“ As the evening wore on we could see the flash from both shell and gun.
About the time we finished our frugal evening meal lightning began to play in intermittent flashes, like a heavenly searchlight, from far across the hidden Narrows and Asia Minor, and put to shame the puny bursts of light from the handiwork of man. The boats were still at it, but their dull booming was now intermixed with the rumble of distant thunder.
The lightning becomes more vivid. There is a rattling, crashing roar from the artillery of the skies that can never be equalled by any earthly batteries. ”

“ To look out on the same stretch of beach or the same patch of trench wall and the same terraces of hostile black and grey sandbags day after day is to be wearied. There is the same sitting in the same trench, shelled by the same guns, manned, perhaps (though that we endeavour to avert) , by the same Turks. Unhappily it is not the same men of ours that they maim and kill daily.
And if one’s dug-out lies on a seaward slope there is, every morning, the same stretch of the lovely Ægean, with the same two islands standing over in the west. ”

“ Here in Anzac we have suffered the tail-end of one or two autumn storms, and have had two fierce and downright gales blow up. The wind came in the night, with a suddenness that found us most unprepared. In half an hour many of us were homeless, crouching about with our bundled bedclothes, trespassing tyrannically upon the confined space of the stouter dug-outs of our friends—a sore tax upon true friendship. They lay on their backs and held down their roofs by mere weight of body until overpowered. ”

“ On the Peninsula and under fire his sterling qualities were not long in coming to the surface. Living all his life in an environment in which the pick and shovel plays an important part he proved himself an adept at sapping and mining. At this game he was worth four ordinary men. No matter how circuitous the maze of trenches, he could find his way with ease. He could turn out all sorts of dishes from his daily rations of flour, bacon, jam, and of course the inevitable “bully” and biscuits. An endless amount of initiative showed itself in everything he did. ”

“ But it has indeed helped us all to have been with strong men at “Anzac,” and whatever the future may have in store, I, personally, shall always regard the time I have been privileged to be a comrade of the brave and strong men from Australia and New Zealand, who have served alongside of me, as one of the greatest privileges that could be conferred on any man, and of which I shall be prouder to the end of my days than any honour which can be given me. ”

“ We will all of us look back in years to come on Queen Elizabeth, Prince of Wales, London, Triumph, Bacchante, Grafton, Endymion, as well as such sleuth-hounds of the ocean as Colne, Chelmer, Pincher, Rattlesnake, Mosquito, and many others, as our best of friends, and will think of them, their officers and ship’s company, as the truest of comrades, with whom it has been a privilege to serve, and as the best of representatives of the Great Fleet and Service which carries with honour and ensures respect for the British flag to the uttermost parts of the earth. ”

“ A rattling, crashing roar, such as I have never heard in any Australian thunderstorm, is followed by a deafening clap, and a huge ball of fire falls earthward at terrific speed in the direction of Constantinople, followed by a sound as of a shattering explosion, which causes the very hillsides to quake, traverse and parapet to tremble, and the roofs of dug-outs to send down a shower of stones. ”

“ The late afternoons are becoming bleak; men relieved from labour seek the warmth of their dug-outs.
The chaplain stands where he can find a level area and awaits a congregation. When two or three are gathered together he announces a hymn. The voices go up in feeble unison, punctuated by the roar of artillery and the crackle of rifle fire. The prayers are offered. The address is short and shorn of cant. This is no place for canting formula. Reality is very grim all round. There is a furtive under-watchfulness against shrapnel. ”

“ Has been the soul of Anzac. Not for one single day has he ever quitted his post. Cheery and full of human sympathy, he has spent many hours of each twenty-four inspiring the defenders of the front trenches, and if he does not know every soldier in his force, at least every soldier in the force believes he is known to his chief. ”

“ Trenches full of rifles upon the shore and surrounding hills open on us, and machine-guns, hidden in gullies or redoubts, increase the murderous hail. Oars are splintered, boats are perforated. A sharp moan, a low gurgling cry, tells of a comrade hit. Boats ground in four or five feet of water owing to the human weight contained in them. We scramble out, struggle to the shore, and, rushing across the beach, take cover under a low sandbank. ”

“ One of our number is struck by shrapnel retiring to his dug-out to read his just delivered mail. He is off duty—is, in fact, far up on the ridges overlooking the sea. The wound gapes in his back. There is no staunching it. Every thump of the aorta pumps out his life. Practically he is a dead man when struck; he lives but a few minutes—with his pipe still steaming, clenched in his teeth. They lay him aside in the hospital. ”

