Tiger Men

by Judy Nunn

  3 March 1915

  We’re on the move, the battalion sailed out of Alexandria yesterday. Hooray, at last we’re about to see some action. Life in the desert had become wretchedly tedious, I can tell you. Even the odd shenanigan we got up to in Cairo had lost its appeal. We’re raring to get into the real stuff . . .

  But the ‘real stuff’ didn’t appear to be immediately on offer.

  We’re still holed up aboard ship, Max Miller wrote, and have been for weeks now. Then he went on to describe a rather dull existence, more to fill in the page than anything as they were not permitted to write about their location or the battalion’s activities.

  The troopship was only one of many docked alongside all other manner of warships at the island of Lemnos in the Aegean Sea, roughly fifty miles from the Turkish mainland. The troops’ mail home was censored, and if a soldier inadvertently let slip a piece of information, a thick black line was drawn through the reference.

  All of us are bored rotten, and the food, what little there is of it, is truly awful. Some blokes are getting crook, which doesn’t help matters. Max, like all the others, couldn’t resist including a complaint about the food, which was not only justifiable, but hugely understated. The British government’s rations were so insubstantial in quality and quantity that combined with a shortage of fresh water, it was making the men seriously ill. Some were even hospitalised on Lemnos.

  Gosh I sound like a whinger, don’t I? Don’t really mean to, it’s just that we’re itching for action and this is getting us all down. Hope everyone’s well at home. Keep those letters coming. The arrival of the mail is the only thing stopping us from going barmy, I swear.

  Love to you all, Max

  In compliance with Gus’s instructions, Max had not been informed of his father’s internment. Heidi and Jeanie kept the news to themselves and the Powells made no mention of it when they wrote to Gordie and David.

  The last of the letters written aboard the troopship left with the mail boat on the twenty-first of April. The letters home after that would never be the same.

  It was late in the afternoon, the sun just beginning to set across the Aegean Sea and, from where he lay in the scrub two hundred feet above the beach, Hugh looked at the carnage below. So this is war, he thought, this butchery is war. But surely it hadn’t been meant to happen like this. It couldn’t have been, he thought as he gazed at the flotsam and jetsam of men dead and dying that littered the beach. There must have been a mistake. Something must have gone dreadfully wrong.

  Hugh Stanford had been in the first wave of the 3rd Brigade to reach the beach. A number of men in his landing boat had been killed, but he’d managed to get ashore, discarding his pack in the water when it threatened to drag him down and losing his rifle as he swam the last several yards. Then there’d been the mad dash across the beach for the shelter of the steep cliffs that confronted them. Bullets had whizzed past, thudding into sand, scrub and men alike, and artillery shells had burst overhead spitting shrapnel, but he’d made it, even managing to score a rifle on the way. He’d grabbed it from the hands of a dead man on the beach. He hadn’t needed to stop and check, he’d known the man was dead: half his head was missing.

  Scaling the cliff heights had been almost impossible. Perhaps a feat only possible for men driven by fear, he now thought, looking down at the bloodbath he’d so miraculously escaped. He’d killed a man on the way up, possibly two – he hadn’t checked on the second one he’d shot. He’d taken a look at the first Turk though: a lad younger than himself, no more than sixteen. The entire landing was a fiasco, he thought, companies, platoons, even sections split up, scattered in all directions. No-one had known where their units were. In fact, no-one had known what the hell was going on; in the massacre it had been a race for survival.

  Above the beach and out of the immediate danger zone, he’d managed to catch up with his platoon sergeant, who had already gathered a number of men from various units, including David Powell, Oscar O’Callaghan and Max Miller. With some semblance of military command restored, they’d fought and clawed their way higher to their objective rendezvous point at 400 Plateau. The platoon’s orders had been to support an Indian artillery unit that was setting up position there. Upon arrival, they’d been ordered to dig in by a British major – who had promptly disappeared.

  The Turkish batteries, however, alerted to the presence of the Indian artillery unit, had opened fire, a fresh hell had broken loose, and Hugh couldn’t remember anything after that. He had no idea what had happened to the others, but he’d finished up halfway back down the slope, unconscious. That’s where the medic had found him some time later.

