by Jim Haynes
Five minutes more brings us to the sentry guarding the communication trench. He sends us stooping on our way, for you dare not walk erect beyond this point. Here the bullets are not ‘spent’ (though ‘spent’ bullets can do damage enough further down).
The labour of trench-making must have been enormous. Here is a picked trench five feet deep and half as wide again as your body, cut out of soft rock, hundreds of yards of it . . . miles of it!
Fifteen minutes looping around in this manner brings us to an exit which opens out into a battery position where two guns are speaking from deep pits. In a dug-out beside the pit lies the presiding genius with his ear to a telephone. His lingo is almost unintelligible, except to the initiated, but from the observers on our flanks he is transmitting corrections and directions to his gunners.
One man is juggling shells from the rear of the pit, one is ‘laying’ the gun, and the rest are understrappers.
The roar of the discharge, heard from behind, is not excessive. What comes uppermost is the prolonged ‘whizz’ and scream of the shell.
Artillery work is at least engaging and interesting. The infantryman aims in a direction and hopes for the best but the man at the gun watches each shot, gauges the error, and acts accordingly for the next. His is a sort of triumphal progress towards his mark.
Re-entering the trench, we creep towards our second line. There are a few scattered marksmen at work here and there along our way.
There is a kind of comfort even in the trenches. The sleeping places, hollowed out under the lee of the wall a foot from the floor, will keep a man more or less dry in the rain. There are symbols of creature comfort scattered around, blankets, newspapers, tobacco tins, eggshells, orange peel and chocolate wrappings . . . but it’s harsh enough. There is little respite from the crackle of musketry, the song of the bullet and the intimate scream of the shells.
The labyrinth of trenches becomes very intricate as you approach the front line. ‘Saps’, communications trenches, tunnels and galleries make a maze that requires some initiation and knowledge to negotiate successfully.
In the rear lines the men off duty are resting as best they can, plagued as they are with flies, heat and dust. In general they are far too exhausted to care much, as long as they have their tobacco and a place to lie. They try to be comfortable in the squalor; some even try to cook a trifle of food at their pathetic little hole-in-the-wall fires.
The most impressive thing near the first line is the elaborateness and permanency of the trenches, dug-outs and overhead cover. Also, the impression of keenness and alertness here is in striking contrast to the easy-going aspect of the reservists in the rear lines. The men work at frequent intervals, in pairs, one observing with the periscope, the other missing no chances with the rifle.
Two things shock you and arrest your gaze.
The first is the ghastly spectacle of our dead lying beyond the parapet. They have been there since the last charge; that was three weeks ago, and they are black and swollen. They lie in so exposed a place that they dare not be approached.
The stink is revolting; putrefying human flesh emits an odour without a parallel. An hour’s inhalation was almost overpowering. One asks how our men have breathed it for three and four months. The flies swarm in hosts.
The second thing you notice is the amazing proximity of the enemy trenches. The average distance is about fifteen yards.
You may be told ‘Come along here, they’re a bit closer’ and taken to a point at which the neutral ground is no more than five yards in width, a rifle and bayonet extended from each trench would meet across it. You will need to look furtively through a loophole to verify this. Our men can hear the Turks snoring.
One result of this uncanny proximity is that the bomb is the chief weapon of offence. To shy a bomb over five yards is an easy deed to accomplish and bomb wounds are much to be dreaded as the missile does not pierce, it shatters, and there is no choosing where you will have your wound.
Working slowly back along the line you will find you are in old Turkish trenches that have been originally constructed as to fight in the direction of the sea. When our men took them they had to immediately turn around and build a parapet on the other side.
These trenches were choked with Turkish dead and to bury them out in the open was unthinkable, so they had to be buried beneath the new inland-facing parapet or thrown into pits excavated in the trench wall. The consequence is that as you make your way along the trench floor you occasionally come into contact with a protruding boot encasing the foot of a dead Turk. We had more than one such unsavoury encounter. The odour arising from our own dead is not all with which our infantry have to contend.
