• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1928 0

destroyer, and he was still bemused by the events of the last few days. His appointment as Commander-in-Chief of a cobbled-together expeditionary force had come as a complete surprise. He had been summoned to the War Office on 12 March and, within twenty-four hours, had been sent off with such dispatch that he had only the vaguest idea of what was expected of him. His instructions, so far as they went, were to cooperate with the Royal Navy, to effect a landing on the Gallipoli peninsula and, thereafter, to proceed to occupy Constantinople. He was given no advice on how this was to be accomplished. He had no reliable maps, for there were none. He was given no information on the Turkish garrison or its defences, for no intelligence had been collected. No intelligence officers accompanied him, for none had yet been appointed. He was given no plan, for none had been drawn up, and his staff of thirteen officers, nastily co-opted, were as ignorant as he was himself. The General Staff, who had not been in the confidence of the War Council, had received no hint that a Dardanelles campaign was being mooted, and they were naturally in no position to supply more than the sketchiest outline of conditions on the peninsula. Even those dated from a scheme that had been studied and rejected as impracticable in 1906. The best they could do was to supply him with a pre-war copy of a Turkish Army handbook. It was better, but not much better, than nothing, and it was hardly surprising that Hamilton spent many solitary hours wrapped in his own thoughts as he paced the deck of the cruiser Phaeton, pausing at times to gaze reflectively at the inscrutable sea. He had plenty to think about.

The fate of the 29th Division had also been decided, for Lord Kitchener had at last agreed to release them. By 19 March the last man had embarked for Egypt where the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps were training hard. They were burdened with a clumsy title, awkward on the tongue, but the combination of initials was a happy one. Supply boxes, orders, papers, and all the stationery of the Corps was stamped with the letters ‘A. & N. Z. A. C.’ and it was only a matter of time before the convenient nickname ‘Anzac’ was universally adopted. One day it would be immortal – though no one knew it then. And it was many months before an army interpreter was struck by the shocking irony that ‘Anzac’ closely resembled a certain Turkish word. That word was ‘anjac’. Its meaning was ‘almost’.

But that was in the future. Meanwhile, like pawns in some giant tournament of chess, the troops were on the move. Hopes were high in that spring of 1915. But the battles in Europe, east and west, had been no more than the opening moves in the first rounds of the contest. Before it was concluded half the nations of the world would be vying for the role of grand master.

Part 3

‘This is the happy warrior – this is he!’

Where are our uniforms?

Far, far away.

When will our rifles come?

P’raps, p’raps some day.

All we need is just a gun

For to chase the bloody Hun

Think of us when we are gone

Far, far away.

Chapter 11

On the first day of spring the weather rose to the occasion and 21 March was bright and warm enough to bring out droves of Sunday strollers. They thronged into the parks to enjoy the sunshine, the early spring flowers, and the sight of young soldiers on weekend leave, swaggering self-consciously in stiff new khaki, accompanied by proud mothers or sweethearts in whose eyes they were already heroes. In parks near military hospitals there was the added attraction of genuine wounded heroes to be smiled at sympathetically as they took the air in suits of convalescent blue. Anything military was a draw. In London crowds streamed down the Mall to Buckingham Palace where the King was taking the salute at a march-past of newly fledged Battalions and, when it was over and the stirring music of the band had faded in the distance, hundreds of people flocked into St James’s Park and across Horseguards Parade to Whitehall to linger outside the War Office. There