At the Front, Mesopotamia, via Basra. Undated.
In a tour of the trenches the thing which touches one’s imagination most is the little step cut in the front wall of the firing line, which the Tommy calls “H P” - the taking off point for “hopping the parapet.” On the quietest days the air is not salubrious on the other side of the loopholes, and the “phuit, phuit” of the casual bullet is enough to cramp one’s normal style of walking. During an assault, when those messengers are thick and hot like a hurricane and the flash behind the rifles becomes a continual sheet of flame, one’s inner machinery needs a bit of winding up before one makes the change.
I often used to wonder what regiments would be given the honour of the first hop over the wall. I was bivouacking in the trenches for a day or two before the new division came in. Parties of young officers of Kitchener’s Army would come in to have a look round as one inspects a house one is taking over. They seemed full of confidence, and not at all impressed by the entanglements in front of the Turkish line. On the night of the 4th April I was in the firing trench when the assault was made. We expected a bloody struggle, but found that the Turks were not holding the position in strength. This time they were not surprised. One of them stood up on the parapet at midnight and declaimed in a strange tongue. We wondered what it was all about and whether he knew that we were on the point of launching our attack. He seemed aware of some crisis, and his tone was …fiant and we interpreted it as an invitation to “come on,”
Our first line, with the bombing parties, crept over the parapet at 4.55. In a few seconds a cheer, heard above the rifle and maxim fire, told us that they had taken the trench. Immediately they were in, our guns opened on the third line. On the marsh side, where I was, the Turks were thinnest. The W-s on the left ran into a machine gun; they blew it up with hand grenade und killed the whole detachment. In other parts of the line batches of prisoners were taken. We went on, advancing under a screen of artillery fire which lifted from trench to trench as we swept down Turkish position to the last line, a full mile in the rear.
In this freshly acquired ground I was with a division which did not know me. Luckily I had a pass from the General, the first written order of the kind I had asked for, “To permit the bearer (eyewitness with the I.E.F) to pass into the fire trenches to witness the assault.” When the first Turkish line fell I “hopped the parapet.” When the red flag waved over the second line I went on to the first trench. A zealous young officer arrested me. A mysterious bearded figure in khaki, with belt and revolver but no badge on sleeve or shoulder, hovering in the dim light between the first and second lines of the Turkish trenches might well arouse suspicion. It was just the kind of trick the Hun would play on a new division, trusting to their ignorance of the personnel of the force. The young officer was very rude and turned his back on my civilities. As I took my pass from my pocket I said something cheerful wishing to extricate him from an embarrassing position. But he was not to be cajoled. He seized my revolver and put a corporal on guard over me until a brigade major came up and made him disgorge his prey. This he did unwillingly and with visible disappointment. I might have reassured him. Al Hannah was the only lightly stocked covert he was likely to draw for a long time. He had a stomachful of fighting before the end of the day.
The Turks hung on doggedly and waited for the bayonet charge. The W-s took a machine gun. The officer manning it held on to the last. A long swath of our dead lay in front; the men nearest it were riddled with bullets, but our wave never broke. We pushed right through and consolidated our line some eight hundred yards in advance of the line the Turks had held. It was a long “hop” from the parapet, but Kitchener’s men were not baulked of their scrap. They are a cool, hard, determined looking breed, and they don’t count the cost. They are burnt now to the complexion of Gurkhas. It is a hard campaign for them; but they endure wind and rain and sun and flood and a bed in the wire as indifferently at bullets.