“Just a bloke,” was the answer. “’E ’ad two legs, two arms, and a
’ead, two eyes——” Then he added in a puzzled fashion: “But, dammit,
did ’e?”
I didn’t wait any longer, but was off again. At Shell Green I heard
that a man—just a feller, rather—had told them that the Russians had
surrounded and captured Hindenburg’s army, and that 500,000 Russians
were to make a landing in Turkey. The Russian officers were here
already. The man who had seen them had just passed five minutes
before. I wasn’t far from Furphy now.
At Chatham’s Post they were buzzing with excitement over the news
that 600,000 French were going to be landed between Kaba Tepe and
Helles.
I asked if they thought it was true, and they assured me that they
had heard it from a man who looked as if he knew. No two descriptions
of him, however, agreed. I was getting closer to Furphy.
I hurried along the trenches as fast as I could, but got no
information till near Lone Pine, where I heard that a big mob of
Turks was expected to surrender that night. It was said they could
not face the prospect of the coming landing of the whole Italian
army. Besides, they were short of food and water, they were being
badly treated by their officers, and their guns had hardly any
ammunition left. A 75 just then knocked a portion of parapet over
me. I remarked that anyone could see the information was right about
Abdul being short of ammunition, but where did the information come
from?
“A fellow that just went by,” they said; “looked like a staff
officer.”
Getting near Steele’s Post, I saw in front of me a man with an
indescribable gait. He seemed to float along instead of walk. It was
Furphy!
I hurried, but seemed to make no gain on him. I began to run. Near
Courtney’s Post I was twenty yards from him, and called to a man to
stop him. My quarry brushed past. I put on a spurt. I was within
about five yards of him when, all of a sudden, he sank into the
earth. As his head disappeared he smiled an oily grimace at me.
And I noticed that there were small horns behind his ears.
Q. E. D.
FOOTNOTES:
[11] Furphy was the name of the contractor which was written large
upon the rubbish carts that he supplied to the Melbourne camps. The
name was transferred to a certain class of news item, very common
since the war, which flourished greatly upon all the beaches.—EDS.
FROM MY TRENCH
A clear, cold night, and in the southern air
Those far-off thunderings so often there;[12]
A Turkish moon is shining fitfully—
My thoughts are ’neath another moon where we
Paced slowly through the tree stems—you and I.
And, looking back at yon farewell, I sigh
And wonder whether then I cared as much
As now I do when far beyond your touch.
Cpl. COMUS, 2nd Bat., A.I.F.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] Cape Helles is about 12 miles south of Anzac, and the distant
rumble of the guns there was constantly in the air at Anzac.—EDS.
ABDUL
We’ve drunk the boys who rushed the hills,
The men who stormed the beach,
The sappers and the A.S.C.,
We’ve had a toast for each;
And the guns and stretcher-bearers—
But, before the bowl is cool,
There’s one chap I’d like to mention,
He’s a fellow called ABDUL.
We haven’t seen him much of late—
Unless it be his hat,
Bobbing down behind a loophole ...
And we mostly blaze at that;
But we hear him wheezing there at nights,
Patrolling through the dark,
With his signals—hoots and chirrups—
Like an early morning lark.
We’ve heard the twigs a-crackling,
As we crouched upon our knees,
And his big, black shape went smashing,
Like a rhino, through the trees.
We’ve seen him flung in, rank on rank,
Across the morning sky;
And we’ve had some pretty shooting,
And—he knows the way to die.
Yes, we’ve seen him dying there in front—
Our own boys died there, too—
With his poor dark eyes a-rolling,
Staring at the hopeless blue;
With his poor maimed arms a-stretching
To the God we both can name ...
And it fairly tore our hearts out;
But it’s in the beastly game.
[Illustration: ABDUL
_Drawn by TED COLLES_]
So though your name be black as ink
For murder and rapine,
Carried out in happy concert
With your Christians from the Rhine,
_We_ will judge you, Mr. Abdul,
By the test by which _we_ can—
That with all your breath, in life, in death,
You’ve played the gentleman.
C. E. W. B.
[Illustration: Decoration]
A CONFESSION OF FAITH
Who would remember me were I to die,
Remember with a pang and yet no pain;
Remember as a friend, and feel good-bye
Said at each memory as it wakes again?
I would not that a single heart should ache—
That some dear heart will ache is my one grief.
Friends, if I have them, I would fondly take
With me that best of gifts, a friend’s belief.
I have believed, and for my faith reaped tares;
Believed again, and, losing, was content;
A heart perchance touched blindly, unawares,
Rewards with friendship faith thus freely spent.
