BREAKING IN THE Q. L. H.

Taranaki Daily News, 27 November 1915, Page 9 (Supplement)

BREAKING IN THE Q. L. H.

FIRST DAY IN THE TRENCHES. HOW THE CORNERS ARE RUBBED OFiF NEW OfflUlS. The following article, written by Captain C. E. W. Bean, the official press representative with the Imperial Forces in the Dardanelles, was issued by the High Commissioner for Australia last month, and is taken from the Standard. It describes the introduction to real warfare of the Queensland Light Horse. Gaba Tope, August 22.

It is the true history of one day at An/.ac (the zone of the Australian and New Zealand Army contingents). Incidentally it will give some idea of Quinn's Post. The Queensland Light Horse arrived in the morning fresh from Egypt on little grey trawlers. The crew .of one such trawler that was noted were very much the same crew that had dragged their trawl for many peaceful years over Dogger Bank, and they had slaved most of this night in order to provide these new chums with a cup of hot cocoa and a bowl of soup. The trawler's company had recently arrived in their ship after a wild winter in the North Sea, during which they had been washed clean from bow to stem by about two seething, grey gales per week, and had seen precisely three mines, which a neighbouring destroyer had sunk. But. this narrative is not concerned with hospitable naval reservists, but with a very fresh and green regiment of Queensland Light Horse. It is a veteran regiment now. They found themselves at daybreak off a distant blue coast, with a certain long, blu > hill just opposite them, and on the side of the hill a long, shallow triangle of more or less bare sand. They did not know that this triangle had been more or less worn bare by the daily life of an army. They noticed a fleecy white puff or two unroll themselves once or twice on the hillside. They had heard stories of shrapnel, so they were able to diagnose it satisfactorily.

'They climbed into horse punts alongside of their trawlers, and a small naval steamboat came and grabbed each horse print much as an ant might grab the log of a stag-beetle, and carried it off about as gracefully to the shore. While they were on their way there came something like the sound of a steam siren through the air, and a couple of shells burst like rockets in the air and whipped up the water some hundred yards away from them. Some of them guessed it was just some of their own boys having a game with them until the burst came overhead, and one of their mates who was laughing and talking just now slid forward from his seat and lay with a startled look for the moment in the bottom of the boat.

REGION OF STRAY BULLETS. They were landed at a pontoon, and for a morning they sat on the side of a knoll where tliey were more or less out of the way—overlooking the beach, and wondering like new boys at school where all the traffic was going that disappeared around the corners of the beach beyond the hospitals and biscuitboxes and little Indian carts and huge piles of hay trusses. That siren—it is very like a siren, only its croon comes down tiie scale instead of running up it —came out of the sky at them twenty or thirty times during the morning and burst more or less over them, and they watched the pellets whipping up the sea like raindrops; and once a friendly stray donkey which'they had been petting appeared to be stung by an unseen whip and started kicking for no visible reason—the total effect of this desultory bombardment.

Then they were inarched off down the beach and up a gully at the end of it, and the. Turks from some observation post on the capes north or south saw them going, and the guns on Gaba Tepe promontory, two miles southwards, began to plaster that gully with shrapnel, but just managed to miss their passing. And they came into a region of stray bullets, which fluttered to earth with a sigh like the last fluttering breath oi a dying man. Then the scrubby gnlly took a band, and ahead of them was a distant plateau across the valleys from which the Turks could see them—though they did not know tills—and where they were all unconsciously protected by the fact that somebody on the hills above was making it a very dangerous matter for any Turk to shoot down that gully, no matter how well ho concealed himself.

They saw lines of tumbled, bare earth along the top of most of the ridges above them, and vaguely understood these to he "the trenches.'' They were turned into the scrub in one gully to camp for the night. They also vaguely understood that they were to go into the "trenches" next day.

About eleven o'clock the following morning they were sent up the gully to the head of it, up a very steep path to a point under the crest where they watched infantry ,in batches being passed out of a magnificent rabbit burrow at the head of it while they by batches were passed in.

FIRST LOOK AT THE ENEMY. Some of them tentatively asked the infantry what it was like in there. "Oh, you may get a few bombs," was the reply. Tnen they moved into a narrow, winding cutting in the red earth, where they had to run bent low for a few yards and ducked under a low earthen roof into it tunnel not big enough properly to hold a man, and so into the narrow, winding daylight again. On the top of the red cutting were ragged sandbags—if they had been older soldiers they would have known that those sandbags were suspiciously ragged. Occasionally the daylight was bridged by a short tunnel roof—sometimes a mere buttress. From the underside of one buttress protruded the fingers and part of the boot of a buried TurkIt may he considered that at this point the day of which this article tells had begun. Having reached their trenches, they laid their rifles up against the parapet and sat down on their overcoats and waited. The first thing they did was to have a look at the enemy. Having heard that it was impossible to put your head over the top, they put up their periscopes and stared into them. The periscope showed them in some parts about ten yards of short scrub not more than, three inches high and strangely scorched and shrivelled. From some parts of their trench they saw nothing more, for after that the hill fell away to some unknown country the other side. In other parts the scrub was bordered twenty and thirty yards away by a row of low sandbags half-emerging from the scrub. After the periscope had been up for about a minute there was a tremendous cra<:k above the observer's head; a shower of glass fell round him, and the top mirror had vanished, The observer picked a few bits of it oat of

his forearm ami thou watched the next man's periscope go. As there was clearly an unsuspected Haw in the system of observing by periscope they fell hack cm the next obvious resort, which was lunch.

