Great Anzac Stories

by Graham Seal

  ‘Pass on, Digger,’ interrupted the sentry, ‘you’ve got the dinkum talk!’

  The dialogue between the American and the Australian was a popular form of digger humour. Possibly because the Australian always tops the exaggerations of the American. This one was already old when it was first published in 1917.

  A yankee and an Aussie were having a quiet drink in the canteen. After a while the conversation came around to the subject of wildlife. ‘Your dingo is nowhere near as savage as our coyote’, the American claimed. ‘And our cougars can outdo any of your wild beasts.’

  ‘Is that right?’, said the Aussie.

  ‘Yeah. Take our rattlesnake. It bites you and you die in under two minutes.’

  ‘Oh, that’s nothing’, replied the Aussie. ‘Our taipans come at you so fast you’re dead two minutes before they bite you.’

  It was not only the wildlife that featured in tall tales of this type.

  It was at a military hospital in England, and the convalescents were sitting in the garden chatting. The topic was cold weather. The American had the floor.

  ‘Wal, I reckon it was a bit cold in those French trenches this winter. But shucks! It was a heat wave compared with some of the cold snaps we get in America. Why, look here, children; I remember one day over’n New York it got so darned cold, kinder suddent like, that everybody’s whiskers freezed, and the people had ter shave themselves with dynamite. Of course the explosions shook up ther old city a trifle, but, by George Washington, some whickers got shifted! Another day a cold jerk put in without notice and freezed up all the whisky. The bartenders had to go about with axes chipping’ nobblers off the whiskey blocks. Some cold, I reckon!’

  An Australian scratched his right ear with a crutch, and put in:

  ‘Dunno much about cold in Australia, but I ken talk heat a bit. It does warm up over there. Now, once I was humpin’ me bluey in ther bush. A heat wave came up. You could see it comin’ in the distance by ther kangaroos ’oppin’ about with their tails on fire. I picked up a bit of old fencin’ wire and lit me pipe with it. That was a sure sign too. In a few minutes that wave struck me, dealt with me, and then passed on, leavin’ me with only me pocket knife and a quart pot to go on with. Of course I was new to the bush, or I couldn’t have felt it so much. I met another bloke soon after. He was eatin’ a baked goanna he’d picked up. I sez ‘Warm, mate, eh?’ He sez, ‘Oh, it’s been just nice to-day. Reckon it’ll be fairly ’ot tomorrow.’

  It was on again in the next war as well.

  Overheard on Townsville beach one night in 1944—a Yank calls to an Aussie: ‘Hey, Buddy, break down the language! I’d like you to know I have a lady with me here!’

  The Aussie calls back to the Yank: ‘And what the hell d’ya think I have here—a ruddy seagull?’

  Religion

  Religion was another point of difference and potential sectarian dissension within the ranks. Personal experience stories featured frequently in trench tales. These were sometimes simple accounts of unusual and/or humorous experiences; at other times they were retellings of traditional yarns and tall stories. Often they were in all likelihood apocryphal, though nonetheless revealing for that, as in this slice of sectarian rivalry under the title ‘We’ll Have That Moment Again’.

  A n R.C. Padre was tripping gaily along somewhere near supports, when he noticed a burying party just putting the finishing touches to the graves of four of their comrades. He pulled up, and finding that three of them were of his creed, asked who had read the service. ‘Some Tommy C of E Padre, sir’ was the reply. The R. C. Chaplain asked nothing more but walked straight to the graves, and, in a voice like a sergeant-major, gave the order ‘Numbers 2, 3 and 4—As you were!’—Then proceeded to re-read the burial service.

  Many years after World War II ended in 1945, Mr R. F. Young of Tasmania remembered an incident that typified the predominant digger attitude to formal religious affiliations.

  When I was joining the A.I.F. back in 1940, a big bushman ahead of me in the line was being asked by the Recruiting Depot Lieutenant about his name, age, and so on. When it came to his religious denomination he drawled, ‘Aw, I’m not fussy. What are you short of?’

  Monocles

  This anecdote is from the Boer War (1899–1902) and so cannot be considered a strictly Anzac yarn. But it suggests that the attitudes of the diggers were already in formation a long time before 1915.

