Those left moved quickly from place to place, firing their rifles in order to preserve the "normality" of things. The old trench mortars coughed spasmodically, and the Turks returned the compliment. Away on Walker's Ridge several very heavy bursts of firing broke out. Men could not help questioning themselves. Was Quinn's Post holding out with so numerically weak a garrison? Quinn's that had cost so much to hold all those weary months. It was hard to give up Quinn's!
And Lone Pine! Where the glorious men of those veteran battalions made such a sacrifice for the sake of Anzac—and for the sake of Suvla. These last men, with their boots muffled in sandbags, crept back and meditated at Brown's Dip with its rows of silent eloquent graves. The dead men took Lone Pine from the Turks, the survivors held it against angry hordes, to-night the rearguard was to hand it quietly back!
The men of the New Zealand Infantry Brigade looked out towards The Farm and the fatal crest above it, and thought of those boys who in August went straight for the ridge of Chunuk and doggedly waited for the help from the left, the help that never came. Here the last New Zealanders stood fingering their trigger guards—holding the line at the Apex, only 2,000 yards from the sea. Eight months of incessant striving, a gain of 2,000 yards of bare clay hillside, a loss of so many valuable lives!
And Hill 60! Where the New Zealand Mounted Rifles had refused to be worsted when others fell back! Hill 60! Now honeycombed with galleries hewn out with such an expenditure of blood and sweat. These men of the C parties could not help feeling that the dead deserved a better fate than this. Yet what could be done? No men could have achieved more. If the men of Anzac had failed, they certainly had been faithful failures.
No pains were spared to make everything appear normal. Some men went round lighting candles in the empty dugouts, others concocted placards to welcome the Turks. The soldiers bore no malice. "Goodbye Johnnie, see you soon in the Suez Canal;" and "Remember you didn't push us off, we simply went," are typical. Others were more amusing if not quite so polite! Men wandered up and down firing occasional shots, and at 11.30 the message came round to the men in the line that everywhere the plans were working without a hitch and well up to time. In front of the Apex and near Hill 60 the Turks were putting out more wire in anticipation of the big attack on Christmas Day. They evidently interpreted the shipping off the coast as the prelude to a big attack.
The Last Anxious Moments.
Midnight came and the firing died down as was the normal custom. Slowly the minutes crept by. One o'clock! Still there was no alarm. Some men began to feel the tension very keenly. Everybody else was safe. Would C party get away? At 1.30 the first of the C parties commenced to come in. At 1.45 the duty machine gun at the Apex fired three shots three times in rapid succession. This was the signal for all the machine guns of our infantry brigade to withdraw. With a quarter of the remaining infantry, the gunners marched down the gullies and joined up with the other detachments. The organization worked like clockwork. One party was two minutes early in the Chailak Dere and was halted by its captain until, to the second, the little party resumed its march and dovetailed into the long column now winding down the gully towards the muffled piers.
At two o'clock another party left. The men of the last group were now looking anxiously at their wristlet watches, which had been carefully synchronized. At about 2.15 each man in the trenches quietly walked out into the nearest communication trench. There was little time to lose. The gate in the Chailak Dere was to be closed at 2.25. Here a staff officer carefully checked the numbers and made sure that all were accounted for.