Great Anzac Stories

by Graham Seal

  I have been inside ‘Little Australia,’ have played two-up on the two-up tower, patted her dog, whom she called ‘Digger,’ sang the songs she wrote about us, and listened to the glowing tales she recited about the old Diggers. But most of all I was privileged to know and learn to love this grand lady, who thought so much of Australians, and who worked so hard, at her own expense, to make their passing through South Africa a happy one. Indeed did she earn the title of ‘The Angel of Durban.’

  Should there be any ex-serviceman who would care to contribute to the cost of a small memorial plaque, to be placed on her grave. I would be only too willing to arrange details and to have the work completed.

  The chalk Rising Sun

  England’s Salisbury Plain was the location of extensive military camps, depots, hospitals and related facilities throughout World War I. Many Australians and New Zealanders spent time there, either in training or in hospital, often both. On a hillside near one of the local villages, Codford, in Wiltshire, can still be seen a memento of the Great War Anzacs. A large Rising Sun badge, 53 by 45 metres, was carved into the chalk in 1917 by diggers stationed near the village. According to the story, a local commander decided that something striking on the hillside would improve his view. He assigned the 13th Training Battalion to the task as a form of punishment for their malingering. The hill, properly known as ‘Lamb Down’, became ‘Misery Hill’ to the soldiers who had to spend long, cold days building and then maintaining the carving. They did have one consolation, though. According to local historians, the soldiers used beer bottles to dig up the grass to form the design and also to embed in the carving, giving it the appearance of the actual bronze of the Rising Sun badge. Presumably they had to empty the bottles first.

  A Tasmanian visitor to the area in 1918 provided some colour to the story and also indicated that the Anzacs had carved other symbols into the hillside, not entirely to the satisfaction of all the locals.

  The country all around is very pretty, and both Hurdcott and Fovant camps are well situated on a hill and very healthy. Opposite, with a narrow valley between, there is another low hill; this is of chalk, with a thin coating of grass. The Australian badge, ‘The Rising Sun’, has been formed by cutting away the grass, it is beautifully done; also Y.M.C.A. badge, map of Australia and Tasmania, a kangaroo, and various crosses, etc. I was told that the owner had sued the Commonwealth for damages. He was offered £1500, but refused it, went to law, lost the case, and had to pay his own costs. Truly a just punishment. He should have been well pleased to have his entirely useless hill turned into a work of art for all time.

  By 1938 the Codford badge had become so badly eroded that it had to be restored, and its subsequent upkeep was accepted by the Commonwealth government as part of its war memorial program. But it was not long before the carving had to be covered up to avoid its bright outline being used by German bombers as a navigation aid. It has since been uncovered and restored.

  Codford was also the location of a New Zealand military hospital during World War I, the inmates producing a lively newspaper called The Codford Wheeze (incorporating The Wiltshire Wangler, The Wyle Wail and The Salisbury Swinger). The paper contained many examples of soldier humour, related especially to injury and, hopefully, convalescence. A patient under the pen name ‘Zeaffirm’ contributed some verses under the title ‘Codford’ that give a good idea of life in the hospital.

  A place of wood and rusty tin,

  Long corridors that leak like sin,

  A dismal place, without, within,

  Just Codford Hospital.

  In Summer time it’s hot as well

  The place of which the Padres tell,

  And don’t the paint and Ronuk [wood polish] smell?

  In Codford Hospital.

  In winter time it gets the worst

  Of mud! It takes an easy first

  For frozen taps and pipes that burst,

  This Codford Hospital.

  Still, Diggers, if from fell disease,

  From leadswinging or feet that freeze,

  You suffer—come, we cure all these

  In Codford Hospital.

  For, if discomforts we have got,

  Are we downhearted? Rather not;

  We are a very happy lot

  At Codford Hospital.

  ‘Zeaffirm’ was perhaps feeling happier than usual as he knocked out his rough and ready poem during Christmas, 1918, and having survived the war he probably also survived Codford. At least ninety-seven patients did not. Sixty-six New Zealanders and thirty-one Australians are lying still in Codford cemetery, the largest of its kind in Britain. The cemetery is the site of Anzac Day observances each year.