  He’d been hit twice, not fatal wounds, but painful and bloody. A Turkish bullet had opened a rip in the muscle of his upper arm and a piece of shrapnel from an artillery shell had sliced his thigh. The medic from the Field Ambulance Unit had stemmed the bleeding, bandaged him roughly and told him to make his way down to the far side of the cove, where a casualty clearing station had been set up.

  ‘Sorry, mate, can’t do any more,’ the man had said, ‘you’re on your own, but you’ll live.’ Leaving a water bottle, he’d moved off to answer the call of other wounded.

  Hugh had watched from the slopes as down on the beach the slaughter had continued. He’d seen the troops of the 7th Battalion, 2nd Brigade literally shot to pieces by Turkish machine-gun fire. Oh dear God, he’d thought as he’d watched the men being systematically mowed down, oh dear God, those poor lads, every one of them’s copping it.

  Now, with the advent of dusk, things had at last eased. He hauled himself to his feet and using his rifle to assist him started his painful trek down to the cove.

  On reaching the foreshore, he wended his way through the carnage towards the clearance station, where a tent had been set up for emergency operations and where, in a nearby triage area, troops were being treated for minor wounds. Out in the open, lined up on stretchers, were dozens upon dozens of men waiting to be ferried to the hospital ship in the transport barges that ran continuously to and fro.

  Hugh reported to the triage area where exhausted members of the medical unit were working at a feverish pace.

  ‘Well blow me down, look who’s here,’ David said with the broadest grin. ‘We thought you’d copped it, didn’t we, Oscar?’ Both were having bayonet cuts stitched; David’s wound was in his upper arm and Oscar’s in his left side.

  ‘We certainly did,’ Oscar agreed, ‘one minute you were there and the next you were gone, we thought you’d been blown up. Ouch, that hurt.’

  ‘You’d make it easier on yourself if you stood still,’ the doctor said tetchily.

  Hugh waited his turn, which didn’t take long coming – the medics were moving from one man to the next with amazing efficiency. He gritted his teeth while his thigh and upper arm were tamped and bandaged and fifteen minutes later, like David and Oscar, he was declared fit to fight.

  ‘I suppose we don’t get out of it that easily,’ he said as he limped from the triage area. The tamping of his open wounds had been extremely painful. ‘We’re the lucky ones who get to fight another day.’

  He’d said it jokingly, but looking down the beach at the dead – who had not yet been collected, for ambulance teams were too busy collecting those who might possibly be saved – and looking over at the row upon row of wounded men awaiting transport to the hospital ship, they knew it was no joke, all three of them. They were indeed the lucky ones, so far anyway.

  Hugh drained the water bottle the Field Ambulance man had given him.

  ‘We need to get you another pack,’ Oscar said and he walked off down the beach, returning only minutes later with a full kitbag. ‘There are plenty around,’ he said. He wasn’t trying to be funny.

  They found a spot up near the cliffs safe from sniper fire and sat on the rocks, Hugh easing out his throbbing leg while David and Oscar lit up cigarettes.

  ‘So what happened to Max,’ Hugh asked, ‘do you know?’


  ‘No idea,’ Oscar said. ‘We were too busy running for cover and when we found he wasn’t with us, we thought he must have copped it like you.’

  ‘We were going to go back and look for him,’ David said, ‘but that’s when we bumped into Johnny Turk, and I mean literally. We fell right into a dugout where they were holed up. Surprised them even more than us. They were focused on the Indian artillery unit below, so we had the advantage.’

  ‘There were five,’ Oscar added, ‘it was a pretty good fight.’

  ‘You killed all five?’ Hugh was impressed.

  ‘Three,’ Oscar said, ‘the other two got away. You should have seen David though, God it was funny. He was so shocked when he landed on the Turks that he dropped his rifle. He actually dropped his bloody rifle.’ Oscar threw back his head and laughed. ‘I tell you, the look on his face! But he didn’t pause for a second. He whipped out his bayonet and gutted two of the Turks straight off. I managed to get in a head shot first up, but after that there was no space to move so we took on the other two hand-to-hand – they had their own bayonets out by then.’ He grinned at David. ‘It was no match though, was it?

