Made in Myrtle Street (Prequel) (8 page)

Such was the tedium that, when they were ordered at the beginning of May, to reinforce the beleaguered garrison on Gallipoli in Turkey, they all sang lustily in the cattle trucks which took them from Abbassia to Alexandria, regulating the beat of the song to the clip of the wheels. It was cold and dark as the train rumbled through the night but their spirits were high.

On the quayside, the early morning mist lay like a cold embrace over the sea and clung around the buildings that housed the offices of the great shipping companies. British names stood out reassuringly over many of the doors. Leaning out of the train window Edward watched the large, flat bottomed Arab dhows emerging out of the mist then disappearing again, wrapped by the slight breeze into the damp, white folds. Incomprehensible shouted greetings, warnings and instructions between the Arabs echoed over the slowing rhythm of the carriage wheels.

Approaching the looming presence of the Royal Naval vessels the sounds from the mists changed. Anguished voices, crying out from desperate pain, began to colour the spectrum of noise; scraping on Edward’s suddenly taut nerves. When the shrouds of the morning fog parted he saw the rows of stretchers lined up on the dusty dockside between London bound crates of dates and figs and bales of cotton destined for Blackburn and Bolton.

He watched the sailors and medical orderlies unloading these ships that had come in from Gallipoli with the injured on board. The seemingly endless stream of heavily bandaged, agonised men flowed down the gangplanks and slowly covered the quayside. A cargo of pain and suffering waiting for whatever transport could be made available. Nurses moved amongst them dispensing strong painkillers and the stimulating medicine of firmly, but gently, delivered feminine kindness. They held cigarettes in the blistered lips of men with useless, or no, hands. For some of them, the kind eyes and the soothing nicotine became their last living memory.

Edward tried to suppress the shudder as he looked out over the wasted acres of the dying and the dead. His mind struggled to embrace the size and severity of it. There had been many Turkish soldiers injured in Egypt but what he was witnessing now, on this harbour side, was maiming on a massive scale. So many men with legs and arms missing or with major head injuries, the blood stained bandages binding the stumps of arms that had once driven the industry of Lancashire. The crying and groaning hovered in the air like wailing gulls and chilled the waiting soldiers. The singing had long since stopped.

Recognising the face of a man whose leg had been blown off, his thoughts were driven back to Laura and the kids waiting in Myrtle Street. He realized that some of these men had also taken that walk down Cross Lane to the Drill Hall. What would happen to their wives and families when they got home? Or to the wives woken by a knock on the door to read the few words of the telegram that would cleave through their lives?

Suddenly, chillingly, this war was not about football and rugby, about chattering Arabs and spitting camels. This was about death and destruction on a level that was hard to comprehend.

The officers had told them that they were about to enter a new theatre of war. ‘Some show this is going to be’ thought Edward with bitter irony. He stood at the rail of the ship, the HMT ‘Karoa’, numbed by the evidence of the awful carnage that was spread out below him, and thought about the kids in Salford, playing happily around home made maypoles; innocents on the streets who would now never see their dads again.

Chapter 4

Gallipoli, May 1915

The Lancashire Fusiliers boarded the troopship ‘Karoa’ at lunchtime on the 1 May 1915 and the activity in loading and securing all the weaponry and equipment that followed was a welcome distraction. They had been elated to be escaping from the stifling Egyptian summer and excited at the prospect of direct confrontation with the enemy. Only when they had been sitting on the quayside at Alexandria had they got a glimpse of the Hell's cauldron that they were about to be thrust into and their mood had become more sombre.

The following day they brought on board food, blankets, clothing, tents and medical equipment. They stacked crates of sacks ready to be filled with sand, tarpaulins for the construction of shelters and mail for the soldiers already out there. Finally they loaded the mules which they had brought over from the Reserve Park in Alexandria.

On the 3 May the ship nosed its way out of Alexandria harbour and the battalion diarist wrote ‘6 am 3.5.15 Saild’(sic). Edward and the now much sobered 1/8 Battalion headed out for the Dardanelles and the bloody fields of Gallipoli.

