GALLIPOLI
Today all is quiet at Gallipoli Peninsula. The rows on rows of wooden
crosses at Anzac and Helles, at Nibrunsei Point and Brighton Beach,
look out over the Ægean Sea, doubtless blue as it ever was. The dead
who lie beneath these little monuments of great deeds--the crosses amid
the dwarf holly bushes that clothe the western slopes--have reached
their rest. In the scrub Lee-Enfields lie rusting alongside shattered
Mausers. The pebbles on the long bleak beaches are mixed with shrapnel
bullets, and in the sand and the dunes west of the Long Sap are buried
bones and scraps of leather, clips of corroded cartridges, and shreds
of khaki clothing.
We had no false idea when we left Lemnos Island, eight transports
carrying our particular 3,000 Australians, twelve more carrying the
remainder of General Birdwood’s division, as to the difficulty if not
impossibility of the task ahead. Our training at Lemnos Island had
shown some of the difficulties, especially the business of landing
through choppy seas or narrow beaches under frowning cliffs and then
scaling those cliffs. The Turks with their German officers had had
their warning in the attempt to force the Dardenelles by the allied
forces in January. It was absurd to think that they would be surprised
by any movement we could make only a few months after. We discussed the
improbability of success quite openly. We went over the old defeats
in the history of the Dardenelles, the defeats when Helen of Troy
figured as the object of conquest, the defeats of the Crusaders and
of Constantine. As I say, we didn’t have much hope, but nevertheless,
we were all glad that the time had come when the training was at an
end and we were to go into the fight. Personally, I set about the same
task as the others. On the eve of the battle I wrote to my solicitors,
Garland, Seabourne & Abbott, as to the disposal of an insurance policy
I had. I had no wife, sweetheart or parents and decided to make an old
and pretty-crusty uncle of mine in England--he had given me a whaling
or two when I was a boy--the beneficiary.
I had gathered before leaving Australia ostrich and emu plumes and
had made photographs of my companions, had purchased in Egypt the
pretty little flower books made up in their pages of pressed flowers,
had acquired sandal boxes, silk handkerchiefs and quite a quantity of
“Turkish delight,” as we always spoke of our tobacco. I made up many
little packages as mementos to girls I knew, to friends, and in common
with the others gave them over to the postal clerk of the _Euripides_.
Of course, the world knows the fate of the _Euripides_, and so my
will and all my packages of gifts and letters never reached their
destination. But after the men had made these final dispensations of
their little properties, had written their private secret hopes, fears,
and expressions of affection to loved ones, the sadness of that period
swiftly passed from us and we began to laugh and joke at the prospect
of what was ahead. We even went so far as to make a sweepstake to
be won by the first man to land on the Peninsula. We came to anchor
at, I should say, about two o’clock in the morning off what we have
since designated as X. Y. Z. beach. This is at Kaba Tepeh. The other
detachments of General Birdwood’s forces were spread at anchorage up
to and beyond Suvla Bay. The particular stretch of territory that we
were called upon to capture was about 500 yards long. It was a nearly
straight line of coast. The beach was two hundred yards in width with
a gradual rising of sand dunes tufted with dwarf holly bushes and
miniature table lands, which finally resolved itself into sheer cliffs,
some of them high and sharp like fangs, others rounded, in all giving
the impression of the open, snarling jaw of some mammoth animal with
scraggy teeth.
Our battle ship pinnaces, that is to say, barges, were launched and
sent out to the different transports to take aboard the landing
parties. Each man as we stood at parade on the decks before being
ordered to the pinnaces had for his supplies as indicated in General
Birdwood’s orders, his rifle and bayonet, 150 rounds of ammunition
and three days’ rations, which consisted of his water bottle holding
a quart of water, furnished by the clear springs of Lemnos Island, a
tin of bully-beef to the weight of half a pound, as many biscuits as
he could take on, while leaving room for his emergency tin which holds
tablets of concentrated beef and cakes of chocolate. Besides in your
pocket you had your first-aid kit, a small roll of bandages and a vial
of iodine.
Weirdly began our great and deadly adventure on this coveted stretch of
the Ægean Sea which if we could conquer made possible the breaking of
the historic barrier of the Dardanelles. It was a stretch of coast we
were soon to wash with our blood as literally as the Ægean’s waves wash
the self-same shore.
The long procession of transports and their grim battleship escorts had
stolen up in the night, a widely-spread yet organized, concrete group
of slowly-moving, black, gloomy monsters. Every light aboard each ship
had been ordered out. Not even the pin-head flame of a cigarette might
show on any deck.
The only light we had was the faint green gleam that filtered over the
smooth waters from a moon that had begun to wane and had, indeed, at
this hour of three in the morning, nearly fallen behind the ragged jaw
of the black cliffs.
I can tell you that we most heartily wished this moon in ---- well,
anywhere than shining just then upon this particular spot of the earth.
We little cared for a moon to direct a spotlight on our surprise
attack. It looked like an evil moon to us. Or rather, it looked like
the evil, watchful eye of our enemy. For all of us knew well enough
what was behind those cliffs--about two miles or thereabouts behind.
Oh, we knew well enough that there lay the Turks and their big,
German-managed guns.
The Turks couldn’t very well hear me talking at from four to five
miles, yet such was the consciousness of the danger of our adventure
and such the hypnotism of the scene that when I spoke to the comrade
next to me, it was in a whisper.
