Passport to Hell

by Hyde, Robin

  Page 56

  ‘Three miles up from Y Beach’. Another of the factual errors for which Tait chides Hyde; she was simply following Starkie here and his memory was wrong. Y Beach was near Gurkha Beach, quite a long way from Anzac Cove: closer to twelve miles (map in A. E. Byrne, Official History of the Otago Regiment, N.Z.E.F. in the Great War 1914–18, 2nd ed., Wilkie & Co., Dunedin 1921, p.25). In fact, Starkie had all his distances wrong: from No 2 post in the North to Chatham’s post in the South—the southern extent of Anzac—was 2 miles, while Quinn’s post in the East was approximately 1,000 yards from the sea (Major Fred Waite, The New Zealanders at Gallipoli, Whitcombe & Tombs, 1919, p.136). Presumably the Fifth Reinforcements came ashore at Anzac Cove, where the piers were, then moved along the ‘Big Sap’, a large communication trench leading to the outposts. The Sap ended at No 2 Post on the far side of Sazli Beit Dere. The Maori contingent had worked on the Sap and left a carved figure labelled ‘Pah’ on its wall (Waite, p.194). The Reinforcements arrived at No 2 post on 8 August in the middle of the most savage battle of the Gallipoli Campaign, the fight for Chunuk Bair.

  Page 57

  Mule Gully. A gully running up towards the ‘Sphinx’ just north of Walker’s Pier and parallel with the trenches of Walker’s Ridge. Mules were stabled in the cliffs of the Gully (photograph in Waite, p.164). It is about 1,000 yards from No 2 outpost where the 5th Reinforcements were thrown into battle so Starkie may be confused in his memory.

  Page 58

  ‘971, the entrenched hill’. ‘Immediately south of Suvla was the loftiest and wildest mass of hill country at this end of the Peninsula. Its name was Koja Chemen Tepe (Hill of the Great Pasture) but it was known to the army by its height in feet … 971’, Bean, p.206.

  ‘four hundred’. ‘The Regiment … receiving an added strength of approximately 300 all ranks. Without any preliminaries this new force was thrown into the violent struggle then raging’ (Byrne, p.66). On 16 August, eight days after arrival: ‘The recorded total strength of the Battalion … was 360 all ranks … including the additional strength derived from the 5th Reinforcements’, Byrne, p.67.

  Page 59

  Charlie Saunders. Rattray, MS Notes.

  Page 60

  ‘two wells’. ‘Wells were sunk in all likely places …. The wells, however, did not last long …. Greek tank steamers brought the bulk of the water from Egypt …. Two quarts a day was often the ration—this had to be used for all purposes. Mostly it was drunk in the form of tea. Any tea left over was not wasted, but used for shaving!’ Waite, pp.160–1.

  Page 61

  ‘the apex’. Not just an apex but The Apex—the most easterly point of Anzac penetration with reinforced trenches. It lay at the head of two gullies—Chailak Dere and Sazli Beit Dere—directly below the ridge of Chunuk Bair (Waite, p.202). The drive up the Deres to capture Table Top and Rhododendron Spur was made on the night of 6 August. The Turkish counter-attack on 10 August after the terrible battle for Chunuk Bair was held up at the Apex and the defence consolidated. On 20 August the Otago Battalion returned (having been relieved on the 15th) to hold the Apex. Byrne, pp.66,67.

  Page 62

  ‘the attack on Suvla Bay’. Part of the overall strategy of the attack on Chunuk was a surprise landing on Suvla Bay, five miles or so north of Anzac Cove. But it is more likely that Starkie was remembering the attack of 21 August (just after Otago’s return to the Apex) by the British 29th Division and the 2nd Mounted Division of British Yeomanry from Chocolate Hill against Scimitar Hill (Waite, p.246).

  ‘an advance of thirty yards’. ‘300 yards’ (MS Notes), which is more accurate.

  ‘number nines’. ‘a standardized purgative pill known as Number 9…. The Number nine pill was said to counteract the constipating nature of much of the only food available up the line’, Brophy and Partridge, The Long Trail, Deutsch 1965, p.180.

  King. ‘Kingie the doctor’s orderly’, MS Notes.

  Page 63

  ‘Death Gully’. Valley, MS Notes.

  Page 64

  ‘a story which his father had told’. The story is Hyde’s.

  ‘“Stop it, you dirty Hun!”’ ‘Boys go crook’, MS Notes.

  Page 65

  ‘slaughtering a goat’. The details are provided by Hyde.

