. Then we had famous footballers in Sergeants Pearson and Bamber. The Territorial origin of the Battalion was,

nant-Colonel) C.L. Worthington, had lost enormously in their valiant battles. One of their captains-R.H. Bedford-helped in our history lectures. Another battalion, under Lieutenant-Colonel MacCarthy Morrogh, with Major H.C.F. Mandley as Seco

lay between Geoghegan's Bluff and Bruce's Ravine, Turkish cartridge boxes made by the Deutsche Waffen und Munitionsfabriken at Karlsruhe and labelled with inscriptions in German an

BRITISH CAMEL C

the South Wales Borderers on the 25th April, stood out clear-cut against the bright blue of the Dardanelles and the fainter grey of the Asiatic coast beyond. We went on past French and Senegalese dug-outs to Sedd-el-Bahr, a village and fort wrecked by our naval guns in the first days of the campaign. The country was open and dotted with

Munsters. We struggled back to our bivouac in the teeth of a dusty, warm wind, to be inoculated with emetine and to rest by the white coast road, while we watched our monitors riding between Cape Helles and Imbros, and landing

gh to secure timber or some corrugated iron to roof our dug-outs. Normally we had only our mackintosh sheets. Rain turned the thick dust to a brown mo

otrude from the parapet, as the soil around them fell away. Smells became all-pervading. We would seek refuge in the dug-outs, that looked out upon a crowded graveyard from the sloping incline by Border Barricade. Then would come the time for another inoculation wit

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