by Jim Haynes
Down their cheeks the salt tears flow;
Who knows what silent prayer
Their hearts speak—who can tell?
With hands laid on the rough graves
They say their last farewell.
The Sikh and the Punjaber,
With their pack mules oft pass by,
And when they see those kneeling forms
Their cheeks are not quite dry.
I’ve rushed back to the trenches,
Cursing the Turkish foe,
Then, gaze on my sleeping comrades,
Wondering who next would go.
There’s many a loving mother,
Home in Australia dear,
Who is thinking, broken-hearted,
Of her loved son’s distant bier;
There’s many a true Australian girl,
Stricken with sudden pain,
Mourning for her dead sweetheart,
Whom she’ll never see again.
They know not where he’s lying,
Or how their loved one fell;
That’s why these lines are written,
The simple truth to tell.
Their graves are on Gallipoli,
Up in the very heights,
Above the rugged landing-place,
Scene of the first great fights.
Shrapnel Gully is on their right,
Courtney’s Post at their head,
The Mediterranean at their feet
And the blue sky overhead.
Their burial march was the big guns’ roar,
Their greatcoat their winding sheet,
Their head is to the firing line
And the ocean at their feet.
Officers and privates, who fell
In that first fierce rush of fame,
They lie there, comrade by comrade;
Their rank is now the same.
The city boy from his ledger,
The country boy from his plough,
They trained together in Egypt,
And sleep together now.
Your graves may be neglected,
But fond mem’ry will remain;
The story of how you fought and died
Will ease the grief and pain
That we know your kin are feeling
Over there across the foam,
And we’ll tell the story of your deeds
Should we e’er reach Home, Sweet Home.
Sleep on! Dear fallen comrades!
You’ll ne’er be forgotten by
The boys who fought beside you
And the boys who saw you die.
THE 3RD BATTALION’S RUM
H.W. CAVILL
There is one humorous incident connected with the famous Lone Pine charge that deserves to be recorded; that is the story of the 3rd Battalion’s rum.
The officers of the 3rd Battalion were addressed by their Colonel the evening before the fight, and one of the matters that came up to be decided was that of rum. Two issues of rum were due on the day of the fight, and the question was when should they be given.
The Colonel was an old Australian soldier of the Instructional Staff—one of the finest fighters at Gallipoli. He was wounded three times in the next twenty-four hours and was carried dying from the trenches he had won.
At this conference, the night before the fight, he laid down his view: ‘I believe the issue will be a good tonic to the men in their present condition,’ he said, ‘but I do not like the idea of giving it to men just before they go into action. We will have one issue in the morning, and the other after the fight is over.’
It was next day, about two hours after the charge, when a man with a demijohn on his shoulder came along, up Shrapnel Valley and into the firing line trenches. The Brigadier himself was at the mouth of that sap receiving messages. He was trying to clear the sap to let some of the most urgent traffic through. All traffic to the front had to pass through thirty yards of narrow, pitch-dark tunnel, and then out over the heath, facing the gauntlet up to the parapet of the Turkish trench.
Endless lines of men with ammunition, men with bombs, men with water, men with picks, shovels, sandbags, signallers, messengers, engineers, stretcher-bearers, were filing at funeral pace into it, and the whole tunnel was constantly blocked, while they carried one or two poor badly wounded fellows back.
I remember one pitiful procession that emerged from it, after at least ten minutes’ struggle through the dark interior—first a seriously wounded man in a folding cane stretcher, next an army medical man, and after him, crawling on hands and knees out of the tunnel and down the trench towards the rear, another wounded man.
Only those men whose presence was urgent were allowed to go through afterwards.
‘What are you carrying?’
‘Bombs, sir.’
‘Well, put them down here a moment, and stand by until that tunnel is clearer.’
‘And what are you carrying, my man?’
‘The 3rd Battalion’s rum, sir.’
‘What?’
‘The 3rd Battalion’s rum, sir. Colonel put me in charge of it, and told me to see the . . .’
‘Well, put it down here, and stand by.’
‘The Colonel told me to take it through, sir.’
‘Well, put it down here for the present.’
‘The Colonel told me . . .’
‘Look here! Never mind what you were told; put it down there at once!’
The rum carrier put his heavy load down on the first step, and retired, obviously unsatisfied, for the moment. The Colonel had told him the men would want their rum, and it was his duty to see it through. For a couple of minutes he watched the Brigade staff dealing with infinitely more important messages.
Then, the first time the Brigadier looked up, he stepped forward again.
‘How ’bout the 3rd Battalion’s rum, sir?’
‘Oh, well, get along with you,’ answered the Brigadier, amusedly.
And so he shouldered it and trudged out contently towards the heath and towards the bullets, and, I suppose, the 3rd Battalion got its rum.
THOUGHTS OF HOME
ROWLEY CLARK
’Tis springtime now in the Goulburn Valley
And the wheat grows high in the distant Mallee,
And at Widgewa ’tis the lambing tally
And we’re not there.
