by A B Facey
A strange experience—here we were, mixing with our enemies, exchanging smiles and cigarettes, when a day before we had been tearing each other to pieces. Apart from the noise of the grave-diggers and padres reading the burial services, it was mostly silent. No shelling, no rifle-fire. 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 watch the burial. By mid-afternoon we retired back to our trenches. Then, some time between four and five o’clock, shelling started again. We were at it once more.
A few days after the armistice we received some trench comfort parcels from home. I got a pair of hand-knitted socks in my parcel, and I found a note rolled up inside them: 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 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. That was the only parcel I received while at Gallipoli.
Our position in the trenches became a stalemate. We had to work hard digging new trenches. Some were tunnelled and after we had carried all the earth out from underground, we would open them at night and put sandbags in front to form parapets every twenty feet or so. When daylight came the Turks would see that our line had moved closer without them knowing. They would shell hell out of the new trench for a day or two.
During one of these shellings a piece of shrapnel struck me on the left side of my face, knocking four teeth out and loosening several others. It embedded itself in the roof of my mouth and it was such a mess that I was sent down to the beach dressing-station near where the first landing took place. There a doctor got the piece out, and said he would have to pull out the broken teeth. ‘Or,’ he said, ‘we will send you over to the hospital ship and they can fix you up.’ I asked the doctor not to send me away as I didn’t want to leave my mates—we were very short-handed, and my battalion was only half strength at that time.
So three big strapping orderlies held me in a sitting position, and without any anaesthetic, the doctor, a big strong man, pulled the teeth out. This was very painful. The doctor 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 jaws firmly in place. I looked a fright; but at the end of two weeks I was nearly okay again. 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. My brother Roy was with the fourth. He thought I was in ‘A’ Company and asked to be drafted there. When he found I was with ‘D’ Company he made an application to be transferred. Roy’s officer told him that it would take about fourteen days before this could be arranged.
On a date I will always remember—the twenty-eighth of June—word came that the English were hard-pressed at Cape Helles a few miles right of our position, and we were to attack 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. We had to run downhill as our trenches were on a higher position than the Turks’, and the Turks gave us a bad time with shelling. A lot of the boys were killed and many wounded. Below the hill was a dry watercourse and some twenty of us reached this watercourse and 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 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.
Our little group got back safely to our fire-line after dark, but I was told that Roy had been killed. This was a terrible blow to me. I had seen a lot of men die, but Roy was my brother and I had been looking forward to having him with me. He was to have been transferred to my company the next day. I helped to bury Roy and fifteen of our mates. We put them in a grave on the side of a clearing we called Shell Green. Roy was in pieces when they found him—it was terrible.
My eldest brother Joseph 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. I found out from Headquarters where he was; his unit had taken up a position away to the left of our bridgehead at a high spot called the Apex. He was very upset and swore revenge for Roy. He promised to come and see me soon.
July was passing and my battalion was ordered out of the trenches for a few days’ rest. We rested in dugouts under the protection of a steep cliff, just above Shell Green where Roy was buried. 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 his Commanding Officer had given him permission to come, but while he was walking up the valley to Lone Pine, a huge shell had come from nowhere and exploded into the hill on the left, sending tons of earth and rocks into the valley. ‘That was enough for me,’ he said, ‘so I came back.’ I explained that those shells came over every day from a fort on the narrows some seven miles away, trying to silence the battery of Australian Artillery that had dug in on the hill on the left-hand side of the valley. This battery was called Browne’s Battery, after its Commanding Officer.
When we were resting we were allowed to go to the beach near Headquarters and have a swim. 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 before it exploded.
But one day we got a shock. Our section was swimming near the end of a jetty when a sailor suddenly called a warning to us to get out of the water quickly. I looked around and spotted a creature I had never seen before. It had, I thought at a glance, one big eye! I gave a terrified yell. Being a good, strong swimmer it didn’t take me many seconds before I reached the end of the jetty and climbed on. I asked the sailor what it was and he said it was an ‘old man squid’. He told us the eye I had seen was really two eyes that looked like one. The body was about three feet across and it had very long tentacles with suckers all along them. If it got its tentacles around you it would pull you under. That was the last time our section went swimming at Gallipoli.
After a full week’s rest we were ordered to relieve a battalion of Tasmanians occupying a position forward of the main trenchline named Tasmania Post—one of the hottest spots we had been in since the landing. 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 gully called Valley of Despair. Our Commanding Officer wanted the Turks’ position taken, and 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. Ex-goldminers were used a lot for this work. The tunnelling had to be done in silence so the Turks wouldn’t know what we were doing, so we loosened the earth and clay with a crowbar and pushed it into the bags without making any noise. We used candles for lights, and signs or notes to let each other know what we wanted.
By the end of July we were ready to try and take the Turks’ position. 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. I don’t know how the others felt, but I know I was very frighten
ed and nervous.
All was in readiness. The first signal—a red glow-appeared, and most of us were on our way out of our trench. However, not all the charges set exploded—the one where we were heading didn’t go off. This was confusing and caused some to hesitate.
I arrived at the Turks’ trench with two others and as we went over the parapet into the trench two Turks fired at us, killing one of the men. A bullet struck the other man’s rifle and flew away, not harming him. I dealt with one Turk and he the other. Some other Turks came at us and we used the bayonet; our Turkish counterparts didn’t like this and soon made themselves scarce.
After fierce fighting our forces were able to capture and secure the entire trench. Apparently the charge below our position never went off, but I heard that one of the others near us did when our troops were in the Turkish trench fighting.
We opened up the tunnels where the charges went off and eventually managed to get the wounded back for treatment. The Turkish trench was on the edge of a drop, so we pushed the dead Turks over and let them fall down to where their own mates could bury them.
The following morning the Turkish Artillery opened up on us and all we could do was lie down flat at the bottom and take it. The sandbags we had placed in position to protect us were blown into the trench in places and many of our men were killed or badly wounded. Some were blown to pieces.
The shelling went on all day at intervals, but when darkness came it stopped. This was because at night our Navy could detect the guns’ positions by the flash when they went off, and so the Turks didn’t want to give themselves away.
For three nights, as fast as we built the parapets up they would be blown away again next day. New reinforcements joined us a few days after we had taken the trench. Small groups of them were allowed to come into the position and be schooled in trench warfare. By the sixth day a lot of us old hands were almost dead on our feet, so a number of us were sent back to our reserve trenches to have a well-earned rest. The change was made after dark and we were so tired we fell asleep as soon as we lay down.
Just before daylight we were awakened with the shocking news that the Turks were in the trench and had killed most of the men who had remained there when we left. By the time we were fully awake we were ordered to charge again, this time in broad daylight. I had seen some hot spots during the campaign but this was terrible. The little strip of land we had to cross was being swept by fire from all angles. Our casualties were heavy; but somehow we recaptured the trench.
Our hand-grenades were getting low so a lieutenant ordered me to take a message back to our Commanding Officer. He told me he was sending me because I was an old hand at using shell holes for protection. I slipped out of the trench and crawled into a large shell hole. Then I noticed another hole about ten yards away. I jumped out and ran and fell into it safely. Suddenly a shell went into the ground a few yards beyond this hole and the whole world seemed to explode. The shell was a large one and the dust, smoke and earth that showered into the air when it exploded gave me ample cover to run straight into our original firing-line.
I got into our main trench and our colonel was there. There were several men lying at the bottom, some dead and some badly wounded. I hurried to give the Colonel the message. He ordered me to take charge of the tunnel, explaining that the Turks were near the entrance and were throwing grenades. I summed up the position, then I got four men to get a full sandbag each and hold it in an upright position so their whole bodies would be protected. I then told them what we wanted to do. I ran into the mouth of the tunnel and put my bag on the ground. The next man put his on top of mine, and so on until we had that end safe and blocked, and the grenades couldn’t do us any further harm.
A few minutes later, while I was explaining the position of our troops in the recaptured trench to our colonel, a noise came from within the tunnel, then a white rag tied to the end of a bayonet appeared. I said to the Colonel, ‘They’re surrendering.’ With that we moved the sandbags and eight Turks came out, one by one. We took their rifles and they were put under a guard. The trench was completely ours again.
The Colonel told eight of us to take the prisoners to Headquarters to be interrogated. Now a most extraordinary thing happened. We had arranged the guard down to Headquarters so that we had an Australian soldier in the lead (we had to go along the trenches in Indian file), then a Turk, another Aussie, then another Turk, and so on, with a corporal at the rear. After travelling along the trenches towards the Headquarters for about two hundred yards—the Turks were sending shells and shrapnel over as fast as they could—a shrapnel shell suddenly exploded above us, killing the first, second and third Turk and badly wounding the fourth. Not one of us Aussies was touched. For me, this was one of the miracles of the Gallipoli Campaign.
