HOLDING ON
Our little fortress or “sangar” could be likened to a cauldron for
it was constantly surrounded by fire--the bursting, flaming shells,
and the pepper of snipers’ bullets like the sharp bubbling of boiling
water to “carry on” the likeness of a cauldron. Down on the beach at
the first ridge of rocky embankment the engineers had most bravely
under a frightful fire blasted great dug-outs for the establishment
of headquarters, a hospital, and the first station for the storing of
supplies.
There never was an instant’s cessation of the storm of Turkish shells
from the batteries back of the cliffs, but other little companies
like my own had gained a foot-hold on the first ridge and held on
desperately.
Something like organization was coming out of the chaos. My men were
showing no signs of panic. I dispatched two messengers back to the
beach to report my position, the number of men still with me, and to
secure food and ammunition. These men in common with other messengers
sent from similar small strongholds on the ridge, had a most dangerous
duty to perform. They ran the gamut of intense fire. Many of them were
killed. But my men successfully returned. They came laden with bully
beef, biscuits and jam. Our emergency rations had disappeared hours
before and we were brisk enough in opening the boxes and tins and
strengthening ourselves with bully beef, biscuits and jam.
The organization at headquarters went on with remarkable efficiency
considering the stormy environment. I soon received a reinforcement
which brought my reduced company of twelve men up to my original quota
of sixty.
In the protection of night relays of messengers worked briskly in
bringing to us rifles and ammunition to complete our supplies. Not
that these messengers had any easy pathway. The storm of shrapnel was
ceaseless and it was a bright night. We were as grateful for the
ammunition as for the food because, as I have already told, all the men
of my detachment had been blown into the water and in the saving of
their own lives had necessarily abandoned their cartridge belts.
The Turks were still firmly holding a ridge some eighty feet above
us from which throughout the night they kept up a playful attack of
machine guns, and their snipers were tireless. My men were so annoyed
at these attentions that I had some difficulty in restraining them from
making sorties. One of the men recklessly stuck his head above the
rocky wall of the “sangar” and queried:
“Where are the Turks?”
“Over there,” I said, with a nod toward the ridge.
“Don’t they ever show themselves?” he demanded indignantly.
“Put your head down, get down, you chump, or you’ll never live to see
one of them,” I told him.
Another time a sniper’s bullet ricochetted around the rocky wall of the
“sangar.”
“What’s that?” demanded one of my men.
“A ricochet,” I replied.
“Don’t we use them, too?” asked this guileless rookie.
Fortunately for us the Turks on the ridge above were not possessed of
bombs. They tried to make up for this deficiency by hurling at us huge
chunks of rock that had been smashed by our battle-ship attack from the
face of their sandstone cliffs.
We made them a better retort. We took our bully beef tins and jam tins
and tobacco tins, loaded them with broken stones and cordite taken from
our rifle cartridges, and messengers were dispatched to return with
other forms of explosives and fuses to aid us in the completion of
these amateur weapons of war. We lighted them from our cigarette ends
and hurled them in whatever direction a Turk had betrayed his presence.
Sometimes they would explode prematurely and not a few of the bombers
of that night had their faces blown away.
Dawn found us still in possession of the first ridge. While we remained
there inactive and before any order had been given to indicate that we
were to assault the upper ridge, there came an order which aroused my
wonder and opposition. It was to “Fix bayonets!”
Obedience to this order all along our position brought about a
startling betrayal of the whereabouts of the entire force, for
the sunshine glittered brilliantly on the steel blades and fairly
telegraphed the location of all our quotas to the enemy above.
I knew there must be some mistake and cried to my men, “Unfix bayonets!
Who the hell gave that order?”
I never found out, but I have very definite suspicion. I am certain it
was a false order circulated by spies, which we were subsequently to
discover were among us.
It is a fact that the German spy system even invaded the very personnel
of the British army. My platoon sergeant, Merrifield, summarily
accounted for one of these spies. This was some weeks later, at the
attack at Lone Pine. We had won the position and we were consolidating,
improving upon the trenches and the strongholds which we had captured
when the order come down from the left, “Retire! to the first line.”
