The story of the Australian training camps in Egypt, the dramatic assault upon the Turkish cliff trenches of Gallipoli, where so many of our men had their baptism of fire, where many sleep in silent company, has been often told, so it is necessary only to offer a few personal impressions and experiences of that campaign.
Prior to the war I held a commission in the citizen military forces, but that, apparently, was not considered a vital recommendation for war service, because it was only on the twelfth application and after repeated offers of service in any capacity that I was finally accepted and sent to Duntroon for the special course. In any case the age limit of twenty-one years—soon afterwards extended to twenty-three—for commissions would have proved a barrier to holding commission rank at the age of twenty with the AIF, though not with the Imperial Forces, for, in despair of seeing war service at home, I had applied to the War Office, and in Egypt later was offered a commission. In the meantime I had passed out of Duntroon as one of five special instructors for Broadmeadows Camp, and once enrolled with the Australians, there was, naturally, no desire for service elsewhere, even though accompanied with that offer of rank which was denied at home.
As a result of many disappointments both before and after enlistment, I missed the heroic landing at Gallipoli, and to an Anzac that much has ever been a matter of regret. Beginning as a Private, I had gained my Sergeant’s stripes when eventually I got away with the 6th Brigade under Lieutenant Colonel George Morton, commanding officer of the 23rd Battalion, who had been my battalion commander in home soldiering with the 71st City of Ballarat Regiment. Both on Gallipoli and in France it was my good fortune to serve under officers identified with the Ballarat district.
Egypt had been called the land of sun, sin, sorrow and sore eyes. Its temperatures are as high as its morals are unquestionably low, and Cairo is qualified in both ways to be its capital. One had to be very young indeed, very unobservant, not to realise the pity that Australian troops were ever landed there at all, even though it paved the way to Gallipoli and the name and fame of Anzac. It was in one sense dramatically picturesque that it should have fallen to the lot of the youngest nation amongst the Allies to sojourn in Egypt and campaign in Palestine—two of the cradles of the world. Their immemorial ruins were fingerposts pointing us always back to the grey days of antiquity, giving a new meaning to Scripture and history. The pity is that the contrast between past and present should, in its human elements, be so marked. There is nothing inspiring in the Egyptian today. He represents squalor and vice at its worst, and into these centres of decadence were dumped thousands of young Australians, many of whom had just thrown aside their school books, ignorant of the dangers of their surroundings, full of confidence in themselves. Their first knowledge of the outside world might have been gained in much better company and in a cleaner atmosphere. It was especially hard upon lads who were playing the man’s game, with very little preparation for it. Apart from the desire for action, no one was sorry to see the last of Egypt.
Our first touch of hostilities on the way to the Turkish coast came with the torpedoing of the Southland, our transport being near enough at the time to assist in the rescue of her troops. The death of Colonel Richard Linton, commanding officer of the 6th Brigade, was to me a matter of deep regret, because it was mainly upon his very strong recommendation that I had finally obtained the chance for active service. Even in the Lone Pine trenches, with the zip of sniper bullets always about one’s ears, the occasional boom of big artillery, and the very near presence of the unspeakable Turk, it was difficult for one to realise that he had reached the Mecca of his pilgrimage. Even this early in my experience of war and with prying aeroplanes frequently crossing over our lines, I began to realise that the machine could never alter or lower the status of the human scout. The glamour of night work, of creeping and peering through the darkness to get touch of the enemy and some knowledge of his intentions began then to get possession of me. The searching of actual war finds elements and qualities in many forms. Under its grim influence one must discover himself afresh, though the finest find of all is that which he discovers in others, the spirit and full meaning of comradeship, the depths never before plumbed which the grim psychology of battle alone reveals. To have seen the souls and hearts of men laid bare is to know men—the very flower of men—in a new phase, and in that knowledge to be forever exalted.
The duller weeks of Gallipoli, in which both sides hung grimly to their lines, each watching and waiting for the other to lead, passed on with such excitements as an occasional bit of sniping, a constant vigilance in the matter of spies, for in this we were able to teach Abdul little. He took the ventures of it, both in our uniform and his own, and in this proved himself a brave soldier. In all the work of war time, none is more widely misunderstood than that of the military spy. Knowing well that, even on the faintest suspicion, he will be riddled with volleys of awkward questions, trusting wholly to his own mental alertness to survive that ordeal, he goes into enemy lines fully aware that discovery means short shrift and sudden death. Only the soldier can understand and appreciate all the risks of such a duty, the vital importance of success, the inevitable consequences of failure. The civilian scorns him, but the soldier takes off his hat to him.
With a fortnight’s experience much of the novelty of trench warfare had disappeared. One was absorbed mainly in ordinary campaigning pursuits, the desire for a change of diet, the hundred and one little every day devices that help to lessen discomfort and maintain physical fitness. There was the perennial problem of the little nuisances of life, the unbidden guests which come and abide with you—not as single spies, but in battalions. Had lice been sheep, many of us were squatters. The sight of the blue Aegean suggested fish and fishing, and our first experiment was with a tin of bully beef and a bomb. The tin was opened and thrown into the sea. Half an hour was given the fish to get interested, and the bomb followed the bait. The first catch was eleven fish up to 5 lbs in weight. On the following day we got over thirty, and the fish for breakfast as an alternative to fat bacon was just then one of the most desirable things in life. The only book I possessed—a translation of Dante’s Purgatorio— seemed in one sense suited to the occasion and the scene. When nothing else was offered there was always the Turkish sniper and the wish to exchange compliments with him. One day, through over eagerness to get in touch with one of them, I laid myself open to crossfire from another quarter, and was given a lesson in prudence through the bridge of my rifle being shot away.
