R. Hugh Knyvett - Over There with the Australians

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Some days later old Mullins appeared again, leading Nipper on a chain.
Almost every one entrenched himself behind a table, but the old man had
no fight in him, declaring in a choking voice that Nipper had come to
enlist alone. "He is not too old, anyway, and will deal with more of
the blank-blank swine than a hundred of your sissy, white-faced,
unweaned kids!" One of the doctors had a heart in the right place and
wrote a letter to the commandant of a regiment soon going overseas,
asking him if he could not take the dog as a regimental pet. He gave
the old man the letter and told him to take his dog out to the camp.

The colonel was not without understanding, and that is how Nipper
"joined up" to fight for democracy.

There were some who started out to teach Nipper tricks, but it was soon
discovered that he knew a good deal more than most of us. He had a
keen sense of humor, and after some one would spend hours trying to
teach him to sit up, all of which time he would pretend he could not
understand what he was wanted to do, with a sly look he would suddenly
go through a whole repertoire of tricks, not merely sitting up, but
tumbling over backward, generally ending the performance by
"heeling-up" (nipping in the heel) all and sundry. He never really bit
any one, but a lot of the new boys were nervous during this heeling-up
process.

Nipper was certainly the most intelligent of the whole canine race. He
was continually trying out new tricks for our amusement and was in
ecstasy if they brought applause. On a shot being fired he would
stretch out and pretend he was killed, but if you said, "White Flag!
Treachery!" he would come to life again as savage as a wolf. If any
one scolded him he would lie down and wipe his eyes with his paw, which
was irresistible and turned the scolding voice into laughter.

There was one senior officer that Nipper suspected was a German, and
every chance he got he would sneak up and, without preliminary warning,
take a good hold of the seat of his trousers. This major returned
Nipper's dislike with interest, and had it not been for the protection
of the colonel Nipper's career might have been cut short before we left
Australia.

Nipper never seemed to entertain much respect for the Army Service
Corps, and sometimes he would attack one of their wagons with such fury
as to clear the men off it and start the horses bolting.

These were his dislikes, but his one and only hate was a military
policeman. Perhaps he had a guilty conscience; but the very sight of a
red-cap would make him foam at the mouth, and they sent in several
requests that they might be allowed to shoot him for their own
protection. The boys in camp had no special love for the M. P.'s
either, and there was very nearly a pitched battle when Nipper appeared
one day with two raw welts across his back, suspicion being immediately
laid at their door.

Nipper always appeared on parade, and considered his position to be the
right flank when in line and right ahead of everybody when in column of
route. If motor-car or horse vehicle was slow in giving way to us,
Nipper informed them who we were, which was one of the few occasions on
which he was heard to bark. At first he had some narrow escapes, but
soon discovered that "heeling-up" a horse or the rear wheel of a moving
automobile was more risky than nipping at the heels of sheep or cow.

Once our adjutant had an argument with the owner of an automobile for
breaking through our column. Nipper objected to a certain remark of
the slacker in the car, and without joining in the conversation leaped
into the car and dragged out his overcoat into the mud, not
relinquishing it until it was well soaked.

On board the troop-ship Nipper pined for the smell of the gum leaves,
and it was the only time when we lost patience with him, for every
night he would stand in the bow and howl.

The smells of Egypt disgusted Nipper, remembering the scents of the
Australian bush. Only once did he make the mistake of heeling-up a
Gyppo, after which he made a great pretense of being very sick. On
other occasions when he wanted them to keep their distance, he found
mere growling to have the desired effect.

The atmosphere of Egypt had a bad effect on Nipper's morals, and he
would sometimes disappear for days. After a while the old reprobate
acquired the disgusting habit of eating sand, which not only showed how
far he had fallen from grace, but also had a serious effect on his
health. On several occasions he had to be taken to the army medical
tent, and only the most drastic remedies saved his life.

One day the colonel read a letter he had received from old Mullins
inquiring if Nipper was still alive and reminding us that his meat had
always been cooked for him. It almost made one believe in
reincarnation, for it was really uncanny, as no human being could more
contritely express remorse than did Nipper as he listened with tail
between his legs, whining most piteously.

