Gallipoli Diary 1915 by Alec Riley

Author:Alec Riley
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780645235920
Publisher: No Rest For The Wicked

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Sunday, August 22, was uneventful. The 8th Manchesters took over from the 5th and 6th. Gorman left us and Robinson and Greatorex came in his place. We were all very lousy. I hung my tunic on a root sticking out from our back wall. Soon, a lot of little black ants were running about on it. They brought the lice out of the seams and carried them away to their nests. It must have been hard work for the little creatures to carry such big lice and I helped some of them with a twig. This kept me busy for some time. Someone had sent me some lemon-squash crystals, and I mixed them with lime juice to vary the old flavour a little.

I spent the evening at Abe’s visual station on Fusilier Bluff. Noble and Haworth were there as well. Abe’s cup of joy was running over. He had done his first visual business with the navy, sending map-references for the TBDs to fire on. Abe was overflowing with interest in his job. Thus was visual justified of her children. Abe told us all about it. His best line was the electric lamp, a compact oblong box screwed on a tripod. It could be worked from a distance of a few feet, by a long wire with a key at the end. I sat in Abe’s dug-out, leaning back comfortably, and playing with the new toy while Abe made sounds of pleasure as he explained it. Except for a small amount done by the Signal Company headquarters section, visual signalling had been a wash-out at Helles.

By this time we were finding it hard work to be pleasant with our companions. Most of us were really ill, although we didn’t realise it. There were no serious rows, but there were innumerable squabbles over details of no importance. Three months before they would not have been noticed. Three months later they were forgotten. They were natural under the circumstances.

Figure 21. Firing-line trench. From the album of a soldier in the 8th Manchesters. Taken after 19 August 1915. (Editor’s collection) My mouth was full of flies when I woke up on Monday, August 23. I cursed the green devils as I spat and spluttered them out. The day was quiet. We did our work mechanically. There was little interest in it now.

Murphy, now the adjutant of the 8th Manchesters, was good to us.[190] I spent many an hour with him, and as I mentioned previously, he always had something to offer me. It was a pleasure to take a message to him, for there was always a rest and a talk, sitting in his dug-out. His remarks about certain Ks officers, replacing old territorial officers who had been killed with the 8th, or who had left the peninsula, were worth hearing. Their heads were of large dimensions, apparently. Murphy gave one of them such a stiff dose of logic that he could not answer it. We had no time for Ks, and we lost no opportunity of saying so.

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