Gallipoli at this period of the year was a frying pan. Men found their uniforms intolerable. We cut our trousers into “knickers,” abandoned our tunics, and did all our fighting in bare knees and shirt sleeves. Our enemies got a wrong impression from this. Turkish prisoners told us that the report among them was we were falling so short of supplies that we were cutting our trousers in two to make double the number of pairs. The idea of our poverty of supplies was further strengthened by the fact that many of our men abandoned shirts entirely and moved about like savages with bronzed bodies naked of all covering save the knickers and their socks and boots. Our aspect and the fact that our men went after them practically always with a bayonet, won for us from the Turk the respectful sobriquet of the “White Ghurkas,” the Ghurkas being famous for their fondness and expertness in the use of the knife.

Not to give the reader too happy an impression of affairs as they stood with us in Gallipoli after the night of our desperate landing, it might be well to note here that of our original landing force of 20,000 there had been at least 5,000 casualties among us. The night of the landing in the storm from the Turkish forts, the cliff batteries, the machine guns and the snipers, and also the drownings, fully 3,000 men had been killed or wounded. In the intermittent fighting of the following weeks preceding the attacks on Lone Pine and Chocolate Hill, the work of the sharp-shooters, added to that of many small engagements, had further depleted our numbers 2,000 more at least. We had held our own under these harrowing circumstances from the last of April until August when the second division of 20,000 new Anzacs came to join us.

In the fleet of transports that bore the fresh contingent of Australians and New Zealanders, was the Southland, she who was torpedoed in the Mediterranean. The men who arrived told us a most interesting story of the experience of the Southland and the 1,300 troops aboard her. It will be recalled that after being torpedoed the Southland had a remarkably long life. She was kept afloat for hours until beached on a rocky strand. The descriptions we got of the behavior of the Anzacs and her crew were thrilling in the courage, cheerfulness and display of humor on the part of hundreds of Britishers, who had no way of knowing at what moment the wounded ship might plunge to the bottom of the sea.

One of the things they did was to hold an impromptu auction sale of the crippled Southland. Bids for the great boat, whose cost had been a half million, started at a shilling and while she was being battered on the sand and rocks, rose to the majestic sum of one pound. She was knocked down at that price to an Anzac, who later, in all hopefulness, was to file his claim of ownership with the marine registry at London. He announced his intention after the war of taking the Southland back home with him to make of it an Australian bungalow.

The Southland they told us landed with her nose high in the air, and there was rivalry as to who should be the last to leave the ship. Men scrambled up the steeply slanting deck, clinging to rails, cabin doors, and any other object offering hand- or foot-hold. There were big bathing parties around the wreck, before the men were picked up by the launches and barges from the other transports and battle ships. In the first of the shock from the torpedo and when all were in expectancy of the Southland’s going down, the men assembled on the decks and bravely set up the Australian song composed by a British naval officer, which had become dear to them:

“Gather around the banners of your country,
Join in the chorus or the foam,
On land or sea, wherever you be,
Keep your eye on Germanee.
England’s home of beauty has no cause to fear,
Should old acquaintance be forgot?
No! No! No! No! No!
Australia will be there, Australia will be there!”

CHAPTER VI
Giving Up Gallipoli

In looking over the notes and papers I have collected to aid me in the preparation of this book, memory is vigorously stirred by a clipping of an article from the Sydney Mail of October 31, 1917, written by a fellow officer who prefers to remain anonymous. He wrote well of the familiar scenes of the famous battlefield as they would appear today. Following is an extract: