Part 3 of Over there With The Australians: Gallipoli

Part 3 of Over there With The Australians: Gallipoli

Chapter 12 THE ADVENTURE OF YOUTH

FATE has decided that Gallipoli shall always be associated with the story of the Anzacs.

This name (which is formed from the initial letters of the Australian & New Zealand Army Corps) does not describe more than half the troops that were engaged in that ill-fated campaign, but it has so caught the popular fancy, that in spite of all that historians may do, injustice will be done in the thought of the public to the English, Scottish, and Irish regiments and the gallant French Colonial troops who played an equally heroic part.

There were certainly no finer troops on the Peninsula probably in the whole war no unit has shown greater courage than did the glorious Twenty ninth British Division in the landing at Cape Helles.

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No writer who accurately pictured these memorable months of our ' treading on the corns of the Turkish Empire' could leave out even the oval dark-skinned Britishers from the Hindustani hillsand from the Ganges. There both Gourkas and Sikhs added to their reputation as fighters.

Australia and New Zealand's part does not, in actual accomplishment or in personal daring and endurance, outclass the doings of these others, the larger half of the army. But there is a romance and a glow about the ' Anzac' exploits that (rail at the injustice of it as you may) makes a human interest story that will elbow out of the mind of the ' man in the street ' what other troops did. In fact, every second man one meets has the idea that the Australians and New Zealanders were the only men there.

I don't intend to try and write the story of Gallipoli - I haven't the equipment or the experience - John Masefield has written the only book that need be read, and only a man who was in that outstanding achievement of the landing on the 25th of April has a right to the honour of associating his name in a chronicle of ' What I did'.

What I am going to attempt to do is just to picture it as a ' winning of the spurs ' by the youngest democracy on earth.

There was something peculiarly fitting in the fate that ordained that this adolescent nation of the South Seas should prove its fitness for manhood in an adventure upon which were focussed the eyes of all nations. The gods love romance, else why was the youngest nation of earth tried out on the oldest battlefield of history ? How those young men from the continent whose soil had never been stained with blood thrilled to hear their padres tell them as they gathered on the decks of the troopships in the harbour of Lemnos, that to-morrow they would set foot almost on the site of the ancient battlefield of Troy, where the early Greeks shed their blood, as sung in the oldest battle-song in the world.

These young Australians were eager to prove their country's worth as a breeder of men. Australians have been very sensitive to the criticism of Old World visitors - that we were a pleasure seeking people, who only thought of sport - that in our country no one took life seriously, and even the making of money was secondary to football, and that we would all rather win a hundred pounds on a horse-race than make a thousand by personal exertion. Practically every book written on Australia by an Englishman or an American has said the same thing, that we were a lovable, easy-going race, but did not work very hard, and in a serious crisis would be found wanting.

The whole nation brooded over these young guardians of Australia's honour, and waited anxiously for them to wipe out this slur. That explains Australia's pride in ' Anzac.' It meant for us not merely our baptism in blood-it-was more even than a victory - for there, with the fierce search-light of every nation turned upon it, our representative manhood showed no faltering - but proved it was of the true British breed, having nevertheless a bearing in battle that was uniquely its own. In this age of bravest men the Australian has an abandon in fight which on every battlefield marks him as different from any other soldier.

There is an insidious German propaganda suggesting that the Australians are very sore at the failure on Gallipoli and that we blame the British Government and staff for having sent us to perish in an impossible task. I want to say, that while in the Australian army, as private, N.C.O., and officer, I never heard a single criticism of the government for the Gallipoli business. There is no man who was on the Peninsula who does not admire General Sir Ian Hamilton, and most of the officers believe that Britain has never produced a more brilliant general.

That the expedition failed was not the fault of the commander-in-chief nor of the troops. And, any way, we Australians are good enough sports to realise that there must be blunders here and there, and we're quite ready to bear our share of the occasional inevitable disaster.

But Gallipoli was not the failure many people think. Some people seem to have the idea that a hundred thousand troops were intended to beat a couple of million, and take one of the strongest cities in the world. There never was a time when the Turks did not outnumber us five to one, when they did not have an enormous reserve, in men, equipment, and munitions, immediately at their back, while our base was five hundred miles away in Egypt.

The Turks had a Krupp factory at Constantinople within a few hours of them, turning out more ammunition per day than they were using, while ours had to come thousands of miles from England. Of course, we were never intended to take Constantinople. The expedition was a purely naval one, and we were small military force, auxiliary to the navy, that was to seize the Narrows and enable the ships to get within range of Constantinople, and so compel its surrender. We failed in this final objective, but we accomplished a great deal, nevertheless.

We held back probably a million Turks from the Russians, and we left, in actual counted dead Turkish bodies, more than double our own casualties (killed, wounded, and missing). But, above all, we definitely impressed the German mind with the fact that Great Britain did not mean the British Isles but the equally loyal brave fighters from Britain overseas.

Here is no history of Gallipoli, but let me try sketch four pictures that will show you the type of men that there joked with death and curses sound to angel ears sweeter than the hymns of the soft-souled churchgoer.