He accompanied me on some scouting expeditions in the desert, but his
powers were failing, and I never trusted him after one occasion on
which he made a fool of me. He showed all the symptoms of danger being
near; and sure enough on looking through my glasses I saw what appeared
to be a man with a rifle crouched behind a bush. I took three men with
me and we made a long detour to approach from behind, but after all our
precautions and alarm we found nothing but a long stick leaning against
the bush and the shadow of a rock that looked something like a man.

In the end Nipper committed suicide, and this was the manner of his
going. He was in the habit of swimming across the canal every morning
while we were at Ferry Post. This morning, however, one of the boys
noticed him go under, and diving in after him was able, after some
difficulty, to get his body ashore. He was quite stiff and we all of
us believed that he swam out a certain distance and gave up.

His bearing for days indicated that something was preying on his mind,
and as we did not know what cloud overshadowed his canine soul we
forbore to judge him.

His memory will remain for long in the hearts of those who knew him,
and we buried him in the burning sand of Arabia with the simple
inscription on a pine board:

HERE LIES
"NIPPER"

DIED ON ACTIVE SERVICE,
A TRUE COMRADE,----
SACRIFICED TO "ON," [1]
NO. 0000----REGIMENTAL PET----
----TH BRIGADE----HEATHEN.

and his identification disk was sent home to old Mullins and maybe
hangs in the old hut where, perhaps, the ghost walks no more and the
ashes of the fire smoulder undisturbed.

[1] The Egyptian sun-god.

PART III

GALLIPOLI

CHAPTER XII

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 _A_ustralian _N_ew _Z_ealand _A_rmy _C_orps) does not
describe more than half the troops that were engaged in that fated
campaign, but it has so caught the popular fancy, that in spite of all
historians may do, injustice will be done in the thought of the public
to the English, Scotch, 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.

No writer who accurately pictured these memorable months of our
"treading on the corns of the Turkish Empire" could leave out even the
loyal dark-skinned Britishers from the Hindustani hills and 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
honor 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 troop-ships in the harbor 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-loving 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 men, guardians of Australia's
honor, 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, anyway, we Australians are good enough sports to
realize 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 a 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 only mean the British Isles but the equally loyal
and brave fighters from Britain overseas.

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

CHAPTER XIII

THE LANDING THAT COULD NOT SUCCEED--BUT DID

Picture yourself on a ship that was more crowded with men than ever
ship had been before, in a harbor more crowded with ships than ever
harbor had been crowded before, with more fears in your mind than had
ever crowded into it before, knowing that in a few hours you would see
battle for the first time. Having comrades crowding round, bidding you
good-bye and informing you that as _your_ regimental number added up to
thirteen, you would be the first to die, remembering that you hadn't
said your prayers for years, and then comforting yourself with the
realization that what is going to happen will happen, and that an
appeal to the general will not stop the battle, anyway, and you may as
well die like a man, and you will feel as did many of those young lads,
on the eve of the 25th of April, 1915. There was some premonition of
death in those congregations of khaki-clad men who gathered round the
padres on each ship and sang "God be with you till we meet again." You
could see in men's faces that they knew they were "going west" on the
morrow--but it was a swan-song that could not paralyze the arm or daunt
the heart of these young Greathearts, who intended that on this morrow
they would do deeds that would make their mothers proud of them.

"For if you 'as to die,
As it sometimes 'appens, why,
Far better die a 'ero than a skunk;
A' doin' of yer bit." [1]

As soon as church-parade was dismissed, another song was on the boards,
no hymn, maybe not fine poetry, but the song that will be always
associated with the story of Australia's doings in the great war,
Australia's battle-song--"Australia Will Be There"--immortalized on the
_Southland_ and _Ballarat_, as it was sung by the soldiers thereon,
when they stood in the sea-water that was covering the decks of those
torpedoed troop-ships. It was now sung by every Australian voice, and
as those crowded troop-ships moved out from Lemnos they truly carried
"Australia," eager, untried Australia--where?

The next day showed to the world that "Australia would always be
_there_!" where the fight raged thickest. Her sons might sometimes
penetrate the enemy's territory too far, but hereafter, and till the
war's end, they would always be in the front line, storming with the
foremost for freedom and democracy.

The landing could not possibly be a surprise to the Turks; the British
and French warships had advertised our coming by a preliminary
bombardment weeks previously--the Greeks knew all about our
concentration in their waters--and wasn't the Queen of Greece sister to
the Kaiser?

There were only about two places where we could possibly land, and the
Turks were not merely warned of our intentions, but they were warned in
plenty of time for them to prepare for us a warm reception. The
schooling and method of the Germans had united with the ingenuity of
the Turks to make those beaches the unhealthiest spots on the globe.
The Germans plainly believed that a landing was impossible.

Think of those beaches, with land and sea mines, densely strewn with
barbed wire (even into deep water), with machine-guns arranged so that
every yard of sand and water would be swept, by direct, indirect, and
cross fire, with a hose-like stream of bullets; think of thousands of
field-pieces and howitzers ready, ranged, and set, so that they would
spray the sand and whip the sea, merely by the pulling of triggers.
Think of a force larger than the intended landing-party entrenched,
with their rifles loaded and their range known, behind all manner of
overhead cover and wire entanglements, and then remember that you are
one of a party that has to step ashore there from an open boat, and
kill, or drive far enough inland, these enemy soldiers to enable your
stores to be landed so that when you have defeated him, you may not
perish of starvation. Far more than at Balaclava did these young men
from "down under" walk "right into the jaws of death, into the mouth of
hell!" And the Turks waited till they were _well_ within the jaws
before they opened fire. No one in the landing force knew where the
Turks were, and the Turks did not fire on us until we got to the zone
which they had so prepared that all might perish that entered there.
They could see us clearly, the crowded open boats were targets of naked
flesh that could not be missed. Was there ever a more favorable
setting for a massacre? The Turks in burning Armenian villages with
their women and children had not easier tasks than that entrenched
army. Our men in the boats were too crowded to use their rifles, and
the boats were too close in for the supporting war-ships to keep down
the fire from those trenches. How was any one left alive? By
calculation of the odds not one man should have set foot on that shore.
Make a successful landing, enabling us to occupy a portion of that
soil! What an impossible task!

[Illustration: Anzac Cove, Gallipoli.]

To the men in those boats and the men watching from the ships, it
appeared as if not merely the expedition had failed, but that not a man
of the landing force would survive. Boats were riddled with bullets
and sunk--other boats drifted helplessly as there were not enough alive
to row them--men jumped into the bullet-formed spray to swim ashore but
were caught in the barbed wire and drowned. Who could expect success,
but it nevertheless happened! The Turks were sure that we could not
land, yet _we did_. Not only did those boys set foot on those beaches,
but the remnant of that landing-party drove the Turks out of their
entrenchments up cliffs five hundred feet high, and entrenched
themselves on the summit. How did they do it? No one knows; the men
who were there don't know themselves. Did heaven intervene? Perhaps
spiritual forces may sometimes paralyze material. It must be that
right has _physical_ might, else why didn't the Kaiser get to Paris?
Mathematics and preparedness were on his side; by all reasoning Germany
ought to have overwhelmed the world in a few months, with the
superiority of her armament, but she didn't. The Turks ought to have
kept us off the Peninsula, by all laws of logic and arithmetic, _and
they didn't_. I really think the landing succeeded because those boys
thought they had failed.

They must have believed themselves doomed--they could see that there
were too few to accomplish what was even doubtful when the force was
intact. When they were on the shore they must have felt that it was
impossible that they could be taken off again. All the time more were
falling, and soon it seemed that every last man must be massacred.
They made up their minds that, at any rate, they would get a few of the
swine before they went. Every man believed that in the end he must be
killed, but determined to sell his life as dearly as possible, and that
made them the supermen that could not be "held back." A whole platoon
would be cut down, but somehow one or two would manage to get into the
trench, where, of necessity, it was hand-to-hand work, and with
laughing disregard of the odds would lay out a score of the enemy and
send the others fleeing before them, who would yell out that they were
fighting demons from hell. After the confusion in the boats, and from
the fact that in most cases companies were entirely without officers,
there was no forming up for charges--indeed, there were no orders at
all, but every man knew that he could not but be doing the right thing
every time he killed a Turk, so they just took their rifle and bayonet
in their naked hands and went to it. There was no line of battle, it
was just here, there, and everywhere, khaki-clad, laughing demons,
seeking Turks to kill.