  ‘than ever …. At the water-tanks’. Eighteen lines cut from MS B-10 concern the relative danger of bathing off Gallipoli—sharks against bullets.

  Page 66

  ‘Fray Bentos’. The name of a particular brand of bully-beef, often used for all bully-beef. Also used facetiously as an approximation for très bien, especially in reply to an enquiry about one’s health.

  ‘used to it … used to anything’. Thirty-six lines omitted from MS B-10 concern the terrible conditioning effect of violence and the lack of understanding by those who control it from afar.

  ‘Rest Gully’. ‘“Otago Gully’” (Alexander Aitken, Gallipoli to the Somme: Recollections of a New Zealand Infantryman, Oxford 1963, p.23). ‘This rest consisted in going up to the line by night, as before, to dig in four-hour shifts, or by day to the beach to carry back the tins of bully-beef and biscuits, the ‘3-by-2’ or ‘4-by-2’ wooden beams, the bags of rice, or the sheets of corrugated iron, past the mouth of the Chailak Dere and the dangerous corners’ (Aitken, p.28). ‘Yet still today men remember the unfairness of using rest for hard manual labour, back-breaking labour with doses of that crippling fear in burial fatigues and wiring parties, which men thought they had been rested from for the time’, Denis Winter, Death’s Men, Lane 1978, p.159.

  ‘Tommy’ Taylor. Thomas Fielden Taylor (1880–1937). Born and educated in England, he came to Nelson, worked in the diocese and became Canon of Nelson Cathedral. In 1914 he became a chaplain with the N.Z.E.F. and in 1919, Wellington City Missioner. ‘Mr Taylor had served with distinction as a chaplain at Gallipoli. His war injuries necessitated his discharge from active service. He took up his residence in typical Taranaki Street quarters and with a genius for appealing to boys and men, he soon made friends with many down and outs. He established clubs, a night school and Bible classes. On Sunday evenings he held a Mission Service…. The Mission came into its own during the slump years’, H. W. Monaghan, From Age to Age, 1957, p.111.

  ‘of whom Starkie was one’. ‘stolen by youths’ (MS Notes); another instance of Hyde’s deliberately darkening the portrait.

  Page 67

  ‘usual pair of number nines’. Starkie is more amusing: ‘Private got 2 no. nines. Headache, heartache, toothache, piles, laziness, malingering, cuts’, MS Notes.

  Page 68

  ‘the rivals fought and tore…. The forbidding’. Twenty-two lines cut from MS B-10 concern the shipboard wounded, the beauties of the aurora, and the horrors of Gallipoli and after.

  Page 69

  ‘old stone flagwork’. Is ‘flagstone work’ intended?

  Page 70

  ‘piastres … four hundred’. ‘300 piastres’, MS Notes.

  ‘Bradburys’. Pound notes: from John Swanick Bradbury, Secretary to the British Treasury 1913–19.

  Sisters Street. ‘Sisters Street was the brothel street of Alexandria’ (MS Notes). This is evidently the extent of Starkie’s contribution to the following passage.

  Page 71

  ‘superlatively good liars’. Hyde’s addition.

  ‘a beautiful British general’. General Alec Godley (MS Notes). Major General Sir Alex Godley, K.C.M.G., C.B., General Officer Commanding N.Z.E.F.

  ‘“Not half living up to his reputation.”’ ‘Living up to his name’ (MS Notes). Suppressing Godley’s name has ruined the joke.

  The raiding of the Tommies’ beer canteen. Hyde has this story slightly wrong: ‘Tommies used to come for beer. N.Z. beer ran out. Tommies wouldn’t stand any. Night came. Tommy canteen raided, four barrels taken. 4th Brigade Aussies helped/1st Brigade in quarantine with yellow jack’, MS Notes.

  Page 72

  ‘Came also the General’. In the MS Notes he i
s accompanied by Lady Godley. Aitken (p.19), notes that the Otagos were reviewed by General Godley at Lemnos on 7 November 1915.

  ‘Otago Fourth’. ‘1st Battalion Otago’, MS Notes.

  ‘continual drill parade’. ‘14 days second field’ (MS Notes). ‘… pay forfeit, sleeping under guard and the performance of such fatigues and pack drills as could be crammed into the day…. a diet of water and biscuit. Worse, he would not be allowed to smoke during any of the twenty-eight days’ punishment’, Winter, p. 43.

  Page 73

  ‘the weather went mad’. The ‘famous November blizzard, which must have hastened the date of Evacuation by proving that it was impossible to live on Gallipoli during the winter months. It fell on the night of 26th November’, Aitken, p.29.

