tty and I
spat it out, much to the amusement of the Indians.
One of them saw the humorous side of life. He described to Mr.
Henderson the different attitudes adopted towards Turkish shells by
the British, Indian and Australian soldiers. "British Tommy," said he,
"Turk shell, Tommy says 'Ah!' Turk shell, Indian say 'Oosh!'
Australian say 'Where the hell did that come from?'"
The Divisional Ammunition Column was composed of Sikhs, and they were
a brave body of men. It was their job to get the ammunition to the
front line, so that they were always fair targets for the Turks. The
mules were hitched up in threes, one in rear of the other, each mule
carrying two boxes of ammunition. The train might number anything from
15 to 20 mules. All went along at a trot, constantly under fire. When
a mule was hit he was unhitched, the boxes of ammunition were rolled
off, and the train proceeded; nothing stopped them. It was the same if
one of the men became a casualty; he was put on one side to await the
stretcher-bearers--but almost always one of the other men appeared
with a water bottle.
They were very adept in the management of mules. Frequently a block
would occur while the mule train occupied a sap; the mules at times
became fractious and manipulated their hind legs with the most
marvellous precision--certainly they placed a good deal of weight in
their arguments. But in the midst of it all, when one could see
nothing but mules' heels, straps and ammunition boxes, the Indian
drivers would talk to their charges and soothe them down. I don't know
what they said, but presume it resembled the cooing, coaxing and
persuasive tongue of our bullock-driver. The mules were all stalled in
the next gully to ours, and one afternoon three or four of us were
sitting admiring the sunset when a shell came over. It was different
from that usually sent by Abdul, being seemingly formed of paper and
black rag; someone suggested, too, that there was a good deal of
faultiness in the powder. From subsequent inquiries we found that what
we saw going over our dug-outs was Mule! A shell had burst right in
one of them, and the resultant mass was what we had observed. The
Ceylon Tea Planter's Corps was bivouacked just below us and were
having tea at the time; their repast was mixed with mule.
Donkeys formed part of the population of the Peninsula. I am referring
here to the four-footed variety, though, of course, others were in
evidence at times. The
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