Sir Gerald B. Hurst

“ Education has its uses, after all. Then followed concerts, which were splendidly arranged by Regimental Sergeant-Major M. Hartnett, a veteran of Ladysmith and East Africa and a pillar of the Battalion, now, alas, dead, and by Quartermaster-Sergeant Mort, himself an adept as an entertainer. These "shows" used to start about 6.45 in the evening, and the vision of our tired boys scattered in the fast fading twilight on the slope of some narrow ravine beneath the serene, starry sky of Turkey will be among our most lasting memories of Gallipoli. ”

“ No men were ever greater lovers of peace. Some philosophers have seen or tried to see in the War a judgment on the luxury and frivolity of pre-War England, on her neglect of defence, and her absorption in opulence. Were this the case, it would be ironical to reflect how the North Country homes, first and most cruelly scourged by the War, were homes to which the so-called "sins of society" were least known and most repugnant, and where military training had been long pursued in the teeth of public ridicule and at the sacrifice of leisure. ”

“ Against all the defects that have no doubt affected the application of the Territorial idea, the historian should set its signal virtues. It is an asset beyond price in soldiering to have all ranks welded together by community of feeling and opinion. Joined by ties of neighbourhood, occupation, sport and common interests, men are particularly apt to cultivate that intense patriotism of the small unit which is termed esprit de corps. The history of the War—like the history of all past wars—will illustrate its constant military value. ”

“ Ashton is already nothing but a desert site. The tide of victorious warfare has left it high and dry. It always was high and dry. At probably no other period, however, did the personality of the Manchester Territorial show to greater advantage, as the life was one of peculiar privation. Water was carried up daily by camels from Railhead, but was most scanty, and always warm. The sand was too soft for any game to be played—too soft even to permit of trotting horses. ”

“ It would be idiotic to reassert the old fallacy, belied by the experience of centuries, that one volunteer is worth ten pressed men. Nevertheless the morale of a unit can only be enriched when it is recruited wholly from willing applicants familiar with its traditions and with the badges that symbolise its past, rather than from conscripts drafted from anywhere in Great Britain by the chance action of a Government department. Indeed the Territorial idea has counted for much wherever British man power has been successfully organised during the War. ”

“ As the Turks enjoyed the possession of higher ground everywhere from first to last, their power of observation was necessarily greater than ours, and no corner of Cape Helles was exempt from shell fire. It pursued us even in our bathing places.
The course of life on Gallipoli was, however, so monotonous that men became callous to all dangers. They carried on the long day's routine and the numberless little jobs included in the term "trench duties," as if nothing else mattered. Such tasks are familiar to-day to so many millions of Europeans that they need no description. ”

“ The one handicap that was above all others a constant and pervading thought in the minds of our men was the shortage in numbers. It was a common belief that more reinforcements would have carried the great advances of June and July over every obstacle. Our drafts were always too small and too few, and the want of men infinitely aggravated the exhaustion of the survivors. With but a part of its old strength, and with no supports whatever between itself and the beaches, a battalion was still expected to hold the same length of line as when it was up to strength. ”

“ The tone of an army is the tone of its individual men. An unhappy soldiery cannot win wars. "An army moves on its stomach," said Napoleon; and the recognition of the soldier's hunger and thirst, his desire for rest, amusement and sympathy helps, almost as much as skill and self-confidence help, to make the successful leader of men.
It was, therefore, a soldier's job to keep up the hearts of our colony at Ashton-in-Sinai. ”

“ The fine appreciation of the Manchester Territorial Brigade's work on the 4th June, which he wrote in his dispatches, made his name a name always to conjure with, but to the man in the trenches, an Army Commander can at most be but a shining name. Consequently, the story of the fighting in August, as we saw it, must needs be silent on all vexed questions of high policy, and also on the more famous struggle to the north of Achi Baba. Its limitations are true to life. ”

