GURKHAS, WHITE AND BROWN
"Here you are," cried my friend Trooper Billy Clancy, of the
Australian Light Horse, as I entered the convalescent camp. "Ask him.
He knows what I'm saying is true." His very charming visitor regarded
me doubtfully. "Go on; ask him," urged the soldier; "he knows." "Is
it true," asked the fair ministrant to lonely Colonials, "that there
is a real Australian language and a different way of comparing such
adjectives as good?" "Good; bonza; boshter," I answered promptly.
"There," crowed Trooper Clancy, "what did I tell you?" "I don't
believe either of you," replied his visitor, and departed with an
effect of dimples and blushes.
"These English ladies are awful kind-hearted," said Clancy, evading
my eye, "but they do ask some rummy questions. Did you never hear
what happened to Shorty Shaw? You know Shorty? He's six feet five and
got a face like a grown-up baby's. Everybody likes old Shorty, but
the lady I'm going to tell you about took the greatest fancy to him.
She used to come in a motor-car and bring her little boy and girl
to see him. She treated him as if he was a very nice, interesting
specimen from the planet Mars. Why, when he said he felt the cold she
brought him a contraption she made herself of Jaeger goods to wear
next his skin.
"It was all patent fastenings and tied itself into knots when he
tried to get into it. And when he had it on he couldn't sit still;
kept hunching his shoulders and rubbing his back against the chair.
She asked him how he liked it without batting an eye, and Shorty
up and said he was all of a glow. Well, one day she was talking to
Shorty when I heard a noise like a hen clucking, and saw her going
out with her face very red and her nose in the air. And Shorty was
squirming about like his wound was hurting him. It seems she had
asked Shorty wasn't he proud to be called a White Gurkha? What Shorty
said he would never tell us, but it was the last we ever saw of the
kind-hearted lady.
"Of course she wasn't to know that Shorty's teaming business had been
ruined by Afghan camel-men. She didn't guess that Shorty used to
say that when he died the words 'A White Australia' would be found
written on his heart. 'White Gurkhas!' he used to say; 'they'll be
calling Chinamen smoked Australians next.' I tried to argue with him.
'Look here,' I said. 'Why do we call you Shorty?' 'Because you are
a lot of naturals,' says he. 'No; because you're the longest chap
in the brigade. Well, it's the same with the name of White Gurkhas.
The Gurkhas are all little, short, broad chaps, and the Australians
are all long, thin blokes. Don't you see?' But Shorty didn't; his
prejudices prevented foreign travel from improving his mind.
"As a matter of fact, there was only one Australian I ever saw that
looked at all like a white Gurkha; and that was Jimmy Young, the
celebrated footballer. He was a cabdriver in South Melbourne, and
the trickiest footballer that ever played the game. He was short and
as broad as he was long; he wore whiskers and he was bandy-legged.
His capers earned him the name of Diddly. He'd come down the field
bouncing the ball and breaking evens. Being so short he seemed to
be running even faster than that. When the other side tried to stop
him they'd be tackling a man who wasn't there; and all the South
Melbourne barrackers would call out, 'Oh, you Diddly!' He was a
ringer, was Diddly Young.
"The first mob of Gurkhas we ever saw was in charge of a sergeant
that must have come out of the same mould as Diddly. He and his push
had come from Cape Helles way, where they'd been fighting with the
English and the French. They hadn't been an hour at Anzac when this
sergeant got in a hurry about something and started to run. At
once about half a dozen of our chaps said at the same time, 'Diddly
Young!' You simply couldn't mistake the action. And he answered to
the name of Diddly with a grin a foot wide; it turned out that it
wasn't so far from his real name.
"We saw a lot of the Gurkhas then, and soon got to like them fine.
They were always laughing and joking; you never saw jollier little
chaps. Not like the Tommies, who were solemn and worried; nor like
the Sikhs, who were a bit sour. It was astonishing how quickly they
picked things up; this Diddly learned to talk Australian in no time.
One day he was chatting to me and a shell burst a bit close; and I
said something. He burst out laughing. 'One shell go bang,' he says;
'Frenchman lie down flat. Two shell go bang, Englishman go in his
dug-out. Three shell go bang, Australian look up and say "You ----."'
"Just about that time we were getting a lot more bursting shells
than we altogether cared about. They came from all directions, but
the two worst nuisances were two guns that had our beaches ranged
from north and south. The one to the south was Beachy Bill, that
they say has knocked out over 2,000 men and is still going. He lived
somewhere among the mangroves between Gaba Tepe and Achi Baba. The
other was Anafarta Anne, that was hid up in the hills--behind Suvla
Bay. Anafarta Anne was our particular worry and there was nothing we
wouldn't have done to shut her up.
"It afterwards turned out that she lived in a deep cutting, driven
sixty feet in the hillside, and was run out on rails when they wanted
to use her. The kick of her recoil drove her back into her hole
and shut a door in the front that was dodged up to look like the
hillside. Everybody was out after Anafarta Anne. Cruisers used to
come along and shell the hillside where she lived. A destroyer came
fussing up every day almost to give her a round or two. They sent up
captive balloons to watch for her and aeroplanes observers hovered
over the spot. All to no purpose.
