Chapter C: D. MC

_Drawn by TED COLLES, after F. J. Leigh_]

(_The sort of thing we must expect to hear after the War is ended_)]

Yes, that’s the red ribbon I’m wearing—
Just a small strip of scarlet, you see,
But there’s no one can tell how I prize it
Nor the glow it occasions to me.
For it speaks of the broad fields of honour
Which we wrung from the red jaws of hell—
And my eyes grow bedimmed for the cobbers[13]
Who battled and conquered and fell.

Yes, that’s the V.C. How I won it,
It isn’t for _me_ to relate.
(We heroes are always so modest,
And boasting’s a thing that I hate.)
Well—seeing you write for the papers,
I’ll make an exception of you;
Don’t mention _my_ name if you write it,
Tho’ every partic’lar is true.

It was during a fight for an outpost—
It was called the Green Knoll, I believe—
And the Turks on the top dealt out slaughter:
They’d a week of defeat to retrieve.
It was five thousand feet to the summit,
And almost as steep as a wall;
And they met every charge as we rushed it
With bayonet, shrapnel, and ball.

’Twas defended by nine tiers of trenches
(That’s strong for an outpost, you’ll guess),
With twelve 42 centimetres,
Which kicked up the deuce of a mess.
We’d been fighting five days without resting,
When the eighth line of trenches we took;
For ev’ry man there was a hero—
From me to the company’s cook.

And there was the knoll just before us—
Some two hundred paces or more;
With barb-wire and bayonets bristling,
And the parapets sloppy with gore.
And the howitzers roared like perdition
And vomited fire and death;
Till we saw it was madness to charge them,
And halted a moment for breath.

Ah, stranger, imagine the picture,
And then stand with horror aghast—
_We had fought for a month without sleeping,
And we stood facing failure at last!_
We had squandered the best of our Army,
We had “stuck” to our ultimate gasp;
And there, in the moment of triumph,
The prize was to slip from our grasp.

Then suddenly out sprang the Major,
His face lighted over with bliss—
“Pass the word there for Lance-Private Wilson;
_He_’ll find us a way out of this!”
(If there’s one thing I hate, it is skiting,[14]
When I hear it I always feel sore,
So you won’t think I boast when I tell you
He ought to have done it before!)

And a great cheer arose as I faced him
And nodded (I never salute),
And said to him: “I’ll see you thro’, sir,
And win you some glory to boot.
The chaps of the 16th Battalion
Are not easy snoozers to beat;
I’ve a notion (I says) that will lick them—
’Arf a dollar I line them a treat!

“I don’t want no red-tapey orders,
And I don’t want no kudos nor pelf;
You get back to your own little dug-outs,
And I’ll tackle the knoll _by myself_!
I’ll lay down my life for my country,
For old England, the land of the free;
And you’ll find that the bloke called Horatius
Was only a trifle to me!”

Then I shook hands with all the battalion
(There were only thirteen of us left),
And they cheered me again till the foemen
Must have thought us of senses bereft.
And I gathered my arms and my rations,
And girded myself for the fray—
If I live to be ninety or over,
I will always remember that day!

I had five hundred rounds for my rifle,
And of hand bombs I took forty-one;
A machine-gun was slung to my shoulders,
And I carried a periscope gun.
As for rations—well, all I took with me
Was a tin of Fray Bentos[15] or two,
And in my breast pocket I planted
A nice Army biscuit to chew.

Then I waved a farewell to my cobbers—
I was too much affected to speak;
There are times when the bravest of soldiers
Have feelings that render them weak.
One tear—then I turned to the trenches,
And charged like a lion at bay
As I caught the last words of our Colonel,
Crying: “Bonzer[16] ... Gorstrafem ... Hooray!”

You talk of charmed lives—I’d a thousand;
As I rushed up that hill like a goat
I got thirty-two shots thro’ my trousers
And nine shrapnel balls thro’ my coat;
And a Japanese bomb burst beneath me
—For a moment I gave up all hope,
But it proved the best thing that could happen,
_For it pushed me half-way up the slope_.