On the Clarence banks they’re cutting the cane
On the Bowen Downs, time for milking again,
And the weights are out for the Spring campaign
And we’re not there.
On the Diamantina the cattle are lowing,
At Narrabeen now the waratah’s growing
Out on the Lachlan the billabong’s flowing
And we’re not there.
THE SECOND NURSE’S STORY
Based on various accounts, letters and diaries
The 3rd Australian General Hospital, AIF, was set up in response to a request from the British War Office.
In May 1915, the new unit sailed from Circular Quay, Sydney, with a number of Australian Army nurses. On 8 August, after travelling via Plymouth and Alexandria, forty of us were landed at the new site on Lemnos.
There was, as yet, no hospital and no accommodation—just a site pegged out on the ground and a few tents. The previous day the August offensive had begun with massive battles at Lone Pine, Rhododendron Ridge and the Nek.
Before breakfast on 9 August, more than 200 wounded arrived from Gallipoli. Four days later, there were more than 800 patients.
On 10 August a convoy of wounded arrived at night and the next day another 400 seriously wounded stretcher cases were left on the beach, most of them horribly shattered and many dying.
We had no equipment and no water to give them a drink. We could only feed them and dress their wounds; many died. The store ship didn’t arrive until 20 August. There was no medical equipment whatever and no water to drink or wash. The wounded were just laid on the ground on blankets or on the f
loors of tents.
Even after the stores arrived conditions were awful. The travelling kitchens would burn on windy days.
The weather was terrible, bitterly cold, with wind and rain. We nearly froze, even in our balaclavas, mufflers, mittens, cardigans, raincoats and Wellingtons. We had no fruit or vegetables, and butter and eggs only once a month.
The men got dysentery from the local bread and there were scorpions and centipedes everywhere and thistles and burrs, most girls cut their hair short to save trouble. We didn’t even have a bath tent.
Night after night, in the high wind, the tents would shake and flap. We lay awake waiting for them to collapse. Hardly a night passed that a tent didn’t collapse.
As for the poor wounded soldiers who arrived in hundreds, the scenes were too awful to describe. It would be better for these men to be killed outright.
A LITTLE SPRIG OF WATTLE
A.H. SCOTT
My mother’s letter came to-day,
And now my thoughts are far away,
For in between its pages lay
A little sprig of wattle.
‘The old home now looks at its best,’
The message ran; ‘the country’s dressed
In spring’s gay cloak, and I have pressed
A little sprig of wattle.’
I almost see that glimpse of spring:
The very air here seems to ring
With joyful notes of birds that sing
Among the sprigs of wattle.
The old home snug amidst the pines,
The trickling creek that twists and twines
Round tall gum roots and undermines,
Is all ablaze with wattle.
THE MIGHTY NEW ZEALANDERS
E.C. BULEY
The men of New Zealand had to defend the extreme left of the Australasian lines along Walker’s Ridge, facing almost due north. During the month of July, too, the New Zealanders took over the defence of Quinn’s Post, and by very skilful sapping operations made that once dangerous post one of the safest places in the whole camp.
Farther north than Walker’s Ridge itself, the New Zealanders also held two isolated posts known as Outpost No. 1 and Outpost No. 2. Communication with the main lines from these outposts was maintained through deep saps, which had been dug by the New Zealanders themselves.
Outpost No. 2 was held by the 500 Maori and was sometimes known as Maori Outpost. This place was used as a base for stores; and here in the first days of August an immense amount of munitions and food was accumulated. At this outpost, during the night of 5 August, the men of New Zealand and the 4th Brigade of Australian infantry were massed for the attack, which began on 6 August.
Between this point and the great hill of Sari Bair (Hill 971) were a number of high points, among which were two flat-topped hills known as Greater and Lesser Tabletop and also Bauchop’s Hill. The sides of these hills were almost perpendicular, and a network of trenches made them impregnable if held by any considerable force of men. In the early days of August it became known that very few men occupied these defensive trenches, and one of the objects of the attack of 6 August was to take these positions by surprise.
After dark on 6 August, the New Zealanders and the 4th Brigade of Australians marched out from Maori Outpost, stepping silently through the scrub in a northerly direction. From the beach a series of gullies, running at right angles to the shore, give an entry to the hill slopes that lead up to the main ridges of Sari Bair and Chunuk Bair, the highest points of the mountain mass separated by a deep ravine.
Up these gullies the New Zealanders made their way, clearing the enemy out of the trenches dug to bar the approaches to Sari Bair. Charging up one gully, the men of Wellington surprised and captured the Tabletop hills. Up a parallel gully the Auckland Mounted Rifles went and took possession of Rhododendron Ridge.
The Maoris charged up yet a third gully, to take Bauchop’s Hill and the trenches beyond it. The fierceness of that charge, when they swept every Turk out of their path, has become legendary among the men of Anzac. The impetuosity of the charge carried them right through their own gully and into that which the men of Auckland had taken.
