In the Line of Battle

The firing ceased, and the Turks came out with all their stretcher-bearers, and our stretcher-bearers and diggers went out, too, and the burials went on – and not before they were necessary, for the stenches were awful.

This sad work was being done, when our artillery observers noticed that the Turks were bringing up guns and reinforcements from the gulley at the back of our chaps, and we were ordered to come in.

That ended the armistice for the time, and the Turks at the back were fired on and their little game stopped. Next morning there was another armistice, for it was absolutely necessary to get on with the burials. The atmosphere was almost unendurable, and, even on landing, the stench from dead mules and so on was so horrible that it nearly made me bilious.

On that second morning I was able to see that a lot of our chaps were lying between our parapet and the Turks’ parapet. We made an exchange of bodies, and having got our men’s identification discs, we buried them in the small trenches, so that the fighting-places became graves.

All these things that I have told about happened within thirty hours of our landing – and the fortune of war had sent some of the Anzacs to their last resting-place and put others, wounded, on the list for home. Men were sent off, their fighting careers ended, after having been in the enemy’s country for only a few hours.

We were pretty philosophical over the business. I remember one of the men in my squadron saying, “If your name’s on a bullet you’re going to stop it.” Soon afterwards a four-point-seven got him.

The Turks used to fire like mad. It was astonishing to see how many bullets they fired, but even at that early stage our men, when off duty, were asleep and taking no notice of them.

At this time we were opposite Lone Pine, attached to the 4th Australian Battalion as infantry. After the fighting we had exactly a month in the trenches, and then relieved some infantry who had had three weeks of solid fighting. We were relieved and went to a rest camp near Gaba Tepi. We had seven days there, with a good deal of excitement one way and another, and plenty of casualties, for we were being called out every day.

It was rumoured that Achi Baba was going to fall, and we were ordered into the firing-line as supports for the 5th Light Horse. The 5th were going out in front to draw the Turks’ fire and keep reinforcements from going down to Achi Baba. Some of the 6th and 7th Light Horse were to stand by and act as reinforcements. My troop was in the firing-line.

The 5th hopped out right on the beach, and ran for Gaba Tepi under cover of the ridges. The 7th got up on our left. We were in the middle. A squadron of the 7th ran along under cover of the ridge, in the same direction as the 5th. They went a good while without drawing the fire of the Turks, who did not seem to notice them; but fire was opened at last.

Still the advance continued, more cautiously now, our fellows crawling when they could, for shelter. The Turks got a few lucky shells in amongst the 5th, and the casualties began to come in.

There were some odd incidents.

Our sergeant was peering through a look-out with a pair of glasses, his right hand being round them. Another sergeant said, “Let’s have a peep.”

Our sergeant pulled his head back and straightened himself, but still held the glasses with his hand in front of the hole.

The other sergeant was just stepping up to take the glasses, when a bullet came through the hole and went clean through the hand that still held the glasses, putting our sergeant out of action. We took him to the dressing-station, and he was not long before he was back in the firing-line, which is more than would have happened if the sergeant had been still bending down and had got the bullet in his head. He was a nice chap – a station-manager from Queensland.

In about two hours volunteers were asked for to bring in wounded Colonials from the front. There were a good many casualties by this time, and plenty for the stretcher-bearers to do.

We got to two men who, we saw at once, were very badly wounded. They were pretty well sheltered, and it was thought better to leave them where they were for the present, and not try to move them. One man had his foot blown off by shrapnel, and he was otherwise very badly wounded. A stretcher-bearer had bound him up roughly and put a tourniquet on to stop the bleeding; and another chap had carried him on his back to shelter. Several of the stretcher-bearers were killed and wounded at this time, but I do not think that the firing on them was deliberate.

The other man was a trumpeter. He was a little chap, and we called him “Scottie,” because he had gone out to Australia from Scotland. He was wounded in the abdomen, and was in agony, but we managed to relieve his suffering with half a grain of morphia. The flies were swarming and were terribly troublesome. I tried to keep them off with a wet towel – I had to wet it in salt water – so that they should not annoy him. I noticed that his boots were torn, and I took them off. I then saw that his legs had not been dressed – and he had been lying there for some time. I put iodine on the wounds.