Bury the body—it has served its ends;
Mark not the spot, but “On Gallipoli,”
Let it be said, “he died.” Oh, Hearts of Friends,
If I am worth it, keep my memory.
Capt. JAMES SPRENT,
A.M.C. (attached 3rd Field Amb.).
OUR FRIEND THE ENEMY
(_A Sketch by One who knows him very well_)
In a shady spot beneath the scarlet-blossomed Judas trees, Abdul
sat sipping his coffee, contemplating the busy scene in the small
marketplace. There were happy fishermen hanging their nets to dry on
the lime trees for which the village is famous, after their night’s
toil in the Black Sea. Their catch was a good one, and was even now
being put up for sale in the narrow alleys by the Jews. The village
barber was a hard-worked man that day, for the Turk is vain and also
dignified, and was it not the eve of the Bairam festival! Groups of
gaily coloured villagers among the fruiterers’ baskets were busy
haggling over their bargains. The word “Cauzaum” (my lamb) would
often be flung by an infuriated vendor at stalwart Kurds, workers
in the neighbouring quarry, who fingered his luscious grapes whilst
cavilling at his prices. From a latticed window a veiled woman with
a shrill voice called to a little red-fezzed boy escaping from his
mother.
The _Mouktar_ (mayor), with a jasper-handled stick, was pointing to
the new fountain, its gilded inscription of extracts from the Koran
shining in the sun. Had not the _Mouktar_ sat day after day outside
the door of the great _Dahlié Naziri_ (Minister of Interior) waiting
to obtain a credit for the construction of the fountain whose waters
were from the Beicos bends?
“God is great, and Mahomet is His prophet,” murmured Abdul, as he
slowly counted off another bead from his amber rosary. “I am a happy
man,” he murmured to himself. “Was not my Kismet good; when lifting
the veil of my wife at the marriage ceremony I found that she was
beautiful? She is a good housekeeper; her coffee resembles that of
the creamy Arabian coffee bean. Is not the gilled ram that I bought
for to-morrow’s sacrifice worthy of her cooking?”
Abdul wandered along homewards to his cottage near the shore; for it
was drawing close to the midday call to prayer, and his heart was
full of thanksgiving to Allah.
* * * * *
Abdul is struggling along the main road leading to Stamboul with many
others. He no longer hearkens to the beating of the tom-toms, and to
the patriotic exhortations of a straggling mob following behind with
green banners. “It is Kismet,” he murmurs, as he turns once more for
a last look at the silvery winding thread below—the Bosphorus, on
whose shores lies his home, his all. He has been told there is a war.
He does not question; he knows not the cause. It is fate. He trudges
on.
* * * * *
The fighting has been fierce. He is hard pressed. Sweating with
blood he draws back. His regiment is hard put to it, and, like sheep
without a master, the men are preparing to disperse. Already German
machine-guns from their rear are on to them. The road home means
death. Like a man he faces the rush of his opponents.
* * * * *
He sees strange faces—the pain from his wounds is calmed. Once more
there swim before his eyes his home, his wife, his plantation of
maize so promising.
Allah was great—it was Kismet.
H. E. W.,
A. & N. Z. A. C.
ARMY BISCUITS
Biscuits! Army biscuits! What a volume of blessings and cursings have
been uttered on the subject of biscuits—army biscuits!
What a part they take in our daily routine: the carrying of them, the
eating of them, the cursing at them!
Could we find any substitute for biscuits? Surely not! It is easy
to think of biscuits without an army, but of an army without
biscuits—never.
Biscuits, like the poor, are always with us. Crawling from our
earthly dens at the dim dawning of the day, we receive no portion
of the dainties which once were ours in the long ago times of
effete civilisation; but, instead, we devour with eagerness—biscuit
porridge. We eat our meat, not with thankfulness, but with biscuits.
We lengthen out the taste of jam—with biscuits. We pound them to
powder. We boil them with bully. We stew them in stews. We fry them
as fritters. We curse them with many and bitter cursings, and we
bless them with few blessings.
Biscuits! Army biscuits! Consider the hardness of them. Remember the
cracking of your plate, the breaking of this tooth, the splintering
of that. Call to mind how your finest gold crown weakened, wobbled,
and finally shrivelled under the terrific strain of masticating
Puntley and Chalmer’s No. 5’s.
Think of the aching void where once grew a goodly tooth. Think
of the struggle and strain, the crushing and crunching as two
molars wrestled with some rocky fragment. Think of the momentary
elation during the fleeting seconds when it seemed that the molars
would triumphantly blast and scrunch through every stratum of the
thrice-hardened rock. Call to mind the disappointment, the agony of
mind and body, as the almost victorious grinder missed its footing,
slipped, and snapped hard upon its mate, while the elusive biscuit
rasped and scraped upon bruised and tender gums.
