PART IV

E-text prepared by Al Haines

Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this

file which includes the original illustrations.

See 17206-h.htm or 17206-h.zip:

(https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/2/0/17206/17206-h/17206-h.htm)

or

(https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/2/0/17206/17206-h.zip)

"OVER THERE" WITH THE AUSTRALIANS

by

CAPTAIN R. HUGH KNYVETT

ANZAC Scout

Intelligence Officer, Fifteenth Australian Infantry

[Frontispiece: Captain R. Hugh Knyvett.]

New York

Charles Scribner's Sons

1918

Copyright, 1918, by

Charles Scribner's Sons

Published April, 1918

BILL-JIM'S CHRISTMAS

(Bill-Jim is Australia's name for her soldier)

Here where I sit, mucked-up with Flanders mud,

Wrapped-round with clothes to keep the Winter out,

Ate-up wi' pests a bloke don't care to name

To ears polite,

I'm glad I'm here all right;

A man must fight for freedom and his blood

Against this German rout

An' do his bit,

An' not go growlin' while he's doin' it:

The cove as can't stand cowardice or shame

Must play the game.

Here's Christmas, though, with cold sleet swirlin' down . . .

God! gimme Christmas day in Sydney town!

I long to see the flowers in Martin Place,

To meet the girl I write to face to face,

To hold her close and teach

What in this Hell I'm learning--that a man

Is only half a man without his girl,

That sure as grass is green and God's above

A chap's real happiness,

If he's no churl,

Is home and folks and girl,

And all the comforts that come in with love!

There is a thrill in war, as all must own,

The tramplin' onward rush,

The shriek o' shrapnel and the followin' hush,

The bosker crunch o' bayonet on bone,

The warmth of the dim dug-out at the end,

The talkin' over things, as friend to friend,

And through it all the blessed certainty

As this war's working out for you an' me

As we would have it work.

Fritz maybe, and the Turk

Feel that way, too,

The same as me an' you,

And dream o' victory at last, although

The silly cows don't know,

Because they ain't been born and bred clean-free,

Like you and me.

But this is Christmas, and I'm feeling blue,

An' lonely, too.

I want to see one little girl's sly pout

(There's lots of other coves as feels like this)

That holds you off and still invites a kiss.

I want to get out from this smash and wreck

Just for to-day,

And feel a pair of arms slip round me neck

In that one girl's own way.

I want to hear the splendid roar and shout

O' breakers comin' in on Bondi Beach,

While she, with her old scrappy costume on,

Walks by my side, an' looks into my face,

An' makes creation one big pleasure-place

Where golden sand basks in that golden weather--

Yes! her an' me together!

I do me bit,

An' make no fuss of it;

But for to-day I somehow want to be

At home, just her an' me.

(From the Sydney "Sunday Times")

CONTENTS

An Introduction Mainly About Scouts

PART I

"THE CALL TO ARMS"

CHAPTER

I. The Call Reaches Some Far-Out Australians

II. An All-British Ship

III. Human Snowballs

IV. Training-Camp Life

V. Concentrated for Embarkation

VI. Many Weeks at Sea

PART II

EGYPT

VII. The Land of Sand and Sweat

VIII. Heliopolis

IX. The Desert

X. Picketing in Cairo

XI. "Nipper"

PART III

GALLIPOLI

XII. The Adventure of Youth

XIII. The Landing That Could Not Succeed--But Did

XIV. Holding On and Nibbling

XV. The Evacuation

XVI. "Ships That Pass . . ."

PART IV

THE WESTERN FRONT

XVII. Ferry Post and the Suez Canal Defenses

XVIII. First Days in France

XIX. The Battle of Fleurbaix

XX. Days and Nights of Strafe

XXI. The Village of Sleep

XXII. The Somme

XXIII. The Army's Pair of Eyes

XXIV. Nights in No Man's Land

XXV. Spy-Hunting

XXVI. Bapaume and "a Blighty"

PART V

HOSPITAL LIFE

XXVII. In France

XXVIII. In London

XXIX. The Hospital-Ship

XXX. In Australia

XXXI. Using an Irishman's Nerve

PART VI

MEDITATIONS IN THE TRENCHES

XXXII. The Right Infantry Weapons

XXXIII. The Forcing-House of Bestiality

XXXIV. The Psychology of Fear

XXXV. The Splendor of the Present Opportunity

XXXVI. Not a Fight for "Race" but for "Right"

XXXVII. "Keeping Faith with the Dead"

Poem, "But a Short Time to Live"

ILLUSTRATIONS

R. Hugh Knyvett . . . . . . _Frontispiece_

From inland towns . . . men without the means of

paying their transportation . . . started out to

walk the three or four hundred miles . . . to the

nearest camp

"On Show" Before Leaving Home

Anzac Cove, Gallipoli

An Australian Camel Corps

"Us--Going In"

My Own Comrades Waiting for Buses

Ammunition Going Through a Somme City

AN INTRODUCTION MAINLY ABOUT SCOUTS

I am a scout; nature, inclination, and fate put me into that branch of

army service. In trying to tell Australia's story I have of necessity

enlarged on the work of the scouts, not because theirs is more

important than other branches of the service, nor they braver than

their comrades of other units. Nor do I want it to be thought that we

undergo greater danger than machine-gunners, grenadiers, light

trench-mortar men, or other specialists. But, frankly, I don't know

much about any other man's job but my own, and less than I ought to

about that. To introduce you to the spirit, action, and ideals of the

Australian army I have to intrude my own personality, and if in the

following pages "what I did" comes out rather strongly, please remember

I am but "one of the boys," and have done not nearly as good work as

ten thousand more.

I rejoice though that I was a scout, and would not exchange my

experiences with any, not even with an adventurer from the pages of B.

O. P. [1] Romance bathes the very name, the finger-tips tingle as they

write it, and there was not infrequently enough interesting work to

make one even forget to be afraid. Very happy were those days when I

lived just across the road from Fritz, for we held dominion over No

Man's Land, and I was given complete freedom in planning and executing

my tiny stunts. The general said: "It is not much use training

specialists if you interfere with them," so as long as we did our job

we were given a free hand.

The deepest lines are graven on my memory from those days, not by the

thrilling experiences--"th' hairbreadth 'scapes"--but by the fellowship

of the men I knew. An American general said to me recently that scouts

were born, not made. It may be so, but it is surprising what opposite

types of men became our best scouts. There were two without equal:

one, city-bred, a college graduate; the other a "bushie," writing his

name with difficulty.

Ray Wilson was a nervous, highly strung sort of fellow, almost a girl

in his sensitiveness. In fact, at the first there were several who

called him Rachel, but they soon dropped it, for he was a lovable chap,

and disarmed his enemies with his good nature. He had taken his arts

course, but was studying music when he enlisted, and he must have been

the true artist, for though the boys were prejudiced against the

mandolin as being a _sissy_ instrument, when he played they would sit

around in silence for hours. What makes real friendship between men?

You may know and like and respect a fellow for years, and that is as

far as it goes, when, suddenly, one day something happens--a curtain is

pulled aside and you go "ben" [2] with him for a second--afterward you

are "friends," before you were merely friendly acquaintances.

Ray and I became friends in this wise. We were out together scouting

preparatory to a raid, and were seeking a supposed new "listening post"

of the enemy. There had been a very heavy bombardment of the German

trenches all day, and it was only held up for three-quarters of an hour

to let us do our job. The new-stale earth turned up by the shells

extended fifty yards in No Man's Land. (Only earth that has been blown

on by the wind is fresh "over there." Don't, if you have a weak

stomach, ever turn up any earth; though there may not be rotting flesh,

other gases are imprisoned in the soil.) This night the wind was

strong, and the smell of warm blood mingled with the phosphorous odor

of high explosive, and there was that other sweet-sticky-sickly smell

that is the strongest scent of a recent battle-field. It was a vile,

unwholesome job, and we were glad that our time was limited to

three-quarters of an hour, when our artillery would re-open fire. I

got a fearful start on looking at my companion's face in the light of a

white star-shell; it might have belonged to one of the corpses lying

near, with the lips drawn back, the eyes fixed, and the complexion

ghastly. He replied to my signal that he was all right, but a nasty

suspicion crept into my mind--his teeth had chattered so much as to

make him unable to answer a question of mine just before we left the

trench, but one took no notice of a thing like that, for stage fright

was common enough to all of us before a job actually started. But

"could he be depended on?" was the fear that was now haunting me.

Presently some Germans came out of their trench. We counted eight of

them as they crawled down inside their broken wire. We cautiously

followed them, expecting that they were going out to the suspected

"listening post," but they went about fifty yards, and then lay down

just in front of their own parapet. After about twenty minutes they

returned the way they came, and I have no doubt reported that they had

been over to our wire and there were no Australian patrols out.

This had taken up most of our time, and I showed Wilson that we had

only ten minutes left, and that we had better get back so as not to cut

it too fine. I was rather surprised when he objected, spelling out

Morse on my hand that we had come out to find the "listening post," and

we had not searched up to the right. The Germans were evidently

getting suspicious of the silence, and to our consternation suddenly

put down a heavy barrage in No Man's Land, not more than thirty yards

behind us. There was no getting through it, and we grabbed each

other's hand, and only the pressure was needed to signal the one word

"trapped." When the shelling commenced we had instinctively made for a

drain about four feet deep that ran across No Man's Land, and "sat up"

in about six inches of water. Had we remained on top the light from

the shells would have revealed us only too plainly, being behind us. I

was afraid to look at my wristwatch, and when I did pluck up sufficient

courage to do so, I might have saved myself the trouble, as the opening

shell from our batteries at the same moment proclaimed that the time

was up. As we huddled down, sitting in the icy water, we realized that

the objective of our own guns was less than ten yards from us, and we

could only hope and pray that no more wire-cutting was going to be done

that night. Once, when we were covered with the returning debris, we

instinctively threw our arms round each other. When we shook ourselves

free, what was my amazement to find my companion shaking

with--laughter. There was now no need for silence, a shout could

hardly be heard a few yards away. He called to me: "Did you ever do

the Blondin act before, because we are walking a razor-edge right now.

We're between the devil and the 'deep sea,' anyway, and I think myself

the 'deep sea' will get us." As I looked at him something happened,

and I felt light-hearted as though miles from danger--all fear of death

was taken away. What did it matter if we were killed?--it was a

strange sense of security in a rather tight place.

After a short while our bombardment ceased. We learned afterward that

word was sent back to the artillery that we were still out. As the

boche fire also stopped soon afterward, we were able to scurry back and

surprise our friends with our safe appearance.

After this experience Ray Wilson and I were closer than brothers--than

twin brothers. It was only a common danger shared, such an ordinary

thing in trench life, but there was something that was not on the

surface, and though I was his officer, our friendship knew no barrier.

I went mad for a while when his body was found--mutilated--after he had

been missing three days. Don't talk of "not hating" to a man whose

friend has been foully murdered! What if he had been yours?

A very different man was Dan Macarthy, a typical outbacker. All the

schooling he ever got was from an itinerant teacher who would stay for

a week at the house, correct and set tasks, returning three months

later for another week. This system was adopted by the government for

the sparsely settled districts not able to support a teacher, as a

means of assisting the parents in teaching their children themselves.

But Dan's parents could neither read nor write, and what healthy

youngster, with "all out-of-doors" around him, would study by himself.

Dan read with difficulty and wrote with greater, but I have met few

better-educated men. His eyesight was marvellous, and I don't think

that he ever forgot an incident, however slight. After a route march

our scouts have to write down everything they saw, not omitting the

very smallest detail. For example, if we pass through a village they

have to give an estimate by examining the stores, how many troops it

could support, and so on. No other list was ever as large as Dan's.

He saw and remembered everything. He had received his training as a

child looking for horses in a paddock so large that if you did not know

where to look you might search for a week. Out there in the country of

the black-tracker powers of observation are abnormally developed--lives

depend on it, as when in a drought the watercourses dry up, and only

the signs written on the ground indicate to him who can read them where

the life-saving fluid may be found. Dan was a wonderful scout, a true

and loyal friend, but he had absolutely no "sense of ownership." He

thought that whatever another man possessed he had a right to; but, on

the other hand, any one else had an equal right to appropriate anything

of his (Dan's). He never put forward any theory about it, but would

just help himself to anything he wanted, not troubling to hide it, and

he never made any fuss if some one picked up something of his that was

not in use. I never saw such a practical example of communism. At

first, there were a number of rows about it, but after a while if any

of the boys missed anything they would go and hunt through Dan's kit

for it. The only time he made a fuss at losing anything was when one

of his mates for a lark took his rosary. He soon discovered, by shrewd

questioning, who it was, and there was a fight that landed them both in

the guard-tent. The boys forbore to tease him about his inconsistency

when he said: "It was mother's. She brought it from Ireland." Dan was

still scouting when I was sent out well-punctured, and I doubt if there

are any who have accounted for more of the Potsdam swine single-handed.

His score was known to be over a hundred when I left. If I can get

back again, may I have Dan in my squad! These two are but types of the

boys I lived with so long, and got to love so well. Few of my early

comrades are left on the earth; but we are not separated even from

those who have "gone west," and the war has given to me, in time and

eternity, many real friends.

The following pages are not a history of the Australians. I have no

means of collecting and checking data, but they are an attempt to show

the true nature of the Australian soldier, and sent out with the hope

that they will remind some, in this great American democracy, of the

contribution made by the freemen who live across the ocean of peace

from you to "make the world safe for democracy."

I also have the hope that the stories of personal experience will make

real to you some of the men whose bodies have been for three years part

of that human rampart that has kept your homes from desolation, and

your daughters from violation, and that you will speed in sending them

succor as though the barrier had broken and the bestial Hun were even

now, with lust dominant, smashing at your own door.

[1] _Boys Own Paper_.

[2] "Ben" was the living-room of a Scotch cottage where only intimate

friends were admitted. Ian Maclaren says of a very good man: "He was

far ben wi God."

PART I

"THE CALL TO ARMS"

CHAPTER I

THE CALL REACHES SOME FAR-OUT AUSTRALIANS

Just where the white man's continent pushes the tip of its horn among

the eastern lands there is a black man's land half as large as Mexico

that is administered by the government of Australia. New Guinea has

all the romance and lure of unexplored regions. It is a country of

nature's wonders, a treasure-chest with the lid yet to be raised by

some intrepid discoverer. There are tree-climbing fish, and pygmy men,

mountains higher and rivers greater than any yet discovered. To the

north of Australia's slice of this wonderland the Kaiser was squeezing

a hunk of the same island in his mailed fist.

The contrast between the administration of these two portions of the

same land forms the best answer to the question: "What shall be done

with Germany's colonies?"

In German New Guinea there have always been more soldiers than

civilians, cannibalism is rife, and life and property are insecure

outside the immediate limits of the barracks. In British New Guinea or

Papua there has never been a single soldier and cannibalism is

abolished. A white woman, Beatrice Grimshaw, travelled through the

greater part of it unprotected and unmolested.

The following story told of Sir William Macgregor, the first

administrator, shows the way of Britishers in governing native races.

He one day marched into a village where five hundred warriors were

assembled for a head-hunting expedition. Sir William, then Doctor

Macgregor, had with him two white men and twelve native police. He

strode into the centre of these blood-thirsting savages, grasped the

chief by the scruff of the neck, kicked him around the circle of his

warriors, demanded an immediate apology and the payment of a fine for

the transgression of the Great White Mother's orders for peace--the

bluff worked, as it always does.

Australia has now added the late German colony Hermanlohe, or German

New Guinea, to the southern portion, making an Australian crown colony

of about two hundred and fifty thousand square miles. This was taken

by a force of Australian troops conveyed in Australian ships. I was

not fortunate enough to be a member of the expedition, but the

ultimatum issued to the German commandant resulted in the Australian

flag flying over the governor's residence at Rabaul within a few hours

of the appearance of the Australian ships.

It was soon evident to the Australians that this was intended to be a

German naval station and military post of great importance. Enough

munition, and accommodation for troops were there to show that it was

to be the jumping-off place for an attack on Australia. Such armament

could never have been meant merely to impel _Kultur_ on the poor,

harmless blacks with their blowpipes and bows and arrows.

Every Australian is determined that these of nature's children shall

not come again within reach of German brutality, but that they shall

know fair play and good government such as the British race everywhere

gives to the "nigger," having a sense of responsibility toward him that

the men of this breed cannot escape. It would almost seem that the

Almighty has laid the black man's burden on the shoulders of the

Briton, as he was the first to abolish slavery, and no other people

govern colored peoples for the sole benefit of the governed.

In every British colony other nations can trade on equal terms, and

millions of pounds sterling are squeezed from the British public every

year to provide for the well-being of native peoples, worshipping

strange deities and jabbering a gibberish that would sound to an

American like a gramophone-shop gone crazy! While other nations make

their colonies _pay_ for the protection they give them, the British

people pay very heavily for the privilege (?) of sheltering and

civilizing these far-flung, strange peoples. No true friend of the

black man can consider the possibility of handing him back to the

cruelty of Teutonic "forced Kultur."

The most heartless of Japanese gardeners could never twist and torture

a plant into freak beauty more surely than the German system of

government would compress the governed into a sham civilization.

Australia would fight again sooner than that a German establishment

should offend our sense of justice and menace our peace near our

northern shores.

The western half of New Guinea (and the least known) belongs to

Holland, and it was in the waters of this coast that the Australians

whose story I am telling were living and working when the tocsin of war

sounded. These sons of empire were registered under a Dutch name with

their charter to work there from the Dutch Government, yet when they

heard that men were needed for the Australian army, they dropped

everything and hastened south to enlist. The long-obeyed calls of

large profits and novel experiences, the lure of an adventurous life,

were drowned by the bugle notes of the Australian "call to arms."

These were young men who had left the shores of their native country,

venturing farther out a-sea, ever seeking pearls of great price. They

had once been engaged in pearl-fishing from the northernmost point of

Australia--Thursday Island--that eastern and cosmopolitan village

squatting on the soil of a continent sacred to the white races.

