Great Anzac Stories

by Graham Seal

  In compiling my history of the war, said Mr. Bean, the authorities in London thought it would be of advantage for me to visit Gallipoli, in order to ascertain what the real strength of the Turkish positions had been, and how far the Australians had penetrated on the first day of the landing, at Ari Burnu. I took with me several members of the Australian Historical Mission, including Captain Wilkins, M.C., photographer, Captain Lambert, the well-known Australian painter, and Lieut. Buchanan, in addition to a party of surveyors and draftsmen, and we worked continuously for three weeks. We did not land at the same place as we did when the famous landing was made at Anzac beach, but at Chanak, where the Turkish ports inside the Dardanelles are situated. From there, with a working party, I went through the ruins of Maidos, the town which was blown and burst by the guns of the Queen Elizabeth the day after the landing. There was nothing of it left. Some big shells evidently fell into the town, and set fire to the buildings; then the Turks pulled down the houses, using the material for making dug-outs. The Turks were great on salvage. We found the hillside for miles around the Turkish positions at Anzac littered with empty bully beef tins. The Turks took all the stores we left behind, and we were told that for months after the evacuation our beef was a common article of diet in Constantinople.

  EARLY AUSTRALIAN SUCCESS.

  We reached Anzac . . . from the Turkish side, from the district of Gun Ridge, the position which faced us for the whole eight months we spent at Anzac, and which had been our objective from the first day of landing, but which was never reached. Later we found traces of a few men having reached the lower, seaward side of Gun Ridge. We arrived at the certitude, from the traces we found, that a few Australian scouts reached this slope within a few hours of the landing. Little bits of kit were lying about, and on seeing spent cartridge cases, conviction stared us in the face that some Australians on their first day reached the farther slopes of Pine Ridge, which they never again approached. A few possibly reached Battleship Hill. All these positions have been marked on our survey plans, and if more perfect maps of the country had been available when we landed, or if the ‘digger’ had at that time possessed the wonderful experience which he achieved during the last six months of the campaign in France, we might have reached Gun Ridge and held it, or at least a part of it. As it was, the outstanding fact that struck us, as it must strike all beholders, was that it was marvellous that they went as far as they did.

  THE TURKS ’ SIDE OF LONE PINE.

  As soon as our party reached the top of Gun Ridge . . . we found ourselves looking into the Turkish side of Lone Pine. We were faced by the shelves on which the Turks had built their shelters and dug-outs. There was a little more green grass about than our minds pictured to exist at Anzac, as we knew the locality, except that every particle of timber or metal had been removed by the Turks. The place was otherwise unchanged. A road wound up the southern side of Lone Pine, and we rode along this road, but owing to there being trenches everywhere it was very difficult to get about, except on foot. Of course, we carefully examined the trenches, and they struck us as representing the most complicated and intricate maze of trench digging that we had ever seen. Our official photographer, who probably had visited more battlefields in France than any one else, agreed that he had never seen there anything approaching the work of the Turkish sappers. The trenches were all well conserved, and in such a state that if one got into them it was difficult to get out. On the top of the hill we came out on a square patch of grass, which we recognised at once as the ‘daisy patch,’ and which was some times known as ‘dead men’s field.’ This position, over which the troops charged at Lone Pine, is unfortunately crowded with unidentified graves of our men, who were killed in the famous charge.

  MARKING OF ANZAC GRAVES.

  The work of marking the graves of those Australians who fell at Anzac is being extraordinarily well done by the small Australian party which is on the spot. Between 5000 and 6000 graves have already been identified, with absolute certainty, and when those of some of the 20,000 odd who lost their lives in No Man’s Land have been placed with some accuracy one of our duties will be concluded.

  FAMOUS BEACHY BILL BATTERY.

  Mr. Bean was to look for Beachy Bill, the famous battery which used to enfilade the beach from the south. There were 50 theories that ‘Bill’ was dug back into the slope of the hill, in the olive grove behind Gaba Tepe. Some people said that ‘he’ was on rails, with a disappearing trap door, and others merely pictured ‘him’ in a deep cave, but . . . we found ‘him’ in the oak grove, south of the Aama Dere. It was exactly like any other German battery, the system of the ordinary open emplacement being fairly well camouflaged. There were about 30 gun positions, a dozen of which were new, and around every one of them there were marks of our own gun fire, and round some of the others, one especially, the ground was almost as much cut up as it would be round a battery in France. Beachy Bill certainly consisted of one battery of 5.9 howitzers, and two or three batteries of 4.2 guns and 75s. The only other place where Anzac was cut up by shell fire in a manner in any way comparable to the fields of France was on the slopes of Battleship Hill where the big guns of the Queen Elizabeth, Bacchante and other warships got onto the Turks on the first few days after the landing.

  Another group of British, New Zealanders and Australians visited the Gallipoli battlefields in 1934 and were addressed by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938), Turkey’s first president. Atatürk has an important role in the Anzac story. As a young military commander he was largely responsible for the success of the Turkish resistance to the Anzac attacks at Gallipoli (Gelibolu).

