Five Months at Anzac Part 4

Our casualties during this afternoon were pretty considerable, and our stretcher-bearers were constantly on the "go" getting men under shelter.

Early in the morning the Ghurkas came ash.o.r.e, but the Turks spotted them, and gave them a cordial welcome to Anzac. They are a small-sized set of men, very dark (almost black), with Mongol type of face and very stolid. One was killed while landing. They were evidently not accustomed to sh.e.l.l-fire, and at first were rather scared, but were soon rea.s.sured when we told them where to stand in safety. Each carried in addition to his rifle a Kukri--a heavy, sharp knife, shaped something like a reaping-hook, though with a curve not quite so p.r.o.nounced. It was carried in a leather case, and was as keen as a razor. I believe the Ghurkas' particular delight is to use it in lopping off arms at the shoulder-joint. As events turned out we were to see a good deal of these little chaps, and to appreciate their fighting qualities.

The 2nd Field Ambulance was to take our position on the beach. We packed up our panniers and prepared to leave the spot where we had done so much work during the last three months, and where we had been the unwilling recipients of so much attention from Beachy Bill and his friend Windy Annie. Our donkeys carried the panniers, and each man took his own wardrobe. Even in a place like this one collects rubbish, just as at home, and one had to choose just what he required to take away; in some cases this was very little, for each had to be his own beast of burden. Still, with our needs reduced to the minimum, we looked rather like walking Christmas-trees. The distance to Rest Gully was about a mile and a half, through saps and over very rough cobble-stones, and our household goods and chattels became heavy indeed before we halted; I know mine did.

THE ATTEMPT ON SARI BAIR

Our Ambulance was attached to the Left a.s.saulting Column, which consisted of the 29th Indian Brigade, 4th Australian Infantry Brigade, Mountain Battery and one company of New Zealand Engineers under Brigadier-General c.o.x.

The commanding officers of all the ambulances in General G.o.dley's Division met in the gully and had the operation orders explained to them by the A.D.M.S. of the Division, Colonel Manders, a very capable officer. To my great regret he was killed two days later; we had been acquainted for some time, and I had a great regard for him.

The 4th Infantry Brigade was to operate in what was known as the Aghyl Dere (Dere in Turkish means "gully"). The operation order gave out that we were to establish our Field Hospital in such a position as to be readily accessible for the great number of wounded we expected.

Meantime, after making all arrangements for the move and ascertaining that each man knew his job exactly, we sat about for a while. The bombardment was to commence at 5 p.m. Precisely at that hour the _Bacchante_ opened fire, the howitzers and our field guns co-operating, the Turks making a hearty response. The din was frightful. To make a man sitting beside me hear what I was saying, I had to shout at the top of my voice. However, there were not many men hit. We had tea--for which Walkley had got three eggs from somewhere, the first I had tasted since leaving Egypt. We tried to get some sleep, but that was impossible, the noise being so great; it was hard, too, to know where one was safe from bullets. Mr. Tute, the Quartermaster, and I got a dug-out fairly well up the hill, and turned in. We had not been long there when a machine-gun appeared to be trained right on to us--bullets were coming in quant.i.ties. It was pitch-dark, so we waited until they stopped, and then got further down the gully and tried to sleep there--but this particular dug-out had more than ourselves in it, and we pa.s.sed the night hunting for things. The Division started to march out just after dark, the 4th Brigade leading. It was almost daylight before the rear of the column pa.s.sed the place at which we were waiting. The men were all in great spirits, laughing and chaffing and giving the usual "Are we down'earted?". I think those men would laugh if they were going to be hanged. Our bearer divisions, in charge respectively of Captains Welch, Jeffries and Kenny, followed in rear of the Brigade, while the tent divisions came in rear of the whole column.

Major Meikle and I had often, like Moses viewing the Land of Promise, looked at the country over which the fight was now to take place--a stretch of flats about three miles long, from the beach up to the foot of the hills. As the day broke, we found a transformation at Nibronesi Point, which is the southernmost part of Suvla Bay. At nightfall not a ship was there; now there was a perfect forest of masts. The place looked like Siberia in Newcastle when there was a strike on. I counted ten transports, seven battle-cruisers, fourteen destroyers, twelve trawlers and a lot of pinnaces. These had landed the force which was afterwards known as the Suvla Bay Army. A balloon ship and five hospital ships were also at anchor in the bay. As we pa.s.sed what was known as our No. 3 Outpost, we came across evidences of the fight--dead men, dead mules, equipment, ammunition boxes and rifles lying all over the place. We noted, too, little hillocks of sand here and there, from behind which the Turks had fired at our column. It was evident that our men had soon got in touch with the enemy and had driven him back. The Aghyl Dere proved to be a fairly wide gully with steep hills on either side. A little distance, about three quarters of a mile up, we came to what had been the Turkish Brigade Headquarters.