SPIRITED DIALOGUES. There is :i persistent story that an hour or so later this day a voice cried out of the enemy's trench: "Como on, you blank Light Horse—we know you're there." I. have never found or heard of the actual man that heard it, and, therefore, 1 believe that, like almost all similar stories, it is untrue; but if it wero true there is not the slightest need to, imagine that there was any spying in the camp. All through dinner-time, a cheerful conversation was going on up and down the whole length of the section. Within lifteen yards in parts ran n trench crammed with swarthy gentlemen in skull cups, and if any of them understood Knglish, as some of them certainly do, they must have had an interesting time that morning, For days they had scarcely seen a periscope opposite them or heard the sound of an Knglish voice—the infantry had learned to talk in whispers in those trenches. And then .suddenly, at about midday, there appeared whole galaxies of periscopes surveying the scenery in a most comprehensive mannei, and an amount, of spirited dialogue that did your heart good to listen to. The natural consequence followed pretty quickly. The consequence actually arrived before they had finished dinner. Someone saw a shadow flit across the strip of daylight above. Something fell on to the parapet, and then rolled down into the trench. The nearest man, who was digging in a half-finished tin of bully beef, shouted "Look out! There's a bomb," and dived about eight feet sideway along the trench, others took headers into the. tunnel of the nearest communication trench, and a couple of seconds later the thing exploded like a big cracker. There was a cloud of dust, a nasty acrid smell, and one of the rifles that had been against the parapet lay along the bottom of the trench with its stock broken clean in two. Also the walls of the trench and the sandbags immediately above wore a curiously haggard expression, dishevelled, and torn bits of cloth, from the corner of an overcoat and tumbled sand. After that another shadow flitted across—something fizzed for an moment on the parados, which is the rear parapet—a Imrst of dust, and a sandbag landed fair in the middle of somebody's back. Everyone laughed at him, and he laughed too. That was only the beginning of a shower. At first they dodged them by flinging themselves away from them. Further down the trench some who had picked up rather better hints from the infantry started picking them up as they came in and throwing them back — there was just time to do it if you were quick and caught them like a cricketer—until the Turks recognised their own I brand of bomb coming back at them and grew cunning and cut short the fuse, when one of the gallant excited youngsters who v.s throwing them back had his hand blew off by the bomb he was throwing back. They were driven backwards and forwards along the trench until someone heard of or hit on the plan of throwing in overcoat over the bomb, which usually deadened it a little if it got there in time. They would dodge behind the traverse or throw themselves flat, but the explosions gradually caught first one and then another. "Look out, there's something fizzing by your overcoat!" They had been looking the other way—a rush, a burst, the second man falls against the first. They bend over him he is alive. His pockets are searched for his first field dressing. The blessed thing is sewn into the pocket—will it never come out? They have never seen a wound like that before, a mass of lead in the check, a badly torn arm, a chest apparently almost smashed to pulp. Boys straight from a Queensland station will tackle anything, and they bandage him somehow, and pass him out. Sis men have been passed out of the same small section, but nobody dreams of leaving the trench. If the Turks come they will be pounced on by men who are gretting eager for the chance.

DAVE BROWNING'S BOMBS. S The end came,in a curious manner. I don't know who the man was, but we will say his name was Dave Browning. He was a big Queenslandw anyway, and he was hit on both sides of his face by bits of a bomb, and the iron was still there, and he was very angry indeed. Wo did not know much about bombs at that date—not what we know now—but Dave went and got an armful and carried them to a particular corner of the trench which was exceptionally warm. The northern end of our trench had no end to it to speak of. That is to say, that during a recent night attack we had captured temporarily part of a Turkish trench ten yards to the north of it, and had cut a continuation from the northern end of our trench into the southern end of theirs. The northern end of our trench, therefore, merely wound round a corner and disappeared. We had managed to push out a breastwork of sandbags about three feet high across this trench, and kept a guard lying there while the Turks were four yards away around the bend. Dave went straight to this corner with his bombs and hurled them over ono after another as fast as lie could into the Turkish trench. He guessed that was where the Turks were, and apparhe guessed right, for that trench must have been cleared of Turks from that moment. Dave felt belter in his mind; the Turkish bomb-throwing stopped dead. Next day—not that day when they were in Quinn's Post, but next day when they came out —Dave had the fron picked from his cheeks by the doctor. The Turks only threw two or three bombs thai; night. But all night long two men who had never seen a shot ■Ural before that day had to lie on their stomachs out at the end of the trench just behind the sandbags—one youngster with three or four bombs and thcy other with his finger on a trigger watching the bend of that trench as a eat watches a mousoholc. The two who came on just before dawn had seen, for a moment the skull cap of one of the/ Turkish relieving picket over Hie edj»o of the trench ahead, but that was the only sign or sound they heard for hours. They came out of Quinn's that morning. They know the place well, enough now. Many a splendid man who start- i cd his life's work on a Queensland run' or a Northern Rivers farm ended in one of the two magnificent charges thatthey/ have made from Quinn's Post. A great I deal has changed, but not the dcadKness j of those fifteen yard of scorched and shrivelled scrub.