Made in Myrtle Street (Prequel)

by B A Lightfoot

  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

  2nd 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.

  I can’t wait to try the jam tarts that you are making. We have lots of jam tarts here but they are not as good as those that your Mam makes.

  I’m sorry but I don’t think that they would let us come home just yet. The men who are marching up Trafford Road are asking the dock owners to give them a fair day’s pay. It is very difficult for some of them because the
y are keeping a few families going whilst the men are away and I think that I would be on their side.

  The weather here is very hot at the moment and there are lots of beautiful flowers. In the morning we see big families of rabbits like your Floppy getting their breakfasts before it gets too hot. After that we get masses of horrible flies. They even come into your cup when you are having a drink of tea.

  Darling, try to be a bit extra kind to Edith Hardcastle because her Dad has had an accident here and he won’t be coming home again. Don’t say anything about it unless she says something to you but, if she does, tell her that he was very brave and that we all said a prayer for him.

  I am very pleased that you are doing well at school, Laura, because it is very important for you as you get older. I’m sure that your Mam knows what is right for you with the times tables so keep practising them and we will be very proud of our little girl.

  Love

  Dad

  PS. Yes, ps’s are very useful.

  PPS. I have sent a letter to your Mam with this one but will you tell the others that I will send letters to them next week because the boat is leaving soon.

  Chapter 8

  Christmas 1915

  The battle, in August, for small areas of Turkish soil around Krithia vineyard had continued for some days but there were no further gains by the Allied troops. The lives of thousands of soldiers had been sacrificed but the operation was a failure because of what seemed, for the soldiers in the trenches, to be the mesmerizing incompetence of those who were directing it. The Allied landings at Suvla Bay had been achieved with virtually no enemy resistance but the landing parties, instead of sweeping across and round to the rear of the Turks, encamped in the bay and did nothing.

  Elsewhere, a combined force of four hundred from the Ghurkhas and the 6th South Lancashires had stormed the cliffs at Chunuk Bair and had driven the Turks before them. They had raced down the slopes after the fleeing Turkish soldiers, intent on achieving the major strategic gains of Maidos and the control of The Narrows in the straits. Suddenly, and with deadly accuracy, they had been hit by a salvo of heavy artillery fire and the band of heroes had been wiped out. The shells that had destroyed them had been British.

  Since August, although the skirmishing had continued, there had been no major battles and both sides had entrenched in the positions that they held. Many of the sick and injured, along with new reinforcements, had joined them from Alexandria and life for the Salford soldiers had settled into a desultory routine.

  They had spent four months in the line and in reserve in a variety of trenches around Gully Ravine. The landscape had taken on a new kind of beauty where the once green, but now straw coloured, grass was slashed and torn by the scars of the artillery shelling. The sometimes ethereal and tranquil appearance of the no-man’s-land, however, had belied its deadly secrets. The whole of the area was littered with the unburied corpses of soldiers from both sides, the air was heavy with the stench of rotting flesh, and disease had become the new enemy.

  The flies were like a plague. They got everywhere, and, no matter how many were killed, there were millions more to replace them. The British soldiers tried to cover their food and drink but the flies were creative and persistent and they quickly spread diseases around their luckless victims. ‘Bloody big families these flies have,’ a miserable Liam had observed, ‘You kill one of the little sods and five thousand come to the funeral.’

  The wells were drying up or becoming contaminated and access to clean water became a major problem. Special desalination vessels were brought in but many men were apprehensive about drinking the water in which they had seen the bloated carcases of dead horses floating alongside the bodies of their fallen comrades.

  Edward and Liam and their Salford mates had had their share of the jaundice and the epidemic of septic sores that had been so widespread, but it was the debilitating dysentery that had wreaked the most havoc. The disease, fuelled by the irrepressible flies that swarmed over the unburied corpses, had spread throughout the soldiers in Gallipoli without deference to rank or age.

  Edward had watched pitifully weak men, stripped of their dignity and their soiled clothes, and mortified by their failing bodies, crawling on their hands and knees to the plank of the latrine. Some had been so ill that they had slipped off into the slimy filth of the ditch and, without the strength to lift their bodies, had drowned in the fetid excrement.

  Many men had died from disease during this period and many others had been taken off to recovery units, but the options for natural clean drinking water were virtually non-existent.

