Part 5

“TENTMATE,” 11th London Regt.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] Cobbers—mates.

THE INDIAN MULE CORPS

My work in the A.S.C. has brought me very much in touch with the Indian Mule Corps; and I don’t think “The Anzac Book” would be complete without some mention of that admirable body of men.

What should we at Anzac have done without “Johnnie” and his sturdy little mules? Horse or motor transport could not have faced the difficulties of Anzac. The mules are sometimes stubborn and unmanageable, but we knew that before. And the drivers are—most of them—hard workers, intelligent and anxious to please. I often marvel on a rough day, when the loaded carts, nearly up to their axles in mud or sand, are beached on that wild seashore, on the watery edge of which they are kept during the day; and wonder still more when, after standing there for a few hours, the mules draw them out when the convoy leaves at night. For the mules do not like the sea, and when the weather is rough it is very difficult to get the little beasts anywhere near it.

One thing, however, really does hang up work for a time, and that is “Beachy Bill” in action. Even then some of the “Johnnies,” who are less fearsome than the rest, go on with their work, and have from time to time been hit.

Therefore, all praise to the Indian Mule Corps.

B. R.

HILL 60

As some far swimmer, turning, views once more England’s white cliffs, and strongly cleaves t’ward shore, But, tide-encumbered, faints; so far and dear Thy crystal arms and pillared throat appear, Love, to thy soldier who makes earth his bed In this grey catacomb of unnamed dead. Thy voice, o’er tossing seas of eves and dawns, Comes like dim music heard on magic lawns; And, when in prayer thou kneelest, this grim brow Feels the cool benison of hands which thou Wouldst often grant. Now know I ’twas not vain Our love, whose memory softens present pain.

C. J. N.

JENNY

For the delightful diversion which little Jenny, with her frolics and gambols, provided for the A.S.C.’s when they really had a moment to spare another medium will have to be sought. Though of short duration, her life appeared a charmed one whilst it lasted. Her freedom of action was the envy of every soldier along the beach. Her disregard for the enemy’s bullets and shells commanded our unbounded admiration. But whether her immunity for six months was due to the kindness of the Turks or their bad shooting, or her own good judgment, who can say?

Jenny’s origin is enveloped in some obscurity; but it is said that with her parents, Murphy of Red Cross fame and Jenny Senior, she toddled into our lines when quite a mite; and, once having crossed over the border into civilisation, the three emphatically refused to return whilst the objectionable Hun element obtained in their native country.[10]

Jenny the younger was no mere mystic mascot for the humouring of an especially created superstition. Her congenial company and high spirits, her affectionate ways and equable temperament, were the factors which gained for her the obvious rank of “Camp Pet.” Her friendly regular visits will be missed, and the picture of her patrician head and dark-brown shaggy winter’s coat. Her refined voice was music compared with the common “hee-haw” which characterises her kind, or the peremptory foghorn of the sergeant-major.

But now she is no more. Our sorrow is immeasurable. The mother never left the babe whilst it suffered excruciating agony through a deadly shrapnel pellet. Skilful, indefatigable attention, innumerable applications of the “invincible iodine,” proved futile. Jenny Senior is grief-stricken, and now lies upon the neat little grave in which her infant was placed by the big Australian playmates who now mourn their irreparable loss.

F. C. DUNSTAN, L.-C., B Depot, 6th A.A.S.C.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] This origin is a myth. The parents landed with the troops on April 25, 1915. Murphy, who bore a red cross between his two long ears, is said (in company with his master, Pte. Simpson, 3rd Australian Field Ambulance) to have carried 72 wounded men from the firing line through Shrapnel Gully, at the time when that valley thoroughly earned its name, before his master met his death on one of these errands of mercy. Murphy himself was subsequently hit by a shell, but happily survives, and was, we believe, brought safely away from Anzac.—EDS.

MARCHING SONG

Boots, belt, rifle, and pack— All you’ll need till you come back; All you’ll doff when you lie down to sleep; All they’ll take off when they bury you deep. Boots, belt, rifle, and pack.