I shouted “Stick where you are! Who gave that damned order?”
I sent up Merrifield to make inquiries and as he was making his way
along the line asking the men where the order had come from, it was
pointed out to him that a man on the left started the order. Merrifield
went up to him and asked who gave that order to retire. This man
replied “Lieutenant Wilhelm.” We had seen enough of spy work since we
left Australia and Merrifield, rushing up, faced Wilhelm. He did not
stop to question him. He read in the man’s countenance the appearance
of a Teuton, the broad face, high cheek-bones and broad neck. And
Merrifield took long chances but was too enraged to consider that.
“You damned square-head,” he shouted, and with the utterance of the
words killed the lieutenant with his bayonet. Wilhelm’s attempted
treachery not only cost him his life, but did not gain its end, for
the order never got any farther. On examining his person, we found
letters, photographs and a signal code, all going to show that however
recklessly he had acted, Merrifield had made no mistake.
The night of the second day found us in positions higher up among the
sandy table lands and ridges and dug into positions that we were to
hold for a few weeks waiting for reinforcements, which were coming up
from Egypt.
The Turkish snipers occupied a great deal of our attention all this
time and they were a cunning lot. They were adepts in the art of
camouflage--an art which was new to battlefields at this time. Their
favorite method of deception was to paint their bodies green, to
shroud their heads with the natural foliage of the country, moss and
holly-bush twigs. With this arrangement they could conceal themselves
as neatly and completely as snakes in the grass. They not only hid in
the shrubbery, but successfully concealed themselves in the stunted
trees that grew among the rocky crevices. The cliffs themselves
gave them a tremendous advantage. In this they had drilled shooting
boxes--holes in all manner of secret recesses large enough to hold
their bodies.
But we did not permit them to pot us wholly undisturbed. Many of our
men made night expeditions that silenced forever our hidden hunters.
One of my bush men came back from such an expedition with a startling
souvenir. It was nothing less than a head of one of the Turkish
snipers--the face of the ghastly object painted green, twigs enmeshed
in the hair and sticking out of the ears.
But after a while we were to meet the Turk and find him not such a
bad fellow. I asked the prisoners we captured why they were fighting.
They said, they didn’t know what they were fighting for, but they just
wanted to have a fight. A rejoinder which an Irishman like myself could
appreciate. In a conversation with an educated Turk I asked him why
they allowed the Germans to be the master. He replied that the Germans
had for the last forty years over-run his country and taken over the
direction of the civil, the military and the naval affairs of his
nation, and they were so strong, dealt with the Turks with such an
iron hand, that there was no commencing a mutiny. It had been tried and
proved a fiasco.
During the months of July and August when the sun was very hot and the
ground very dry, and the flies and the mosquitoes were everywhere,
water became scarce, for it was a waterless land we were on. The
Turkish prisoners, so friendly did they become with us, went back to
their own lines and brought us water. We sent others back to try and
persuade their kind to come over and give themselves up. We fed them
well, gave them the best that we had, and made jolly good fellows
of them, as they were indeed. They had given us a good fight and we
appreciate a good fighter. Though they went back to their own lines
they would always return and brought us frequently gourds of fresh
water. The water that we got ourselves was coming from Murdos and
Lemnos Islands. It was brackish and it stunk. We were only allowed
one pint per man a day, a stingy ration under a tropic sun. The Turks
said they brought us water because when wounded Turks lay gasping for
water, we had given them of our own.
Then the time came when we were getting an extra supply of jam, and
there were only two kinds of jam issued--plum and an apple and apricot
combination. Of course, that set us all grumbling, soldier-like,
because we didn’t get strawberry. One day one of the men hit upon the
idea of exchanging this jam with wine with which the French soldiers
over Suvla Bay way were liberally supplied. This exchange went on for
about a fortnight, and there were happy times in the trenches. Then
the French got fed up with this sameness of jam and our stocks dropped
below zero. So we had to look out for another customer. One of our boys
hit upon the idea of exchanging the jam with the Turks. During the day
we put up our articles of exchange--jam and bully beef on bayonets and
held them up in prominent positions on the front line trenches. And
we waited anxiously as to what was going to happen, and lo! at night
we heard and saw the Turks crawling through the brushwood and scrub,
growling and muttering to themselves as their whiskers were caught
on the twigs of the bushes. When they reached the front-line trenches
they took off the articles of exchange and put in their place wines,
cigarettes and Turkish “delight,” as we always called the tobacco. That
showed us that they didn’t want war and we knew we didn’t want war,
but the Germans wanted it and as long as they wanted it we had to keep
going.