“ In welcoming the 2nd Australian Division to join the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, the General Officer Commanding, on behalf of all their comrades now serving on the Peninsula, wishes to convey to them our general feeling of admiration for the gallant behaviour of all ranks on board the transport Southland, when that vessel was torpedoed on the 2nd inst.
All the troops of the Empire now serving with the Army Corps have heard with pride of the courage and discipline shown at a moment when the nerves of the bravest were liable to be so highly tried. ”

“ The whole sea route lay open to the view of the Turks upon Achi Baba’s summit and Battleship Hill. Aeroplanes could count every tent and every ship at Mudros or at Imbros. Within rifle fire of Anzac’s open beach hostile riflemen were looking out across the Ægean no more than twenty feet from our opposing lines. Every modern appliance of telescope, telegraph, wireless was at the disposal of the enemy. ”

“ Antwerp falls, Louvain is burned, the tide of battle surges back and forth; new reputations are made, the old ones pass away; Warsaw, Lemberg, Servia, the stern battle lines of Gallipoli, Hindenburg, Mackensen, each name catches our ear for brief moments of time, and then gives way to another crowding it out; but army biscuits are abiding facts, always with us, patient, appealing, enduring. ”

“ A few scattered Turks showing in the distance we instantly fired on. Some fell to rise no more; others fell wounded and, crawling into the low bushes, sniped our lads as they went past. There were snipers in plenty, cunningly hidden in the hearts of low green shrubs. They accounted for a lot of our boys in the first few days, but gradually were rooted out. Over the hill we dashed, and down into what is now called “Shrapnel Gully,” and up the other hillside, until, on reaching the top, we found that some of the lads of the 3rd Brigade had commenced to dig in. ”

“ What we frequently distrust in the way of tucker holds no terrors for the Gallipoli flies; they delight in taking risks if only to impress us with their fearlessness. Stepping boldly on the edge of a syrup-covered biscuit, they immediately get their feet entangled; but they will not retreat—that would be against all their traditions. Instead, they will struggle their way towards the centre, where they gladly give up the contest and die. ”

“ The enemy’s positions were now being rapidly entrenched, and, as I could not depend on receiving reinforcing drafts, I was faced with the danger that if I could not drive the Turks back I might lose so many men that I would find myself unable to hold the very extensive new area of ground which had been gained. I therefore decided to mass every available man against Ismail Oglu Tepe, a sine qua non to my plans whether as a first step towards clearing the valley, or, if this proved impossible, towards securing Suvla Bay and Anzac Cove from shell fire. ”

“ Thus was Lone Pine taken and held. The Turks were in great force and very full of fight, yet one weak Australian brigade, numbering at the outset but 2,000 rifles, and supported only by two weak battalions, carried the work under the eyes of a whole enemy division. The irresistible dash and daring of officers and men in the initial charge were a glory to Australia. In one corner eight Turks and six Australians were found lying as they had bayoneted one another. ”

“ One is a neighbour in a Light Horse regiment—a colonel. He flaunts it in no sandbagged palace. His dug-out is indistinguishable from those of the privates between whom he is sandwiched—mere waterproof sheet aloft and bed laid on the Turkish clay; a couple of biscuit boxes with his oddments—jam, and milk, and bread: writing materials and toilet requisites. A string line beneath the roof holds his towel and lately washed garments. He is a simple parson, hard-worked by day and night in and about the trenches, careful for such comforts as can be got for his men in this benighted land ”

“ No soldier relishes undertaking a withdrawal from before the enemy. It is hard to leave behind the graves of good comrades, and to relinquish positions so hardly won and so gallantly maintained as those we have left. But all ranks in the Dardanelles Army will realise that in this matter they were but carrying out the orders of His Majesty’s Government, so that they might in due course be more usefully employed in fighting elsewhere for their King, their Country, and the Empire. ”

“ It may be necessary to explain that every man in the Gallipoli Peninsula was within easy range of the Turkish artillery. For anything except a hospital to use a tent would have been to give an open invitation to shrapnel. “The nearest shops” were about three miles behind the Turkish lines.
ARCADIA
I’ve stayed in many a boarding-house,
From good, to fair, to rotten,
Seeking the comfort of a home
With all its cares forgotten.
In pubs I’ve dwelt and drowned the cares
Which canker life by meeting
With open hand each casual friend,
And moistened well each greeting. ”

