Chapter C: E. W. B

A CONFESSION OF FAITH

Who would remember me were I to die,
Remember with a pang and yet no pain;
Remember as a friend, and feel good-bye
Said at each memory as it wakes again?

I would not that a single heart should ache—
That some dear heart will ache is my one grief.
Friends, if I have them, I would fondly take
With me that best of gifts, a friend’s belief.

I have believed, and for my faith reaped tares;
Believed again, and, losing, was content;
A heart perchance touched blindly, unawares,
Rewards with friendship faith thus freely spent.

Bury the body—it has served its ends;
Mark not the spot, but “On Gallipoli,”
Let it be said, “he died.” Oh, Hearts of Friends,
If I am worth it, keep my memory.

Capt. JAMES SPRENT,
A.M.C. (attached 3rd Field Amb.).

OUR FRIEND THE ENEMY

(_A Sketch by One who knows him very well_)

In a shady spot beneath the scarlet-blossomed Judas trees, Abdul sat sipping his coffee, contemplating the busy scene in the small marketplace. There were happy fishermen hanging their nets to dry on the lime trees for which the village is famous, after their night’s toil in the Black Sea. Their catch was a good one, and was even now being put up for sale in the narrow alleys by the Jews. The village barber was a hard-worked man that day, for the Turk is vain and also dignified, and was it not the eve of the Bairam festival! Groups of gaily coloured villagers among the fruiterers’ baskets were busy haggling over their bargains. The word “Cauzaum” (my lamb) would often be flung by an infuriated vendor at stalwart Kurds, workers in the neighbouring quarry, who fingered his luscious grapes whilst cavilling at his prices. From a latticed window a veiled woman with a shrill voice called to a little red-fezzed boy escaping from his mother.

The _Mouktar_ (mayor), with a jasper-handled stick, was pointing to the new fountain, its gilded inscription of extracts from the Koran shining in the sun. Had not the _Mouktar_ sat day after day outside the door of the great _Dahlié Naziri_ (Minister of Interior) waiting to obtain a credit for the construction of the fountain whose waters were from the Beicos bends?

“God is great, and Mahomet is His prophet,” murmured Abdul, as he slowly counted off another bead from his amber rosary. “I am a happy man,” he murmured to himself. “Was not my Kismet good; when lifting the veil of my wife at the marriage ceremony I found that she was beautiful? She is a good housekeeper; her coffee resembles that of the creamy Arabian coffee bean. Is not the gilled ram that I bought for to-morrow’s sacrifice worthy of her cooking?”

Abdul wandered along homewards to his cottage near the shore; for it was drawing close to the midday call to prayer, and his heart was full of thanksgiving to Allah.

* * * * *

Abdul is struggling along the main road leading to Stamboul with many others. He no longer hearkens to the beating of the tom-toms, and to the patriotic exhortations of a straggling mob following behind with green banners. “It is Kismet,” he murmurs, as he turns once more for a last look at the silvery winding thread below—the Bosphorus, on whose shores lies his home, his all. He has been told there is a war. He does not question; he knows not the cause. It is fate. He trudges on.

* * * * *

The fighting has been fierce. He is hard pressed. Sweating with blood he draws back. His regiment is hard put to it, and, like sheep without a master, the men are preparing to disperse. Already German machine-guns from their rear are on to them. The road home means death. Like a man he faces the rush of his opponents.

* * * * *

He sees strange faces—the pain from his wounds is calmed. Once more there swim before his eyes his home, his wife, his plantation of maize so promising.

Allah was great—it was Kismet.

H. E. W.,
A. & N. Z. A. C.

ARMY BISCUITS

Biscuits! Army biscuits! What a volume of blessings and cursings have been uttered on the subject of biscuits—army biscuits!

What a part they take in our daily routine: the carrying of them, the eating of them, the cursing at them!

Could we find any substitute for biscuits? Surely not! It is easy to think of biscuits without an army, but of an army without biscuits—never.