Here everything was as they had left it. The surprise had been complete, and we had given them very short notice to quit. Clothing, rifles, equipment, copper pans and boilers were in abundance, and it was evident that Abdul makes war with regard to every comfort, for there were visible also sundry articles of wearing apparel only used by the gentler s.e.x. The men had comfortable bivouacs and plenty of bed-clothing of various patterns. The camp was situated in a hollow, round in shape and about a hundred yards in diameter, with dug-outs in the surrounding hillsides; all was very clean, except for the fleas, of which a good a.s.sortment remained. The dug-outs were roofed in with waterproof sheets, b.u.t.toned together and held up by pegs which fitted into one another. These sheets, with the poles, made handy bivouac shelters, easily pitched and struck. Altogether, their camp equipment was better than ours.

We annexed all the pans and boilers and made good use of them for our own Ambulance. Then, proceeding further up the gully, we found it almost impa.s.sable by reason of dead Ghurkas and mules; a gun on a ridge had the range of this place to a nicety, and the ammunition train was held up for a time. I never saw such a mess of entangled mules; they were kicking and squealing, many of them were wounded, and through it all the Indian drivers were endeavouring to restore some kind of order. One had to keep close under the banks to escape the sh.e.l.ls. Not far from here was the emplacement of our old friend "Windy Annie," but alas! Annie was constant to Abdul, and they had taken her with them. It was a great pity we did not get the gun. No wonder our guns never found the place. The ground had been dug out to some depth and then roofed over with great logs and covered with earth and sandbags; the ammunition--plenty of it--was in deep pits on either side; artillery quarters were in close proximity, and the tracks of the gun were clearly seen.

The sh.e.l.ling was far too heavy to let us pitch a dressing station anywhere here, so we retired to the beach to find a place more sheltered under the hills; the bearers meanwhile followed the troops.

Soon scores of casualties began to arrive, and we selected a position in a dry creek about six yards wide, with high banks on either side.

The operating tent was used as a protection from the sun and stretched from bank to bank, the centre being upheld by rifles lashed together; the panniers were used to form the operating table, and our drugs were placed round the banks. We were, however, much handicapped by not having any transport, as our donkeys had been requisitioned by the Army Service Corps. Everything had to be carried from a distance, and water was exceedingly scarce. All day we were treating cases and operating until late at night. Major Meikle and I divided the night, and we were kept going. From one until four in the morning I slept in a hole in a trench like a tomb.

At daylight we could see our men righting their way through the scrub over Sari Bair, the warships firing just ahead of them to clear the scrub of the Turkish Infantry. The foremost men carried flags, which denoted the farthest point reached and the extent of the two flanks, as a direction to the ship. With the gla.s.ses one could see that the bayonet was being used pretty freely; the Turks were making a great stand, and we were losing a lot of men. They could be seen falling everywhere.

AMBULANCE WORK

Our bearers were doing splendid work; it was a long and dangerous carry, and a lot of them were wounded themselves. The miserable part of the affair was that the Casualty Clearing Station on the beach broke down and could not evacuate our wounded. This caused a block, and we had numbers of wounded on our hands. A block of a few hours can be dealt with, but when it is impossible to get cases away for forty hours the condition of the men is very miserable. However, we got the cooks going, and had plenty of Bovril and Oxo, which we boiled up with biscuits broken small. It made a very sustaining meal, but caused thirst, which was troublesome, as it was particularly difficult to obtain water. Shelter from the sun, too, was hard to get; the day was exceedingly hot, and there were only a few trees about. As many as could be got into the shade were put there, but we had to keep moving them round to avoid the sun. Many of the cases were desperate, but they uttered not a word of complaint--they all seemed to understand that it was not our fault that they were kept here.

As the cases were treated by us, they were taken down towards the beach and kept under cover as much as possible. At one time we had nearly four hundred waiting for removal to the ship. Then came a message asking for more stretchers to be sent to the firing line, and none were to be obtained; so we just had to remove the wounded from those we had, lay them on the ground, and send the stretchers up.

Thank goodness, we had plenty of morphia, and the hypodermic syringe relieved many who would otherwise have suffered great agony.

Going through the cases, I found one man who had his arm shattered and a large wound in his chest. Amputation at the shoulder-joint was the only way of saving his life. Major Clayton gave the anaesthetic, and we got him through.

