Made in Myrtle Street (Prequel) (15 page)

They had been told that a big landing of Allied troops was to take place at Suvla Bay a few miles to the North. The troops already on Gallipoli were going to mount an attack on the Turks to keep them pinned down in the south so that the landing troops could have a clear run into Suvla Bay. From there they would be able to swing round and attack the Turks from the rear.

The Salford men had known that something special was being planned. For the last two days they had been making jam tin bombs in earnest. They had scoured the area and collected thousands of spent bullets and any other odd bits of metal that they could find. Empty one-pound jam tins were brought up from the kitchens on ‘W’ beach, where they had been carefully cleaned and stored, and these were packed with the bits of shrapnel. A piece of gelignite with a fuse in it was then pushed into the centre of each tin and the lid was soldered back into place with the fuse protruding. The design was simple but effective. It had been developed by the ever-inventive Tommies whose official supply of hand bombs was sparse in comparison with the plentiful supply that the Turks had available.

Whilst relatively safe to use – light the fuse, count to five and then throw – when Liam mischievously announced on one occasion that he had forgotten where he had counted up to, the trench cleared within seconds.

That morning they had been introduced to a new weapon of war that had been brought up to the front lines. There had been general disbelief, and no shortage of pointed comments, when they had seen the four foot wooden catapults but it was explained that these would project grenades over a much greater distance. They had been reassured to see that they also had a supply of a new grenade that was being specially made for them in Malta.

They had practised with the catapults for a while, lobbing large stones towards the watching lines of bemused Turks. The exercise had resulted in clearing the agitated bird life out of the trees but they had managed to get a reasonable feel for the positioning of the catapult and the pull needed.

Shelling of the Turkish trenches had started earlier in the afternoon, signalling that an attack had now been launched in another part of the line. It would be another long night of waiting in the Salford trenches. They would be going over the top in the morning but already the tension was mounting.

‘Do you remember those pork sausages from that butcher’s on Ellor Street?’ Liam asked. ‘Were they not the most exquisite things that you had ever tasted?’

‘Was that the one with all the white tiles? I think it was called Robert Lloyd’s,’ Edward said. ‘We used to have them for our tea every Saturday night.’

Big Charlie, now distracted by the discussion of food, folded his cloths and put them in his rucksack. ‘My Dad preferred belly pork so we usually had that.’

‘Well, right now a plateful of that with a couple of sliced eggs and two rounds of Brig’s bread would suit me fine.’

‘We had it on Wednesday nights as well. Then on Tuesdays and Fridays my Mam used to go to Mary Deakin’s for some tripe.’

‘My Mam used to get her tripe from Frank Dawson’s,’ Liam said thoughtfully. ‘Looking at the size of you though, perhaps she should have gone to Mary Deakin’s sometimes. She must have been putting something in her cowheel.’

‘I remember the clothes exchange place near the tripe shops,’ Edward said. ‘George Hughes it was called. Had to go in there if you took the backside out of your pants or if the family hand-me-downs didn’t fit.’

‘My Mam bought me a stupid, poncey jumper from there once,’ Big Charlie recalled glumly.

‘I remember it,’ Liam shouted, slapping his big friend on the shoulder. ‘A massive bright green thing with a big gold pattern down each sleeve.’

‘Aye, that was the one.’

‘You looked like a tree with two giant caterpillars stuck on it when you came down the street in that,’ Liam taunted.

‘It wasn’t as bad as that overcoat that your Mam got you that was down to your ankles,’ Big Charlie retorted.

‘Oh yes. I remember that one,’ Edward said. ‘I borrowed it once and it was so long that it got stuck in the wheels of my bogey going down Rabbit Hill. Our kid overheard me telling our Sarah what had happened and within minutes all the neighbours had come round to have a good laugh. Fat lot of sympathy I got for all my cuts and bruises.’