Boots that went light down the Suffolk lane Will shuffle and drag ere they tread it again. Nails that rang gay on the cobbled street Will have pierced through the sock into somebody’s feet. Boots, belt, rifle, and pack.

Belt—for water-bottle and sword: One to save life; the other—oh, Lord! ’Fore you’ve finished with them, you bet, One will be dry and the other wet. Boots, belt, rifle, and pack.

Rifle—the soldier’s only friend— True, if you treat her well, to the end: Feed her with five, and the tune she’ll play Will reach the heart of a Turkish Bey. Boots, belt, rifle, and pack.

Pack—that holds what a man most wants: A shirt, an overcoat, socks and pants, A Bible, a photo of heart’s desire; But you’ll throw it away when you charge—or retire. Boots, belt, rifle, and pack.

Leather and canvas, steel and wood, They’ll stand by you if you’re good; Keep them oiled and keep them dry, They’ll see you home safely—by and by. Boots, belt, rifle, and pack.

C. J. N.

FURPHY

It was the colonel who propounded the theory first, on hearing some rumour more optimistic than reliable. “These furphies[11] are the very devil,” he said.

Now, I had a theory about Furphy. I was waiting for an opportunity of following it up, and it came this way:

I was on the beach one day when a friend met me and asked if I had heard the latest dinkum. On learning that I hadn’t, he informed me that Greece had declared war on Turkey, and was going to land 100,000 men within the next few days on the Peninsula. I inquired for the source, and he said he got it from a fellow who had just gone along the beach towards the left. I asked what the man was like. That sort of puzzled him. He said he was a tall man—no, he thought he was only middle height or perhaps a bit on the small side. His hair was dark—no, now that he thought a bit, he fancied it was fair. In fact, the more he tried to describe him the less could he remember him. “He’s my Moses,” I said, and hurried off in in the direction he had gone.

Passing through the sap to Shrapnel Gully, I met another friend.

“Heard the latest?” he inquired.

I said “No.”

“Four Italian staff officers seen on the beach to-day,” he said breathlessly. “Two hundred thousand Italian troops being sent here.”

“Who told you?” I asked.

“Fellow just going into White’s Valley.”

“What was he like?” I inquired excitedly.

“An ordinary fellow—not tall, and not short.”

“His hair?”

“Well, it wasn’t dark—yes, it was—no, I don’t know.”

“How did he walk?”

“I never noticed,” he said; “in fact, he didn’t seem to walk at all.”

I left him standing, and got down the sap and over into White’s Valley in a record time, and bumped into another acquaintance.

“Heard the news?” he said.

“No.”

“Why, three hundred thousand Italians have landed at Helles, and Achi Baba is to be taken to-night.”

I asked who his informant was, and he began to flounder into contradictions. I rushed off, knowing that I was well on the track of Furphy.

In Victoria Gully I heard that Roumania had declared war, and 400,000 troops were marching through Bulgaria to Constantinople.

“Who told you? What was he like?” I gasped at the teller.

“Just a bloke,” was the answer. “’E ’ad two legs, two arms, and a ’ead, two eyes——” Then he added in a puzzled fashion: “But, dammit, did ’e?”

I didn’t wait any longer, but was off again. At Shell Green I heard that a man—just a feller, rather—had told them that the Russians had surrounded and captured Hindenburg’s army, and that 500,000 Russians were to make a landing in Turkey. The Russian officers were here already. The man who had seen them had just passed five minutes before. I wasn’t far from Furphy now.

At Chatham’s Post they were buzzing with excitement over the news that 600,000 French were going to be landed between Kaba Tepe and Helles.

I asked if they thought it was true, and they assured me that they had heard it from a man who looked as if he knew. No two descriptions of him, however, agreed. I was getting closer to Furphy.

I hurried along the trenches as fast as I could, but got no information till near Lone Pine, where I heard that a big mob of Turks was expected to surrender that night. It was said they could not face the prospect of the coming landing of the whole Italian army. Besides, they were short of food and water, they were being badly treated by their officers, and their guns had hardly any ammunition left. A 75 just then knocked a portion of parapet over me. I remarked that anyone could see the information was right about Abdul being short of ammunition, but where did the information come from?

