The Best Gallipoli Yarns and Forgotten Stories Page 4

  I do not profess to know if it is the correct thing to sleep blissfully on the eve of a battle, especially such a battle as we were faced with, but this I do know, what within half an hour the ship was filled with the harmonious melody of a multitude of contented sleepers.

  I was still enjoying that blissful period that comes on one just before fully waking. Events were taking shape in my mind; I had just become aware, by the even throb of the engines and the motion of the ship, that we were moving, when to my ears came a sound of distant thunder that swelled louder and louder, in a mighty crescendo, punctuated by terrific crashes as if the very heavens were falling.

  You can easily guess I was fully awake by this time, and shouting ‘We are there’ I flew up the companion-way and on to deck. Already there were a few on deck, but there was little to be seen. The morning mist shrouded everything, and one could only judge the position of the land by the flash of the shore batteries as they returned the fire of the fleet.

  Steadily we continued our way, passing battleships in action every few minutes. One after another they would loom up out of the impenetrable grey, deafen us with their mighty guns, and then, as we steamed on, disappear like phantom ships into the gloom. At last we dropped anchor close to two of our ships that could only be located by the flash of their guns.

  It was a queer sight—on every hand these darting flames, followed by ear-splitting explosions, while every moment the leaden-coloured water would rise in a mighty column, like some magnificent fountain, as the shells from the shore plunged in.

  Slowly the mist of the early morn lifted, and there before our eyes lay a scene such as I never dare hope to witness a second time in this life. I could hardly drag myself away to dress; but, at last, slipping into my clothes and putting the last touches to my equipment, I quickly got into a position where I could watch the mighty effort of the Fleet.

  We occupied the extreme left of the position. Round about us lay scores of troopships, trawlers, destroyers, and warships. Standing out prominently among the latter was the old H.M.S. Euryalus, so well known in Australia a few years ago as our navy’s flagship. She was right inshore, and engaged at point-blank range the formidable Gaba Tepe battery, which had been doing serious damage, enfilading the beach.

  The terrific duel that ensued made everything else appear trivial. The water about the Euryalus was churned into foam, and flew up in great columns, but the old ship doggedly hung to her position, while her gunners simply drove us into a frenzy of cheering, as, with marvellous exactness, they dropped shell after shell on to the position.

  For over twenty minutes the scrap continued; till finally this piece of landscape lost all shape, the battery was silenced, and the forces no doubt retreated, for the guns were trained to throw the shells, first over the headland, then right up and over the first gradient.

  One could hardly believe that at any moment the boys were under fire of the shore batteries. They filled the rigging and decks, and at every salvo from the warships a mighty cheer would rend the air, and then the ship would ring with laughter. No, there were no long faces, but rather a joyous, reckless fearlessness that boded ill for their foes.

  The spasmodic crackle of rifle fire now grew into one continuous roll, like the beating of a thousand kettle drums; the 3rd Brigade were getting busy. But, hark!

  ‘Fall in, A and B Companies.’

  Swiftly, the eager waiters stepped into their places, and then just as quickly slipped over the ship’s side and down the rope ladders, entirely forgetful of the seventy-odd pound load of equipment they carried.

  The crews of the destroyers on each side of the ship worked like Trojans, packing the men in like the proverbial sardines, while we of C and D Companies, who were to go by the second tow, wriggled out of portholes at the risk of cracking our necks, and shouted, ‘Jack, I say, Jack, how’s things ashore? How did the boys go?’

  Thus they rattled on in disjointed conversation, just as the pressure of business would allow.

  At last, after what seemed an eternity, our turn came and with the eagerness of school children off for a picnic, we scrambled down the ladders and into the destroyer Usk. Scarcely had we left the Derfflinger than we heard a high whining noise.

  A land battery had opened fire on her, and shell after shell came screaming overhead and plunged all round our recent home.

