The battle-cries, by the way, were for the Turks the sonorous, deep-voiced “Allah, Allah,” and “Voor” (“God, God,” “Strike”); while the New Zealanders used often to shout: “Eggs is cooked.” This apparently irrelevant, unwarlike slogan had its origin in Egypt. There, on field days in the desert, when the men halted to rest, Egyptians would appear magically with primitive kitchens and the cry of “Eggs is cooked!”
Diary. Monday, August 16, 1915. No. 3 Outpost. Christo will spit on my razor-strop; otherwise he is a good servant.... Bathed with Charlie B. yesterday afternoon.... I don’t think we want Roumania in. If she has no ammunition and takes a very bad knock from Germany, it would give Germany a very strong strategic position. The Turks who have come in do not really seem very disheartened.
At about this time the Expeditionary Force entered upon a new phase. The agony of the struggle had passed its crisis. Both sides sat down grimly, to wait for the winter. In many ways our position had distinctly improved. There was more room, and space banished the sense of imprisonment that had afflicted us. The country was not as battle-scarred as Anzac, and walking over the heights at sunset was a feast of loveliness.
We moved our Headquarters again, and I went up to a large dugout in what had been a Turkish fort. The troops quartered in this fort were an Indian Field Battery and sixty-three New Zealanders, all that was left of their battalion. These men had been in the first landing. They had, every one of them, had dysentery or fever, and the great majority were still sick and over-ripe for hospital.
As time went on, and illness increased, one often heard men and officers say: “If we can’t hold the trenches with sound men, we have got to hold them with sick men.” When all was quiet, the sick-list grew daily. But when the men knew that there was to be an attack, they fought their sickness, to fight the Turk, and the stream to the hospitals shrank.
I admired nothing in the war more than the spirit of these sixty-three New Zealanders, who were soon to go to their last fight. When the day’s work was over, and the sunset swept the sea, we used to lean upon the parapet and look up to where Chunuk Bair flamed, and talk. The great distance from their own country created an atmosphere of loneliness. This loneliness was emphasized by the fact that the New Zealanders rarely received the same recognition as the Australians in the Press, and many of their gallant deeds went unrecorded or were attributed to their greater neighbours. But they had a silent pride that put these things into proper perspective. The spirit of these men was unconquered and unconquerable. At night, when the great moon of the Dardanelles soared and all was quiet except the occasional whine of a bullet overhead, the voices of the tired men continually argued the merits of the Expedition, and there was always one end to these discussions: “Well, it may all be a —— mistake, but in a war of this size you will have mistakes of this size, and it doesn’t matter a —— to us whether we are for it here or in France, for we came out to do one job, and it’s nothing to us whether we finish in one place or another.” The Turks were not the only fatalists in those days.
We were now well supplied with water, but food of the right kind was a difficulty. It was very hard to obtain supplies for sick men, and here, as always, we met with the greatest kindness from the Navy.