  ‘No match at all, that’s for sure.’ David grinned back. ‘They got in a couple of jabs and then took off like frightened rabbits.’

  ‘Well done,’ Hugh said.

  ‘How about you,’ Oscar asked excitedly, ‘did you kill any Turks?’

  ‘I don’t know, I shot a couple.’

  ‘But did you kill them?’

  ‘I don’t know, I just kept running, I didn’t stop to look.’ He had stopped of course. He had looked. And he’d decided that he would never stop again.

  Hugh could see the light of battle in his friends’ eyes, the slightly mad, unreal, adrenalin-rush of victory. He understood their exhilaration. He felt it too. Was it the thrill of killing? Had they in some way been blooded? Or was it because they had survived to tell their tales?

  ‘What about the others,’ he asked, ‘do you know how they fared?’

  ‘Gordie made it safely across the beach,’ David said, ‘but I haven’t seen him since then. We saw the Balfours up on a ridge digging in though, didn’t we, Oscar, and they were in good nick.’

  ‘Yeah, we bumped into Wes and Harry just before we came down here to get stitched up. They lead charmed lives those boys – not a scratch on either of them.’

  ‘So maybe there’s only Max to worry about,’ Hugh said. ‘Let’s check the wounded.’

  He held out his hand, they hauled him to his feet and the three of them wandered over to where the rows of stretchers were laid out on the sand.

  They walked along twenty yards or so and there he was. He appeared to be asleep.

  ‘G’day, Max,’ David said.

  Max’s eyes sprang open and he beamed up at them with a slightly crazed expression.

  ‘Well blow me down, what do we have here?’ He grinned at David as he employed the commonly used phrase of his lifelong friend. ‘Half the gang, if I’m not mistaken. Where are the others?’

  They squatted beside him on the beach, Hugh awkwardly with his wounded leg stretched out, and they told him that Wes and Harry were safe, but that they didn’t know about Gordie.

  ‘Oh Gordie’s determined to become some sort of hero,’ Max said. He was quite lucid although clearly full of morphine and tending to gabble a bit. ‘I was waiting to be treated in the hospital tent and Gordie came in with a bloke over his shoulder. He’d carried him all the way down those ridges, poor bastard had a foot missing. Anyway, Gordie dumped him down and went back up, presumably to fetch some other poor bastard.’ Max gave a slightly demented laugh: the opiates were having a strange effect on him. ‘Good old Gordie, true hero material, but he’s safe and that’s the main thing.’ His face cracked into a manic grin. ‘Which means we boys made it,’ he said triumphantly. ‘Given the law of averages, not bad for a day like today, eh? I reckon we’re damn lucky to have survived in one piece. Lesson learnt though,’ he added in all seriousness, ‘we can’t let them get the better of us like that again. We’ll have to sort them out tomorrow, that’s for sure.’

  Max was delirious. He didn’t seem to know that he was one of many seriously wounded lying on a stretcher waiting to be taken to the hospital ship. He didn’t seem to know also that he had a limb missing. Below his right knee was a crisp white bandage binding the stump where, in the emergency tent, they had amputated and cauterised the shredded remnants of his leg to prevent him from bleeding to death.

  ‘Yeah, we boys made it, Max,’ Hugh said, ‘we survived all right,’ but not in one piece, he thought, and we’re not boys, not any more.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  It was some time before the devastating statistics of the Gallipoli landings reached home. The British Army refused to make public the details of the disastrous invasion, or to admit to accusations of military ineptitude; and the Australian government, with its need to meet an agreed quota of troops for the British, was wary about frightening off volunteers and adversely affecting the recruitment drive.

  The truth could not be denied for long, however. As telegrams arrived informing families that their men had been killed or lost or wounded in action the enormity of the disaster started to sink in.

  Heidi and Jeanie Müller received the telegram from the AIF Base Records Office in Melbourne on the second of May. It was addressed to Mr G Miller – when listing his nearest of kin, Max had made the same alteration to his father’s name.

