J. H. Patterson

“ I am perfectly certain that the Gallipoli motor cyclists never gave a thought to absent friends; they were much too busy avoiding pitfalls and shells. They flew over the most uneven ground, took small trenches as it were in their stride, and were generally the most dare-devil set of boys I have ever seen. Many a time we stood and watched through our glasses this dangerous strip of road which the Turks had got the range of to a yard. As the wagons, gun-teams and cyclists approached it, they would get up the pace, and fly through it at top speed. ”

“ The vicious thing can be seen soaring high up into the air, until it reaches a point directly overhead, then it hovers for a moment, like a hawk over its prey, and finally swoops down, pulverising everybody and everything near which it explodes.
From my own observation of trench warfare I would say unhesitatingly that no assault should be launched against the enemy until his trenches had been thoroughly pounded to pieces by high explosive, his men demoralised by a constant stream of shells, and all wire entanglements or other barriers swept out of the way of the advance. ”

“ The Turks would charge, crying: "Allah! Allah!" The Australians would respond by leaping on the parapets of their trenches, shouting: "Come on, you blighters, and bring him with you." They fear nothing—God, Man, Death, or Devil!
When we eventually plant our flag triumphantly on Gallipoli, the flag of Australia and New Zealand must float in the place of honour upon the Anzac peaks, for here, in their shadows, at peace forever, lie thousands of their bravest sons.
After a few hours my trawler weighed anchor and we steamed south for Helles, which we reached in a couple of hours. ”

“ Those were glorious days—days when one could thoroughly enjoy warfare—a wild gallop over the veldt, a good fight in the open, and the day won by the best men.
In these days war is robbed of all its glory and romance. It is now but a dyke-maker's job, and a dirty one at that; but much as the soldier may dislike this method of warfare, it has come to stay, and we must make the best of a bad job, adapt ourselves to the new conditions, and by sticking it out, as we have always done, wear down the foe. ”

“ The rattle of musketry was like the continuous roll of kettledrums, and considering all our surroundings, and the fierce fight that was going on, it was altogether a night to be remembered.
At last we reached the troops holding the front line; there were no supports or reserves, so far as I could see; every man had been put into the firing line, owing to the terrible losses that had been sustained.
Here in the dark, with shot and shell flying all round, we unpacked our mules and handed over the ammunition and food to the brigade. ”

“ We can well imagine that the spirits of those heroes of France and Britain and Greater Britain who have fallen in the fight are eagerly watching and waiting for the hour of our victory; and when our Fleet sails triumphantly through the Dardanelles, as it surely must, and thunders forth a salute over the mortal remains of our mighty dead, their shades will be at peace, for they will then know that, after all, they have not died in vain. ”

“ A first-aid dressing station was close by, where scores of wounded, French and Turks, were being doctored and bandaged. These sights of the uglier and sadder side of war are not pleasing, and any one who has seen the horrors of it can never wish to view such scenes again. I would put all Foreign Ministers, Diplomats and Newspaper Proprietors in the forefront of every battle for which they were in any way responsible. However, duty has to be done, even in the midst of horrors, so saluting the General, I pushed further along to the front, where I could see Gye with the mules in the distance. ”

“ For a time everything was quiet as we splashed our way along, there being a lull just then in the fighting; all of a sudden it broke out again with feverish intensity. The Gully Ravine made a turn at one part of its course which took us right between the line of fire of the two opposing forces. Shells from our own guns screamed and passed safely over the ravine, but the shells from the Turkish batteries often burst exactly overhead, scattering shrapnel all round, at other times plunking into the cliff on our right and smothering us with clay and gravel. ”

“ It is said that the gods strike with blindness those whom they are about to destroy and it certainly looks as if the gods had held the searing iron rather close to our eyes; but, notwithstanding all the mistakes and in spite of our politicians and our blundering strategists, and in spite of our neglect of science and scientists, I have still absolute confidence, owing to what I have seen of the splendid pluck and endurance of our men, both in the Fleet and in the Army, that we will come out of this great World War triumphant. ”

“ As we ploughed along the calm sea, to the slow beat of the engines, each hour seemed a century, but at last we were able to distinguish the misty outline of the Asiatic shore and, a little later on, we saw, coming to meet us like an out-stretched arm and hand, a land fringed and half-hidden by the fire and smoke which enveloped it as if some great magician had summoned the powers of darkness to aid in its defence. ”

“ Finding life rather monotonous, and being somewhat fed up with bully beef, he bored a hole in his tin, stuck a cartridge into it, and hurled the novel projectile over the sandbag barrier among the Turks, who could be heard flying for their lives away from it along the trench, evidently thinking it was some new form of diabolical bomb we had invented. Then one man, a little bolder than the rest, could be heard cautiously stalking it; he even threw stones at it, and when these failed to cause an explosion, he plucked up enough courage to hook it towards him with his fixed bayonet. ”

