Glorious Deeds of Australasians in the Great War

by E. C. Buley

"The world seems to have been built up on end, and the high cliffs are accessible only by the spurs and valleys. The place is very different now—roads have been cut and built, and steep as they are, mules can reach the top fairly easily. It is very exasperating to look out on the peaceful flat country just a few miles away with peaceful homesteads in places. Our chief pastime in life is smashing Turkish periscopes, of which they don't possess very many. It is good target practice, and helps to prevent them from being too perky. At present we are just marking time, and things are rather quiet."

Things were quiet by the deliberate plan of Sir Ian Hamilton. Having decided that his next attempt was to be made from Anzac, his hope was to divert the attention of the enemy, as far as might be, from that particular theatre of operations. The Anzacs were therefore confined to trench warfare and to those underground operations which made of their holding a warren of saps and tunnels.

They could watch the Turks entrenching busily all around them, until they were confronted with a series of defence works that were practically impregnable. North-east of them, where the mountain spurs of Sari Bair ran up from the coast to the dominating height of Koja Chemen (Hill 971), every rise had its network of trenches. Opposite Quinn's Post a net of trenches was dug so intricate that it was given the name of The Chessboard. Not a day passed but the Turks, working on higher ground, made their holding as secure as digging and earthwork could make it.

Also they posted guns on well-chosen positions, and the Anzacs had to endure a bombardment that recurred every day. On Battleship Hill there was a battery that had the whole of the southern posts ranged, and dropped shells on them with unceasing regularity and remarkable accuracy. In the mangroves south of Gaba Tepe there was hidden a quick-firing gun known to the Anzacs as Beachy Bill. He had the Anzac beaches ranged, and did enormous damage with his sudden bursts of shrapnel.

This monster, and a twin gun on an elevation to the north, somewhere behind Anafarta village and known as Anafarta Anne, made the old amusement of beach bathing a deadly peril. Long before the final abandonment of the Anzac position a camp statistician had reckoned that the score of casualties due to the activities of Beachy Bill exceeded the total of 1,500, and on one bad day he accounts for sixty-four men. Many attempts were made by the warships to silence these guns and blow away their emplacements. Sometimes they were so damaged that they had to remain quiescent for a day or two, but just when hope was growing in the Anzac ranks that they had heard the last of Beachy Bill, a bathing party would be reminded by a spray of shrapnel that he was very much in being.

The sufferings endured by the troops holding the southern part of the Anzac line, from Quinn's Post down to The Pimple, arising out of the shelling of their trenches with high explosive, will never be told. The remnants of the Second Brigade, which were posted at Steel's Post and Johnston's Jolly, endured this for weeks, especially toward the end of July.

One experience related to me by a young officer of the 7th will ever stick in my memory. His company had maintained a ceaseless vigil for days and nights, men falling asleep where they stood under arms. When things appeared at their worst, he was delighted at the appearance of a small party of reinforcements, fifteen in number. He gave a relieved glance at the new-comers, and conducted them to a deep trench that had been made a few yards behind the firing line where the men used to retire to rest in comparative safety.

He left them there while he selected from his band of overwrought warriors those who needed rest most of all where every one was in vital need of a spell. No sooner had he left this rest trench than a great "Jack Johnson" came, burying the reinforcements under many feet of earth. Their comrades sprang to their assistance, digging away the earth like possessed beings. One by one the dead and dying men were discovered, and tenderly borne back to the beach from which they had just come. Finally all had been removed but one, and of him no trace could be found.

"I urged the men to dig on," said my informant, and as I spoke I felt something move under my feet. I was standing on the hip of the buried man. We worked with our hands to clear his face, and I removed as well as I could the dirt from his mouth and nostrils. He was black in the face, and, I feared, beyond recovery.