Best Australian Yarns

by Haynes, Jim

  Joseph Beeston was born in Newcastle, NSW, in 1859, studied medicine in London and later attended the Dublin College of Surgeons.

  Beeston practised medicine in Newcastle and was Honorary Surgeon at Newcastle Hospital. He was also president of the Newcastle School of Arts and the Newcastle Agricultural and Horticultural Society. In 1908, he was appointed a lifetime Liberal member to the New South Wales Parliamentary Upper House.

  He served as Honorary Captain in the Army Medical Staff Corps from 1891 and enlisted on the outbreak of war in September 1914. As Lieutenant Colonel, he was Officer in Charge of the 4th Field Ambulance at Gallipoli and was awarded the CMG. He contracted malaria and returned to Australia in 1916. He died in 1921. The last story is particularly amusing because Beeston was very short, only just over 1.5 metres.

  There were very few horses on the Peninsula, and those few belonged to the artillery. But at the time I speak of, we had one attached to the New Zealand and Australian headquarters, to be used by the despatch rider.

  Anzac, the headquarters of General Birdwood, was about two and a half miles away; and, being a true Australian, the despatch-carrier declined to walk when he could ride, so he rode every day with despatches. Part of the journey had to be made across a position open to fire from Walker’s Ridge.

  We used to watch for the man every day, and make bets whether he would be hit. Directly he entered the fire zone, he started as if he were riding in the Melbourne Cup, sitting low in the saddle, while the bullets kicked up dust all round him.

  One day, the horse returned alone, and everyone thought the man had been hit at last; but in about an hour’s time he walked in. The saddle had slipped, and he came off and rolled into a sap, whence he made his way to us on foot.

  When going through the trenches, it is not a disadvantage to be small of stature. It is not good form to put one’s head over the sandbags; the Turks invariably objected, and even entered their protest against periscopes, which are very small in size. Numbers of observers were cut about the face and a few lost their eyes through the mirror at the top being smashed by a bullet.

  On one occasion, I was in a trench which the men were making deeper. A rise in the bottom of the trench just enabled me, by standing on it, to peer through the loophole.

  On commending the man for leaving this lump in the floor of the trench, he replied, ‘That’s a dead Turk, sir!’

  MY LITTLE WET HOME IN THE TRENCH

  TOM SKEYHILL

  I’ve a Little Wet Home in the Trench,

  Which the rainstorms continually drench.

  Blue sky overhead, mud and sand for a bed,

  And a stone that we use for a bench.

  Bully beef and hard biscuit we chew,

  It seems years since we tasted a stew,

  Shells crackle and scare, there’s no place can compare

  With My Little Wet Home in the Trench.

  Our friends in the trench o’er the way

  Seem to know that we’ve come here to stay.

  They rush and they shout, but they can’t get us out,

  Though there’s no dirty trick they won’t play.

  They rushed us a few nights ago,

  But we don’t like intruders, and so,

  Some departed quite sore, others sleep evermore,

  Near My Little Wet Home in the Trench.

  There’s a Little Wet Home in the Trench,

  Which the raindrops continually drench,

  There’s a dead Turk close by, with his toes to the sky,

  Who causes a terrible stench.

  There are snipers who keep on the go,

  So we all keep our heads pretty low,

  But with shells dropping there, there’s no place can compare,

  With My Little Wet Home in the Trench.

  PRIVATE DONNELLY’S YARNS

  ANONYMOUS

  These first-hand accounts of day-to-day events at Gallipoli were reported in the Sydney Sun in 1917. The reporter visited wounded Anzacs at Randwick Hospital, sadly his name was not used in the article.

  ‘Allow me to introduce Private Donnelly, 1st Battalion.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve forgotten everything since I had shell-shock,’ he tells me, bringing his wheelchair to a standstill.

  ‘Did you really suffer from shell-shock?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, from eating peanuts!’

  I learn that after four months on Gallipoli, he got so badly peppered by a machine-gun that his mates suspected him of having tried to eat it.

  He was taken off to Malta with a complement of thirty-two bullets. He marks off the joint of his first finger to show the length of them.

