103 Years Ago

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/archive/first-world-war/article4617559.ece

Wife’s emotion in identity case

On this day: Nov 19 1915

At Manchester Assizes yesterday George Parkin Hall, alias Herbert Dandy, a soldier, was found guilty of an offence against Mrs Dandy, of West Gorton, and was sentenced to three years’ penal servitude. It was alleged that he personated the woman’s husband, Sergeant Dandy, a soldier serving at the front, and having succeeded in convincing her that he was really Dandy, stayed with her for several days. Hall, aged 37, was dressed in civilian clothes, and pleaded “Not Guilty”. 

Mr F Brocklehurst, prosecuting, pointed out that the facts of the case were peculiar. Hall bore a resemblance to Sergeant Dandy, who went out to Egypt with the 8th Manchesters last year. He presented himself to Mrs Dandy at her shop in July last, and represented that he was her husband. She doubted him at first, but after he had explained that his looks had been altered by his lying on a battlefield unattended for 72 hours, and that he could not remember domestic details as he had lost his memory, and after her relatives had assured her that he was her husband, she believed him and cohabited with him for several days. Then she again doubted him, and ceased to acknowledge him as her husband. Later it became known that the accused was named Hall, that he had a wife in Manchester, and that he only enlisted this year. 

Mrs Dandy in evidence told how the prisoner called at her shop in July and said he was her husband. Owing to his changed appearance she exclaimed “Never,” but he explained that the cause of the change was what he had gone through whilst serving abroad. Sergeant Dandy had an abscess mark on his neck, but Hall said it had been filled in. Dandy also had tattoo marks on his arm, and the prisoner explained their absence by saying they had been burnt out. 

Upon being cross-examined, Mrs Dandy burst into tears and sobbed convulsively. She exclaimed, “I have had nine children in ten years. I have never known wrong in my life, and never thought of a man apart from my husband, and all after my poor husband is laid below.” 

After the verdict Hall pleaded for leniency on the ground that he has six children and had been in gaol 13 weeks. The Judge, however, declared that he had committed a most impudent and deliberate crime.

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/archive/first-world-war/article4617564.ece

September 28, 1915

A baptism of Fire

When we got into the zone of fire it was awful. The furze and dry bushes ahead of us were already well on fire, and we had to pass through that.

The following is taken from a letter from one of the British Yeomanry on service in the Dardanelles: September 5, 1915. Just a line or two to let you know that, up to the exact moment of writing, I have so far escaped being “strafed”, although the shells are dropping within a very few yards of our dug-out. I will, without the aid of the Censor, try to give you a small idea of the great advance. The dismounted Yeo. Division left our original landing beach And marched by night to the second beach, where we hastily dug trenches and slept until dawn. In the afternoon at 2.30 the division “fell in,” and waited on the cliffs for the order to move forward. The division sat on the cliffs and witnessed a marvellous sight. Below us in the bay three British cruisers were firing as hard as they could at the hills in which the Turks were entrenched. Also our field guns, placed in three separate places, were hammering hard at the hills. The noise was deafening.

At last the order came for our brigade to advance. Over the hills and down into the open valley we marched in extended order of troops. We then saw and received our baptism of lire. The valley was 24 miles long and ended in a sloping hill. It was to this hill we had to get the brigade.. This was in the afternoon about 4pm, when the Turkish guns started shelling us. It was absolute hell. We had then about a mile and a half to cover before we could reach safety. The Brigade in front of us was getting it hot. I saw a shell lay out about a dozen men, and men were lying about all over the ground. It was absolutely forbidden to stop for any wounded. When we got into the zone of fire it was awful. The furze and dry bushes ahead of us were already well on fire, and we had to pass through that. The troops then broke into a double. I was never so exhausted in my life. We were carrying 300 rounds of ammunition, water bottle, haversack, rifle, and a heavy pick or shovel. I staggered through that bush fire, and the scream of the shells was horrible. At last we got through the shell zone and had only a few hundred yards to go through whistling bullets. We reached the safety of the hill at last and flopped down. Done to the wide! As we lay on that hillside at night the flames reached to a terrific height, and gave a gruesome finish to a terrible day. At about 2 in the morning we left the hill and went into the trenches. The whole place smells of the unburned dead. It is impossible to get into the open because of the snipers, so there they still lay, in view of all, a witness of war’s horrors. This past week we have been relieved and are back at this hill for a rest. We return to the trenches tonight.