  A similar design, 51 by 32 metres, together with a number of regimental badges of Australian and British army units and the YMCA logo, was also cut into a hillside at nearby Fovant, also in Wiltshire. These striking examples of folk art date mostly from 1919 when Anzacs were encamped in the area awaiting return home. Together with some post–World War II carvings of British regimental badges, they are looked after by the volunteers of the Fovant Badges Society, which traced its lineage to the local Home Guard—or ‘Dad’s Army’—of World War II, with assistance from the Australian War Memorial. Thanks largely to the society and its fundraising efforts, the carvings can still be seen today.

  Another British Anzac memento of the Great War was created not too far from Codford. At Hurdcott, in Wiltshire, an outline of Australia was cast in cement across a hillside that was re-christened ‘Australia Hill’. It took volunteer diggers seventeen weeks to finish in 1918. Apparently the structure was still visible in 1999, at least from the air, though unlike the chalk carvings this English home-front monument does not seem to have been maintained.

  Blighty

  In World War I, Britain was known to all British, Canadian and Anzac troops as ‘Blighty’, derived from a Hindustani term for ‘foreign’ or ‘away’. For the British it was home and for the Anzacs and other Empire troops it was an opportunity to get away from the fighting, on leave—or for recuperation if they had been wounded. The time taken to sail to and fro between the Pacific and Europe meant that it was difficult for Australians or New Zealanders to return home for even fairly lengthy periods of leave. When asked by an English woman how often he had leave, an Australian soldier was rumoured to have replied ‘Once every war’.

  As well as getting ‘Blighty leave’, many soldiers hoped to receive ‘a Blighty one’, meaning a wound serious enough for them to need treatment in Britain, while not serious enough to be life threatening. As the Adelaide journalist and soldier Hugh Garland (DCM) wrote in his Vignettes of War, this ditty was popular with the Australian troops at the front:

  Dear Lord our ways we’re wending

  To toil and strife again.

  Where Fritz is always sending

  His shrapnel down like rain.

  O, teach us, Lord, to dodge ’em

  And, if you don’t do that,

  Please tell old Fritz to lodge ’em

  For blighties neat and pat.

  Sadly, Garland was not lucky enough to receive a Blighty one. He was killed in action in May 1917.

  If a digger did win some time in a British hospital, there was an opportunity to spin a few yarns to the locals. Diggers were notorious in Britain during the Great War for the whopping lies they frequently told gullible ‘pommies’ about their goanna farms and the like back home.

  I’ve heard Aussies tell stories to the unsophisticated of many different kinds of farms we have ‘out there’—there’s the jackeroo [sic] farm, the nulla-nulla farm, the wombat farm, etc., etc. But the boy with the flea farm is the best novelty I’ve struck. He was a badly wounded inmate of an English hospital. At every opportunity he would tell the nurse about his wonderful flea farm. Finally, the nurse concluded that he had gone off his block and reported the matter to the doctor.

  ‘What do you do with this flea farm of yours?’ the doctor asked him.

 
‘Oh’, replied the Aussie ‘we make beer out of the hops.’

  While recuperating from his ‘Blighty one’, a digger would often be visited by well-meaning citizens doing their bit for the war effort by cheering up recovering soldiers. While this was appreciated, it could often be a little wearing as the citizens, ignorant of the reality of the front line, invariably asked lots of silly questions. Anecdotes on this theme were many.

  In a British hospital a lady had put more questions to a wounded Australian than an insurance agent could. ‘Do you get much windy weather in Australia?’ she at length asked. Then the soldier departed from the strict truth. ‘Windy weather!’ he exclaimed. ‘Why, I should reckon. For instance, sometimes a cold south gale will come on, and blow so darned hard, that it blows the sun out. Then you’ve got to sit round in the dark sometimes for a week, ’till a hot northerly sets in and lights it up again.’