Likewise we had other experiences that were not all grim, but they were
exciting. For instance, our bathing parties on the beach. We didn’t
have to bother with bathing suits or summer-resort regulations, but we
had the novelty of bathing to the accompaniment of shell fire. When we
saw shells diving we dived to get out of the way.
Gallipoli at this period of the year was a frying pan. Men found their
uniforms intolerable. We cut our trousers into “knickers,” abandoned
our tunics, and did all our fighting in bare knees and shirt sleeves.
Our enemies got a wrong impression from this. Turkish prisoners told us
that the report among them was we were falling so short of supplies
that we were cutting our trousers in two to make double the number of
pairs. The idea of our poverty of supplies was further strengthened
by the fact that many of our men abandoned shirts entirely and moved
about like savages with bronzed bodies naked of all covering save the
knickers and their socks and boots. Our aspect and the fact that our
men went after them practically always with a bayonet, won for us from
the Turk the respectful sobriquet of the “White Ghurkas,” the Ghurkas
being famous for their fondness and expertness in the use of the knife.
Not to give the reader too happy an impression of affairs as they stood
with us in Gallipoli after the night of our desperate landing, it might
be well to note here that of our original landing force of 20,000 there
had been at least 5,000 casualties among us. The night of the landing
in the storm from the Turkish forts, the cliff batteries, the machine
guns and the snipers, and also the drownings, fully 3,000 men had been
killed or wounded. In the intermittent fighting of the following weeks
preceding the attacks on Lone Pine and Chocolate Hill, the work of the
sharp-shooters, added to that of many small engagements, had further
depleted our numbers 2,000 more at least. We had held our own under
these harrowing circumstances from the last of April until August when
the second division of 20,000 new Anzacs came to join us.
In the fleet of transports that bore the fresh contingent of
Australians and New Zealanders, was the _Southland_, she who was
torpedoed in the Mediterranean. The men who arrived told us a most
interesting story of the experience of the _Southland_ and the 1,300
troops aboard her. It will be recalled that after being torpedoed
the _Southland_ had a remarkably long life. She was kept afloat
for hours until beached on a rocky strand. The descriptions we got
of the behavior of the Anzacs and her crew were thrilling in the
courage, cheerfulness and display of humor on the part of hundreds of
Britishers, who had no way of knowing at what moment the wounded ship
might plunge to the bottom of the sea.
One of the things they did was to hold an impromptu auction sale of the
crippled _Southland_. Bids for the great boat, whose cost had been a
half million, started at a shilling and while she was being battered
on the sand and rocks, rose to the majestic sum of one pound. She was
knocked down at that price to an Anzac, who later, in all hopefulness,
was to file his claim of ownership with the marine registry at London.
He announced his intention after the war of taking the _Southland_ back
home with him to make of it an Australian bungalow.
The _Southland_ they told us landed with her nose high in the air,
and there was rivalry as to who should be the last to leave the ship.
Men scrambled up the steeply slanting deck, clinging to rails, cabin
doors, and any other object offering hand- or foot-hold. There were big
bathing parties around the wreck, before the men were picked up by the
launches and barges from the other transports and battle ships. In the
first of the shock from the torpedo and when all were in expectancy
of the _Southland’s_ going down, the men assembled on the decks and
bravely set up the Australian song composed by a British naval officer,
which had become dear to them:
“Gather around the banners of your country,
Join in the chorus or the foam,
On land or sea, wherever you be,
Keep your eye on Germanee.
England’s home of beauty has no cause to fear,
Should old acquaintance be forgot?
No! No! No! No! No!
Australia will be there, Australia will be there!”