Not long after delivering the prisoners and returning to my unit, my part in the campaign ended. While I was on lookout duty, a shell lobbed into the parapet of our trench and exploded, blowing several bags filled with sand on top of me. This hurt me badly inside and crushed my right leg. The doctor examined me and ordered me to be taken away, and I was put on a troopship called the Ulysses anchored about one mile off shore. There were already three hundred sick and wounded on board.
It was the nineteenth day of August 1915. I had been on Gallipoli only six days short of four months and I want to say now that they were the worst four months of my whole life. I had seen many men die horribly, and had killed many myself, and lived in fear most of the time. And it is terrible to think that it was all for nothing.
All of us on the ship thought that the whole Gallipoli Campaign was a terrible, unnecessary loss of life. We worried about what would happen to the men we had been forced to leave behind. I still had my brother Joseph there, and Roy was also on my mind—he would never leave. When we were fighting we used to envy mates that were sent away sick or wounded, but now all we felt was sorrow, and that we should be back with them. I think that it would be true to say that all the men who were at Gallipoli wanted to stay with their comrades. It wasn’t that anyone wanted to be a hero, it was just that we were very close after four months together under such terrible conditions. A sort of love and trust in one another developed in the trenches.
That evening on the ship we had our first real meal for about four months and were given clean beds and clothes. It felt wonderful to be really clean again. These were simple things, but they were marvellous to us. All the very ill were put on the first deck and we had lovely nurses to look after us. Those sent away because their nerves had given out on them were put in hammocks in the lower decks. The doctors wouldn’t allow men with nerve sickness to stay at the Front because they would be upsetting to the others. The men who suffered from it couldn’t help it. I have seen men doze off and suddenly jump up shouting, ‘Here they come! Quick! Thousands of them!’ We had to grab them and hold them down until a doctor or medical orderly could come and give them a needle to quieten them.
The first night on the ship we were so tired that most of us were sound asleep before dark. When we awoke next morning we found the ship was anchored at Lemnos Island. The harbour was full of ships of all sorts and sizes waiting to sneak out and hoping to dodge the submarines. Small torpedo boats kept a continuous patrol around the submarine nets across the mouth of the harbour. An officer told us we might have to wait several days before we got the all-clear to sail to Egypt.
On the morning of the twenty-fifth we awakened to find that we were well out to sea. The Mediterranean was a lovely deep blue, calm as a lake. It was hard to believe there were great dangers lurking under the surface, but a few days later our attention was directed to a troopship travelling in the opposite direction. We were all watching when, to our horror, there was a loud explosion. The troopship was almost cut in half from the force of a blast that hit it in the centre and it started to sink, going down with both ends lifting high out of the water. After about fifteen minutes the ship seemed to fold up and disappeared completely.
; We expected our ship to go to the aid of the men who had jumped or had been thrown overboard by the explosion. To our surprise the Ulysses turned away full steam ahead; it fairly shuddered with the vibration of the engines.
One of the sailors explained that if we had stayed to rescue the men we would have also been torpedoed and sunk. The submarine that had torpedoed the ship was no doubt after us now. The Ulysses had a small gun mounted at the stern which had a range of approximately four miles, so the submarine would have to keep out of range during daylight. We were safe until after dark.
All night the Ulysses travelled flat-out with all lights out. We put life belts on. Those who were too ill to be put in the belts had their beds unbolted from the deck and airtight drums attached to them. That night is something I am sure none of us who experienced it will ever forget. We felt so helpless.
When daylight came we met a French battleship, two cruisers and four destroyers. They steamed past and we were told that they were after the submarine. Later that afternoon one of the destroyers came back and escorted us on the rest of our journey to Egypt. For the first time in many months we were safe.
We arrived at Alexandria just before noon on the twenty-ninth of August. We were put on to a hospital train and taken through to the No. 1 Australian General Hospital at Cairo. I had my twenty-first birthday there but didn’t tell anyone. It wasn’t a time for celebrations. After about four weeks a lot of us were sent to a convalescent home a few miles outside of Cairo.
I received word at the convalescent home that my brother Joseph had been killed at Gallipoli. He had been bayoneted by the Turks while on guard duty at an outpost. I was very upset by the news; I wasn’t as close to him as I had been to Roy, but he was my brother.
During my third week at the convalescent home I went before the medical board. I was still suffering faintness and internal pain, and vomiting blood—the cause had the doctors baffled. The board recommended that I be sent to England or Australia for six months of further treatment and observation. I chose Australia.
