We worked all that night getting our stores on to the lighters, for everything had to be transhipped that went on shore at Anzac. It was pretty well daylight by the time we got them unloaded off the lighter. After this was finished we marched up to Clarke’s Gully & had our breakfast. We were dead tired for we had been working hard all night & had no sleep. About 10 o’clock we went into the trenches & relieved some of the 3rd Brigade. On the way up we lost an officer & 3 men by shrapnel fire — old Beachy Bill was responsible for them. It’s a wonder there were not more of us knocked for he shelled Shell Green pretty heavy as we came across it.
What a home these trenches were compared to the ones we had been fighting in. They ranged from 200 to 300 yards from the Turkish trenches & caught very little shell fire compared to what we had been used to: trenches that were rarely more than 70 yards distant & the majority were not more than 10 yards. Some of them were not 5 yards away as in the Pine, where only sandbags separated us, for we held half a communication trench each & terrible were the bomb fights in consequence, for you dare not put overhead cover up — if you did, the artillery would be on it like a shot, & blow it to pieces & you with it.
This portion of the line was known as Leane’s Trench after a W.A. Major. A man was very stiff to get skittled here, & needless to say we lost very few men the last 2 months we were on the peninsula. I don’t wonder at the 3rd Bde sticking to their trenches so long — they had a paradise compared to what we had battled through in.
We were not long in settling down to the old trench life again. It was noticeably colder now though the sun still continued to shine.
On the 1st November there was a heavy gale which lasted 24 hours, during which time it made a mess of Anzac beach. Cases of biscuits, bully, potatoes were piled all over the place, for the waves rushed up & knocked the stacks over like ninepins, & you should have seen the sea: it was literally smothered with onions & the beach stank for weeks after as they slowly rotted away. This was just a taste of what we had to expect in the winter months — not a very promising outlook was it.
The 7th & 8th reinforcements arrived on the 5th November. This made our work considerably lighter for we were woefully short of men for the length of line we were holding.
One of our stretcher bearers done a risky thing. There was a wounded Turk out in the open, & he hopped over the parapet & fetched him in — a plucky act & the Turks never even fired on him. What would the Germans have done I wonder. No enemy could have fought fairer than the Turks did after the first week we were there.
The weather was still holding fine & things were going nicely. We had started to put some big saps down. They were going to be our winter quarters, & also cover from the big guns the Germans were sending to be used against us — we were expecting them any day. These funk holes, as we called them, were to have 20 ft earth on top, as they reckoned it took 15 ft for protection against Germany’s 17 in. guns. I should not have cared to have been in these chambers when one of those giant shells lobbed on top; there would have been something doing I bet. We had trenches here 12 to 15 ft deep & practically proof against everything but the heaviest of shells. They were beauties & one of the Generals from Cape Helles complimented the Australians on their fine trenches.
Most of our dugouts also were very good. Some of them were got up like a room, especially those who were not being moved about, such as the artillery, A.S.C., Q.M.C. & various other units. The infantry of course did not have such elaborate dugouts for we were often on the move. One fellow even had a window in his & a pot of flowers, & at night time he would draw a curtain across his window. He was a machine gunner & his dugout was about the best there.
Looking at Anzac from the sea it resembled a huge warren, with the dugouts dotted all over it — there were tier upon tier of them.
Pretty close to our last position was Victoria Gully & I saw something in this gully that I had often read about, but always refused to believe. It was this: a running stream of water that choked with dead & dying men, running red with blood. It seems hard to believe but nevertheless it’s true. All men wounded on the ridges above it & at the head of Brown’s Dip would make for this gully, for not only was it the safest way down to the dressing stations, for on one side of it the hill was so steep that it would try a monkey to scale it, & it afforded safe cover from shrapnel fire, & it also had the fresh water which everyone when wounded longs for. Scores of wounded men reached this creek alright, but in many cases it proved their grave, for they got stuck in the sticky clay & there being no one on hand to help them out, they perished.