When the handful of white people holding this newest continent first

flaunted their banner of "No Trespassers" in the face of the

multicolored millions of Asia, they declared their willingness to sweat

and toil even under tropic skies, and develop their country without the

aid of the cheap labor of the rice-eating, mat-sleeping, fast-breeding

spawn of the man-burdened East. But this policy came well-nigh to

being the death-blow to one little industry of the north, so far from

the ken of the legislators in Sydney and Melbourne as to have almost

escaped their recognizance.

The largest pearling-ground in the world is just to the north of this

lovely Southland. It would seem as though the aesthetic oyster that

lines its home with the tinting of heaven and has caught the "tears of

angels," petrifying them as permanent souvenirs, loves to make its home

as near to this earthly paradise as the ocean will permit.

When the law decreed that only white labor must be employed on the

fleets a number of the pearlers went north and became Dutch citizens,

for from ports in the Dutch Indies they could work Australian waters up

to the three-mile limit. But as soon as it was known that Australia

needed _men_, that _we_ were at war, then politics and profits could go

hang: at heart they were all Australians and would not be behind any in

offering their lives. It took but a few days to pay off the crews,

send the Jap divers where they belonged, beach the schooners, and take

the fastest steamer back HOME--then enlist, and away, with front seats

for the biggest show on earth.

CHAPTER II

AN ALL-BRITISH SHIP

We flew the Dutch flag, we were registered in a Dutch port, but every

timber in that British-built ship creaked out a protest, and there

paced the quarter-deck five registered Dutchmen who could not croak

"Gott-verdammter!" if their lives depended on it, and who guzzled "rice

taffle" in a very un-Dutch manner. Generally they forgot that they had

sold their birthright. Ever their eyes turned southward, which was

homeward, and only the mention of the Labor party brought to their

minds the reason for leaving their native land. Each visit to port

rubbed in the fact that they were now Dutchmen, as there were always

blue papers to be signed and fresh taxes to be paid.

There was George Hym, who was a member of every learned society in

England. The only letter of the alphabet he did not have after his

name was "I," and that was because he did not happen to have been born

in Indiana. Had that accident happened to him, even the Indiana

Society would have given him a place at the speaker's table. He was

the skipper of our fleet, had an extra master's certificate entitling

him to command even the _Mauretania_. Many yarns were invented to

explain his being with us. It was as if "John D." should be found

peddling hair-oil.

Some said he had murdered his grandmother-in-law and dare not pass the

time of day with Mr. Murphy in blue. Others claimed that the crime was

far greater--_the murder of a stately ship_--and that the marine

underwriters would have paid handsomely for the knowledge of his

whereabouts. At any rate, he never left the ship while in port, and he

seemed to have no relatives.

There were times when the black cloud was upon him and our voices were

hushed to whispers lest the vibration should cause it to break in fury

on our own heads--then he would flog the crew with a wire hawser, and

his language would cause the paint to blister on the deck. At other

times the memory of his "mother" would steal over his spirit and in a

sweet tenor he would croon the old-time hymns and the old ship would

creak its loving accompaniment, and the unopened shell-fish would waft

the incense heavenward.

We believed most of his ill temper was due to the foreign flag hanging

at our stern that the Sydney-built ship was ever trying to hide beneath

a wave. He had sailed every sea, with no other flag above him than the

Union Jack, and felt maybe that even his misdeeds deserved not the

covering of less bright colors. It was like a ringmaster fallen on

hard times having to act the part of "clown." But needs must where

necessity drives, and as his own country would have none of him, he was

tolerant of the flag that hid him from the "sleuths" of British law.

BUT WAR CAME, and the chance to redeem himself. What washes so clean

as blood--and many a stained escutcheon has in these times been

cleansed and renewed--bathed in the hot blood poured out freely by the

"sons of the line." Whether the fleet was laid up or not, George was

going! He might be over age, but no one could say what age he really

was, and he was tougher than most men half his age. He left Queensland

for Egypt with the Remount Unit in 1915, and is to-day in Jerusalem,

with the British forces. Maybe he is treading the Via Dolorosa gazing

at a place called Calvary, hoping that _One_ will remember that he,

too, had offered his life a ransom for past sins, which were many.

"For ours shall be Jerusalem, the golden city blest,

The happy home of which we've sung, in every land

and every tongue,

When there the pure white cross is hung,

Great spirits shall have rest." [1]

Prince Dressup was the dandy of the ship, a "swell guy" even at sea.

His singlets were open-work, his moleskins were tailor-made, and his

toe-nails were pedicured. The others wore only singlets and "pants,"

but had the regulation costume been as in the Garden of Eden, his

fig-leaf would have been the greenest and freshest there!

At one time he had been the best-dressed man in Sydney, giving the glad

and glassy optic to every flapper whose clocked silk stockings caught

his fancy. Some girl must have jilted him, and this was his revenge on

the fluffy things, the choice of a life where none of them could feast

their eyes on his immaculate masculine eligibility. Or, maybe, he was

really in love, and some true woman had told him only to return to her

when he had proved himself a man. If so, he had chosen the best

forcing-school for real manhood that existed prior to the war. And

there was real stuff in Prince Dressup; for, although there was

distinction and style even in the way he opened shell-fish, he took his

share of the dirty work, and when the time came he would not let

another man take his place in the ranks of the fighters for Australia's

freedom. He said, when we knew of the war, "that it would be rather

good fun," and when he died on Gallipoli, the bullet that passed

through his lungs had first of all come through the body of a comrade

on his back.

Chum Shrimp's size was the joke of the ship--he must have weighed three

hundred pounds. He could only pass through a door sideways, and the

"Binghis" (natives of New Guinea), when they saw him, blamed him for a

recent tidal wave, saying that he had fallen overboard. He was the

most active man I have ever known, and on rough days would board the

schooner by catching the dinghee boom with one hand as it dipped toward

the launch, and swing himself hand over hand inboard. I never expected

the schooner to complete the opposite roll until Chum was "playing

plum" in the centre.

Chum's parentage was romantic--his father a government official and his

mother an island princess--he himself being one of the whitest men I

have ever been privileged to call friend. We never thought he would

get into the army, for though he was as strong as any two of us, he

would require the cloth of three men's suits for his uniform, and he

would always have to be the blank file in a column of fours, as four of

his size would spread across the street, and to "cover off" the four

behind them would just march in the rear of their spinal columns,

having a driveway between each of them.

He was determined to enlist, and a wise government solved the problem

by making him quartermaster, thus insuring in the only way possible

that Chum would have a sufficient supply of "grub." This job was also

right in his hands, because he possessed considerable business

instinct; and you remember Lord Kitchener said of the quartermaster

that he was the only man in the army whose salary he did not know!

The fifth Britisher of our crew will growl himself into your favor,

being a well-bred British bulldog, looking down with pity on the tykes

of mixed blood. Even before the war he showed his anti-German feelings

by his treatment of a pet pig that we had on the schooner.

As I look back on it, our evening sport was a prophecy of what is

to-day happening on the western front. "Torres" would stand growling

and snapping at the porker, which would squeal and try to get away, but

his hoofs could not grip the slippery deck, and though his feet were

going so fast as to be blurred he would not be making an inch of

progress. The Germans have been squealing and wanting to get away from

the British bulldog but they do not know how to retire without collapse.

This pig had a habit of curling up among the anchor chains, and while

we only used one anchor he escaped injury, but one rough day when both

anchors were dropped simultaneously, piggy shot into the air with a

broken back. The Germans have withstood the Allies so far, but now

that America is with us, the back of the German resistance will soon be

broken.

Of course Torres enlisted! In the beginning he was with Chum, and

there was danger of his growing fat of body and soft of soul in the

quartermaster's store, but he was rescued in time, and after months of

exciting researches into canine history among the bones of the tombs of

Egypt he earned renown at Armentières, as his body was found in No

Man's Land with his head in the cold hand of a comrade to whom he had

attached himself, and I believe his spirit has joined the deathless

army of the unburied dead that watch over our patrols and inspire our

sentries with the realization that on an Australian front No Man's Land

has shrunk and our possession reaches right up to the enemy barbed wire.

[1] Mrs. A. H. Spicer, Chicago.

CHAPTER III

HUMAN SNOWBALLS

'Way out back in the Never Never Land of Australia there lives a

patriotic breed of humans who know little of the comforts of civilized

life, whose homes are bare, where coin is rarely seen, but who have as

red blood and as clean minds as any race on earth.

The little town of Muttaburra, for instance, has a population of two

hundred, one-half of whom are eligible for military service.

They live in galvanized-iron humpies with dirt floors,

newspaper-covered walls, sacking stretched across poles for beds,

kerosene-boxes for chairs, and a table made from saplings. The water

for household uses is delivered to the door by modern Dianas driving a

team of goats at twenty-five cents per kerosene-tin, which is not so

dear when you know that it has to be brought from a "billabong" [1] ten

miles away.

Most of the men in such towns work as "rouseabouts" (handy men) on the

surrounding sheep and cattle stations. At shearing-time the "gaffers"

(grandfathers) and young boys get employment as "pickers-up" and

"rollers." Every shearer keeps three men at high speed attending to

him. One picks up the fleece in such a manner as to spread it out on

the table in one throw; another one pulls off the ends and rolls it so

that the wool-classer can see at a glance the length of the wool and

weight of the fleece; another, called the "sweeper," gathers into a

basket the trimmings and odd pieces. These casual laborers and

rouseabouts are paid ten dollars a week, while the shearer works on

piece work, receiving six dollars for each hundred sheep shorn, and it

is a slow man who does not average one hundred and fifty per day. All

the shearing is done by machine, and in Western Queensland good

shearers are in constant employment for ten months of the year. The

shearers have a separate union from the rouseabouts, and there is a

good deal of ill feeling between the two classes. When the shearers

want a spell I have known them declare by a majority vote that the

sheep were "wet," though there had not been any rain for months! There

is a law that says that shearers must not be asked to shear "wet"

sheep, as it is supposed to give them a peculiar disease. The

rouseabouts do not mind these "slow-down" strikes, as they get paid

anyway, but the shearers are very bitter when these have a dispute with

the boss and strike, for it cuts down their earnings, probably just

when they wanted to finish the shed so as to get a "stand" at the

commencement of shearing near by.

When the war broke out the problem of the government was how to collect

the volunteers from these outback towns for active service. It would

cost from fifty to one hundred dollars per head in railway fare to

bring them into camp.

The outbacker, however, solved the problem without waiting for the

government to make up its mind. They just made up their swags and

"humped the bluey" [2] for the coast. That is how the remarkable

phenomenon of the human snowball marches commenced.

Simultaneously from inland towns in different parts of Australia men

without the means of paying their transportation to Sydney or Melbourne

simply started out to walk the three or four hundred miles from their

homes to the nearest camp. In the beginning there would just be half a

dozen or so, but as they reached the next township they would tell

where they were bound, and more would join. Passing by boundary

riders' and prospectors' huts, they would pick up here and there

another red-blood who could not resist the chance of being in a real

ding-dong fight. Many were grizzled and gray, but as hard as nails,

and no one could _prove_ that they were over the age for enlistment,

for they themselves did not know how old they were!

[Illustration: From inland towns . . . men without the means of paying

their transportation . . . started out to walk the three or four

hundred miles . . . to the nearest camp.]

"Said the squatter, 'Mike, you're crazy, they have

soldier-men a-plenty!

You're as grizzled as a badger, and you're sixty year or so!'

'But I haven't missed a scrap,' says I, 'since I was

one-and-twenty,

And shall I miss the biggest? You can bet your

whiskers--No!!'" [3]

Presently the telegraph-wires got busy, and the defense department in

Melbourne rubbed its eyes and sat up. As usual, the country was bigger

than its rulers, and more men were coming in than could be coped with.

The whole country was a catchment of patriotism--a huge

river-basin--and these marching bands from the far-out country were the

tributaries which fed the huge river of men which flowed from the State

capitals to the concentration camps in Sydney and Melbourne. The

leading newspapers soon were full of the story of these men from the

bush who could not wait for the government to gather them in, and none

should deny them the right to fight for their liberties.

Strange men these, as they tramped into a bush township, feet tied up

in sacking, old felt hats on their heads, moleskins and shirt, "bluey,"

or blue blanket, and "billy," or quart canister, for boiling tea slung

over their backs, all white from the dust of the road.

Old Tom Coghlan was there. He had lived in a boundary hut for twenty

years, only seeing another human being once a month, when his rations

were brought from the head station. His conversation for days, now

that he was with companions, would be limited to two distinctive

grunts, one meaning "yes," the other "no." But on the station he had

been known to harangue for hours a jam-tin on a post, declaiming on the

iniquities of a capitalist government. Those who heard him as they hid

behind a gum-tree declared his language then was that of a college man.

Probably he was the scion of some noble house--there are many of them

out there in the land where no one cares about your past.

Here, too, was young Bill Squires, who had reached the age of

twenty-one without having seen a parson, and asked a bush missionary

who inquired if he knew Jesus Christ: "What kind of horse does he ride?"

Not much of an army, this band. They would not have impressed a

drill-sergeant. To many even in those towns they were just a number of

sundowners. [4] They would act the part, arriving as the sun was

setting and, throwing their swags on the veranda of the hotel, lining

up to the bar, eyeing the loungers there to see who would stand treat.

Only the eye of God Almighty could see that beneath the dust and rags

there were hearts beating with love for country, and spirits exulting

in the opportunity offering in the undertaking of a man-size job.

Perhaps a Kitchener would have seen that the slouch was but habit and

the nonchalance merely a cloak for enthusiasm, but even he would hardly

have guessed that these were the men who would win on Gallipoli the

praise of the greatest British generals, who called them "the greatest

fighters in the world." Soon the news of these bands "on the wallaby"

[4] at the call of country caught the imagination of the whole nation.

Outback was terra incognita to the city-bred Australian, but that these

men who were coming to offer their lives should walk into the city

barefoot could not be thought of. The government was soon convinced

that the weeks, and, in some cases, months that would be occupied in

this long tramp need not be wasted. Military training could be given

on the way, and they might arrive in camp finished soldiers.

So the snowball marches were at last recognized and controlled by the

government. Whenever as many as fifty had been gathered together,

instructors, boots, and uniforms were sent along, and the march partook

of a military character. No longer were they sundowners; they

_marched_ into town at the end of the day, four abreast, in proper

column of route, with a sergeant swinging his cane at the head,

sometimes keeping step to the tune of mouth-organs. The uniforms were

merely of blue dungaree with white calico hats, but they were

serviceable, and all being dressed alike made them look somewhat

soldierly. The sergeants always had an eye open for more recruits, and

every town and station they passed through became a rallying-point for

aspirants to the army.

Their coming was now heralded--local shire councillors gathered to

greet them, streets were beflagged, dinners were given--always, at

every opportunity, appeals were made for more recruits. Sometimes, to

the embarrassment of many a bushman whose meetings with women had been

few and far between, there were many girls who in their enthusiasm

farewelled them with kisses, though one can hardly imagine even a shy

bushman failing to appreciate these unaccustomed sweets!

The snowballs grew rapidly. Farmers let down their fences, and they

marched triumphantly through growing crops, each farmer vying with

another to do honor to these men coming from the ends of the earth to

deliver democracy.

"They're fools, you say? Maybe you're right.

They'll have no peace unless they fight.

They've ceased to think; they only know

They've got to go--yes, got to go!" [6]

By the time they reached the camp many of these groups had grown to

regiments, and under names such as "Coo-ees," "Kangaroos," "Wallaroos,"

they marched through the streets of Sydney between cheering throngs to

the tune of brass bands. Such was the intention, at any rate, but

before they reached the railway station their military formation was

broken up, and in their enthusiasm the people of the capital

practically mobbed these "outbackers," loading them, not merely with

cigarettes and candy, but before night came there was many a bushman

who had never seen a city before who carried a load of liquor that made

even his well-seasoned head spin. The "chain lightning" of the bush

was outclassed with the cinematograph whiskey of the city, that made

its moving throngs and streets pass before his eyes like a

kaleidoscope. A day or two in camp soon restored their balance. The

training en route bore fruit; their commandant was so impressed that

some of these regiments were equipped and officered, in a few weeks

embarking for overseas.

Men from these regiments can be picked out to-day in London. If you

see an Australian in a slouch-hat galloping his horse down Rotten Row,

expecting "Algy" and "Gertrude" to give him a clear course, be sure

it's a "Coo-ee!"

When some Australian sprawls in the Trocadero, inviting himself to

table with the Earl of So-and-so, asking him to pass the butter, it's

likely to be one of the "Kangaroos."

These Australians have had no master in their lives but the pitiless

drought; they respect not Kings, but they love a real man who knows not

fear and is kind to a horse. Masefield said of them in "Gallipoli":

"They were in the pink of condition and gave a damn for no one!"

There is a certain hospital in London provided by a certain grand lady

for convalescent Australians. She is very kind, but rather inclined to

treat the patients as "exhibits" and show them off to her "tony"

friends. The Australians bore this meekly for some time, but one day

it was announced that some high personages would be visitors. On their

arrival they found every bed was placarded, such as this: "No. 1

Bed--This is a Military Cross Hero. He bumped into a trench of

Fritzes. If he hides his face under the bedclothes, it is because he

is sensitive of his looks." "No. 2 Bed--Here lies a D.S.O. (Dirty

Stop-Out)."

"'He stopped out of the trenches as long as he could.

And now the old blighter must stop out for good.'"

The bushman is a real man under all circumstances, having no awe of

authority, no hesitation in speaking his mind, but a great reverence

for women and a real respect for a religion that does not savor of cant.

[1] _Billabong_--a water-hole in a dry river-course.

[2] _Humped the bluey_--tramped across country with blue blanket (or

swag).

[3] Robert W. Service.

[4] _Sundowners_--tramps who arrive at a ranch at sundown expecting to

be put up for the night.

[5] _On the wallaby_--on the tramp.

[6] Robert W. Service.

CHAPTER IV

TRAINING-CAMP LIFE

The town of Bendigo received a great increase of liveliness by having

to accommodate four or five thousand soldiers.