  It was a nerve-trying time. Our destroyer raced toward the beach, escaping in a miraculous manner the storm of shrapnel. Within a few hundred yards of the shore the destroyer eased down; quickly we jumped into the ship’s boats that were being towed alongside; and, with a hearty hurrah, gave way and rowed through the curtain of fire that enveloped the beach.

  The question has been asked many times, ‘What did you feel like when first under fire?’

  I have already described our feelings when leaving the ship; but, as we drew nearer the shore, lips were set, faces grew stern and thoughtful, rifles were gripped more firmly, hands stole quietly round and loosened bayonets, and then—then nothing else to do, and being ‘Real Australians’, the lads once again joked and laughed, yes actually laughed.

  As the keel of the boat grated on the rocky bottom, one and all jumped waist deep into the sea and waded ashore, still quite merry, in spite of the hail of shrapnel that bespattered the beach.

  No sooner had we gained the shore than the first man was killed. Not five yards from where I stood a C Company man was struck in the head by a splinter of a shell that burst right in our midst; fortunately nobody else was hit.

  We were now in the thick of business. Immediately the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Battalions were ordered to advance to support the covering party.

  Dropping our packs, the 2nd Battalion rushed at once to the left flank, where a handful of the covering party were hotly engaged. Then came a toilsome scramble over the high bluffs, carrying, in addition to our equipment, picks, shovels, and boxes of ammunition.

  Reaching the top of the first ridge, we came to a Turkish trench, in which lay those Turks who had stayed too long to dispute possession with the 3rd Brigade. Stooping low, we doubled across a plateau over which the sharp-nosed bullets flew, meowing like motherless kittens. A constant stream of wounded men—still quite cheerful—passed us on the way to the beach, saying, ‘It’s hot as hell up there’—and it was.

  All down through Shrapnel Valley, thick with mines and pitfalls, infested with snipers, and torn with shrapnel—from whence it earned its name—hairbreadth escapes were now becoming so frequent that one scarcely stopped to notice them.

  We commenced fighting our way up the third hill which, personally, I think was the worst of the lot. Never again do I expect to see such superhuman efforts. Dragging the ammunition and entrenching implements, the men struggled up this almost perpendicular, crumbling, scrub-covered cliff in the face of a withering fire.

  One exposed knoll, which the snipers were paying particular attention to, we were compelled to rush over singly. As it came to my turn, I bolted, pick in one hand and rifle in the other, as hard as my legs would carry me. One had simply to claw one’s way up the soft, yielding bank. No sooner had I reached the top than a dozen bullets kicked up the dirt all around me. An officer who followed me said, ‘What’s the matter, laddie?’

  ‘Drop,’ I shouted.

  He did so, only just in time to miss a perfect fusillade of snipers’ bullets.

  Side by side we wriggled over the knoll, slid down the opposite side, regained our feet, and put up a record sprint to where the rugged hill afforded some little cover.

  At the top of the hill we were in the full blast of the enemy’s fire. It was a perfect inferno. A score of machine-guns filled the air with their rat-a-tat; just like a hundred noisy motor bicycles; while the Turkish artillery threw a curtain of shrapnel along the ridge that looked as if it would stop any further effort to advance. But, knowing that our only safety lay in victory, one had to forget self and fight like the very devil.

  Many of the boys never passed tha
t shrapnel-swept ridge. One wounded lad, who was bleeding badly over the shoulder, propped himself up as we passed, and grinning hideously with his shattered mouth, he wheezed, ‘Got it where the chicken got the axe,’ then fainted.

  Right and left men were being hit, and a fellow had to just clench his teeth and keep going, with the vague thought somewhere in the back of your cranium that you might be the next. It was just here that my chum, Howard Proctor, was killed.

  A shrapnel burst right in the midst of the platoon in front of me; it cut the haversack from the side of Corporal Turton, and splashed two or three others, but poor Proctor was struck with a piece of the shell, which inflicted a fatal wound. The lads close at hand, after shaking hands with him, offered a few words of cheer, and then had to advance.