They came over a spur of the hills, yelling with excitement, and seeing in the dim light that a trench before them was occupied by armed men, rushed upon it, shouting their war cry. The men before them were the men of Auckland, who at once recognised the war cries of the Maoris. Fortunately the average New Zealander has a fair smattering of the Maori tongue, and the Auckland men shouted at them what phrases of Maori they could summon up in such an emergency, and the charge was stopped right on the parapet of the trench.
By such wild fighting the men of New Zealand steadily won their way upwards, through the tangle of gullies and steep hillsides toward the crest of the big hill. By day they hung on doggedly to the positions they had won, resisting attacks by bayonet and bomb. By night they moved stealthily on, through dense scrub and broken country, converging by parallel paths toward the desired crest of the hill.
No words can paint the gallantry of the fighting on those four days and 9 August saw a gallant little band of New Zealanders planting their artillery flags on the trench that spans the summit of Chunuk Bair. From that vantage point the bold pioneers could see all they had striven for through many weary weeks of constant fighting.
Away to the south-east were the forts of the Narrows. At their very feet ran the road from Gallipoli town to the main Turkish position at Achi Baba. They could see the trains of mules and the transport vehicles passing along this road. The goal of all their efforts was there, The Dardanelles, in their full sight. To their right and left, on higher crests, the Turks were massed in force, determined to drive them from Chunuk Bair.
Desperately the New Zealanders hung on to what they had gained, until support should come. Their attempt to hold that hilltop is one of the most glorious deeds in all the annals of war. Eventually the best of the Turkish commanders, Mustafa Kemal, led a huge force against them.
Finally, after sixteen New Zealanders kept a long section of trench against a whole host of enemies for three hours, the position was abandoned and the New Zealanders had to retire. Many would rather have died where they were . . . and a good many of them did so.
The losses of those four days can best be judged by reference to the casualty lists. The Auckland Mounted Rifles, 800 strong on the day of 6 August, had thirty-seven uninjured men at roll call on 11 August.
Over 400 New Zealand wounded spent those four days in a place they christened the Valley of Torment. It was a deep depression in the hillside on the rugged side of Sari Bair. On one side of it rose a perpendicular cliff that would have defied a mountain goat to climb it. On the other rose the steep declivity of Rhododendron Ridge.
The only way in and out was from above, where the New Zealanders were fighting like possessed beings for the foothold they had won on the crest of Sari Bair. Below, the valley opened out upon a flat plateau, so swept by the guns of both sides that no living thing could exist for one moment upon its flat, open surface.
To this valley the stretcher-bearers carried the men who had fallen in the fight, a sad little group of wounded men whose numbers increased hourly. Those less severely injured crawled there and unwounded soldiers carried their stricken mates there for shelter from the hail of bullets.
A devoted band of Red Cross men lent them what aid they could, stayed their wounds with bandages, tied tourniquets round limbs to check the flow of arterial blood, and made tortured men as easy as circumstances would permit. There was no doctor nearer then the dressing station on the beach.
The approach to this valley was so dangerous to attempt by daylight and there was no water there, until one man dug into a moist spot far down the valley, and chanced on a spring that yielded a trickle of brackish water.
By midday on 8 August, 300 men, suffering from all the terrible manglings that exploding bombs and high explosive shells can inflict, were in this place of refuge, and mo
re were continually arriving. Some sought to cheer the rest by predicting a great victory as the result of the attack. Here and there a man could be heard reciting verses to those who would listen.
No one moaned, and no one uttered a complaint. When a man died of his wounds they expressed their thanks that he had been spared further pain. As the little spring filled, each man would have his lips moistened with the brackish water.
When night at last came, the weary stretcher-bearers tried to move some of them over the ridge to a safer valley on the other side. But these men had been working for days and nights without rest and the task was beyond their strength, for the steepness and roughness of that hillside is beyond description.
The next day came with a hot sun, and clouds of flies. Also there came many more wounded to the Valley of Torment, until the number exceeded 400.
That day many died and among those who lived, the torture from tourniquets that had been left too long on wounded limbs became unendurable. Many of them will never recover the free use of their limbs.
At last that day ended, too, and evening brought a cool breeze. Then they heard, from the safe gully that lay beyond the ridge, the stealthy approach of many men in the dark. One of them, out of thankfulness, began to sing the hymn—
At even, ’ere the sun was set,
The sick, O Lord, around Thee lay.
Nearly all of them took up the singing and, while they were still singing, over the ridge came a large number of soldiers who put them all on stretchers. The newcomers, some thousands in number, ranged themselves in two rows that stretched up the crest of the ridge and down the other side into the safe gully.
Each stretcher was passed from hand to hand, to the safety on the other side where a long procession was formed, bearing the wounded down to the sea. Two miles it stretched from start to finish and so the wounded men of New Zealand were carried out of the Valley of Torment.
I have met many of the men who suffered there; and I know that in their eyes the real tragedy is not the torture they experienced. It is that their comrades eventually had to withdraw from the hilltops that had been won by so much loss of life.
One wounded corporal told me his story: