The Big Fight (Gallipoli to the Somme). David Fallon

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       David Fallon

      The Big Fight (Gallipoli to the Somme)

      Published by Good Press, 2021

       [email protected]

      EAN 4057664575005

Table of Contents

       THE BIG FIGHT

       CHAPTER I From Australia to the Fray

       CHAPTER II From Australia to the Fray (Continued)

       CHAPTER III Gallipoli

       CHAPTER IV The Ghastly Landing

       CHAPTER V Holding On

       CHAPTER VI Giving Up Gallipoli

       CHAPTER VII Compliments of the King

       CHAPTER VIII An Intermission

       CHAPTER IX No Quarter

       CHAPTER X Trapping Sappers

       Appendices 1–3

       Appendix 1

       Appendix 1A

       Appendix 2

       Appendix 3

       CHAPTER XI Spotting

       CHAPTER XII “ Razzle Dazzle ”

       CHAPTER XIII Moquet Farm

       CHAPTER XIV Spies

       CHAPTER XV “ Woodfighting ”

       CHAPTER XVI The Play Side of War

       CHAPTER XVII The Rat in the Night

       CHAPTER XVIII The Worst Ordeal

       CHAPTER XIX Blighty

       CHAPTER XX Honored by the King

       CHAPTER XXI The Gray Mother

       XI

THE BIG FIGHT

       Table of Contents

CHAPTER I

       From Australia to the Fray

       Table of Contents

      When great historians with their learned pens shall come to set forth the complete story of the most sweeping and horrible war the world has ever known, I figure they may perhaps have need of such evidence, information and material as a man like myself can give. I mean a man who has been through the red hell of the vast conflict in places where it has flamed most fiercely, a soldier who has been eye-witness of its superb heroisms, its stupendous tragedies, scientific marvels, has undergone its tense emotional and psychological experiences, bears on his body its wounds, has seen at first hand with the amazement all civilization has felt, the cowardice, bestiality, utter moral abandonment to which a nation may fall in a mad dream of the conquest of the world.

      My name is David Fallon. I am of the County Mayo, Ireland. And I’d ask your pardon for a word or two by way of boasting in stating that my ancestors for a pretty-long journey back into history, have always figured in the man-sized battles of their generations. My father, a naturalist, rushed away from gentle scientific pursuits in 1870 to bear arms for France against the Prussians. And it isn’t only because I’m Irish that I fought to get into this present big fight—and I did fight to get into it—but for the pertinent and additional reason that it was in France father met Mlle. Sarah Voltaire who not very long thereafter became Mrs. Fallon.

      And small wonder, with my boy’s mind stirred so many an evening by the exciting stories of the Franco-Prussian battles my father and mother would tell us of in the glow of the old library fireplace, that I had no trouble electing the course of my life. I left the University of Dublin to enlist in the British army. I joined a Northumberland regiment, Nov. 19, 1904, and the military examiners were not at first quite so enthusiastic about the performance as I was for I offered them no Hercules. I was then only eighteen years old, a little under medium height and slim as a whalebone. A weighing machine as far as I was concerned escaped with the small effort of marking one hundred and ten pounds. But I was sound of eye, tooth, blood and heart and so they cordially handed me my uniform—even if they did have to trim off the sleeves of the tunic a bit.

      It is only fair I should say for myself that I was a rather good boy—that the temptations besetting youths in the army have never left their marks on me. Not, believe me, that I was a sanctimonious kid—a good many miles away from that. But I was lucky in having a keen love of athletics and a pride of achievement in many branches of sport. There’s nothing like such a disposition to keep a boy clean and straight. Soccer, Rugby, swimming, wrestling, running—the opportunity for such games and contests was constant in the army and made me devoted to military life.

      And boxing! Good heavens, the whalings I took! But by the same token, the whalings I handed out! There is no use my telling myself that just about here I should be content to hide my light under a bushel somewhat. I’ll not do it. The fact is I rose to the dizzy splendor of champion featherweight of the British Army in India.

      Just a few words more in order to place myself at the time when the vast war began. I saw brief, uneventful service in China, then spent years in India, took part in many of the “hills scraps,” sporadic uprisings