  His right arm is of use only when lifted in a certain way, and it will be a week or two yet before he is able to discard the wheelchair. His legs show several crevices where bullets entered.

  ‘This was a bull’s-eye,’ he continues, opening his tunic so that I can see a cup-shaped wound in his chest. The bullet came out through the shoulder.

  During the Gallipoli campaign, Private Donnelly went from a Friday afternoon until the following Tuesday with five hours’ sleep. ‘In action,’ he says, ‘you never feel tired, even when you’ve been at it for as long as three or four days; but as soon as you come off duty you go flop.

  ‘I remember being sent into the trenches. There were regular rooms where you could lie down. They were shell-proof, and, as you may imagine, very dim. I went along the trench looking for a place to rest, and I met one of my pals. “Oh,” he said, “the big room along here is all right. I’ll wake you when your time’s up.”

  ‘I stumbled along, and when I got there the place was full except for one bit of floor just big enough for me. I tiptoed over the others to it, and lay down, with my water-bottle for a pillow. There were two big chaps either side of me, and as they’d been there before me I took it they’d had a pretty fair innings, so made myself more comfortable by shoving one of them against the wall. My pal woke me at 9 p.m. I asked him for a cigarette, and when I struck the match I said to him, “My word, those fellows are doing well, sleeping so long.”

  ‘He laughed, and I took another look at them. I had been sleeping between two dead Turks! But you didn’t take any notice of things like that out there!

  ‘On the day of the armistice, I made friends with a Turk. He spoke perfect English. He had been coming out to Sydney to join his uncle and nephew in business, but five days before his departure he was called up. We exchanged cigarettes—I gave him a box of those awful Scotch things we used to get out there, and he gave me the real Turkish article, which, I can tell you, I enjoyed.

  ‘While we smoked, he said, “Strange, you know! Today we smoke, chat and are happy together; tomorrow we shall probably pour lead into each other!” He was taken prisoner afterwards, and I never saw him again. He was a really good fellow, like many of the other rural Turks against whom we fought.

  ‘Life in the trenches? Well, there wasn’t any dinner bell! We took bully beef and biscuits with us, and opened the beef whenever we were hungry and had the chance of eating.

  ‘There was one fellow who had been a shearer’s cook. He made a sort of grater by piercing a piece of tin with holes. He used to grate the biscuits and beef, and make rissoles and cutlets and things. My word, we wouldn’t have lost him for a fortune. We were the envy of the lines.

  ‘One day, someone shot a hare (the first and last I saw on the peninsula). It was a lord mayor’s banquet! We grilled it, and as soon as a bit was cooked it would be hacked off, and it was “Goodbye, hare”.’

  Private Donnelly was in London for Anzac Day 1916. He says that most of the Australians had fresh tunics made for the occasion, more smartly cut than usual. He and several others were in a theatre during the day. In the seat in front was a broad-shouldered Australian in khaki. They recognised him as a pal.

  ‘How ’bout it, Nugget?’ said one of the soldiers, laying his hand on the shoulder of the Anzac in front. ‘Nugget’ turned round, and, to their dismay, t
hey saw the crown of a general on his shoulder.

  ‘Beg pardon, sir,’ said they, ‘thought you were one of ourselves.’

  ‘Well, damn it all, aren’t I?’ said the general. ‘Come out and have a drink.’

  He refused to tell them his name, and they have never discovered it.

  WHO GOES THERE?

  During World War I, the Australian troops were renowned for not saluting officers and generally not giving respect unless it was earned.

  This story is told of a sentry on the Western Front who was obviously used to the Aussies’ way of dealing with army protocol.

  One dark and foggy night the sentry was standing on duty where several communication trenches met, going about his duties to the best of his ability.

  Two figures appeared in the gloom and the sentry took his stance with rifle pointed right at them.

  ‘Halt, who goes there?’

  ‘Sappers of the Suffolk Regiment, Third Brigade,’ came the crisp reply.

  The sentry knew those were the sappers on duty that night.

  ‘Pass, Suffolk Regiment,’ he announced, lowering his weapon.