Biscuits, like the poor, are always with us. Crawling from our earthly dens at the dim dawning of the day, we receive no portion of the dainties which once were ours in the long ago times of effete civilisation; but, instead, we devour with eagerness—biscuit porridge. 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. 5’s.

Think of the aching void where once grew a goodly tooth. Think of the struggle and strain, the crushing and crunching as two molars wrestled with some rocky fragment. Think of the momentary elation during the fleeting seconds when it seemed that the molars would triumphantly blast and scrunch through every stratum of the thrice-hardened rock. Call to mind the disappointment, the agony of mind and body, as the almost victorious grinder missed its footing, slipped, and snapped hard upon its mate, while the elusive biscuit rasped and scraped upon bruised and tender gums.

Biscuits! Army biscuits! Have you, reader, ever analysed with due carefulness the taste of army biscuits? Is it the delicious succulency of ground granite or the savoury toothsomeness of powdered marble? Do we perceive a delicate flavouring of ferro-concrete with just a dash of scraped iron railings? 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. If it be granted that they possess this faculty of stimulating the peripheral extremities of a soldier’s taste-buds, then it must also be conceded that the stimulation is on the whole of an unpleasant sort. In short, that the soldier’s feeling, apart from the joy, the pride, and the satisfaction at his completed achievement in transferring a whole biscuit from his outer to his inner man without undue accident or loss of teeth, is one of pain, unease, and dissatisfaction.

It may seem almost incredible, wholly unbelievable indeed, but armies have marched and fought, made sieges, retired according to plan, stormed impregnable cities, toiled in weariness and painfulness, kept lonely vigils, suffered the extremes of burning heat and of freezing cold, and have, in the last extremity, bled and died, laurel-crowned and greatly triumphant, the heroes of legend and of song, all without the moral or physical, or even spiritual aid of army biscuits.

Agamemnon and the Greeks camped for ten years on the windy plains of Troy without one box of army biscuits. When Xerxes threw his pontoon bridge across the Narrows and marched 1,000,000 men into Greece, his transport included none of Teak Green and Co.’s paving-stones for the hardening of his soldiers’ hearts and the stiffening of their backs. Cæsar subdued Britons, Gauls, and Germans. Before the lines of Dyrrhachium his legions lived many days on boiled grass and such-like delicacies, but they never exercised their jaws upon a rough, tough bit of—army biscuit.

Biscuits! Army biscuits! They are old friends now, and, like all old friends, they will stand much hard wear and tear. Well glazed, they would make excellent tiles or fine flagstones. After the war they will have great scarcity value as curios, as souvenirs which one can pass on from generation to generation, souvenirs which will endure while the Empire stands. If we cannot get physical strength from army biscuits, let us at least catch the great spiritual ideal of enduring hardness, which they are so magnificently fitted to proclaim.

The seasons change. 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. We can move to other theatres, we can change our clothes, our arms, and our generals, but we must have our biscuits, army biscuits, else we are no longer an army.

O. E. BURTON,
N.Z.M.C.

A PRESENT FROM HOME

DAVID BARKER
Gallipoli ’15

“Do they think we’re on a bloomin’ pic-nic?”]

THE LOST POEM

I called to see our regimental poet last evening. He had previously told me that he intended to “write something” for “The Anzac Book.” Our poet is also Q.M. Sergeant, and when he is not writing requisitions or taking “baksheesh” out of our rations, and watering our rum, he writes poetry.

When I called on him he was in his dug-out, surrounded by bully-beef tins, empty cases, and his ill-gotten shares of our daily issues. He has many callers, and I am afraid their inquiries rather spoilt his verses. When I arrived the Q.M.S. was already in a poor humour for writing poetry. The O.C. had been worrying him about galvanised iron for cover for some dug-outs; three men had complained about the scantiness of their rum issue—which somehow always annoys the Q.M.S.; and he had received no letters in the day’s mail except a bill from a chap he had borrowed a pound from in Charleville two years ago. Still, our Q.M.S. is a sticker, and he read me the covering letter which he was sending to the Editor.