“A fellow that just went by,” they said; “looked like a staff officer.”

Getting near Steele’s Post, I saw in front of me a man with an indescribable gait. He seemed to float along instead of walk. It was Furphy!

I hurried, but seemed to make no gain on him. I began to run. Near Courtney’s Post I was twenty yards from him, and called to a man to stop him. My quarry brushed past. I put on a spurt. I was within about five yards of him when, all of a sudden, he sank into the earth. As his head disappeared he smiled an oily grimace at me.

And I noticed that there were small horns behind his ears.

Q. E. D.

FOOTNOTES:

[11] Furphy was the name of the contractor which was written large upon the rubbish carts that he supplied to the Melbourne camps. The name was transferred to a certain class of news item, very common since the war, which flourished greatly upon all the beaches.—EDS.

FROM MY TRENCH

A clear, cold night, and in the southern air Those far-off thunderings so often there;[12] A Turkish moon is shining fitfully— My thoughts are ’neath another moon where we Paced slowly through the tree stems—you and I. And, looking back at yon farewell, I sigh And wonder whether then I cared as much As now I do when far beyond your touch.

Cpl. COMUS, 2nd Bat., A.I.F.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] Cape Helles is about 12 miles south of Anzac, and the distant rumble of the guns there was constantly in the air at Anzac.—EDS.

ABDUL

We’ve drunk the boys who rushed the hills, The men who stormed the beach, The sappers and the A.S.C., We’ve had a toast for each; And the guns and stretcher-bearers— But, before the bowl is cool, There’s one chap I’d like to mention, He’s a fellow called ABDUL.

We haven’t seen him much of late— Unless it be his hat, Bobbing down behind a loophole ... And we mostly blaze at that; But we hear him wheezing there at nights, Patrolling through the dark, With his signals—hoots and chirrups— Like an early morning lark.

We’ve heard the twigs a-crackling, As we crouched upon our knees, And his big, black shape went smashing, Like a rhino, through the trees. We’ve seen him flung in, rank on rank, Across the morning sky; And we’ve had some pretty shooting, And—he knows the way to die.

Yes, we’ve seen him dying there in front— Our own boys died there, too— With his poor dark eyes a-rolling, Staring at the hopeless blue; With his poor maimed arms a-stretching To the God we both can name ... And it fairly tore our hearts out; But it’s in the beastly game.

So though your name be black as ink For murder and rapine, Carried out in happy concert With your Christians from the Rhine, _We_ will judge you, Mr. Abdul, By the test by which _we_ can— That with all your breath, in life, in death, You’ve played the gentleman.

C. E. W. B.

A CONFESSION OF FAITH

Who would remember me were I to die, Remember with a pang and yet no pain; Remember as a friend, and feel good-bye Said at each memory as it wakes again?

I would not that a single heart should ache— That some dear heart will ache is my one grief. Friends, if I have them, I would fondly take With me that best of gifts, a friend’s belief.

I have believed, and for my faith reaped tares; Believed again, and, losing, was content; A heart perchance touched blindly, unawares, Rewards with friendship faith thus freely spent.

Bury the body—it has served its ends; Mark not the spot, but “On Gallipoli,” Let it be said, “he died.” Oh, Hearts of Friends, If I am worth it, keep my memory.

Capt. JAMES SPRENT, A.M.C. (attached 3rd Field Amb.).

OUR FRIEND THE ENEMY

(_A Sketch by One who knows him very well_)

In a shady spot beneath the scarlet-blossomed Judas trees, Abdul sat sipping his coffee, contemplating the busy scene in the small marketplace. There were happy fishermen hanging their nets to dry on the lime trees for which the village is famous, after their night’s toil in the Black Sea. Their catch was a good one, and was even now being put up for sale in the narrow alleys by the Jews. The village barber was a hard-worked man that day, for the Turk is vain and also dignified, and was it not the eve of the Bairam festival! Groups of gaily coloured villagers among the fruiterers’ baskets were busy haggling over their bargains. The word “Cauzaum” (my lamb) would often be flung by an infuriated vendor at stalwart Kurds, workers in the neighbouring quarry, who fingered his luscious grapes whilst cavilling at his prices. From a latticed window a veiled woman with a shrill voice called to a little red-fezzed boy escaping from his mother.