  And while being away from the front—even with over-inquisitive locals—was pretty good, it was ‘not all beer and skittles’. A battle-scarred Gunner Millard was welcomed to England as he left his hospital ship by scores of girls carrying fresh fruit for the wounded. But things went downhill from there, not only for himself but also for the British people, as he wrote home from No. 4 Convalescent Camp on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire.

  In camp we never taste sugar or butter and get very little meat. The main ration is mostly fat at that. Things are getting fairly serious with the civilian population. The people have to wait in queues for hours to get a few ounces of margarine, butter being a thing of the past. The same applies to meat, tea, etc. Hundreds have to go away empty-handed as there is seldom enough to go around. A lot of the London butchers are now selling horse-flesh, having given up the unequal contest for other meat . . .

  London was also the location of the Australian Army Headquarters in Horseferry Road. Most Australians would turn up here sooner or later if they were in London, either for some official reason or for the social facilities. It seems the encounters they had at headquarters were not always pleasant. A story about a digger just off the boat from the trenches being upbraided for the state of his uniform by a staff member at Horseferry Road became a poem and a famous soldier song.

  He landed in London and straightaway strode

  Direct to Headquarters in Horseferry Road.

  A Buckshee Corporal said ‘pardon me, please,

  But there’s dust on your tunic and dirt on your knees.

  You look so disgraceful that people will laugh,’

  Said the cold-footed coward that works on the staff.

  The Aussie just gave him a murderous glance,

  And said ‘I’ve just come from the trenches in France,

  Where shrapnel is falling and comforts are few,

  And Aussies are fighting for cowards like you.

  I wonder, old shirker, if your mother e’er knew

  That her son is a waster and afraid of the strafe,

  But holds a soft snap on the Horseferry staff?’

  By the time the Anzacs went home after the war, the song had changed a bit, but the sentiments remained the same in this version from a homeward-bound troopship in 1919.

  Your hat should be turned up at the side like mine,

  Your boots, I might state, are in want of a shine,

  Your puttees are falling away from your calf;

  Said the cold footed b—— of Horseferry staff.

  The soldier gave him a murderous glance,

  Remember I’m just home from the trenches in France.

  Where shrapnel is flying and comforts are few,

  Where the soldiers are fighting for b——s like you!

  So well did ‘Horseferry Road’ capture the attitude of diggers towards authority that it was also sung in various versions in Australia’s next few wars. By 1941 ‘Horseferry Road’ had grown a chorus and become the famous ‘Dinky-di’ with the chorus ‘Dinky-di, dinky-di, “I am a digger and I won’t tell a lie . . .’.

  Other versions were still being sung in the Vietnam War.

  Homecoming

  Around 10 am on 3 August 1915, the troopship Ballarat entered Outer Harbour at Semaphore in Adelaide. She carried a cargo of wounded men from Gallipoli. A local journalist reported the scene.

  Many persons went to the Outer Harbour to meet the soldiers but in view of the fact made public that the South Australian warriors would be conveyed without delay to Keswick, and would there be permitted to be welcomed, the crowd was not so large as would otherwise have been the case. As the Ballarat was nearing the Outer Harbour wharf the signal ‘Welcome home,’ displayed from the local flagstaff, caught the eyes of the troops, many of whom lined the rail and gave rousing cheers. No attempt was made by the returned heroes to hide the nature of the wounds they received. Some were minus a leg, others without an arm, several with an eye gone, and a large number with an arm still resting in a sling, crowded to the vessel’s rail. All were in a merry mood, and frequently the spectators ashore would hear a shout, ‘Are we downhearted?’ and the ready response from others—a long-drawn-out ‘No.’ Immediately the stretcher-bearers on the wharf received an order to march, the troops on board called ‘Left, right, left, right’ as the men marched, and other-wise good-humoredly chaffed them.

