Not So Unspeakable
A Turk Whose Sense of Humor Made the Tommies His Friends at Gallipoli
War has its humor. Even though it appear arms locked with death, there is a laugh on the side. It is probably true, as an old soldier once said, that if there were not a funny side to war an army could never get through its hell. The British troops on the Gallipoli Peninsula did not find the situation teeming with the hilarious, but there were moments of relief from the grim monster of trench fighting. Oddly enough one of the provoking causes of much mirth, seasoned with a due amount of vexation, was a rotund Turk in whom a sense of humor and an impudent daring mingled in a way to win the regard of the Tommies fighting in the trench opposite him. He alternated between tossing a bunch of dates and hurling a bomb into the trench of the Tommies with whom he exchanged laughter daily. Some of the Australians detected in him reminders of an eccentric “publican” who dispensed beer at home. So the Turk was dubbed “Fatty” Burns, the sobriquet of the keeper of the “pub.”
A correspondent of the New York Globe tells the story as he got it from Trooper Clancy, one of the men in the trench opposite the merry Turk, at Russell’s Top, on Gallipoli, the two trenches being separated by less than twenty-five yards.
“One old topper in the trench opposite me was a fair treat,” said Clancy. “He was so. My word! Used to pop up his head above the trenches and laugh at us. Then he’d pop down again. All along our side the boys would be taking shots at him, and they never hit. Then we could hear him laugh. We got so we liked him.
“‘Don’t shoot at the old orphan,’ the boys would say. ‘He looks like “Fatty” Burns.’”
One morning the Light Horse had made a demonstration in order to keep the Turks from thinking of what was going on somewhere else. They were chased back to the trenches when they had done their part, but they left two men behind them. The sun was cruel hot, Clancy says. His rifle-barrel fair blistered his fingers. These poor chaps were lying there with their faces in the grizzling sand. The Australians could not reach them. It would have been suicide to try.
“Here comes ‘Fatty’ Burns,” said some one.
The Australians in stupefaction watched the old Turk. He had thrown aside his rifle and stood up at full length on the parapet of the trench. Anyone could have potted him at that range. Clancy doesn’t understand yet why no one did, except that they were all fond of the old blighter. “Fatty” Burns crawled into the open in a lazy sort of way and walked over to the two wounded men.
“Gave them a drink of water, he did,” said Clancy, “and wiped their lips and then lugged them over to a bit of cover so we could go out and get them after night came. We gave a cheer for old ‘Fatty’ and he laughed at us before he went back into his hole. My word! How his white teeth did shine.”
The Australians had more bully-beef than they needed. The cans got to be a nuisance. They were not permitted to refuse the stated allowance of bull each day. Until lately a British ration has been a fixed and immutable thing. One day it occurred to some one that “Fatty” Burns might like some meat. So they tossed three cans into his trench.
“There was a terrible hullaballo, when they landed,” said Clancy. “I suppose they thought it was some new-fangled kind of bomb. But an hour or so later some Turk threw us a lot of fine, fresh dates. We always reckoned it was ‘Fatty’ Burns.”
Three or four days afterward “Fatty” Burns thrust head and shoulders above the trench-top again and laughed like sin. Then he threw something into Clancy’s trench.
“I just had time to get my overcoat down on it before it went off,” said he. “‘Fatty’ had scooped out the meat from one of our tins and filled it up with melinite and pieces of scrap-iron. It fair murdered my coat. I held it up above the parapet and shook it at ‘Fatty.’ He laughed until he choked.”
“A bully old sport was ‘Fatty’ Burns.”