“I wonder,” I said, “what that old green eye of a moon is looking
at back of those dark, old cliffs? I wonder if he sees the big guns
drowsing and the garrisons asleep or----”
“What he’s seeing,” said the man at my side in a grumble, “is the
heathen blighters getting ready to bang hell out of us!”
“Cheerful beggar you are,” I whispered back the more gloomily because
I was one of those who had argued and felt certain that we were not to
take the Turks by surprise.
And now the men had assembled on the decks as soft-footedly as they
might. They had gathered in the darkness into orderly rows like big
companies of phantoms. The ships’ crews worked as spectrally and nearly
as silently as the lowering of ladders and the launching of the boats
would permit. Even the groaning and wrenching of the chains and cables
seemed subdued and ghostly. Small steamboats each with a swerving tail
made up of barges and small boats panted alongside the transports and
battleships. With wonderful precision and swiftness the great ships
spawned hundreds on hundreds of smaller craft, thousands on thousands
of men, crowding the waters with them for as far as you could make out
whichever way you looked in the faint moonlight.
“Fall in Number Nine platoon!” came the growled order.
That was my command.
I quickly had my men groping down the companion ladder. There were
sixty in my special charge. By the time I had them all aboard and had
stepped into the barge myself where we huddled with fully two hundred
more, the voice of our cocky little midshipman sounded. He sat most
correctly erect in the stern, his cap at a jaunty angle, his slender
neck in its broad white collar. He was so very young and boyish but he
had an alert and business-like eye.
“Full up, sir,” he said smartly.
God bless and care for that gallant little chap! I can’t help
fervently wishing it as the memory of him comes to me now. He was only
sixteen--the treble of childhood was still in his voice. But in it
as he gave his orders then and afterward as well when frightful peril
came, were the steadiness and the coolness of a brave man--the sort
of man he must have become if the dandy little youngster had not been
destined for death with those many, many others on this April night.
The men in our barge as it bobbed about began to pass jests, in
whispers, of course. Not that they felt giddy--funny. Or, yes, in a
way, a bit giddy--nervous tension, you know. Like a small boy whistling
in the dark. And yet willing and eager to meet whatever dragon might be
there. For now we felt and knew that all we had trained for, prepared
for, thought about, imagined--the big time of actual warfare was at
hand. That was what was most alive in every man’s mind. But they joked.
“I’ve remembered you in my will, Jimmy,” said one to a pal two rows
behind him. “You’ll get nothing short of a million, my son.”
“What--‘cooties’?” demanded Jim. I think I need not stop to describe
“cooties,” those “bosom friends” of the trenches.
“Don’t waste your millions on him, Bob,” advised another. “Just
leave’m a lock o’ your ’air.”
A small but very sharp voice cut in:
“Silence!”
It was the middie, but for all save the pitch of the voice it might
have been a veteran commander.
“Cast off and drift astern,” directed a basso from the transport’s deck.
Our little man expeditiously carried out the order and slowly we
drifted astern until there came sudden twangs from the hawsers,
startling because everything had been so quiet or muffled before. This
was as the hawsers coupling boats and barges went taut as each boat
in succession, filling with men, drew suddenly to a halt its drifting
predecessor.
Two of the men in our boat who were standing were caught by the jerk of
the hawser and snapped overboard. They were fished out with boathooks
under the rapid, cool direction of the indignant middie.
“Disgusting carelessness,” he called the incident.
[Illustration: The Military Cross]
When all the boats of our string had been filled, there came the order
to the tugs: “Full steam ahead!”
Our tug was quite ready for it. Our string straightened out in a jiffy
and we got off to a racing start--bounding, dipping and rolling.
Sometimes we shot ahead in a straight line, sometimes in a half circle.
“God bless that damned old moon!” said a man near me. His jumble of
reverence and profanity came from the fact that the old green wicked
eye of a moon had blinked out behind the cliffs. A moment before I had
looked back and could see the battleship coming on slowly in our rear
with the obvious purpose of covering our attack.
Then I couldn’t see a blessed thing. The green waters had turned to
ink. You only knew your comrades were with you in the same boat by the
press of their swaying bodies against your shoulders and your ribs.
About this time some of the gay Johnnies got another severe reprimand
from our kiddie commander. They had undertaken to rise and were
holding their bayonets out over the waters like fish poles, chaffing
one another as to which of them would catch the first Turk. All said
they wished it would be a particularly fat one--say, a three hundred
pounder.
But the middie’s eyes had got used to the inky darkness and he spotted
the jokers.
“No skylarking and silence all!” said the infant “vet.” The men were
pretty well on edge by this time. And, as the world generally knows,
the Australian does not put much store in military discipline. But
these men obeyed the little boy on the instant--all save one who
though as quick as the others in resuming his proper place in the
boat, disobeyed sufficiently to remark in a whisper, good-natured and
admiring:
“Who’d ’a’ thought we had admirals so blarsted young!”
And by this time we were within two hundred yards of the shore. A man
near me voiced the impression we all were getting.
“Shouldn’t wonder,” he said, “if we’re to surprise them after all.”
Then suddenly out of that weird darkness, that curious silence that
had been disturbed only by the rapid, half-choked panting of the steam
tugs, the surge of the water against the sides of the barges, the
whispers, the occasional smothered laughs--all soft sounds--there came
hell--veritable hell if ever hell comes to men on earth! And it came
with a tremendous roar!