GLIMPSES OF ANZAC
II
A whole legion of Gallipoli maps has been published in the Press. They
show the landing-places. All Australians know the Anzac positions where
their sons and brothers scrambled from the boats, splashed to the fatal
sand, and fell forthwith or fixed the steel and charged to conquer or
fall above. This spot, where Australians showed the world what manner
of man is nurtured beneath the Southern Cross, is fair to look on. We
saw it first from the sea, in the full burst of the spring. Literature,
ancient and Byronic, glows with the beauties of the Ægean spring. It's
all true. Anzac is reckoned a true type of that loveliness. The charge
was made up a steep ridged hill opening upon an irregular tableland.
Either flank of that hill is gently undulating low country. The thin
belt of light sand fronts all. The deep wild-flower colour flung in
broad splashes upon the low country of the flanks is foiled by the
delicious blue that bathes the sand-strip. When the ancients gave us a
picture of all this we questioned it, as perhaps painted inaccurately
in the elation of literary composition. That is not a right inference.
One attempts to describe it as it appears in 1915; but there is the
danger of being disbelieved, because the prodigal flinging of spring
colour over the shores of Gallipoli utterly surpasses in richness the
colour of Australia. England doubtless shows something far more like it
in spring. The colour ashore is a glowing red--acres of poppy waving
there upon the green plains. Neither do we know the Ægean blue in
Australian waters, somehow. The reader, harassed by the war news from
this smiling land, may conceive the incongruity of this fair landscape
splashed with colour of another sort--the red dust of a moving troop,
the hideous discolour of bursting lyddite, and the grey smudge of
shrapnel. A grand range of chalk hills runs south behind the pasture of
the right flank. The low shore plain of the left flank is backed by a
group of green pinnacles moving north towards the glittering salt-lake.
The coast, northerly, sweeps out to the southern horn of Saros Bay--a
rough, sheer-rising headland, southern sentinel of the great Saros
Cliffs.
Moving inshore to the foot of the Anzac plateau, one gets a delusive
impression of Anzac smoothness. Anzac in detail is rough: small
gulches, ravines--Arabian _wadys_--which at once hindered and assisted
the aggressors at landing. Leaving behind the beach, with its feverish
busyness, the climb up to the trenches begins forthwith. You follow a
well-engineered road levelled in the bed of the ravine. In the sides
the dug-outs are as thick as dwellings in a Cairene alley--which is
saying much. Beaten side-tracks branch off like rivulets which join a
mountain torrent. The only haven for mules and horses is the shelter of
the banks, which have been half dug out at intervals into an extensive
sort of stable. It is the height of the afternoon. There is no wind
stirring under the hill. The men off duty are sleeping heavily--have
flung themselves down, worn-out, and lie in the thick dust of their
shelters, where the flies swarm and the heat reeks. But all are not
sleeping. Periodically a regimental office is dug in; the typewriters
are noisy: they make a strange dissonance with the hum of bullets
above, which does not cease. The post-office lies in a bend of the
path. This is dug deep, with sandbag bulwarks. There's no sleeping
here. A khaki staff sorts and stamps, in this curious subterranean
chamber, amidst a disorder of mail-bags and the fumes of sealing-wax.
One hopes, in passing, the shrapnel will spare this sanctuary.... Half
a mile up, the road peters out into a rough and dusty track under the
hill-crest. It is heavy climbing. One realises fully for the first
time what a scaling was here at the first charge. It has been hard
work up a beaten road: what for those hampered infantrymen, with their
steel-laden rifles and their equipment, and the Turks raining death
from their entrenchments aloft? It was seventeen minutes' work for
them; we have been panting and scrambling for forty, and are not up
yet. Five minutes more brings us to the sentry guarding the entrance
to the communication-trench. He sets us on our stooping way. You dare
not walk erect. Here the bullets are not "spent," though "spent"
bullets can do damage enough. 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 a soft rock--hundreds of yards of it,
half-miles of it. Fifteen minutes looping along brings us to an exit
opening on a battery, where two guns are speaking from their 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.