Scottie was rather cheery, and when the padre came up and said, “Well, how are you?” he answered, “I’m feeling pretty good now.”

When the colonel went up to him, Scottie said, “I’m going to die!”

“Oh no, you’re not,” said the colonel. “You’ll get all right again. Don’t let that worry you. You’ll soon be playing Christmas Calls for us.”

To that Scottie made a reply which I shall never forget. “Yes,” he said. “I shall die! I can smell ut!” That was his real expression, and I suppose he meant that he could smell death.

Scottie wanted the colonel to take charge of some little trinkets and things: his pay-book, and a photograph of two children. “Give these to the wife,” he said. Then he broke into “Annie Laurie,” and sang a verse of it. He sang the song fairly well. It was a good attempt for a man in the straits that he was in.

At six o’clock he died, and was buried the same night, after sundown, at the place where we were, and that was a big cutting called Chatham’s Post, named after one of the officers. It was a deep cutting in the side of the hill. These two chaps were lying there on stretchers, and it was very hard for a bullet to hit them. Scottie was just taken to the back of the parade at the back of Chatham’s Post, a place called Shrapnel Green. It was a green field when we first went, but it was soon trodden down and made bare by gun and rifle fire. And there Scottie was laid to rest.

From the burial we went back to the dressing-station and carried the wounded trooper – Lane, they called him – down to the beach. The padre asked Lane if he would like a “wad,” that is a pannikin, of tea, and Lane said he would. I helped him to sit up, and I held the “wad” for him. He drank the tea cheerfully, though he must have been in awful agony. They took him along the beach. He did not say much, but never complained. When he did speak it was to ask, “Who’s that lying there?” or “How is he getting on?” He was the best I saw the whole time I was there.

On the way to the beach there were wire entanglements, to stop the Turkish patrols. The stretcher-bearers fell into the entanglements and dropped Lane; but he never thought about himself. What he said was, “Are you hurt?” I am glad to say that he is here in England, like me, and has pretty well got over it, though he has lost his foot. Seventeen men were hit by the shell that knocked Lane out.

We settled down again to the fighting game with the Turks, who kept us very lively, especially with a gun that we called “Beachy Bill.” This gun played on the beach whenever there was a sign of our movements, and it became a common thing to say, “Beachy Bill’s got somebody again.” That Turkish gun caused more casualties than all the rest put together. The monitors used to go for it, and I believe they bombarded it out of existence more than once. A new gun was soon at work again, but to us it was always “Beachy Bill.” When we first got to Gallipoli we did not know the tricks of the trade, but everybody soon got fly, and that helped us a lot in tackling “Beachy Bill” and lessening his bag.

There’s a lot more to say, but I will only tell you about one more thing, and that is the blowing up of some Turks. Our trenches and those of the Turks almost met in places, and bombs were thrown from one to the other. That was a lively exchange of greetings, but it didn’t lead to much. Something more definite was wanted, and so our people began to dig a tunnel at a very narrow junction, so as to blow up the Turkish trenches, and make our own trench-line straight, instead of being, as it was, twisting and zigzag.

It was a real Turk hunt, and just the sort of work that our chaps revelled in.

This affair, like most of our scraps, was done in the darkness, which made it all the more thrilling. Well, we dug and sapped and tunnelled towards the Turks, and when everything had been got ready, powder was packed in sandbags and fuses were put to them. The deeper the sandbags the worse the explosion.

All was ready at last. The powder-bags were packed, the fuses were lit, and then the 11th and 12th Battalions began to finish the work which the artillery had begun. The guns had started at five o’clock, they went on booming till nine, then there was a fearful sound which was louder than the loudest thunder I ever heard, accompanied by an immense mass of red fire in the blackness of the night. I was two hundred yards away, but the very earth on which I stood shook and shivered with the upheaval.