Quite a number of Ghurkas and Sikhs were amongst the wounded, and they all seemed to think that it was part of the game; patience loomed large among their virtues. Turkish wounded were also on our hands, and, though they could not speak our language, still they expressed grat.i.tude with their eyes. One of the Turks was interrogated, first by the Turkish interpreter with no result; the Frenchman then had a go at him, and still nothing could be got out of him. After these two had finished, Captain Jefferies went over to the man and said, "Would you like a drink of water?" "Yes, please," was the reply.

During one afternoon, after we had been in this place for three days, a battalion crossed the ground between us and the beach. This brought the Turkish guns into action immediately, and we got the time of our lives. We had reached a stage when we regarded ourselves as fair judges of decent sh.e.l.l-fire, and could give an unbia.s.sed opinion on the point, but--to paraphrase Kipling--what we knew before was "Pop"

to what we now had to swallow. The sh.e.l.ls simply rained on us, shrapnel all the time; of course our tent was no protection as it consisted simply of canvas, and the only thing to do was to keep under the banks as much as possible. We were jammed full of wounded in no time. Men rushing into the gully one after another, and even a company of infantry tried to take shelter there; but that, of course, could not be allowed. We had our Geneva Cross flag up, and their coming there only drew fire.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Getting Wounded off after a Fight.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Water Carts protected by Sand Bags.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Burial Parties during the Armistice.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Simpson and his Donkey.]

In three-quarters of an hour we put through fifty-four cases. Many bearers were hit, and McGowen and Threlfall of the 1st Light Horse Field Ambulance were killed. Seven of our tent division were wounded.

One man reported to me that he had been sent as a reinforcement, had been through Samoa, and had just arrived in Gallipoli. While he was speaking, he sank quietly down without a sound. A bullet had come over my shoulder into his heart. That was another instance of the fortune of war. Many men were hit, either before they landed or soon after, while others could go months with never a scratch. From 2 till 7 p.m.

we dealt with 142 cases.

This sh.e.l.ling lasted for an hour or more, and when it subsided a party of men arrived with a message from Divisional Headquarters. They had been instructed to remove as many of the Ambulance as were alive.

Headquarters, it appears, had been watching the firing. We lost very little time in leaving, and for the night we dossed down in the scrub a mile further along the beach, where we were only exposed to the fire of spent bullets coming over the hills. Our fervent prayer was that we had said good-bye to sh.e.l.ls.

The new position was very nice; it had been a farm--in fact the plough was still there, made of wood, no iron being used in its construction.

Blackberries, olives, and wild thyme grew on the place, and also a kind of small melon. We did not eat any; we thought we were running enough risks already; but the cooks used the thyme to flavour the bovril, and it was a nice addition.

Not far from us something happened that was for all the world like an incident described by Zola in his "Debacle," when during the bombardment before Sedan a man went on ploughing in a valley with a white horse, while an artillery duel continued over his head.

Precisely the same thing occurred here--the only difference being that here a man persisted in looking after his cattle, while the guns were firing over his head.

Walkley and Betts proved ingenious craftsmen. They secured two wheels left by the Signalling Corps, and on these fastened a stretcher; out of a lot of the web equipment lying about they made a set of harness; two donkeys eventuated from somewhere, and with this conveyance quite a lot of transport was done. Water and rations were carried as well, and the saving to our men was great. Goodness knows the bearers were already sufficiently worked carrying wounded.

The _Bacchante_ did some splendid firing, right into the trenches every time. With one shot, amongst the dust and earth, a Turk went up about thirty feet: arms and legs extended, his body revolving like a catherine wheel. One saw plenty of limbs go up at different times, but this was the only time when I saw a man go aloft _in extenso_.

It was while we were in this position that W.O. Henderson was. .h.i.t; the bullet came through the tent, through another man's arm and into Mr.

Henderson. He was a serious loss to the Ambulance, as since its inception he had had sole charge of everything connected with the supply of drugs and dressings, and I missed his services very much.

We were now being kept very busy and had little time for rest, numbers of cases being brought down. Our table was made of four biscuit boxes, on which were placed the stretchers. We had to be very sparing of water, as all had to be carried. The donkey conveyance was kept constantly employed. Whenever that party left we used to wonder whether they would return, for one part of the road was quite exposed to fire; but Betts and Walkley both pulled through.

One night I had just turned in at nine-thirty, when Captain Welch came up to say that a bad casualty had come in, and so many came in afterwards that it was three o'clock in the following morning before I had finished operating. While in the middle of the work I looked up and found G. Anschau holding the lantern. He belonged to the 1st Field Ambulance, but had come over to our side to give any a.s.sistance he could. He worked like a Trojan.

