THE BEACH CLEARING STATION (LIEUT.-COLONEL GIBLIN) IN THE EARLY DAYS OF ANZAC.
To face p. 164.
On the 24th May—Empire Day, as Australians know it—the armistice was begun at eight o'clock, and lasted till five o'clock in the evening. Some of its features are interesting, gruesome as the object was. Burial parties were selected from each side. Groups of selected officers left the trenches and started to define with white flags the lines of demarcation. It had been decided there should be a central zone where the men from the two sides might work together—a narrow strip it was, too. The Turks were not to venture into what might be termed "our territory," that varied in width according to the distances the trenches were apart, and the Australians were not to venture into the enemy's. Orders were issued that there was to be no firing anywhere along the line. Arms were to be collected and handed over to the respective armies to which they belonged, minus the rifle bolts. No field-glasses were to be used, and the men were to keep down in the trenches and not look over the parapets.
Now one of the disadvantages of the armistice, from the Australians' point of view, was that the topographical features of the position enabled any of the Turks who might approach within a certain distance to look down into the heart of the Anzac position (that was, into their own gullies), but also into gullies that now contained the Australians' reserve trenches and bivouacs, and where the troops were sheltered and stores placed. It seems very probable that the enemy realized this advantage, however slight. I do not think they were able to gain much. Nevertheless, in the interests of the health of all at Anzac, it was essential that the armistice should be arranged. So the party of the armistice went carefully round the 2-mile front of the position, moving the flags a little nearer the Turkish lines here, there, nearer the Australian. Following these slowly worked the burial parties, all wearing white armlets—doctors and padres.
Under guise of a sergeant of the Red Crescent walked General Liman von Sanders, the German leader against Anzac, and he mixed with the burial parties. It was a misty and wet morning, and every one wore greatcoats and helmets that were sufficient cloak to any identity. All day the parties worked, collecting the identity discs of many gallant lads whose fate had been uncertain, men whose mouldering bodies had been seen lying between the trenches. They were buried in huge open trenches, often alongside their fallen foe, as often it was impossible, owing to the condition of the bodies, to remove them to the Turkish burial-grounds. Once some firing began on the right, where it was alleged some parties were digging firing trenches, but it was hushed, and I have never been able to find an exact and official statement of this.
Some of the Turks who were directing operations mingled with our men; they spoke perfect English. By judicious handing out of cigarettes they sought to discover as much as they dared or as much as they might be told. Brigadier-General G. J. Johnston (Artillery officer) told me an amusing interview he had with a Turkish officer who asked him about the number of men Australia was sending to the war. The Gunner replied, "Five times as many thousands as had been already landed, while hundreds of thousands more were ready." Another conversation shows very clearly the absence of bitterness on one side or the other. It concerned the meeting of two men who exchanged cards, while the Turk told (one suspects with a cynical smile) of many haunts of pleasure and amusement in Constantinople where the Australian could amuse himself when he came. I do not wish to convey that the Turks believed that they would be beaten, but they were not hated enemies of the Australians, and on this, as on other occasions, they played the game. Over 3,000 of their dead were buried that day. They lay in heaps; they sprawled, swelled and stark, in rows, linked together by the guiding ropes which they had clung to. Many were lying just above the Turkish parapets, where our machine guns had mowed them down as they left their trenches. And these the Turks themselves just barely covered, as was their custom in burying their dead.
Chaplains Merrington and Dexter both held short services over the graves of the fallen in the few hollows near Quinn's Post and other points farther south. A cairn of stones was left to mark the spot on which some day a greater memorial may be raised; down in the gullies rough wooden crosses mark other graves.
Gradually, after 3 p.m., the parties withdrew from their solemn task, and as the last white flag was struck and the parties retreated into their own trenches, the snip, snip, zip, zip, and crack of the bullets and boom of the bombs began again, and never ceased till the last shot was fired on the peninsula.