  A few minutes later, when my platoon advanced, I knelt by his side, but he was going fast; I tried to cheer him, but somehow I got a big lump in my throat, my eyes were dimmed, and after a few incoherent words I was silent. Then, in spite of the fact that he was paralysed by his wound, and almost at his last gasp, his face brightened, and with a smile he said, ‘Don’t worry about me, Cav; I feel quite satisfied; I feel I have done my bit; take my glasses and try and return them to my mother.’ And so brave Proctor passed away.

  Can you wonder, reader, that we old boys of the 1st Brigade reverence the very name of Anzac?

  When we remember the number of our hero chums that sleep the long sleep on the bleak, forbidding hills above Anzac Cove, well have they been named ‘The Glorious Dead’.

  Can we ever forget the unselfish spirit of soldiers like Pte. W. Penton. Mortally wounded, face downward he lay. Yet, with his last effort, and his last breath, he raised himself, and turning to a mate, said, ‘Good-bye, Warrington, old boy; I’m going; but tell Albert he will find plenty of cigarettes in my pack.’

  Upon uttering those words, poor Penton fell forward and he was gone.

  His parents weep and mourn, but we who knew him will ever cherish the memory of such a great, unselfish soul. No words are there more true than those of Souter, when he said: ‘We need no costly monument to keep their memory fast.’

  I trust I shall be forgiven if I tell of the heroism of yet another before I pick up the thread of my story.

  It is the story of Sgt. Larkin, the member for Willoughby in the NSW Legislative Assembly. He lay wounded and dying and yet when the stretcher-bearers came to carry him in, he waved them on, saying, ‘There’s plenty worse than me out there.’ Later, they found him—dead.

  Can anyone feel surprised when we get in a rage at the sight of ham and beef shops branded ‘ANZAC’?

  The splendid courage of our officers compelled admiration. Separated from their own men—for in the wild fighting over the hills the 1st Brigade was quite mixed up—they gathered all the men in sight, and, with commendable courage, charged the enemy’s position with the bayonet.

  It was in this way that I was separated from my own Company, and fought throughout the day alongside of Major B.I. Swannell, who, with his Company, had got mixed up with our Battalion.

  Never shall I forget the look on his face when we first got within striking distance of the enemy.

  ‘Fix bayonets! Charge!’ rang out his order.

  There was a flash of steel, a wild hurrah, and the boys dashed straight at the wall of fire, heedless of the frightful slaughter. They were not to be stopped.

  It was in this charge that Major Swannell was killed. He had seized a rifle, and with dauntless courage was leading his men, when a Turkish bullet, penetrating his forehead, ended his career, thus depriving the 1st Brigade of one of its bravest officers.

  The few remaining hours of daylight were spent in such fierce, unequal fighting that I remembered little else until, about an hour before dusk, something hit me.

  I thought at first that I had been struck by a shell. After picking myself up, and regaining a sitting position, I put my hand down to feel if my leg was still there; I was really scared to look, for fear it had gone. Feeling that that really useful member was still attached to my body, I started to discover the extent of the damage. Whipping off my puttee and slashing the seam of my breeches with my clasp knife, I reached my knee, to find a small, quite respectable looking puncture close alongside the knee-cap, from which oozed a thin stream of blood.

  The bullet—for such it was—had gone right through, coming out behind the knee, severing, en route, some of the important nerves of the leg, thus paralysing the leg. This was temporarily useful, as it saved me any intense pain.

  It was just at this stage that the Turks, heavily reinforced, counter-attacked, and compelled our sadly diminished force to fall back. I knew that if I jumped to my feet to retire I would only collapse, as my leg was as useless as though there was no bone in it.

  The only thing to avoid capture was to crawl, and crawl pretty quickly.

  So, on one knee and two hands, I started, faced with a three-mile journey over as rough country as it would be possible to find.

  How I accomplished the distance safely I shall never know. At least a dozen snipers wasted a cartridge on me—the bullets clipping twigs in front of my nose, whistling through my hair, and kicking the dirt up in my face.

