ONE DAY AT ANZAC

Evening Post, Volume XC, Issue 82, 5 October 1915, Page 7

ONE DAY AT ANZAC

RAW TROOPS IN THE TRENCHES PLAYING BALL WITH BOMBS GABA STEPE, 21st 'Angust; : It-is-true history of one-day at Anzoc. Incidentally it -will give yon gome idea of Quinn's Post (writes Captain Bean, the Australian correspondent). They arrived in the morning fresh ffrom Egypt in a little grey trawler. The 'trawler's crew, who for the most part were very much the came crew thai had dragged their trawl for many peaceful years over the Dogger Bank, had slaved most of the night in order to provide these new chums with a cup of hot cocoa and a bowl of soup. The trawler's company had recently arrived in their ship, after a wild winter in the North Sea, during which they had been washed clean from bow to stern by. about two seething grey gales per week, and had seen precisely three mines which a neighbouring destroyer had sunk. But this narrative is not concerned with hospitable naval reservists, but with a regiment not long since very fresh and green — the Queensland Light Horse. It ie a veteran regiment now. SONG OF THE SHRAPNEL. They found themselves at daybreak ofl a distant blue coast, with a certain long blue hill just opposite them— and on the side of the hill a long shallow triangle of more or less bare sand. They did not know that this triangle had been more or lees worn bare by the daily life of an army. They noticed a fleecy white puff or two unroll ' themselves once or twice on the hillside. They had heard stories of shrapnel, so they were able to diagnose it satisfactorily. They climbed into horse punts at the side of their trawler, and a small naval steamboat came and grabbed each horse punt, much as an ant might grab the leg of a stag beetle, and carried it oft" about as gracefully to the shore. While they were on their way there came something like the sound of a steam siren, and a couple of shells burst like rockets m the air and whipped up the water about a hundred yards away from them. Some of them guessed it was just some of their own boys having a game with them, until the burst came overhead, and one of 'their mates who was laughing and talking just then slid forward from his seat and lay with a startled look for the moment in iine bottom of the boat. They were landed at "a. pontoon, aid for a morning they sat on the side of the knoll, where they were more or less out of the way— overlooking the beach, and wondering, like new boys at school,* where all the traffic was going that disappeared around the corners of the beach beyond the hospitals and biscuit boxes, and the little Indian carts and huge piles of hay trusses. Tha^ ,siren— it is very like a siren, only its croon comes down' the scale instead of running up it — came out of the air at them twenty or thirty times during the morning, and burst more or less over them. They watched the pellets whipping up the sea like raindrops. And once a friendly stray donkey which they had been' petting appeared to be stunned by an unseen whip, and started kicking for no visible reason-f-the total effect of this desultory bombardment. Then they were marched off down the beach and op -* gully at the end, and the Turks from some observation post on the capes north or south saw them goings and the guns'-on Gaba Tepe Promontory, two miles southwards began to plaster that gully with shrapnel, but just managed to miss-their passing. And they came into a region-of stray bullets, which fluttered to earth with a sigh like the last fluttering breath of a dying man. Then the scrubby gully took a bend, and ahead of them was a distant plateau across the valley's end, from which the Turks could see. them — though they did not know this — and where they <were all unconsciously protected by the fact that somebody -on the hills above was making it a very dangerous matter for any Turk to shoot down that gully, no matter how well he concealed himself. They saw lines of tumbled bare earth along the top of most of the ridges above them, and vaguely understood these to be "the trenches." They were turned into the scrub in one gully to camp for the night. They also vaguely understood that they were to go into "the trenches" next day. HOW THE PERISCOPES WENT."" About 11 o'clock the following morning they were sent up the gully to the head of it, up a very steep path to a point ) under a magnified rabbit burrow. Some of them tentatively asked the infantry what it was like in there. " Oh, you may get a few bombs," was the reply. Then they moved into a narrow, winding cutting in the red earth, where they had to run bent low for a few yards, and ducked under a low ea-rthen roof into a tunnel not big enough properly to hold a man, and so into the narrow winding daylight again. On the top of J>he red cutting were ragged sandbags. If they had been older soldiers they would have known that those sandbags were suspiciously ragged. Occasionally the daylight was bridged by a short tunnel roof — sometimes a mere buttress. From the inside of one buttress protruded the fingers and part of the boot of a buried Turk. It may be considered that at this point the day of which this article tells had begun. Having reached their trenches they laid their rifles up against the parapet and sat down on their overcoats and waited. The first thing they did was to have a look at the enemy. Having heard that it was impossible to put your head over 1 the top, they put up their periscopes and stared into them. The scrub was not more than 3in high, and strangely scorched and shrivelled. From some parts of the trench they saw the other side. In other parts the scrub was bordered twenty and thirty yarvds"^way by a row of low isandbags half emerging from the scrub. After the periscope had been up for about a minute there was a tremendous crack above the observer's head ; a shower of glass fell round him, and the top mirror had vanished.- The observer picked a few bits of it out of his forearm, and then watched the next man's periscope go. As there was clearly an unsuspected flaw in the system of observing by periscope they fell back on the next obvious resort, which was lunch. There is a persistent story that an hour or so later this day a" voice cried out, of the enemy's trench, "Come ou, you Light Horse; we know you're there!" I have never found or heard of the actual man that heard it, and therefore I believe that, like almost all similar stories, it is untrue ; but if it were there is not the slightest neea to imagine that there was any spying in the camp. All through dinner time a cheerful conversation was going on up and down the whole length of the section. Within 15 yards in parts ran a. trench crammed with swarthy gentlemen in skull caps — and if any of them under stood enough, as some of them certainly do, they must have had an interesting time that morning. For days they had scarcely seen a periscope opposite 'them., nor heard the sound of an English voice ~the infantry had learned to talk in .ffhimarsJa. thaaa^tneneheA. And th&a