There was another gully something similar to this at the Bluff. In this little steep watercourse Australians & New Zealanders lay dead & wounded in scores. It was an awful sight to see the poor fellows helping one another down to the dressing station in Shrapnel Gully. It was in Shrapnel Gully that the Red Cross chap Simpson made such a name for himself, with his little donkey. Many a man’s life he & the little donkey saved. I have seen them often myself bringing down the wounded & the shrapnel fairly hailing down. It’s marvellous he lived as long as he did, for the hills around were alive with snipers, & the gully was always being shelled for the Turks knew well enough that it was the only track that we could get tucker & ammunition to the Chessboard to the left of our position. The little donkey would go backwards & forwards on its own account — he seemed to know as much as a man. He was the pet of all Anzac & had a charmed life.
I don’t know what we would have done without the mules at Anzac — I reckon we would have starved. You should have seen some of the tracks they had to climb & talk about slippery. Every bit of food, ammunition, clothing & nearly all our water had to be carried by the mule teams up to the trenches. It was a task I can tell you, & it had practically all to be done at night time for the Turks could see them in daylight. The Indians were responsible for all this work & deserve a heap of praise. There were a good few of these chaps killed at Anzac. They are proper fatalists are the Sikhs.
We had orders to write our Xmas mail, & great was the penwork for a day or so. It was sent away & nearly all of it was sunk. Wasn’t there some swearing.
On the 15th November there was a terrific bombardment of Achi Baba. Our warships fairly rained shells on the Turks for hours — how on earth they could stand it gets me for we could feel the concussion even where we were. We always had a splendid view of these bombardments for we overlooked all the country between Anzac & Achi Baba. Krithia at times could hardly be seen for smoke & dust; it must have been a perfect Hell there.
One of the prettiest sights I have seen at Anzac was when 6 cruisers bombarded the Olive Grove. They stood about a mile off the shore & if they didn’t paste the batteries there it was a caution. Sometimes they would fire the whole broadside which would envelop the ship in a black sort of smoke, & you could see each gun as it was fired shoot out a dark angry-looking sheet of flame, stabbing the black curtain of smoke like lightning darting across the sky. After a ship had fired her broadside you could turn round & watch where they were going to bob, which we could see as plain as day for some of the shells were lobbing very little more than half a mile from us. When they landed they seemed to strike fire out of the earth such is the speed they travel at; when the shell explodes it throws earth hundreds of feet high, & shakes the whole place. They were firing their guns so fast at times that you could not count the report from one ship let alone 6. They kept this up for hours but they failed to get old Beachy Bill for just before the finish I’m hanged if he didn’t have the cheek to fire back at the warships. Beachy must have been in a pretty secure place to defy those naval guns as he did. Old Beachy would have a go at anything. They reckon he was in a steel & concrete gun pit & had rails to run up on when he was going to fire, & the recoil from the charge would drive him back & he would run to some other hole & let go at them.
Our food take it all round at Anzac was not of the best. We had good long stretches without bread & fresh meat, & as for water, at times we had none
. A pint a day was our allowance at the best of times, & on this meagre allowance we had to quench our thirst, shave, clean our teeth, wash & wash any clothes you might have dirty. There have been times when we have been without water for 3 days, only had enough for a pint of tea twice a day. That’s cutting it pretty fine you know. More than once we have had to carry our water nearly 2 miles & up a steep hill at that. We used to curse like troopers when Beachy Bill would sink our water barges, after coming all the way from Alexandria or Lemnos, for it always meant a lot of hard & extra work besides cutting our ration of water down. There’s no one knows what hardships the old 1st Division & New Zealanders had to go through on that remarkable place, a position as full of natural difficulties as an egg is full of meat.
We had a snifter parson on the peninsula, one of the very whitest — Mac we all used to call him (McKenzie his name was). He & General Birdwood were the 2 outstanding personalities over there. No matter how hot the day was you would see Mac among the boys cheering & cracking jokes with them, & he would go down to the beach & help the boys carry up the rations, hard work it was too, he rarely had his coat on. That man was almost worshipped by the boys. He was attached to the 4th Battalion, & many & many a time he buried our chaps under fire. He was always merry & bright & never downhearted & I don’t think he was off the peninsula the whole time; he’s a man I would take off my hat to & there’s not many I would do that to.