It had known some lively times in the old gold days, but when its

"yellow love" became thin, thousands of people went to other fields and

the former flourishing city became a husk and as dull as only a

declining mining city can become; but, as usually happens in old mining

districts, when the gold gives out, the solid wealth of the soil in

crop-growing capacity is developed, and Bendigo is prospering again

through the labors of the tillers of the soil, if not by the delvings

of its miners. Still, farmers have not the same habit of "blowing in

their earnings" and are, admittedly, a little dull. There was a story

that when the town council put a notice at the busy centre--"Walk Round

Corners"--many of the farmers made sure of keeping the law by getting

out of their vehicles and _leading_ their horses round! The old-time

miner was rather in the habit of smashing the unoffending lamp-post

that barred his straight progress to the "pub." where his favorite

brand of fire-water was on tap.

The Bendigoans will never forgive me for having failed to appreciate

the fact that their Golden City was far ahead even of Melbourne. They

would never believe that any one could make the mistake in regard to

_their_ city that an American did about an Australian seaport when he

marvelled at our frankness in putting notice at the entrance to the

harbor "_Dead Slow_," and he never learned, after months of residence,

that said notice was really a warning to shipping.

But at any rate the soldiers livened things up. They were gathered

from many States--their day was just "one damn thing after

another"--sometimes varied a bit with a right turn instead of left, and

sometimes we would salute to the right instead of the left--but when

night came, fun must be had somehow, and Bendigo had to supply it.

We all had some intelligence, so after spending a whole day in

employment that forbade our using the smallest atom, we would seek

during the night a "safety-valve."

The camp was in the show-ground, which naturally divided the young

animals in training into different sorts--the élite had the grand

stand, horse-boxes were grabbed by the N. C. O.'s, prize-cattle stalls

were clean enough, but some line of mental association must have caused

the powers that be to allot the "pig-and-dog" section to the military

police and their prey.

It was fun on the arrival of a fresh contingent who were told "they

could take what accommodation was left in the grand stand, the

remainder having to bunk in the animal stalls," to see them rush the

lower tiers, appropriating their six-foot length by dumping their

"blueys" upon it, but that same night they would be convinced of their

mistake as the old hands, living above them, exhibited their joy at

having dodged the guard, returning in the small hours, by walking on

every one possible on their way up top. Next morning there would be

more applications for "horse-and-cattle" stalls, but the best ones

would be gone, and they would have to be content to lie, six in a box,

where a flooring-board was missing through which the rats would make

their nightly explorations. But even this was better than the lower

tiers of the grand stand, as the rats would not always wake you running

across your face, but a husky in military boots stepping on it would

rouse even the deadest in slumber. As he would step on about twenty

others as well, the mutual recriminations would continue for hours, and

as the real culprit would settle down in the dark into his own place

without a word no one would know who it was. There would come from up

above: "Shut up, there!" "What the h---- are you makin' all that row

about?" and the answer: "So would you make a row if a b-- b-- elephant

stepped on your face!" "Go and bag your head! Anyway, there are two

hundred men who didn't step on your face trying to go to sleep, and it

will be reveille in an hour or so."

These grand-stand couches were bad places at the best of times. They

may have been high and dry, but were open to every breeze that blew and

were sheltered only on the side from which the rain never came. The

Bendigo show committee must have faced them that way so that the sun

and weather would be right in the eyes of the onlookers and prevent

them seeing any "crook riding" or "running dead," etc.

The first item on the day's programme was the "gargling parade."

Meningitis had broken out in the camp and every one had to gargle his

throat first thing in the morning with salt water. We would be marched

under our sergeant to each receive our half-pannikin of salt water at

the A. M. C. tent. We would string out along the brick drain and then

began the most horrible conglomeration of sounds that ever offended the

ear. It was like the tuning up of some infernal orchestra. I don't

know why it is, but it is surprising how few men can gargle "like a

gentleman." For days I have not spoken to my best friend, who was most

refined in other respects, but could not desist from spluttering and

spraying the half dozen men nearest to him. We became friends again,

but although we slept and messed together, I always took care never to

be nearer than number ten from him at "gargling parade." I never heard

any complaints from the people at Bendigo about this early-morning

discord, but I learn that no frogs have been heard in the neighborhood

since.

Our training at this camp was purely preliminary--we certainly formed

fours seven billion times, and turned to the right fourteen billion,

and saluted a post that represented an officer so often, that the rush

of air caused by the quick movement of hands and heads had worn the

edge off it.

We were so used to the sound of the sergeant-major's voice when he

said, "The company will move to right in fours," that, when a grazing

donkey happened to "hee-haw," the whole company formed fours. Even

then only about half the company discovered the mistake--there was

mighty little difference in the tones, anyway!

For a man that has never previously had military training, the first

few weeks in camp is the most humiliating and trying experience that

could be inflicted on him. I am quite sure that were it a prison and a

treadmill he could not hate it the more.

Here was I, never been under orders since I was breeched, and even

before then getting my own way, suddenly finding myself with every

movement I was to make laid down in regulations, with about a score of

men round me all day to see that I carried them out correctly.

How I used to hate that camp band, when it played at reveille, I cursed

it in full BLAST because it would wake me suddenly when I seemed to

have only just lain down, and reviled it when it played softly because

I would not hear it and some of the other boys would wake me only when

they were fully dressed; and the last to fall in at roll-call were

picked for cook's fatigue--peeling spuds and cleaning dixies! How I

loathed those dixies! The more grease you got on your hands and

clothes the more appeared to be left in the dixie! The outside was

sooty, the inside was greasy, and after I had done my best, the

sergeant cook would make remarks about my ancestors which had nothing

to do with the question, and I could not resent them lest I be detailed

for a whole week of infernal dixie-cleaning. Anyway, all his ancestors

had ever dared to do in the presence of mine was to touch their

forelock.

In those first weeks I think I would gladly have murdered every

sergeant. It was "Number 10, hold your head up!" "Put your heels

together!" or a sarcastic remark as to whether I knew what a button was

for, when I happened to miss doing one up in my flurry to dress in

time, so that I would not be at the bottom of the line and picked for

fatigue.

It is not often realized what a purgatory the educated, independent man

who enlists as a private has to go through before his spirit is tamed

sufficiently to stand bossing, without resentment, by men socially and

educationally inferior. There was a young officer who called me over

one day and told me to clean his boots. I answered, "Clean them

yourself!" and got three days C. C. (confinement to camp). This same

officer took advantage of his rank on several other occasions and

sought to humiliate me. He was a poor sort of a sport, and many months

later when I was his equal in rank in France I punched his head,

telling him I had waited eighteen months to do it. So you see,

everything comes to those who wait.

As a matter of fact, it was only three weeks before I was made an

acting sergeant, but I have great sympathy with the soft-handed rookie,

for in those three weeks it seemed to me that it was an easy thing to

die for one's country, but to train to be a soldier was about the worst

kind of penal servitude a man could undergo.

When acting as sergeant I was boss of five stables, each containing

eight men, who could only squeeze in the floor space by sleeping head

to feet. These stables were only completely closed in on three sides,

the entrance side being boarded up three feet high, except for the

space of the doorway. There was no attempt to close up this opening,

except after afternoon parade, when visitors would have arrived before

our changing into reception-clothes was completed, and we would

partially block it with our waterproof sheeting.

I must mention that in the early days we had no real uniforms, but used

to parade in blue dungarees and white cloth hats. They certainly made

the men look "_uniform_," but "_uniformly hideous_," and none of us

would be seen in them by a pretty girl, for a king's ransom. As soon

as afternoon parade was dismissed, we would dive for our quarters, and

re-don our "civvies" until next parade. The "cocky" would be

resplendent again in his soft collar and red tie, and the city clerk in

starched collar and cuffs.

Sometimes, however, there was a variation in time between the watches

of the sergeant-major on the parade-ground and the guard at the gate.

Visitors would be let in too soon, and innocently curious dames would

wonder what these rows of stables were for, and wandering in that

direction, would suddenly beat a blushing retreat at the revelation of

hundreds of young men getting into respectable clothes who had no other

place in which to change. Even if you did put a blanket or W. P. sheet

over the entrance, there were no tacks, or nails, and it always fell

down at the most awkward moments. However, the visitors soon got wise,

and in about half an hour the boys who had callers would be proudly

showing their friends, by the name above the feed-box, that the

previous occupant of their quarters was the famous "Highflyer," winner

of scores of cups, etc.

There were a good lot of us there from other states, and _we_ had no

special callers, but there were always girls who came out to see a

Sergeant Martin or some such name not on the rolls. "Couldn't we find

him for you?" If we did happen to find a sergeant of that name, he

would not happen to be the one she wanted, then we would offer to do

the honors of the camp, and as she would not like the hamper brought

for her friend to be wasted, an acquaintance was soon struck up. Some

boys were too shy, but nearly all of us had visitors after we had been

in camp a week or two.

The town had appointed a soldiers' entertainment committee, and they

gave us a concert every night in the Y. M. C. A. tent. These were

high-class shows, but most of us preferred to go into the town though

we only had leave till six o'clock.

Some of us used to stay in town till midnight, trusting to our

ingenuity in bluffing the guard. Many were the dodges used to gain

entrance to the camp. Some townsboys could get passes till midnight

about once a week, and instead of handing these to the guard, as they

hurried past, they would substitute a piece of blank paper. If they

got past it was good for another occasion, as the date was easily

altered. If they were pulled up they would apologize profusely and

hand up the right pass. Sometimes we would wait until there were a

score of us, and while the sentry was examining the first pass the

others would rush the gate. Rarely could more than one or two be

identified, and the odds were in our favor.

Soon the guard was doubled, and only a small wicket was opened, where

but one man could pass through at a time. Then we scraped holes under

the galvanized-iron fence that surrounded the show-ground, concealing

them carefully with bushes and watching out for the pickets who

patrolled the outside of the camp.

I think I got my best training in scouting dodging these pickets. I

have climbed trees, crawled into hollow logs, and played 'possum in

gullies to escape them. Being caught meant not only several days in

the guard-tent, but the loss of the chance of "stripes."

There was really not much excitement in the town and many of us just

stayed late for the excitement of breaking the law without being

caught. It was the outbreak of our personality after being mere cogs

in a drill-machine all day. I never was guilty of returning except

after hours, and I never was caught, even when extraordinary

precautions were taken to get the delinquents. Sometimes a check-roll

would be called, at some uncertain hour, but it was always a point of

honor for the boys in camp to answer "present" for any absent mates.

Evidently I was destined to be a scout. From this camp I was drafted

into the intelligence section for specialized training. That has been

my work all the time overseas, and I never had harder work dodging

Fritz's sentries than those pickets round Bendigo show-ground.

CHAPTER V

CONCENTRATED FOR EMBARKATION

One morning there was great excitement in the Bendigo camp. An

announcement was made that members of rifle-clubs would be tried out on

the range and all qualifying with ninety per cent of marks would be

sent overseas in the earliest draft. All who had ever fired a gun, and

some who hadn't, stepped forward for trial, but on the range the

eligibles were found to be only fifty, of whom I was lucky enough to be

one.

The next day we lined up for a final medical inspection. As we passed

the doctor there were none to congratulate us, but we made allowances,

knowing how sore the others were who had failed to qualify. We packed

up our kits and marched to the train leaving a camp literally "green

with envy." We shouted good-bye, amazed at the good fortune that had

chosen us to escape many months of deadly grind in the training-camp,

and it seemed as we passed in single file through the old showground

turnstile as if already we had left Australia behind, and in

imagination our feet felt the roll of the ship that in our fancy was

even now carrying us out on the "Great Adventure"; and our thoughts

wafted farewells to mother or wife, as we bade them never fear but that

we would show that their men were not unworthy of their regard.

Our spirits had not been so elated had we known that more weeks of camp

life in Australia yet awaited us. Had we not thought that we were

destined for immediate embarkation we might have been better disposed

to appreciate Broadmeadows, but as it was it seemed to us about the

last place made--and not yet finished.

As the days passed, our detestation of the place grew, but we soon

found that our impatience of delay in embarking was shared by several

thousand others who had gathered there from many States and been weeks

trampling out the grass and raising the dust in those accursed fields

till it choked them, when they had long before expected to be inhaling

the ozone from the deck of some good ship that with every knot bore

them nearer to the strife for liberty and a man's chance.

This camp was always seething with discontent, for with the delay was

in every man's heart the haunting fear that the war might be over ere

he got there, and none could think without dread of the possibility

that we might have to endure the lowest depths of humiliation in

returning home without having struck a blow.

On one occasion the impatience that was like a festering sore among the

men of this camp nearly resulted in a show of mutiny. Oil was added to

the flame of our discontent by the tactlessness of the camp adjutant.

He will always be known to the men of those days as the "Puppy." His

father was a commanding officer, and though he was only nineteen years

of age and his voice was just breaking, he rode the "high-horse of

authority" over those men as though they were schoolchildren. When his

lady friends came to visit him he would order a special parade so that

they might see him in command of "_his men_, doncherknow!" But his

"high horse" nearly threw him one day when he gave the order, "Move to

the right and fours, form fours!" and not a man moved. Blushing like a

schoolgirl, he called the officers out for consultation and sent for

the commandant. When, however, real men took command there was no

further trouble, though the boys openly voiced their complaints--"that

their leave was restricted for no reason"--"that they were on parade

after hours," and "Why don't they send us away to fight, anyway?

That's what we enlisted for." The announcement that we would be

sailing soon brought forth cheers and every one was in good humor

again. Only let us be sure that we were off to war, and we could stand

even the Puppy's yelping.

But all the same, there were a couple more weeks of the mud and dust to

be endured. I have been in sand-storms in the interior of Australia

when the sun was blotted out and in Egypt when the Kam-seen said to the

mountain, "Be thou removed!" and it was removed in a single night some

fifty miles away, but neither of these is worse than some of the

dust-storms that blow over Melbourne, and at Broadmeadows we got their

full force. We would march in from the parade-ground not being able to

see the man in front of us, and in the light of the candles in our

tents our very features were blotted out and nothing but eyes and teeth

were visible, except that, perhaps, in some faces two small holes would

suggest where the nose might be. It was only after a good deal of

shaking that the place could be discerned where neck emerged from

collar. There were some serious accidents in these dust-storms through

men trying to bump buildings out of their way, and on one occasion two

poor fellows were nearly killed in failing to give the "right-away" to

a couple of sheets of galvanized iron. And when it rained, great

snakes! Where was there ever mud like that! We certainly did a good

deal in mixing the soil of those paddocks, for we would carry an acre

of it from around the tents onto the drill-ground, where we would

carefully scrape it off, and when we marched back we would bring

another acre on our boots to form a hillock at our tent door. If there

had been but an inch of rain we would lift up on the soles of our boots

all the wet earth, uncovering a surface of dust to pepper our evening

meal.

Large sums of money have been spent on this camp since those days and

it is now a _nursery_ for the recruits who have volunteered three years

late and need the enticement of feather beds to induce them to leave

mother. It has been thoroughly drained and terraced, and comfortable

huts have been erected, but _we_ simply rolled in blankets on bare

Mother Earth and sheltered from sun and rain in tents that were

supposed to be water-proof, and generally _were_ unless you happened to

touch them when wet. If you did accidentally happen to rub against the

sides, there would be a stream of water pouring down on you all night.

There was no escaping this, for there was not an inch of ground inside

the tent that was not covered by man. In fact, with ten in a tent, one

of us had to lie three-quarters outside, anyway, which was the chief

reason why I was never last in. Dressing was a problem, for every one

must needs dress at the same time, and from the outside the tent must

have looked something like a camel whose hump was constantly slipping.

Perhaps that is why every one used safety-razors after a while, for

although our faces would frequently look as though they had been mixed

up in barbed wire, there was really not much danger of cutting one's

throat, for even though you received a forty-horse-power jolt at a

critical moment, the razor-guard prevented your life being actually

imperilled.

In this camp we received our uniforms and equipment, but it was only

after a lot of exchanging had been done that our uniforms made us look

soldierly. Oh, Lord! what caricatures many of us were after the first

issue. There were practically no out-sizes in tunics, but plenty of

the men were not merely out-size, but odd-sized. Some little fellows

looked as if they were wearing father's coat, and there were others who

looked as if they were wearing that of baby brother. Some had to turn

back the cuffs two or three times, while others had at least a foot of

wrist and forearm showing. But the breeches! Oh, my Aunt Sarah! Some

were able to tuck the bottoms into their boots, while others had to

wind puttees above their knees. There were men who couldn't bend

comfortably, while others had room to carry a couch about with them.

However, the orders were that we were to keep on exchanging until we

got something like a fit, but as there were varieties in the quality of

the cloth, there were those who preferred a misfit to poor material, so

that there were always a number who looked like Charlie Chaplin.

New arrivals in camp were always called "Marmalades," because they were

distinguished by their relish for marmalade jam. After they had

consumed over a ton of it and forgotten the taste of any other kind of

jam then they looked at a tin of it with loathing, when they would be

considered to have passed the "recruit" stage and be on a fair way to

becoming soldiers.

Long before we got our uniforms we were issued greatcoats, hats, and

boots. At this time the only other clothes we had were the blue

dungarees and white cloth hats called "fatigue dress." No

self-respecting man would allow a lady friend to see him in this

rig-out. Yet one must breathe the free air of liberty some time, and

"confinement to camp" was a punishment for crime. So we compromised by

strolling the city streets with our military hats and boots, with the

army greatcoats seeking to hide the blue hideousness of our dungarees.

Some of us sought to be unconscious of the foot or two of blue cloth

showing beneath the greatcoat, and these were times when we envied the

little chap enveloped in a greatcoat that hung down as low as his

boots. We received at this time the nickname "Keystone soldiers," some

genial ass conceiving that we looked as funny as the Keystone police.

These greatcoats were a bit out of place on a day that was over a

hundred in the shade, and they did not look exactly the thing at a

dainty tea-table in a swell cafe, but we clung to those greatcoats as

our only salvation, for they _did_ hide the blue horror beneath. I

should have explained that our civilian clothes had been taken from us,

and we were forbidden, under severe penalty, to wear any but regulation

dress. Nevertheless, the lucky dogs who had relatives near by would

take the risk and borrow a cousin's rig-out, but we hated them as mean

dogs, feeling they were taking an unfair advantage; and, if we got a

chance, we would, by innuendo, hint to the lady in the case that these

fellows did so much dixie-cleaning that their dungarees were too stiff

to wear!