War isn’t fun and a good deal of drivel is spoken and written about the ennobling effects of warfare in the field. The men who have had four months of this are, for the most part, pasty-faced ghosts with their nerves on a raw edge. The troops suffer from inadequate rest that is habitually broken, an entire lack of exercise, food that is scanty and ill-nourishing, a perpetual and overpowering stink of the most revolting kind and black swarms of flies that make rest impossible even if the enemy shelling and bomb-throwing did not. Then there is the nervous strain of suspense and known peril that is never lifted.
Australians have done their part with unequalled magnificence but flesh and blood and spirit cannot go at this indefinitely. God help the Australian infantryman who has less than a frame of steel wire, muscles of whipcord and a heart of fire.
In rare cases men have been driven demented in our firing line. Men who were in civilian life modest, gentle, tender-hearted and self-effacing have become bloody minded, lusting to kill. War is not fun, neither is it ennobling.
It is by way of Shrapnel Valley that we regain the beach. The Australian hospital stands on the right extremity, by no means out of danger. A sparse line of stretchers is moving down almost continuously. This is a hospital for mere hasty dressing to enable the wounded to go aboard the pinnaces and out to the hospital ship standing offshore.
Collins Street doctors who have left behind practices replete with every convenience find themselves working in hastily erected marquees where half the attendants limp or hop.
The beach is animated. There are innumerable wireless stations, ordnance stores, medical supply stores and A.S.C. depots. Here are the hard facts and hard graft; dirt, sweat and peril of righteous war. It is by these mundane means, rather than pride, pomp and circumstance, that the clash of ideals is progressing, and by which a decision will come.
Here on the beach the morning splash has become indispensable to some. Daily at six-thirty you see the bald pate of General Birdwood bobbing beyond the sunken barge just offshore, and a host of nudes lining the beach. As the weather cools the host is slowly diminishing to a few isolated fellows who are either fanatics or have come down from the trenches to clear up vermin and dust-infested skin at all costs.
Naturally men would prefer to bathe at midday, rather than at 6.30 a.m. when the sun has not got above the precipitous ridge of Sari Bair. But the early morning dip is almost the only safe one. The beach is still enfiladed by Turkish artillery from the right although this is better than previously when enemy guns from both flanks commanded the beach. The gun on the right somewhere that continues to harass us is known familiarly as ‘Beachy Bill’. The one that was formerly active on the left went by a name intended for the ears of soldiers only.
‘Beachy Bill’ is, in fact, the collective name for a whole battery capable of throwing over five shells simultaneously. ‘Beachy Bill’ sometimes catches the morning bathing squad and then there is much ducking and splashing shoreward and scurrying over the beach to cover by men clad only in the garments nature provided.
Shrapnel bursting above the water raises the question: will it ever stop? Will the pellets ever cease to whip the water? The interval between the murderous lightning burst aloft and the last pellets whipping the water seems everlasting to the potential victim.
Th
e hidden battery cannot be located. The cruisers are doing their best with searching fire, their blue-jackets are climbing the masts to observe, the balloon is aloft, the seaplanes are vigilant, our own artillery outposts never relax . . . but there is no clue. It is concealed with devilish ingenuity. Every day it is costing us dearly.
All’s fair in war. Turkish sniping is awfully successful. The Turkish sniper is almost unequalled, certainly unexcelled, as an unerring shot. They have picked off our officers at a deadly rate. Lance Corporals have become Lieutenants in a single night.
Transport of supplies to the flanks is done by mule-carts manned by Sikhs. The route is sniped by night as well as by day and is swept by shrapnel and machine-gun fire. Only under the most urgent necessity are supplies taken to the flanks by day and then the loss in men and mules is heavier than we can rightly bear.
