E. C. Buley

“ To expect to fight, to realize that there is always a chance to win, but a reasonable expectation of defeat, to seek expedients without being discouraged by failure; all these things make good training for soldiering. They are all part of the daily life of the Australasian, even of the Australasian of the cities. Disaster, sudden and swift; change, inexorable and sweeping; disappointment, bitter and undeserved; he recognizes them all as everyday factors in his existence. The fighting spirit cannot be held long in abeyance if they are to be countered and overcome. ”

“ How they cheered as the pioneers swept the Turks off the coast and drove them into the thick scrub that skirted the more distant ranges of hills! The audacity of that landing has no superior in history, and Australian soldiers will ever be remembered for their initiative, resource, and daring. Where men less used to acting on their own responsibility would have formed bravely, and waited for orders from some superior, these men from the South dashed off in little groups, all working efficiently, as if by some tacit understanding. ”

“ Nature, as well as the deliberate plan of the Australasians themselves, has ensured that an army of Australasians must necessarily compose a very fine fighting force. It may be that the qualifications of the soldier of the future shall consist of an incredible callousness of heart, and an extended knowledge of all the detestable forms that can be assumed by the most hideous of human crimes. But the qualifications of a warrior have not yet been so far modified by the Great War that he has been converted into a poisoner. ”

“ Dear Australian Boys,—Every Australian woman's heart this week is thrilling with pride, with exultation, and while her eyes fill with tears she springs up as I did when the story in Saturday's Argus was finished and says, 'Thank God, I am an Australian.' Boys, you have honoured our land; you, the novices, the untrained, the untaught in war's grim school, have done the deeds of veterans. ”

“ He carries no spare flesh, but is a big-boned, thick-set fellow, brought up on mutton and oatmeal. His cheeks are rosy and tanned with the salt wind [22] that never ceases to blow over the wholesome island where he grows rich harvests of grain and tends his plentiful flocks. He is a stiff, great fellow, as hard as nails, and as healthy as a big bullock. His keen blue eyes look out from under a smooth brow unfurrowed by any care. He comes from a land where there is no want; his million or more of fellow New Zealanders have not yet built a big city or created a huge fortune. ”

“ One day they lost their lieutenant, a great favourite, by a shell which wounded him mortally and kicked a lot of sandbags on top of him. The men set to work like maniacs, pulling away the sandbags and cursing horribly. He heard them and said, 'Don't swear, men; that does no good.' They were his last words. It is a fact that an oath in that trench was a worse crime than cowardice from that day forward. ”

“ From the support trench, which was full of Turks, there poured a hail of bullets and grenades, causing us to reel and fall back for a breathing space. Then our own bomb throwers stepped forward and hurled bombs into the trench, whence fragments of shattered humanity leaped up into the [139] air. The desperate men sprang from the trench and bravely charged, but ten yards was as far as they got; under our deadly rifle and machine-gun fire they went down like wheat before the scythe. ”

“ Right and left, on higher crests, were the Turks in force, determined to drive them from their post of vantage. Desperately the New Zealanders hung on to what they had gained, until support should come. The history of that attempt to hold a hilltop is one of the most glorious in all the annals of war. Some day the world will know how sixteen New Zealanders kept a long section of trench against a whole host of enemies for three hours. If the desperate valour of the men of New Zealand, and of their Gurkha friends, could have conserved the advantage, it would never have been lost. ”

“ THE HEART OF EMPIRE STIRRED If Australasia sought reward for the devotion and heroism displayed in the time of the peril of the whole Empire, other than the consciousness of duty done ungrudgingly and continuously, that reward has surely been accorded by the proud Mother Country. From the King himself down to the humblest of his subjects, Britons have shared with the Southern nations all the sentiments that have been elicited by the performance of Australasians in their first great essay at waging war. ”

“ No sooner had he left this rest trench than a great "Jack Johnson" came, burying the reinforcements under many feet of earth. Their comrades sprang to their assistance, digging away the earth like possessed beings. One by one the dead and dying men were discovered, and tenderly borne back to the beach from which they had just come. ”

“ Are you on a quest in search of gain such as led your fathers to the Australian shore? Are you preparing to invade and outrage weaker nationalities in lawless raids of conquest? Thank God, your mission is as pure and as noble as any soldiers undertook to rid the world of would-be tyrants. ”

“ Do not forget the desperate battles long drawn out which you must fight and win. Do not forget Lord Kitchener's warning to the soldiers of the Empire. Do not forget the distant homes that love you. Do not forget the fair fame and stainless honour of Australia committed to your keeping. A few bad ones can sully the reputation of a whole army. ”

“ Yet it was through this screen of horror that we had to dash, and by sheer force drive the enemy out of their newly-acquired position. Clear above all other noises shrilled a whistle; and with a yell each man dashed forward. There was a confused glimpse of men falling, and of others staggering back through the smoke, all streaming with blood and with limbs shattered by the hideous bombs. But in thirty seconds the communication trench was clear. ”