  It was during the Boer War. He was walking down the street in a city in South Africa when he noticed a very polished and obviously very new British Army lieutenant complete with monocle and swagger stick, walking across the road.

  About to cross the road from the other side was a very dirty and obviously very experienced Australian Light Horseman, complete with slouch hat, the inevitable ‘makings’ hanging from his lower lip, and a saddle over one arm.

  The young lieutenant halted the Aussie, apparently with the intention of asking him what he meant by appearing in the streets in such an untidy getup.

  The Aussie spat his cigarette on to the road and eyed the young officer up and down. ‘The Queensland Bushrangers,’ he answered casually. Then he lifted a saddle stirrup to one eye in imitation of the monocle, and said with a forced accent. ‘And you, my good man—what bloody regiment, may I ask, do you belong to?’

  The diggers of the Great War didn’t have it all their own way when it came to British officers and monocles. One Australian unit had a posh-talking officer who wore a monocle. One morning when the men came out to parade before the officer, they all lined up with a coin in one eye. The British officer looked at them, then tossed his head upwards, sending his monocle spinning into the air, catching it in his other eye.

  ‘Now, which one of you bastards can do that?’, he asked in an impeccable English accent.

  It is said that the diggers were so impressed they all wanted to buy the officer a drink.

  Food and drink

  If troops are not properly fed they cannot fight well, due both to physical and psychological decline. Sometimes it becomes necessary to resort to deception to improve the menu, as recounted in this tale from Gallipoli.

  The ration problem on Gallipoli was at times a very real one, but probably the most trying part of it, to the troops at any rate, was that the only commodity in the ‘sweets’ line of business was apricot jam. Australians often wondered why that particular form of preserve seemed to be unlimited. The explanation was that in 1914 the English crop of ’cots was one of the heaviest on record. Thousands of tons of the fruit were jammed and canned, and some makers (can any of us ever forget Tickler, with his picture on the label?) made fortunes, though all of them didn’t deserve to. Naturally the troops, and especially the Australians, got sick of the sight of the stuff.

  One dark night in November, ’15, it fell to my lot to take a fatigue party of 20 men down from ‘Q Pip’ (Quinn’s Post) to the beach. None of us knew the route we had been ordered to follow, and we got helplessly bushed until I espied a light in what turned out to be an ASC sub-depot. ‘I’ve been lookin’ for you,’ said a voice. ‘You’ll be the party for the stuff for the Jocks’ (Scottish Horse). Scenting something good, I took the risk and said that we were. Darkness aided in hiding the Aussie uniform and silence did the rest. We afterwards discovered that we had got away with over 200 jars of Keiller’s Dundee marmalade, among the best of Scotia’s products. I have often wondered what happened to the wight who issued the stuff without a murmur. But in those days one could do a lot and get away with it.

  Alcohol has always featured heavily in the life and lore of soldiers. During the Great War, rum and other forms of alcohol were often issued to troops when at the front line—and greatly appreciated it was, as reflected in this World War I ditty.

  The Frenchman likes his sparkling wine,

  The German likes his beer,

  The Tommie likes his half and half

  Because it brings good cheer.

  The Scotsman likes his whisky,


  And Paddy likes his pot,

  But the Digger has no national drink,

  So he drinks the blanky lot.

  Many yarns were spun around the subject of grog. This one allegedly took place in the French town of Le Havre immediately after the war’s end on 11 November 1918. The reference to the ‘8 chevaux ou 40 hommes’ (8 horses or 40 men) was a favourite World War I digger term for the very basic French rail carriages in which they were often transported. As this story tells it, four days of this form of travel put the diggers in the mood for a drink.

  After the Armistice the troops were sent to Le Havre in a car deluxe of the ‘8 chevaux ou 40 hommes’ brand. The weather being cold, the food crook, and the journey taking anything up to four days, the troops arrived at their destination in a somewhat peevish mood.

  Our crowd was reported to have busted open some railway trucks at Abbeville and helped themselves to cognac, and the O.C. No. 5 Company at the Australian delousing camp was deputed to intercept the train . . . and search it. He carried out his duties faithfully telling the O.C. train his orders and saying ‘I shall be back in twenty minutes with my staff and I will search thoroughly. If I find any cognac, heaven help anyone found with it.’