Sickness also has diminished little. Colic, enteric, dysentery and jaundice are still painfully prevalent and our sick are far flung and many in Lemnos, Egypt, Malta and England. As long as the flies and the unburied persist, the wastage in sick men deported is near to alarming.
Along with disease it’s the monotony that kills those away from the front lines, not hard work or hard fare. We have now been embarked here for four months and there has been little change in our way of living. Every day there is the same work on the same beach, shelled by the same guns. Presumably the same guns are manned by the same Turks, for we never seem to knock out those furtive and deadly batteries that maim and kill almost daily.
MY COSY LITTLE DUG-OUT ON THE HILL
CORPORAL G.L. SMITH
Come and see my little dug-out—way upon a hill it stands
From where I get a lovely view of Anzac’s golden sands;
When ‘Beachy Bill’ is shelling, I can see just where it lands,
From my cosy little dug-out on the hill.
Now, it isn’t quite as roomy as the mansions of the Tsar,
From sitting room to bedroom really isn’t very far,
For the dining and the smoking room—you stay just where you are,
In my cosy little dug-out on the hill.
The fleas all wander nightly, just as soon as I’ve undressed,
And after many weary hunts I’ve had to give them best.
And the ants have also found it, so there’s very little rest
In my cosy little dug-out on the hill.
I’ve a natty little cupboard, which looks so very nice,
It was made to keep my bread and jam, my bacon and my rice;
But now it’s just a comfy little home for orphaned mice,
In my cosy little dug-out on the hill.
There is no electric lighting in this blighted land of war,
So I use some fat in syrup tins, which stand upon the floor.
And when that’s burning brightly, well I sweat from every pore,
In my cosy little dug-out on the hill.
When the nights are clear and starry and the scenery beautified
By the silvery gleams and shadows then I often sleep outside;
But when it’s wet and stormy—well, I just crawl in and hide
In my cosy little dug-out on the hill.
When it’s time for parting from my little eight by four,
I’ll finally get a good night’s rest without a back that’s sore,
Perhaps some day I’ll miss it and will long to live once more
In my cosy little dug-out on the hill.
SIDELIGHTS OF BATTLE
ANONYMOUS—AN ARTICLE IN THE SUN, SYDNEY 1916
‘I’ll never forget,’ says Corporal Carnegie, ‘my first feeling after killing a man. I took aim and that, all right, I fired and he fell dead. I shook all over, and felt as if I had murdered him, and then I heard myself saying to my neighbour, “There now, I’ve killed him, the poor beggar!” You soon get over that, though, and after a short time become as deliberate and callous as possible.
‘It is marvellous how short a time war takes to change the make of you. When I arrived in Gallipoli I fancied the men I saw must be a different kind to myself. They paced up and down the trenches looking like wild beasts. You never saw anything like the look in their eyes—wild and staring. And when, after the evacuation, I got back to Cairo, the chaps who had not yet been into action remarked the same expression in my own eyes! So there you are!’
Corporal Carnegie’s expression now is the mildest and cheeriest in the world. You cannot imagine that it was ever wildly staring. He, like others, found waiting for the order to charge the most nerve-racking of all war’s trials.
‘Five minutes to go!
‘Three minutes to go!
‘Over!
‘And then men who have been trembling and fearful leap over the parapet with shouting and laughter.
‘I saw a bit of a kid cowering in a corner when the order was given to fire. I took not a bit of notice of him, and my mate said, “All right, leave him alone; he’ll be at it presently.” And sure enough, in a little while the youngster got up and took his rifle. His face was white as death, but I saw him lean right over the parapet and take aim. His gun was hot before he stopped firing, and the enemies’ bullets were kicking the dust up all around him.
‘There was another youngster I shan’t forget in a hurry. It was his first experience of bombs. One burst in the trench, and he ran just as hard as he could to the end of the sap. Yes, he came back again very ashamed of himself, until I told him, “It’s all right, laddie, I’ve felt that way myself.”