  In a remarkably generous speech to the visitors, the president said of the Anzac dead:

  Those heroes that shed their blood

  And lost their lives.

  You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country.

  Therefore rest in peace.

  There is no difference between the Johnnies

  And the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side

  Here in this country of ours.

  You, the mothers,

  Who sent their sons from far away countries

  Wipe away your tears,

  Your sons are now lying in our bosom

  And are in peace

  After having lost their lives on this land they have

  Become our sons as well.

  This text has been inscribed on the Ari Burnu Cemetery memorial and on memorials in New Zealand and Australia.

  Visits to the Gallipoli battlefields in search of graves or other indications of the last resting place of loved ones began very soon after the war ended. These visits quickly became known as ‘pilgrimages’, an indication of the Australian and New Zealand attitude that this sparse area of rock and sand had become sacred ground.

  After the war

  During the war, diggers had often complained of the tendency of civilians to ask what the soldiers considered to be stupid questions about the front line. It seems that the same problem occurred after the war. ‘The Silly Things Diggers Were Asked After the War’, or some version of it, appeared in more than one old soldiers’ publication.

  Jones: ‘You’re looking fine, old chap. I suppose if war started again you’d be anxious to have another go at them?’

  Mother: ‘I suppose you delighted in splashing about in the water in the trenches?’

  The Flapper: ‘It must have been great fun chasing the Germans with an eighteen-pounder, wasn’t it?’

  Tommy (aged five, longingly): ‘Was there plenty of good mud over there, uncle?’

  Aunt: ‘I suppose those Germans are awfully ugly, aren’t they?’

  The Business Man: ‘Now, what would be the number of tins, approximately, of course, of bully beef eaten per day?’

  Maude: ‘Wasn’t it delightfully lovely living in those dear little dugouts?’

  As the postwar years stretched out, so those who survived increasingly felt the need to relive their experiences. The 1920s and 193
0s were thick with boozy reunions of old soldiers. These featured the telling of the old yarns yet again and the singing and reciting of song and verse from the trenches, the troopships and the estaminets. So powerful was the need to maintain or revive wartime memories that new items were composed and published long after the events to which they referred. ‘The Digger’s Alphabet’ was written in 1931 by C. R. Collins, soldier, physical education trainer and avid writer on all matters digger. This particular ‘Digger’s Alphabet’—it was one of many similar poems—might well have been composed anytime between 1916 and 1918, but for one or two postwar references. It is full of digger lingo, old rumours and memories of long-ago transgressions. Such compositions, despite their anachronistic nature, were also a form of memorial.

  THE DIGGER ’S ALPHABET

  A for the Adjutants, dashing young blades,

  B for the Batmen who dodged all parades.

  C for the Clink, aftermath of the spree,

  The home of the birds who go making too free.

  D for the Digger, the casual brute,

  Who sauntered past ‘Birdie’ and didn’t salute.

  E for the ‘Eggsers’ who turned their hats down,

  ‘The married man [sic] have to’, we told the whole town.

  F for the Furphies, related with zest,

  Especially the one of the long-promised rest.

  G for the Gunner, a decent old sport,

  Except for his habit of dropping ’em short.

  H stands for Hindenburg, sturdy and hale,

  Till Monash and Co. put a twist in his tail.

  I for intelligence, reigning serene,

  The reason the blighters were tabbed out in green.

  J stands for Jerry, and Jacko the Turk,

  Who kept all the diggers in regular work.

  K stands for Knighthoods that Generals got,

  Except when the profiteers collared the lot.

  L for the Legends we told all the flappers,

  Of boomerang farms and the jackeroo-trappers.

  M stand [sic] for Mademoiselle. It appears

  That she lived in the town we pronounced ‘Armenteers.’

  N for the Nips that were seldom repaid,

  Horseferry Road was the nub of this trade.

  O for the O.B.E.s dished out in millions,

  To actors and women and other civilians.

  P for the Padre, the shifter of sin,

  When you nipped him for gaspers you’d get the whole tin.

  Q for the ‘Quack’ with his quick Number Nine,

  And also the Quarter-bloke, dodging the line.

  R for the Ration-state, figured and cinched,

  Except for the Rum that the Quarter-bloke pinched.

  S for the Sisters, the pride of the show,

  But how they endured us, I’m hanged if I know.

  T stands for ‘Two-up’ the national game;

  When Princes have played it, are we much to blame?

  U for the U-boats that scuttled in flight

  Whene’er a destroyer would steam up in sight.

  V for the ‘vin blong’ estaminets sold,

  A potent prescription to keep out the cold.

  W for War Books, so smutty in places,

  All written by ladies or blokes from the bases.

  X for the marks that they put upon casks,

  To empty the same were our happiest tasks.

  Y for the Y plus the M and C.A.,

  The one little show that could make the war pay.

  Z for the Zeppelins, purveyors of hate,

  And also for Zero, the dread hour of fate.

