Fear At Gallipoli

• Bailey Sprecak, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2014

We were on the boats off the coast of Gallipoli. The sergeant was doing a roll call.
"William Slider!" he called.
"Here!" I called back. He was standing right in front of me and was going to move out of the way when the whistle was blown. He was too much of a coward to fight and wanted all of us to go before him. We were getting closer and I could smell the air of the coast. We hadn't even seen the terrain and they wanted us to take out Turkish heavy machine guns with our little pistols. It was an impossible mission. Us ANZAC's would be dead as soon as we got there. But it seemed like they wanted us to die. Only the really good and fit soldiers had the best weapons. Everyone was also given little bombs from old jam tins stuffed with scrap metal and explosives. I kept on thinking about my life back in Australia. But I was interrupted by the sound of a whistle. It was time.

I got my bag off the floor of the boat and put it on my back. The boat started to slow down and the Turkish were ready to shoot us.
"Go, go, go!" shouted the sergeant.
Of course, he moved out of the way and I ran to the end of the boat. I dived over the side and into the water. It was deeper than I expected. All of a sudden, tons of soldiers were piling up on me and I felt as if I was going to drown. Eventually, the soldiers started to swim and so did I. I could touch the bottom now and the soldiers started running to shore. Then, the Turkish started firing their HMG's (heavy machine guns). All around me soldiers were falling down dead. I tried to stay underwater as much as I could as bullets slow down in water.

It had been 5 minutes and finally more boats arrived. More soldiers ran to shore and were shot. A lot had survived and were shooting all through the hills to find and kill the Turkish. A dead body floated up to me and I grabbed the shotgun from it. I needed a better gun. I finally decided to go. I ran up the shore and joined the fighters. I saw what looked to be a Turk with a bomb. I quickly took aim and fired my gun. I realised that that was the only bullet in the gun. Seconds later, the Turk was falling and the bomb in his hand exploded. the hill that he was standing in collapsed and a HMG with its operator fell to. About 10 other soldiers fell and they were all lifeless.
"Great shot, mate" said a soldier standing next to me.
"We have to start running!" said another soldier in the line.
We started running up the hill and we all threw our bombs at any bunker or foxhole we could find. About 7 more soldiers died in the process. We had made it over the 1st obstacle.

We had all walked for about 10 minutes, dead bodies laid everywhere. I heard a gunshot and a tree next to me had a spur of dust coming out of it. The shooter was close by. A flurry of bullets came out of nowhere and everyone but me died. I threw a bomb in the direction of the bullets and it exploded in mid air from a bullet. I fell to the ground. The shooter came up to me, pointed the gun to my head, and fired.