General Birdwood was a bonzer bloke, he suited the Australians down to the ground. He would come along & have a chat to anyone; there was no formality about him or General Walker. They were both almost idolised by the boys, & General Birdwood had a very high opinion of the Colonials. He refused a higher command while on the peninsula rather than leave the Australians; he always used to reckon they would do him. When speaking of, or about them, he would always refer to them as boys. There’s many a good joke is told about him.
Among the Australians there was a code of honour different to nearly every other Army, as ever I have read or heard of. It was like this: when any particular risky work had to be done, such as putting out barb wire, patrolling, building parapets & etc, they never detailed men off to do it, they always called for volunteers & needless to say never called in vain.
On the 25th November the most puzzling of all things happened to us & that was that we were not to fire a shot on any account, neither from rifles, bombs nor guns. No fires were to be lit & everyone had to keep under cover & not be seen on any account whatsoever. That set the rumours going properly. Nearly every man had a different idea of what we were trying to do & of all the opinions I don’t think one of them guessed at the real meaning of it, as we found out afterwards.
Most of us thought we were trying to kid the Turks to attack us — it would most certainly have been a bad day for them had they done so — but they apparently had enough of that game. Instead they sent patrols out & we could hear them at night time rattling the tins quite close to the parapet. It was very tempting for a shot, for every now & again you would see one quite plainly. In fact as many as 200 were seen in the gully one night just below us but the machine guns were not allowed to fire on them. They would have wiped the lot of them out had they done so, for we had 13 machine guns pointing up this valley, ready waiting for an attack at any time from Johnny Turk. A good few of our chaps were shot while observing at night over the parapet. Pretty rotten you know, being shot at & not being able to shoot back.
In Lone Pine the Turks threw a note over to our chaps saying, “Come out you silly — & fire away, we know you are there,” but for all that they were not too sure for they attacked the British at Cape Helles & suffered a severe setback. The same day they tried the same game on the New Zealanders, but they dished them up properly, so they done a bit of good with their silence. The main object of course was to try them & see how they would act when the time came for the evacuation. Little did we think it would come to that, after all the terrific fighting we had done there.
Another time the Turks threw a note over to the 2nd Battalion just opposite Lone Pine & in it they offered us good homes, plenty of wives & all sorts of nice things if we would only give ourselves up. For, they said, you are fighting a hopeless fight, & one day if you don’t give in we will kill the lot of you, & also England was frightened to send any more ships with food to us & we would starve to death for they, Germany, had command of the sea & all that sort of thing. The note was pinned on the bags at Headquarters for all to see, & many the laugh it caused us I can tell you.
This silence lasted until midnight on the third day, & the instant time was up talk about a rifle fire. I think nearly everyone had a go & relieved his feelings; it had been a most trying time for all concerned, & everyone was glad when they could fire again. I expect the old Turks chuckled to themselves when we started to fire again, but the silence had served its purpose, & little did they know it.
The next thing was our blizzard & she was a snifter. It started on the 28th November by a cold rain which continued all day, but as night came on it turned to a howling blizzard. Talk about cold. That night I had 2 pair of socks on & my feet in bags, underpants, trousers, singlet, flannel, tunic, overcoat & then I was nearly freezing. The blizzard raged furiously all night long & when morning broke, the hills & everything else were completely covered with snow. The snow was a novelty to a lot of our chaps, many of whom had never seen it before, & they played with it like schoolboys.
It snowed most of the day, & the temperature was well below zero, & everything was frozen as hard as steel. Even the very water in our water bottles was ice & the water cans were solid — they had to be melted before the cooks could get it into the dixies to boil. One of the worst misfortunes happened to our water supply, for all the pipes leading to the supply tanks in Victoria Gully were burst with the frost freezing so hard. That was a calamity, & we had to carry our water at times right from Williams Pier, a distance of nearly 2 miles, & uphill & under fire nearly the whole way. The men in the firing line had no water issued to them for nearly 3 days & everyone was going round gathering snow from wherever they could. Even the very water in the ground which used to feed the wells in Clarke’s Gully stopped flowing for I suppose it was also frozen.
