The Best Gallipoli Yarns and Forgotten Stories

by Jim Haynes

  The first man was a skeleton, picked as clean as a century of waiting might do. His skull looked out between the tunic and the hat; and through the bones of his hands grasses had woven a road. One could only gape at the fellow.

  The next man waited on his back too; but the fierce suns had done otherwise with him. The flesh had decayed under the skin, while the skin had stayed, becoming a dark parchment drawn tightly over the bones. Every hair on head and hand remained. Face and hands were tiny, the face and hands of a child they were: yet the face was full of expression, and more terrible to look on than the face of any ape.

  The third man was as the second.

  The fourth man had swollen up and afterwards sunk down again. I had to turn away and spit.

  And those four men had been filled with great foolish hopes but a few weeks before. Amen! Amen!

  An old friend of mine, the late Alan Murphy, gave me a copy of his grandfather’s diary from Gallipoli. Alan’s grandfather was Sergeant Major Thomas Murphy, a cook with the 1st Battalion, and his diary is full of extraordinarily matter-of-fact observations and comments such as:

  27/5/15 Wounded at Shrapnel Gully in the head. Shrapnel shell bursts over me while taking ammunition on mules up the gully. Mules play up and I am dragged down the hillside and badly bruised.

  29/6/15 Leave Anzac for rest at Imbros.

  6/7/15 Return to Gallipoli on SS El Kahira. Cooking resumes under heavy shellfire.

  7/7/15 Receive letters and news of Mother’s death. Send letters home. Turkish night attack; heavy losses on their side.

  31/7/15 Aeroplane drops bomb on cookhouse; food spoilt, no one hurt.

  7/8/15 Captain Shout and Pte. Keyzor earn V.C. Cookhouse shelled heavily. Wounded in right eye.

  16/8/15 Sent to hospital ship Rewa in barge . . . supplied with cocoa and food. Sleep on deck. Bullets fall on deck; shift bed to port side and go to bed.

  I am in awe of Sergeant Major Murphy (who was actually permanently blinded in one eye that day, 7 August 1915), although Alan always said he was a ‘cranky old bugger’ in later life.

  MY LITTLE WET HOME IN THE TRENCH

  TOM SKEYHILL

  I’ve a Little Wet Home in the Trench,

  Which the rain storms 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.

  JOSEPH BEESTON

  JIM HAYNES

  Joseph Beeston was born in Newcastle in 1859. The son of the traffic manager on the recently opened Newcastle to Maitland Railway, he was educated in Newcastle and then went on to study medicine in London and later attended the Dublin College of Surgeons.

  Beeston practised medicine in Newcastle and became president of the NSW British Medical Association and 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 NSW 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 made a companion of the order of St Michael and St George in 1915 and was awarded the Volunteer Officers’ Decoration (V.D.), which, as he was a medical man, I am sure he found at least mildly amusing.

  Beeston contracted malaria and was invalided to Wandsworth Hospital, London, and upon recovery served as Assistant Director of Medical Services to the 2nd Division.

  In 1916 he returned to Australia and that same year wrote the book from which the pieces used here were taken, Five Months at Anzac.

  Beeston saw the worst of things at Anzac Cove, yet he maintained a sense of humour and commanded the medical staff with a dignity and stoicism, which is reflected in his writing. He died in 1921.

  AMBULANCE WORK

  JOSEPH BEESTON

  Once we had landed on 25 April and our tent was pitched in a gully near the beach casualties began to come in pretty freely, so that our tent was soon filled. We then commenced making dugouts in the side of the gully and placing the men in these.

  After a few days the Royal Marine Light Infantry Ambulance were ordered away, and we were directed to take up their position on the beach. A place for operating was prepared by putting sandbags at either end, the roof being formed by planks covered with sandbags and loose earth. Stanchions of four by four inch timber were driven into the ground, with crosspieces at a convenient height; the stretcher was placed on these, and thus an operating table was formed.

  Shelves were made to hold our instruments, trays and bottles; these were all in charge of Staff Sergeant Henderson, a most capable and willing assistant. Close by a kitchen was made, and a cook kept constantly employed keeping a supply of hot water, bovril, milk and biscuits ready for the men when they came in wounded, for they had to be fed as well as medically attended to.

  One never ceased admiring our men, and their cheeriness under these circumstances and their droll remarks caused us many a laugh. One man, just blown up by a shell, informed us that it was a **** of a place, ‘no place to take a lady’. Another told of the mishap to his ‘cobber’ who picked up a bomb and blew on it to make it light: ‘All at once it blew his bloody head off! Gorblime! You would have laughed!’

  For lurid and perfervid language commend me to the Australian soldier. I have seen scores of them lying wounded and yet chatting one to another while waiting their turn to be dressed. Profanity oozes from him like music from a barrel organ. At the same time, he will give you his side of the situation, almost without exception in an optimistic strain, generally concluding his observation with the intimation that ‘We gave them hell’.