  REGRET REPORT SON PRIVATE MAX G MILLER WOUNDED WILL ADVISE ANYTHING FURTHER RECEIVED.

  The telegram’s wording was not only abrupt, it was terrifyingly inconclusive. How severely had he been wounded? Where had he been taken? Was he expected to survive? Heidi and Jeanie were in turmoil. There were so many questions and no answers forthcoming. Should they send word to Gus at the internment camp? They decided to wait until they found out the truth. Not knowing was torturous.

  Eventually they found out through David Powell, although not directly. David wrote to his father, Thomas. He did not, as he had in the past, include his mother and sisters in his letter, which also lacked its normal larrikin tone. Indeed, his writing was uncharacteristically cynical.

  Dear Dad,

  I don’t know how long it’ll take for this to reach you. Given the chaos that reigns over here probably some time, but I thought I’d let you know about Max. In all this madness it’s doubtful the army will supply much detail and you can pass the news on to Heidi and Jeanie. I reckon it’ll be easier if they hear it face to face, and frankly I don’t want to be the one to tell Jeanie her brother’s coming home with one leg.

  Mind you, the fact that he’ll be coming home at all will be of huge comfort, I’m sure: there are thousands who won’t by the time this bloody campaign’s done. But from what I can gather, Max will be all right. He’s a strong little bastard as we all know.

  We saw him on the beach that first day, not long after Gordie had carried him down from the ridges. He was off his trolley, didn’t even know Gordie had brought him in or that his leg had been taken off in the casualty station.

  We’ve made enquiries with the medics since then. They say he’s been evacuated to Malta and from there he’ll probably be shipped over to England. So that’s some cheering news you can pass on.

  I have to tell you, Dad, strictly between us (and it’s good to be able to write honestly instead of sugaring the pill for the girls), Max might well be one of the lucky ones. For a start he’s alive, which has to be a bonus; and as for wounds, I’ve seen sights that beggar description. If some of those poor bastards do manage to survive, how they’ll live with such disfigurement and debilitation is beyond me.

  The fact is, this is a filthy, ugly hell on earth and there are only two things that will see you through it. The first of course is sheer bloody luck. After that, you have to be tough. You’re undone if you let yourself go under.

  I’ll write a letter to Jeanie now telling her that Max will recover and that
you have the news about him. Sorry to land you with that. And I’ll write a letter to Mum and the girls telling them that I’m all right (which I am) and that the food’s bloody terrible (which it is).

  Good to let off a bit of steam, I must say. I miss our talks.

  Lots of love, David

  When the first batch of letters arrived home from the front, Heidi and Jeanie, who had as yet received no further word from the military, were overwhelmed with relief to discover that Max was safe. At last they could let Gus know.

  The timing as it turned out was fortuitous. One month after Gus Müller received word of his son’s safety, the internees of Bruny Island were transferred from Dennes Point to Holsworthy Camp in New South Wales, a location far removed from the Huon. Gus was now a world away from his family.

  The horrendous war news continued to seep into the Australian consciousness. The burgeoning statistics could no longer be denied; brutal telegrams were delivered to front doors with relentless regularity; and now the letters reached home from the troops themselves. The magnitude of the loss was finally revealed and Australians across the country were shocked to the core.

  Evelyn Stanford fretted day and night for her son’s safety. Her anxiety exacerbated her already frail condition and in early June she fell gravely ill. At first her family thought her bronchitis the lingering result of a severe cold she’d caught in the spring, but her lungs became infected and she developed pneumonia. She died two weeks later.

  Reginald was thoroughly disoriented by the loss of his wife. He was in a state of shock and confusion as much as grief, for despite her fragility it had not occurred to him until near the end that she might actually die. Life without Evelyn was something he had never contemplated. And to make matters worse, there was Rupert.

  Twenty-year-old Rupert was more than disoriented: he was distraught with grief. He wept incessantly over the loss of the mother, who had been the centre of his existence. Iris Watson, the housekeeper, a kindly woman, did her best to comfort him. She would cuddle his hulking frame to her matronly breast and he would cling to her like a baby, crying ‘Mummy, Mummy’ over and over again.