  The lonely Anzac

  Will Longstaff ’s famous painting, ‘Menin Gate at Midnight’, also known as ‘The Ghosts of Menin’, was painted in 1927. Longstaff had been present at the unveiling ceremony of the Menin Gate Memorial at Ypres in Belgium and, according to one story, had been so affected by the experience that he walked along the Menin road and received the vision depicted in the painting, which he completed in a single marathon creative session after his return to London. He is also said to have been inspired by a woman he met on his walk. Mrs Mary Horsburgh had worked in a British canteen during the war, and she told him that she could feel ‘her dead boys’ all around her.

  In the aftermath of World War I, the unprecedented immensity of grief on all sides produced an atmosphere of religious and spiritual emotion in which works like Longstaff ’s—if not as well known—were produced. Longstaff ’s powerfully symbolic representation of spectral soldiers hovering over a cornfield and moving towards the gate, with poppies in the background, evokes a general tone of mourning. It was immediately popular and remains so today.

  The Menin Gate leading onto the road along which many Allied soldiers marched for the last time is known as ‘the Memorial to the Missing’ and has special significance for Australians and New Zealanders, as so many of their troops passed beneath it, never to return. The gate is specifically dedicated to those British and Commonwealth soldiers whose graves are unknown. Each night since 1928, with a break during World War II, there has been a memorial observance known as ‘the Last Post Ceremony’ at the gate, usually attended by thousands of tourists, local dignitaries and members of the armed and civic services.

  But the spirits of Australian soldiers do not all lie on the battlefields of the Great War.

  In July 1916 a wounded Australian soldier from the fighting at Pozières was travelling on a Red Cross train bound for a Yorkshire hospital. When the train reached Peterborough, Thomas Hunter was too ill to continue the journey. He was transferred to the Peterborough Infirmary where he died a few days later and was buried in the hospital grounds. This may have been simply another sad fatality during a war in which hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers died but for the intense local reaction, then and since.

  The death of Sergeant Hunter, a 36-year-old Gallipoli veteran, so far from Australia and from family, friends and comrades, drew the sympathy of Peterborough’s wartime community. The mayor arranged for a civic funeral ceremony, which was attended by crowds of local people, many bearing wreaths. An appeal for funds to build a memorial was generously supported, generating income sufficient to build a substantial grave and to have a bronze plaque made and erected in Peterborough Cathedral. A desire to propagandise the war effort was probably the official inspiration for this reaction. It was a time of intense patriotism in which expressions of loyalty to king, country and the British Empire were regularly voiced in newspapers and pulpits and played out in public events. A poem published in the local newspaper summed up these ideas and the language used to express them.

  Blood of our blood, son of our race,

  Imperial and strong,

  He came in all his youth’s fair grace—

  One of a glorious throng

  Of heroes from the southern land

  Linked in our empire’s chain;

  One of the famous Anzac band

  From the far-distant main.

  With British pride, in British soil,

  Amidst our own dear dead

  We laid him, freed from warrior’s toil,

  In a true warrior’s bed.

  His tomb, as long as it shall stand,

  Shall keep alive his worth,

  And link this spot of Motherland

  With those who sent him forth.

  But there was also genuine popular sympathy for the death of the ‘Lone Anzac’, as he was being called. Wreaths carried messages of sympathy from ‘a soldier’s mother’ and ‘for someone’s darling boy’. Although he had migrated to Australia from his native County Durham in 1910, Hunter had an adopted family in Australia who wrote to a local family requesting that ‘you will sometimes visit our darling’s grave and think of his sorrowing father, mother and sister, fourteen thousand miles away, who seem to miss him more each day’. There was still considerable local interest two years after his death. The 1918 Anzac Day observance involved another subscription plea for furth
er decorations to Hunter’s grave and bronze memorial, while services were conducted in his memory at both these locations.

  It seems that this local enthusiasm for the lonely Anzac faded away in the postwar years. But in September 1931 the first recorded manifestations of Thomas Hunter’s ghost were reported in the Peterborough Museum, once the Peterborough Infirmary. The wife of the building’s caretaker saw and heard a figure climbing the stairs. It was a man of about thirty with brown hair and wearing a green or grey suit. The figure walked through a closed door, down the corridor and then vanished. There were further sightings of the ghost over the next decades. These seem to have ceased in the 1970s, although unexplained cold spots and mysteriously moved furniture have been reported in the building.

  Now, each Anzac Day since the 1980s, the Royal British Legion and the Peterborough community have commemorated the Lone Anzac. Members of the Australian High Commission or Australian military attend the event, together with hundreds of locals and civil dignitaries. During the ceremony, the stone cross that adorns his grave is covered with the Australian and British flags, and a special prayer is said.

  The longest memorial

  Who was Howard Hitchcock? He was a wealthy businessman who was also mayor of Geelong, Victoria, from 1917 to 1922 and the person whose vision, money and perseverance led to the building of the world’s largest and longest constructed war memorial. As World War I dragged to an end, Hitchcock and a group of Geelong-based associates conceived the idea of building a road along the Victorian coast from Anglesea to Warrnambool. The road would open up land along the way, provide work for returned soldiers and also be a memorial to the sacrifices they and their comrades had made. Construction of the Great Ocean Road, as it would become known, began in 1919 and lasted for another thirteen years. The little-told story of the road is an epic of financial struggle, hard labour and controversy.