Long ago water had become too precious a thing to be used for shaving and our men had become as whiskery as the Turks. One fellow one morning looking through his trench periscope caught a reflection of himself in its mirror. He had grown a foot and one-half of black whiskers, but hadn’t realized the change it would make in his appearance. So he let a yell out of him to give us the alarm that the Turks were at our trench. But his own magnificent growth of black whiskers had deceived him.
We lived so long in these trenches that were so much like rabbit warrens that we had got to calling ourselves rabbits and one disconsolate man of mine that I found sitting in the trench one day and asked of him what might be the cause of his deep dejection answered:
“I am waiting for my ears to get longer and my tail to sprout.”
I come now to a day in November, to be exact the 25th. This was to be a historic event for us Anzacs and will doubtless rank as a historic event of the war. It was the visit of Lord Kitchener to Anzac as we now call the two miles of Gallipoli strip we held. I am not in a position to make the statement authoritatively, but I think his coming was a complete surprise to the commandants. It certainly was to the rank and file. He arrived on a man-o’-warsman. Of course, great honors were paid him. The Turks were no longer active and the commanders had no hesitation in assembling fully ten thousand men on the beach to stand in review before the great leader. I was fortunately among them. I had, when in service in India (1906–1911), been a participant in the famous Kitchener maneuvers.
I naturally looked at him searchingly to note what changes might have been wrought by the war and its responsibilities. He did look older as he stood before us—much older. He was a little stooped, but in the stride of his long lean figure he was as vigorous as I had ever seen him. And his eyes were keen and full of light and strength as he stood before us. It wasn’t until days later that positive orders came when we learned officially that Gallipoli was to be evacuated. But he practically told us that fact that day. For a brief talk to the army followed his visit and inspection of three hours of the front trenches, his own observations with glasses from certain places of vantage, a submission to his consideration of all the aëro-photographs that had been taken of the Turkish positions and strength and a long conference with the supreme commandant of the period, Sir Charles Monro.
I will try to repeat Lord Kitchener’s words to us as literally, as accurately as memory will serve. He said:
“The King and your country appreciate most deeply the great work you have done. To have effected a landing on this hostile shore and to have held it as splendidly as you have done is in itself a great triumph for British arms. I regret that the necessities of our armies, in conformation to other plans drawn, may not permit you to remain to complete this noble success.”
And so Kitchener left us. His visit was not longer than twenty-four hours—in fact, the man-o’-warsman that brought him into Anzac Cove slipped away in the darkness, sometime before dawn.
But from that day we knew that all the perils and hardships we had endured in the fight for Gallipoli were to be crossed out in the record of results of the war. There began from November 26th a silent, secretive movement to effect our evacuation.
It must go down in history that this was most subtly done. If the Turks had ever suspected that we were thinking of withdrawing, they might have in the last two weeks of the evacuation, at least, swooped down and slaughtered the third of the force which was actually left on the Gallipoli strip. We used countless schemes of deception. To be specific we would send away boat loads of a thousand men in the night, but in the daylight land boat loads of a hundred to fool the Turkish observers into believing we were landing new forces. In the same way we would transport thousands of boxes of bombs and cartridges out of the trenches and the harbor in the night to the battle ships and in the daylight land from our barges, steamboats, pinnaces and launches, thousands and thousands of empty boxes that had contained the ammunition.