. : suddenly at about midday there had aj> •peared whole galaxies of periscopes snrthe scenery in a compTehensi.v«' _„ manner, and an amount of spirited dia logue that did your heart good to listen " to. BOMB CAUSES SCATTER. The natural consequences followed pretty quickly — indeed, actually arrived before they had finished dinner. Some- ' one saw a shadow flit across the strip of daylight above. Something fell on the parapet, and then rolled down into the trench. The nearest man, who was digging into a half-finished tin of bully beefj shouted "Look out, there's a bomb !" „, and dived about eight feet sideways " along the. trench. Others took headers into the tunnel of the nearest communiT cation trench. A couple of seconds later ~~ (the thing exploded like • a big cracker. -. There was a 1 cloud of dust> a nasty acrid .■ amell. and,one o^the rifles that had been against the parapet lay along the bottom ."_ -of the trench with its stock broken clean „ in two. Also the walls of the trench and the sandbags immediately above wore a curiously sagged expression, dishevelled ,-with torn bits of cloth from the corner ■_ of an overcoat and tumbled sand. - After that another 1 shadow • flitted .Tr across — something fizzed for a moment on "■**• the parapet — a burst of' dust, and a sand- .•-.,. ifcag landed fair in the middle of some- . tody's back. Everyone laughed at him, and he laughed, too. That was only the beginning of the shower. At first they dodged them by slinging themselves away from them. ""." Further down the trenches some who had ' picked up. rather better hints from the ■ infantry started picking the bombs up as they came in and throwing them back .» . -r-there was just time to do it if you were J, ,quick and caught them like a cricketeT — until the Turks recognised their own ". '. brand of bomb coming back at them, "*" &nd grew cunning and cut short _the ""fuse, when one of the gallant, excited who was throwing them back '""had his hand blown off by the bomb he •~-\was throwing back. , . They were driven backwards and for.l. ■jvards along the trench, until someone ;_- heard of, or hit on, the plan of throwing T an overcoat upon the bomb, which usu- " ally deadened it a little if it got there in time. They would dodge behind the traverse, or throw themselves flat, but the "J explosion gradually caught first one and "' then another. ;; „ SIX MEN PASSED OUT. - - They had been looking the other way. -^'A rush, a burst, the second man falls '„ . against J.lie'. first. They bend over him. ,^/He is alive. His first field dressing is T-.sewn into the pocket — will, it never come .."'.out? They have never seen a wound like "w" w that before. A mass -of lead in the cheek, a badly torn arm, a chest apparently almost smashed to pulp. Boys .- straight from a Queensland station will tackle anything, and they bandage him „,.somehow,, .somehow,. and „p ass -him out,- Six men nave been passed out of the' same small section, bnt nobody dreams of leaving the trench. If the Turks come they will 3>e pounced on by men who are getting for the^chance» .. - The end came in a curious manner. I don't know who the man was, but we ■ -will say his name was Dave Browning. He was a big' Queenslander, anyway, and •he was hit on both sides of his face 4>y bits of a, bomb. The iron was still ithere, and he was very angry indeed. \We did not know much about bombs at that date, not what we know now — but - ■ Dave went and got an armful and carried them to a particular corner of the trench '"' "which \was exceptionally warm. The 1 northern end of our trench had no end to it to speak of. That is to say, that during a recent night attack we had captured temporarily part of a Turkish trench ten yards to the north of it, and had cnt continuation from the northern end of oar trench into the southern end , of theirs. The northern end, therefore, merely woand round a corner and disappeared. We had managed to push a breastwork of sandbags about 3ft high across this trench ; 'and kept a guard lying there while the Turks were four yards' away around the bend. Dave Z went straight to this corner -with his - bombs and hurled them over one after «» another as fast as he could into the ■; Turkish trench. 1 He guessed that was •* where ttie Turks were, and apparently '. he guessed right, for that trench must " have been cleared of Turks from that moment. Dave felt better in his mind, ~ and the Turkish bomb-throwing stopped r dead. Next day— not that day when •; they were in Quinn's Post, but next day - —they came out. Dave had the iron <_ 'picked from his cheeks by the doctor. WATCH ON THE BEND. The Turks only threw two or three t tombs that night. But all night long ' t two men who had never seen a shot fired - before that day had to lie on their , etomachs out at the end of the trench • jjust behind the sandbags — one youngster - with three or four bombs and the other with his finger on a trigger watching the bend of that -trench as a cat watches a mousehole. The two who came on just before dawn had seen for a- moment the skull cap of one of the Turkish relieving picket over the edge of the trench . ahead, but it was the only sign and sound they heard for hours. They came out of Quinn's that morning. They know the place well enough now. Many » splendid man who started his life's , v ork on a Queensland run or a Northern • Rivers farm ended in one of the two magnificent charges that they have made Kom Quinn's Post. A great deal has changed— but not the deadliness of those fifteen yards of scorched and shrivelled ecjub. ■