Then a fifteen-inch shell came straight at me
—I hadn’t a moment to shirk—
But it struck on that hard Army biscuit
And rebounded—and blew up a Turk!
You doubt it? Well, if you want proof, sir,
The truth of this tale to endorse,
Here’s the biscuit—that dent in the middle
Is where the shell struck it, of course!

Ah, yes, ’twas a terrible moment;
I was then slightly wounded, ’tis true—
Just a bayonet stab in the gizzard
And a crack from a bullet or two.
But I gathered new strength for the conflict,
And, just as the darkness came down,
I was under their parapets, resting,
And I knew I had beaten them brown!

For this was the scheme I had worked on,
’Twas a little bit mean, you may say—
But I knew that the Turks were half-famished,
And fought on one biscuit a day;
And the tins of Fray Bentos I carried,
I chucked in the trench then and there;
And I heard the poor beggars pounce on it,
And I knew they were caught in the snare!

* * * * *

The morning broke, smiling and peaceful—
Ah, shame that we soldiers must fight—
’Twas a piteous scene met my vision
With the first rosy quivers of light.
When I peeped in the trench, not a Turk, sir,
Was left of that legion accurst—
For they’d whacked the Fray Bentos among them,
_And each man had perished from thirst_.

That’s the yarn. If you know the 16th, sir,
You’ll know how our Colonel can smile.
He said to me: “_Corporal_ Wilson,
You’ve dished up the beggars in style.”
Promotion! Some say I deserve it,
But _that’s_ really nothing to me;
I don’t want no honour or glory,
But—that’s how I won the V.C.

“CROSSCUT,” 16th Battalion, A.I.F.

FOOTNOTES:

[13] Cobber is Australian for a tried and trusted friend.

[14] Skiting—Australian for “swanking” in speech. “Skite”—blatherskite.

[15] Fray Bentos is a brand of tinned meat.

[16] Bonzer—Australian for “excellent.”

ICY

Nobody seemed to know much about him except that he was generally considered by all those who knew of him in the squadron to be a “cold-foot,” and his nickname was appropriately “Icy.” Not that the others had any particular cause to call him that, but whenever “Beachy Bill” came screeching overhead he would involuntarily duck and then smile in that peculiar manner of his as much as to say, “I can’t help it!” Beachy wasn’t his worst enemy, though, for if there was anything that he dreaded it was those Turkish “75’s.”[17] It used to make us feel as if we could shake him when we saw how he would double himself up. And yet one never liked to attempt anything of the kind whenever he used that smile. Moreover, as he was over six feet in height and correspondingly strong, it would not have been politic. His was a baffling smile, recalling the peculiar smile of the “Monna Lisa,” and, like it, unfathomable. He was a very quiet kind of chap, and when it was his turn to do fatigues, he would go and perform whatever was required of him without ever grumbling. His mates used to take a mean advantage of his good nature, and would shunt all the work, such as sweeping out the “possie,” or trenches, on to him.

About the time of which I am writing we had noticed that Abdul was sapping somewhere down the gully. Sometimes we could distinguish dark shapes moving about, and no amount of sniping on our part would stop them. They worked only during the night, and each morning we found that the pile of new earth down the gully had grown higher. At last we understood his plan—and it came to our turn to make a counter move.

One evening I was told off among others to go out and dig a new trench in front of Abdul’s new sap. We had to block him from getting to a certain place on the little ridge which hitherto had been in “No-Man’s Land.” I noticed that Icy had also been told off, but he was to be one of the covering party. All that night we worked hard, digging ourselves in and filling sandbags which we threw up in front of us. At first we were undisturbed, but suddenly the bullets began to ping-ping over our heads, and we knew that Abdul had tumbled. Still, as he was himself intent on digging he did not come out at us, but contented himself by sniping, thinking to drive us off in that way. However, it was a bit late in the day for that; since by the time he found us out we had already several good sandbags filled, and these protected us as long as we kept well down.