He said he thought it would be as well to get the letter off his mind first. That would make the writing of the verses necessary, and he would have to complete the job in order to keep faith.

Before I arrived he had written:

Yes, Mr. Editor, I will try to “write something” for your book.
’Tis a glorious day, bright with sunshine, and the snow has melted
away from the sides of the hills—snow that so many Anzacites saw
fall for the first time. I know a state where no snow falls. And,
to-night, being rum issue night, I would sing to you of black soil
plains and wheat-fields, of warm comfy boundary riders’ huts, and
of holidays where plump maids join you in surf-bathing excursions.
But you see I am a Q.M.S., and at other times when I have tried to
versify I have been disturbed. We have a Quartermaster, but, of
course, I do all the work. Well, let’s rhyme. Boy, bring me the
lyre. The Quartermaster? No, I don’t want the Quartermaster. I want
a harp that I may sing to my muse....

He had just read this much out when the sergeant came in and reported that the C.O. insisted on the galvanised iron being procured to-morrow. Then a corporal called and wanted to know could six men in his section have new boots, and when would the rubber boots be ready for the coves in the trenches?

“How can a man write when he is interrupted like this?” asked our poet. “I had a lovely inspiration, too, about surf bathing. It ran like this——”

But again there was an interruption. The sergeant cook was the caller, and he was angry and hostile. “How the —— can I cook seventy beef teas, forty puddings and two hundred milk diets with the bloomin’ quarter issue of water I get? Love me, when I was cooking for shearing sheds out on the Barcoo, where it never rained, I could get as much water as I wanted. If you want them bloomin’ milk diets you got to get me water—or cook them yourself.”

I don’t know whether our poet had a rod with which he taps the rock and brings forth water, but he mollified the sergeant cook by getting water from somewhere. It tasted well in the rum, too. I would have heard the first line of the poem if one of the sergeants in our hospital had not called down for three hot-water bottles, a tin of Bovril, and some brandy for a sick soldier. I wonder how sick you have to be before you get brandy? Before the sergeant had gone the orderly officer came in. He bullied the Q.M.S. about not getting some tents repaired.

“It’s hard work trying to write a poem here,” said the Q.M.S. sadly, when the orderly officer departed. “For two pins I’d chuck writin’, but that idea about the surf girls is too good to lose. I was going to start with this line——”

“Those patients up in Number Three Ward must have more blankets. And you will have to get another forty beds ready to-night,” yelled a voice at the door.

“Excuse me a bit,” said the poet. He was gone about an hour. When he returned there were five men waiting to interview him. The corporal wished that the Q.M.S. would explain how men were to keep their boots on without laces, and whether socks were supposed to be everlasting. The second caller came on a more peaceful mission. He simply wished to know if the Q.M.S. had heard anything about a consignment of Christmas billy-cans that good people in Australia are supposed to be sending us. I don’t know why, but this query made my friend very angry. “Do you think I’ve got your bloomin’ billy-cans?” he yelled. Why should a Q.M.S. say a thing like that? And he seemed so indignant about it, too. The third chap wanted some paper and an envelope to write to his girl; the fourth wanted an old blanket and some twine to make a shroud for a man who had died; and the fifth asked whether the Q.M.S. knew what was the latest war news. When he was told to go to a place warmer than Port Darwin, he asked quietly if either of us could tell him if sheep would do well around Adrianople after the war.

It was growing late, but I thought I would wait a bit and hear that first line about the surf bathers. Two men came in for soap; a doctor chap called to ask whether there was any fruit to make a fruit salad for a sick man; a lance-corporal said his boots hurt, and got a bigger pair; the cook came back and complained that somebody had pinched six tins of condensed milk; and an officer’s servant inquired whether his boss could have an old box and a ground-sheet to make a bath.