We still had our swim off the beach from this position. It will be a wonderful place for tourists after the war is over. For Australians particularly it will have an unbounded interest. The trenches where the men fought will be visible for a long time, and there will be trophies to be picked up for years to come. All along the flat land by the beach there are sufficient bullets to start a lead factory. Then searching among the gullies will give good results. We came across the Turkish Quartermaster's store, any quant.i.ty of coats and boots and bully beef. The latter was much more palatable than ours.

Our men had a novel way of fishing; they threw a bomb into the water, and the dead fish would either float and be caught or go to the bottom--in which case the water was so clear that they were easily seen. Wilson brought me two, something like a mackerel, that were delicious.

As there was still a good deal of delay in getting the cases off, our tent was brought over from Canterbury Gully and pitched on the beach; the cooks keeping the bovril and biscuits going. We could not maintain it there long, however, as the Turks' rifle-fire was too heavy, so the evacuation was all done from Walker's Ridge about two miles away. The Casualty Clearing Station here (the 16th) was a totally different proposition from the other one. Colonel Corkery was commanding officer, and knew his job. His command was exceedingly well administered, and there was no further occasion to fear any block in getting our wounded off.

Amongst the men who came in to be dressed was one wounded in the leg.

The injury was a pretty bad one, though the bone was not fractured.

The leg being uncovered, the man sat up to look at it. He exclaimed "Eggs a cook! I thought it was only a scratch!"

Our bearers did great work here, Sergeant Baber being in charge and the guiding spirit amongst them. Carberry from Western Australia proved his worth in another manner. The 4th Brigade were some distance up the gully and greatly in want of water. Carberry seems to have the knack of divining, for he selected a spot where water was obtained after sinking. General Monash drew my attention to this, and Carberry was recommended for the D.C.M.

Early in August, soon after Colonel Manders was killed, I was promoted to his position as a.s.sistant Director of Medical Services, or, as it is usually written, A.D.M.S. On this I relinquished command of the 4th Field Ambulance, and though I appreciated the honour of the promotion yet I was sorry to leave the Ambulance. We had been together so long, and through so much, and every member of it was of such sterling worth, that when the order came for me to join Headquarters I must say that my joy was mingled with regret. Everyone--officers, non-commissioned officers and men--had all striven to do their level best, and had succeeded. With one or two exceptions it was our first experience on active service, but all went through their work like veterans. General G.o.dley, in whose division we were, told me how pleased he was with the work of the Ambulance and how proud he was to have them in his command. The Honour list was quite sufficient to satisfy any man. We got one D.S.O., two D.C.M.s, and sixteen "Mentioned in Despatches." Many more deserved recognition, but then all can't get it.

Major Meikle took charge, and I am sure the same good work will be done under his command. Captain Dawson came over with me as D.A.D.M.S. He had been Adjutant from the start until the landing, when he "handed over" to Captain Finn, D.S.O., who was the dentist.

Major Clayton had charge of C Section; Captains Welch, Jeffries and Kenny were the officers in charge of the Bearer Divisions. Jeffries and Kenny were both wounded. Captain B. Finn, of Perth, Western Australia, was a specialist in eye and ear diseases. Mr. Cosgrove was the Quartermaster, and Mr. Baber the Warrant Officer; Sergeant Baxter was the Sergeant Clerk. To mention any of the men individually would be invidious. They were as fine a set of men as one would desire to command. In fact, the whole Ambulance was a very happy family, all doing their bit and doing it well.

On the 21st of August an attack was made on what were know as the W Hills--so named from their resemblance to that letter of the alphabet.

Seated on a hill one had a splendid view of the battle. First the Australians went forward over some open ground at a slow double with bayonets fixed, not firing a shot; the Turks gave them shrapnel and rifle-fire, but very few fell. They got right up to the first Turkish trench, when all the occupants turned out and retired with more speed than elegance. Still our men went on, taking a few prisoners and getting close to the hills, over which they disappeared from my view.

Next, a battalion from Suvla came across as supports. The Turks meanwhile had got the range to a nicety; the shrapnel was bursting neatly and low and spreading beautifully--it was the best Turkish shooting I had seen. The battalion was rather badly cut up, but a second body came across in more open order than the others, and well under the control of their officers; they took advantage of cover, and did not lose so many men. The fight was more like those one sees in the ill.u.s.trated papers than any hitherto--sh.e.l.ls bursting, men falling, and bearers going out for the wounded. The position was gained and held, but there was plenty of work for the Ambulance.