Read Ebook: The Big Fight (Gallipoli to the Somme) by Fallon David

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Moreover, German propagandists had corrupted countless of the proprietors of the small resorts where liquor and gambling were to be found, had instilled all the inhabitants and keepers of bazaars in the native village of Cairo with ideas of secret assassination of our men for gain. Also after the arrival of our soldiers these insidious workers did all they could to promote an enmity between the natives and the Anzacs. The result of this campaign was nearly as sinister as that of the inoculation of the women. Our men on leave were drugged and secretly murdered, their bodies made away with, with a skill that defeated all efforts at tracing the crimes. It is a fact that at least two hundred and fifty of the first division of Anzacs encamped at Cairo never returned to their regiments, and no trace of what had befallen them, which doubtless was most sinister, has ever come to our exact knowledge to this very day. So thoroughly had the natives been instilled with an enmity toward us that the atmosphere and conditions between us became intolerable. The natives assumed a surly and insulting aspect toward us, and we in turn, I presume, swaggered and frowned and treated them with growing sharpness. With the full extent of the villainy that had been plotted and achieved against us in the matter of afflicting hundreds of our men with horrible disease and of assassinating fully two hundred and fifty others, there came a night when resentment burst forth among a large company of the Anzacs and took the shape of a fierce, violent and deadly reprisal.

The men secretly collected, armed themselves with revolvers, secured paraffin and oil torches, and some even took up bombs.

They rushed through the native section of the city especially among its disreputable resorts, and did their utmost to destroy it utterly by the flames of their torches, and where resistance was met, did not hesitate to use their fire-arms and bombs to kill. It was a night of horror in Cairo. But the crimes against us had been more terrible than the revenge. This summary and deadly action discredited the secret German agents and their influence and brought about from the natives a subserviency and desire to propitiate the Anzacs equal to their attitude of enmity before. It was a drastic measure that was taken, but under the circumstances, it may be left to the judgment of the reader as to its justification.

There was intensive drilling in our cantonment, called Mena Camp, near the Pyramids of Gizeh, but just the same we found time for the indulgence in many sports, especially horse racing, camel and donkey riding, hunts for buried treasure among the sacred tombs of the ancients, and one party of the boys really returned to camp with a genuine mummy for a prize.

LANDING ORDERS.

AUSTRALIAN NEW ZEALAND ARMY CORPS.

OFFICERS AND MEN:

April 1915.

In conjunction with the Navy, we are about to undertake one of the most difficult tasks any soldier can be called to perform, and a problem which has puzzled many soldiers for years past. That we will succeed I have no doubt, simply because I know your full determination to do so. Lord Kitchener has told us that he lays special stress on the r?le the Army has to play in this particular operation, the success of which will be a very severe blow to the enemy indeed, as severe as any he could receive in France. It will go down in history to the glory of the soldiers of Australia and New Zealand. Before we start, there are one or two points which I must impress on all, and I most earnestly beg every single man to listen attentively and take them to heart.

We are going to have a real hard and rough time of it until, at all events, we have turned the enemy out of the first objective. Hard, rough times none of us mind, but to get through them successfully we must always keep before us the following facts: Every possible endeavor will be made to bring up transport as often as possible; but the country whither we are bound is very difficult, and we may not be able to get our wagons anywhere near us for days, so men must not think their wants have been neglected if they do not get all they want. On landing it will be necessary for every individual to carry with him all his requirements in food and clothing for three days, as we may not see our transport again till then. Remember then that it is essential for everyone to take the very greatest care not only of his food, but of his ammunition the replenishment of which will be very difficult. Men are liable to throw away their food first day out and to finish their water bottles as soon as they start marching. If you do this now, we can hardly hope for success, as unfed men cannot fight, and you must make an effort to try and refrain from starting on your water bottles until quite late in the day. Once you begin drinking you cannot stop, and a water bottle is very soon emptied.