Then the Q.M.S. had another rum and took up his pencil again. He spread out a piece of paper and commenced to write. “I’ll get that first verse off and read it to you,” he said. He would have done it, too, but for the sergeant-major. Our sergeant-major is a—well, he is just a sergeant-major, and he does not write verse.

ANZAC SKETCHES

_By DAVID BARKER_

“What about those great-coats?” he roared. “Didn’t I tell you to get them to-day? And they are not here. Weeks ago I ordered you to get them. I don’t suppose you ever requisitioned for them. What’s that you’re writing now—requisitions?”

“No, sir,” said the Q.M.S. “It’s a poem.”

Then the ’major saw red. “What the blazes have I got here?” he yelled. “Men dying from cold because they’ve got no coats, and you writing poems. What the——”

He fainted away, and I was present when the doctors came out of the hospital tent to which they carried him. One of the doctors said the sergeant-major was a splendid soldier, but he had received a tremendous shock from some unknown cause, and they don’t think he can recover.

When the Q.M.S. heard that he became very despondent. “I won’t write that poem now,” he said; “but it would have been a splendid thing. All about a pretty girl in the surf who met a fellow from the bush....”

R. A. L.
1st Australian Stat. Hosp.

A LITTLE SPRIG OF WATTLE

My mother’s letter came to-day,
And now my thoughts are far away,
For in between its pages lay
A little sprig of wattle.

“The old home now looks at its best,”
The message ran; “the country’s dressed
In spring’s gay cloak, and I have pressed
A little sprig of wattle.”

I almost see that glimpse of spring:
The very air here seems to ring
With joyful notes of birds that sing
Among the sprigs of wattle.

The old home snug amidst the pines,
The trickling creek that twists and twines
Round tall gum roots and undermines,
Is all ablaze with wattle.

A. H. SCOTT,
4th Battery, A.F.A.

THE TRUE STORY OF SAPPHO’S DEATH

_Deciphered—with much labour—by a bomb-thrower of the New Zealand Infantry Brigade from a very old tablet dug up in the trenches at Quinn’s Post_

The Isles of Greece! The Isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho sang,
Both day and night, without surcease—
She didn’t care a hang!

She sang so much by night, by day—
She couldn’t sing at all.
Her manager he docked her pay:
She didn’t fill the hall!

At length, distraught, in fiendish glee,
From cliffs that I have seen,
She flung herself into the sea,
One mile from Mitylene!

’Twas thus that Sappho bold did end
Her gay, voluptuous days;
And monks, who never can unbend,
Press-censored all her lays!

The moral of this tale is that
You guard what Deus sends:
You cannot burn the candle-fat
At both the candle ends!

M. R.

[NOTE.—The epic loses much of its beauty through a hurried
translation from the Ancient Greek during a Turkish attack.]

THE EVERLASTING ARGUMENT

Said Pat Malone to a big, brown Sick,
“They say at fighting you’re mighty slick.”
Said Jock McNab, “Have you noticed the Seeks?
They wear their shirts outside their breeks.”
Said Cornstalk Joe, “Say what you like,
I’ll swear S-i-k-h spells Sike.”
Ses I to ’em all, “What need to bicker?
Pronounce it so’s to rhyme with shikker.”

C. D. MC.,
R.S.D., 11th Aust. A.S.C.

Now snowflakes thickly falling in the winter breeze
Have cloaked alike the hard, unbending ilex
And the grey, drooping branches of the olive trees,
Transmuting into silver all their lead;
And, in between the winding lines, in No-Man’s Land,
Have softly covered with a glittering shroud
The unburied dead.

And in the silences of night, when winds are fair,
When shot and shard have ceased their wild surprising,
I hear a sound of music in the upper air,
Rising and falling till it slowly dies—
It is the beating of the wings of migrant birds
Wafting the souls of these unburied heroes
Into the skies.