“ Route marches, night operations, field days, hard drilling in the Barrack square, digging trenches, gun and maxim drill, and last but not least, constant practice on the ranges in addition to ordinary garrison duties have transformed them into an alert body of trained soldiers capable of taking their place anywhere. You can safely rely on them to do—and do well—whatever duty they may be called upon to perform against the enemy, and I am confident that they will yield to no Battalion in the Division in regard either to training or fighting efficiency. ”

“ The Germans in August, 1914, were still "Lancashire's best customers"—not a warlike race bent on winning world-empire by blood and iron. The social traditions of the middle-class urban population, from which the Territorials were drawn, had never fostered the military spirit, nor the power to recognise and understand that spirit in others. In such circumstances the sober zeal with which middle-aged sergeants forsook their families and businesses at the very outset of the War, without a moment's hesitation, is a signal proof of their character. ”

“ It was delightful to ride out from Shallufa camp along a track called "the pilgrims' way" to so charming a spot for a swim in the Canal and pleasures impossible on the dust-swept desert. A few hundred yards to the north, a little white tower called Lonesome Post long flaunted in red paint the Battalion's name and motto for the edification of passing liners. What have become of like devices that were once deep cut on the scarped cliff of Bruce's Ravine on Gallipoli? ”

“ Then the sun would come out and the flies returned in their myriads to plague us. They blackened every jam-pot and clustered thickly round the mouths and eyes of sleeping soldiers. The trenches became dry and dusty. Detached legs or feet or arms of the dead would protrude from the parapet, as the soil around them fell away. Smells became all-pervading. We would seek refuge in the dug-outs, that looked out upon a crowded graveyard from the sloping incline by Border Barricade. ”

“ It was realised nowhere at this period that the rôle of infantry in attack is quite secondary to that of the guns. The bombardment that preceded the infantry assaults at Cape Helles in August did not last over two hours, and certainly never hit the trenches actually in front of the Manchester Territorial Brigade. The gunners could do no more than they did. The resources at their disposal were quite insufficient to atone for the Army's difficulties in point of numbers and in point of ground. It would appear as if we enjoyed no real ascendancy over the enemy either in aircraft or mining. ”

“ The difficulty as to its shortage in men was met as soon as War was declared. The Territorial Force was, in fact, capable of infinite expansion, and of being the basis of the entire New Army, had the Government so willed. Its training, again, was far better than no training at all. Later events have proved with what speed wholly untrained British conscripts can be moulded into efficient soldiers, and that willing men can learn discipline and the use of the rifle within a very few months. ”

“ It was at once obvious that our guns had been unable to affect the strength and resisting power of the enemy's front line. Each advancing wave of the Manchesters was swept away by machine-gun fire. A few of them gallantly reached the Turkish trenches and fell there. Long afterwards, during the last flicker of a British offensive in December, some Lowland Scots soldiers of the 52nd Division found in trenches on the west of the nullah the bodies of some of the Manchester men, who had also this day fought a way to their objective and perished. ”

“ Their story, as told in the pages of the Sentry, was read by General Wingate a few months later "with mixed feelings of joy and sorrow—sorrow for the many good friends who have laid down their lives for their King and Country, and joy that it has fallen to the lot of the gallant Battalion, of which I have the honour to be Colonel, to have behaved so gloriously in one of the hardest and most deadly campaigns in which British troops have ever been engaged."
It is a source of pride to have known and lived with such men. ”

“ On the south-east side of the gap, a barricade ran up a steep slope to the trenches of other Manchesters, whose assault was to be simultaneous with ours. Owing to the clearance of the fire trenches, the assaulting parties had, unfortunately, to move across the open. The nullah was twisted and partly covered by curving banks on either flank; so that it was hoped that our men might nevertheless avoid complete exposure. The great hope, however, was that the British guns would succeed in wrecking the redoubt that commanded the outlet of the nullah before the infantry moved. ”