Also as regards ammunition--you must not waste it by firing away indiscriminately at no target. The time will come when we shall find the enemy in well-entrenched positions, from which we shall have to turn them out, when all our ammunition will be required; and remember,

Concealment whenever possible, Covering fire always, Control of fire and control of your men, Communications never to be neglected.

W. R. BIRDWOOD.

I am here reminded of an incident regarding this human, kindly commander that may have a smile in it for the reader.

The Australians or Anzacs took pride in distinguishing themselves by the wearing of an emu feather in their caps. No Anzac was happy without an emu feather in his cap. I have already said how willing and anxious the Australians were to make good in their military duties, but how hard it was for them to enter strictly into the conduct demanded by militarism.

A certain sentry didn't salute General Birdwood, who at that time wore no emu feather in his hat, an omission the Australians resented.

"What do you mean, sir," demanded General Birdwood, "by not saluting me? Do you know who I am?"

"No, who are you?"

"I am Birdwood."

"Then," said the sentry, without any loss of his own dignity, "why don't you wear a feather in your cap as a bird would?"

The general stared hard at the man for an instant, tried to frown, but laughed instead, and there was no court martial.

GALLIPOLI

Today all is quiet at Gallipoli Peninsula. The rows on rows of wooden crosses at Anzac and Helles, at Nibrunsei Point and Brighton Beach, look out over the AEgean Sea, doubtless blue as it ever was. The dead who lie beneath these little monuments of great deeds--the crosses amid the dwarf holly bushes that clothe the western slopes--have reached their rest. In the scrub Lee-Enfields lie rusting alongside shattered Mausers. The pebbles on the long bleak beaches are mixed with shrapnel bullets, and in the sand and the dunes west of the Long Sap are buried bones and scraps of leather, clips of corroded cartridges, and shreds of khaki clothing.

We had no false idea when we left Lemnos Island, eight transports carrying our particular 3,000 Australians, twelve more carrying the remainder of General Birdwood's division, as to the difficulty if not impossibility of the task ahead. Our training at Lemnos Island had shown some of the difficulties, especially the business of landing through choppy seas or narrow beaches under frowning cliffs and then scaling those cliffs. The Turks with their German officers had had their warning in the attempt to force the Dardenelles by the allied forces in January. It was absurd to think that they would be surprised by any movement we could make only a few months after. We discussed the improbability of success quite openly. We went over the old defeats in the history of the Dardenelles, the defeats when Helen of Troy figured as the object of conquest, the defeats of the Crusaders and of Constantine. As I say, we didn't have much hope, but nevertheless, we were all glad that the time had come when the training was at an end and we were to go into the fight. Personally, I set about the same task as the others. On the eve of the battle I wrote to my solicitors, Garland, Seabourne & Abbott, as to the disposal of an insurance policy I had. I had no wife, sweetheart or parents and decided to make an old and pretty-crusty uncle of mine in England--he had given me a whaling or two when I was a boy--the beneficiary.

Our battle ship pinnaces, that is to say, barges, were launched and sent out to the different transports to take aboard the landing parties. Each man as we stood at parade on the decks before being ordered to the pinnaces had for his supplies as indicated in General Birdwood's orders, his rifle and bayonet, 150 rounds of ammunition and three days' rations, which consisted of his water bottle holding a quart of water, furnished by the clear springs of Lemnos Island, a tin of bully-beef to the weight of half a pound, as many biscuits as he could take on, while leaving room for his emergency tin which holds tablets of concentrated beef and cakes of chocolate. Besides in your pocket you had your first-aid kit, a small roll of bandages and a vial of iodine.

Weirdly began our great and deadly adventure on this coveted stretch of the AEgean Sea which if we could conquer made possible the breaking of the historic barrier of the Dardanelles. It was a stretch of coast we were soon to wash with our blood as literally as the AEgean's waves wash the self-same shore.

