ENGINEERS: from The Story of The Anzacs

The work of the engineers at Anzac was vast and various. They had to provide pontoons for land in g-parties, to make roadways under heavy fire, to make tracks for the easy carriage of water and ammunition to the firing line, to sap out in front of the trenches, and put up barbed wire entanglements or form new lines with the enemy trenches in many cases only twenty five yards away; and to perform a dozen other tasks, some trivial, some tremendous, but all indispensable, and all fraught with deadly danger.

But the sapper's most difficult and dangerous work was, after all, mining against the Turkish trenches within earshot of the tap-tap-tap of pick and shovel in the Turkish counter-mines. Time and again it was a question as to who should get his charge in first and blow the other "at the moon." Particularly fine work was done at Quinn's Post by the New Zealand miners, who repeatedly out-sapped the Turk.

On one occasion volunteers were called on to take charge of mining and demolition works at this position, and 100 miners at once responded. On three several occasions, in this position alone, they blew in galleries of the enemy who were mining near at hand. It must be remembered that every bit of earth or stone removed from the interior of the tunnel had to be packed in bags and trucked down to a place behind the trenches, where it was dumped.

The Engineers became as hard and fit as any set of men on Gallipoli.