"Then there would come a day when the cruiser was away at Cape
Helles. The destroyer would be engaged on important business
elsewhere and the captive balloon deflated. Perhaps the aeroplane
man was away dropping bombs on Maidos. And there would be a score or
two of our chaps in swimming after a fortnight in the firing line
without so much as a rinse. Then Anafarta Anne would pop out of her
hole and send a great shrapnel shell that would spread a spray of
bullets over a piece of water a hundred yards long by fifty wide.
Our chaps would be lucky if they ducked in time and could swim under
water to the beach. They would come out nearly black in the face, but
not so strangled that they could not find breath to curse the name of
Anafarta Anne.
"One day Anne went a bit too far. There was a mule team coming up
from the beach with water. There were five mules with Indian drivers
and two kerosene tins to each mule. The water was pukka Malta water
sealed in the kerosene tins and was most important water indeed, as
it turned out. You see, it was specially reserved for the sacred
ablutions of the Gurkhas. Well, this Anafarta Anne had no more sense
than to drop a high-explosive shell right on top of the procession.
Up in air went three good mules and every drop of the water was
wasted. I believe there was a mule-man or two missing as well, but I
never counted them myself.
"The boss mule-driver was an excitable Punjabi who loved mules like a
pawnbroker loves diamonds. He came leaping down to the Gurkha camp,
making a chattering noise like the whole Turkish army, and the first
Gurkha he ran into was Diddly. What he said I couldn't tell you, but
he must have rubbed it in about the Gurkhas' holy water, for Diddly
got very serious and very busy. He got all his push together and sent
somebody for the white officer sahib. In his presence they all drew
their big knives and nicked one another's thumbs and swore an oath.
They swore they would put an end to Anafarta Anne. So much I gathered
from Diddly afterwards.
"Naturally there was a good deal of interest among our chaps to see
what would happen. Fellows like Shorty Shaw said it was all nonsense
for a pack of Gurkhas to expect to do what everybody else had failed
in. It seemed a tall order, and some of the boys betted long odds
against the thing ever being done that way. I don't mind telling you
that I had my little bit at five to one on little old Diddly. He gave
me confidence somehow or other; I don't know why.
"Well, every night some of the Gurkhas would be out of the trenches.
As for Diddly, he used to be missing for days on end. And when you
saw him he was no longer laughing and full of jokes. He looked just
about as happy as a Belgian farmer. This went on for a bit, and then
one day Diddly turned up all jokes and smiles again. The odds went
down to six to four that night, and even Shorty Shaw admitted that
little old Diddly must know something.
"Then came the Suvla Bay landing on August 6. The night before all
the Gurkhas went off somewhere, and we were left behind. We had our
own troubles early next morning, and they were bad enough. But not
so bad, but every man was on the keevee (qui vive) for some sound of
Anafarta Anne. When there was not a word from that quarter we all
allowed that Diddly had done it on the Turks; and that night I could
have had my money if I had insisted on it. But, as it turned out, it
wasn't so.
"It was a good time afterwards that I had the true story of what
happened from a man in the ----th, who was in the big night march
from the Maori Outpost. The ----th were hot after Anafarta Anne,
too, and got to the gun emplacement a few minutes after Diddly and
his Gurkhas. He says he found them there in possession of the place,
and of a lot of dead Turks pretty badly cut about with knives. But
Anafarta Anne, drawn by a mule team, was just showing her tail around
a bend of the hills half a mile or so away. He said Diddly was very
sore about it; but I never heard that till much later.
"I saw Diddly himself the following day, but only at a distance. The
Gurkhas were just going out to charge, and that was worth seeing.
Each man of them had his rifle slung over his back, and his big knife
in his teeth, so as to leave his hands free. They had been laughing
like in camp; a very gay push. Then they got the word to go. An
English officer ran first, a fair-headed man a foot taller than his
Gurkha band. He was in front, but not a pace away ran old Diddly and
another Gurkha tough. They had only eyes for one thing: the sahib
officer. So I saw them charge away into the dusk of early morning.
"You know that charge carried them right away to the top of the big
hill, and to a sight of the Dardanelles beyond. But Diddly never
saw the Dardanelles. We moved up behind them in support, and found
Diddly in a little spur of the gully. He and his tough little mate
were lying dead, and underneath them was the dead body of that fine
white officer. The left hands of the two Gurkhas were all cut to
ribbons, where they had grabbed the Turkish bayonets, and there was
awful evidence that they had known how to use the notched knives they
still gripped in their other hands. The rest of that day, and of some
bad days that followed, I felt as if I had lost another dear old
mate. And I wasn't the only one that felt like that about good old
Diddly.
"So, you see, it doesn't do to judge a man by the colour of his skin.
I knew a good Chinaman once. And my Uncle Fred, who used to spar with
Peter Jackson, often used to say he would as soon shake hands with
Peter as with any white man he ever knew. That's why I say to Shorty
Shaw that I'm never going to worry if nobody never calls me nothing
worse than a White Gurkha."
THE MAN WHO WASN'T LET