Biscuits! Army biscuits! Have you, reader, ever analysed with
due carefulness the taste of army biscuits? Is it the delicious
succulency of ground granite or the savoury toothsomeness of powdered
marble? Do we perceive a delicate flavouring of ferro-concrete with
just a dash of scraped iron railings? Certainly, army biscuits,
if they have a taste, have one which is peculiarly their own. The
choicest dishes of civilised life, whether they be baked or boiled,
stewed or steamed, fried, frizzled, roasted or toasted, whether they
be composed of meat or fish, fruit or vegetable, have not (thank
Heaven!) any like taste to that of army biscuits. Army biscuits taste
like nothing else on the Gallipoli Peninsula. It is a debatable
question indeed whether or not they have the quality of taste. If
it be granted that they possess this faculty of stimulating the
peripheral extremities of a soldier’s taste-buds, then it must also
be conceded that the stimulation is on the whole of an unpleasant
sort. In short, that the soldier’s feeling, apart from the joy,
the pride, and the satisfaction at his completed achievement in
transferring a whole biscuit from his outer to his inner man without
undue accident or loss of teeth, is one of pain, unease, and
dissatisfaction.
It may seem almost incredible, wholly unbelievable indeed, but armies
have marched and fought, made sieges, retired according to plan,
stormed impregnable cities, toiled in weariness and painfulness, kept
lonely vigils, suffered the extremes of burning heat and of freezing
cold, and have, in the last extremity, bled and died, laurel-crowned
and greatly triumphant, the heroes of legend and of song, all without
the moral or physical, or even spiritual aid of army biscuits.
Agamemnon and the Greeks camped for ten years on the windy plains of
Troy without one box of army biscuits. When Xerxes threw his pontoon
bridge across the Narrows and marched 1,000,000 men into Greece, his
transport included none of Teak Green and Co.’s paving-stones for
the hardening of his soldiers’ hearts and the stiffening of their
backs. Cæsar subdued Britons, Gauls, and Germans. Before the lines of
Dyrrhachium his legions lived many days on boiled grass and such-like
delicacies, but they never exercised their jaws upon a rough, tough
bit of—army biscuit.
Biscuits! Army biscuits! They are old friends now, and, like all old
friends, they will stand much hard wear and tear. Well glazed, they
would make excellent tiles or fine flagstones. After the war they
will have great scarcity value as curios, as souvenirs which one can
pass on from generation to generation, souvenirs which will endure
while the Empire stands. If we cannot get physical strength from army
biscuits, let us at least catch the great spiritual ideal of enduring
hardness, which they are so magnificently fitted to proclaim.
The seasons change. Antwerp falls, Louvain is burned, the tide of
battle surges back and forth; new reputations are made, the old
ones pass away; Warsaw, Lemberg, Servia, the stern battle lines of
Gallipoli, Hindenburg, Mackensen, each name catches our ear for brief
moments of time, and then gives way to another crowding it out; but
army biscuits are abiding facts, always with us, patient, appealing,
enduring. We can move to other theatres, we can change our clothes,
our arms, and our generals, but we must have our biscuits, army
biscuits, else we are no longer an army.
O. E. BURTON,
N.Z.M.C.
[Illustration: “Gawd help the first bloomin’ Turk I see to-night.”]
A PRESENT FROM HOME
[Illustration:
DAVID BARKER
Gallipoli ’15
“Do they think we’re on a bloomin’ pic-nic?”]
THE LOST POEM
I called to see our regimental poet last evening. He had previously
told me that he intended to “write something” for “The Anzac
Book.” Our poet is also Q.M. Sergeant, and when he is not writing
requisitions or taking “baksheesh” out of our rations, and watering
our rum, he writes poetry.
When I called on him he was in his dug-out, surrounded by bully-beef
tins, empty cases, and his ill-gotten shares of our daily issues.
He has many callers, and I am afraid their inquiries rather spoilt
his verses. When I arrived the Q.M.S. was already in a poor humour
for writing poetry. The O.C. had been worrying him about galvanised
iron for cover for some dug-outs; three men had complained about the
scantiness of their rum issue—which somehow always annoys the Q.M.S.;
and he had received no letters in the day’s mail except a bill from
a chap he had borrowed a pound from in Charleville two years ago.
Still, our Q.M.S. is a sticker, and he read me the covering letter
which he was sending to the Editor.
He said he thought it would be as well to get the letter off his mind
first. That would make the writing of the verses necessary, and he
would have to complete the job in order to keep faith.