  A squad of the A.M.C. lent assistance to those who were unable to walk down the gangway, but although many of the returned warriors needed no help, there were a few who could not have reached the wharf without it. If anything was required to bring forcibly home to Australians the awful effects of war, the sight of maimed and shell-torn men carried down the gangway on the backs of comrades must have done so. Three South Australians among those who landed were minus portions of their legs, but all bore their bufferings cheerfully, and one could not but admire their spirit. At the foot of the gangway Captain Butler checked the names of the sick and wounded as they crossed to the wharf, and the soldiers were at once escorted to the waiting ambulance train. In a little more than half an hour the disembarkation was completed, and at 10.45 the train moved off for Keswick amidst the cheers of the spectators and farewells from those still on the troopship . . .

  The premier and other dignitaries welcomed the soldiers home with patriotic words and expressions of gratitude for their bravery and sacrifice. The reporters interviewed some of the men, mostly wanting to know the more grisly details of the hand-to-hand fighting. Some yarns were spun.

  There is a more kindly feeling than ever between themselves, and though they make light of their own wounds there is obvious sympathy in their demeanour to the other wounded. But when it comes to killing an enemy it is only a matter of business, and if they felt a pity for their antagonists they would not be so well fitted to do their work. It is not surprising, therefore, that they chat about the number of Turks they have bayoneted without the slightest shudder. ‘War is murder,’ said one, but ‘War is good’ said most of them. ‘It is tip-top,’ said Private Sheppard. ‘I advise all the lads to go and have a cut at it. There is plenty of fun and plenty of good shooting to be had. The Turks are not such bad fellows. During the 24 hours armistice some Turkish soldiers exchanged money and cigarettes with our own boys who were burying the dead. Some of the Turks can talk a little English, and the German officers seem to understand English well.’

  On the same page of the newspaper that carried this account was a report of 1000 men out of work at Broken Hill in New South Wales.

  Very irritated

  Civilian questions to soldiers returned home from the front often betrayed such ignorance of what the soldiers were experiencing that they were parodied in digger humour. On this occasion, the question seemed to be a sensible one, though the answer could perhaps be taken with a grain or two of salt.

  ‘Do the Australians still keep up their cheerfulness at the front?’ I asked a soldier at the Cheer-Up Hut [a solider’s comfort facility—see ‘The Lady of Violets’ in the chapter entitled ‘Memories’], Adelaide, recently. He had just returned from France.

&nb
sp; ‘Yes, easy,’ he replied. ‘I only struck one feller who didn’t. He was as cheery a chap you ever seen too. ’E was all grins and jokes. ’Is smile was like a sunrise on a patch o’ golden wattles. One day ’e went with ’is battalion bayonetin’ Germans. It was a ’ell of a scrap. ’E was singin’ “Australia will be there” all through it, and every time ’e notched a German, ’e’d yell somethin’ funny. ’E got six wounds in different parts of ’is frame. When ’e was bein’ carried on a stretcher to the dressin’ station ’e laughed over the fight as it is ’ad been a little game o’ ticky touchwood. ’E was fixed up with bandages until ’e looked like a bloomin’ mummy, and every time ’e moved ’is wounds stung ’im like scorpions. But ’e just laughed as merry as a baby in a bath tub. Suddent ’e lost all ’is joy, and began to swear like—like—lemme see—well, like an A.S.C. man ’e was wild!’

  ‘And what made him so cross?’ I asked.

  ‘Why, ’e found ’e’d lost ’is pipe in the fight.’

  Death’s soldier

  Just sixteen when he enlisted in the AIF, ‘Ted’ Lording’s story is one of horror and fortitude that highlights the usually forgotten aftermath of war. Born in Balmain, Sydney, Lording served in Egypt and on the western front as a signaller in the 30th Battalion. In July 1916 he was savagely wounded by a burst of enemy machine-gun fire at the battle of Fromelles. This shattered his chest and right arm, and a few minutes later several scraps of shrapnel embedded themselves in his spine. Miraculously still alive, Lording spent the rest of the war undergoing medical treatment after medical treatment in Britain and in Australia, where he returned in 1917. These treatments continued after the war and by 1928 he had undergone fifty-two mostly serious surgical operations. Lording should have died many times but refused to surrender to what must have seemed the sweet release of death.