1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [248]
Sir Maurice visited every corner of the peninsula. He spent time at Cape Helles (‘I shall have to paint a picture of great discomfort and hardship… our men are in good heart’). He rode close to the front line for a view of Achi Baba (‘The only difficulty for the Turkish gunner on Achi Baba is the bewildering variety of targets – crowded beaches, horse lines, rest camps, flotillas of trawlers…’). He scrambled up Gully Ravine (‘Proper sanitation is impossible in places as the Turkish dead lie in heaps, the smell being bad, while the thought of masses of flies in such conditions makes the flesh creep…’). He visited every beach (‘Really rather horrible. A dust storm rages for a great part of most days, the sun is intensely hot, of shade there is none, the soil is soft sand, very fatiguing to move about in, the flies are execrable, and, worst of all, the Turks shell at frequent intervals…’). He went to Anzac (‘Several very deep, steep and bare ravines, the sides everywhere scarred by hundreds of “dug-outs” where the men off duty live like anchorites and hermits. The hills, some four hundred feet above the sea, are crowned with the most amazingly complete labyrinth of trenches…’).
Sir Maurice spent a good deal of time in the Australian trenches at Anzac for his cousin was Second-in-Command of an Australian battalion and escorted him up to the front line for a close-up view. Hankey was deeply impressed. He wrote to the Prime Minister:
I do hope that we shall hear no more of the ‘indiscipline’ of this extraordinary Corps, for I don’t believe that for military qualities of every kind their equal exists. Their physique is wonderful and their intelligence of a high order. Harassed by continuous shelling, living in intense heat, tormented by flies, compelled to carry their water and most of their supplies and ammunition by hand 400 feet up the hills and deprived of any recreation except occasionally bathing, they are nevertheless in the highest spirits and spoiling for a fight.
Since it seemed the only way to get out of their present situation the Australians were certainly ‘spoiling for a fight’, but their spirits were not so high as the visitor assumed. The Anzacs made no bones about the fact that they were fed up. Perspiring in the baking heat, with frequent, unwelcome visitations of dysentery, with a monotonous thirst-provoking diet of bully beef and biscuits enlivened occasionally by tough unsavoury stew, and with no rest to look forward to but the weary toil of fatigues, it was hardly astonishing that they were sick of the peninsula and sick to death of the war. It was not what they had bargained for.
Pte. W. Carrol, 21st Bn., AIF.
The war broke out when I was up in Queensland and we were shearing and there were no telephones or wireless in those days and the shearer said, ‘Oh, there’s war. They’re going to have war.’ They all said it wouldn’t last a week. They wanted men to keep Arabs and Turks away from the Suez Canal because it linked England and Australia and New Zealand and China and India and so it was very important to have that channel free with all the food and ammunition and soldiers going backwards and forwards. They wanted Australia to send men – and I was one of the mugs. We all came down from the station, and they said anyone who would like to go to join the Army and go to Egypt to defend the canal was to report to barracks, and there was such a crowd and I didn’t expect to get through. We said it wouldn’t last a week, or two at the most. What fun it would be. That’s what we thought, actually. We were proved to be a lot of suckers.
First of all, I was in the 13th, the Light Horse. Everyone wanted to ride a horse. With sixty pounds on your back, you didn’t get much encouragement to join the infantry! But then they must have had ideas that a horse was no good at digging trenches – you must have infantry,