Several of our chaps were winged, but as none of the wounds was very serious we didn’t mind that. When it had struck five in the morning we knocked off and retired to sleep away the day. Half a dozen bomb-throwers who had volunteered for the job then took our places, bringing with them a few bombs, their rifles, ammunition, water bottles, and a supply of bully beef and biscuits. There they spent the whole day, lying low under cover of the sandbags. But Abdul troubled them not! Next night we went out again to resume work, and then it was that certain things happened which made us look upon Icy in a different light.

We had no sooner started work than _ra-ta-ta-ta-ta_ went a machine-gun somewhere out to the left, and the bullets came pinging round hot and close, winging three and killing two on the first discharge.

John Turk had stolen a march on us by placing a machine-gun away out on his extreme flank where he could to a certain extent enfilade us. That sort of thing could not be allowed to last, as we had to bury our noses in the ground each time the confounded gun opened up. Our covering party, being out ahead of us, escaped the hail of bullets better than we did. The place was now becoming too hot to stay in, so the order came along to retire independently to our trenches, until something could be done to stop the machine-gun.

When we mustered again in the trenches, we found that one man of the covering party was missing. The man was Icy. As we were talking about him—wondering who should go back to look for him—there came the noise of a commotion from the direction of the Turkish machine-gun. Bang! bang! went a couple of bombs, followed by cries and shouts from Abdul, and above it all we were certain we heard fragments of language, of the category known in Australia as “bullocky.”[18] What could it mean? By this time the alarm had spread along the whole of Abdul’s front trenches, which belched forth liquid fire. In our own trenches everyone had mechanically sprung to arms; and we stood there wondering while for fifteen minutes the Turks fired without ceasing. Gradually the noise subsided—and we noticed that for some reason the machine-gun away on the left was strangely quiet.

An hour later we were stealing out again to have another attempt at completing our new trenches when I stumbled over the form of a man lying prone. Bending over to see him, I found it was Icy. His clothes were wet and sticky with blood, and half underneath his body there showed the muzzle of a machine-gun. As we lifted him up, we saw that the gun was there complete, tripod and all.

We took him into the lines and handed him over to the dressing-station; and just before we came away he opened his eyes and told enough for us to realise that Icy had sneaked over and stolen that Turkish gun. To this day we don’t quite know how he did it, as he never will talk about it; but before they took him on to the hospital ship next day—with his sixteen bullet wounds and scratches all told—there went down to see him a crowd in which I was amongst the foremost, which apologised to Icy very humbly.

And, do you know, he only smiled back at us in that funny old way of his.

E. A. M. W.

FOOTNOTES:

[17] The Turks had a battery of French “75’s” at Anzac, seized as the guns were coming from France during the blockade of Servia in the Balkan War.

[18] Bullocky—stands both for the bullock driver and for his chief gift.

THE TROJAN WAR, 1915

We care not what old Homer tells
Of Trojan war and Helen’s fame.
Upon the ancient Dardanelles
New peoples write—in blood—their name.

Those Grecian heroes long have fled,
No more the Plain of Troy they haunt;
Made sacred by our Southern dead,
Historic is the Hellespont.

Homeric wars are fought again
By men who like old Greeks can die;
Australian backblock heroes slain,
With Hector and Achilles lie.

No legend lured these men to roam;
They journeyed forth to save from harm
Some Mother-Helen sad at home,
Some obscure Helen on a farm.

And when one falls upon the hill—
Then by dark Styx’s gloomy strand,
In honour to plain Private Bill
Great Agamemnon lifts his hand!

J. WAREHAM, 1st Aust. Field Amb.

THE PRICE

Dead figures writhe and beckon in my dream;
Wild eyes look into mine;
While I, bewildered, watch the bloody stream
With misty eyes ashine.