  In October, after a prolonged spell of hot, dry weather, there had been some frightening rain storms that had caused widespread damage. Tents had collapsed, blankets had become sodden and the trenches, acting like drainage channels, had become running streams. The Salford lads were, however, quick to turn adversity into an advantage. They collected every empty vessel that they could find and set them up to collect the rainwater. They pleated the tops of semi collapsed tents so that the water ran, as if from a spout, into empty petrol cans and they arranged spare capes to funnel it into waiting cooking vessels. For a while, the drinking water crisis had been averted and the men enjoyed a more frequent supply of tea, albeit slightly petrol flavoured. Liam promoted it as ‘Ben’s Ole Juice.’

  The weather had improved slightly, for a while, but then in November it had changed again. From the 15th to the 17th there had been a violent storm that had driven the sea up the beach submerging the bivouacs that were set up there. The heavy downpours of rain had raised the level of water in the gullies and dead mules, bales of hay and huge amounts of debris had been scoured out of the ravines and then washed out to sea.

  The soldiers barely had time to recover before being hit by an even more violent storm on the 26th November. In parts of the Peninsula the waist-deep water had poured like a mill race down the trenches taking with it rations and equipment and, sometimes, even men. To escape the water the soldiers had stood on top of the trenches where they were in full view of the Turkish snipers. A quick glance at the enemy lines, however, had shown that they were themselves trying to escape the devastating effects of the weather. An unspoken truce had been established between the two sides as both struggled to survive against this new, common enemy.

  The gales had turned into hurricanes and, on the beaches, piers and landing stages had been swept away. The flashing lightning and rolling thunder had turned the Helles Peninsula into a theatre of war where nature was demonstrating her own awesome powers to the human bit players. The heavy deluges, combined with freezing cold, had made conditions for the soldiers almost unbearable for two days then nature had delivered her coup de grace. On the 27th November the winds had changed to northerlies and the ice cold air had caused a fearsome blizzard. The Allied troops, with their sodden clothes freezing to their bodies, had struggled to find enough dry wood to light the fires that they needed for warmth and for cooking food. When the blizzard had stopped, the soldiers had been confronted with a calm and hauntingly beautiful, snow covered landscape but, before their numbed minds and frozen bodies could respond to it, there had been a rapid and devastating thaw.

  Within minutes the gullies had been filled with raging torrents and many soldiers had drowned or were frozen to death. Many men had lost limbs and some had lost their reason. The casualties on the British side had been 15,000 men killed or injured. This was 10% of their total force and it had probably been a similar number for the Turkish army. More than 10,000 sick men from the Allied forces had had to be taken off the Peninsula to receive treatment.

  Action between the two opposing forces over the recent months had ground itself into local, and largely unsuccessful, skirmishes although there was rarely a break in the shelling and sniper fire.

  The Salford lads had been invited, in October, to volunteer for mining duties which was, in some ways, a relief from manning the trenches and it gave them a useful pay increase. The strategy had be
en simple, if exhausting and dangerous. They had dug tunnels underground to a position underneath the enemy trenches and then laid a large charge of explosive before retiring to the safety of their own trenches. There they had exploded the charge and watched as the spectacular clouds of dust and debris plumed up into the air.

  Unfortunately, the Turkish soldiers had been practising the same mining techniques against the British lines and both sides had employed listeners to try to determine what their opponents were doing. Sometimes the two sets of tunnels ran dangerously close together and, at the end of October, the Turks had exploded a mine in a British tunnel in which soldiers from the 5th Manchesters had been working. Edward and Liam had been involved in the rescue party, digging out tons of fallen earth, and they had eventually pulled out three men alive and two dead. Another three that were known to be part of the mining party had been given up for lost.

  Three days later Liam had come bouncing down the trench and told them excitedly that he had just heard that the three missing men had just been brought from the shaft. Although they had had no food and only one bottle of water between them, one of the soldiers, a young Manchester lad called Grimes, had had a penknife and a lot of determination. Over three days they had dug their way through twelve feet of fallen earth, clawing at the debris and pulling away the large rocks. When they had finally broken through, on the point of collapse, two of them had had to be carried on stretchers from the mine shaft but the third – Private Grimes – had determinedly fought through his exhaustion and walked out.

  The news had spread rapidly throughout the Allied forces around the Peninsula. They had seen many of their comrades die but to have three of them come back from the dead was like a small miracle for them.