It took some time to fix the pipes, for they were a long time thawing, & to make matters worse the storm on the beach about wrecked everything down there that was worth spoiling. Talk about a scene of desolation, well the beach was it. They had a big condensing plant nearly finished, & the waves settled that & a lot of valuable machinery besides, & Beachy Bill hit the engine that pumped all the water from the barges to the different distributing tanks on Anzac. The beach was covered with the wrecks of small barges & boats that were battered to pieces & left high & dry, while coal, bully beef, biscuits, onions, flour & etc were practically everywhere. Here & there you would see the inevitable dead mule lying on the edge of the water or else floating close. There were mules killed nearly every night on the beach, for Beachy played on it nearly all the time & rations had to be got up somehow or other.
We could see from this gale what kind of a job we were going to have when the real winter set in. I don’t know how we would have got on if we had to stop there. The storm washed up a lot of barb wire which the Turks had placed in the water to prevent us from landing. We had a good few fellows with frostbitten feet & one or two frozen to death.
The 9th Army Corps were the ones that suffered. They were on low-lying ground & in some places they were flooded out & drowned. Altogether they lost 200 men counting frozen & drowned cases. That will give you an idea of the severity of the storm.
The Turks, we had good reason to believe, suffered even worse than we did, for scores of them gave themselves up & they told some terrible tales. Of course you must take everything you hear with a grain of salt, but they must have suffered terribly for they were not near as well equipped as we were. In fact many of them had no overcoats & waterproofs were almost unknown among them.
Many a man was fo
und standing at his post apparently keeping a good lookout, but frozen to death.
The storm also smashed Watson’s Pier about considerably & others disappeared completely. About 2 days after the storm had subsided the sun came out & shone brilliantly. There was very little warmth in it, but oh how welcome it was to us.
One night early in December I was emptying some bags out on the dump & I had a wonderful escape. I had just finished & was coming back when I heard a hissing noise coming through the air. I knew what it was — a stick bomb — but I did not know what to do, whether to run, lie down, or stand still. Before I could decide, down she came & bobbed in the heap of dirt not 6 feet from me. Luckily she failed to explode or I should not be alive today. They were a big bomb weighing about 12 lbs & very destructive.
About this time most mysterious things began to happen. First of all they stopped all mail from either coming or going, & cleared the Post Office off the peninsula. Next thing to go was all the hospital patients. Everyone was mystified, some of us even thought another great offensive was about to take place, & they were getting everything in readiness for it, but it began to gradually dawn on us that we were about to leave Anzac. I need scarcely say how sorry & downhearted everyone was for we always regarded that little bit of soil as our own.
All the graves were being done up & new crosses put up with the particulars of the fallen ones.
For a long time we kidded ourselves that Canadian troops were going to relieve us for the winter, & that we were going to either Mesopotamia or the Suez Canal. Another rumour got about that they were going to withdraw all troops & put in some big siege guns & they, with the help of the Navy, were going to hold the position.
The first to go of the fighting units were the 5th & 6th Battalions, 4th Light Horse & anything between 40 & 60 guns with artillery, & I think the 8th Field Ambulance. Luckily the night was fine & the sea smooth & they got away without a hitch. Each night after this there were big drafts of men leaving, & very soon old Anzac looked deserted. What few guns were left kept on firing bravely & to us it seemed as if the Turks must surely notice it — our daring bit of bluff seemed so very thin & poor an excuse — but they were fooled properly. I don’t know what they must have been doing for there was a constant stream of small barges & boats all day long flying between the shore & ships (they were getting all the more valuable stores & goods away). Fortune was favouring us, for the weather was holding fine, a most essential thing in this great undertaking.
In Great Spirits Page 7