From the observers on our flanks he is transmitting the corrections and
directions to his gunners. One man is juggling shell from the rear of
the pit; one is laying the gun; the rest are understrappers. The roar
of discharge, heard from behind, is not excessive. What comes uppermost
is the prolonged whizz and scream of the shell. Artillery work must
be far the most interesting. The infantryman, a good deal, aims "in a
direction," and hopes for the best. The man at the gun watches each
shot, the error is gauged, and he acts accordingly at the next. His is
a sort of triumphal progress upon his mark.... Re-entering the trench,
we crept to our second line. There were a few scattered marksmen. There
is a kind of comfort, even in trenches. The sleeping-places hollowed
out under the lee of the wall, a foot from the floor, will keep one
more or less dry in rain. There are carnal symbols of creature comfort
scattered up and down--blankets, newspapers, tobacco-tins, egg-shells,
orange-peel, and the wrappings of Mexican chocolate. But it's harsh
enough. From the crackle of musketry and the song of the bullet and the
intimate scream of the shell there's little respite.
The labyrinth of trenches becomes very intricate as you approach the
front line: saps, communication trenches, tunnels, and galleries, make
a maze that requires some initiation to negotiate successfully. In the
rear lines the men off duty are resting, as well as may be, plagued
as they are with flies, heat and dust. In general they are too far
exhausted to care much, so long as they can get their tobacco and a
place to lie. They try to lie comfortable in the squalor; try to cook
a trifle at their pathetic little hole-in-the-wall fires. The most
impressive thing near the first line (there are things more impressive
when you get there) is the elaborateness and permanency of the trenches
and dug-outs and overhead cover. One might think the beggars are
here for a year: which God forbid! The impression of keenness and
alertness here is in striking contrast with the easy-going aspect of
the "reservists." The men work at frequent intervals, in pairs, one
observing with the periscope, the other missing no chances with the
rifle. We looked long and earnestly through a periscope. Two things
arrest you. The first is the ghastly spectacle of our dead lying beyond
the parapet. They have been there since the last charge; that is 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 five months. The flies swarm in hosts.
The second thing that arrests you is the amazing proximity of the
enemy trenches. You put down the periscope and look furtively through
a loophole to verify. The average distance is about fifteen yards. Our
conductor smiled at the expression of amazement. "Come along here;
they're a bit closer." He took us to a point at which the neutral
ground was no more than five yards in width; rifle and bayonet extended
from either trench could have met across it. We well believed our
men could hear the Turks snore. This is an uncanny proximity. One
result is that the bomb is the chief weapon of offence. To shy a bomb
effectively over five yards is as good a deed as drink. Bomb wounds are
much to be dreaded. The missile does not pierce, it shatters, and there
is no choosing where you will have your wound. We laid well to heart
the admonition to be momentarily on the look out for bombs.
We worked slowly back along a tortuous route. These are old Turkish
trenches. They had been so constructed as to fight in the direction of
the sea. When our men took them they had immediately to turn round and
build a parapet on the side more remote. They were choked with Turkish
dead. To bury them in the open was unthinkable; they had to be thrown
into pits excavated in the trench wall, or flung aloft, and buried
beneath the new inland parapet. 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 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. 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, in great part,
pasty-faced ghosts, with nerves on raw edge. What may one expect?
Inadequate rest, and that rudely and habitually broken; almost an
entire want of exercise--except in the charge; food that is necessarily
scanty and ill-nourishing; a perpetual and overpowering stink of
the most revolting kind; black swarms of flies that make quiescence
impossible--even if enemy shelling and enemy bomb-slinging did not;
a nervous strain of suspense or known peril (or both) that never is
lifted. Australians have done their part with unequalled magnificence.
But they are not gods. Flesh and blood and spirit cannot go on at
this indefinitely. God help the Australian infantryman with less than
a frame of steel wire, muscles of whipcord, and a heart of fire. The
cases are rare, but men have been driven demented in our firing-line,
and men who in civil-life were modest, gentle, tender-hearted, and
self-effacing, have become bloody-minded, lusting to kill. War is _not_
fun; neither is it ennobling.
It was fighting of another sort when Greeks and Persians traversed this
ground. For the Narrows was, more than possibly, the crossing-place
of the Hellespont for either host. Anzac or Gaba Tepe would be,
almost inevitably, right in the track. Australian trenches perhaps
cut across the classic line of march. Who is to say that the site of
Xerxes' Headquarters-camp is not at this moment serried with Australian
dug-outs? Where he stood to embark, the wireless operator may now be
squatting in his sandpit receiving from our cruisers. Certainly every
mile over which we are fighting is charged with classical associations.