  The stretcher-bearers were a fine body of men. Prior to this campaign, the Army Medical Corps was always looked upon as a soft job. In peacetime we had to submit to all sorts of flippant remarks, and were called Linseed Lancers, Body Snatchers, and other cheery and jovial names; but, thanks to the Turks and the cordiality of their reception, the A.A.M.C. can hold up their head with any of the fighting troops. It was a common thing to hear men say, ‘This beach is a hell of a place! The trenches are better than this.’

  The praises of the stretcher-bearers were in all the men’s mouths; enough could not be said in their favour. Owing to the impossibility of landing the transport, all the wounded had to be carried—often for a distance of a mile and a half, in a blazing sun and through shrapnel and machine-gun fire. But there was never a flinch; through it all they went, and performed their duty.

  Of our Ambulance 185 men and officers landed, and when I relinquished command, forty-three remained. At one time we were losing so many bearers, that carrying during the daytime was abandoned, and orders were given that it should only be undertaken after nightfall.

  On one occasion a
man was being sent off to the hospital ship from our tent in the gully. He was not very bad, but he felt like being carried down. As the party went along the beach, Beachy Bill became active; one of the bearers lost his leg, the other was wounded, but the man who was being carried down got up and ran!

  All the remarks I have made regarding the intrepidity and valour of the stretcher-bearers apply also to the regimental bearers. These are made up from the bandsmen. Very few people think, when they see the band leading the battalion in parade through the streets, what happens to them on active service. Here bands are not thought of; the instruments are left at the base, and the men become bearers, and carry the wounded out of the front line for the Ambulance men to care for. Many a stretcher-bearer has deserved the V.C.

  One of ours told me they had reached a man severely wounded in the leg, in close proximity to his dug-out. After he had been placed on the stretcher and made comfortable, he was asked whether there was anything he would like to take with him. He pondered a bit, and then said, ‘Oh! You might give me my diary—I would like to make a note of this before I forget it!’

  Meantime stores of all kinds were being accumulated on the beach: stacks of biscuits, cheese and preserved beef, all of the best. One particular kind of biscuit was known as the ‘forty-niner’ because it had forty-nine holes in it, was believed to take forty-nine years to bake, and needed forty-nine chews to a bite. But there were also beautiful hams and preserved vegetables, and with these and a tube of Oxo a very palatable soup could be prepared.

  It can be readily understood that in dealing with large bodies of men, such as ours, a considerable degree of organisation is necessary, in order to keep an account, not only of the man, but of the nature of his injury (or illness, as the case may be) and of his destination. Without method chaos would soon reign.

  As each casualty came in he was examined, and dressed or operated upon as the necessity arose. Sergeant Baxter then got orders from the officer as to where the case was to be sent. A ticket was made out, containing the man’s name, his regimental number, the nature of his complaint, whether morphia had been administered and the quantity, and finally his destination. All this was also recorded in our books, and returns made weekly, both to headquarters and to the base.

  Cases likely to recover in a fortnight’s time were sent by fleet-sweeper to Mudros; the others were embarked on the hospital ship. They were placed in barges, and towed out by a pinnace to a trawler, and by that to the hospital ship, where the cases were sorted out. When once they had left the beach, our knowledge of them ceased, and of course our responsibility.

  We heard many anecdotes about our recent patients. One man arriving at a hospital ship was describing, with the usual picturesque invective, how the bullet had got into his shoulder. One of the British officers, who apparently was unacquainted with the Australian vocabulary, asked, ‘What was that you said, my man?’

  The reply came, ‘A blightah ovah theah put a bullet in heah.’

  At a later period, after the Turkish offensive in May, a new gun had come into action on our left, which the men christened ‘Windy Annie’. Beachy Bill occupied the olive grove, and was on our right. Annie was getting the range of our dressing station pretty accurately, and a requisition on the Engineers evoked the information that sandbags were not available. However, the Army Service came to our rescue with some old friends, the ‘forty-niner’ biscuits. Three tiers of these in their boxes defied the shells just as they defied our teeth.

  As sickness began to be more manifest, it became necessary to enlarge the accommodation in our gully. The hill was dug out, and the soil placed in bags with which a wall was built, the intervening portion being filled up with the remainder of the hill. By this means we were able to pitch a second tent and house more of those who were slightly ill.

  It was in connection with this engineering scheme that I found the value of W.O. Cosgrove. He was possessed of a good deal of the suaviter in modo, and it was owing to his dextrous handling of Ordnance that we got such a fine supply of bags. This necessitated a redistribution of dug-outs, and a line of them was constructed sufficient to take a section of bearers. The men christened this ‘Shrapnel Avenue’. They called my dug-out ‘The Nut’ because it held the ‘Kernel’. I offer this with every apology. It’s not my joke.

  The new dug-outs were not too safe. Captain Murphy was killed there one afternoon.

  SHRAPNEL

  TOM SKEYHILL

  I was sittin’ in me dug-out and was feelin’ dinkum good,

  Chewin’ Queensland bully beef and biscuits hard as wood.