Never was there fighting like this. All that day it went on. On the
beach, up the cliff, in the gullies, miles inland were men fighting.
It was not a battle; it would have made a master of tactics weep and
tear his hair, but these man-to-man fights kept on. Many were shot
from behind, many were wounded and fell in places where no one would
find them--some, fighting on, went in a circle and found themselves
back on the beach again. However, at nightfall some had begun to dig a
shallow line of trenches, well inland across the cliff. Single men and
small groups of them, not finding any more Turks where they were, fell
back into this ditch and helped deepen it.

Fresh Turks were massing for counter-attack, and soon came on with
fury, but we were something like an army now, and although the line had
to be shortened it never broke. The landing had been made good, the
impossible had been achieved. But there were many who died strange
deaths, many left way in, helpless, who could not be succored--many
whom the fighting lust led so far that when they thought of seeking
their comrades they found the barrier of a Turkish army now
intervening. Strange, unknown duels and combats were fought that day.
Unknown are the "Bill-Jims" who killed scores with naked hand--there
were many such. Though we beat the Turk with the odds in his favor,
yet this day and afterward he earned our respect as a fighting man.

"East is East and West is West, and never
the twain shall meet
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's
great Judgment Seat.
But there is neither East nor West, Border,
nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho'
they come from the ends of the Earth."

The Australian had proved himself the fiercest fighter of the
world. . . As one naval officer remarked, they fought not as men but
devils. Many have said that much of the loss of life was needless,
that had the Australians kept together and waited for orders not so
many would have been cut off in the bush. It was true that the
impetuosity of many took them too far to return, but it was that very
quality that won the day. They did not return, but they drove the Turk
before them and enabled others to dig in before he could re-form. You
would have to go back to mediaeval times to parallel this fighting.
There were impetuosity, dash, initiative, berserker rage, fierce
hand-to-hand fighting, every man his own general.

These were not the only qualities of the Australian fighting men, but
these alone could have succeeded on that day. When the time came for
evacuation of those hardly won and held trenches, these same troops
gave evidence of the possession of the opposite attributes of coolness,
silence, patience, co-ordination; every man acting as part of a single
unit, under control of a single will--which is discipline!

[1] Robert W. Service.

CHAPTER XIV

HOLDING ON AND NIBBLING

There are people who think that the Australian dash petered out with
that one supreme effort of landing. We had achieved the impossible in
landing--why did we not in the many months we were there, do the
comparatively easy thing and advance? Surely, now that we had stores
and equipment and artillery, we could more easily drive the Turks out
of their trenches. So many seem to think that so much was done on that
first day, and so little thereafter.

But the Peninsula is not a story of mere impetuosity and dash, it is a
story of endurance as well. As a matter of fact, those eight months of
holding on were as great a miracle as the landing. There is a limit to
the physical powers even of supermen. These men were not content with
the small strip of ground that they held, and they did attack and
defeat the Turks opposing them again and again, but as soon as a
Turkish army was beaten there was ever another fresh one to take its
place. The Turks could not attack us at one time with an army
outnumbering us by ten to one, not because they had not the troops, but
because there was not room enough. As a matter of fact, that little
army (only reinforced enough to fill up the gaps) defeated five Turkish
armies, each one larger than its own. Remember, too, that the Turks
were always better equipped and supplied--it was so easy with their
chief city of Constantinople just within "coo-ee." Our little army had
to be supplied with every single thing over thousands of miles of
water. General Hamilton said the navy was father and mother to us, and
when it is remembered that every cartridge, every ounce of food, every
drop of water, every splinter of firewood had to be brought by the
ships, it will be seen that we could not have existed a single day
without their aid. The Turks said often enough that they would push us
into the sea--they continually called on Allah to aid them--we were
only a handful after all; we only held a few hundred acres of their
filthy soil, but onto that we clung, sometimes by the skin of our
teeth. And it was the weather, not the Turks, that made us leave in
the end.

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