As bad luck had prevented me from seeing and sharing the beginnings of Gallipoli, the chances of war passed me out before the end of it. On the evening of November 5th—Guy Fawkes Day—our fireworks came in sudden and disastrous form. Sitting in company headquarters, which was roofed with iron and covered with about a foot of earth, I was giving some instructions to Sergeant Major James Purcell and Sergeant Fisher when a Turkish bomb found us. It was of a new pattern, made of shell casing filled with high explosive, and with a shaft some feet in length screwed to it. It burst immediately upon piercing the roof. Purcell, standing a little way off, was killed instantly. Fisher had, amongst other wounds, one of his hands badly mutilated. My injuries were chiefly on the back and crown of the head, eight serious shrapnel wounds in all, and a compound fracture of the skull. There was a wound in the right shoulder also, and the force of the blow seemed to have shot the right eye so far out of the socket that it had to be pushed back in again. Some fragments of iron lodged at the back of it even now causes complete loss of sight for a time.
It seemed the end of all things for the moment, but meant only the end of Gallipoli, and what touched me most on leaving it was the concern of the men with whom I had been more closely associated. In Egypt I had not been a tender taskmaster. There were times when I felt that my platoon hated me very cordially, that my death in or out of action would have caused them no grief. In two months of Gallipoli we had come to a better knowledge and understanding. I realised it then, realised it later when, although forbidden to boast about trophies of war, they managed to bring me out a few souvenirs of Gallipoli. Because of all that lay behind it, no gift that I ever received had a greater value.
A month of Malta and St John’s Hospital followed upon that adventure and, with the help of a good constitution, I made a quick recovery. My flesh must, I think, have remarkable healing qualities, for the whole of my face, which was practically raw and disfigured when leaving Anzac, healed very rapidly and soon began to look normal again. Many fragments of Turkish metal which the x-rays revealed were not recovered by the surgeons, and still give occasional trouble.
I was able to see a little of this keep of the Mediterranean before leaving it, the tombs and memorials of the old knights of St John of Jerusalem, their armour and weapons in the armoury being of chief interest. Otherwise than in its fortress value and its old association with pilgrimages to the Holy Land—which seem, by the bye, to have been the carefully conducted Cook’s cheap excursions of the period—Malta is not especially interesting. During convalescence I had a chance to visit Florence, but wished to get back to Egypt, wholly for the sake of meeting my brother Cecil and to arrange, if possible, for his transfer to my own corps.4 It seemed to be highly desirable at the moment that my brother and I should be together, and headquarters were always willing to help out any such arrangement. Later I began to doubt the value of it, because in close companionship the anxieties about the other to devote himself to the single purpose, and there is always the chance that both may go out in the one calamity.
We had a sad illustration of that afterwards in the attack on Mouquet Farm. Captain Harold Smith let a company of the 22nd; his brother Captain Dick Smith had a company of the 21st. They went over the top together, and both were killed within a few yards of the parapet. A third brother, who had been badly wounded in the first attack, died in an English hospital a few days later, and the family tragedy was complete. All three were magnificent fellows—men in battle, gentlemen always.
Before reaching Cairo the wounds in my head had reopened, but a fortnight in hospital left me fairly fit for service, though with little hope of again seeing Gallipoli. Apart from the suggestive fact that reinforcements were no longer being sent to the peninsula, one had that definite sense of something impending. A dark cloud seemed to be gathering over the east, and those were not good days for anyone who happened for the moment to be outside the absorbing sphere of action. So the news that the great adventure had ended, that we had stolen away into the night, leaving our dead to the mercy of the Turk and the trenches, which he could never win in action, to his easy occupation, was not altogether a bolt from the blue. It was a melancholy ending to a magnificent effort. Into the strategic considerations which made evacuation desirable one may not enter without fuller knowledge of the circumstances, but the Anzacs of today have no self-accusing memories of it, no torturing sense of anything undone that might humanly have been accomplished. It brought them at least glory, well won in sacrifice. As one who shared only in a little of its story, it is possible to say so much without egotism, to say it for others as well as for Australians, because it is even now necessary to recall at times the splendid story of a certain 29th Division, though few on Gallipoli who had their eyes and ears open will need to be reminded of it. With the great story of Mons fresh in our ears, it seemed at the moment an unhappy fact that our shining things were being accomplished chiefly in retreats.
From the quiet confidences of camp and trench I knew how hard it was for the Anzacs to come away from Gallipoli, hardest of all to leave the little white crosses in the folds of the hills, where in their loneliness the lost lads lay waiting for the last daybreak.
When across the mighty mountains
And along the silent sea,
The sublime celestial bugler
Shall ring out the Reveille.
It had been a hard preparation for the greater phases to come, because there were no reliefs on Gallipoli, no billets behind the line—men were always in it and under it.
In camp again upon historic ground in the desert of Sinai, amongst the old trenches of Tel-el-Kebir, and hard by a cemetery filled with British dead. In the changeless east, shifting in many things—chiefly in sand—it was astonishing to find the old lines still so clearly marked. Just about that time I made the acquaintance of an Egyptian doctor, a very charming man, who on learning where we were camped chatted freely and interestingly upon incidents of the old campaign. That he was so familiar with every detail of that battle of thirty-three years ago was no longer a surprise when I found out that he was a nephew of Arabi Pasha, who fought us there.