As soon as the crash came our chaps hopped up and rushed the shattered trenches. They found that a big crater had been made by the explosion, and that most of the Turks had been stiffened. Those who were left were either bayoneted or bombed. The Turks did not counter-attack that day. They had had enough of it. We had a good few casualties, but it was an effort that was worth while, because it showed that if we wanted a place we could take it, and at any time we liked. I saw all this very clearly, for I was going backward and forward all the time as a stretcher-bearer.

The Turks gave us no chance and we gave them none; but at the same time they did not do anything that I would call really dirty or out of the way. A lot of them were fine fellows physically. Some of the Turkish diggers we got as prisoners had no fighting gear on them at all. They were just peasants who had been brought up to do the work.

At last I fell ill with dysentery and gastritis, and came home on a huge hospital ship, with four thousand more sick and wounded soldiers. We had a six days’ run to Southampton, and had just under sixty deaths on board. They were buried at sea in batches, the biggest being eleven – and very solemn it all was.

Now I have done; but I want to tell of just one more little thing that happened here in England, where I have been in hospital, and where people have been so good to us.

It was Christmas-time, and we were having a Sunday evening service in hospital. We were asked what hymns we would like, and a chap spoke out and said, “Let’s have

‘We plough the fields and scatter
The good seed on the land.’”

The parson was puzzled. He hardly thought we could, because it was Christmas-time and this was a harvest hymn.

“And it’s harvest-time now at home in Australia,” the chap said.

So we had the good old hymn, and it took us back to home twelve thousand miles away.

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I think the Anzacs did what they set out to do.

CHAPTER VI

“IMPERISHABLE GLORY” FOR THE KENSINGTONS

[”By your splendid attack and dogged endurance on May 9th, you and your fallen comrades won imperishable glory for the 13th London Battalion. It was a feat of arms surpassed by no battalion in this great war.” This was the fine tribute paid to the 13th (Kensington) Battalion of the London Regiment by General Sir Henry Rawlinson, commanding the 4th Army Corps, after the Kensingtons had taken part in the British advance in May between Bois Grenier and Festubert. The battalion had already greatly distinguished itself in the Neuve Chapelle operations and elsewhere. This story of some of the doings of the corps at the front is told by a member of the Kensingtons, who wishes to remain anonymous.]

The main body of the Kensingtons had gone out in October, and I left England with a draft in January, the dead of winter. We marched up to billets in Laventi, three miles from the firing-line. The place was being heavily shelled by the Germans, and amongst other buildings the church was smashed up; but the men were lucky, and I don’t think that any soldiers were hit there. I shall always particularly remember that place, because it was there that I saw for the first time a man who had been killed by the enemy.

I was going along a street near an old ruined house which was being used as a soldiers’ club, when I heard the noise of an exploding shell. The crash was very near, and soldiers rushed out from the ruined house to see what had happened. They told me that the shell had burst farther down the street, and that a civilian had been killed. Without any loss of time they took a door down, and using this as a stretcher they carried the dead man away, and as I watched them I realised that we were fairly in it, and I am bound to say that I was very strangely moved and deeply impressed by this little tragedy.

We realised even more fully what it all meant when for the first time at the front we put five rounds of ball ammunition in the magazines and marched off for our first spell in the trenches, between our billets and the firing-line. We started at dusk, so that we should reach the trenches just when it became dark.

There was something very solemn in going away like that towards the enemy; yet there was, of course, intense excitement and curiosity. It was not a very exhilarating start, because the country was in a very bad state, owing to the heavy January rains. There was plenty of water in the trenches when we reached them, and it was bitterly cold. We were only one night in them that time, but it was a useful breaking-in experience, and hardened us a bit for the much longer spells, during which the cold was so intense that the rifles were frozen as they lay on the parapets, if care had not been taken to keep them well oiled after firing.

We got some fine experience and first-rate preparation as a nerve-steadier in carrying out the duties of “listening patrol.” When night came we went out of our trenches and made our way to the front of the parapet, working in pairs. This work was both dangerous and ticklish, for we had orders not to fire under any circumstances, as that would have brought the German machine-guns on us; but to use only the bayonet in case we came across parties of the enemy.