Before I arrived he had written:
Yes, Mr. Editor, I will try to “write something” for your book.
’Tis a glorious day, bright with sunshine, and the snow has melted
away from the sides of the hills—snow that so many Anzacites saw
fall for the first time. I know a state where no snow falls. And,
to-night, being rum issue night, I would sing to you of black soil
plains and wheat-fields, of warm comfy boundary riders’ huts, and
of holidays where plump maids join you in surf-bathing excursions.
But you see I am a Q.M.S., and at other times when I have tried to
versify I have been disturbed. We have a Quartermaster, but, of
course, I do all the work. Well, let’s rhyme. Boy, bring me the
lyre. The Quartermaster? No, I don’t want the Quartermaster. I want
a harp that I may sing to my muse....
He had just read this much out when the sergeant came in and reported
that the C.O. insisted on the galvanised iron being procured
to-morrow. Then a corporal called and wanted to know could six men in
his section have new boots, and when would the rubber boots be ready
for the coves in the trenches?
“How can a man write when he is interrupted like this?” asked our
poet. “I had a lovely inspiration, too, about surf bathing. It ran
like this——”
But again there was an interruption. The sergeant cook was the
caller, and he was angry and hostile. “How the —— can I cook seventy
beef teas, forty puddings and two hundred milk diets with the
bloomin’ quarter issue of water I get? Love me, when I was cooking
for shearing sheds out on the Barcoo, where it never rained, I could
get as much water as I wanted. If you want them bloomin’ milk diets
you got to get me water—or cook them yourself.”
I don’t know whether our poet had a rod with which he taps the rock
and brings forth water, but he mollified the sergeant cook by getting
water from somewhere. It tasted well in the rum, too. I would have
heard the first line of the poem if one of the sergeants in our
hospital had not called down for three hot-water bottles, a tin of
Bovril, and some brandy for a sick soldier. I wonder how sick you
have to be before you get brandy? Before the sergeant had gone the
orderly officer came in. He bullied the Q.M.S. about not getting some
tents repaired.
“It’s hard work trying to write a poem here,” said the Q.M.S. sadly,
when the orderly officer departed. “For two pins I’d chuck writin’,
but that idea about the surf girls is too good to lose. I was going
to start with this line——”
“Those patients up in Number Three Ward must have more blankets. And
you will have to get another forty beds ready to-night,” yelled a
voice at the door.
“Excuse me a bit,” said the poet. He was gone about an hour. When he
returned there were five men waiting to interview him. The corporal
wished that the Q.M.S. would explain how men were to keep their boots
on without laces, and whether socks were supposed to be everlasting.
The second caller came on a more peaceful mission. He simply wished
to know if the Q.M.S. had heard anything about a consignment of
Christmas billy-cans that good people in Australia are supposed to
be sending us. I don’t know why, but this query made my friend very
angry. “Do you think I’ve got your bloomin’ billy-cans?” he yelled.
Why should a Q.M.S. say a thing like that? And he seemed so indignant
about it, too. The third chap wanted some paper and an envelope to
write to his girl; the fourth wanted an old blanket and some twine to
make a shroud for a man who had died; and the fifth asked whether the
Q.M.S. knew what was the latest war news. When he was told to go to a
place warmer than Port Darwin, he asked quietly if either of us could
tell him if sheep would do well around Adrianople after the war.
It was growing late, but I thought I would wait a bit and hear that
first line about the surf bathers. Two men came in for soap; a doctor
chap called to ask whether there was any fruit to make a fruit salad
for a sick man; a lance-corporal said his boots hurt, and got a
bigger pair; the cook came back and complained that somebody had
pinched six tins of condensed milk; and an officer’s servant inquired
whether his boss could have an old box and a ground-sheet to make a
bath.
Then the Q.M.S. had another rum and took up his pencil again. He
spread out a piece of paper and commenced to write. “I’ll get that
first verse off and read it to you,” he said. He would have done it,
too, but for the sergeant-major. Our sergeant-major is a—well, he is
just a sergeant-major, and he does not write verse.
[Illustration: THE HOSPITAL CAMP]
[Illustration: WATER CARRIERS]
[Illustration: A Y.M.C.A. CANTEEN QUEUE]
ANZAC SKETCHES
_By DAVID BARKER_
“What about those great-coats?” he roared. “Didn’t I tell you to get
them to-day? And they are not here. Weeks ago I ordered you to get
them. I don’t suppose you ever requisitioned for them. What’s that
you’re writing now—requisitions?”
“No, sir,” said the Q.M.S. “It’s a poem.”