  Sometime later, a group of a dozen or so figures in trench coats approached the sentry post.

  ‘Halt, who goes there?’

  ‘Duty patrol of the Welsh Guards, Fifth Regiment.’

  The sentry knew the Fifth Regiment was patrolling that night.

  ‘Pass, Welsh Guards,’ he announced, formally, again lowering his rifle.

  Twenty minutes later, a group of four men came walking along, chatting casually and smoking cigarettes.

  ‘Halt, who goes there?’

  ‘Who fucking well wants to bloody know?’ came the reply.

  The sentry lowered his rifle and replied, ‘Pass, Australians.’

  JH

  HOW SOME AUSSIE SOLDIERS GOT THE HUMP

  The Imperial Camel Corps was one of the oddest fighting forces in World War I. It was originally formed in early 1916, in response to an uprising of tribesmen in Egypt’s Western Desert. The rebels were men of the Senussi tribe, who were sympathetic to the Turkish cause.

  Most of the ‘cameleers’ were recruited from the Australian infantry and lighthorse battalions who were back in Egypt recuperating after the Gallipoli campaign. Eventually, there were four battalions and the first and third were entirely Australian. The second was British, and the fourth was a mix of Australians and New Zealanders. The Camel Corps also had a machine-gun unit, and a battery of light artillery manned by recruits from Hong Kong and Singapore.

  The operations of the Corps against the rebels were characterised by long desert patrols and surprise attacks, ambushes and skirmishes.

  Late in 1916, the Camel Corps transferred to the Sinai desert to fight against the Turkish army alongside the Australian Light Horse. They served with distinction at Romani, Magdhaba and Rafa and remained an integral part of the British and Dominion force during the advance north through Palestine in 1917 and 1918.

  The Corps suffered heavy casualties and losses at the Second Battle of Gaza on 19 April 1917, and in the battles fought in November as part of the campaign to destroy the Turkish desert defences and capture Beersheba.

  The Camel Corps had a tough reputation. Not only were the camels cantankerous and feared by other troops, their riders were, too!

  There was a good reason for this. When the Corps was originally formed, the Australian battalion commanders saw an opportunity to offload some of the more difficult, unruly and insubordinate members of their battalions.

  It was common practice for British headquarters to warn other British officers if the Camel Corps were to be stationed nearby. In 1917, officers commanding the supply dump at Rafa were warned to double their guards as the Camel Corps was going to be camped nearby.

  The cameleers were tough, resourceful and effective fighting men. While defending a hill called Musallabeh in April 1918, they ran out of hand grenades and began heaving boulders down upon the attacking Turks. The plan worked and the Turks retreated and the hill became known as the Camel’s Hump.

  As the fighting moved into the more fertile country of northern Palestine, horses could move much faster and this odd fighting force was disbanded in June 1918. The Australian cameleers swapped their camels for horses and became the 14th and 15th Light Horse Regiments.

  JH

  PALESTINE AND POETS

  ANONYMOUS

  Where the tracks are hard and dreary,

  The tracks are long and dry,

  The tropic sun is beating down

  From out a cloudless sky;

  There’s naught to see but sand

  And now and then you’ll see a clump

  Of palm trees—it’s no wonder

  That the camel’s got the hump.

  Never-ending sands that stretch

  To where the sky and land

  Meet in a line of blue and brown—

  And poets say it’s grand!

  But poets stay at home in ease

  And travel not afar,

  To where the way is lighted

  By a ‘pale unwavering star’.

  Poets never rise at dawn

  And feed a blinking horse,

  And poets never eat our grub,

  Plain bully-beef, of course.

  They never scorch or swelter,

  At the desert never swear,

  The reason why’s not hard to find;

  They never have been there!

  Now, when you hear the poet rave

  Of ‘vast encircling sands

  Whose magnitude is circumscribed

  By cloudless azure bands

  Of Heaven’s vault’ (his poesy’s

  Imagination grows)

  Just think of all these scorching sands—

  And bash him on the nose!

  IT’S NOT CRICKET!

