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Remembered Today:

Percy Brown's war diary

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2 to 6 May 1915


priestleysj

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Sun. May 2nd 1915. We started to attack Krithia again this morning, but had to retire into our trenches, under heavy artillery fire; many casualities. I had to go out again today & help bring in the wounded. There were about a dozen of us went out. We only took our rifles & a bandolier of ammunition (50 rounds). We went out in extended order; from 20 to 30 yards apart. I was left hand man, & we had gone about 200 yards, when I saw a man out on my left front. He was sitting up, waving his arms & calling for help. I left our party & went over to him. He could not walk, & he had another man with him in a dying condition. He had had no food for 3 days & I could see that he would not live, so I tried to get the other one in. as I went to lift him, about a dozen shots rang out, & the bullets struck the ground all around us. I saw him under cover, & went to fetch help, as he was too much for me to manage by myself. I came across two of the Worcester Regt, who were out after wounded, like myself, so I asked them to give me a hand. They came with me, & two of us took cover while the other crawled out to the wounded man. One of us had glasses, & we tried to find the snipers so that we could shoot at them & make them keep their heads down. As soon as we had found out where most of them were, we told the other chap to pick up the wounded man, & run back to the next point of cover, while we blazed away at the snipers. We had got back behind a portion of a ruined wall, & I was looking through the glasses, when I suddenly saw a Turkish sniper, just on our left about 30 to 50 yards away. He was just crawling behind a bush & getting ready to fire at us. I dropped the glasses; snatched up my rifle, & had him over, first shot. We eventually got the wounded man back into our trenches, but could not go out for the other, as the Turks started an attack, & we had to remain in the trench. Mon. May 3rd 1915. We have not nearly half our regt left now. We have suffered many casualities since landing. Tues. May 4th/15. We were releived yesterday from the firing line & are now back in the reserve trenches. Ten days in the firing line; advancing & digging trenches, with continuous night attacks, makes one rather fagged out. Wed. May 5th/15. Up in the firing line again. They did not give us much rest. There is a deep gulley or ravine just on our left, & about 40 Turks broke through during the night. They all surrendered. We had our machine guns playing on the gulley nearly all night, & in the morning the ground was covered with dead Turks. Thur. May 6th/15. The Turks called a truce today. To pick up the wounded & bury the dead. We found a few of our men dead in front of our trenches; but no wounded, except one young Turk, whom we brought back with us. He tried to sham dead at first. I suppose he thought we were going to torture him, the same as some of their snipers have done to our men. Two of our sergeants were left wounded on the field, & a Turkish sniper came up to one of them & tried to skin him alive. The other sergt. tried to commit suicide but failed. We made an advance & came across him, when he told us of the sniper's brutality.

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Groon

Thanks for blogging all this. I am grateful for the info as my Great Uncle William GODSELL was a CSM with 2 Hants and was killed at 2nd Krithia on 8 May. I was hoping to read something of that day from the Diary,a disappoinment that Percy wasn't there to write about the advance,but a rejoicing also that he was lost and with the NZs for a couple of days and may have escaped the fate of William and 20 others in the bayonet charge on the Turks which cost them their lives.

William was with the half of the Battalion which didn't land on 25 April,they came in a couple of days later,so I am assuming that Percy was not with William's Company as he landed on W Beach.

Best wishes

Sotonmate

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Thanks for your comment Sotonmate. I imagine Percy would have felt guilty about missing that action, but it probably saved his life. It's frustrating for us now that he didn't include more detail in the diary; however, he was just a very ordinary man caught up in extraordinary events. It's typical of the time perhaps that he mentions some of the senior officers by name but not the men or NCOs. No doubt he'd have known CSM Godsell well.

I'm going to give the manuscript to the Regimental Museum in Winchester, in due course.

Best wishes,

Steve

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