The Best Gallipoli Yarns and Forgotten Stories Read online

  Devil-may-care is on the march, with ever their heads held high;

  Theirs is a mighty sacrifice, cheer loud as they’re passing by!

  Give them a cheer to remember, give them a rousing hand;

  Strong and fit, and they’ll do their bit, the bravest men in the land.

  Shearer’s cook and rouseabout, hard-bitten tough of the ’Loo,

  Have cobbered up with a parson’s son and a freckle-faced jackeroo.

  Cream of a nation’s manhood, pride of a people’s heart,

  A Devil-may-care battalion eager to play their part.

  Son of a city banker, son of a city slum,

  Son of the boundless bushland, keen and alert they come.

  Shoulder to shoulder they’re marching, hard as steel and as true,

  Devil-may-care and reckless—and ready to die or do.

  A rollicking hardcase legion—see how the blighters grin!

  Those are the kind that are needed, those are the men who’ll win.

  Swinging to war like their fathers, wiry and ready and game,

  The devil-may-cares are marching—on to their deathless fame.

  BILL’S RELIGION

  WILLIAM BAYLEBRIDGE

  Among those questions put to men before we let them into our armed forces, the one that most troubles them is the question that bears upon their creed or religion.

  To many men the beliefs of the various church conclaves and synods are dead things of which they know nothing. These men have their own creed, often kept well hidden and containing some strange articles. Some of these articles many a priest, perhaps, would set little store by.

  This creed, the creed proper to Australians, we have not yet written down in books, thus, men are at times hard put to answer questions that bear upon their creed or religious beliefs.

  There was a young bushman called Bill. He went early to join up for the Light Horse. Having passed the riding test, he was told, with others, to get stripped, and stand in a tent, and wait there till the tape Sergeant called on him. This he did. Seeing him there in his skin only, you could have marked that he was a lengthy lean fellow, broad of bone, with muscle sitting along it like bunched wire. The bush had done that.

  Someone said: ‘Step forward!’ And he stepped up and on to the scale.

  ‘Twelve seven,’ said the Sergeant.

  He then stood up to have the tape run across him.

  ‘Five eleven and a half—forty—forty-four,’ said the Sergeant again.

  Then, when they were done with his age, his eyes, the colour of his hair, and the quaint marks, an officer said, looking up: ‘What religion?’

  Now, this man, because of the reason I have spoken of, could not well answer this.

  ‘My kind,’ he said, ‘give little thought to that.’

  The officer said, ‘But, you must tell me this. We require an answer. What belief does your father hold to?’

  ‘He kept it always inside his shirt,’ said Bill, slowly, ‘no one rightly knew.’

  ‘How, then, was he buried?’ asked the officer again, sharply. He did not care much for this man’s manners. ‘That will clear this thing up.’

  ‘Well,’ said Bill, ‘the old man had the laugh on them there too, for he put that job through himself.’

  ‘Himself! How so?’

  ‘He dropped down a shaft,’ Bill answered, ‘and it fell in upon him. This we found out later and, as he was a dead man then, there was nothing left to do but to put the stone up.’

  ‘A poor funeral!’ the officer remarked.

  ‘Well, he always said,’ answered Bill, ‘that he’d care most for a funeral that had little fuss about it.’

  The officer, plainly, was losing his patience. ‘Have you never heard tell of such things as the Thirty-nine Articles?’ he asked, ‘the Sermon on the Mount, and the Ten Commandments? Look, my man, don’t you know what a Catholic is, and a Quaker? What a Wesleyan is, or a Seventh Day Saint? It might be, now, that you’re an Anabaptist,’ he said, ‘or a Jew. But one of these things you must be. Speak up. The Sergeant has to fill this form in.’

  ‘One of those things I might be,’ Bill answered. ‘But I can’t tell that. I’m a plain man.’

  The officer looked at him squarely and then said, with a hard lip, ‘Tell me this—have you any religion in you at all?’

  ‘That I can’t swear to,’ said Bill. ‘But an old fellow up our way, who looked after us well as children and often chatted with us around the campfire, said he reckoned so.’

  The officer smiled tartly, ‘And this bushman had some articles of faith for this religion?’

