SAID AN AUSTRALIAN OFFICER
"Fraternizing with the Indians!" chuckled the Australian officer,
as he laid down a London evening paper which had been expressing
satisfaction at the fact that Australasians and Indians were fighting
side by side before Sari Bair. "The last fraternizing I saw was being
done by a young officer of the A.S.C. He was brandishing something
that looked like a pick handle (of course he never used it), and
demanding a lost transport mule in a fervid mixture of Arabic,
Turkish, and Never-Never talk from the Back of Nowhere.
"You see, these Indians are fatalists to a man; they think that if
they are to be hit, they must be, and there's an end of it. The
consequence is, they take no care of themselves; and that wouldn't
matter so much, if they'd only take reasonable care of the mules.
Mules are precious, but they take their mules anywhere, and lose
them. Hence the fraternizing. 'Where's my mule, son of Belial?' this
chap was shouting; and the other things he was saying made even a
little middie look shocked.
"We never got tired of those middies. You'd see a pinnace coming up
to the beach under shellfire, and a little chap of fourteen talking
to the boat's crew like a Yanko bullock driver. The big sailor men
were all grinning with sheer delight at the snap of the boys, who
didn't seem to know what fear was. I tried some middy's talk on my
men once, and startled them down to their bones. They thought about
it for half a minute, and then one fellow asked me where I was hit.
"When we go back to Australia, the Australian language will be richer
for a word or two of Arabic, that will go there to stay. We have made
a regular battle cry of 'Imshi Yalla,' which means 'Get on with it'
as far as we can make out. Then there's 'Mafish,' meaning 'Finished.'
It was the last word on the lips of many a good man in those days at
the end of last April. The ordinary camp greeting is 'Sayeeda'--'Good
day,' or 'How d'ye do?' as I take it. There's a word or two more, but
there is no need to translate them. They are useful words.
[Illustration: Colonel Sir Newton Moore, in charge of the
Australasian Depôt at Weymouth.]
"The Turks are fine fellows. People ask me if they were not very
cruel; and I hear all sorts of rumours about mutilations, and so
on. There is not one word of truth in it. The story went round
that one well-known Australian officer had been found hideously
mutilated; and I happen to be in a position to contradict that story
point-blank. When the armistice was declared at the end of the battle
of Quinn's Post, it was my sorrowful duty to identify and bury the
body of that officer. He had not a mark on him, except the honourable
wound that caused his death. Dr. Springthorpe, who is the chief
Australian medical officer in Egypt, has assured me that no case of
mutilation has been treated in the hospitals there; which contradicts
some very circumstantial stories that have found their way into
print, both here and in Australia.
"That armistice was a funny business. Of course, the only people with
any business between the lines were the Red Cross people, but no
sooner had the armistice begun than a whole lot of German officers
in Turkish uniforms stepped out, and began to make the best use of
their opportunities for taking observations. The only counter for
that was that we should go out too, and we did so. The Germans were
as grumpy as pigs about it, but the Turkish officers turned out to be
fine gentlemen. Soon I was swopping cigarettes with them, and we were
carrying on a conversation in bad French, eked out with scraps of all
other tongues. They were quite jolly fellows, and brave fighters into
the bargain.
"It was during that armistice that I saw a German officer talking to
some Turkish soldiers with a shovel. They did not move quickly enough
to suit him, I suppose, and he laid into them with it. He was not
particular whether the flat or the edge of it struck them, so long as
he did not miss altogether. I said to my fellows, 'How should we get
on, if I did that to you?' and they only scowled. Two of them went
out a night or two afterwards, and came back with some buttons they
said were his. I don't know.
"Yes, the Turks are brave men, and brave women, too. I saw with my
own eyes one sniper brought in, all covered with twigs and painted
green in the face. This sniper was smoking a cigarette presented
by one of our fellows, and when a couple more added a pat on the
back, and said 'Cheero,' the sniper burst into tears. It was a
young Turkish girl. Upon my word, I saw the thing happen. She had
provisions for three weeks and a thousand rounds, and as nice a
little cubby-hole as you ever saw to hide in. I don't know what
became of her, but I can vouch for what I am telling you being true.