The long procession of transports and their grim battleship escorts had stolen up in the night, a widely-spread yet organized, concrete group of slowly-moving, black, gloomy monsters. Every light aboard each ship had been ordered out. Not even the pin-head flame of a cigarette might show on any deck.

The only light we had was the faint green gleam that filtered over the smooth waters from a moon that had begun to wane and had, indeed, at this hour of three in the morning, nearly fallen behind the ragged jaw of the black cliffs.

The Turks couldn't very well hear me talking at from four to five miles, yet such was the consciousness of the danger of our adventure and such the hypnotism of the scene that when I spoke to the comrade next to me, it was in a whisper.

"What he's seeing," said the man at my side in a grumble, "is the heathen blighters getting ready to bang hell out of us!"

"Cheerful beggar you are," I whispered back the more gloomily because I was one of those who had argued and felt certain that we were not to take the Turks by surprise.

And now the men had assembled on the decks as soft-footedly as they might. They had gathered in the darkness into orderly rows like big companies of phantoms. The ships' crews worked as spectrally and nearly as silently as the lowering of ladders and the launching of the boats would permit. Even the groaning and wrenching of the chains and cables seemed subdued and ghostly. Small steamboats each with a swerving tail made up of barges and small boats panted alongside the transports and battleships. With wonderful precision and swiftness the great ships spawned hundreds on hundreds of smaller craft, thousands on thousands of men, crowding the waters with them for as far as you could make out whichever way you looked in the faint moonlight.

"Fall in Number Nine platoon!" came the growled order.

That was my command.

"Full up, sir," he said smartly.

God bless and care for that gallant little chap! I can't help fervently wishing it as the memory of him comes to me now. He was only sixteen--the treble of childhood was still in his voice. But in it as he gave his orders then and afterward as well when frightful peril came, were the steadiness and the coolness of a brave man--the sort of man he must have become if the dandy little youngster had not been destined for death with those many, many others on this April night.

The men in our barge as it bobbed about began to pass jests, in whispers, of course. Not that they felt giddy--funny. Or, yes, in a way, a bit giddy--nervous tension, you know. Like a small boy whistling in the dark. And yet willing and eager to meet whatever dragon might be there. For now we felt and knew that all we had trained for, prepared for, thought about, imagined--the big time of actual warfare was at hand. That was what was most alive in every man's mind. But they joked.

"I've remembered you in my will, Jimmy," said one to a pal two rows behind him. "You'll get nothing short of a million, my son."

"What--'cooties'?" demanded Jim. I think I need not stop to describe "cooties," those "bosom friends" of the trenches.

"Don't waste your millions on him, Bob," advised another. "Just leave'm a lock o' your 'air."

A small but very sharp voice cut in:

"Silence!"

It was the middie, but for all save the pitch of the voice it might have been a veteran commander.

"Cast off and drift astern," directed a basso from the transport's deck.

Our little man expeditiously carried out the order and slowly we drifted astern until there came sudden twangs from the hawsers, startling because everything had been so quiet or muffled before. This was as the hawsers coupling boats and barges went taut as each boat in succession, filling with men, drew suddenly to a halt its drifting predecessor.

Two of the men in our boat who were standing were caught by the jerk of the hawser and snapped overboard. They were fished out with boathooks under the rapid, cool direction of the indignant middie.

"Disgusting carelessness," he called the incident.

When all the boats of our string had been filled, there came the order to the tugs: "Full steam ahead!"

Our tug was quite ready for it. Our string straightened out in a jiffy and we got off to a racing start--bounding, dipping and rolling. Sometimes we shot ahead in a straight line, sometimes in a half circle.

"God bless that damned old moon!" said a man near me. His jumble of reverence and profanity came from the fact that the old green wicked eye of a moon had blinked out behind the cliffs. A moment before I had looked back and could see the battleship coming on slowly in our rear with the obvious purpose of covering our attack.

Then I couldn't see a blessed thing. The green waters had turned to ink. You only knew your comrades were with you in the same boat by the press of their swaying bodies against your shoulders and your ribs.

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