“I am Birdwood.”
“Then,” said the sentry, without any loss of his own dignity, “why don’t you wear a feather in your cap as a bird would?”
The general stared hard at the man for an instant, tried to frown, but laughed instead, and there was no court martial.
CHAPTER III
Gallipoli
Today all is quiet at Gallipoli Peninsula. The rows on rows of wooden crosses at Anzac and Helles, at Nibrunsei Point and Brighton Beach, look out over the Ægean Sea, doubtless blue as it ever was. The dead who lie beneath these little monuments of great deeds—the crosses amid the dwarf holly bushes that clothe the western slopes—have reached their rest. In the scrub Lee-Enfields lie rusting alongside shattered Mausers. The pebbles on the long bleak beaches are mixed with shrapnel bullets, and in the sand and the dunes west of the Long Sap are buried bones and scraps of leather, clips of corroded cartridges, and shreds of khaki clothing.
We had no false idea when we left Lemnos Island, eight transports carrying our particular 3,000 Australians, twelve more carrying the remainder of General Birdwood’s division, as to the difficulty if not impossibility of the task ahead. Our training at Lemnos Island had shown some of the difficulties, especially the business of landing through choppy seas or narrow beaches under frowning cliffs and then scaling those cliffs. The Turks with their German officers had had their warning in the attempt to force the Dardenelles by the allied forces in January. It was absurd to think that they would be surprised by any movement we could make only a few months after. We discussed the improbability of success quite openly. We went over the old defeats in the history of the Dardenelles, the defeats when Helen of Troy figured as the object of conquest, the defeats of the Crusaders and of Constantine. As I say, we didn’t have much hope, but nevertheless, we were all glad that the time had come when the training was at an end and we were to go into the fight. Personally, I set about the same task as the others. On the eve of the battle I wrote to my solicitors, Garland, Seabourne & Abbott, as to the disposal of an insurance policy I had. I had no wife, sweetheart or parents and decided to make an old and pretty-crusty uncle of mine in England—he had given me a whaling or two when I was a boy—the beneficiary.
I had gathered before leaving Australia ostrich and emu plumes and had made photographs of my companions, had purchased in Egypt the pretty little flower books made up in their pages of pressed flowers, had acquired sandal boxes, silk handkerchiefs and quite a quantity of “Turkish delight,” as we always spoke of our tobacco. I made up many little packages as mementos to girls I knew, to friends, and in common with the others gave them over to the postal clerk of the Euripides.
Of course, the world knows the fate of the Euripides, and so my will and all my packages of gifts and letters never reached their destination. But after the men had made these final dispensations of their little properties, had written their private secret hopes, fears, and expressions of affection to loved ones, the sadness of that period swiftly passed from us and we began to laugh and joke at the prospect of what was ahead. We even went so far as to make a sweepstake to be won by the first man to land on the Peninsula. We came to anchor at, I should say, about two o’clock in the morning off what we have since designated as X. Y. Z. beach. This is at Kaba Tepeh. The other detachments of General Birdwood’s forces were spread at anchorage up to and beyond Suvla Bay. The particular stretch of territory that we were called upon to capture was about 500 yards long. It was a nearly straight line of coast. The beach was two hundred yards in width with a gradual rising of sand dunes tufted with dwarf holly bushes and miniature table lands, which finally resolved itself into sheer cliffs, some of them high and sharp like fangs, others rounded, in all giving the impression of the open, snarling jaw of some mammoth animal with scraggy teeth.