On board the ship, they then spent two days in intensive training. This was a new battle, they were told, a new type of warfare and a totally different terrain that they were heading towards. They had instruction covering the use of the ship-to-shore barges, the offloading of equipment and animals, the dangers from the shellfire and about where they should aim to position themselves under the cliffs.

As they sailed through the idyllic waters and the beautiful islands of the Aegean Sea, the story of the grim battles that had taken place less than two weeks before on the Gallipoli Peninsula began to emerge. Bit by bit, through official edicts and unofficial gossip, the explanation of the strategy, and the dreadful consequences, was gradually built up.

The fighting on the Western Front in Europe, it seemed, had by now settled into the form of siege warfare that defied attempts by both sides to unlock the other’s defences. Attention had turned to look for other opportunities to break the deadlock. Some British politicians, led by Winston Churchill, had become infatuated by the idea of attacking Germany 'by the back door.' Despite pre-war Naval planning that suggested a passage of the Dardanelles Straits was not possible, the lure of an easier route to the defeat of Germany became irresistible. One strong argument put forward had been the need of the Russians for support in their struggle with the Turks. The senior officers in the Army high command, who felt that the attack should be concentrated on the Western Front, were overruled by the politicians and eventually they acquiesced.

The Gallipoli Peninsula was a part of Turkey and formed, along its southerly edge, one land side of the Dardanelles Straits – a historic waterway that linked the Aegean Sea to the Black Sea. The Peninsula was only ten miles across at the widest point and about forty five miles long. Cape Helles lay at its southernmost tip. Much of the terrain was rocky scrubland with little water. The hills were steep-sided and were cut into deep gullies and ravines.

Among the hills that lay along the spine of the peninsula, there were numerous peaks and valleys. The most important heights were the summits of Achi Baba, which stood at 709 feet and overlooked all of Cape Helles, and Sari Bair at 971 feet. From this peak the sea could be seen on both sides.

At the southern point of Cape Helles, where the Aegean Sea met the Dardanelles Straits, there were, along the Western side, a number of small sandy bays. There were no such beaches on the eastern side where the hills dropped down into the Straits. To the North West there was a large flat area surrounding a salt lake.

The whole region seemed to have little strategic importance as there were no towns and only a relatively few sleepy, insignificant settlements. Krithia in the South and Bulair in the North were the most important. Churchill’s plan, however, was to assemble a large Allied force here and sweep up the Peninsula and on to Constantinople.

On 25 April 1915, under the command of General Sir Ian Hamilton, an Allied army of British, Anzac and French forces had started to land on the Gallipoli Peninsula. However, a naval bombardment of the area had been carried out a month before the landings took place and this had given the Turks a good warning that the area was about to become a focus of Allied attention. Under an able German General, Liman von Sanders, they had prepared a comprehensive system of defensive barriers and had land mined the beaches that they thought might be used for landings. Well-defended gun emplacements were situated in the cliffs overlooking the beaches, secure from further naval attacks.

On the other side of the narrow Dardanelles Straits they had positioned a number of big artillery guns. The welcoming party was in place and ready for the invaders.

These initial landings had included some Battalions of the Lancashire Fusiliers as part of the 86th Brigade. Having thought that they were going to France they had had their spirits lifted when they had discovered that their new posting was taking them to Turkey. Their boat journey through the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas had seemed idyllic to these men. Their view of the World had been restricted before that to occasional glimpses of the hills around their homes in the drab cotton mill towns of Lancashire.

These first troops had gone ashore at 6.00am on 'W' Beach on and had fought heroically against unbelievable odds to gain a foothold on Turkish soil. But the operation had been a disaster and they had been cut down mercilessly by the Turkish defences.

They had disembarked from HMS ‘Euryalus’ into the cutters taking them ashore but, as they touched the beach, they had been pounded by the Turkish shore batteries from the far side of the Straits. When they had jumped from the cutters to wade ashore they had found themselves entangled in thick barbed wire that was laid under the water. As the soldiers had struggled to cut through the barrier a ferocious tirade of gunfire from emplacements on the shore had torn into them.