Then the ’major saw red. “What the blazes have I got here?” he
yelled. “Men dying from cold because they’ve got no coats, and you
writing poems. What the——”
He fainted away, and I was present when the doctors came out of the
hospital tent to which they carried him. One of the doctors said
the sergeant-major was a splendid soldier, but he had received a
tremendous shock from some unknown cause, and they don’t think he can
recover.
When the Q.M.S. heard that he became very despondent. “I won’t
write that poem now,” he said; “but it would have been a splendid
thing. All about a pretty girl in the surf who met a fellow from the
bush....”
R. A. L.
1st Australian Stat. Hosp.
[Illustration: Decoration]
A LITTLE SPRIG OF WATTLE
My mother’s letter came to-day,
And now my thoughts are far away,
For in between its pages lay
A little sprig of wattle.
“The old home now looks at its best,”
The message ran; “the country’s dressed
In spring’s gay cloak, and I have pressed
A little sprig of wattle.”
I almost see that glimpse of spring:
The very air here seems to ring
With joyful notes of birds that sing
Among the sprigs of wattle.
The old home snug amidst the pines,
The trickling creek that twists and twines
Round tall gum roots and undermines,
Is all ablaze with wattle.
A. H. SCOTT,
4th Battery, A.F.A.
THE TRUE STORY OF SAPPHO’S DEATH
_Deciphered—with much labour—by a bomb-thrower of the New Zealand
Infantry Brigade from a very old tablet dug up in the trenches at
Quinn’s Post_
The Isles of Greece! The Isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho sang,
Both day and night, without surcease—
She didn’t care a hang!
She sang so much by night, by day—
She couldn’t sing at all.
Her manager he docked her pay:
She didn’t fill the hall!
At length, distraught, in fiendish glee,
From cliffs that I have seen,
She flung herself into the sea,
One mile from Mitylene!
’Twas thus that Sappho bold did end
Her gay, voluptuous days;
And monks, who never can unbend,
Press-censored all her lays!
The moral of this tale is that
You guard what Deus sends:
You cannot burn the candle-fat
At both the candle ends!
M. R.
[NOTE.—The epic loses much of its beauty through a hurried
translation from the Ancient Greek during a Turkish attack.]
[Illustration: Decoration]
THE EVERLASTING ARGUMENT
Said Pat Malone to a big, brown Sick,
“They say at fighting you’re mighty slick.”
Said Jock McNab, “Have you noticed the Seeks?
They wear their shirts outside their breeks.”
Said Cornstalk Joe, “Say what you like,
I’ll swear S-i-k-h spells Sike.”
Ses I to ’em all, “What need to bicker?
Pronounce it so’s to rhyme with shikker.”
C. D. MC.,
R.S.D., 11th Aust. A.S.C.
[Illustration: THE UNBURIED]
Now snowflakes thickly falling in the winter breeze
Have cloaked alike the hard, unbending ilex
And the grey, drooping branches of the olive trees,
Transmuting into silver all their lead;
And, in between the winding lines, in No-Man’s Land,
Have softly covered with a glittering shroud
The unburied dead.
And in the silences of night, when winds are fair,
When shot and shard have ceased their wild surprising,
I hear a sound of music in the upper air,
Rising and falling till it slowly dies—
It is the beating of the wings of migrant birds
Wafting the souls of these unburied heroes
Into the skies.
M. R.,
N.Z. Headquarters.
[Illustration: F. R. CROZIER]
[Illustration: THE BOMB EXPERT]
[Illustration: SOMETHING TO REMEMBER US BY
_Drawn by TED COLLES_]
THE STORY OF ANZAC
The following extracts from the dispatches of Sir Ian Hamilton form a
short official summary of the history of Anzac:
[Sidenote: The Landing]
The Australian and New Zealand Army Corps sailed out of Mudros Bay
on the afternoon of April 24, escorted by the 2nd Squadron of the
Fleet, under Rear-Admiral Thursby. The rendezvous was reached just
after half-past one in the morning of the 25th, and there the 1,500
men who had been placed on board H.M. ships before leaving Mudros
were transferred to their boats. This operation was carried out with
remarkable expedition and in absolute silence. Simultaneously the
remaining 2,500 men of the covering force were transferred from their
transports to six destroyers. At 2.30 A.M. H.M. ships, together with
the tows and the destroyers, proceeded to within some four miles
of the coast, H.M.S. _Queen_ (flying Rear-Admiral Thursby’s flag)
directing on a point about a mile north of Kaba Tepe. At 3.30 A.M.
orders to go ahead and land were given to the tows, and at 4.10 A.M.
the destroyers were ordered to follow.