  On one occasion a platoon of Australians passed on their way to the firing line. One man, dropping out, half carried me back about a hundred yards, and, with a sincere, ‘Good luck, mate, I’m needed up above,’ he raced away to assist the hard-pressed, exhausted men in the firing line.

  So again I started off, crawling as hard as possible. While lying on my back, resting in one place, eight or nine shells burst in quick succession right over my head—one bursting so close that the black soot, like burnt powder, fell on my chest. The shrubs were torn and the earth scarred by the hail of shrapnel bullets, but again I got off without a scratch.

  I came to the hurried conclusion, however, that there were many healthier places about, and made off again.

  I had gone only a short distance when I came upon a touching spectacle. I was crossing a narrow road on the summit of a hill when I saw an officer sitting upright on the roadside, with his back to the shrubs that grew on either side.

  I approached, but he did not speak or move, so I crawled up close, and found to my surprise that he was dead. He had just been in the act of writing when a bullet through the heart caused instantaneous death. He had never moved an inch; his notebook was still in the left hand; while the right still held a pencil poised in a natural position over the book. He was a Colonel, past middle age, grey-haired, and wearing a breast full of service ribbons.

  In a shallow trench close by another pathetic incident occurred. Lying in a trench was an Australian, who had been badly hit. His eyes opened slowly, his lips moved, and faintly he murmured, ‘Mafeesh’, the Arabic for ‘finished’, and more slowly, ‘Take money-belt—missus and kids—dirty swap dirty . . .’ Then a strange thing happened. Dying, shattered beyond recognition, he rose to his knees and dragged his rifle to the parapet. With a weak finger he took shaky aim and fired his last shot, then collapsed in the bottom of the trench.

  A little later I had another very narrow escape. I was crawling along, dragging a rifle which I had picked up in case I met any stray Turks, when right before me, at no distance, I spotted a rifle poking through a shrub, and behind it a New Zealander in the act of pulling trigger. ‘Don’t fire; I’m wounded,’ I yelled and immediately a New Zealand officer jumped out from behind the bush. He was just rushing a company of infantry to reinforce the line.

  ‘Where’s the firing line?’ he asked.

  ‘Straight on, over a mile ahead of you,’ I answered.

  With a ‘Sorry you’re hurt, my boy!’ he rushed his men on.

  After escapes innumerable, and a struggle that I never expected to accomplish, I reached the ridge of the first hill in company with a New Zealander, who was also wounded. Together we hopped and stumbled, with our arms about one another’s neck, finally rolling over the brow of the hill into a h
ole that afforded some little amount of shelter.

  We settled down there for a short spell before continuing to the dressing station on the beach. The wounded still passed in apparently endless procession. They were wonderfully cheerful and full of information. But here our peace was short-lived.

  Gradually the enemy’s range lengthened, and shells crept nearer and nearer; machine-gun and rifle fire commenced to whisk about us again; then suddenly through the scrub broke the head remnant of the firing line.

  Slowly they came, disputing every inch and reluctantly yielding the ground which they had so gloriously occupied during the earlier hours of the day.

  The Turks evidently intended to drive them into the sea by sheer weight of numbers, but they were determined to die rather than surrender the position dearly won. Having retired some little distance in an orderly manner, they concentrated on the ring of hills commanding the beach, and, hastily entrenching, prepared to meet the massed infantry that were being hurled forward.

  They had not long to wait, for very soon the whole ridge was black with Turks. On they came, evidently thinking that very soon they would sweep the remnant of our little force from their shores. But they were sadly mistaken.

  When they were within easy range, a storm of rifle and machine-gun fire tore lanes through their massed ranks, while the Queen Elizabeth, which had been unable to support us during the afternoon, opened fire with her fifteen-inch guns, causing fearful losses.

  The Turks were stunned by such a reception, and retired over the hill, giving the boys time to further consolidate the position; but they came again and again, meeting with the same withering fire each time.

  Eventually they retired for the night, leaving the gallant survivors in peace, and in possession of the joyful thought that they had come through the severest fighting, and ‘had done their bit’.