Photo is the 1/6th Manchesters in Krithia Nullah, fromthe Hellfire Corner website:http://www.hellfirecorner.co.uk/hartley/worthington.htm. Also see John Hartley's recommended book on the 1/6th Manchesters 'Not a Rotter in the Lot'.
"We watched the attack through our glasses - it was awfully interesting!" You could follow the whole progress of the fight: first they were behind some clumps of trees in small bodies; then they pushed off in small columns and finally deployed and advanced in rushes; all the time our guns were simply playing hell with the Turkish trenches - high explosives shells busting right in the trenches giving a cloud of sickly yellow smoke and a pillar of dust debris. The French line still went on and now they were on open grassland and you could see their bayonets gleaming in the sun. They got closer and closer to the Turkish trenches."
In the circumstances the newly arrived 127th Brigade were lucky not to have been thrown into the fruitless attacks on 8 May. Yet they still suffered casualties illustrating their inexperience. There was certainly a painful lesson for Second Lieutenant Hugh Heywood of the 1/6th Manchesters when he and his men were caught milling around in the open.
"The bullets came pretty thick around us - probably ones fired at the frontline trenches and aimed high - and one of them picked me off in the lower left arm. It felt like a big stone being thrown at me hard - very had indeed - and I did not think it was a bullet, till I felt the warm trickle of blood down my sleeve. The arm hurt quite a lot at first, but it soon got to a dull throb and I was quite happy, except for the first half mile bullets were quite frequent visitors and kept on singing through the air near you or kicking up the dust round your feet. On the way back I picked up an Australian and a Naval Division man. The naval fellow was very bad and nearly dying - he'd got a bullet through the back and we got him into a cart and we didn't see him again. The Australian and I walked on and talked much - or rather he did and I listened - of the glories of Australia and the Australians and so on, which bored me rather."
Heywood managed to walk all the way back to the main hospital. As such he was lucky for many wounded who were unable to walk were left trapped in the forward dressing stations that were soon swamped. Further back, near the beach, the main hospital was a grim place of tents packed full of shattered men.
"There were some beastly cases: a man next to me had been shot through the stomach and was yelling for morphia. Another had got it through the head and was lying still with a blood soaked bandage round his forehead, a third had got it through both cheeks and had his tongue taken off at the same time, he was coughing blood all the time and couldn't lie down. In fact it was an eerie place, lit by two poor lamps, with a sleepy orderly sitting by a medical table at one end, and the rows of stretchers all round illuminated just enough to see the white bandages stained a dull red and not much more - which in some cases was rather a blessing."
Two of the officers in that tent would die before Heywood was finally evacuated by sea next day.
SOURCE: IWM DOCS: H. C. L. Heywood, Manuscript account, p.24-29
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