Snowy's questioner retired, possibly to deliver this uncompromising message, and Snowy's mates started the usual chaff.
"I see you're getting very pally with the General, Snowy." Snowy's jaw dropped, and he stared in dismay. Then the slow grin of the Australian bushman crept over his hard face.
"Pally! I should think so. He called me Snowy. And I didn't know what to call him back. I s'pose I oughter called him 'Birdie.'"
A wound sustained during the early days of May, and General Birdwood's active devotion to duty while it was in the course of healing, completed his ascendancy over the men he commanded. Obedience to his commands was rendered in a cheerful and zealous spirit by every man; and this success in winning all hearts may serve to explain some of the impossibilities achieved by the Anzacs in the second week of August.
The commissioned officers from Australia and New Zealand are no less devoted to their distinguished leader than their men. To them he was a model of appreciative consideration. Many of them have been awarded decorations for services of special merit, but I have found that more prized even than these honourable awards are the few lines scribbled by Sir William Birdwood to his officers lying sorely wounded in hospital. He does not forget, even under the load of the heavy responsibilities that weighed upon him on Gallipoli peninsula. Nor will the officers and men of Australia and New Zealand ever forget Sir William Birdwood.
The dispatches of the Commander-in-Chief are testimony that he is as distinguished a General as he is sympathetic as a leader of men. Writing of the Anzac plans drawn up by General Birdwood Sir Ian Hamilton says:—
"So excellently was this vital business worked out on the lines of the instructions issued that I had no modifications to suggest, and all these local preparations were completed by August 6 in a way which reflects the greatest credit not only on the Corps Commander and his staff, but also upon the troops themselves, who had to toil like slaves to accumulate food, drink, and munitions of war. Alone the accommodation for the extra troops to be landed necessitated an immense amount of work in preparing new concealed bivouacs, in making interior communications, and in storing water and supplies, for I was determined to put on shore as many fighting men as our modest holding at Anzac could possibly accommodate or provision. All the work was done by Australian and New Zealand soldiers almost entirely by night, and the uncomplaining efforts of these much-tried troops in preparation are in a sense as much to their credit as their heroism in the battles that followed."
On the fourth of August reinforcements of British troops were landed by night at Anzac, and the work was continued through the following night, until the forces at the disposal of the General were 37,000 men and seventy-two guns; while two cruisers, two destroyers, and four monitors were detailed to support the operations from the sea.