  ‘He did,’ replied Bill.

  ‘This ought to be looked into,’ said the officer, ‘it may be that he made up the decalogue for it, too.’

  ‘In a manner of speaking he did,’ answered Bill again.

  ‘Indeed! And what, then, was that?’

  Bill, taking his time about it, said: ‘I got this off by heart. To give it in his own words it ran like this:

  Honour your country; put no fealty before this.

  Honour those who serve it.

  Honour yourself; for this is the beginning of all honour.

  A mean heart is the starting place of evil.

  A clean heart is the dignity of life; keep your heart clean.

  Think first; then labour.

  Lay to, so that your seed will stand up thick on the earth.

  Possess your own soul.

  Thou shalt live . . . and

  Thou shalt lay down thy life for more life.

  ‘I think that was it,’ he said. ‘I can’t go much into that swagger; but I guess that’s about right. Now, if you’ll put that question again, I think I could fix it.’

  ‘What, then, is your religion?’ asked the officer.

  Glad at heart to have found his answer, Bill said, quickly, ‘Australian, that’s my religion.’

  ‘Well,’ said the officer, with a sour smile, ‘that will do. Pass on to the doctor.’

  On Bill’s form, then, in the space against religion, he wrote this word—‘None’.

  RECRUITED

  THOMAS BARKLA

  Phyllis, your method of raising recruits

  Smacks of the press-gang a trifle.

  Here am I wearing impossible boots

  And marching about with a rifle

  Because you have said

  We can never be wed

  Until I am carried home, wounded or dead

  Now I’ve a number instead of a name;

  The cut of my clothes is atrocious;

  Daily I’m drilled until aching and lame,

  By officers young and precocious,

  Who force me to lie

  On my tummy to try

  To shoot an imagin’ry bull in the eye.

  Please do not think I’m unwilling to go—

  I’ve no intention of quitting;

  But, Phyllis, there’s one thing I really must know:

  For whom is that muffler you’re knitting?

  I don’t care a lot

  If by Germans I’m shot:

  But if that is for me, I’ll desert on the spot!

  SAM AND ME

  STEELE RUDD

  The most notable Australian author to fictionalise the Anzac experience was Arthur Hoey Davis, the famous ‘Steele Rudd’.

  Davis was born in 1868, in Drayton, near Toowoomba, and worked as a horse breaker, stockman and drover before moving to Brisbane where he began to write poetry and draw sketches for local periodicals.

  The first of his stories about selectors appeared in The Bulletin in 1895 and his many books typically portray life in the Darling Downs area of southern Queensland. His own family were poor selectors and his two main comic creations, Dad and Dave, are among the most famous in Australian literature.

  Davis’s fame was so great that he founded his own Steele Rudd’s Magazine, in 1904. His son, Gower, enlisted in 1915 and much of the Memoirs of Corporal Keeley, from which the story inclu
ded here is drawn, is based on Gower’s reminiscences. Davis died in 1935.

  ***

  There were seven of us, all in our teens except Tom Murray and Sam Condle, all sons of cockies and Darling Downs pioneers.

  We worked our passage to Blackall, camping a night with Jimmy Power, the big shearer, at the Four Mile Gardens, belonging to a Chinaman, an’ helped ourselves to some of his spuds.

  From there to Isisford; to Barcaldine; down the Barcoo to Northampton Downs; then to Windorah and across to Adavale where we was heaping up big money when news come that war had broke out with Germany. I don’t know how long it was coming but it seemed to have broke out a good while before it reached us.

  From Adavale we cut into Charleville, intending to have a good spell there before arranging our next programme.

  ***

  We found Charleville full of nothing but talk and excitement about the war. From what some of them was saying you’d think the Germans had landed and were coming down by Cape York. According to the papers we saw they was all at it, hammer and tongs.

  ‘Australia will be there,’ blokes were singing in the street. ‘The Empire calls every fit man to the colours’ was printed on the walls, an’ ‘Your country needs your help’ was staring at you in the bars.

  Blokes was coming in from all parts of the country, selling their horses and belongings an’ enlisting, an’ some of ’em was blokes Sam an’ me met at the sheds. Of course, we got talking to ’em.