  When the search was made the honour of the AIF was vindicated. Next morning the O.C. No. 5 found a bottle of cognac on his bunk.

  Babbling brooks

  The tradition of the dreadful cook is a long one, stretching back to Australia’s pioneering days. It often features in the lore of shearing; for example, in the tale of ‘Who called the cook a bastard?’. In this story, the shearers are so fed up with the appalling food their cook serves up that there is an argument in which one of them calls the cook a ‘bastard’. The cook complains to the boss, who comes into the men’s shed to find the culprit. ‘Who called the cook a bastard?’ he demands to know. ‘Who called the bastard a cook?’, comes the rapid-fire reply.

  The tradition continued into the First AIF where, in a variation on the theme, a digger is being questioned by the officer in charge of his court-martial. ‘“Did you call the cook a ———?” “No”, the digger answers, “but I could kiss the ——— who did!”’

  And in another incident involving bad food and bad language:

  I came out of my dugout one morning attracted by a terrible outburst of Aussie slanguage in the trench. The company dag [character] was standing in about three feet of mud, holding his mess tin in front of him and gazing contemptuously at a piece of badly cooked bacon, while he made a few heated remarks concerning one known as Bolo, the babbling brook. He concluded an earnest and powerful address thus:

  ‘An’ if the ——— that cooked this bacon ever gets hung for bein’ a cook, the poor ——— will be innocent’.

  Cooks were usually known by their rhyming slang name as ‘Babbling Brooks’, or simply ‘Babblers’.

  ‘What’s this the Babbling Brook has given me—tea or stew?’ asked the new hand perplexedly, as he contemplated the concoction in his Dixie.

  ‘It’s tea’, announced his cobber.

  ‘How can you tell?’ said the new hand.

  ‘You can always tell when you’ve got tea or stew by where he puts it. If he puts it in the Dixie lid it’s stew, but if he puts it in the Dixie itself it’s tea.’

  Repetition of the same offering could also cause concern.

  During the advance towards the outer defences of the Hindenburg Line early in September, 1918, the supply of rations got a bit disorganized, and for three solid days the cookhouse menu was stew, made of biscuits and bully-beef, with sundry dehydrated vegetables put through the mince, and boiled with a little water. Every man who came to the cookhouse made practically the same remark: ‘Struth! Stoo again!’ Then followed a wider range of language.

  It nearly drove the cook mad. On the evening of the third day a notice was chalked up outside the cookhouse: ‘It’s Stew Again! But the first insulting cow who says so will be made Fresh Meat!’

  Cooks were usually considered to be less than hygienic in both their trade and their personal characteristics.

  Back in the First World War days there was a company cook— we’ll call him Bill—who was probably the finest spoiler of Army rations in the whole A.I.F. He was also the greasiest trooper ever to don uniform.

  ‘I learnt to cook from me old mother,’ he would reminisce. ‘Every Saturday she useter boil a sheep’s head for Dad and us 14 kids; and she always cooked the head with the eyes in, as she reckoned it’d ’ave to see us through the week.’

  Old Bill returned home after the armistice, sound in wind and limb, his nearest approach to a ‘Blighty’ being up at Messines in ’17, when a whizzbang shell struck him fair and square in the chest. But he was so greasy the shell merely glanced off him and killed two mules attached to the cooker.

  The tradition, and the problem, continued into the next war.

  The boys hated the new cook, and one of them filled his boots with pig-wash in the dead of night. The cook said nothing next day when the lads visited the cookhouse after dinner, and the jester said:

  ‘Well, cookie, who filled your boots with pig-wash?’

  ‘Dunno’, cookie said, ‘but I know who ate it.’

  In another place during the same war:

  ‘How you liking it?’ the cook said to the new recruit eating his first camp dinner.

  ‘What is it?’ the new recruit said.

  ‘Horseflesh’, the cook said. ‘How’d you feel about that, eh?’

  ‘I don’t mind horseflesh’, the new recruit said, ‘but you might have taken the harness off.’