Nearing the close of a long, sunny Australian day--the air soft, warm,

and sweet, and the sky suffused with a lovely pink. It was

visiting-day--Friday. In the camp, rows of figures in blue dungarees

and white hats were marching round and round the drill-ground, turning

from left to right, forming fours, then back to two deep, and, so on

and so on. Out across the flat ground between the camp and the

railway-station, coming steadily toward the camp, was a very straggly

line of white figures. As they came closer, one saw they were women

and girls, fresh and dainty in summer frocks and hats, all carrying big

baskets, suitcases, and all manner of strange and weirdly shaped

parcels. A few odd males among them, mostly nearing sixty, or under

ten. Some were portly, puffing a little, some old, their heavy parcels

making their lips quiver and their step slow--and girls, just

multitudes of them, all sizes, ages, and shapes--blondes, brunettes,

in-betweens, and from every rank in the social scale--mostly in groups

of any number from two to twenty--some chaperoned, some not. Here and

there one saw one alone carrying an extra heavy suitcase, which somehow

you knew contained extra-specially good things to eat, and when you

looked at her face under her big hat a certain something there told you

that on the third finger of the left hand under her glove you would

surely find a diamond half-loop, and even, perhaps, a _very_ plain new

gold band!

From the drill-ground the soldiers could see this crowd of womenfolk

steadily coming toward them, and grew acutely aware of their shapeless,

grubby dungarees, dusty boots, and perspiring faces under tired-looking

white hats. Agonized glances were turned on the sergeant-major as,

with his face utterly expressionless, ignoring the oncoming feminine

figures, he still right-about-turned and quick-marched them. The

fluttering white frocks came closer and closer, and as they began to

get near the gate imploring glances were turned in the direction of the

guard, praying they would not let any one in. Then suddenly, to their

immense relief, they were dismissed; then it was just one mad rush for

tents. Swearing breathlessly as they bumped into each other or tripped

over tent-pegs and ropes, they ran, putting on an extra spurt every

time they glanced over their shoulders and saw the women advancing upon

them in mass formation. Changing was soon accomplished, not without a

good deal of confusion, mixing up of garments, and splashing water

around, but when they were finally all dressed and again in khaki

uniforms smiles of satisfaction spread over clean and shiny faces as

they glanced down at neat uniforms and well-polished boots--Smoke-o

that day had seen much activity in the business of brushing and

polishing.

[Illustration: "On Show" Before Leaving Home.]

Down at the gate the picket was having a busy time answering questions:

"Could you tell me where I will find Private McIntosh?" "What tent is

my brother in, d'you know?" But as many of the eager questioners were,

well, very delightful, none of the boys on picket duty kicked at their

job. Some of the boys who were quicker dressers than the others now

began to come down to the gate, bustling into the crowd of womenfolk,

looking eagerly for their own particular visitors, and, seeing them,

dashing up, hugging mothers and sisters, shaking bashfully the hand of

"sister's friend," gathering up all their parcels, and, with them all

following close behind, leading the way to "a dandy spot" for supper.

In course of time the sorting-out process was complete, and the camp

was dotted with hundreds of groups, large and small, all laughing and

talking, and busy unpacking those very weighty parcels. Boys who had

changed into uniform with the others and gone down to the gate, though

not really expecting any one as they were from out back and had no city

friends, but still feeling lonesome, and, perhaps, having a forlorn

hope that there might be some one, had helped rather bewildered girls,

carrying their baskets and finding the man they wanted--these boys now

looked longingly around at these groups, hoping some one would invite

them to join in; and how their faces brightened when one of their

tentmates, looking up from a hunk of frosted cake, would see them and

shout, "Hey, Bill! Here!" and, after the agony of being presented to

"My mater, my sister, and Miss Stephenson," things were just O. K.

Yet there were a good many lonely ones, boys who hadn't even bothered

to change, still in their ill-shaped blue dungarees, dusty boots, and

cloth hats, some of them walking round, their heads down, and kicking

at every clump of grass or stone that came within reach of their

boots--some of them, too lonely even to look at the fun, hanging over

the fences, occasionally exchanging a few peevish words with each

other, while others gathered round the old man who kept a stall just

inside the gate and bought lemonade, ginger ale, and arrowroot

biscuits, consuming them with much assumed gusto, while others still

sat inside their tents or the Y. M. C. A. hut.

Looking at these boys gave one a deep heartache, but the sob in one's

throat changed suddenly to a laugh as one looked at their hats.

Americans in Australia have always held the prize for originality in

headgear, but that same prize must now be handed over to our soldiers

in camp. What they can do with one simple, unoffending, white-cloth

cricket-hat passes all belief. Seldom, as is the case with their

dungarees, did these boys have a hat that really fitted them, those

with big heads had the smallest hats, and those with extra small heads

got the largest size. They were all shades, from their original pure

white down, or up, to an exact match with Mother Earth. And the

shapes! Some wore them turned down all round, some turned up all

round, some turned up in front and down at the back, some vice versa,

some turned up on the left side and down at the right, and some down at

the left and up at the right; some had tucked the front part in,

leaving a large expanse of bare brow, while the back part, turned down,

shaded the nape of their neck. Some applied this idea reversed,

turning in the back; some turned the brim right in except for a small

peak à la Jockey; some had a peak back and front, made by rolling in

both sides, and some settled the question by turning the whole brim in,

the resultant skull-cap effect being such as to bring tears to the eyes

of all beholders.

These disconsolate, lonely faces, with, in the cases of the younger

boys, tear-filled eyes, surmounted by these absurd, preposterous

hats--it was truly a case of not knowing whether to laugh or to cry; so

by laughing hard, the women who saw them hid their tears.

It soon began to get dark--in Australia our twilight is short--so

suitcases and baskets were repacked, but only this time with plates,

cups, spoons, etc.--and one by one the parties rose and went over to

the Y. M. C. A. tent for the concert. In the tent tables had all been

moved out and rows of chairs and forms filled it. In a short time they

were all occupied, the officers sitting in front, some with visitors,

others alone and casting very longing eyes at the lovely girls coming

in with the men.

The concert was given, as they mostly were, by an amateur club, and had

its ups and downs. But every one enjoyed it--the items that took the

popular fancy were loudly applauded, and the others that weren't so

good--well, no one minded, as every one was happy, and the lights were

very dim!

By the end of the concert it was nine o'clock, the time for all

visitors to be shooed off home. The bugles blew "The First Post," and

every one, very unwilling, made their way slowly down to the gate.

Here good-byes were said, meetings arranged for the boys' next leave,

promises made to come out next week, with much chattering and laughing,

though here and there, back in the shadows, would be couples, very

quiet, maybe engaged, perhaps just married, hating to separate.

At last the remaining white frocks flutter through the big gate and

join in the stream already straggling across country toward the

railway-station, every one quiet and very tired.

In camp the boys stroll over to their tents, exchanging an occasional

word with pals, but for the most part silent, and turn in, tired also,

and a little thoughtful. In an hour all the stars shine brightly from

the velvety, blue-black sky, the soft-scented air wafts in through open

tent-flaps, lights are out, and all is quiet in the camp, except for

the periodical changing of pickets and the occasional roar of a passing

train in the distance.

CHAPTER VI

MANY WEEKS AT SEA

A troop-ship has no longer a name, but although the ship we boarded at

Port Melbourne docks was designated by the number A 14, it was not hard

to discover that we were on a well-known ocean-liner, for on life-buoys

and wheelhouse the paint was not so thick that inquisitiveness could

not see the name that in pre-war days the Aberdeen line proudly

advertised as one of their most comfortable passenger-carrying ships.

That meant little to us, for her trimmings of comfort had been stripped

off but for a few cabins left for the officers, and when we were

mustered in our quarters, we wondered where we would sleep, for no

bunks met our eye.

Embarkation is for every one concerned the most tedious, red-tapeyist

incident in a soldier's career. For fear of spies the exact day had

been kept secret, and although we had expected to leave weeks

previously, and had, at least, twenty times said our tearful farewells,

when the actual day arrived there was no expectation of it and no

farewells. The night previously men had said to their wives, "See you

to-morrow, dear!"--meetings were arranged with best girls, for the

movies--in fact, not the faintest rumor had spread through the camp

that there was any likelihood of our sailing for weeks, and here in the

early dawn we were lined up on the wharf, being counted off like sheep,

and allotted our quarter cubic foot of ship's space; preparing for our

adventure overseas without the slightest chance of letting any one I

know what had happened to us. We could sympathize with the feelings of

our folks as they would journey out to camp with the usual good things

to eat only to find we had gone. By this time we would be well out at

sea, en route for the Great Adventure, but it was hard luck for mothers

and wives suddenly to find us gone without warning, and having to wait

many weeks for the first letter.

It was wet, it was cold, it was dark on that wharf. If we were counted

once, we were counted fifty times, and for hours we stood in the rain

because there were two men too many. No, not men, for they were found

to be boys of fifteen who had stolen uniforms and had hidden near the

wharf for days to get away with the troops, but they were discovered,

as every man had his name called and was identified by his officer as

he passed up the gangway. One of them was not to be kept off, however:

he slipped round the stern and climbed up the mooring cables like a

monkey, and as no one gave him away he was undiscovered until rations

were issued, so, perforce, he was a member of the ship's company and

went with us to Egypt.

It's marvellous what quantities of men a troop-ship can swallow. There

were a thousand men on our ship and we wondered how we would possibly

move about, for we were marched 'tween decks, and seated on benches

ranged alongside deal tables, and when all were aboard there was not

room for a man more. It was explained to us that these were our

quarters. We could understand them as eating quarters, but where were

we to sleep? It was soon evident; above our heads were rows of black

iron hooks; these were for our hammocks, which, with a blanket apiece,

were in bins at the end of each deck. Hammock sleeping was not new to

me, so I got a good deal of fun seeing the early-to-bedders climb in

one side of their hammock, only to fall out the other, and very few

could manipulate their blankets. One could see that nearly every one

was nervous for fear of turning over in his sleep, but there was really

no danger of falling out, for when all the hammocks were up they were

packed so closely that if you did roll over, you would only roll into

the next hammock on top of some fellow who would, no doubt, think the

mast had fallen. There were a good number of men to whom life would

have been much pleasanter the next few days if they could have stayed

in their hammocks all day, as, no matter how the ship rolls, a hammock,

being swung, always keeps level. Unfortunately, all hammocks had to be

taken down at 6 A. M. so we could sit at the tables for breakfast, and

to most of the boys that first morning getting out of their hammocks

was like stepping onto a razzle-dazzle. We were now well at sea and

the general cry was in the words of the song: "Sea, sea, why are you

angry with me?" Discipline had to be relaxed those first days, for a

seasick man is quite willing to be shot and has no interest in the war,

and doesn't care which horse wins the boat-race. Seasickness never

gets any sympathy from those who are immune, but sometimes just

retribution comes on the scoffer, and it is some satisfaction to see a

man's face turn green who but a few hours ago had been whistling with a

selfish cheerfulness while you were revealing your own sticky past to

the mermaids.

After about a week parades were announced, and in the early morning we

were lined up for "physical jerks," by which is meant calisthenics, or

setting-up exercises. We now realized the appropriateness of the

nickname, for the first stretching would cause a number to rush to the

side, where they would attempt to jerk their hearts out, and also,

standing on tiptoe on a rolling ship, one can only bend in jerks. To

our joy these parades were short affairs, for there was only the

limited space of the boat and saloon decks and each platoon had to take

its turn in occupying this very limited parade-ground--so the greater

part of the time was spent in passing remarks about the slovenly work

of every other squad but one's own. Of course there were always

fatigue and guard duties. I'll never forget my first butcher's

fatigue, for when I stooped to pick up a carcass of mutton, I thought

the best way to carry it would be to hang it round my neck like a

feather boa, but no log of wood was stiffer or more unbending than that

frozen woolly, and I asked if we were expected to eat that. No wonder

so much coal is used on a ship when the food has to be thawed out! But

this job was very comforting, for I saw the inside of the ship's

storehouse, and never feared, though we were wrecked on a desert

island, there would be any danger of our starving.

We turned out some pretty ragtime guards--sentries were posted at

different parts of the ship, the most important being the guard over

the liquor, and another sentry at the saloon gangway, whose duty it was

to prevent any private or other common person trespassing on the

hallowed ground sacred to the cigarette-ash and footprints of officers.

This last sentry was expected to salute the O. C. troops and commander

of the ship, all other salutes being dispensed with, as on board ship

we saw our officers some five hundred and ninety times a day, and their

arms would have been whirling like windmills had they been compelled to

return our salutes. I remember one sentry failing to recognize the

Commander-in-chief, and presently the colonel spoke to him thus: "What

are you doing here, my man?" "I'm supposed to be a ---- sentry."

"Well, do you know that I am supposed to be the ---- colonel?" "Oh!

Well, I'm supposed to give you a ---- salute!" And the sentry

forthwith performed his belated duty.

On this ship the officers were all pretty popular, especially one who

was never known by any title or other designation than "Jerry." Jerry

had more self-confidence than any man I have ever met. He could not

correctly put a platoon through its formations, but would not hesitate

to take charge of a battalion. When he had given some orders and had

hopelessly mixed up a company, he would look at the mess with an air of

superiority that proclaimed to all and sundry that he was commanding a

lot of imbeciles, and then he would calmly throw the responsibility of

disentangling themselves upon the men by the order: "As you were!"

It was a puzzle to all as to how he got his commission. He was tall

and spruce, most scrupulous in the fit of his uniform, but absolutely

too lazy to learn his job. He was something of a joke as an officer,

yet his men got to like him for his good humor and absolute

indifference to the censure of his superiors. In instructing a squad

he would quite calmly read aloud out of a drill-book right under the

eyes of the colonel, and his air of calm assurance under rebuke would

so annoy his superiors that he frequently escaped much censure, for few

senior officers are willing to display a loss of temper in front of the

men, as it makes for a loss of dignity. One day Jerry found a sentry

asleep at his post while he was on "visiting rounds" as officer of the

guard. All Jerry did was to drawl out: "Next time you go to sleep, my

lad, you'll wake up in hell!" As a matter of fact, he was too

good-natured to have a man punished, and as the boys realized this,

they would not let any one take advantage of him. We did not think

there was anything that Jerry could do properly until the first concert.

These concerts were weekly affairs, and we had three artists who were

equal to the best. Tom Dawson, the Tivoli comedian, who was afterward

killed in France, was one of us and always willing to provide half a

dozen songs, with his india-rubber face stretched to suit each part.

He was a prime favorite. Then we had an operatic tenor who could sing

a solo from almost any Italian opera, but his talent was not

appreciated--some one would be bound to call "Pretty Joey!" in the

middle of his most impassioned passages. He got plenty of applause

when he sang about "the end of a perfect day," even though the day had

been as beastly as a severe storm could make it for a thousand-odd men

cooped up so closely that only a third of them could see the sky at one

time. His efforts to educate our musical taste completely failed, for

the announcement that he was going to sing in Italian always raised

cries of "Steaka-de-oyst!" "Fiji banana!" etc.

Another real artist played the mandolin, and when he appeared with it

first of all he was greeted with cries of "Gertie!" As he played,

however, he held the boys spellbound and never after failed to get an

encore, though many still held that a mandolin was only a "sissy"

instrument. But the star performer, to every one's surprise, was

Jerry. Here was one thing he could do, at any rate! His recitation of

"Gunga Dhin" brought tears to our eyes, and thereafter no programme was

complete without this item.

Toward the end of the voyage the concerts lost popularity, as there

were only three or four artists; and there was no stock of music on

board, so their two or three songs became as wearisome as a much-played

gramophone record. The boxing and wrestling matches always held the

crowd, and there was no lack of competition, for the runner-up was

always _sure_ that he would have won but for bad luck and was ever

ready for another try. These were no "pussy" shows, for we had some

professionals among us: "Sailor Duffy," one of our second lieutenants,

was middleweight champion of Victoria, and one of the ship's crew was

champion wrestler of London. There were others who required

convincing, at any rate, that they were not as good as the champions,

and anyway there were always plenty of disputes during the day that by

general consent were settled in the ring at night. This was how we

passed the long weeks to Colombo, our first port of call.

To the white man having to make his home at Colombo it may not be

paradise, but to the sea-weary landlubber who has been weeks without a

sight of land, there never was place more delightful. The first day we

weren't allowed ashore, but there were other troop-ships lying in the

harbor, and soon pretty well every man who could find a footing on the

rigging was semaphoring like mad: "Who are you? Where'd you come from?

Where are you going?" We discovered one boat was full of New

Zealanders and we coo-eed and waved wildly to them, feeling that New

Zealand ought to be part of Australia, anyhow, and they were almost

homelanders. There were also some Indian troops bound for the Persian

Gulf, and immediately the rumor started that that was where we were

bound, and everybody looked pretty blue. Pretty soon some

coal-lighters came alongside--that is, we discovered there was coal in

them after they had discharged their living freight, for they were

simply black with niggers. There did not seem to be an inch of boat

space that was not covered up by nigger. About half of them started to

work, for the method of coaling in these parts is for the niggers to

carry aboard about a teaspoonful in a wicker basket. By working in

shifts and maintaining a constant stream of men hurrying from lighters

to ship each with his spoonful of coal, sufficient is taken inboard in

a very long time. Those who were not coaling, loudly proclaimed that

they would dive for money and thereafter, by day and night, our ears

were assailed by their cries: "Me di'." "Gib it money." "You throw."

It was very amusing for the first hour or two, but we soon got heartily

sick of their importunity and their incessant chatter.

The second day we were allowed a couple of hours ashore, and as many

had a three-weeks' thirst, they saw no more of Colombo than the inside

of a hotel bar. Others of us were amused at being escorted through the

streets by the nigger policemen with whips, who did not hesitate to

belabor very energetically any niggers who approached us too closely;

but while the policeman was chasing one nigger another would seize his

chance and offer for sale native jewelry of exquisite workmanship, at

what would seem to us a ridiculously low price, but we were assured by

every one that whatever price they asked was ten times its value. Some

of the boys were after souvenirs, and as soon as it was realized that

we had money to spend we were followed about, during our whole stay, by

scores of merchants, some simply loaded down with the entire stock of

their shops. Our time ashore was too short for us to see what Colombo

really was like, but it was delightful to be able to stretch our legs

ashore again, and the novelty and charm of the streets and the

luxuriant tropical vegetation made us feel that we would be willing to

remain a lifetime amid scenes of such fascination and color.

