Now, perhaps, had I been clairvoyant, had I been able to see ahead what was shortly to come—the savage, awful experience in Gallipoli, the murderous, weary days and nights in Flanders and the Somme, the long suffering, the tremendous scientific ferocity of it all, well, perhaps I might not have tried so hard to bring the Minister of Defense to my way of thinking. And, yet, while ducking the appellation of hero as I would duck a Boche bomb, after all, I think that with present knowledge of what comes to a man in this great war and what can come to him, I would still have tried for my chance to play my part in the great game. What soldier worth the name would not?
Well, soon enough there came a day that found us—the First Division of the Australian Expeditionary Force—on our way. We had no clear idea of whither we were bound. We thought for the most part that we were going straight to the fighting in France. There were thirty transports in all. My own crowd, about twelve hundred strong, were aboard the Themistocles, a converted White Star Liner that formerly traveled between Australian ports and Aberdeen, Scotland, a goodly-sized ship she was of 13,000 tons. From every other port of size in Australia other troopships had come laden. At Sydney the entire thirty were mobilized and with the Australian fleet comprising some of Britain’s greatest dreadnaughts, a complement of Japanese destroyers and a French cruiser or two we set forth on fairly smooth seas.
At all the ports where the populace got hints of the time of sailing of the ships there were great demonstrations and likewise impromptu demonstrations of liveliest enthusiasm met us whenever we appeared parading on the streets, to say nothing of the crowds that came to cheer us at drill in our camps.
For by October, Australia had come to know how tremendous and frightful a war Germany had planned, how viciously and hatefully Germany had resolved to strike at the very life of the British Empire and Australia began to realize that if the British Empire went under, she herself would eventually have the Hun at her own throat.
It wasn’t only the news of the mammoth operations which had started in Europe that brought this realization. Things had happened “at home.” The German propaganda secretly, maliciously taking advantage of a democratic country’s open hospitality, had effected bomb outrages, and worked insidiously to bring about strikes in the coal and iron mines and strikes on the railroads, had worked the same despicable “below the belt” tactics in the Archipelago as she has in America. And the cables were constantly bringing news of fresh, cowardly outrages upon the old, and the women and the children of Belgium!
The firmness of Australia’s premier, the effectiveness of Australia’s police in its cities and of the Government’s secret agents as well (once the German propagandists had revealed their hands) soon began securely to tie these same hands of the promoters of German frightfulness. But the people by this time had been worked to a towering rage and as we started away in our troopships, great crowds in the cities were riotously asserting their resentment. They wrecked scores of German shops, battered them into ruins and put them to the torch.
With none of us knowing that Gallipoli was ahead we settled down to make our ocean voyage. Where—we didn’t know at the time it was to take us, but we did make it as enjoyable as might be in crowded bunks and where we were forever touching elbows on the jammed decks. Men never sailed on an expedition of war in better spirits and greater confidence. The regular soldiers and amateur soldiers were about evenly divided, but the amateurs were swiftly coming into line in physical fitness and expertness in drill. Still there were some funny incidents due to the novelty of the life that many of our men were leading. As for instance, a little deck sentry, whom I approached one day and who looked at me and said: “Are you an officer?”
“Can’t you tell that from my uniform?” I said, nodding toward the sergeant-major’s chevrons on my arm.
“Well, then,” he said, suiting the action of the word, “I suppose I will have to chuck you a blooming salute.”
We got together for all kinds of athletic fun—wrestling, potato and wheel-barrow races, running races, but principally the sport was boxing. Then there were serious-minded men who liked the sports all right, but organized a sort of debating society. There were no lack of interesting principals for this organization. There were professors from the Australian universities, Captain Knyvett for example, who had been the professor of psychology at the University of Brisbane, and there were scores of his class. The debating club discussed everything from Sanskrit to how to fry an egg or bayonet a Boche.