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/archive/first-world-war/article4617556.ece

September 20, 1915

Winter menaces at Anzac

How Anzac will be in winter it is difficult to say. When the great rains come vast quantities of water will stream off the hill sides, and the deep gullies that score them will be converted into torrent beds.

During the last week of August the Australian and New Zealand troops were called upon for yet another effort and responded with their wonted courage and devotion. As the result the height known as Hill or Knoll 60 passed finally into our hands, and some 400 acres of ground were added to the territory of Anzac. Hill 60 lies on the extreme left of the Anzac position beyond the ground captured by the night attack of August 6. It is almost the last crest of the last ridge separating Anzac from the plain to the north. Its importance for us lies in the fact that it constitutes a point of union between our forces at Anzac and our line across the Suvla plain. The Turks clung to it with the utmost determination. When they were flung out of a trench by the rush of our men they would bomb their way back again, accepting terrible loss unflinchingly to win back the lost ground, and when we finally got possession of the trenches it was to find them full of the enemy’s dead.

We, of course, did not come off scatheless. It took three days’ hard fighting to turn the Turks out, and the ground over which our men had to charge is still thickly strewn with the bodies of the slain - our own and the enemy’s. It is computed that the Turks lost 5,000 men before they surrendered the position. The Indian Brigade and our own Connaught Rangers (5th Battalion) shared the fighting with the Australians and New Zealanders. There were rumours that the enemy meant to try a general attack, but they have not materialized, and it is improbable that the Turks feel disposed to risk an attack after the enormous loss they have sustained on this front during the past month. They cannot yet have forgotten the Lone Pine trenches, where they left 700 of their dead to be buried by our men. Still less can they have forgotten their descent upon the “Farm” from the ridge of Chunuk Bair on August 10.

The New Zealanders, after they had won a footing on the ridge, were relieved by two British battalions, who were swept off the ridge by the Turkish onrush. No discredit attaches to them; the position was insecure, and the numbers against them overwhelming. After them the Turks, 12 battalions strong, swept over the crest into the tremendous ravine below. Coming down the steep side they came under our machine-gun flre. Ten machine guns under the command of Wallingford, of Hvthar fame, rained bullets on them until the last remnant had got back over the ridge into safety.

“They came down in thousands; they went back in hundreds,” said a Staff officer of the New Zealand Brigade, describing the affair. The machine gunners claim 5,000 killed. The last fight for Hill 60 must be even fresher in the memory of the Turks. Danger at this part of the line could come, I think, only from physical overstrain, from the bodily weariness of the troops. The Australian-New Zealand Army Corps has held the Anrie position since April 25. During all that time the men have been cramped into a space some 2,000 yards wide by 1,200 deep. They lived and live on the slopes of precipitous hills. The enemy’s trenches overlook our positions at many posts, and not only has there been ordinary trench digging, but innumerable saps, communication trenches, and covered trenches have been dug. On the lower levels mule transport is used, but higher up every cartridge, every biscuit, and every mouthful of water that reaches the firing trenches has to be “humped” on men’s backs. All this has been done under a broiling sun on a diet which, while nourishing and abundant, sorely lacks variety.

The beach is again enfiladed by the enemy’s artillery from both sides. The guns in the olive groves south of Anzac have never changed their position and drop shrapnel on the beach or over the trawlers and other small craft lying off it. “Beachy Bill,” which used to enfilade the beach from the Suvla Bay side, was silent for a few days after our landing in the bay, but has since been mounted in the “W” hill further inland, and is able to reach Anzac with all the old precision.

“Beachy Bill” is said to be a French “soixante-quinze” manufactured for the Serbians and intercepted by the Turks just before the Balkan War. How Anzac will be in winter it is difficult to say. When the great rains come vast quantities of water will stream off the hill sides, and the deep gullies that score them will be converted into torrent beds. In many places one can see that the water must have washed two or three feet deep over the ground during last winter’s storms. The angles of the ground, however, are so steep that the skill of the engineers should be able to devise something like a practical drainage system. The trenches and dug-outs will necessarily become soaking wet, and here lies a danger for the health of the troops that can only be averted by putting in flooring and roofing wherever needful, as well as rivetting the sides of the trenches. For this purpose great quantities of material will be necessary, which cannot be supplied on the spot.