After Colombo the days were more wearisome than before. The weather

was scorching and only a few of us could get on deck at a time for a

breath of fresh air. Long before nightfall the decks would be covered

with men lying on their blankets, for permission was given to as many

as there was room for to sleep on the boat and saloon decks, and as

there was only room for a twentieth of the complement, one had to grab

one's position early. Some preferred a comfortable night's rest to

their tea, and so would occupy their man's length of deck space while

the others were eating.

Going through the Red Sea was a feast of beauty, for the evening colors

of the sand-hills were gorgeous, and inconceivable to any but an

eye-witness. We were now on biblical ground, and great were the

religious arguments that waged. One boy wrote home that one of the

ship's anchors had brought up a wheel from the chariot of Pharaoh, and

his mother had replied that she was glad he was visiting such historic

country, but when he later on told her that "Big Lizzie" was firing

shells twenty-seven miles at the Dardanelles, she wrote him that she

was afraid life in the army was making him exaggerate things and that

he should keep strictly to the truth!

There was fighting going on at Aden when we passed--some Bedouins were

attacking the town from the desert side, but evidently it was not

serious, for, to our disappointment, we were not asked to join in. We

were merely examined by a British war-ship and told to pass on.

At Suez we disembarked and we were none of us sorry to say good-bye to

the old ship, and there were no fond farewells taken of the crew, for

they were as unpatriotic a set of scoundrels as ever sailed under the

British flag. They robbed us right and left. They stole our ration

jam, selling it to us in the form of a drink. A penny a glass would

buy "pineapple cordial," which was merely a tin of pineapple jam mixed

up in a ship's bucket of iced water. "Orangeade" was marmalade jam and

water. Strange to say, there were always enough "boobs" among us

soldiers to fall for it. On board ship we were not allowed to wear

boots, as the hobnails in our military footwear could cut up the deck,

so those that hadn't shoes went barefoot, but at the end of the voyage

when we began to search for our boots there was the deuce to pay. Only

half the men could find them at all, and it was only through a search

of the whole ship that many of us did not have to walk in the sands of

Egypt barefooted. The missing pairs were found among the sailors, of

course, one of them even having six. It is a wonder those sailors

didn't cut our hair when we were asleep to stuff their pillows--they

certainly skinned us as close as they could.

PART II

EGYPT

CHAPTER VII

THE LAND OF SAND AND SWEAT

How we hated Egypt before we left it! It may be a land of fascination

to the tourist who drives about in gharris to view its wonders and

stays at a European hotel, but to be there as a soldier, to lie in its

vile sand, to swallow its conglomerated stinks, to rub the filth off

the seats in the third-class train-carriages, to have under your eyes

continually the animated lump of muck that the "Gyppo" is, to have your

ears filled continually with the vile expressions that the Egyptian

conceives as wit, is an experience that makes one so disgusted that few

Australians that were there will ever want to see the rotten country

again. At first, however, all was novelty, and we were like children

on a picnic as we marched from the wharf into the third-class carriages

of the Egyptian state railways waiting for us just outside the gates.

It was some job getting into those carriages. Ordinarily white people

travelled first-class, but we were troops, and it was like pushing

against a wall to pass the smell that came from the doors of these

carriages that had been the preserves of the unwashed nigger of varied

age and sex for the Lord knows how many years.

We left the ship with twenty-four hours' provisions, which were all

consumed on that train. Some of us managed to get a little sleep by

packing all the equipment in the end of the carriage and sitting on the

floor back to back. Now and again the train would stop at nowhere in

particular, when we would be assailed by anything-but-clean niggers,

who would draw oranges and other fruit from inside their shirts. We

had been warned against eating anything in Egypt that could not be

skinned, and when we saw the niggers and where they kept their stock in

trade we knew the reason. So far we had nothing but English money,

and, though we had been given lectures before disembarking on the

values of Egyptian money, we had to pay liberal exchange to these

train-side merchants. Oranges cost us about two cents apiece, though

later on with Egyptian money we bought them three for a half piastre

(three cents). The only station I remember on this trip was because of

its curious-sounding name, Zagizig, where we had a stroll along the

platform and met some of our lordly Sikhs from India, who were all

smiles when they discovered we were Australians. In the early dawn we

disentrained at Koubbeh and after straightening ourselves out from

having been cramped up in those horse-boxes, we started our march of

about ten miles, carrying full pack, to the camp at Zeitoun. But here

there was no arrangement for our breakfast. The New Zealanders and

Australians already camped there had only their own day's rations, and

we had consumed ours on the train. How we cursed the powers that be!

We had humped our eighty-pound packs those weary miles and when we

thought we had arrived--no tucker! There might have been some trouble;

grumbling might have led to action in a raid on somebody's stores, but

for the Y. M. C. A. hut. They served out hot tea and in a few moments

grumbling gave place to "chiaching"; criticism that a few moments ago

had been edged was now good-humored. Give an Australian soldier hot

tea and it will pick him up quicker than any other drink on earth.

CHAPTER VIII

HELIOPOLIS

Our camp was just outside the new city of Heliopolis, which was built

at the cost of about $40,000,000 by a Belgian syndicate to rival Monte

Carlo, but it was a fiasco as a money-making concern. Nevertheless,

there were some gorgeous buildings, and it was a source of constant

interest to us. The Palace Hotel was the most magnificent building I

have ever seen; used by us as a hospital. There was no lack of marble,

and the mosaics were marvellous. The lamp-stands were of a unique and

exquisite design. The contract provided that the pattern should be

destroyed after they were made, so they would not be copied. It was

rather incongruous to see nothing but rows and rows of army cots, and

the white-robed nurses flitting about in rooms that were manifestly

intended for luxurious divans and the evening dress of fashion. Lying

in those cots, one had but to gaze ceilingward, and forget that one was

in a hospital. It required little imagination to people the rooms with

the same splendor and fashion that fills Monte Carlo, and maybe, had

the war not come and the gambling license been granted, all this

barbaric splendor would have been perfumed with the scents of "attar of

roses" and "lily-of-the-valley" instead of "iodoform" and "carbolic."

Another hospital was in Luna Park, which had been built to cater to the

amusement of thousands of joy-seekers, but the only joy there now was

in relief from pain. It was fun to make the round of the wards, for

many beds were on the scenic railway, and you would visit one poor chap

in a high fever, lying amid painted ice and snow, while another nursed

his broken leg alongside a precipice that might well have caused it. I

walked in to see the sights one day, and passing through a cave almost

fell over a bed whereon was my own brother, whose whereabouts I had

been trying to discover for days. Such are the coincidences of life.

The streets of this town were spacious and very clean and were bordered

by fine buildings with granite and marble pillars and some fine masonry

lacework. Unfortunately, poor taste was often shown, with plaster

alongside the marble, and the stone used was too soft and already in

places was crumbling. In Egypt, where it rarely rains, the climate is

kind to the jerry-builder, and it's only when Jupiter Pluvius wants a

laugh and sends a regular tropical downpour that the buildings that

were a thing of beauty and a joy forever come to earth and are no more.

We ourselves were on one occasion victims of this god's fun. We were

told that it never rained, and our huts were built just to shelter us

from the sun, but at 2 A. M. the grim old weather-god turned on the

shower, and no doubt it amused him a good deal to hear our curses as we

tried to shelter ourselves and tucker beneath greatcoats and

water-proof sheeting. There was no chance of "getting in out of the

rain," for there was not a water-proof shelter for miles. Egypt is not

the only place, though, where the residents know least about their own

climate!

Heliopolis, anyway, is a skeleton of a town, for most of these

buildings were merely occupied in the front, by Greek and Indian

merchants who had anticipated our coming. In these shops anything

could be bought, from a microbe (which was sometimes given away) to an

elephant (nearly always a white one)! However, there were silks galore

and filagree-work of beauty, but the biggest trade was done in colored

handkerchiefs, crudely worked on a sewing-machine with a design of the

pyramids and "Advance Australia." The cuteness of these merchants was

also evidenced in the signs on their stores. The first Australian to

stroll down those streets was amazed to see, in huge lettering, "The

Melbourne Store," next door to "The Sydney Shop." They even knew our

slang, for here was "The 'Fair Dinkum' Store," and across the way

"Ribuck Goods." Prices were pretty much what you liked to pay. At any

rate I never failed to get an article by paying only a quarter of the

first-named price.

The most persistent of professionals were the bootblacks. You _had_ to

have your boots cleaned whether you liked it or not! Stop for a moment

to talk to a friend and there was a nigger on each foot, industriously

brushing away as if his life depended on it. They would follow you on

to a tram-car, and whether you got a seat or not there would be

somebody working on your boots two seconds after boarding it. Another

nuisance were the sellers of swagger-sticks, and I have frequently

bought one just for the pleasure of laying it across the back of its

previous owner. They soon picked up our language and its choicest

words, but one word they never understood was "_No!_" The first

Egyptian word we learned was "_Imshi!_" literally, "Get!"--but it

generally required the backing of a military boot to make it effective.

The Australianese that the "Gyppos" picked up is not commonly used in

polite society; maybe _they_ thought it correct English, but it was

sometimes very embarrassing when walking down the street with a nurse.

And some polite merchants were sorely puzzled when the effect of their

well-chosen words and bow was an unintentional biting of the dust.

We must pass a vote of thanks, however, to the syndicate for providing

us with some ideal club-rooms. I guess the Y. M. C. A. never had such

quarters before or since, and must have had to do some squaring of

conscience in calling these "Army _Huts_." It was a hut, though, all

right, out at the camp, made of grass mats, held together with string,

but it was the usual boon and blessing to men, and I guess there were

few letters left camp that weren't on Red Triangle paper. I may as

well mention here, too, that the best meals I had since leaving home

were in the Y. M. C. A. building in the Esbekiah Gardens in Cairo, so

here's a thank-you to those ladies and the management.

CHAPTER IX

THE DESERT

I know more about the desert in Egypt than any other part of it, for it

was on the desert we trained. There were sham fights galore, but it

was mostly squad and company drill, until if some devil had scooped out

our brain-boxes and filled them with sawdust we could have carried out

the orders just as well. In fact, one fellow must have gone mad with

the monotony of it and perpetrated the rhyme, to the tune of "The Red,

White, and Blue":

"At the halt, on the left, form platoons,

At the halt, on the left, form platoons,

If the odd numbers don't mark time two paces,

How the hell can the boys form platoons?"

I don't know whether the author was ever found, but I know plenty that

were laid out for singing it. We began to have a sinking feeling that

we would not be in the real scrap at all, for a good part of our time

was taken up in forming "_hollow square_," a formation that is famous

in the British army as having been only once broken, but is only of

value against savages, and "furphies" (unfounded rumors) spread that we

were going into Darkest Africa or the Soudan. However, we also

practised echelon for artillery formation, that is, breaking a company

into chunks and throwing it about at unequal distances, so that a shell

falling on one chunk would not wipe any of the others off the map.

Then there was more gloom, for that looked as if the war was real, and

there must be something in what the papers were saying after all.

About this time some of the boys' letters began to contain more war

news even than the papers, for the padre, who was regimental censor,

informed us that if he let our mail go home unpencilled there would be

many mothers weeping at the danger their boys were in, as they

described fierce battles in the desert. Even as it was, letters were

published in home papers that showed our regiment to have been four

times annihilated while we were in training! The only shots these

fellows heard all day were the popping of the corks in the wet canteen!

(No charge to the "drys" for this story!)

And then, of course, we route-marched--in the desert, please remember;

a very different thing, Mr. Rookie, to the same thing on made roads!

For one thing, we were not supposed to do more than fifteen miles a

day, but on the desert there were no milestones, and the distance was

"estimated" by the officer in command. Some of these officers must

have been city treasurers in private life, for their estimate of

distance was like estimated annual expenditure, generally much under

the mark. Mostly they would know when we had gone far enough, which

for us was too far, and then we would get lost coming back.

Fortunately, there was a lot of men camped in that desert, and as it is

customary for a man lost to travel in a circle, we would generally run

into some camp or other, otherwise I'm afraid we would now be a

petrified army, "somewhere in Sahara." Ten miles with an eighty-pound

pack on your back, through heavy sand, is as much as a man can endure;

after that he doesn't endure, he just carries on, and on, and on, and

on. At that time your company are all feet and are walking on your

brain. Anyway, the man behind you does actually walk on your ----

heels every second step.

In the desert, also, did we dig trenches. No, not the same thing as

digging trenches anywhere! For it is really nearly as easy to dig

trenches in the ocean. For every spadeful you throw out two fall in,

and if, by the use of much cunning, you _do_ manage to get a hole dug,

then you must not leave it for a single instant, for it is only waiting

until your back is turned to disappear. There is one thing--those

trenches were good cover, for we would no sooner occupy them than we

would be covered up entirely. I would defy an aeroplane with the best

"made in Germany" spectacles to discover whether we were men or mummies.

But we had one very exciting trench-digging expedition. We dug, if you

please, into an old city, and broke into tombs umpteen thousand years

old. There were scarabs and ancient jewels there that the Field Museum

would give their eye-teeth for. We were ordered to deliver our finds

to the authorities, but I am afraid many of the boys had "sticky"

fingers. It was all jolly interesting, but there is a fly in every box

of ointment, and the supposed age of these relics brought home to us

the fact that this soil had been lived on for thousands of years by

people much like our present neighbors, without any sanitary ideas; and

one of our fellows with a scientific mind pictured to us every grain of

sand as being a globe inhabited by germs. This was comforting, for we

each of us swallowed a few billion of these "universes" every day!

They got in our eyes, in our ears, in our nose and mouth, but if they

got into a cut by any chance, then we were subjects for the doctor.

"Oh Egypt, thou land of teeming life, how healthy wouldst thou be if

you weren't so overcrowded!"

Yet there was beauty in the desert. We would frequently pick up

agates, sapphires, and turquoise matrix. But its beauty was chiefly

suggestive. There were gorgeous sunsets--poetry there, but more poetry

still in the wonderful mirages. Why, here, hung above the earth, were

scenes from every age: Cleopatra's galleys, Alexander's legions, the

pomp of the Mamelukes, Ptolemy and Pompey, Napoleon and Gordon--their

times and deeds were all pictured here. Perhaps the spirit world has

its "movies," and only here in the desert mirage is the "screen" of

stuff that can be seen with mortal eyes.

But beauty is not for soldiers--the desert was our "schoolmaster." It

was the right-hand man of Kitchener, and well did it perform its task

of putting iron into our spirits and turning our muscles into steel,

and making us fit for whatever job the Maker of Armies had for us. He

knew the place to train us--where the weaklings would fall and only the

very fit survive. Any soldier who passed through his grades in the

"academy of the desert" might not shine in a _guard of honor to a

princess_; his skin would be blistered, his clothes would be stained,

but he'd be the equal in strength of any man on earth, and would have

fought the attacks of every known disease. It was Egypt and the desert

that made Gallipoli possible, and the Australian army owes much to the

astuteness of Kitchener, who knew the ideal training-ground for the

daredevil freeman from "down under."

CHAPTER X

PICKETING IN CAIRO

No man in the British Empire knew Egypt better than Lord Kitchener, and

he had very good reasons, apart from training, in sending us there.

There can be no doubt whatever that the majority of the Egyptians were

pro-Turkish if not pro-German. The educated Egyptian, like the Babu in

Bengal, is specially fitted by nature for intrigue, and if he sees a

chance to oppose whatever government is in power and keep his own skin,

it is his idea of living well. Egypt was immediately put under martial

law, but there was plenty of scope for a while for the midnight

assassin and the poisoner. Here and there soldiers would disappear and

street riots would be started by the wind. Who would not turn round on

seeing an R. S. V. P. eye in a face whose veil enhanced the beauty it

did not hide? But there would always be some sedition-monger to

immediately fill the street with a thousand yelling maniacs who would

scream that their religion had been insulted by the accursed infidels.

_Religion_ they knew nothing about, but to make trouble was their meat

and drink. There was a good deal of Irish blood among us, and many men

who would rather fight than go to the opera, so there were some good

old ding-dong scraps. Of course the "Gyppo" is no fighter, but he can

stand behind and throw stones and can't resist plunging the knife into

an inviting back, so sometimes our boys would get laid out. A street

row is always a dangerous thing, for those in front cry "Back!" and

those behind cry "Forward!" and there is likely to be a jam in which

the innocent, if there are any, get hurt. I saw a pretty ugly-looking

crowd dispersed with a characteristic Australian weapon. Firing over

their heads had no effect, nor threats of a bayonet charge, but when

two Australian bushmen began plying stockwhips, those niggers made

themselves scarcer than mice on the smell of a cat. As a good

manipulator of the stockwhip can pull the cork from a bottle, maybe

these plotters were afraid of having their guilty secrets picked from

them. At any rate, there were some who lost flesh in a part that would

insure them having a smaller following thereafter.