“ Bitter as has been my experience in losing many a good friend, I, personally, shall always look back on our days together at “Anzac” as a time never to be forgotten, for during it I hope I have made many fast friends in all ranks, whose friendship is all the more valuable because it has been acquired in circumstances of stress and often danger, when a man’s real self is shown. ”

“ A hospital ship brought him to the City of London.
London first came to know him through the medium of its most useful person, the policeman. Bill had no love for a policeman as a reader of Riot Acts, but he developed quite an affection for him as a Pointer of the Way. “I’m bushed” became a familiar greeting between them, and the Kangaroo was never disappointed when he strolled across the street to ask P.C. 49 the way he should go. A London motor-bus might have done what a Turkish bullet failed to do if the man in blue had not stopped the traffic and played the part of pilot to him. ”

“ We eat our meat, not with thankfulness, but with biscuits. We lengthen out the taste of jam—with biscuits. We pound them to powder. We boil them with bully. We stew them in stews. We fry them as fritters. We curse them with many and bitter cursings, and we bless them with few blessings.
Biscuits! Army biscuits! Consider the hardness of them. Remember the cracking of your plate, the breaking of this tooth, the splintering of that. Call to mind how your finest gold crown weakened, wobbled, and finally shrivelled under the terrific strain of masticating Puntley and Chalmer’s No. ”

“ Simultaneously the attack on Table Top had been launched under cover of a heavy bombardment from H.M.S. Colne. No general on peace manœuvres would ask troops to attempt so breakneck an enterprise. The angle of Table Top’s ascent is recognised in our regulations as “impracticable for infantry.” But neither Turks nor angles of ascent were destined to stop Russell or his New Zealanders that night. The scarped heights were scaled, the plateau was carried by midnight. With this brilliant feat the task of the right covering force was at an end. ”

“ Horse or motor transport could not have faced the difficulties of Anzac. The mules are sometimes stubborn and unmanageable, but we knew that before. And the drivers are—most of them—hard workers, intelligent and anxious to please. I often marvel on a rough day, when the loaded carts, nearly up to their axles in mud or sand, are beached on that wild seashore, on the watery edge of which they are kept during the day ”

“ The interval between the murderous lightning flash aloft and the last pellet-swish seems, to the potential victim, everlasting.
The work of enemy shell behind the actual trenches is peculiarly horrible. Men are struck down suddenly and unmercifully where there is no heat of battle. A man dies more easily in the charge. ”

“ The grave is hastily filled in by a couple of shovel-men; the service is over; and fresh graves are to be dug forthwith for stricken members of the party. To die violently and be laid in this shell-swept area is to die lonely indeed. The day is far off (but it will come) when splendid mausolea will be raised over these heroic dead. And one foresees the time when steamers will bear up the Ægean pilgrims come to do honour at the resting places of friends and kindred, and to move over the charred battlegrounds of Turkey. ”

“ Loneliness garbed in a mantle of merging grey sea and grey sky, trimmed with the spires and turrets of grey and seemingly unsouled ships, whose presence in the blue and gold days was as that of old friends well met, but which now seem to be ragged rents in the solemn dress of Loneliness, reminding one of a derelict’s slovenly covering held together over a hopeless breast by an old gold brooch—perhaps the gift of a mother or handed down from bygone ages. ”

“ PARABLES OF ANZAC I
FROM SHELL GREEN From a Correspondent in Australian Field Artillery, “Sea View,” Boltons Knoll, near Shell Green.
I was looking out from the entrance of my dug-out, thinking how peaceful everything was, when Johnny Turk opened on our trenches. Shells were bursting, and fragments scattered all about Shell Green. Just at this time some new reinforcements were eagerly collecting spent fuses and shells as mementoes. While this fusillade was on, men were walking about the Green just as usual, when one was hit by a falling fuse. ”

“ Certainly, army biscuits, if they have a taste, have one which is peculiarly their own. The choicest dishes of civilised life, whether they be baked or boiled, stewed or steamed, fried, frizzled, roasted or toasted, whether they be composed of meat or fish, fruit or vegetable, have not (thank Heaven!) any like taste to that of army biscuits. Army biscuits taste like nothing else on the Gallipoli Peninsula. It is a debatable question indeed whether or not they have the quality of taste. ”