 Within minutes, the sea had flowed red with the blood of British soldiers, gunned down as they struggled to free themselves from the clawing grip of the submerged wire barrier. Officers, standing in the water waving their men on, had been cut down by snipers.

In the neighbouring bay, at ‘V’ Beach, the HMS ‘Clyde’, shelled by the Turkish heavy artillery, was blown apart and lay crippled on its side in the water.

For those on ‘W’ Beach who had managed to reach the shore there had followed a desperate run across the land-mined sands and through the incessant machine gun fire to gain the shelter of the cliffs. Many had fallen on the way.

Elsewhere, other Allied troops had met with varying degrees of resistance in landing on the Peninsula but they had failed to pursue whatever advantage they had gained. They had made the fatal mistake of waiting for communication from other forces to order an advance but it never came and the Turks gained the time that they needed to send in reinforcements.

Over those first few days various attempts had been made to take Krithia but the heavy bombardment that was needed to give cover as they advanced towards the enemy lines had not materialised. Unfortunately, with so much weaponry now committed to the Western Front and  because there was, anyway, a belief in the higher echelons of the army that the Turks would not present a strong opposition, only three heavy guns and just a small supply of artillery had been landed.

The few remaining members of the Battalion who had survived the carnage of the beaches had fought bravely but had struggled against the odds. These Lancashire soldiers, at the end of April 1915, had been sent to war like Trojans in a glass horse.

Their training in Tatton Park had taught them how to march in strict formation, how to dig trenches, how to attack and kill the enemy with their bayonets and, when enough guns could be found, how to shoot more accurately. How to climb a cliff, however, or walk across an open field under enfilading fire from secure and barely threatened enemy machine guns had barely been touched on.

By the 30 April the 1st Lancashire Fusiliers had lost a thousand men from the battalion strength of around one thousand four hundred.

The following day the Turks had launched a night attack and had continued the offensive until daylight. The Allied troops, although initially startled by the manic ferocity of these soldiers who had come hurtling at them screaming ‘Allah, Allah’ had fought hard and had retained the positions that had already cost them so many lives to gain.

Many Turkish prisoners had been taken during those first few days but this action marked the end of the open warfare on Cape Helles. The losses for the Allied forces had been so heavy that neither sufficient men nor weaponry remained to pursue the attack. Under the blazing sun of the day, the freezing nights and the frequent drenching rain the soldiers from both sides dug themselves in.

It had become clear by then that if there was to be any hope of further progress they would need significant reinforcements and hence the decision had been made to transfer the 42nd Division from Egypt. Edward and his mates from Salford would be sent to stand shoulder to shoulder with the pitifully few Lancashire men in Gallipoli who had managed to survive those first landings.

***

The plan, to link up with the regulars who were already there and to then advance up the peninsula and take the village of Krithia, was explained to them as they huddled together in the hold of the ship. They were also warned that they should avoid touching the bodies that they would encounter both in the water and on the beaches.

The final hours of darkness were receding from the skies on the morning of the 5 May as the ‘Karoa’ gently nosed her way forward towards the landing beach at Cape Helles. The men had been up and preparing themselves for hours and, with the tension mounting, the Lancashire humour was a fortifying carapace.

‘It could have been a bit more fun if we had been pulling into Blackpool Central,’ Liam suggested cheerily.

‘Well, at least there wouldn’t have been all the dead bodies in the water to wade through,’ Big Charlie replied. ‘They don’t make it sound much like a holiday outing.’

‘No, but the weather will be better here.’

‘And there’d be no barbed wire ripping your legs to shreds in Blackpool.’

‘But you won’t have any fearsome landladies to make your life a misery.’

‘Aye, but I’d rather have any of those than that sodding Major.’

Liam grew suddenly serious. ‘He’s not with us, is he? I haven’t seen him on the boat.’