“ Though he took no part in the miracle of the landings, the East Lancashire Territorial proved himself worthy of comradeship with even "the incomparable 29th Division." He ranked with the Anzac and the Lowland Scot in the great adventure. The original 1st-line of our Battalion were really destroyed in Turkey with their comrades of the same Brigade, but their gallantry in the early assaults and their inflexible fortitude in the trenches—pestered by flies, enfeebled by dysentery, stinted of water, and worn out by hardships—are a lasting title to honour. ”

“ In all Mohammedan areas of the Sudan, Great Britain is wisely defender of the faith, and Islam is wisely with Britain. On the 19th November we were entertained at the Egyptian Army Officers' Club on the occasion of the Mohammedan New Year. On the 27th January 1915 the Prophet's birthday was celebrated with rapturous pageantry, and the Sirdar and Lady Wingate paid most impressive visits to the pavilions set up by the principal sheikhs and notables in front of the mosques at Khartum and Omdurman, while huge crowds of religious enthusiasts beat tom-toms and sang outside. ”

“ It is impossible to imagine men more worn by sleeplessness and sickness than the jaded Manchester Territorials at the end of a fortnight in the front line. On a moving day Gully Ravine was littered with men who had fallen out of the ranks of a dozen regiments as they trudged, heavily laden, along the winding and dust-swept track.
Sir Ian Hamilton wrote of our men early in August: "The —— Manchesters are a really good Battalion. Indeed, the whole of that Brigade have proved themselves equal to veteran Regulars. ”

“ General in order to share the lot of his old regiment, a battalion of the Manchesters, and was killed in a mine crater near Border Barricade.
The spell in the trenches admitted of few variations. The journey to them was always burdensome. It is easy to recall the trek, on the 1st October 1915, of weary, dust-stained, overloaded men some three miles up the nullah, inches deep in dirty dust and under a broiling sun, to occupy narrow fire trenches, unprotected as ever by head cover, and pestilential with smells and flies. Yet once established in the trenches, life was tolerable enough. ”

“ Territorial training sufficed, at any rate, to enable Territorial units to relieve the Regular Army of all garrison duties abroad immediately on the outbreak of war, and in many cases themselves to take the field on active service before Christmas, 1914. Even with regard to the constitutional obstacle to using the Force overseas, fully nine-tenths of its men never dreamed of claiming immunity. The small margin, which were left for employment in home defence, mainly represented the physically unfit or boys under age. ”

“ All these early scenes of the expedition to the Dardanelles I had missed. On the 17th March I had been invalided home on the Indian hospital ship, Glenart Castle, Alexandria to Southampton, and the only public meeting I witnessed during three years of warfare—a recruiting rally in the Manchester Hippodrome—was a poor outlet for one's activity. An offer of the command of the new 3rd line reserve unit at Southport naturally failed to quench my keenness to rejoin the Battalion, and after vexatious delays I at last sailed from Devonport for the East, on the Simla, on the 13th July 1915. ”

“ The eye could see nothing but endless sand hills, broken only by patches of dry scrub and shimmering yellow under the burning sun. If nature has changed little in the desert since Israel came out of captivity, it is easy to sympathise with their regret for the fleshpots of Egypt. ”

“ British justice is sweeping away these pitfalls for the soldier and sailor.
Egypt was at this time a centre of Anzac relaxation. To have explored the tombs of the kings with a New Zealander, paced the roof of the Cairo Citadel with Australians, and watched the colonial celebrations of Christmas in the Alexandria streets is a political education. No Englishman after the War will be ignorant of that golden New World, where all the labour is well paid, all hours of work are limited, and all shops [Pg 79] close at noon on Saturdays. ”

“ During all our Eastern experiences we used the long rifle only. It was, however, a real advantage to have had nearly sixty years' record as a Volunteer unit behind us, with all sorts of Regimental traditions, which lie at the roots of comradeship and ensure happy relations between officers and men. Another distinctive virtue of the Territorial system about Manchester was that all ranks, from Brigadier-General to private, came from one neighbourhood, and viewed life from much the same angle. ”