  World War II saw Aussies back in the deserts of North Africa once again.

  The Australians who served against the Axis Forces in North Africa, the Mediterranean and the Middle East were all volunteers. They were members of three of the four divisions which made up the 2nd AIF.

  The siege of Tobruk was a very Australian affair. Almost two thirds of the troops defending the garrison were Australians, 15,000 of them. They provided virtually the whole of the infantry at Tobruk with the 12,000 British troops making up four artillery brigades.

  The name ‘Rats of Tobruk’ was taken from phrases used in a propaganda move that backfired. Lord Haw-Haw, in the German propaganda radio broadcasts, had referred to the garrison troops as ‘poor desert rats of Tobruk’ during radio broadcasts.

  The name was appropriate as the troops defending the garrison dug extensive tunnel networks and were ‘caught like rats in a trap’ during the siege.

  What the German propaganda machine didn’t realise, and perhaps could not ever understand, was the characteristic Australian affection for self-deprecating and ironic humour. The men of the 9th Division removed metal from a German bomber, one they had shot down with a salvaged German gun, and made their own unofficial medal with a rat emblem. The 9th Division was officially allowed to have all its badges and flashes shaped in the form of a ‘T’ after the siege of Tobruk.

  The Australian media and general public loved the Rats of Tobruk. The siege helped Australians at home to feel that the nation was playing a vital role in the war effort against Nazism. Their dry wit and unmistakable ‘Australianess’ were a source of pride and inspiration.

  Here are the ‘official’ Rules of Cricket for a game played between Australia’s 20th Brigade and Britain’s 107 Royal Horse Artillery at Tobruk on 30 July 1941:

  Rule 2. Play to be continuous until 1800 hours, except by interference by air raids. Play will NOT, repeat NOT cease during shellfire.

  Rule 4. Shirts, shorts, long socks, sand shoes if available. ITI helmets will not be worn or any other fancy headgear. Umpires will wear white coat (if available) and will carry loaded rifle with fixed bayonet.

&nb
sp; Rule 6. All players to be searched for concealed weapons before start of play, and all weapons found, other than ST grenades, Mills bombs, & revolvers will be confiscated. (This does not apply to umpires.)

  Rule 8. Manager will make medical arrangements & have ambulance in attendance.

  I have no idea what happened to rules 1, 3, 5 and 7!

  Ten months after they were replaced at Tobruk the famous Rats were again called upon to take the main brunt of the Axis attack at El Alamein, while other elements of the Eighth Army fumbled and stumbled their way to victory further south.

  During the entire El Alamein Campaign, the 9th Division suffered 22 per cent of the Eighth Army’s casualties; 1177 Australians were killed, while 3629 were wounded, 795 were captured and 193 were missing. Axis casualties of 37,000 amounted to one third of their total force. Allied casualties of 13,500 were small by comparison at around 6 per cent.

  As soon as it was obvious that the battle was won at El Alamein, Montgomery made his way to 9th Division Headquarters to thank General Morshead for the Australian role in the victory.

  Perhaps the ultimate tribute came on D-day, by which time the 9th Division had fought a campaign against the Japanese in New Guinea. Just before the Allies landed in Normandy, Monty, now Viscount Field Marshall Montgomery, asked his Chief of Staff, Major-General Francis de Guingand, what he thought of the prospects for victory.

  ‘I only wish,’ the General replied, ‘that we had the 9th Australian Division with us this morning.’

  JH

  FREIGHTER

  TIP KELAHER

  I found The Digger Hat, a collection of verse by Tip Kelaher, in a second-hand bookshop. The slim volume was published just three months after Kelaher’s death and the verses are a soldier’s honest expressions of humour, patriotism and homesickness for the bush life he knew and the Sydney he loved. Coincidentally, I had lived in the same suburbs of Sydney and the same area of north-west New South Wales as he had. He and I had attended the same school and I happen to share his enthusiasm for Randwick Racecourse and Coogee beach, enthusiasms he expressed in his verse. He refused to leave his machine gun in the face of a German advance and died at the Battle of Tel El Eisa, in Egypt, in 1942.