It rends my heart, and I am nothing loath
To have the murder cease.
Horror it is and carnage, yet are both
Part of the price of peace.

Corpl. COMUS, 2nd Bat., A.I.F.

KILLED IN ACTION

Where the ranges throw their shadows long before the day’s surrender,
Down a valley where a river used to tumble to the sea,
On a rising patch of level rest the men who dared to tender
Life and all its sweetness for their love o’ liberty.

In a thousand miles of ugly scrubby waste and desolation,
Just that little space of level showing open to the sea;
Nothing there to lend it grandeur (sure, it needs no decoration)
Save those rows of wooden crosses keeping silent custody.

There’s a band of quiet workers, artless lads who joked and chatted
Just this morning; now they’re sullen and they keep their eyes away
From the blanket-hidden body, coat and shirt all blood-bespattered,
Lying motionless and waiting by the new-turned heap of clay.

There are records in the office—date of death and facts pertaining,
Showing name and rank and number and disposal of the kit—
More or less a business matter, and we have no time for feigning
More than momentary pity for the men who have been hit.

There’s a patient mother gazing on her hopes so surely shattered
(Hopes and prayers she cherished bravely, seeking strength to
hide her fear),
Boyhood’s dreams and idle memories—things that never really
mattered—
Lying buried where he’s buried ’neath the stars all shining clear.

There’s a young wife sorrow-stricken in her bitter first conception
Of that brief conclusive message, harsh fulfilment of her dread;
There are tiny lips repeating, with their childish imperception,
Simple words that bring her mem’ries from the boundaries of the
dead.

Could the Turk have seen this picture when his trigger-finger
rounded,
Would his sights have blurred a little had he heard that mother’s
prayer?
Could he know some things that she knew, might his hate have been
confounded?
But he only saw his duty, and he did it, fighting fair.

Just a barren little surface where the grave mounds rise ungainly,
Monuments and tributes to the men who’ve done their share.
Pain and death, the fruits of battle, and the crosses tell it
plainly,
Short and quick and silent suffering; would to God it ended there.

HARRY MCCANN, Headquarters, 4th Aust. Light Horse.

_G.T.M.R._]

A GREY DAY IN GALLIPOLI

As I look westward towards the grey Ægean Sea, generally peaceful, deep blue and ofttimes appearing golden-hued by the mystic hand of sunset, but now flecked with ripples of white like a distant hill-side strewn with new-shorn lambs, and hurried on by the murmurings of the grey sea’s bride, the grey cloud-bearing Mother Wind, as she splashes the foreshore of this grey land with fleecy fringes of her mate, and makes her way over the grey hills, through rugged landslip or tangled, stunted, unfriendly evergreens, grey phantoms flit to and fro, passing with a careless nod, as it were, the little grey homes of those whose thoughts so seldom had time to feast on aught but the bright days before the Peril came; but who now, with a foretaste of hell in their souls, need only such a day as this to make them feel the presence of the grey world’s messenger whose name is Loneliness. 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. Loneliness comes not to all of us garbed in this fashion. To others, who look eastward, she comes dressed in the sombre clothes of the grey hill-side, and with yearning eyes beckons them on to the chances of the blue and gold life in Constantinople; or, perchance, if their luck is that of many another good soldier, to that other grey life forever with the grey seas, grey skies and grey forgetfulness on these ghostly, forsaken grey shores of Gallipoli.

N. ASH,
11th A.A.S.C.

MY ANZAC HOME

Come and see my little dug-out—way up on the hill it stands,
Where I can get a lovely view of Anzac’s golden sands;
When “Beachy Bill” is shelling, I can see just where he lands,
From my cosy little dug-out on the hill.

It isn’t quite as roomy as the mansions of the Tsar;
From sitting-room to bedroom is not so very far,
For the dining- and the smoking-room you stay just where you are,
In my cosy little dug-out on the hill.