“ Long lines of communication trenches were dug to and fro everywhere. Indeed, the amount of earthwork that was excavated in digging trenches and dug-outs, both at Helles and Anzac, was simply "colossal." If the same amount of digging, trenching and dug-outing had been concentrated into one effort, it would have been possible to make a canal across the narrowest part of the Peninsula, wide enough and deep enough for the Queen Elizabeth and the rest of the British Fleet to sail through, without let or hindrance, to Constantinople! ”

“ I well remember that one of our most successful battles was fought on a day when the wind carried the dust into the faces of the Turks; towards the close of this fight I saw a couple of battalions go right through and over all the Turkish trenches within sight, and then get engulfed in a great ravine on the very slope of Achi Baba itself, where they were hidden from view, and then I saw thousands of Turks stream down through communication trenches on each side of our men, filling the trenches in their rear, as could be plainly seen by the bristling bayonets which showed above the parapets. ”

“ Worst trial of all is the trench mortar! This venomous weapon sends a bomb weighing a hundred pounds or more of the most deadly high explosive plumb into the midst of a trench with marvellous accuracy at any range up to four hundred yards. ”

“ But war is war, and as a shell or bullet may come at any moment and bring sudden death with it to one's self, one gets used to the idea, and somehow it does not seem so dreadful. Many of us often escaped by the merest chance. ”

“ One of the very worst trials of trench warfare is to see the dead body of a comrade lying out in the open, gradually fading away before one's eyes, a mummied hand still clutching the [178] rifle, the helmet a little way off, looking ever so weird in its gruesome surroundings.
While in the trenches one is, of course, subject at all times to shells, rifle fire, mine explosions, poison gas, bombs, liquid fire, and other diabolical inventions. The Turks, however, did not use either poison gas or liquid fire, and, of course, neither did the British. ”

“ The officers and men of the corps of Royal Engineers who wore no red-tabs were simply splendid, and it was with admiration that I often watched them at all hours of the day and night, digging trenches, making saps, or putting up barbed wire, right in the very teeth of the enemy—"Second to None."
It is sometimes of vital importance in war to do the exact contrary to all peace tradition; but men get into a groove, get narrow, and often fail to rise to the occasion. I have a good instance of this in mind. A certain officer refused to issue sandbags from his store when they were urgently needed. ”

“ As we approached near to our landing-place, we could see through the haze, smoke and dust, the gleam of bayonets, as men [93] swayed and moved hither and thither in the course of the fight, while the roar of cannon and the rattle of the machine-guns and rifles were absolutely deafening. We could well imagine what a veritable hell our brave fellows who were attacking this formidable position must be facing, for, in addition to rifle and machine-gun fire from the surrounding cliffs, they were also at times under a deadly cannonade from the Turkish batteries established on the Asiatic shore. ”

“ The 29th Division extended from the French left, near the right centre of the saucer, across to the Ægean Sea. The front was towards Achi Baba, and our men made headway towards it in the face of fierce opposition. Our guns were barking away at the Turks in their trenches, and the great guns of the Fleet were hurling their high explosives, which descended on the doomed Turks with terrific effect. One could see great spurts of flame, smoke, earth, timbers, rocks, Turks, in fact, everything in the neighbourhood, going up as though shot out of the crater of a volcano. ”

“ Our men instantly lined the trenches and opened such an intense fire that the Turks were utterly routed, and those of them that were left alive fled back to the cover of their own trenches. The battle was taken up all along the line, and, if volume of musketry counts for anything, it was the hottest night fight we had during all the time we were on the Peninsula. ”

“ When I was at Washington, General Wotherspoon, the Chief of the War College there, very kindly supplied me with maps and notes which he had himself made of the battlefield of Gettysburg, and I am convinced that, if General Longstreet had arrived on the field in time, victory would have rested with the South; and I am equally convinced that, if Stonewall Jackson had been alive, Longstreet would have been in his proper place at the right time. ”

“ A night or two before I left Gallipoli we had a sudden downpour of rain which made the trenches raging torrents, and turned the dug-outs into diving baths; but still our men remained cheery throughout it all; nothing can depress them. ”

“ In spite of the rain of death some of the Dublins and Munsters succeeded in effecting a landing and making a dash for shelter from the tornado of fire under the little ridge of sand which, as I have already mentioned, ran round the beach. Had the Turks taken the precaution of levelling this bank of sand, not a soul could have lived in that fire-swept zone. More than half of the landing-party were killed before they could reach its friendly shelter and many others were left writhing in agony on that narrow strip of beach. ”

“ A very disagreeable feature of trench life is the unpleasant odour of the dead, which penetrates everywhere, for, of course, when an attack is made by one side or the other hundreds may be killed close to the trenches, and as a rule it is impossible either to rescue the wounded or to bury the dead, because the enemy would inevitably shoot down any one attempting such a task. ”

“ The Australian and New Zealand Divisions landed at Anzac, the key position; the 29th Division [43] beat themselves to death attacking six different and almost impregnable positions on the toe of the Peninsula, where, I dare to say, not a single man ought ever to have been landed; in addition to the opposition they met with in Gallipoli they were subjected to a rain of shells from Asia, not only at the time of landing but throughout the whole time we wasted in occupying this utterly (from a military point of view) useless end of the Peninsula. ”