The _Mouktar_ (mayor), with a jasper-handled stick, was pointing to the new fountain, its gilded inscription of extracts from the Koran shining in the sun. Had not the _Mouktar_ sat day after day outside the door of the great _Dahlié Naziri_ (Minister of Interior) waiting to obtain a credit for the construction of the fountain whose waters were from the Beicos bends?

“God is great, and Mahomet is His prophet,” murmured Abdul, as he slowly counted off another bead from his amber rosary. “I am a happy man,” he murmured to himself. “Was not my Kismet good; when lifting the veil of my wife at the marriage ceremony I found that she was beautiful? She is a good housekeeper; her coffee resembles that of the creamy Arabian coffee bean. Is not the gilled ram that I bought for to-morrow’s sacrifice worthy of her cooking?”

Abdul wandered along homewards to his cottage near the shore; for it was drawing close to the midday call to prayer, and his heart was full of thanksgiving to Allah.

* * * * *

Abdul is struggling along the main road leading to Stamboul with many others. He no longer hearkens to the beating of the tom-toms, and to the patriotic exhortations of a straggling mob following behind with green banners. “It is Kismet,” he murmurs, as he turns once more for a last look at the silvery winding thread below—the Bosphorus, on whose shores lies his home, his all. He has been told there is a war. He does not question; he knows not the cause. It is fate. He trudges on.

* * * * *

The fighting has been fierce. He is hard pressed. Sweating with blood he draws back. His regiment is hard put to it, and, like sheep without a master, the men are preparing to disperse. Already German machine-guns from their rear are on to them. The road home means death. Like a man he faces the rush of his opponents.

* * * * *

He sees strange faces—the pain from his wounds is calmed. Once more there swim before his eyes his home, his wife, his plantation of maize so promising.

Allah was great—it was Kismet.

H. E. W., A. & N. Z. A. C.

ARMY BISCUITS

Biscuits! Army biscuits! What a volume of blessings and cursings have been uttered on the subject of biscuits—army biscuits!

What a part they take in our daily routine: the carrying of them, the eating of them, the cursing at them!

Could we find any substitute for biscuits? Surely not! It is easy to think of biscuits without an army, but of an army without biscuits—never.

Biscuits, like the poor, are always with us. Crawling from our earthly dens at the dim dawning of the day, we receive no portion of the dainties which once were ours in the long ago times of effete civilisation; but, instead, we devour with eagerness—biscuit porridge. We eat our meat, not with thankfulness, but with biscuits. We lengthen out the taste of jam—with biscuits. We pound them to powder. We boil them with bully. We stew them in stews. We fry them as fritters. We curse them with many and bitter cursings, and we bless them with few blessings.

Biscuits! Army biscuits! Consider the hardness of them. Remember the cracking of your plate, the breaking of this tooth, the splintering of that. Call to mind how your finest gold crown weakened, wobbled, and finally shrivelled under the terrific strain of masticating Puntley and Chalmer’s No. 5’s.

Think of the aching void where once grew a goodly tooth. Think of the struggle and strain, the crushing and crunching as two molars wrestled with some rocky fragment. Think of the momentary elation during the fleeting seconds when it seemed that the molars would triumphantly blast and scrunch through every stratum of the thrice-hardened rock. Call to mind the disappointment, the agony of mind and body, as the almost victorious grinder missed its footing, slipped, and snapped hard upon its mate, while the elusive biscuit rasped and scraped upon bruised and tender gums.