The fleas they wander nightly, as soon as I’ve undressed,
And after many weary hunts I’ve had to give them best.
As the ants have also found it, there is very little rest
In my cosy little dug-out on the hill.

I’ve a natty little cupboard, and it looks so very nice,
’Twas made to keep my bread and jam, my bacon and my rice;
But now it’s nothing other than a home for orphan’d mice,
In my cosy little dug-out on the hill.

There is no electric lighting in this blighted land of war,
So I use some fat in syrup tins, and stand it on the floor—
And when it’s working overtime I sweat from every pore,
In my cosy little dug-out on the hill.

When the nights are clear and starry—then the scene is beautified
By the silvery gleams and shadows that across the mountain glide;
But if it’s wet and stormy—well, I go to sleep outside
Of my cosy little dug-out on the hill.[19]

When the time comes round for parting from my little eight by four,
And I can get a good night’s rest without a back that’s sore,
Well—_perhaps_ some day I’ll miss you, and will long to live once
more
In the little cosy dug-out on the hill.

Corpl. GEORGE L. SMITH,
24th Sanitary Section, R.A.M.C.T.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] The roof of a dug-out, as usually designed, is a device for keeping the shrapnel out and letting the water in.

WHAT FRANK THOUGHT

A private sat under a tree. It was not the Lone Pine, but the other one. Winter had stripped it of foliage, and all around was bleak and uninviting.

In his bronzed fist, which had carried buckets and biscuits since April 25th, he held a letter, highly perfumed, from his “young lady”—she whom he had escorted on so many occasions to Sydney’s social events in the piping days of peace.

He had not heard from home since embarkation, and had often wondered, as he bathed in just enough water to temper a whisky and shaved by means of a lethal instrument better fitted for cutting a hedge than a beard, whether they really cared. A fit of hesitancy now seized him, and he hardly liked to read the letter. By means of the top of a tin of sardines which he had bought cheap—two bob he had paid for it on the beach—he saw his unshaven face, the neck of his soiled shirt, and his crop of unkempt hair. He was interrupted in this by the attentions a “little friend” was paying him. This he located. He then lighted the end of a cigarette (which he had kept stowed away in the top of his puttees) before risking another glance at himself in the top of the two-bob tin of sardines.

“What a guy,” he murmured. “If Jessie could see me now, would she turn me down for some cold-footed, well-groomed fellow? I don’t think. She’s all right, and would understand it’s no gipsy tea we’re at.”

However, it was with some slight nervousness that he opened the letter. Following the customary greetings, Jessie wrote:

“Dearie, be sure to keep your hat on at all times. Egypt, I hear,
is awfully hot about Christmas-time. The doctor was telling me the
other day that he could hardly sit on the veranda of Shepheard’s in
the middle of the day. Keep your hat on, even when at Shepheard’s.
The climate is so treacherous. Doc. says he recommends this hotel.
Shall we send letters to you there? Iced drinks and heavy meals are
dangerous, doc. says.”

This was more than flesh and blood could stand. “Am I having my leg pulled?” he asked. He looked at the envelope, and found it had been posted in Sydney thirteen months ago. He swore roundly at the expense of the postal people, and as all the rest of the letter was hopelessly out of date, he turned his attention to the next item of his very belated mail. It was another letter from Jessie. She again rambled on about Egypt, its climatic horrors and the dangers of Cairo’s attractions.

He bit his lip and smiled sourly when he came across a passage which related to the dancing deeds of a male acquaintance of his.

“Frank, as you know, has not enlisted yet,” she wrote. “He is
not sure of a commission, because chaps are called upon to
pass a beastly exam. He says it’s rot to ask him to sit for an
examination, and he would just hate to serve in the ranks. In his
case, ‘it would be super-patriotic,’ he says, to do so. I don’t
understand what he means by this, but no doubt you will.”

Hughie knew that the man referred to was big enough to push all the Turks off the Peninsula; and Jessie proved a Job’s comforter when, later on, she told him that Frank only attended dances given for patriotic purposes.

The next item was a parcel containing hair-oil, twenty-five costly cigars, a cigar-holder, a suit of pyjamas, and a booklet given away by a firm of tobacconists, explaining to would-be-recruits that “Henry Clays” would be forwarded to any part of the Australasian front free of carriage. The parcel was addressed to Gallipoli.

“Darling,” wrote Jessie, in the letter that accompanied the parcel,
“keep these things in your tent.[20] It must be a fag getting the
oil you liked so much. I suppose you have to walk some distance
from the firing-line to the nearest shops. No doubt the cigars
will be acceptable after dinner, and, later on, the pyjamas. Don’t
think me forward in sending the latter. But I know fellows do wear
them. I’ve seen them advertised in the _Herald_. I am sending these
things for use in Turkey.

“I have read all about the charge you chaps made on the 25th of
April, and hope you were allowed to get well up in the front. It
would just suit you. I know it is dangerous, but Frank says if it
is dangerous for the men, how much more dangerous must it be for
the officers. He says he will insist upon leading his men in all
charges. Between you and me though, Hughie, I don’t think he will
enlist. He has several pairs of lovely socks to hand by to-day’s
delivery from David Jones’s, and if they are not for the yachting
that is to start next week, then I’m slow. Frank and I are going
to Randwick Races on Saturday, and if we see anything in your
battalion colours we will back it and buy something for you with
what we collect. Frank says he is sure you would like us to do this.

“Please don’t get shot, dear. We intend to send you lots of nice
things for Christmas.”

Hughie, a gay dog in the good old ante-bellum days, who occupied a cosy job and circulated his sovereigns, tramped back to his dug-out through the saps, revolving wicked thoughts about Frank. Always a philosopher, he cleaned his rifle with the hair-oil, cut up the pyjamas to make pull-throughs, and to newly arrived reinforcements distributed the cigars. He and the old hands had lost any appetite they ever had for such comforts.

A. J. BOYD,
A.N.Z.A.C.

FOOTNOTES:

[20] 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.

I’ve dwelt in many a town and shire,
From Cairns to Wangaratta;
I’ve dropped into the Brisbane show
And Bundaberg Regatta.

But now I’ve struck an ideal spot,
Where pleasure never cloys.
Just list’ to the advantages
This choice retreat enjoys—

The rent is free, no board to pay,
No land or income taxes,
And on my tail no middleman
Nor fat man fatter waxes.

If I should say I need some clothes,
Someone will just “_take action_”;
No tailors’ bills can worry me
And drive me to distraction.

And should my health appear to fail
And appetite grow fine,
My doctor hands me—not a bill,
But just a Number 9.[21]

The scenery is glorious,
The sunsets are cyclonic;
The atmosphere’s so full of iron,
It acts as quite a tonic.

And even parsons preach the Word,
Nor take up a collection;
While politicians don’t exist,
Nor e’en a by-election.

No scandal ever hovers here
To sear our simple lives;
And married men are _always_ true
To absent, loving wives.

But the crowning gift of all is—no-
One’s happiness is marred,
Finding answers to the questions
On that d——d War Census Card.

And should you doubt if there can be
A spot which so excels,
Let me whisper—it is ANZAC!
Anzac by the Dardanelles.

Bombardier H. E. SHELL,
7th Battery, Aust. F.A.

FOOTNOTES:

[21] Number 9—a particularly effective and universal remedy in the field service panier in the form of a pill.

DAVID. BARKER. 15.]

(_An Historic Incident_)

Staff Officer (suddenly meeting perspiring Australasian staggering under his twentieth half-ton load in the very first wheelbarrow ever improvised at Anzac—till then sacks had been used): “Hallo, my man! That’s a very good scheme. Did you invent that barrow?”

Perspiring Australasian: “I wish I could find the beggar who did!”]