  ‘Yer can only get killed once,’ they said. ‘You got to die sometime, anyhow, an’ you’ll get a chance to see the blanky world before you do!’

  Sam an’ me seemed to be the only two that wasn’t enlisting.

  ‘We ain’t been down to the Post Office yet,’ said Sam, the second day we was there, ‘to see if any letters come for us.’

  Turning our heads around we went down there and the postman gave us a fistful of letters that was plastered all over with ‘try Blackall’ an’ ‘try Adavale’ an’ ‘try Isisford’ an’ goodness knows where else.

  I seen the Old Lady’s handwriting on one that I got an’ stuffed the others in me shirt.

  ‘I’m blowed!’ Sam exclaimed, in the middle of one he got from his old man, ‘Tom Murray and the other four got home six months ago, an’ are going to the war!’

  ‘Eh!?’ I fairly squealed, ‘to the war!’

  ‘They’re in camp in Brisbane,’ Sam come in again. He was looking serious as a jew-lizard an’ thinking hard to himself.

  ‘Frankie,’ he sez, hitching his pants up, ‘I’m goin’ to enlist; by God, I am!’ An’, from the look in his eye it would have been Lord help the German that happened to walk into the room at that moment!

  ‘I’ll sell the nags here in Charleville,’ he said, ‘and buy that first-class ticket I always promised meself, then off down to Toowoomba an’ enlist there.’

  I didn’t expect he had anything in his head so good as that!

  ‘Oh, my oath,’ I agreed, ‘I’m with you in that, all right, an’ when we get to Toowoomba I’ll see about enlisting too.’

  I never knew anyone look so pleased as Sam did when I told him I was goin’ to enlist too.

  ‘Good man!’ he shouted, an’ grabbed me by the hand. ‘I knew you’d decide in the confirmative, a bloke like you couldn’t do anything else!’

  ‘Of course I couldn’t,’ I answered, ‘I don’t think there’s much to be afraid of, anyway.’

  All the same, I was forced to make a couple of swallers to get rid of a choking feeling that come up into me throat.

  ***

  The Toowoomba platform was crowded when me an’ Sam arrived; an’ how they all started an’ gaped into our carriage as we come backing in.

  ‘There must be a meeting of the Farmers’ Union here today,’ said Sam, ‘look at all the blokes sporting wire whiskers!’

  Then we started ducking an’ shoving to get through the crowd.

  Sam said, ‘I never struck a mob like this here before.’

  In the street, where there was nothing but cabmen watching us like hawks, we stood and put our heads together for a while and talked things over again.

  ‘I think I’ll go straight to the recruiting office and enlist before I change me mind,’ Sam says.

  Right,’ I said, so into town we both goes an’ marches up to the recruiting depot.

  A lot of chaps same as ourselves was coming out an’ goin’ into the building when we arrived, most of them waving their hands an’ talking about the war an’ deciding how to win it.

  Looking in the door we saw a couple of blokes in uniform, with stripes on their arms, sitting at a table covered with papers an’ pens an’ an empty water-bottle.

  ‘There you are, in we go!’ says Sam, giving me a shove.

  Before I knew where I was the military blokes was pouring questions into me and writing me answers down like lightning.

  ‘Into this room here,’ says another in emu feathers and long-necked spurs, ‘an’ be examined by the doctor.’

  In I stumbles, feeling sort of dazed by the imposing surroundings an’ more like a bloke that was doomed to be executed before breakfast than a prospective soldier of the King. Cripes! I did get my eyes open all of a sudden, though. For a minute I thought I had got into the swimming baths, then I took it for a blooming asylum.

  Here before me was about twenty blokes without a blooming stitch of clothes on, all of ’em naked as skinned kangaroos. Some was bucking round doing high kicks; some pretty old fossils, looking like plucked roosters, was sitting on a bench calmly philosophising on the appearance of the other chaps, an’ some more was stalking about putting their chests out and admiring themselves like peacocks.

  I looked round for Sam, but he had gone into a different room. So after thinking about it for a while, I started and took me togs off slowly; but not wanting to make a fool of meself altogether I kept me shirt on, an’ even with it on I never in me life found meself in such an awkward predicament. A bloke couldn’t help feeling downright ashamed of himself and that was all about it. Of course, I squatted on a bench as soon as I could an’ pulled me shirt over me knees.

