“LIEUTENANT-GENERAL SIR W. R. BIRDWOOD
Has been the soul of Anzac. Not for one single day has he ever quitted his post. Cheery and full of human sympathy, he has spent many hours of each twenty-four inspiring the defenders of the front trenches, and if he does not know every soldier in his force, at least every soldier in the force believes he is known to his chief.”
Sir Ian Hamilton’s dispatch.
EDITOR’S NOTE
This book of Anzac was produced in the lines at Anzac on Gallipoli in the closing weeks of 1915. Practically every word in it was written and every line drawn beneath the shelter of a waterproof sheet or of a roof of sandbags—either in the trenches or, at most, well within the range of the oldest Turkish rifle, and under daily visitations from the smallest Turkish field-piece. Day and night, during the whole process of its composition, the crack of the Mauser bullets overhead never ceased. At least one good soldier that we know of, who was preparing a contribution for these pages, met his death while the work was still unfinished.
The Anzac Book was to have been a New Year Magazine to help this little British Australasian fraternity in Turkey to while away the long winter in the trenches. The idea originated with Major S. S. Butler, of the A.N.Z.A.C. Staff. On his initiative and that of Lieutenant H. E. Woods a small committee was formed to father the magazine. A notice was circulated on November 14th calling for contributions from the whole population of Anzac. Any profit was to go to patriotic funds for the benefit of the Army Corps.
Between November 15th and December 8th, when the time for the sending in of contributions closed, The Anzac Book was produced. As drawings and paintings began to come in, disclosing the whereabouts of some of the talent which existed in Anzac, a small staff of artists was collected in order to produce head- and tail-pieces and a few illustrations; and a dug-out overlooking Anzac Cove became the office of the only book ever likely to be produced in Gallipoli.
It was after the contributions had been finally sent in, and when the work of editing was in full swing, that there came upon most of us from the sky the news that Anzac was to be evacuated. Such finishing touches as remained to be added after December 19th were given to the work in Imbros. The date for the publication was necessarily delayed. And it was realised by everyone that this production, which was to have been a mere pastime, had now become a hundred times more precious as a souvenir. Certainly no book has ever been produced under these conditions before.
Except for this modification in the scheme of its production, The Anzac Book remains to-day exactly the same as when it was planned for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps still clinging to the familiar holly-clothed sides of Sari Bair.