"We will always remember the Turks kindly for one thing. We lost
General Bridges, our chief; who fell to a sniper's bullet in Monash
Gully (The Valley of Death), when on his round of inspection. He
refused to be carried down to the sea-front, because of the danger
his bearers would have to risk. Of course, no one would hear of such
nonsense; and he was carried. He was taken slowly through all the
most dangerous windings of the valley; yet not a single Turk fired
a shot. That stands to their credit with every Australian on the
peninsula.
"There are lots of funny things I could tell you, but you might
think I was qualifying for the post of 'First Man.' The First Man?
Oh, that's a title any fellow gets in the trenches who begins to
tell tall yarns. You see, in the first days there was a lot of talk
about who was the first man ashore. He turned up here, there, and
everywhere; everybody knew him. I believe there were some fights
about it. Then some fellows out at Courtney's had a big tin medal
made, and whenever any one began boasting, he would be presented
with this medal, inscribed, 'For the First Man Ashore.' Nearly every
battalion has one of those medals now.
"There were three brothers in my company, all as brave as lions.
Fred, the youngest of the three, was reckless with it; and his two
brothers were always worrying about him. One day he was hit on the
shoulder, and when they saw him go down one brother shouted to the
other, 'Thank Heaven, young Fred's got it!' Of course, we all knew
what he meant--he was pleased the boy had got off with a light
wound--but it made the fellows laugh. After that, whenever one of
them was hit, he'd shout, 'Thank Heaven, young Fred's got it!' and
then lie down and curse.
"This brother was the coolest customer in the trench, and that was
saying something. He was a crack shot, and a great hand at destroying
Turkish periscopes. Smashing the business end of a periscope with
a rifle bullet, even at short range, is not so easy as it sounds;
for the observers keep them moving about erratically, so that it is
something like a very small disappearing target. But Bill nailed one
nearly every time he shot, and the Turks used to chatter with rage at
each loss. I don't think they had too many of them.
"They broke a good many of our periscopes in the same fashion; and
the broken glass used to fly about in a very nasty way. I had five
men cut about the face and head on one day, through their periscopes
being broken at observation work. Then we improvised a sort of safety
helmet out of half a kerosene tin, and put an end to that trouble. We
tried the new steel embrasures at Quinn's Post, but I consider them
sheer death traps, where the trenches are so close to those of the
enemy as twenty yards. The fellows who used them at a distance of 150
or 200 yards spoke most highly of them; but where I was, a gap in the
sandbags served much better.
"The Turk is a punctual beast. We used to time our watches every
evening by the first shell of the evening bombardment, which
invariably came along at ten minutes past six. On the night of May
18, that first shell was followed by 170 others before it had gone
seven o'clock, which was pretty good going. The armistice of the 20th
May was supposed to end at four o'clock in the afternoon, and at one
minute past, along came the first shell, just to show us that our
friend Abdul had his eye on the clock.
"It came from an entirely new direction, too, which showed that the
opportunity for observation afforded by the armistice had not been
wasted. But I think we were able to show that we had not shut our
eyes to things that were easily noticeable. They certainly did not
gain much in the exchanges over that armistice. It's all in the
game, after all. There has been little said about the work of the
Australasian artillery, and for the very best of reasons. But the
gunners, and especially the New Zealanders, will get their due later
on.
"There is one New Zealander who is a perfect marvel with a
machine-gun--Captain Wallingford, a champion shot. He got the
Military Cross for his great work on the opening days, so one can
speak about him. A machine-gun soon draws fire, and it was no
uncommon thing for the whole of a section to go down soon after
a machine-gun opened fire. The way he shifted his gun about in
unfamiliar, broken country, through thick scrub and in the dark, was
something to dream about. He had a sharpshooting section, too, that
was death on snipers, and cleared a whole section of the front in
very quick time.