There was a battle fought in Cairo for which there will be no medals

distributed and to which stay-at-home Australians think there is no

honor attached, but I doubt if any one who took part in the battle of

the Wasir, except maybe the military police, are ashamed of what they

did. Any one who knows Cairo knows that there is a part of it that is

not mentionable at dinner-table. It is the sink of the world. Every

large city has its sore, but Cairo has an ulcer. This vile spot made

the clean lads from the wind-swept plains and scented bush of Australia

absolutely sick. The Australian is a practical idealist, and for him

to see dirt is to want to remove it. Besides which, this place was a

nest of spies and enemies. There were several of our boys who

disappeared, and, though it may be said they had no right there, the

sign "No Admittance" is one that the average Australian has never been

able to read. It was one of those scraps that no one starts but that

breaks out of itself, because it has been brewing so long. There were

a few thousand of the boys in Cairo that night, and when the news

spread it did not take long for more to come in from Mena and other

camps. They did not wait for the motorman to start his car, but in

many cases commandeered it for the time being. Things moved quite

warmly for an hour or two: ladies of low degree scuttled like rats and

panders dashed for safety, while "owners" in princely motorcars turned

almost as white as their livers as they saw their "warehouses of

virtue" going up in flame. Two incidents are very vivid--the sight of

a grand piano tumbling out of a five-story window and one of the

aforesaid "owners" trying to remonstrate with the avengers, and having

his car run into the fire. The military police tried to interfere

early in the game, but only made matters worse, as they were pretty

well hated by the boys as being mostly slackers. The attitude of many

of the officers may be judged from Jerry. He was looking on smoking a

pipe when an English major dashed up to him, very apoplectic. "Are you

an Australian officer?" "Ye--es!" drawled Jerry. "Well, why don't you

take your men in hand?" "Can't see they are doing any harm!" said

Jerry. In the end strong-armed guards were brought in from the camps,

and as the boys were just about tired anyway of their self-appointed

policemanship, things soon quieted down. There were rumors that it

cost the Australian Government a tidy sum of money, but the burning of

those pest-houses must have risen like incense to heaven, and one very

good effect it had, about which there will be no dispute--it put the

fear of God into the Gyppo, and Australian soldiers after that even

singly and in small groups received nothing worse than black looks.

After this Cairo was very thoroughly picketed--the streets were

patrolled all night by parties of ten or a dozen under an N. C. O. I

was in charge of one of these parties for a couple of months and had a

good deal of fun playing "policeman" among the cosmopolitan crowds that

infest Cairo. We were only armed with the handles of our intrenching

tools, which were sticks of hardwood about twelve inches long with an

iron band at the upper end, but they made very effective batons. I

remember once we had to settle a dispute at a wedding-feast. I suppose

there must have been a lack of room in the house, for the meal was

spread in the street--long tables with a couple of hundred guests

seated at them right in the way of the traffic. We strolled past a

couple of times, but as we had no instructions to prevent folk using

the public street for their domestic affairs, we saw no call to

interfere, but our mouths watered at the sight of the good things to

eat, and we thought it rather a tempting of Providence to spread this

abundance of food in the open street of a city where there are always

about a million of people who had not enough to eat at any time. We

had only gone a couple of blocks away when some wildly excited niggers

rushed after us and informed us: "Plenty men kill 'um back there!" We

went back at the double and there was as ugly a riot as ever Irishman

longed for. There seemed to be a couple of thousand yelling maniacs

packing both sides of the street. Our instructions were to prevent the

gathering of crowds. There were only ten of us and we had but our

improvised batons, but I told the boys to get into the crowd and tell

them once to "imshi" (get) and then hit. "Be sure and never speak

twice." We soon dispersed the crowd. There was something about our

"Nulla-nullas" [1] that looked very businesslike, and none stopped to

argue the point.

Sometimes the boys were pretty thirsty in those long tramps through the

streets, and the open cafes were very inviting. But we had an

experience that warned me against allowing any of them to go in and get

a drink. One of them had certainly not been gone more than a couple of

minutes, and he swears he only had one drink; nevertheless, he had to

be put in a cab and sent back to the barracks. We had pretty dull

times in those barracks--the Kasr-el-nile just alongside the bridge of

the same name. The chief amusement was to feed the hawks that all day

hovered in the courtyard. We would drop pieces of meat and bread from

the balcony, but so quick were the birds that I never knew a piece to

reach the ground.

Jerry was one of the officers of the picket, and we had to report to

him at midnight at a shelter in a part of the city with an evil

reputation. From here we would issue in force to close for the night

the various dens of iniquity. Jerry would generally stroll ahead with

his cane and walk into the resort of the worst ruffians on earth with

all the assurance of a general at the head of a brigade. He would

announce to these, the most lawless men and women in the world, that it

was time to close up, and there was something in his bearing that

commanded prompt obedience.

In fact, nothing ever ruffled Jerry. One night a senior officer

attached to the commandant came down in a tearing rage, and began to

dress Jerry down for having presumed to close up a certain gambling

resort without consulting the authorities. After about twenty minutes'

harangue in which he threatened Jerry with all manner of punishment, he

collapsed at the drawled retort: "And then you'll wake up!"

Jerry was still on the picket when I left to go down to the Suez Canal

defenses, and I did not hear any more about him until I met him in

Melbourne a few weeks ago, when I asked him if he had been over to

France, and his reply was: "No. I--I came back." No explanation as to

whether he was invalided or wounded. Jerry was quite equal to telling

a field-marshal to go to a place even warmer than Egypt. Maybe his

extraordinary self-assurance got on the nerves of some general so much

that to protect himself from those critical eyes he had to send Jerry

home.

The two principal hotels in Cairo, Shepheard's and the Continental,

were out of bounds to all but officers. Some of our boys resented this

discrimination while not on parade, for many of the privates were, in

social life, in higher standing than the majority of the officers.

There was one of our colonels who took his brother in to dine with him

at Shepheard's. A snobbish English officer came up to this man who

happened to be only a private, and said: "What are you doing in here,

my man?" But he got rather a setback when the Australian colonel said

to him: "Captain, let me introduce my brother." There was another

Australian private whom an English officer objected to have sitting at

the same table with him at the Trocadero in London. Next day this

private reserved every seat in this swell restaurant and provided

dinner for several hundred of his chums, putting a notice on the door:

"No Officers Admitted." Another illustration of snobbishness, this

time in Australia, was when some officers at a race-meeting instructed

the committee to refuse admittance to the saddling paddock and grand

stand to all privates and N. C. O.'s, but they looked pretty small when

informed that the owner of the race-course was a private and could

hardly be debarred from his own property. Few Australian officers are

of this type, however, and in the trenches our officers and men are a

happy family. When the men realize that an officer knows his job and

has plenty of pluck, they will follow him through hell.

A favorite rendezvous in Cairo was the Ezbekiah Gardens of a Sunday

afternoon. There were beauties there from many nations, dressed in the

"dernier cri" of fashion, who were tickled to death to be escorted by

the bronzed giants from "down-under," and though one failed sometimes

to find words that were understood, yet sufficient was said in glance

and shrug to make a very interesting conversation. And the Sultan's

band was always there to fill in pauses and, in fact, played so well as

to be an encouragement to flirtations that were delightful in spite of

differences of nationality.

There was always plenty to see around Cairo, and the education of the

Australian bushman has been widened considerably through those months

in Egypt, though I am afraid some of us swallowed the yarns of the

guides and garnered a vast store of misinformation. These guides were

a set of blackmailers, but once you had engaged one he looked on you as

his personal property, and would let no one rob you but himself. I

would like, even now, to have within reach of my boot the old scoundrel

who took me inside the Great Pyramid. After following him in and by

the light of a candle climbing very carefully in stockinged feet the

granite passage (polished by millions of toes until it was as slippery

as glass), the old ruffian led me into the Queen's chamber, and then

announced that he had lost his candle but would show me the height of

the chamber by burning magnesian wire for the price of one piastre

(five cents) per second. After I had a good flash-light view of the

inside of this room, and marvelled sufficiently at the enormous size of

the blocks of marble in the walls and out of which the sarcophagus was

made, the old son of a thief told me it would be at the same rate that

he would light my way to the outside air again. I only had stockinged

feet, and made the foolish mistake of striking out in the dark. The

old boy howled, but I verily believe that I very nearly displaced one

of the eighty-ton blocks of marble. We arrived at the opening at the

same moment and I got a "full-Nelson" on the greasy blackguard. He

handed over the magnesian wire, also the candle, and was quite willing

to give me as many of his wives as I required before I released him. I

have never been in any place as hot as the inside of the Great Pyramid,

and no longer wonder that a mummy is so dried up. For in five minutes

pretty nearly every drop of moisture in my own body came out through

the pores of my skin.

I also was barmy enough to climb to the top of the Great Pyramid; each

separate block of stone to be surmounted was like the wall of a house,

but the view from the top was worth while, and might have been enjoyed

but for the thought of getting down again; especially as old Job (my

new guide) persisted in telling me about several people who had been

killed, bouncing all the way to the bottom. I did pretty well all the

tourist stunts in Egypt. I rode a donkey when my feet touched the

ground on either side, also mounted a camel that lifted me to a dizzy

height. I gazed into the imperturbable face of the Sphinx and wandered

among the numerous pyramids of Sakkara. I visited the tombs of the

Mamelukes and feasted on the beauty of the mosques (having my feet shod

with the provided sandals so that my infidel dust might not defame the

hallowed floor). I also viewed the citadel; but the place of most

charm was the streets of old Cairo. I was never tired of elbowing my

way through the bazaars and it was worth it to buy something you didn't

want for the sake of being waited on by "Abraham in the flesh." Here

was the Arabian Nights in very reality, and all the romance and lure of

a thousand dreams. The smell was a bit overpowering, but bearable if

you surrounded yourself with the smell of your favorite tobacco.

[1] Australian native weapon.

CHAPTER XI

"NIPPER"

On the sheep and cattle station of Wyaga in southwestern Queensland

there is a shepherd's hut about fifty miles from the homestead.

One night my father was camping in this hut, and before lying down had

piled a lot of dry dung on the fire outside so that the smoke would

drive away the mosquitoes. Somewhere about midnight he woke with the

sense of some human being near him. Then he was startled to see the

fire scattered before his eyes, but never found sight nor sound of

anything living.

Many months later he again visited the hut. This time it was occupied

by old Mullins, the shepherd. Again about midnight he was roused, this

time by the whining of the sheep-dog "Nipper." Every hair on the dog

was bristling, but he made no attempt to attack whatever it was he saw.

Suddenly the fire was again scattered. The old shepherd said that this

happened about once a month, and that on one occasion he had seen a

woman kick the fire apart and then disappear.

To the railway-station at Goondiwindi came Mullins one day in December,

1914, and bought tickets to Brisbane for himself and Nipper. The

regulations of the Queensland government railways will not allow dogs

to travel in passengers' carriages. As Nipper had to travel in a

dog-box at the end of the guard's van, old Mullins insisted on

occupying a seat in the van, and at every station would get his friend

a drink.

When the train stopped for meals at midday and evening Mullins would

seize the plate served to him and make for the door. The manager of

the refreshment-room made him pay for the plate before taking it

outside, not trusting his looks, but the old shepherd only wanted to

have Nipper's hunger satisfied before his own. At the end of the

journey there were several china plates in the box that were of no

further use to either of them.

The recruiting-officer in Brisbane was not surprised to see a

weather-beaten old "bushie" walk into the depot, for there were many

such seeking to join the young lads in "this ding-dong scrap." It was

only too evident that he was well over the age limit, but when they

told him he was too old, he offered to fight them singly or

collectively, or take on the best fighter their blank-blank army could

produce. They managed to get him outside the door, but not before both

he and Nipper had left behind them proof of their quality in lost skin

and torn clothes.

Some days later old Mullins appeared again, leading Nipper on a chain.

Almost every one entrenched himself behind a table, but the old man had

no fight in him, declaring in a choking voice that Nipper had come to

enlist alone. "He is not too old, anyway, and will deal with more of

the blank-blank swine than a hundred of your sissy, white-faced,

unweaned kids!" One of the doctors had a heart in the right place and

wrote a letter to the commandant of a regiment soon going overseas,

asking him if he could not take the dog as a regimental pet. He gave

the old man the letter and told him to take his dog out to the camp.

The colonel was not without understanding, and that is how Nipper

"joined up" to fight for democracy.

There were some who started out to teach Nipper tricks, but it was soon

discovered that he knew a good deal more than most of us. He had a

keen sense of humor, and after some one would spend hours trying to

teach him to sit up, all of which time he would pretend he could not

understand what he was wanted to do, with a sly look he would suddenly

go through a whole repertoire of tricks, not merely sitting up, but

tumbling over backward, generally ending the performance by

"heeling-up" (nipping in the heel) all and sundry. He never really bit

any one, but a lot of the new boys were nervous during this heeling-up

process.

Nipper was certainly the most intelligent of the whole canine race. He

was continually trying out new tricks for our amusement and was in

ecstasy if they brought applause. On a shot being fired he would

stretch out and pretend he was killed, but if you said, "White Flag!

Treachery!" he would come to life again as savage as a wolf. If any

one scolded him he would lie down and wipe his eyes with his paw, which

was irresistible and turned the scolding voice into laughter.

There was one senior officer that Nipper suspected was a German, and

every chance he got he would sneak up and, without preliminary warning,

take a good hold of the seat of his trousers. This major returned

Nipper's dislike with interest, and had it not been for the protection

of the colonel Nipper's career might have been cut short before we left

Australia.

Nipper never seemed to entertain much respect for the Army Service

Corps, and sometimes he would attack one of their wagons with such fury

as to clear the men off it and start the horses bolting.

These were his dislikes, but his one and only hate was a military

policeman. Perhaps he had a guilty conscience; but the very sight of a

red-cap would make him foam at the mouth, and they sent in several

requests that they might be allowed to shoot him for their own

protection. The boys in camp had no special love for the M. P.'s

either, and there was very nearly a pitched battle when Nipper appeared

one day with two raw welts across his back, suspicion being immediately

laid at their door.

Nipper always appeared on parade, and considered his position to be the

right flank when in line and right ahead of everybody when in column of

route. If motor-car or horse vehicle was slow in giving way to us,

Nipper informed them who we were, which was one of the few occasions on

which he was heard to bark. At first he had some narrow escapes, but

soon discovered that "heeling-up" a horse or the rear wheel of a moving

automobile was more risky than nipping at the heels of sheep or cow.

Once our adjutant had an argument with the owner of an automobile for

breaking through our column. Nipper objected to a certain remark of

the slacker in the car, and without joining in the conversation leaped

into the car and dragged out his overcoat into the mud, not

relinquishing it until it was well soaked.

On board the troop-ship Nipper pined for the smell of the gum leaves,

and it was the only time when we lost patience with him, for every

night he would stand in the bow and howl.

The smells of Egypt disgusted Nipper, remembering the scents of the

Australian bush. Only once did he make the mistake of heeling-up a

Gyppo, after which he made a great pretense of being very sick. On

other occasions when he wanted them to keep their distance, he found

mere growling to have the desired effect.

The atmosphere of Egypt had a bad effect on Nipper's morals, and he

would sometimes disappear for days. After a while the old reprobate

acquired the disgusting habit of eating sand, which not only showed how

far he had fallen from grace, but also had a serious effect on his

health. On several occasions he had to be taken to the army medical

tent, and only the most drastic remedies saved his life.

One day the colonel read a letter he had received from old Mullins

inquiring if Nipper was still alive and reminding us that his meat had

always been cooked for him. It almost made one believe in

reincarnation, for it was really uncanny, as no human being could more

contritely express remorse than did Nipper as he listened with tail

between his legs, whining most piteously.

He accompanied me on some scouting expeditions in the desert, but his

powers were failing, and I never trusted him after one occasion on

which he made a fool of me. He showed all the symptoms of danger being

near; and sure enough on looking through my glasses I saw what appeared

to be a man with a rifle crouched behind a bush. I took three men with

me and we made a long detour to approach from behind, but after all our

precautions and alarm we found nothing but a long stick leaning against

the bush and the shadow of a rock that looked something like a man.

In the end Nipper committed suicide, and this was the manner of his

going. He was in the habit of swimming across the canal every morning

while we were at Ferry Post. This morning, however, one of the boys

noticed him go under, and diving in after him was able, after some

difficulty, to get his body ashore. He was quite stiff and we all of

us believed that he swam out a certain distance and gave up.

His bearing for days indicated that something was preying on his mind,

and as we did not know what cloud overshadowed his canine soul we

forbore to judge him.

His memory will remain for long in the hearts of those who knew him,

and we buried him in the burning sand of Arabia with the simple

inscription on a pine board:

HERE LIES

"NIPPER"

DIED ON ACTIVE SERVICE,

A TRUE COMRADE,----

SACRIFICED TO "ON," [1]

NO. 0000----REGIMENTAL PET----

----TH BRIGADE----HEATHEN.

and his identification disk was sent home to old Mullins and maybe

hangs in the old hut where, perhaps, the ghost walks no more and the

ashes of the fire smoulder undisturbed.

[1] The Egyptian sun-god.

PART III

GALLIPOLI

CHAPTER XII

THE ADVENTURE OF YOUTH

Fate has decided that Gallipoli shall always be associated with the

story of the Anzacs. This name (which is formed from the initial

letters of the _A_ustralian _N_ew _Z_ealand _A_rmy _C_orps) does not

describe more than half the troops that were engaged in that fated

campaign, but it has so caught the popular fancy, that in spite of all

historians may do, injustice will be done in the thought of the public

to the English, Scotch, and Irish regiments and the gallant French

Colonial troops who played an equally heroic part. There were

certainly no finer troops on the Peninsula--probably in the whole war

no unit has shown greater courage than did the glorious Twenty-ninth

British Division in the landing at Cape Helles.

No writer who accurately pictured these memorable months of our

"treading on the corns of the Turkish Empire" could leave out even the

loyal dark-skinned Britishers from the Hindustani hills and from the

Ganges. There both Gourkas and Sikhs added to their reputation as

fighters.

Australia and New Zealand's part does not, in actual accomplishment or

in personal daring and endurance, outclass the doings of these others,

the larger half of the army. But there is a romance and a glow about

the "Anzac" exploits that (rail at the injustice of it as you may)

makes a human-interest story that will elbow out of the mind of the

"man in the street" what other troops did. In fact, every second man

one meets has the idea that the Australians and New Zealanders were the

only men there.

I don't intend to try and write the story of Gallipoli--I haven't the

equipment or the experience--John Masefield has written the only book

that need be read, and only a man who was in that outstanding

achievement of the landing on the 25th of April has a right to the

honor of associating his name in a chronicle of "_What I did!_" What I

am going to attempt to do is just to picture it as a "winning of the

spurs" by the youngest democracy on earth.

There was something peculiarly fitting in the fate that ordained that

this adolescent nation of the South Seas should prove its fitness for

manhood in an adventure upon which were focussed the eyes of all

nations. The gods love romance, else why was the youngest nation of

earth tried out on the oldest battlefield of history? How those young

men from the continent whose soil had never been stained with blood

thrilled to hear their padres tell them as they gathered on the decks

of the troop-ships in the harbor of Lemnos, that to-morrow they would

set foot almost on the site of the ancient battlefield of Troy, where

the early Greeks shed their blood, as sung in the oldest battle-song in

the world.