The new geographical nomenclature stands contrasted with the classical,
as do methods of transport and fighting. What does the dust of Persian
Generals know of Quinn's Post, Walker's Ridge, or Pope's Hill? Even the
Turkish names are despised. We are "naming" our own map as we go on.
Pope's Hill is a feature in the landscape considerable enough to have
justified a Turkish name before we came here. The map of Gallipoli,
as well as that of Western Europe, is in a state of flux. Should
Gallipoli be garrisoned, Australian terms, not to be found in the
dictionary, will stick; scrubs, creeks, and gullies, dignified with the
names of heroes who commanded there, will abound.
It is by way of Shrapnel Gully 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 wounded to go aboard
the pinnace to the Hospital ship standing out. Collins Street doctors
who have left behind surgeries "replete with every convenience" find
themselves in others that are mere hastily run up _marquées_. Half the
attendants hop or limp. They have been peppered. The dentist's outfit
is elaborate, and plagued men may have teeth "stopped" or extracted.
There is a mechanical department, too, where artificial teeth are
repaired--teeth that have been wrecked on the Army biscuit, which is
not just angels'-food. Dentists' kit is almost complete; lacks little,
in fact, but an electric current.
The beach is animated. There are A.S.C. depôts almost innumerable,
wireless stations, ordnance stores, medical supply stores, and
what-not. This is not the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious
war, but the hard facts and hard graft and dirt, sweat and peril, of
righteous war. It is by these mundane means the clash of ideals is
proceeding, and by which a decision will come....
Only when the masked enemy batteries of the flanks are firing (which
is many times in the day) is the beach cleared and quiet. At one stage
a couple of Lieutenants-Colonel limited the adminitory patrolling
to themselves during fire. They walked up and down unconcernedly
with an heroic and nonchalant self-possession, swearing hard at the
men who showed themselves. The hidden battery cannot be located. The
cruisers are doing their best with searching fire; their bluejackets
are climbing the masts to observe; the balloon is aloft; the seaplanes
are vigilant; our own outposts never relax. There is no clue. It is
concealed with devilish ingenuity. Every day it is costing us dearly.
All's fair in war. Their sniping is awfully successful. 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 at close
intervals, by night as well as by day, and by machine-gun as well as
by the rifle; beside, it is swept by shrapnel. Only under the most
urgent necessity are supplies taken to the flanks by day. Then the loss
in men and mules is heavier than we can bear. The Turkish sniper is
almost unequalled--certainly unexcelled--as an unerring shot. At night
the rattle of the mule-carts directs the fire. At certain more exposed
intervals of the route the carts move at the gallop, the drivers lying
full-stretch in the bottom of the carts and flogging on to safety.
Is not this worse than trench-fighting? The Sikhs are doing a deadly
dangerous work unflinchingly well.
It was reported unofficially that two Turkish women were captured
sniping. Rumours are persistent enough as to the presence of women in
and behind the Turkish lines. Our outposts claim to have seen them,
and victorious attacking parties that have captured Turkish camps
have been said to declare they have found hanging there garments of
the most significant lace-frilled sort. The unbelieving diagnose these
as the highly-embellished pyjamas of Turkish officers. The whole thing
is probably to be disbelieved. The Turk is too seriously busy to be
distracted by the blandishments of his women. Harems doubtless are left
well at home, to be revelled in when the British have ultimately been
driven into the sea.
The men bathe, but often pay too dearly for the bath. The bathing beach
is a place notorious for good-humoured but successful "lifting." In the
early stages there was mixed bathing of Colonels and lance-corporals,
Majors and full privates. The Colonel leaves his boots on the sand;
a private is sneaking off--"Hey! those ---- boots are mine!" ... All
ranks go about ashore dressed alike, with the rank shown symbolically;
distinguishing marks of rank become distinguishing marks for
sharp-shooters too: you must know a Captain by his bearing rather than
his clothes. Curious dialogues arise. The officers are in a garb which
differs in many ways from their dress of the promenade at Shepheard's
Hotel.
There is little damping of spirits. Most men are happy. Pettiness
is snubbed. All are bound by the common danger into the spirit of
amity. There is growling day and night--the legitimate growling of the
overwrought man, which means nothing. Little outbursts of the liver
there are, but of a different quality from those civilian ventings of
the spleen.