While they were still singing, there came over the ridge a large number of soldiers, and put them all on stretchers. Then the new-comers, some thousands in number, ranged themselves in two rows facing one another. The double row of soldiers stretched up to the crest of the ridge, and down the other side into the safe gully that was there. And each stretcher was passed from hand to hand, up the steep ridge and down the slope to the safety that lay on the other side.
When all had been taken from the Valley of Torment, a long procession of men with stretchers was formed, bearing the wounded down to the sea. Two miles it stretched from start to finish, and it serpentined slowly down the gully, each pair of bearers walking with slow care, for the sake of the tortured man who was in their charge.
So the wounded men of New Zealand were carried out of the Valley of Torment. One could fill whole volumes about the tender care of the lightly wounded for their more grievously injured comrades, and of the stoical indifference to pain and personal suffering shown by these men. I have met many of the men who suffered there; and I know that in their eyes the real tragedy of the experience is not the torture they experienced. It is that, after all, their comrades eventually had to forgo the advantage that had been won by so much hardihood and loss of life.
Most handsomely, and for all time, has General Sir Ian Hamilton proclaimed the fact that they were blameless of the final catastrophe. His tribute concludes as follows:—
"The grand coup had not come off. The Narrows were still out of sight and beyond field-gun range. But this was not the fault of Lieutenant-General Birdwood or any of the officers and men under his command. No mortal can command success; Lieutenant-General Birdwood had done all that mortal man can do to deserve it. The way in which he worked out his instructions into practical arrangements and dispositions upon the terrain reflect high credit upon his military capacity. I also wish to bring to your Lordship's notice the valuable services of Major-General Godley, commanding the New Zealand and Australian Division. He had under him at one time a force amounting to two divisions, which he handled with conspicuous ability.
"As for the troops, the joyous alacrity with which they faced danger, wounds and death, as if they were some new form of exciting recreation, has astonished me—old campaigner as I am. I will say no more, leaving Major-General Godley to speak for what happened under his eyes:—'I cannot close my report,' he says, 'without placing on record my unbounded admiration of the work performed, and the gallantry displayed, by the troops and their leaders during the severe fighting involved in these operations. Though the Australian, New Zealand, and Indian units had been confined to trench duty in a cramped space for some four months, and though the troops of the New Armies had only just landed from a sea voyage, and many of them had not been previously under fire, I do not believe that any troops in the world could have accomplished more. All ranks vied with one another in the performance of gallant deeds, and more than worthily upheld the best traditions of the British Army.'
"Although the Sari Bair ridge was the key to the whole of my tactical conception, and although the temptation to view this vital Anzac battle at closer quarters was very hard to resist, there was nothing in its course or conduct to call for my personal intervention."