  The doctor was putting ’em through one after the other, like a cove shearing with all the shed to himself, an’ there was me waiting me turn like the poor old cobbler. Always having an active mind, of course, I got to thinking of the whole damn business again. ‘I dunno,’ I thought to meself, ‘what the devil I wanted coming here for at all.’

  ‘Your turn next,’ a bloke sings out to me and disturbs me reflections.

  ‘Oh!’ I says, an’ jumps up an’ move across the room. Passing by a naked recruit he gives me a grin an’ pulls up me shirt.

  ‘Steady,’ I says, ‘none of that.’ An’ a lot of ’em started laughing.

  ‘Think a bloke hasn’t got a bit of respect for himself?’ I says to the lot of ’em, an’ they laughed more. But I let ’em laugh.

  Soon as I face the doctor I began trembling all over an’ nearly choked meself pulling at me shirt to make it come down lower. He lifted his eyes from his writing pad an’, without bidding a bloke good-day or asking how he was, snaps out, ‘Take off your shirt!’

  ‘What, right off?’ I says, just to make sure what he meant.

  ‘Yes, yes, what else?’ an’ he frowns like a burglar.

  Back I creeps and chucks the shirt off, an’ presents meself to him again with only me pants on.

  ‘Dammit, man!’ he blurts out, ‘I want to see you with nothing at all on.’

  ‘Oh!’ I says, ‘can’t you examine some of a bloke at a time?’

  ‘Are you married?’ he says, an’ thinking it was a comical sort of thing to ask a bloke, I grinned.

  ‘Are you?’ he barks, stamping his foot.

  ‘Not yet,’ I says, with another grin.

  ‘And I don’t think you ever will be,’ he says.

  Then, turning to the chap in the emu feathers and the long-necked spurs, he says, ‘For God’s sake, take the pants of
f this innocent abroad and let me get to my work!’

  ‘Whip ’em off, everyone does it!’ says the Captain or whatever he was, striding for me as if he meant to tear ’em off me.

  ‘Oh, orright,’ I says, ‘if everyone does it I’ll do it.’

  Then, turning me back on ’em I lets down me pants an’ was bending low getting me foot outa the leg, when that infernal Captain brought me the most terrific spank I ever heard, with his open hand! Cripes, I nearly hit the ceiling with me head!

  ‘Oy, steady!’ I says to him, ‘I didn’t come here for that sort of thing!’

  When the doctor stopped laughing he steps over to me and says, ‘Why, a man made like you ought to be only too proud to show yourself naked. You’re the best built youngster I ever saw in my life.’

  That changed me feelings an’ me opinion of him in a second.

  ‘Do you think so?’ I says, forgetting the pain and me nakedness an’ grinning proudly.

  ‘I’m sure of it.’

  Then he starts tapping me chest and putting his ear to me and pulling me about.

  ‘Hmmm,’ he says, an’ looks into me mouth, as if I was a horse he was buying.

  Then, to see if I ever went to school, he asks me to read the blooming ABC. Cripes, it was easy as snuff.

  ‘Pass!’ says the Captain.

  ‘Wish we could get another hundred thousand like him,’ says the doctor. Then, putting his hand on me shoulder, he says to me, ‘Sound as a bell, me boy. Good luck to you, and see you come back with a V.C.’

  Outside I found Sam waiting for me already, with a broad smile on him.

  ‘How did you get on?’ he asked.

  ‘Good,’ I answered, an’ started laughing. Then he started laughing, an’ we both went out the gate roaring laughing.

  ***

  We went into camp at Enoggera, an’ into dungarees an’ a white rag hat and big boots that were a load to carry. Lord! Sam an’ me did look a pair but one couldn’t laugh at the other which was the only satisfaction about it.

  For the first couple of days we thought it the maddest place we ever got into, an’ the maddest lot of blokes we ever struck. The camp was all tents an’ buildings an’ sheds an’ big holes in the ground an’ trenches dug crooked an’ big stumps half grubbed out. It looked like a goldfield.