  ‘heavy artillery … from Austria’. ‘a report went about that the Turks were bringing up 10-inch howitzers to drop shells at a steep angle into our trenches and gullies…. We were set to work constructing deep dug-outs, large square vaults described as H. E. Shelters (but promptly named “funk holes”)’, Aitken, p.33.

  Pages 74–75

  Evacuation of Gallipoli. It took two tries to get Otago evacuated. After spending most of the night moving down to North Beach, the Battalion had to turn back and await the evening of 14 December. ‘This second attempt ran without a hitch. We filed down without casualties, and along the beach by Fisherman’s Hut to the pier’ (Aitken, p.38). It seems unlikely that the Maori Pioneer Corps sang ‘waiatas’ since silence was crucial and one of the Otagos was killed in the first attempt and a number of men sustained slight wounds. It is true however that the Maori contingent moved out with the Otago Battalion, Waite, p.280.

  Page 76

  ‘A New Zealand captain’. Captain Broughton (MS Notes). Capt. E. R. M. Broughton.

  Page 77

  Ismailia. They camped half way between Ismailia and the small village of Nefisha, a site that later became Moaskar Camp.

  Ferry Post. ‘north of Ismailia and on the eastern side of the Suez Canal, where it debouches into Lake Timsah’, Aitken, pp.51–52.

  ‘game of drill …. The big boats’. Thirty lines cut from MS B-10 concern the response from the Australian and the New Zealand guard when not apparently noticed during inspection by the Prince of Wales.

  Page 78

  ‘our M.O.’. Dr Paigent (MS Notes); probably a mishearing for Dr Baigent. Captain C. V. A. Baigent, Otago Medical Officer.

  Page 79

  ‘shortages made up …. At Ismailia’. Nineteen lines cut from MS B-10 concern an inspection by Sir Alexander Godley and his wife who appears rather foolish. This was presumably the occasion noted by Aitken (p.54) when Godley announced that they were going to France.

  Page 80

  ‘Everyone … was a Gallipoli veteran’. The greater part of the First Battalion Otago went aboard the Franconia on 6 April (Byrne, p.81). ‘By no means all who went aboard were Gallipoli veterans’ (Downie Stewart, review of Passport to Hell, Otago Daily Times, 4 July, 1936). Starkie had not said so—it was Hyde’s phrase. They had been joined by the 7th Reinforcements, Byrne, p.78.

  ‘a king of their own’. Presumably a reference to Amenhotep IV (or Iknaten) who ascended the throne of Egypt c. 1375 B.C., put aside the warlike aspects of his rule and devoted himself to changing the balance of Egypt’s religion from polytheism to monotheism. There was a violent reaction to his policies after his death. All of these comments are Hyde’s, not Starkie’s.

  Page 81

  ‘Boche submarine’. Submarines were active in the Mediterranean at this time and Aitken (p.55) records a scare on the voyage but does not mention a submarine in harbour,

  ‘fourteen stone’. ‘fifteen’, MS Notes.

  Page 82

  Morbecque. Moerbeke in the text, which was in the middle of Belgium, half way between Antwerp and Ghent in German occupied territory. Hyde may have looked it up and found Moerbeke and since it was in Flanders assumed it would do. Morbecque was in France, half way between Hazebrouck and Steenbecque (H. Stewart, The New Zealand Division, 1916–19, 1921, p.20). The journey has been expanded by Hyde and certainly did not take seven days but Starkie may have broken it up with stops.

  Page 83

  ‘for nothing …. Having something’. Thirteen lines omitted from MS B-10 concern Downie Stewart—how he paid the Battalion out of his own pocket when pay was stopped, and his parliamentary career after the War.

  ‘along in kegs …. In clear July’. Fifteen lines cut from MS B-10 on the difficulties of fraternizing with the ‘mademoiselles’ because of their seriousness and domesticity.

  July ‘route marches to Armentières’. The 1st Battalion moved from Morbecque to Estaires on 9 May. The march took four and a half hours, the distance was thirteen and a half miles and no one fell out (Aitken, p.63). Stark has misled Hyde; he makes it into a journey of fifty miles in two days.

  Pat Johnston. Thompson, MS Notes.

  Page 84

  ‘talking … of Sedan’. Hyde is no doubt referring to the terrible battle around Sedan, August-September 1870, in which the French Army was defeated by a much larger German force and Sedan capitulated.

  Page 85

  Arrantes. There is no Arrantes between Morbecque and Estaires; Starkie does not seem to have remembered this journey well.

  Page 86

  ‘At 11.30 … early autumn’. Aitken (p.66) notes arriving at ‘dusk’; and it was spring—13 May, Byrne, p.88.

  Page 87

  ‘fourteen miles away’. An exaggeration: the front line was two to two and a half miles from Armentières, Aitken, p.60.

  Page 88

  ‘Parapet Joe’. ‘This enemy machine-gunner, with his fine judgement of elevation, went by the nickname of “Parapet Joe”; in the front line he had the height of the parapet to an inch and was able to cut the bags along an arc of 200 or 300 yards; sometimes he would make his spray of bullets switch suddenly back, to catch any unwary head’, Aitken, p.71.

  Bob Phayre. Fife, MS Notes.

  Pages 89–90

  ‘brick convent’. Probably ‘the Hospice Mahieu, an almost deserted charitable institution which still sheltered a few old men and several devoted Soêurs de Charité, one being Irish and thus able to interpret’ (Aitken, p.67). It does not seem to have been used as ‘battalion headquarters’.

  Page 91

  ‘fool of an officer … woke the Germans’. Starkie mentions an officer and, separately, the Third Australians (presumably the 3rd Brigade of the Australian forces). Hyde has conflated them. The First Battalion Otago went into the front line for the first time on 21 May 1916, Byrne, p.93.

  minenwerfer. ‘The German “Minenwerfer” was a heavy trench mortar which flung projectiles of the size of a small oil drum’, O. E. Burton, The Silent Division, 1935, p. 149.

  Page 92

  ‘all Blighty ones’. A ‘blighty one’ was a wound sufficiently serious to take the sufferer back to England.

  Page 93

  ‘in the evenings …. Out of the blue’. Sixteen lines omitted from MS B-10 concern the capture of a German prisoner by Starkie’s group ‘the Wet Party’. The implication is that Colonel Charters sent them out to get rid of them.

  ‘commanding officer’. Colonel Charters, MS Notes.

  Page 94

  ‘The Second Auckland crowd … cut to bits in Seventy-Seven Trench’. It was the 1st Auckland Battalion and the attack occurred in the trench systems of 74, 75, and 76 on 3 July (Burton, p. 150–1). Otago 1st was to have relieved the Auckland Battalion on the night of 3–4 July, but because the relief was postponed twenty-four hours, Otago avoided the fate of Auckland (Byrne, pp.100–01). Aitken describes coming in after the attack, pp.90–91.

  ‘never came back …. Since the company’. Twelve lines omitted from MS B-10 concern the training of a raiding party and the calling off of the raid.

  Page 95

  ‘fifteen days’ probation’. ‘21 days’, MS Notes.

  Pages 96–97

  ‘ne
xt fifteen years …. Starkie was wrong’. Twelve lines omitted from MS B-10 are concerned with a letter Starkie endeavoured to smuggle out saying that he would ‘have two legs and two arms … while some of those bastards are pushing up the daisies’. The letter was intercepted. In Starkie’s account the death of Charlie Dunsterville (Duncan) occurs before the writing of the letter and is presumably the reason for it, MS Notes.

  Page 98

  ‘crucifixion’. Field punishment number one: ‘A man here might be exposed in public, handcuffed to a waggon wheel and spreadeagled for two hours daily’, Winter, p.43.

  Page 99

  Knocking Jackie MacKenzie out incident. Jackie is not knocked out but told ‘he’d get a b-good hiding’, MS Notes.

  ‘Otago Fourth were the driving wedge’. ‘Under the prearranged plan scouts and parapet party were to move out from the sally-port 45 minutes before zero hour and the flanking parties fifteen minutes before that time, and take up their positions in shell-holes with the object of protecting the flanks in the event of a counter-raid. The scouts were then to return and lead out the remainder of the raiding party to a concealed position in front of and distant 150 yards from the line to be assaulted. Our artillery was to open with a slow rate of fire 10 minutes before zero, at which moment artillery and trench mortars were to open with full intensity over the enemy’s trenches and wire entanglements. Twenty minutes later the trench mortars were to direct their fire against the flanking trenches, while that of the artillery was to be lifted, thereby forming a semi-circular barrage round the area to be assaulted. Scouts and parapet party were then to rush forward, the scouts’ duty being to ascertain the condition of the wire, return and lead the raiders through the gaps. The parapet party was to cross the enemy’s trench and bomb suspected shelters in rear, while the assaulting parties were to work along the trench itself in four different sections…. The 8th (Southland) Company was to provide a patrol to cover the right flank of the raiding party, the 10th (North Otago) Company acting similarly in respect of the left flank’, Byrne, pp.101–02.