These young Australians were eager to prove their country's worth as a

breeder of men. Australians have been very sensitive to the criticism

of Old World visitors--that we were a pleasure-loving people, who only

thought of sport--that in our country no one took life seriously, and

even the making of money was secondary to football, and that we would

all rather win a hundred pounds on a horse-race than make a thousand by

personal exertion. Practically every book written on Australia by an

Englishman or an American has said the same thing, that we were a

lovable, easy-going race, but did not work very hard, and in a serious

crisis would be found wanting.

The whole nation brooded over these young men, guardians of Australia's

honor, and waited anxiously for them to wipe out this slur. That

explains Australia's pride in "Anzac." It meant for us not merely our

baptism in blood--it was more even than a victory--for there, with the

fierce search-light of every nation turned upon it, our representative

manhood showed no faltering--but proved it was of the true British

breed, having nevertheless a bearing in battle that was uniquely its

own. In this age of bravest men the Australian has an abandon in fight

which on every battlefield marks him as different from any other

soldier.

There is an insidious German propaganda suggesting that the Australians

are very sore at the failure on Gallipoli and that we blame the British

Government and staff for having sent us to perish in an impossible

task. I want to say, that while in the Australian army, as private, N.

C. O. and officer, I never heard a single criticism of the government

for the Gallipoli business. There is no man who was on the Peninsula

who does not admire General Sir Ian Hamilton, and most of the officers

believe that Britain has never produced a more brilliant general. That

the expedition failed was not the fault of the commander-in-chief nor

of the troops. And, anyway, we Australians are good enough sports to

realize that there must be blunders here and there, and we're quite

ready to bear our share of the occasional inevitable disaster.

But Gallipoli was not the failure many people think. Some people seem

to have the idea that a hundred thousand troops were intended to beat a

couple of million, and take one of the strongest cities in the world.

There never was a time when the Turks did not outnumber us five to one,

when they did not have an enormous reserve, in men, equipment, and

munitions, immediately at their back, while our base was five hundred

miles away in Egypt. The Turks had a Krupp factory at Constantinople

within a few hours of them, turning out more ammunition per day than

they were using, while ours had to come thousands of miles from

England. Of course, we were never intended to take Constantinople.

The expedition was a purely naval one, and we were a small military

force, auxiliary to the navy, that was to seize the Narrows and enable

the ships to get within range of Constantinople, and so compel its

surrender. We failed, in this final objective, but we accomplished a

great deal, nevertheless. We held back probably a million Turks from

the Russians, and we left, in actual counted dead Turkish bodies, more

than double our own casualties (killed, wounded, and missing). But,

above all, we definitely impressed the German mind with the fact that

Great Britain did not only mean the British Isles but the equally loyal

and brave fighters from Britain overseas.

Here is no history of Gallipoli, but let me try to sketch four pictures

that will show you the type of men that there joked with death and made

curses sound to angel ears sweeter than the hymns of the soft-souled

churchgoer.

CHAPTER XIII

THE LANDING THAT COULD NOT SUCCEED--BUT DID

Picture yourself on a ship that was more crowded with men than ever

ship had been before, in a harbor more crowded with ships than ever

harbor had been crowded before, with more fears in your mind than had

ever crowded into it before, knowing that in a few hours you would see

battle for the first time. Having comrades crowding round, bidding you

good-bye and informing you that as _your_ regimental number added up to

thirteen, you would be the first to die, remembering that you hadn't

said your prayers for years, and then comforting yourself with the

realization that what is going to happen will happen, and that an

appeal to the general will not stop the battle, anyway, and you may as

well die like a man, and you will feel as did many of those young lads,

on the eve of the 25th of April, 1915. There was some premonition of

death in those congregations of khaki-clad men who gathered round the

padres on each ship and sang "God be with you till we meet again." You

could see in men's faces that they knew they were "going west" on the

morrow--but it was a swan-song that could not paralyze the arm or daunt

the heart of these young Greathearts, who intended that on this morrow

they would do deeds that would make their mothers proud of them.

"For if you 'as to die,

As it sometimes 'appens, why,

Far better die a 'ero than a skunk;

A' doin' of yer bit." [1]

As soon as church-parade was dismissed, another song was on the boards,

no hymn, maybe not fine poetry, but the song that will be always

associated with the story of Australia's doings in the great war,

Australia's battle-song--"Australia Will Be There"--immortalized on the

_Southland_ and _Ballarat_, as it was sung by the soldiers thereon,

when they stood in the sea-water that was covering the decks of those

torpedoed troop-ships. It was now sung by every Australian voice, and

as those crowded troop-ships moved out from Lemnos they truly carried

"Australia," eager, untried Australia--where?

The next day showed to the world that "Australia would always be

_there_!" where the fight raged thickest. Her sons might sometimes

penetrate the enemy's territory too far, but hereafter, and till the

war's end, they would always be in the front line, storming with the

foremost for freedom and democracy.

The landing could not possibly be a surprise to the Turks; the British

and French warships had advertised our coming by a preliminary

bombardment weeks previously--the Greeks knew all about our

concentration in their waters--and wasn't the Queen of Greece sister to

the Kaiser?

There were only about two places where we could possibly land, and the

Turks were not merely warned of our intentions, but they were warned in

plenty of time for them to prepare for us a warm reception. The

schooling and method of the Germans had united with the ingenuity of

the Turks to make those beaches the unhealthiest spots on the globe.

The Germans plainly believed that a landing was impossible.

Think of those beaches, with land and sea mines, densely strewn with

barbed wire (even into deep water), with machine-guns arranged so that

every yard of sand and water would be swept, by direct, indirect, and

cross fire, with a hose-like stream of bullets; think of thousands of

field-pieces and howitzers ready, ranged, and set, so that they would

spray the sand and whip the sea, merely by the pulling of triggers.

Think of a force larger than the intended landing-party entrenched,

with their rifles loaded and their range known, behind all manner of

overhead cover and wire entanglements, and then remember that you are

one of a party that has to step ashore there from an open boat, and

kill, or drive far enough inland, these enemy soldiers to enable your

stores to be landed so that when you have defeated him, you may not

perish of starvation. Far more than at Balaclava did these young men

from "down under" walk "right into the jaws of death, into the mouth of

hell!" And the Turks waited till they were _well_ within the jaws

before they opened fire. No one in the landing force knew where the

Turks were, and the Turks did not fire on us until we got to the zone

which they had so prepared that all might perish that entered there.

They could see us clearly, the crowded open boats were targets of naked

flesh that could not be missed. Was there ever a more favorable

setting for a massacre? The Turks in burning Armenian villages with

their women and children had not easier tasks than that entrenched

army. Our men in the boats were too crowded to use their rifles, and

the boats were too close in for the supporting war-ships to keep down

the fire from those trenches. How was any one left alive? By

calculation of the odds not one man should have set foot on that shore.

Make a successful landing, enabling us to occupy a portion of that

soil! What an impossible task!

[Illustration: Anzac Cove, Gallipoli.]

To the men in those boats and the men watching from the ships, it

appeared as if not merely the expedition had failed, but that not a man

of the landing force would survive. Boats were riddled with bullets

and sunk--other boats drifted helplessly as there were not enough alive

to row them--men jumped into the bullet-formed spray to swim ashore but

were caught in the barbed wire and drowned. Who could expect success,

but it nevertheless happened! The Turks were sure that we could not

land, yet _we did_. Not only did those boys set foot on those beaches,

but the remnant of that landing-party drove the Turks out of their

entrenchments up cliffs five hundred feet high, and entrenched

themselves on the summit. How did they do it? No one knows; the men

who were there don't know themselves. Did heaven intervene? Perhaps

spiritual forces may sometimes paralyze material. It must be that

right has _physical_ might, else why didn't the Kaiser get to Paris?

Mathematics and preparedness were on his side; by all reasoning Germany

ought to have overwhelmed the world in a few months, with the

superiority of her armament, but she didn't. The Turks ought to have

kept us off the Peninsula, by all laws of logic and arithmetic, _and

they didn't_. I really think the landing succeeded because those boys

thought they had failed.

They must have believed themselves doomed--they could see that there

were too few to accomplish what was even doubtful when the force was

intact. When they were on the shore they must have felt that it was

impossible that they could be taken off again. All the time more were

falling, and soon it seemed that every last man must be massacred.

They made up their minds that, at any rate, they would get a few of the

swine before they went. Every man believed that in the end he must be

killed, but determined to sell his life as dearly as possible, and that

made them the supermen that could not be "held back." A whole platoon

would be cut down, but somehow one or two would manage to get into the

trench, where, of necessity, it was hand-to-hand work, and with

laughing disregard of the odds would lay out a score of the enemy and

send the others fleeing before them, who would yell out that they were

fighting demons from hell. After the confusion in the boats, and from

the fact that in most cases companies were entirely without officers,

there was no forming up for charges--indeed, there were no orders at

all, but every man knew that he could not but be doing the right thing

every time he killed a Turk, so they just took their rifle and bayonet

in their naked hands and went to it. There was no line of battle, it

was just here, there, and everywhere, khaki-clad, laughing demons,

seeking Turks to kill.

Never was there fighting like this. All that day it went on. On the

beach, up the cliff, in the gullies, miles inland were men fighting.

It was not a battle; it would have made a master of tactics weep and

tear his hair, but these man-to-man fights kept on. Many were shot

from behind, many were wounded and fell in places where no one would

find them--some, fighting on, went in a circle and found themselves

back on the beach again. However, at nightfall some had begun to dig a

shallow line of trenches, well inland across the cliff. Single men and

small groups of them, not finding any more Turks where they were, fell

back into this ditch and helped deepen it.

Fresh Turks were massing for counter-attack, and soon came on with

fury, but we were something like an army now, and although the line had

to be shortened it never broke. The landing had been made good, the

impossible had been achieved. But there were many who died strange

deaths, many left way in, helpless, who could not be succored--many

whom the fighting lust led so far that when they thought of seeking

their comrades they found the barrier of a Turkish army now

intervening. Strange, unknown duels and combats were fought that day.

Unknown are the "Bill-Jims" who killed scores with naked hand--there

were many such. Though we beat the Turk with the odds in his favor,

yet this day and afterward he earned our respect as a fighting man.

"East is East and West is West, and never

the twain shall meet

Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's

great Judgment Seat.

But there is neither East nor West, Border,

nor Breed, nor Birth,

When two strong men stand face to face, tho'

they come from the ends of the Earth."

The Australian had proved himself the fiercest fighter of the

world. . . As one naval officer remarked, they fought not as men but

devils. Many have said that much of the loss of life was needless,

that had the Australians kept together and waited for orders not so

many would have been cut off in the bush. It was true that the

impetuosity of many took them too far to return, but it was that very

quality that won the day. They did not return, but they drove the Turk

before them and enabled others to dig in before he could re-form. You

would have to go back to mediaeval times to parallel this fighting.

There were impetuosity, dash, initiative, berserker rage, fierce

hand-to-hand fighting, every man his own general.

These were not the only qualities of the Australian fighting men, but

these alone could have succeeded on that day. When the time came for

evacuation of those hardly won and held trenches, these same troops

gave evidence of the possession of the opposite attributes of coolness,

silence, patience, co-ordination; every man acting as part of a single

unit, under control of a single will--which is discipline!

[1] Robert W. Service.

CHAPTER XIV

HOLDING ON AND NIBBLING

There are people who think that the Australian dash petered out with

that one supreme effort of landing. We had achieved the impossible in

landing--why did we not in the many months we were there, do the

comparatively easy thing and advance? Surely, now that we had stores

and equipment and artillery, we could more easily drive the Turks out

of their trenches. So many seem to think that so much was done on that

first day, and so little thereafter.

But the Peninsula is not a story of mere impetuosity and dash, it is a

story of endurance as well. As a matter of fact, those eight months of

holding on were as great a miracle as the landing. There is a limit to

the physical powers even of supermen. These men were not content with

the small strip of ground that they held, and they did attack and

defeat the Turks opposing them again and again, but as soon as a

Turkish army was beaten there was ever another fresh one to take its

place. The Turks could not attack us at one time with an army

outnumbering us by ten to one, not because they had not the troops, but

because there was not room enough. As a matter of fact, that little

army (only reinforced enough to fill up the gaps) defeated five Turkish

armies, each one larger than its own. Remember, too, that the Turks

were always better equipped and supplied--it was so easy with their

chief city of Constantinople just within "coo-ee." Our little army had

to be supplied with every single thing over thousands of miles of

water. General Hamilton said the navy was father and mother to us, and

when it is remembered that every cartridge, every ounce of food, every

drop of water, every splinter of firewood had to be brought by the

ships, it will be seen that we could not have existed a single day

without their aid. The Turks said often enough that they would push us

into the sea--they continually called on Allah to aid them--we were

only a handful after all; we only held a few hundred acres of their

filthy soil, but onto that we clung, sometimes by the skin of our

teeth. And it was the weather, not the Turks, that made us leave in

the end.

Ever and anon we alarmed the Turk by nibbling a piece nearer to his

sacred city. Never did men live under worse conditions than in those

eight months of hell, yet never was an army so cheerful. "Bill-Jim,"

which is Australia's name for her soldier-boy, always makes the best of

things, and soon made himself at home on that inhospitable shore.

The first thing he decided needed alteration was his uniform. Breeches

and puttees were not only too hot but they closed in the leg and

afforded cover to the lively little fellow who lives indiscriminately

on the soldiers of both sides. As each soldier began to trim his

uniform to his own idea of comfort, it was soon, in very reality, a

"ragtime" army. Some felt that puttees were a nuisance--everybody

realized that the breeches were too long, but differed on the point as

to how much too long. Some would clip off six inches from the end,

others a foot, and others would have been as well covered without the

article at all. Almost everybody decided that a tunic was useless, but

some extremists threw away shirt and singlet as well. A Turkish army

order was captured which stated that the Australians were running short

of supplies, as they made one pair of trousers do for three men.

Evidently Johnny Turk could not understand the Australian disregard for

conventionality and his taking to nakedness when it meant comfort and

there were no women within hundreds of miles to make him conscious of

indecency. Clothes that couldn't be washed wouldn't keep one's body

clean and became the home of an army that had no interest in the fight

for democracy. The Australian showed his practical common sense in

discarding as much as possible--but, say, those boys would have caused

some amusement if drawn up for review!

Water was certainly the most precious thing. There never was enough to

drink, but even then there are always men who would rather wash than

drink, and to see these men having their bath in a jam-tin just showed

how habit is, in many of us, stronger than common sense, for there was

never water enough to more than spread out the dirt or liquefy it so

that it would fill up the pores. Others who must bathe adopted a more

effective but more dangerous proceeding. Of course, the sea was

there--surely plenty of water for washing! Just so, but this bath was

pretty unhealthy, for it was practically always whipped by shrapnel and

you went in at the risk of your life. Some of the best swimmers used

to say it was all right so long as you dived whenever you heard the

screech of a shell--that the shrapnel pellets did not penetrate the

water more than a few inches. Most men did without either of this

choice of baths, and used a scraper. It was evidenced on the Peninsula

that one of the greatest of civilizers is a razor. By necessity few

could shave, and you soon could not recognize the face of your best

chum as it hid itself beneath a growth of some reddish fungus. Really

handsome features were quite blotted out, and it is now evident to me

why, in civilized life, we all so gladly go through the conventional

daily torture of face-scraping.

_Thirst_ is not a thing to joke about, however, and there were times

when the allowance of water was not enough to wash down a half-dozen

bites, and the food would stick in one's throat.

There was generally enough food but mighty little variety except just

before the evacuation when stores had to be eaten to save them being

taken away or destroyed. It is all very well to say a man will eat

anything when he is hungry, but you can get so tired of bully-beef and

biscuits and marmalade-jam that your stomach simply will not digest it.

Machonochie's, which was a sort of canned Irish stew, wasn't bad, but

there wasn't always more than enough of that to supply the

quartermasters. Still there were some great chefs on the Peninsula,

men who had got their training as cooks in shearers' camps, where

anything badly cooked would be thrown at their heads. It was

marvellous how some of them could disguise a bully-beef stew, and I

have been told of men coming to blows over the merits of their

respective "company cooks."

There were more flies on the Peninsula than there was sand on the

shore, and they fought us persistently for every atom of food. Getting

a meal was a hard day's work, for all the time you had to fight away

the swarms, and no matter how quick you were with your fork, you rarely

got a mouthful that hadn't been well walked over, and it didn't do to

think where those flies might have been walking just previously. No

army ever had a better directed sanitary department, but, no matter how

clean we kept our trenches, the Turks just "loved" dirt and

"worshipped" flies, and their trenches were only ten yards away in one

place, and in no place were they far enough to make it a

record-breaking aerial flight for a fly. Perhaps it was because they

were all Turkish-bred that the flies did us so much harm, for they

certainly accounted for more deaths than the shells or bullets.

Dysentery was rife all the time and there were times when not one man

was well. If the doctors had known enough they would have put a

barrage of disinfectant in front of our trenches. We put up sandbags

to stop the bullets, but no one had devised a method to stop those

winged emissaries of death. Those who died from lead-poisoning were

but a score to the hundreds who died of fly-poisoning.

This is but a little of what holding on meant to that little force.

The Turk was not only a brave, but a "wily" fighter--snipers were

always giving trouble, and one never knew from which direction the next

shot was coming. Men with "nerves" declared that our line must be full

of spies--sometimes a shot would come through the door of a dugout

facing out to sea. These snipers were certainly brave fellows--some

were found covered with leaves--one was found in a cleft in the rock

where he must have been lowered by his comrades and he could not get

out without their help. In the early days some of the Turkish officers

who could talk English even took the extreme risk of mixing among the

troops and passing false orders. One of these spies was only

discovered through misuse of a well-known Australian slang-word. No

one in the Australian army but knows the meaning of "dinkum." Its

meaning is something the same as the American "on the level!" and is

probably the commonest word in the Australian soldier's vocabulary. He

will ask: "Is that dinkum news?" State that, "He's a dinkum fellow!"

and so on. Well, one day a man in an Australian officer's uniform

spoke to some officers in a certain sector of trench, and said he

brought a message from headquarters. He was getting a lot of

information and seemed to know several officers' names, but he bungled

over one of them, and on the officer he was speaking to inquiring, "Is

that dinkum?" he answered: "Yes, _that's_ his name!" There was no

further investigation, he was shot dead on the spot. The officer who

did it may have been hasty, but there can be no doubt that justice was

done, for he must have been either a Turk or a German and had already

found out too much.