Biscuits! Army biscuits! Have you, reader, ever analysed with due carefulness the taste of army biscuits? Is it the delicious succulency of ground granite or the savoury toothsomeness of powdered marble? Do we perceive a delicate flavouring of ferro-concrete with just a dash of scraped iron railings? Certainly, army biscuits, if they have a taste, have one which is peculiarly their own. The choicest dishes of civilised life, whether they be baked or boiled, stewed or steamed, fried, frizzled, roasted or toasted, whether they be composed of meat or fish, fruit or vegetable, have not (thank Heaven!) any like taste to that of army biscuits. Army biscuits taste like nothing else on the Gallipoli Peninsula. It is a debatable question indeed whether or not they have the quality of taste. If it be granted that they possess this faculty of stimulating the peripheral extremities of a soldier’s taste-buds, then it must also be conceded that the stimulation is on the whole of an unpleasant sort. In short, that the soldier’s feeling, apart from the joy, the pride, and the satisfaction at his completed achievement in transferring a whole biscuit from his outer to his inner man without undue accident or loss of teeth, is one of pain, unease, and dissatisfaction.

It may seem almost incredible, wholly unbelievable indeed, but armies have marched and fought, made sieges, retired according to plan, stormed impregnable cities, toiled in weariness and painfulness, kept lonely vigils, suffered the extremes of burning heat and of freezing cold, and have, in the last extremity, bled and died, laurel-crowned and greatly triumphant, the heroes of legend and of song, all without the moral or physical, or even spiritual aid of army biscuits.

Agamemnon and the Greeks camped for ten years on the windy plains of Troy without one box of army biscuits. When Xerxes threw his pontoon bridge across the Narrows and marched 1,000,000 men into Greece, his transport included none of Teak Green and Co.’s paving-stones for the hardening of his soldiers’ hearts and the stiffening of their backs. Cæsar subdued Britons, Gauls, and Germans. Before the lines of Dyrrhachium his legions lived many days on boiled grass and such-like delicacies, but they never exercised their jaws upon a rough, tough bit of—army biscuit.

Biscuits! Army biscuits! They are old friends now, and, like all old friends, they will stand much hard wear and tear. Well glazed, they would make excellent tiles or fine flagstones. After the war they will have great scarcity value as curios, as souvenirs which one can pass on from generation to generation, souvenirs which will endure while the Empire stands. If we cannot get physical strength from army biscuits, let us at least catch the great spiritual ideal of enduring hardness, which they are so magnificently fitted to proclaim.

The seasons change. Antwerp falls, Louvain is burned, the tide of battle surges back and forth; new reputations are made, the old ones pass away; Warsaw, Lemberg, Servia, the stern battle lines of Gallipoli, Hindenburg, Mackensen, each name catches our ear for brief moments of time, and then gives way to another crowding it out; but army biscuits are abiding facts, always with us, patient, appealing, enduring. We can move to other theatres, we can change our clothes, our arms, and our generals, but we must have our biscuits, army biscuits, else we are no longer an army.

O. E. BURTON, N.Z.M.C.

A PRESENT FROM HOME

THE LOST POEM

I called to see our regimental poet last evening. He had previously told me that he intended to “write something” for “The Anzac Book.” Our poet is also Q.M. Sergeant, and when he is not writing requisitions or taking “baksheesh” out of our rations, and watering our rum, he writes poetry.

When I called on him he was in his dug-out, surrounded by bully-beef tins, empty cases, and his ill-gotten shares of our daily issues. He has many callers, and I am afraid their inquiries rather spoilt his verses. When I arrived the Q.M.S. was already in a poor humour for writing poetry. The O.C. had been worrying him about galvanised iron for cover for some dug-outs; three men had complained about the scantiness of their rum issue—which somehow always annoys the Q.M.S.; and he had received no letters in the day’s mail except a bill from a chap he had borrowed a pound from in Charleville two years ago. Still, our Q.M.S. is a sticker, and he read me the covering letter which he was sending to the Editor.

He said he thought it would be as well to get the letter off his mind first. That would make the writing of the verses necessary, and he would have to complete the job in order to keep faith.

Before I arrived he had written: