A Fortunate Life

by A B Facey

  On the evening of the eighteenth of May, the Turks bombarded us heavily for a time. Then in the early hours of the morning, before daylight, the attack came, and every available man was in position. The Turks had to come over a small rise and our trenches were just below this so that when the enemy appeared they showed out clearly to us. They were running but we were able to shoot them down as fast as they appeared. When daylight came there were hundreds of dead and wounded lying in No-Man’s Land, some only a few yards in front of our firing-line. The Turks hit our line in places for what seemed like a couple of hours. My section was rushed a couple of times but we stopped them before they reached us – not one Turk got in our trench. Finally the Turks called it a day and word came through to the effect that we had defeated them all along the line.

  No-Man’s Land was now littered with bodies. Attempts were made to remove these for burial but enemy fire made this impossible. Many of our men were hit trying to bring in the bodies. The weather was very hot during the day and before long the corpses began to rot. The smell from this became almost unbearable, particularly when there was no breeze blowing.

  At this time we had a distinguished visitor – a high-ranking British officer. He came along our main frontline trench with several of our Staff Officers and Commanding Officers. He got a whiff of the smell coming from No-Man’s Land and asked the Australian officers, ‘Why don’t you bury the bodies?’ Our Commanding Officer explained that the Turks opened fire every time this was attempted and that we had lost men trying. The officer’s reply to this shocked all of us who heard him. He said, ‘What is a few men?’ He was standing only about ten feet from me when he said this and I was disgusted to think that life seemed to mean nothing to this man. We referred to him as ‘Lord Kitchener’ from then on.

  Later the Turks sent an officer in under a white flag – he was blindfolded and on horseback. He was taken back from our lines to Headquarters to see our Command. Later, we received word that an armistice had been arranged for the twenty-fourth of May to enable both sides to bury the dead.

  I will never forget the armistice – it was a day of hard, smelly, nauseating work. Those of us assigned to pick up the bodies had to pair up and bring the bodies in on stretchers to where the graves were being dug. First we had to cut the cord of the identification disks and record the details on a sheet of paper we were provided with. Some of the bodies were rotted so much that there were only bones and part of the uniform left. The bodies of men killed on the nineteenth (it had now been five days) were awful. Most of us had to work in short spells as we felt very ill. We found a few of our men who had been killed in the first days of the landing.

  This whole operation was a strange experience – here we were, mixing with our enemies, exchanging smiles and cigarettes, when the day before we had been tearing each other to pieces. Apart from the noise of the grave-diggers and the padres reading the burial services, it was mostly silent. There was no shelling, no rifle-fire. Everything seemed so quiet and strange. Away to our left there were high table-topped hills and on these were what looked like thousands of people. Turkish civilians had taken advantage of the cease-fire to come out and watch the burial. Although they were several miles from us they could be clearly seen.

  The burial job was over by mid-afternoon and we retired back to our trenches. Then, sometime between four and five o’clock, rifle-fire started again and then the shelling. We were at it once more.

  On May twenty-fifth something happened that shocked all who saw it. Quite a few of us were sitting on the edge of our dugouts watching the navy ships shelling the Turkish positions away beyond our frontline. One large ship, the Triumph, was sending shells over our position from what seemed about two miles off shore. Suddenly there was a terrible explosion and for a few seconds we wondered what had happened. Then we realised that the Triumph had been hit by a torpedo. She started to list to the side and within fifteen minutes was completely upside down with her two propellers out of the water. In another half an hour she had disappeared completely. After the torpedo struck, the guns, both fore and aft, were firing as fast as they could and those gunners must have gone down with their ship. We considered this one of the most gallant acts of bravery that we had seen and we had seen many by this time. Most of the crew jumped overboard, and destroyers and small boats went to their rescue. We were told that about four hundred had lost their lives.

  A few days after the armistice we received some trench comfort parcels from home. Everything was very quiet this day, and a sergeant-major and several men with bags of parcels came along our line and threw each of us a parcel. I got a pair of socks in my parcel. Having big feet – I take a ten in boots – I called out to my mates saying that I had a pair of socks that I would be glad to swap for a bigger pair as I didn’t think they would fit. Strange as it seems, I was the only person in my section to get socks; the others got all kinds of things such as scarves, balaclavas, vests, note-paper, pencils, envelopes and handkerchiefs. I found a note rolled up in my socks and it read: ‘We wish the soldier that gets this parcel the best of luck and health and a safe return home to his loved ones when the war is over.’ It was signed, ‘Evelyn Gibson, Hon. Secretary, Girl Guides, Bunbury, W.A.’ A lot of my mates came from Bunbury so I asked if any of them knew an Evelyn Gibson. They all knew her and said that she was a good-looker and very smart, and that she came from a well-liked and respected family. I told them that she was mine and we all had an argument, in fun, about this girl and we all claimed her.

  The socks, when I tried them on, fitted perfectly and they were hand-knitted with wool. That was the only parcel I received while at Gallipoli.

  55

  FIGHTING ON

  Our position in the trenches became a stalemate, a kind of cat-and-mouse affair. We had to work hard digging new trenches. Some of the trenches were tunnelled and we carried the dirt out in small bags, tipping it into the valleys and gullies. The Turks would not know about the tunnelled trenches until they were finished and opened up. After we had carried all the earth out from underground, we would open them at night and put sand-bags in front to form parapets every twenty feet or so. When daylight came the Turks would see that our line had moved closer. They would shell hell out of the new trench for a day or two.

  It was during one of these shellings that I received a nasty wound. A piece of shrapnel struck me on the left side of my face, knocking four of my teeth out and loosening several others. It made a cut some three inches long, level with my teeth, then embedded itself in the roof of my mouth and right jaw, loosening some teeth on that side as well.

  I had to go to our frontline dressing-station. The doctor there had a look at my face, and after a lot of pulling and working the shrapnel about, he got the piece out. However, my mouth was in a mess so I was sent down to the beach dressing-station near where the first landing took place. There another doctor made an examination, then said he would have to pull out the broken teeth and the very loose ones. ‘Or,’ he said, ‘better still, we will send you over to the hospital ship and they can fix you up.’ I asked the doctor not to send me away and suggested that he go ahead and pull the teeth himself as I didn’t want to leave my mates – we were very short-handed. In fact, my battalion was only half strength at that time. I said that it hadn’t knocked me out and I felt okay, only a little sore.

  After speaking to another doctor he agreed to pull the teeth out there. Three big strapping orderlies held me in a sitting position, and without any anaesthetic, the doctor, who was a big strong man, pulled the teeth out. This was very painful while it lasted. The doctor washed my mouth out with some kind of solution and made me lie on a bunk in a dugout for about two hours while the bleeding eased. He then painted my mouth and the wounds with some kind of antiseptic paste and made a cradle out of bandages to hold my face and jaw firmly in place. He said I would only be allowed to have liquid foods until my face healed. I was then allowed back to join my mates.

  I looked a fright; the bandage cr
adle covered nearly all my head. The doctor gave me several tins of condensed sweetened milk and some soft biscuits and ordered me to report back every two days. My face healed quickly and at the end of two weeks I was nearly okay again. They put some kind of strapping around the left side of my face covering the scar and gave me an ointment to put on the scar twice a day. With this treatment I was able to remain at the front and cope with the bully beef and hard dog biscuits again.

  It was some time in June when the fourth and fifth reinforcements arrived and my brother Roy was with the fourth. He thought I was in ‘A’ Company and asked to be drafted there. When he found out that I was with ‘D’ Company he made an application to be transferred. It was an army regulation that when a transfer of this nature was required the older brother had to make the application. Roy’s officer told him that it would take about fourteen days before this could be arranged and the elder brother had to move to the younger.

  The routine continued: observing, tunnelling, a little sniping, killing lice, doing water-carrying duty, and guarding the donkey trains carrying food and ammunition up to our position.

  On a date I will always remember – the twenty-eighth of June – word came through to our Commanding Officer to the effect that the English were hard-pressed at Cape Helles a few miles right of our position, and we were to make an attack on the Turks in front of our trenches to draw them away.

  At some time in the afternoon we got an order to go over the top and attack the Turks. I was in the first lot to go. We had to run down hill as our trenches were on a higher position than the Turks’. Below the hill there was a dry watercourse – it was some distance from our position but only about thirty yards from the Turks’ trenches. Some twenty of us reached this watercourse and we were quite safe there from rifle-fire, but the Turks gave us a bad time with shelling. A lot of the boys were killed and many wounded. We waited for the shelling to ease off before we charged the Turks’ trenches. Just before we made our move we picked up a signal to retire back as we had achieved our objective – the Turks had broken off the attack on the English at Cape Helles. We had to get back as best we could and were ordered not to take any unnecessary risks. We decided to stay in the watercourse until after dark as we were sitting ducks in the daylight.

  We got back safely to our fire-line after dark (that is our little group), and on arriving back I was told that Roy had been killed. He and his mate had been killed by the same shell.

  This was a terrible blow to me. I had lost a lot of my mates and seen a lot of men die, but Roy was my brother. We had been through a lot together and always got along fine. I had been looking forward to having him with me.

  I helped to bury Roy and fifteen of our mates who had also been killed on the twenty-eighth. We put them in a grave side by side on the edge of a clearing we called Shell Green. Roy was in pieces when they found him. We put him together as best we could – I can remember carrying a leg – it was terrible. He was to have been transferred to my company the next day.

  A few days before Roy was killed, my eldest brother Joseph had arrived. He had enlisted with the Tenth Light Horse and they had gone to Egypt with their horses, but owing to the shortage of men for Gallipoli, the authorities turned them into infantry to help us out. My job was now to find him and tell him the terrible news.

  My Commanding Officer gave me permission to visit Joseph. I found out from Headquarters at the beach where he was; his unit had taken up a position away to the left of our bridge-head at a high, hilly spot called the Apex. He was very upset and swore revenge for Roy. He promised to come and see me later.