  When, ‘boom!’ I nearly choked meself, I spilt me bloomin’ tea,

  I saw about a million stars and me dug-out fell on me!

  They dug me out with picks and spades, I felt an awful wreck,

  By that bloomin’ Turkish shrapnel I was buried to the neck,

  Me mouth was full of bully beef, me eyes were full of dust,

  I rose up to me bloomin’ feet and shook me fist and cussed.

  The Sergeant says, ‘You’re lucky, lad, it might have got your head,

  You ought to thank your lucky stars!’ I says, ‘Well, strike me dead!’

  It smashed me bloomin’ dug-out, it buried all me kit,

  Spoilt me tea and bully beef . . . I’ll revenge that little bit!

  I was walkin’ to the water barge along the busy shore,

  Listenin’ to the Maxims bark and our Big Lizzie roar,

  When I heard a loud explosion above me bloomin’ head,

  And a bloke, not ten yards distant, flopped sudden down . . . stone dead.

  I crawled out from the debris and lay pantin’ on the sand,

  I cussed that Turkish shrap and every Turk upon the land.

  We cussed it when it busted a yard or two outside,

  We cussed it when it missed us, a hundred yards out wide.

  It’s always bloomin’ shrapnel, wherever you may be,

  Sittin’ in your dug-out, or bathin’ in the sea.

  At Shrapnel Valley, Deadman’s Gully, Courtney’s Post and Quinn’s,

  At Pope’s Hill and Johnson’s Jolly . . . that deadly shrapnel spins.

  I don’t mind bombs and rifles, and I like a bayonet charge,

  But I’m hangin’ out the white flag when shrapnel is at large.

  When I get back to Australia and I hear a whistlin’ train,

  It’s the nearest pub for shelter from that shrapnel once again!

  AN INTERESTING CHARACTER

  JIM HAYNES

  Thomas John Skeyhill was born in 1895 at Terang, Victoria. His parents were native born of Irish extraction and Tom was educated at the local state school and at St Mary’s Convent School, Hamilton, leaving at fourteen to become a telegraph messenger. He was popular as a reciter and was a member of the local debating society.

  He enlisted in August 1914 and landed at Anzac Cove as a signaller on 25 April 1915. On 8 May he was blinded by an exploding Turkish shell at the second battle of Krithia. He was hospitalised in Egypt and following that at the Base Hospital in Melbourne. His patriotic, stirring verse was published both in London and Australia and later in New York, and he was something of a celebrity during and immediately after the war.

  Skeyhill was discharged in September 1916 and his book of verse, Soldier Songs from Anzac was published in December 1915 and quickly sold 20,000 copies. He toured Australia for the Red Cross, lecturing and reciting as ‘the blind soldier poet’.

  In 1918 he undertook a lecture tour of the USA and Teddy Roosevelt called him ‘the finest soldier speaker in the world’. Appointed war lecturer for the US forces, he visited war zones and later toured the United States selling war bonds.

  A new form of osteopathic treatment restored his sight in 1918 and he was commissioned by the American Affiliated League Bureau in 1920 to visit Russia and Eastern Europe. In September 1921 he toured Victoria and New South Wales as a speaker and in 1926 Ohio University gave him an honorary degree. He ma
rried the American actress Marie Adels.

  Skeyhill was killed when a plane he was flying crashed near his home in Massachusetts in May 1932. He was buried with military honours.

  Eight years after his death, Skeyhill’s biography of American war hero Alvin York, Sergeant York: Last of the Long Hunters, was used as the basis of the 1941 Hollywood movie, Sergeant York, starring Gary Cooper.

  Skeyhill’s fame was fleeting however, and his volumes of verse are now mostly long forgotten, though quite a few of his verses are used throughout this collection. I discovered his poems while researching in the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales.

  SNIPERS AND SAPPERS

  E.F. HANMAN

  Much amusement is to be gained from watching the manoeuvres of men as they pass some sniper-covered spot.

  These snipers were always a pest. Just when one had boiled the billy, had warmed the stew or fried some bacon, one of these gentry would, with a deadly accuracy, send billycan, fire and food skidding through space. How we cursed them. But it was no use—just when it was least expected, a bullet would spurt close to one’s feet. It was wise to move.

  We saw our comrades throw up their hands and roll on their faces, we saw our best pals pass away in agony. We cursed, we swore, we gnashed our teeth and took shots at the suspected hiding place of the foe. There was, too, the humorous side. One chap was hit in the thigh. He grimaced and said, ‘Thank Heaven! Now I shall get a clean shirt!’ We saw the last of him hobbling for the beach.

  The snipers were excellent shots and extremely cunning. Several were captured, most of them having short shrift, but one was taken prisoner and photographed as a curiosity. His hands and face were painted green, his rifle was also the same colour. He was entirely covered by a bush, which was fastened to his person. This disguise was wonderful. When still, he looked like a common or garden bush. It would take a very keen pair of eyes to detect anything human about it.