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By Root 1873 0

and how best to help the Russians, staggering on the eastern front under the weight of a German army that was steadily pushing them back. The Dardanelles campaign had been partly designed to tempt Bulgaria into the camp of the allies, and now Bulgaria’s position haunted the deliberations of the Cabinet. It seemed more and more likely now that she would soon throw in her lot with their enemies. Serbia was already fighting Austria on one front. If Bulgaria went to war and attacked her by the back door Serbia would surely be crushed and men, guns and quantities of ammunition would soon be pouring along a through-route from Germany to Turkey. Even apart from the dire consequences this would have for Russia, the allies would then be ignominiously shelled off the peninsula. The political considerations that had given birth to the Dardanelles campaign were more important than ever, and few but Sir Ian Hamilton clung to a thread of hope that a victory on Gallipoli was still possible. Pending a final decision and in the face of some opposition Kitchener decided to dispatch the fifty thousand reinforcements Hamilton requested, with the thought at the back of his mind that, if necessary and as policy developed, they could be used elsewhere in the Mediterranean to assist Serbia.

The slender hope that fortune might eventually smile on the allies at Gallipoli was slender indeed and, at best, a matter of ‘jam tomorrow’. The immediate and most urgent need was to relieve the pressure on Russia and this, in Kitchener’s view, could only be done by a new offensive in France on a scale large enough to force the Germans to weaken their army in the east by rushing large numbers of their troops to the western front. Reluctant though he had been to commit his troops to any major battles in the near future, there was now no alternative. Kitchener felt sure that the French would be only too happy to cooperate.

The troops on Gallipoli knew nothing of these developments. The fighting had quietened down. August scorched on. But at last there was blessed relief for some – a whole month’s leave for part of the Anzac force when reinforcements from Egypt took over the line and they were whisked off to the islands to rest and recuperate. The rest camps bore little resemblance to holiday resorts. They were almost as arid and fly-ridden as the peninsula, but there was half-decent food, there was water in abundance, best of all there was beer, and although of necessity there were drills and parades they were kept to a minimum. The weary soldiers could sleep undisturbed in the furnace of mid-day, they could bathe in the blue waters of the Aegean without being shelled, they could play cricket or football when the heat lessened towards evening, and at the end of the day they could lounge yarning and singing in the starlight. But day after day the distant rumble of guns firing on the peninsula brought a grim reminder that this was a fleeting respite, and some soldier had time to compose the parody that summed up the general feeling. It was sung to the familiar tune of The Mountains of Mourne’ and soon it became their anthem:

Oh, old Gallipoli’s a wonderful place,

Where the boys in the trenches the foe have to face,

But they never grumble, they smile through it all,

Very soon they expect Achi Baba to fall.

At least when I asked them, that’s what they told me

In Constantinople quite soon we would be,

But if war lasts till Doomsday I think we’ll still be

Where the old Gallipoli sweeps down to the sea.

Verse followed verse and since everyone had a go at adding one, soon almost as many versions as there were battalions were being sung at impromptu concerts. The Scots of the 6th HLI contributed the verse that expressed the basic, unsentimental longing at the forefront of every soldier’s mind.

We don’t grow potatoes or barley or wheat,

So we’re aye on the lookout for something to eat,

We’re fed up with biscuits and bully and ham

And we’re sick of the sight of yon parapet jam.

Send out steak and onions and