Edward gazed out over the heavily scarred but still beautiful landscape of Cape Helles and watched as the warm August sun gradually cleared away the early morning mist. In the far distance he could make out a Turkish farmer and his wife working in a field whilst, in another, a young boy chased a yelping, excited dog through the long grass. A few hundred yards away he could see the barbed wire collar of the enemy trenches that were their targets for the action today. In front of them splashes of glowing colours of the wild flowers sat uncomfortably amongst the brown scars of the craters. Swirling, screeching birds marked the positions of unclaimed corpses.

Soon, this comparative peace would be shattered by the ear-splitting, mind-numbing roar of the high explosive shells then, exactly an hour and a half afterwards, it would be their turn.

Edward no longer felt the paralysing fear of going over the top. He had now seen so many of his friends blown apart or shot that the idea of death had become like an unwelcome companion on his elbow. Like his fellow soldiers, he weighed the odds. Although a good proportion of them would be hit, many of those would be non-fatal. The problem for the injured, however, was getting back safely to their own lines. Being hit in no-man’s land invariably meant waiting until nightfall in order to make a move as doing so in sight of the Turks would probably attract a sniper’s bullet. Unfortunately, after a battle, the men in the firing line remained tense and nervous and shot at anything that moved in the dark towards them. Many an injured man, having suffered the agony of remaining still for hours in the baking sun, was then killed by one of his own soldiers as he tried to gain the sanctuary of the trench.

Despite this, for Edward and his friends, the long exposure to the carnage had taken some of the fear out of being injured. If he was going to be hit he just hoped it would be a ‘Blighty’ – an injury serious enough to justify a posting home – rather than one that would see him buried under Turkish soil.

Edward knew that a few of his mates got quite excited at the idea of going into attack. They got a special thrill from the direct combat, from the gladiatorial pursuit of the enemy with bayonets fixed. But for the majority of the soldiers the battle was for survival and the only pleasure was the relief in finding themselves still available at the evening roll call.

At 8.10am the shelling of the Turkish trenches by the British and French artillery started and the intensity was increased when, at 9.00am, the naval guns joined in. As they waited in their trenches they could see that the bombardment was much heavier and more accurate to the right but the area directly in front, where the two nullahs met, was hardly being touched.

They had their tot of rum and fixed the metal markers on their backs so that they could be seen by their own artillery spotters. The whine of the shells and the thunderous roar of the high explosive merged into a continuous wall of sound, the smoke and the clouds of dust that were thrown up into the air spread like a blanket over the area as it drifted down towards them. The trees and the shrubs, the flowers and the mounds of earth, the grassy fields, all became suffused in an orange glow as the brown dust clouds filtered the strong Turkish sunlight.

Their senses were assaulted by the surreal environment and the rum spread warmly in their stomachs. The countdown continued and Edward focused his mind with a little prayer. For the fourth time that morning, he removed the contents of his left breast pocket. He opened his service book, extracted a small piece of folded paper and read the verse that Laura had written when they had become engaged. Pressed into the paper were two buttercups from Peel Park that she had picked when he had proposed. He replaced the note carefully then put the book back behind the tobacco tin in his pocket. He then took out, once again, the contents of his right hand breast pocket which he checked through and ensured that they were in the correct sequence. At the front was the narrow embossed birthday card, printed with a rose, that Laura had sent him. Behind it was a crayon drawing of a steam locomotive done by a then six year old Edward, and after it was a paper with a poem entitled ‘My Dada’ that young Laura had written. Behind that there was a drawing from Ben showing his Dad with a big, black moustache and his Mam with orange hair. Wrapped up inside the drawing was a baby tooth from Sadie and a lock of hair from Mary. Satisfied that everything was there, he replaced them hesitantly in his pocket. There was always a brief moment of uncertainty as he thought whether he should check them again, then he buttoned down the flap.

He checked his right hand tunic pocket to make sure that the lucky stone that he had found in a boyhood escapade on Dorney Hills was there alongside the rabbit’s tail. Then he checked both trouser pockets to ensure that there was a handkerchief in each one. As a child, his mother had always chastised him if he didn’t, at all times, carry a hankie to blow his nose and so now he carried two. Completing his checks, he straightened his hat and picked up his rifle.