‘During a bombardment you don’t feel in the least excited or nervy. It’s the next day, or when you try to sleep, that it gets to you. Dream? I should smile. But they generally give you rum after heavy action, so that you fall into a sound sleep without any trouble.
‘I used to duck like anything when first I saw action, but it was not long before I laughed with the rest when a sniper took off the branch of a tree above my head. Funny, when you’re going into the firing line you never feel it’s yourself won’t come back again. You are quite sure you’ll get through all right, and you feel sorry for the others when you look round during the service beforehand, and consider that never again will this complete set of men stand round while the chaplain reads.
‘Once at Gallipoli we saw a young Turk lying dead in the most beautiful position for firing. He was prone with his rifle sighted. Our fellows waited till night to drag him in and go through his papers. He was only nineteen, and there was a half-written letter in his pocket to his mother. It was in Arabic. In his kit bag we found a nice clean suit of pyjamas, a tin of roast beef, and clothes nicer than our own. His mother must have been fond of that kid.
‘We ate the roast beef, and my word it was a treat after Gallipoli bully beef!’
THE RAGTIME ARMY
ANONYMOUS
We are the ragtime army, the A.N.Z.A.C.,
We cannot shoot, we won’t salute,
What bloody good are we?
And when we get to Berlin Old Kaiser Bill says he:
‘Hoch, hoch, mein Gott, what a lousy rotten lot,
Are the A.N.Z.A.C.’
NOT DEAD YET
JOSEPH BEESTON
Anzac will be a wonderful place for tourists after the war is over. For Australians particularly it will have an unbounded interest. The trenches where the men fought will be visible for a long time, and there will be trophies to be picked up for years to come. All along the flat land by the beach there are sufficient bullets to start a lead factory.
The beaches are pleasant and the water is perfect for swimming and fishing.
Our men had a novel way of fishing; they threw a bomb into the water, and the dead fish would either float and be caught or go to the bottom—in which case the water was so clear that they were easily seen. There was one fish that was common, they were something like a mackerel, and were delicious.
One thing that was really good in Anzac was the swimming. At first we used to dive off the barges; then the Eng
ineers built Watson’s Pier, at the end of which the water was fifteen feet deep and as clear as crystal, so that one could see every pebble at the bottom. At times the water was very cold, but always invigorating.
General Birdwood was an enthusiastic swimmer, but he always caused me a lot of anxiety. That pier was well covered by Beachy Bill, and one never knew when he might choose to give it his attention. This did not deter the General. He came down most regularly, sauntered out to the end, went through a lot of Sandow exercises and finally jumped in. He then swam out to a buoy moored about a quarter of a mile away. On his return he was most leisurely in drying himself. Had anything happened to him I don’t know what the men would have done, for he was adored by everyone.
Swimming was popular with all hands. Early in the campaign we had a Turkish attack one morning; it was over by midday, and an hour later most of the men were in swimming.
I think it not unlikely that some of the ‘missing’ men were due to this habit. They would come to the beach and leave their clothes and identity discs ashore, and sometimes they were killed in the water. In this case there was no possibility of ascertaining their names. It often struck me that this might account for some whose whereabouts were unknown.
My little dog Paddy enjoyed the swim almost as much as I did. He was a great favourite with everybody but the Provost Marshal. This official was a terror for red tape, and an order came out that dogs were to be destroyed. That meant that the Military Police were after Paddy. However, I went to General Birdwood, who was very handsome about it, and gave me permission to keep the little chap. Almost immediately after he was reprieved he ran down to the Provost Marshal’s dug-out and barked at him. Paddy was very nearly human.
One day we were down as usual when Beachy Bill got busy, and I had to leave the pier with only boots and a smile on. I took refuge behind my old friends the biscuits, and Paddy ran out to each shell, barking until it exploded. Finally one burst over him and a bullet perforated his abdomen. His squeals were piteous. He lived until the next day, but he got a soldier’s burial.