  July was passing and Joseph hadn’t turned up – my battalion was ordered out of the trenches for a few days’ rest and our position near Lone Pine was held by another battalion. We rested under the protection of a steep cliff in dugouts prepared for the purpose, just above Shell Green where Roy was buried.

  While we were resting I got permission to visit Joseph again. I found him without any trouble and asked why he hadn’t come to see me. He said that his Commanding Officer had given him permission to visit me but while he was walking up along the valley that leads to Lone Pine, a huge shell had come from nowhere and exploded into the hill on the left, sending tons of earth and rocks tumbling down into the valley. ‘That was enough for me,’ he said, ‘so I came back.’ I explained that this often happened. Every day those shells (they were thirteen-inch shells and made a hell of an explosion) came over. They seemed to come from a fort on the narrows some seven or eight miles away and were trying to silence the battery of Australian Artillery that had dug in on top of the hill on the left-hand side of the valley. (This battery was called Browne’s Battery, after its Commanding Officer. The Turks had tried all kinds of shelling to put it out of action.)

  We weren’t safe even while we were resting. Browne’s Battery used to fire over our resting place and one day one of their eighteen pounders had a premature burst, killing and wounding twenty-one of our mates.

  When we were resting we were allowed to go down to the beach and have a swim, but only near Headquarters. The beach nearest to our position was within range of Turkish snipers and would have been too dangerous. The bay was continually under shell-fire but this didn’t worry us because we could hear a shrapnel shell coming and would dive under the water just before it exploded.

  We used to go on the swimming trips a section at a time under the command of a sergeant. We enjoyed them very much and were able to get ourselves clean.

  One day we got a shock. It had been reported that several men who had gone on one of these trips hadn’t returned. Army Headquarters had set up a military police patrol, whose job was to guard the supplies and Headquarters, and also to watch the beaches at night. We heard talk that the Turks had tried to land spies from the sea under the cover of darkness, using small row-boats.

  But one day, when our section was swimming near the end of a jetty, a sailor suddenly called a warning to us to get out of the water quickly. I was the furthest away from the end of the jetty and he yelled to me to look around. I looked and spotted something – the head and body of a creature I had never seen before. It had, I thought at a glance, one big eye! It was moving towards me. I gave a terrified yell of, ‘Look – get out!!’ Being a good, strong swimmer it didn’t take me many seconds before I reached the end of the jetty and climbed on. My mates had done the same, and when we were all safe on the jetty I asked the sailor what it was. He said it was what they called an ‘old man squid’. He told us that the eye I had seen was really two eyes but that it looked like one. The body was about three feet across and round and it had very long tentacles with suckers all along them. The sailor said that if it got its tentacles around you it would pull you under.

  We decided that that was probably what happened to the missing men. That was the last time our section went swimming at Gallipoli.

  56

  THE BATTLE FOR LEANE’S TRENCH

  After a full week’s rest we were ordered to relieve a battalion of Tasmanians who were occupying a position named after their own state – Tasmania Post. This was one of the hottest little spots we had been in since the landing. The post was forward of the main trenchline. Here the Turks’ trenches came within forty yards of our firing-line. They were at the edge of a cliff which cut away behind into a steep gully called Valley of Despair. The ground between the Turkish trenches and ours was a flat plateau. To the north of both our positions was a field of wheat that had come into head. Our Commanding Officer wanted the Turks’ position taken.

  Several of the staff heads came to have a look at the lay-out of the area and our Engineers were sent to report on the ways and means of taking the ridge from the Turks. The Tassies had raided it earlier and chased some Turks out but the Turks had come straight back.

  We were all set to work digging tunnels from our position towards the Turks’ trenches.

  The idea was to go under or near the Turkish trenches and explode charges, blowing them up. This kind
of trench warfare was practised by both sides – a lot of men were buried or blown up in trenches and tunnels. Ex-goldminers were used a lot for this kind of work throughout the whole time Australia was at Gallipoli.

  The tunnelling had to be done in silence. We carried the earth out in small bags, each bag holding about one hundred pounds of earth. We had to be very careful to conceal the place where the earth was being dumped so the Turks wouldn’t know what we were doing.

  We worked in teams for two hours on and two hours off around the clock, and by the end of July we were getting close to the Turks’ position. The earth was easy to dig. We couldn’t use picks or shovels because it would give our position away, so we loosened the earth and clay with a crowbar and pushed it into the bags without making any noise. We weren’t allowed to speak and we used candles for lights, and signs or notes to let each other know what we wanted to pass on.

  By the end of July we were ready to try and take the Turks’ position. About two hundred men were picked to do the job. The attack was to take place after dark. Charges in the completed tunnels were set to go off at a given signal and were expected to blow sections of the Turkish trench up. We were to rush the Turks in groups of fifty when we heard the charges go off.

  We were all keyed up. I don’t know how the others felt but I know I was very frightened and nervous.

  All was in readiness. We were waiting for the first signal – a red glow on a rise behind us. The red glow appeared and most of us in my section were on our way out of our trench. However not all the charges set exploded – the one to where we were heading didn’t go off. This was confusing and caused some to hesitate.