1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [260]
And a fine big fat chicken with five or six legs,
And a drink of the stuff that begins with a ‘B’
Where the old Gallipoli sweeps down to the sea.
They had some hopes! Soon their holiday would be over, soon they would be returning to the peninsula, to the interminable diet of thirst-provoking bully beef and the sweat and grind of life – or death – in the trenches.
Birds were seldom seen on Gallipoli, but towards the end of August, to the astonishment of the men, large flocks of birds swooped through the sky above the peninsula, migrating from the chilly steppes of Russia to winter in the south. The searing heat showed no signs of abating, but the birds brought a salutary reminder that time was passing, that another season was on the way and that, despite their valiant efforts, they had advanced very little since they had landed in the spring. But it had not been for want of trying.
Part 7
Loos: The Dawn of Hope
The firefly haunts were lighted yet,
As we scaled the top of the parapet,
But the east grew pale to another fire,
As our bayonets gleamed by the foeman’s wire,
And the sky was tinged with gold and grey,
And under our feet the dead men lay,
Stiff by the loop-holed barricade
Food of the bomb and the hand grenade,
Still in the slushy pool and mud –
Ah, the path we came was a path of blood,
When we went to Loos in the morning.
Patrick MacGill
Chapter 31
During the summer months, in towns all over the United Kingdom, photographers were making handsome profits. On the eve of their departure for the front the first contingent of Kitchener’s Army were being photographed in droves, proud and a little self-conscious, for the benefit of their admiring families. Some enterprising firms set up make-shift studios at the gates of army camps and the newly fledged soldiers queued up to be photographed against teetering canvas backdrops of tasteful classical scenes. The exposure in daylight was necessarily long, the sitters emerged stiff and serious, but the results were mostly thought to be satisfactory and tens of thousands of photographs were proudly dispatched through the post or distributed personally on embarkation leave.
After the weary months of waiting, the impatient soldiers of Kitchener’s Army were only too glad to be marching out of camp, new rifles on their shoulders and slung beneath their packs the white linen bags of extra rations that marked them out as men bound for the front. The hour of departure was an ill-kept secret so there was always a good turn-out of well-wishers along the road, and even if civilians were not allowed into the railway station itself, the band that had played the departing warriors from camp was there on the platform to perform a farewell medley as they entrained for the journey. As the train got up steam the band invariably struck up the plaintive strains of ‘Home Sweet Home’ which, in the circumstances, was not an especially tactful choice, but the newly fledged Tommies, who had had quite enough of home sweet home during their long apprenticeship, were far too elated to observe the irony. Even officers renowned as martinets and drill-sergeants of terrifying mien succumbed to the excitement of the occasion and amazed their erstwhile victims by surging to the carriage windows to shake hands, to wish them luck and, wonder of wonders, to salute the cheering Tommies as the train moved off.
Between July and September more than one hundred and fifty battalions of Kitchener’s Army left for France. Not many of them had any experience of foreign travel and it was all strange and exciting. A hundred thousand letters home began in the same way, ‘Dear Mother, I am living on a farm…’, but the homely picture this painted in the imaginations of families at home hardly fitted the reality, for the troops were not exactly living in comfort. But the farms of Flanders were ideally designed to house numbers of men and even if only the NCOs or occasionally the junior officers had the privilege of a room in the farmhouse itself, there was ample