CHAPTER XV

THE EVACUATION

Without warning, winter came down upon us. No one guessed he was so

near. We were still in our summer lack of clothing, and were not

prepared for cold weather, when like a wolf on the fold the blizzard

came down upon us. This was the worst enemy those battered troops had

yet encountered. Hardly any of those boys had ever seen snow and now

they were naked in the bitterest cold. There were more cases of

frost-bite than there were of wounds in the whole campaign. More had

their toes and fingers eaten off by Jack Frost than shells had

amputated. In those open, unprotected trenches, in misery such as they

had never dreamed could be, the lads from sunny Australia stood to

their posts. When the snow melted the trenches fell in and Turk and

Anzac stood exposed to each other's fire, but both were fighting a

common enemy and so hard went this battle with them as to compel a

truce in the fight of man against man.

Soon it was evident that our final objective of capturing the Narrows

could not be accomplished with the forces we had. Directly the winter

gales would arrive and on those exposed beaches no stores could be

landed. We had to leave and leave quickly, or starve to death. So the

evacuation was planned.

No achievement in military history was better conceived or more

faithfully carried out. Here was scope for inventive genius and many

were the devices used to bluff the Turk. We schooled him in getting

used to long periods of silence. At first he was pretty jumpy and

could not understand the change, when the men who had always given him

two for one now received his fire without retaliating. After a while

he decided that as we were quite mad there was no accounting for our

behavior. Then we scared him some more by appearing to land fresh

troops. As a matter of fact, a thousand or so would leave the beach at

night and a few hundred return in the daylight under the eyes of the

Turkish aeroplanes, causing them to report concentration of more

troops. Stores were taken out to the ships by night, and the empty

boxes brought back and stacked on the beaches during the day. It must

have appeared as if we were laying in for the winter.

There were many inventive brains of high quality working at great

pressure during all the days of holding on, but one of the cleverest

ideas put into operation was the arrangement devised by an engineer

whereby rifles were firing automatically in the front-line trenches

after every man had left. There is no doubt the Turks were completely

bluffed. When the remaining stores were fired after being well soaked

with gasolene, the Turkish artillery evidently thought they had made a

lucky hit and they poured shells into the flames and completed for us

the work of destruction. I doubt if they even found the name of a

Chicago packing-house on a bully-beef case, when next day they wandered

curiously through the abandoned settlement that for many months had

been peopled by the bronzed giants from farthest south.

The last men to leave the actual trenches were the remnant of the

heroic band that were the first to land. They requested the honor of

this post of danger _and it could not be refused them_. They must have

expected that their small company would be still further thinned; but

this place of miracles still had another in store, as the evacuation

was accomplished from Anzac itself without a casualty.

The last party to leave the beach was a hospital unit--chaplain,

doctors, and orderlies. It was intended that they should remain to

care for the wounded, though they would necessarily fall into the hands

of the Turks. It was not feared that they would be ill-treated, for

all the reports we had of prisoners in the hands of the Turks went to

show that they were well cared for. In this as in other respects the

Turk showed himself to be much more civilized than the German. It was

a pleasant surprise to be able to greet again these comrades, who but a

few minutes before we had commiserated on their hard luck; for they

came off in the last boats, there being no wounded to require their

services. The padre, who was a Roman Catholic priest, said that he

missed the chance of a lifetime and would now probably never know what

the inside of a harem was like!

They were sad hearts that looked back to those fading shores. It

almost seemed as if we were giving up a bit of Australia to the enemy.

Those acres had been taken possession of by Australian courage,

baptized with the best of the country's blood, and now held the sacred

dust of the greatest of our citizens, whose title to suffrage had been

purchased by the last supreme sacrifice. Never were men asked to do a

harder thing than this--to leave the bones of their comrades to fall

into alien hands. These were men white of face and with clenched fists

that filed past those wooden crosses and few who did not feel shame at

the desertion. Some there were who whispered to the spirits hovering

near an appeal for understanding and forgiveness. They wondered how

the worshippers of the Crescent would treat the dead resting beneath

the symbols that to them represented an accursed infidel faith. There

are cravens in Australia who suggest that she has done more than her

share in this struggle, but while one foot of soil that has been

hallowed by Australian blood remains in the hands of the enemy the man

who would withhold one man or one shilling is not only no true

Australian but no true man--a dastard and a traitor.

When peace shall dawn and the Turk shall heed the voice of United

Democracy as it proclaims with force, "Thou shall not oppress, nor

shalt thou close the gates of these straits again!" then shall visitors

from many lands wander through these trenches and marvel what kind of

men were they that held them for so long against such odds, and gaze at

the honeycombed cliff where twentieth-century men lived like

cave-dwellers, and sang and joked more than the abiders in halls of

luxury.

To-day the name Anzac is the envy of all other soldiers, and while none

would want to live that life again, every man who was there rejoices in

the memory of the association and comradeship of those days. Read the

"Anzac Book" and you will see that there was much talent and many a

spark of genius in that army. But only those who were there know of

the many busy brains that worked overtime devising improvements in the

weapons that were available, and ever seeking to invent contrivances

that added to comfort. Many of the inventions are forgotten, but some

are in use in France to-day, notably the "periscope rifle" or

"sniperscope" and the "thumb periscope" which is no thicker than a

man's finger. It was found that our box-periscopes were always being

smashed by the Turkish snipers; so one ingenious brain collared an

officer's cane and scooped, out the centre. With tiny mirrors top and

bottom, it was a very effective periscope, and soon most officers were

minus their canes. Some very good bombs were made from jam-tins with a

wad of guncotton, and filled up with all manner of missiles. These

improvised bombs were risky to handle, and some men lost their lives

through carelessness, though probably there were nearly as many

accidents through overcaution. They would generally be provided with a

five-second fuse, and you were supposed to swing three times before

throwing. Some men who had not much faith in the time-fuse threw the

bombs as soon as the spark struck, which gave the Turks time to return

them. Both sides played this game of catch, but I think we were the

better at it. The way of lighting the fuse was to hold the head of a

match on the powder stream, drawing the friction-paper across it. This

generally caught immediately, but after a while some one introduced the

idea of having burning sticks in the trench, and a "torchman" would

pass down the trench lighting each fuse. One man was not sure that the

spark had caught and began blowing on it and was surprised when it blew

his hand off. We would drop on top of the Turks' bombs a coat or

sand-bag, and it was surprising how little damage was done. If you put

a sheet of iron on top of one, or a sand-bag full of earth, it would

make the explosion very much worse, but loose cloth would spread out

and make a spring-cushion by compression of the air above.

There was another use made of empty jam-tins: they were tied to our

barbed wire so that if any Turk tried to get through he would make a

noise like the cowbells at milking-time. Talking about barbed wire,

Johnny Turk played a huge joke on us on one occasion. As the staking

down of wire was too risky, we prepared some "knife-rests" (hedges of

wire shaped like a knife rest) and rolled them over our parapet, but

opened our eyes in amazement to find in the morning that they had only

stopped a few feet from the Turkish trenches. The Turks had sneaked

out and tied ropes to them and hauled them over to protect themselves.

Thereafter we took care to let Abdul do his own wiring.

CHAPTER XVI

"SHIPS THAT PASS . . ."

Although we did not capture the Narrows (that narrow stream of water

through which a current runs so swiftly that floating mines are carried

down into it faster than the mine-sweepers could gather them up), this

did not prevent at least one representative of the navy from passing

that barrier. This was the Australian submarine, A2. It may not be

generally known that Australia had two submarines at the outbreak of

war. These would appear antediluvian alongside the latest underwater

monster, but, nevertheless, one of these accomplished a feat such as no

German submarine has ever approached. The first of our submarines met

an unknown fate as it disappeared somewhere near New Guinea. There has

been much speculation as to what happened to it, but its size can be

guessed at when I mention that a naval officer told me he thought it

probable that a shark had eaten it. As was the same type, but it

achieved lasting fame in that it passed under the mine-field, through

the Narrows, across the Sea of Marmora, and into the port of

Constantinople. Right between the teeth of the Turkish forts and fleet

it sank seven Turkish troop-ships and returned safely. A certain town

in Australia that was called "Germanton" has been rechristened

"Holbrook" in honor of the commander of this gallant little craft.

* * * * * *

Every one has heard the story of the destruction of the _Emden_ by the

Australian cruiser _Sydney_, but it is worth bringing to notice that

the captain of the _Emden_ was of a different type from the pirates who

have made the German sailor the most loathed creature that breathes.

It is hard to believe that he was a German, for it seems incredible

that a German sailor would refrain from sinking a ship because there

was a woman on board. One can imagine that he would be ostracized by

his brother officers of the wardroom, for he actually had accompanying

him a spare ship on which to put the crews of the ships he sank. One

can hardly imagine him sitting at mess with the much-decorated murderer

of the women and children on the _Lusitania_, and it is the latter who

is the popular hero in Germany. There are none more ready than the

Australian soldiers to show chivalry to an honorable foe, and when the

_Sydney_ brought Captain Mueller and the crew of the _Emden_ among the

troop-ships these prisoners were cheered again and again. They could

not understand their reception, but the lads from Australia admired

these brave men for their plucky fight and clever exploits. Would

they, had they not been captured early in the war, have changed and

become like the vile, cowardly sharks that infest the seas in U-boats?

* * * * * *

The Great War is writing history on such a large scale that the old

classic stories of heroism and devotion to duty will be forgotten by

the next generation. The story of the _Birkenhead_ has always been

considered the highest illustration of discipline and steadiness in the

face of death evinced by any troops, but the citizen-soldiers from the

young Australian democracy have in this war given on two occasions

proof that they possessed the same qualities. The _Southland_ has been

written in letters of gold on the pages of Australia's history. When

the sneaking U-boat delivered its deadly blow in the entrails of this

crowded troop-ship, there was no more excitement than if the

alarm-bugles had summoned them to an ordinary parade. Some of the boys

fell in on deck without their life-belts, but were sent below to get

them. They had to go, many of them, to the fourth deck, but they

scorned to show anxiety by proceeding at any other pace than a walk.

It was soon evident that there were not enough boats left to take all

off and so none would enter them and leave their comrades to go down

with the ship. They began to sing "Australia Will Be There"--

"Rally round the banner of your country,

Take the field with brothers o'er the foam,

On land or sea, wherever you be,

Keep your eye on Germany.

For England home and beauty

Have no cause to fear--

Should old acquaintance be forgot--

No--no--no, no, no--

Australia will be the-re-re-re!

Australia _will_ be there!"

Some one called out, "Where?" and the answer came from many

throats--"In hell, in five minutes!" and it looked like it. But

nothing in a future life could hold any terrors for the man who had

campaigned during a summer in Egypt. In the end volunteers were taken

into the stokehole and the _Southland_ was beached. The colonel was

drowned and there were a few other casualties, but most escaped without

a wetting, so what looked like an adventure turned out to be a pretty

tame affair after all. But Australia will ever remember how those boys

stood fast with the dark waters of death washing their feet and, like

Stoics, waited calmly for whatever Fate would send them. This epic of

Australian fortitude was written in September, 1915, and is part of the

Dardanelles story.

But the latest troops from Australia are of the same heroic stuff as

those who wrote the name "Anzac" with their blood on the Gallipoli

beach. For the _Southland_ incident was duplicated in almost every

particular on the _Ballarat_ in April, 1917. This story was enacted in

the waters of the English Channel, and there were no casualties, for

the work of rescue by torpedo-boats was made easy as each man calmly

waited his turn and enlivened the monotony meanwhile with ragtime, and

again and again did the strains of "Australia Will Be There!" ring out

over the waters. As they sang "So Long, Letty," many substituted other

Christian names, and it looked as if it might be "so long" in reality.

But they knew that to an Australian girl there would be no "sadness of

farewell" when she realized that her lover had been carried heavenward

by the guardian angel that waits to bear upward the soul of a hero.

* * * * * *

"Big Lizzie" (the _Queen Elizabeth_) was for many months queen of the

waters round Gallipoli. Her tongue boomed louder than any other, and

it was always known when she spoke. She was the latest thing in

dreadnoughts then, just commissioned, and the largest ship afloat.

Though since that time the British navy has added several giants that

dwarf even her immense proportions. The boys in the trenches and on

the beach at Anzac never failed to thrill with pride as they heard her

baying forth her iron hate against the oppressor. We knew that

wherever her ton-weight shells fell there would be much weeping and

gnashing of teeth among the enemy. We readily believed all the stories

told of her prowess, no matter how impossible they seemed. No one

doubted even when we heard that she had sunk a boat in the Sea of

Marmora twenty-seven miles away, firing right over a mountain. She was

there before our eyes an epitome of the might and power of the British

navy that had policed the seas of the world, sweeping them clear of the

surface pirate and also confining the depredations of the underwater

assassin, so that all nations except the robber ones, might trade in

safety. How true it is that the British navy has been the guarantor of

the freedom of the seas, so that even in British ports over the whole

wide world all nations should have equality of trade! Never has this

power been used selfishly: take for instance, the British dominions of

the South Seas, where American goods can be sold cheaper than those of

Britain, for the shorter distance more than compensates for the small

preference in tariff. The almost unprotected coast of the American

continent has been kept free of invaders; its large helpless cities are

unshelled, because "out there" in the North Sea the British navy

maintains an eternal vigilance.

After some valuable battleships were sent to the bottom by the German

submarines it was realized that "Big Lizzie" was too vulnerable and

valuable to be kept in these waters; so in the later months her place

was taken by some weird craft that excited great curiosity among the

sailormen. These were the "monitors" which were just floating

platforms for big guns. They were built originally for the rivers of

South America, but it was discovered that their shallow draft made them

impervious to torpedo attack; and as they were able to get close in

shore, their big guns made havoc of the Turkish defenses. They do not

travel at high speed and appear to waddle a good deal, but they have

been most invaluable right along, and were of great assistance lately

to the Italians in holding up the German drive. They have been used

also around Ostend and are of prime importance wherever the flank of an

army rests on the sea. I have picked up portions of their shells and

seen the shrapnel lying like hail on sand-hills in Arabia (more than

twenty miles from the Suez Canal, which was the nearest waterway).

We also passed some other amazing-looking craft which were being towed

down the Red Sea. They looked like armored houseboats, and were for

use up the Tigris. I should not like to have been boxed up in one, for

it looked as if they would have to use a can-opener to get you out, and

it did not appear to me as though the sides were bullet-proof. But

trust the Admiralty to know what they are doing! Pages could be filled

with the mere cataloguing of the various kinds of ships used by the

navy in this war, and I am told that these river "tanks" were the prime

factor in the advance in Mesopotamia.

A marine court would decide that the _River Clyde_ was not a ship at

all but a fortress. There was a naval engagement in this war when two

ships were refused their share of the prize money for the capture of

German ships because they were anchored, the sea lawyers decreeing that

they were forts.

But the old, sea-beaten collier _River Clyde_ deserves to be remembered

as a ship that has passed, for before she grounded on the beach she

carried in her womb as brave a company of heroes as have ever

emblazoned their deeds on a nation's roll of honor. The wooden horse

that carried Ulysses and the heroic Greeks into the heart of ancient

Troy did not enclose a braver band than were these modern youths shut

within the ironsides of the old tramp steamer which bore them into the

camp of their enemies somewhere near the supposed site of the Homeric

city.

Doors had been cut in the sides of the old steamer, and lighters were

moored alongside with launches. When she ran aground these lighters

were towed round so as to form a gangway to the shore, and the troops

poured down onto them. The Turks were as prepared in this case to

repel an attack as at Anzac, and held their fire until the ship was

hard and fast. They then had a huge target at pointblank range on

which to concentrate leaden hail from machine-guns and rifles aided by

the shells from the Asiatic forts. Few lived in that eager first

rush--some jumped into the sea to wade or swim, but were shot in the

water or drowned under weight of their equipment. Again and again the

lighters broke from their moorings, and many brave swimmers defied

death to secure them. One boy won the Victoria Cross for repeatedly

attempting to carry a rope in his teeth to the shore. But the crosses

earned that day if they were awarded would give to the glorious

Twenty-Ninth Division a distinction that none would begrudge them. The

regiments of the Hampshires, Dublin, and Munster Fusiliers added in a

few hours more glory to their colors than past achievements had given

even such proud historic names as theirs.

The landing at Cape Helles and the wooden horse are beacons of the

Gallipoli campaign that shine undimmed alongside the Australian-New

Zealand landing at Anzac which, as a rising sun, proclaimed the dawn of

the day of their nationhood.

Another "ship that passed" and in its passing wrought havoc on the

enemy was one too small to support a man. It was a tiny raft, and it

was propelled by one-man power, who swam ashore from a destroyer,

towing this craft which was to bluff the Turks into believing that a

whole army was descending upon them. The man was Lieutenant Freyberg,

and on the raft he carried the armament that was to keep a large

Turkish force standing to arms at Bulair (the northern-most neck of the

Peninsula) when they might have been preventing the landing on the

other beaches. The weapons this gallant young officer used were merely

some flares which he lit at intervals along the beach, and then went

naked inland to overlook the army he was attacking. Leaving them to

endure for the rest of that night the continual strain of a momentarily

expected attack, he then swam out to sea, for five miles, searching

anxiously for the destroyer that was to pick him up. After several

more hours of floating he was sighted by the rescuing ship and taken on

board, exhausted and half dead. The Turkish papers stated that "the

strong attack at Bulair was repulsed with heavy losses by our brave

defenders."

This hero, who is a New Zealander, and now Brigadier-General Freyberg,

V.C., is well-known in California and was at Leland-Stanford University.

PART IV

THE WESTERN FRONT