"Colonel Owen's men (the 3rd Battalion) always call him 'Old
Never-Retire.' I asked one of them the reason, and he said that on
the morning of the first landing the Colonel had to take his fellows
up a very steep bit of cliff, almost inaccessible. His position
worried the Admiral so much that he signalled that he had better
retire, and try farther to the right. The Colonel turned on the chap
who brought the message and said, 'My compliments to the Admiral, and
tell him I'll see him damned first.' I don't know whether that is
true, for I never had the chance of testing it. But his men swear to
it.
"The loudest cheer I heard from the trenches was given to a
sergeant[1] whose name I never found out; but I heard he was a
Western Australian. Two sharpshooters had crawled out about thirty
yards for a better shot, and had gone down together; one with a
broken arm, and the other with a shot through the thigh. They lay
there, with bullets kicking up the dust around them, when this
sergeant went out with a rope. He tied it round the waist of the man
with the broken arm, who was dragged to the trench, yelling with
pain. Then he picked the other fellow up on his back, and brought him
in through a perfect rain of bullets. He never had a scratch. It was
away to the left of me, and below me, and I saw it all through my
glasses, and heard the cheers, as if I were sitting in the circle at
a theatre. We found by signal he was unhurt, but could not get his
name.
"There were two platoons away on the right who distinguished
themselves by getting farther inland than any one else. Not many of
them returned to tell the tale, but it was a queer story. They lost
all their officers and most of the non-coms. quite early on. The rest
only knew they were there to take a hill, and so they took one. Then,
for fear that might be the wrong hill, they took another. That set
them off taking all the hills in sight, a pretty tall order. They
only stopped when they blundered on to the Turkish camp; the wonder
is that any of them ever got back.
"I wish the Turks were as cleanly as they are brave and punctual.
They keep their trenches in a filthy condition. I know, because I
occupied one for half a day. We were told to take it; and that was
all right, with the help of the bayonet. We stayed there half a day,
and were quite glad when we were ordered back again. It was dangerous
enough there; but, for the moment, the danger was nothing compared
to the stench and vermin. We lost a lot of men getting out; but were
told the tactical purpose had been achieved. So that was all right.
"Shortage of water was one of the chief hardships of the place. If
one wanted a wash, he had to go down and wash in the sea; and that
was only safe at night time, up to the time I left. I got my bullet
down on the beach; it had come from Dead Man's Ridge, right at the
top of the Valley of Death--or Monash Gully, as it is now called. I
understand the Turks have been cleared from that ridge now, and that
a trip down the valley is safe enough. But for two months after the
landing it was asking for death to walk down it in the daylight. The
water? Oh, the allowance is a quart a day to each man for drinking,
and as much for cooking; and all fare alike. We saved for three days
for a comfortable shave, and had to go short of a drink to do it.
[Illustration: The Valley of Death.]
"The grimmest experience I encountered was in the early days, when I
had to decide in a second to order my men to shoot on unarmed Turks.
They came forward with their hands up, and I fancied I saw the flash
of a bayonet or two in the scrub behind. So I gave the order to
shoot; and five seconds later I knew I was right, for we were busy
repelling the determined attack of a considerable force. If we had
tried to make prisoners of their pioneers, we would have been in
a nice fix. Incidents like that explain why the number of prisoners
taken is not large; there is so much cover there that it is a risky
game making prisoners.
"There are plenty of Germans there; the artillery officers and the
whole of the machine-gun sections are Germans. They wear Turkish
uniforms, and are what we call 'Pointers' in Australia. During the
armistice, they were trying very hard to get their rifles away with
bolts and all, back to the Turkish lines. They were supposed to take
the rifle and leave the bolt, thus making the weapon useless. I had
to stop quite a number who were sneaking off with complete rifles;
there was a bit of a row about one man, because I happened to hit
him with my fist. I could not make him understand what I wanted by
any other means. But there are fewer Germans now than when we first
landed."
FOOTNOTE:
[1] I am informed that the hero of the exploit was Sergeant Duffy, of
the 8th Battalion (Victoria).
THE BAND OF BROTHERS
[Illustration: Captain Richardson of the 1st Brigade, who was awarded
the Military Cross for his fine work at the landing.]