“ And the Australasian is certainly no fool.
There are other circumstances, too, in his daily life that may be partly responsible for his curious readiness to take off his coat and fight. The uncertainty of his surroundings may be responsible for his belief that life is one long fight with circumstance. He goes forth to his daily occupation with the light of battle in his eye; there is something pathetically cynical in his creed that it is necessary to fight for what he gets, even after he has fairly earned it by more peaceful means. ”

“ No finer feat of arms has been performed during the war than this sudden landing in the dark, the storming of the heights, and, above all, the holding on to the position thus won while reinforcements were poured from the transports.'
"It is high praise, but the witness is true, and those Australians and New Zealanders are enrolled among the champions whom the Empire, for generations to come, will delight to honour. One of the best traits of all is the generous tribute given by each group to the indomitable valour of the rest. ”

“ As the open boats, under a hail from hidden guns, poured out their men in thousands on the beach, below perpendicular cliffs of tangled scrub, the task of breasting those heights looked, to many expert eyes, a sheer impossibility. But by the dauntless gallantry of brave men the impossible feat was accomplished, and the record of those hours and of the days which followed is now a portion of our Empire's heritage for ever. ”

“ Coolness and resource in danger, magnanimity in the glory of victory, and stoutheartedness in the first abashment of defeat may still be called the soldier's virtues; and the oldest excuse for war, that the soldier [305] kills without murder in his heart, can still be pleaded by the Briton who takes up arms in defence of his country.
Soldiering of this sort has always been an instinct with the Southern Briton. The individual citizen there is under no misapprehension about the preparedness of his country for war; he looks around and sees for himself. ”

“ I have never seen the like of these wounded Australians in war before, for as they were towed among the ships while accommodation was being found for them, although many of them were shot to bits and without hope of recovery, their cheers resounded through the night, and you could just see amid a mass of suffering humanity arms being waved in greeting to the crews of the warships. ”

“ Most of us, I suppose, whisper longingly at times, perhaps in hours like this we say out, almost imperatively, 'We want to know more, a great deal more, about the nature, even the particulars, of that other life. They are so difficult to picture in plain words in their relation to what we are familiar with here, and the more we try to work out the vision the more bewildered we grow. ”

“ They claim as part of their heritage those pages of British history which tell how gloriously Great Britain has espoused the cause of the weak in the past. There is no quarrel in which the men of Australasia would more gladly take up arms with the Mother Country than one for the innocent weak against the guilty strong. And such a quarrel, they are well persuaded, is the root cause of the Great War in which they are now fighting. ”

“ There will always be generous rivalry between the troops of two great nations fighting side by side in a just cause. But the spirit in which the Australasians went out to the service of the Mother Empire goes deeper and further still. It holds nothing questioning or calculated, it is the conduct of men who hail as a proud privilege the opportunity of [312] laying down their lives for the underlying principles on which the structure of the British Empire is reared. ”

“ For Australians not the least proud of the memories of the first engagement fought by their navy will ever be that silent greeting of the returning conqueror. The restraint imposed upon that army of Australasians, going out for the first time to make war in Europe, was hardly natural, when the thrilling nature of the incident is considered. ”

“ The spirit of Australia can best be gauged by reading an extract from a letter written to the Australian wounded by a young lady who is a teacher at the High School in Ballarat, and which was cabled all over the world, since it echoes truly the pride of Australia in its heroes, and the determination of the Commonwealth that all shall be worthy of their devotion and grand patriotism. ”

“ When the enfilading fire down the valley was at its worst and orders were posted that the ambulance men must not go out, the Man and the Donkey continued placidly at their work. At times they held trenches of hundreds of men spellbound, just to see them at their work. Their quarry lay motionless in an open patch, in easy range of a dozen Turkish rifles. Patiently the little donkey waited under cover, while the man crawled through the thick scrub until he got within striking distance. Then a lightning dash, and he had the wounded man on his back and was making for cover again. ”

“ Perhaps the most famous of all the stretcher-bearers at Anzac was the ubiquitous hero known to every Australasian there as the Man with the Donkey. They were a quaint couple. The man was a 6 ft. Australian, hard-bitten and active. His gaunt profile spoke of wide experience of hard struggles in rough places. The donkey was a little mouse-coloured animal, no taller than a Newfoundland dog. His master called him Abdul. The man seemed to know by intuition every twist and slope of the tortuous valleys of Sari Bair. ”

“ It was time, for by seven in the evening the Turkish attack was at its height. They came in dense masses armed with an abundance of bombs, and fought as no Turk had ever fought before in the experience of the Anzacs. All night the attack was maintained, but the Anzacs meant to hold what they had got. A section of a trench was lost here and there, owing to the showers of bombs which the Turks lavished on their former position. But always the men of Anzac recovered what they had lost. ”

“ No sooner had the first man climbed the parapet of the Anzac trench than the storm of bullets began. It was, as one of the assailants said, "like rice at a wedding." Not a man ever reached the trench. ”