The story of the last three months at Anzac may be swiftly told. It was a struggle during September and October to prepare for the coming winter months. Quantities of wooden beams, and sheet-iron, and winter equipment began to pour into Anzac. Preparations were made for the removal of the hospitals and clearing stations from the beach and from the beds of the creeks, to higher ground. For the weather could no longer be depended on, and the narrowness of the beach rendered it imperative that all the stores should be moved, as the waves would lash against the foot of the cliffs in the sudden storms that arise in the Ægean—storms that are the mariner's constant anxiety. Then at the end of October the activity suddenly was modified. The question of evacuation had brought a new commander and Lord Kitchener to this front. A winter campaign was in abeyance.
Engineers used to tell me that they did not see where the wood was coming from to shore up the trenches against the rains, and that they would all be washed down into the gullies at the first storm. The Australians had only a few days' experience of wet weather, and not very heavy showers at that, in April, when they had landed; but Turkish farmers captured told what might be expected. Ever ingenious, the troops commenced collecting tins, and anything that would keep their "possies" and dugouts dry. In some places great caverns were dug into the side of hills by the battalions of the 2nd Division, where they might be protected from the storms and from the severest shelling. General Monash had planned for the 4th Brigade a huge barracks on the side of Cheshire Ridge—a wonderful piece of engineering. The weather, though still fine, had become decidedly colder. At night the wind was biting, and rain early in November, gave a taste of what the conditions were to be like at Christmas-time. Saps were running with water; the soft, clayey mud clung in clods to the men's boots. The 1st Division and the Australian and New Zealand Divisions came back gradually from the rest camp at Mudros—the men fit again now, but the battalions still below strength in point of numbers.
Hostilities had been confined almost entirely to mining operations along the whole of the front. Mines and countermines were exploded. In some places—particularly at Quinn's Post—the tunnels had met, and an underground battle had ensued. Once we had reconnoitred a whole Turkish gallery, and found the sentries nodding at their posts with the guard in a tunnel, arguing and chattering away in a rapid, unintelligible tongue. These operations were not always accomplished without loss and severe casualties. Fumes overcame a large party near Lone Pine, and many lives were lost, some in the efforts to rescue those who had been suffocated in the mine tunnel. In one instance the Turks exploded a mine that trapped some sappers in a tunnel. After three days the men dug themselves out, and appeared before their astonished and delighted friends over the parapets of our trenches.
From one end of the position to the other, right in the heart of the Turkish hills below the famous Sari Bair ridge, infantry and engineers dug down under the Turkish trenches. I remember talking to Lieut.-Colonel Martyn, of the Divisional Engineers, about his plans. He was considering the possibility of going down 40 feet, tunnelling right through the hill at German Officers' Trench, and in one great effort breaking through in the rear of the Turkish position. If they went deep enough there seemed little likelihood of the Turks hearing the picking and tapping. Whatever may have been the eventual plan, the end of November and the first week of December saw most of the energies of the men engaged in making storm shelters for themselves. That period was one fraught with misfortune for the troops.
Whether the Turkish reconnaissance on the 27th November was intended as a mere bluff, or whether the Turks were anxious to discover if an offensive was in preparation by us, they attacked in thin lines all along the Anzac position. They were driven back with severe loss, and hardly a man reached our parapets.
On the 29th November the Turks commenced a terrible bombardment with heavy howitzers—8, 9, and 10-in. pieces—of the Lone Pine trenches, which were pounded and flattened. A series of mines were exploded under them, and we had to evacuate portions of this dearly held post. But the Turks dared make no fresh attack. Our casualties were heavy.
The day previously a snowstorm had swept down on the north wind that wrought havoc with the shipping in the Cove. Pinnaces broke from their moorings and barges went ashore and were smashed. How wonderful the hills on the morning of the 29th, covered with a snow mantle, which astonished the Australians, the great majority of whom were experiencing their first snowstorm! Icicles hung from the trenches—the sentries stamped up and down. The wind howled down the gullies, that were soon turned into morasses; the trenches were ankle-deep in mud. For three days the frost continued, but the troops were in good spirits and fairly comfortable. Many of the men suffered frost-bite, but on the third day of December the sun shone and the conditions had materially improved.
And now, in this strange eventful story comes the last stage of all. Though the decision for the evacuation was taken in November, the troops guessed nothing of it even up to a week before it took place. They had no realization that the series of very quiet evenings, when scarcely a shot was fired along the whole of the 5-mile front that Anzac now comprised, had in them any definite end. It was all part of the plan conceived by General Birdwood (now commanding the whole Gallipoli forces in place of General Monro) for beginning the education of the Turks to our leaving. But the main proposition to be faced was how to remove 200 guns and hundreds of tons of stores, equipment, and munitions and men, and keep up a semblance of normal activity of throwing supplies into Anzac. Cloudy skies and a first-phase moon helped at night, when the guns were stealthily drawn from their covered pits. There was no unusual gathering of transports by day, though the waters at night might resemble the days of the early landing, when the pinnaces and trawlers had crowded inshore with tows. The tows they removed now contained arms and munitions. More often they contained men declared not absolutely fit.
It was often remarked in the trenches, as December began, that it was an easy matter now to get a spell. The very slightest sickness was sufficient excuse to send men to the beach, from whence all the serious cases had long ago been removed, and so to the transports or hospital ships, as the case might be. Yet during the day, when Turkish aeroplanes hung menacingly over the position, observers might have seen bodies of men marching up the tortuous sap to the trenches. There was more indication of permanency, even of attack, than of evacuation.
So on the 10th December there was left at Anzac barely 20,000 men—very fit, very sound, and very determined men. It wanted nine days to the day of evacuation. Still there was no hint that any unusual step was anticipated. Some regiments were removed for special duty—they anticipated another fight, even a new landing. They left by night. They arrived at dawn at Mudros, safe from the firing-line and Anzac for ever. The greater part of the army service, engineer, and hospital units had left with their equipment. They came down the deep saps from the south and from the north, right from under those hills from the crest of which the Turks could look down almost to the heart of our position. No longer could we hope to make a firm resistance to the Turkish attack, which it had been hoped would develop in November. Rearguard actions were contemplated and evolved, to resist any onslaught. On the beach the heavy ammunition was being loaded on to lighters. All except nine worn guns had gone. Two were left still, almost in the firing-line, where they had been from the first. Quantities of stores and equipment were destroyed on the 16th and 17th rather than they should fall into the hands of the Turks. The "archives" of the brigades and divisions had been removed too, for some time. The administrative dugouts were bare of books, typewriters, and correspondence. Final orders had been issued. It was now only a question of supervision and Staff work to get the men away. And what Staff work it was on the part of General Birdwood to remove that whole army of 40,000 men (I include those troops brought out of the trenches early in December) from such a perilous position! One may write in terms of the highest praise of the demeanour and discipline of the men in those last days, but it is to the leaders that must fall inevitably the greatest praise—the leaders of the army and the leaders of the men: men such as Brigadier-General White, the Chief of Staff to General Birdwood, Brigadier-Generals Antill, Monash, Johnston, Forsyth, and Holmes, who worked on the beach till the very last.