  And, according to Tobruk legend:

  An officer was inspecting the cooking arrangements in a darkened dugout. ‘You’ve got too many flies in here, Cookie’, he told the individual entrusted with feeding the troops.

  ’Ave I sir?’ came the puzzled reply—‘Ow many should I ’ave?’

  Army biscuits

  Perhaps the single most detested item of army food was the biscuit, also known as a ‘tile’ or ‘hard tack’, all names suggesting the unnatural solidity of the food. There was much to be lampooned about the biscuit, as O. E. Burton of the New Zealand Medical Corps wrote on Gallipoli, the extravagance of his prose suggesting the depth of feeling towards the offending item.

  BISCUITS! Army biscuits! What a volume of blessings and cursing have been uttered on the subject of biscuits—army biscuits!

  What a part they take in our daily routine: the carrying of them, the eating of them, the cursing at them!

  Could we find any substitute for biscuits? Surely not! It is easy to think of biscuits without any army, but of an army without biscuits—never.

  Biscuits, like the poor, are always with us. Crawling from our earthly dens at the dim dawning of the day, we receive no portion of the dainties which once were ours in the long ago times of effete civilization: but, instead, we devour with eagerness—biscuits porridge. We eat our meat, not with thankfulness but with biscuits. We lengthen out the taste of jam—with biscuits. We pound them to powder. We boil them with bully. We fry them as fritters. We curse them with many and bitter cursings, and we bless them with few blessings.

  Biscuits! Army biscuits! Consider the hardness of them. Remember the cracking of your plate, the breaking of this tooth, the splintering of that. Call to mind how your finest gold crown weakened, wobbled, and finally shrivelled under the terrific strain of masticating Puntley and Chalmer’s No.5’s.

  Think of the aching void where once grew a goodly tooth. Think of the struggle and strain, the crushing and crunching as two molars wrestled with some rocky fragment. Think of the momentary elation during the fleeting seconds when it seemed that the molars would triumphantly blast and scrunch through every stratum of the thrice-hardened rock. Call to mind the disappointment, the agony of mind and body, as the almost victorious grinder missed its footing, slipped, and snapped hard upon its mate, while the elusive biscuit rasped and scraped upon bruised and tender gums.

 
; Biscuits! Army biscuits! Have you, reader, ever analysed with due carefulness the taste of army biscuits? Is it the delicious succulency of ground granite or the savoury toothsomeness of powdered marble? Do we perceive a delicate flavouring of ferro-concrete with just a dash of scraped iron railings? Certainly, army biscuits, if they have a taste, have one which is peculiarly their own. The choicest dishes of civilized life, stewed or steamed, fried, frizzled, roasted or toasted, whether they be composed of meat or fish, fruit or vegetable, have not (thank Heaven!) any like taste to that of army biscuits. Army biscuits taste like nothing else on the Gallipoli Peninsula. It is a debatable question indeed whether or not they have the quality of taste. If it be granted that they possess this faculty of stimulating the peripheral extremities of a soldier’s taste-buds, then it must also be conceded that the stimulation is on the whole of an unpleasant sort. In short, that the soldier’s feeling apart from the joy, the pride, and the satisfaction at his completed achievement in transferring a whole biscuit from his outer to his inner man without undue accident or loss of teeth, is one of pain, unease and dissatisfaction.

  It may seem almost incredible, wholly unbelievable indeed, but armies have marched and fought, made sieges, retired according to plan, stormed impregnable cities, toiled in weariness and painfulness, kept lonely vigils, suffered the extremes of burning heat and of freezing cold, and have, in the last extremity, bled and died, laurel-crowned and greatly triumphant, the heroes of legend and of song, all without the moral or physical, or even spiritual aid of army biscuits.

  Agamemnon and the Greeks camped for ten years on the windy plains of Troy without one box of army biscuits. When Xerxes threw his pontoon bridge across the Narrows and marched 1,000,000 men into Greece, his transport included none of Teak Green and Co.’s paving-stones for the hardening of his soldiers’ hearts and the stiffening of their backs. Caesar subdued Britons, Gauls, and Germans. Before the lines of Dyrrhachium his legions lived many days on boiled grass and such-like delicacies, but they never exercised their jaws upon a rough, tough bit of—army biscuit.