To his left Sergeant Williams was giving some instructions and some final words of reassurance and to his right he saw Liam, fingers crossed on both hands, glance up and give Edward a quick wink. Beyond Liam, he could see Big Charlie going through his preparation routine. Edward was now quite familiar with the stages of this and saw that his friend was just completing the oiled cloth step of cleaning his rifle which was followed by a new cloth for buffing it. After this he would draw the weapon slowly under his nose to savour its sharp cleanness followed by a check on his rounds of ammunition. He would then fix and remove his bayonet a couple of times before taking out a further cloth and polishing his boots.

Edward turned away and tried to concentrate on the task that faced them but, as always in these last few minutes, he found that his mind was a jumble of thoughts from his past. Some were pleasant but many were small regrets about things that he wished that he had handled differently.

At 9.40am the whistles were blown and they went over the top. Their progress was steady across the open ground towards the first line of the Turkish trenches. They were met with little enemy fire. The soldiers headed for one of the gaps in the barbed wire that had been cut through by the earlier artillery fire. The shelling had been lifted now to the rear Turkish trenches and the British soldiers poured through and jumped into the front line trench. Edward noticed the Sergeant hesitate for a moment when he saw that the trench was not only empty but was surprisingly shallow. Then the fierce cracking of machine gun fire started, bullets whistling as they flew and then the strange dull thud as they hit their targets. The officers and men who had already jumped into the trench were falling everywhere.

Edward saw their captain go down with his sword and pistol still raised and heard Sergeant Williams shouting for them to go with him. He turned back through the wire and the platoon headed up to the right. The sergeant had spotted some of the cleverly positioned machine gun nests that had escaped the Allied shelling and he was working his way up to them. As the platoon approached they could see, across the Turkish trenches, that some of the 6th and 7th Lancashires had now broken through the first line and were approaching the second trench.

Within minutes Edward’s platoon was attacking the machine gun positions and, after some amazingly accurate long distance throwing of the jam tin bombs by Big Charlie, followed by intense hand-to-hand fighting, they took out the enemy positions. The Salford soldiers then headed down the trenches through the sickly sweet smell of the dead to attack the Turks who were holding the flanks. By mid-morning they were occupying the trench and other soldiers from the Lancashire Battalions had taken over parts of the vineyard. Soon after 11.00am, however, the Turks launched a counter attack. Despite the fierce onslaught, the British soldiers managed to hold on to parts of their trench and to the vineyard. Losses were heavy on both sides but the Lancashires began to consolidate their gains and to set up machine gun positions.

At 1.30pm the Turks attacked again but this was brought to a standstill by the British guns. Later in the afternoon they came again with another ferocious assault. By now, Edward’s battalion – the 1/8 Lancashires – had lost ten officers and a huge number of other ranks either killed or injured. They had only seven officers and seventy three men left in the firing line and the depleted forces were eventually forced to concede the trench to the Turks.

That evening Captain Goodfellow was buried near the 3rd East Lancashire dressing station and the 42nd Division counted its losses. Over just two days of action they had lost more than one thousand six hundred men and Edward, battered and strained, dressed his minor wounds and wondered why he was still there.

***

Gallipoli

Turkey

2
^nd
August 1915

Dear Pippin,

Thanks for your lovely letter and I am very glad that you had a nice birthday. I’m looking forward to seeing the cot that Uncle Jim has made when I come home. I don’t know when that will be just yet because we are still very busy here and things are getting in a bit of a pickle.

I think that what your Mam was talking about was a ship called the Lusitania that was sunk by the Germans and lots of people were killed. They shouldn’t take it out on the shopkeeper, though, because it’s not his fault and, anyway, he is not really a German now.

The trouble is that the women are a bit angry and upset because their men are away from home and it is very difficult for them. You have to try and remember, though, that it is a bit like when you get mad with our Edward when he teases you. Sometimes when you feel upset and angry it is better to dry your eyes and blow your nose and have a good think. Sometimes the kind thought fairy will show you a better way than you jumping on him and pulling his hair.