The Riddles of Anzac

CHAPTER I THE RIDDLES OF ;\NZXC THESEevents happened a number of years ago. Their hitherto unwritten story lies in the faded diaries and rain-and-mud-staiiied field-books beside me as I work. It is the story of an attempt to decipher, iiiainly from iiinrks left for several years 011 the ground. some of the events of a famous campaign; to trace them from relics which we came upon-sometimes exactly where we ex- pected to find them. soiiietiiiies quite unexpectedly-a pierced water-bottle in the scrub 011 this ridge, a line of spent cartridges or clips ~iithat, some hurriedly scratched rifle-pits, barely begun. on a third: at one or two points a length of parapet stuclded with bullets like a cake with currants: often the poor relics of a line of men of one side or the other, lying where they died. Our Mission happened in this way: When the Allies left Gallipoli at the turn of the year 19 I 5-1G after from five to nine months’ occupation of the narrow footholds at Cape Helles, Anzac and Suvla, they had already sent away with their regimental war diaries much of the material for writing the history of that famous episode. Yet they left behind them many riddles which no one could there answer. For 11s who had been at Anzac, these uncertainties dated from the first hour of the campaign. There was no exact record of where the first troops-the first wave of the covering force which was to seize a foothold for the rest--had landed, though of course the general location 2 GALLIPOLI MISSION was well established; nor was it known how far this advanced force thrust or how the foremost parts fared. The general report was that the first Australians in wild en- thusiasm, after driving back the Turkish garrison from the heights above the Beach, had rushed much too far, regardless of plan or control, until some alinost reached the Dardanelles, and that they had then suddenly found themselves cut off or nearly so by the Turkish reserves, and had to come back as fast as they had advanced. The commanders and staff officers responsible for writing reports after the battle had little time to investigate: and many of those who knew the facts were either killed where not even their bodies could be reached. or were wounded and scattered to hospitals in Egypt, Malta, England and Australia. But a number eventually came back to the force; and in 1916-18 the writer, working as Official War Correspondent, often came across therm. Together we spent hundreds of hours tracing out their tracks and doings. Many were uncertain as to the ridges and valleys they had fought over, for until after the first fight most of these places had no names, or none known LO us; and. as that ground was afterwards largely behind the Turkish lines, few of the nieii who went farthest had any oppor- tunity to check 011 the spot their recollections. But from these talks, of which I recorded about 200, I had beconie certain that the accepted story of the Anzac Landing was far from the truth. I had gradually realised that, although there was iiiuch confusion in the Landing and the fight that followed-indeed, owing to the boats being carried by current in the dark to a wrong and terribly rugged landing place, the covering force was shuffled like a pack of cards-yet, in the first advance, planned efforts were made under capable leaders to seize the extensive goal set for the covering force: that in several directions organised forces reached and held, though only for a short time, ground far beyond that held at the close of the day or afterwards: but that THE RIUDLES OF ANZAC 3 in not one instance was the goal for the covering force overstepped. Indeed, it was borne in upon me that, in the circumstances, the goal had been too distant and too extensive to be reached by more than a comparatively few troops at a few points. It was not, however, only the Landing that had left its train of unsolved questions. Almost every stage of the campaign involved similar puzzles. Where did our various forces get to in the second great attempt to reach the heights commanding the Dardanelles? And when, four months later, in two nights we stole away from Anzac (and the British from Suvla Bay), and, later still, the British left Cape Helles-how much had the Turks known or guessed of our intentions? and what was their reaction when they found we had gone? Then there was the secret of the Turkish positions, into most of which we had never penetrated. What could they see of us froin there? and what could we have seen if we had captured them-from Achi Baba peak, in front of the British and French at Cape Helles, for example? For many months it had seemed almost the main goal of the expedition. But of all the riddles that interested men and officers at Anzac I think the chief one was-where had been the Turkish guns that had plagued Anzac Beach by their fire from the southern flank. The Anzacs had personified them by the name of “Beachy Bill”; and they had puzzled our artillery by the way in which, though often silenced by our guns or the Navy’s, they had always opened soon after froin the same position. behind a slight fold in the low open country to the south-east. One leading batterycoinniander told me that he believed they were on rails, and after firing were run back into shelters behind steel doors. Obviously the answers to some of these questions we could get only froin the Turks, when, and if, they should ever supply us with them. Other answers we might obtain after the war from Australians who had been captured 4 GALLIPOLI MISSION by the Turks-but these prisoners were very few, and some had died, and the rest niight be difficult to contact. hlaiiy of the riddles might, however, be solved by visiting the ground as soon as it was possible to do so, and follow- ing whatever traces the events had left there. In some cases these might give the only sure aiiswer,l since neither Turks nor prisoners might have observed or recorded the locations of troops aiid nioveiiieiits more definitely than we at Anzac had. Most leaders of the Australian, and indeed of the British, forces that had fought on Gallipoli were as interested in these riddles as I. But I hac1 been charged by the Australian Government with writing or editing the history of Australia's part in the war, aiid both Lient- enant-General C. B. B. White, tlie chief-of-staff of the Australian Imperial Force, my very close friend, and General Birdmood, its commander, were as determined as I that its records should be complete and accurate.? I had discussed with thetn tlie possibility of getting back to Gallipoli while tlie ground was almost unchanged; and so it was that, as soon as it appeared certain that the war was in its last clays, I obtained General Birdwood's authority to visit London and arrange for my return to Australia by way of Gallipoli, taking n7ith me such officers and others as I considered necessary for securing the required records on the old battlegrounds. From Gallipoli I would return with most of the party via Egypt to Australia where the Australian Government wished me to complete arrangements for the history and initiate those for the eventual establishiiieiit of the nation's memorial to those who fell in that war. 1 Those interested iii the philosophy of histoiy may note that in this section of our worh on the Australian Official History \\e almost necessarily followed the inethocl of "question and ans\ver" disciissed by the late Professor R. G. Collingwood of Oxford. I suspect that in our investigation of "antiquities" only four )ear5 old some of our prcbblcnis weie not dissimilar to his concerning the traces of the Roman \Val1 froin the Tjne to Sol\\ay. ZAs had been General IV. T. Bridges, its first commander, killed on Gallipoli. THE RIDDLES OF ANZAC 5 A secondary object of the expedition was to help complete this memorial by collecting, while they could still be obtained there, relics of the occupation of Gallipoli. It had always been in the mind of many AUS- tralian soldiers that records and relics of their fighting would be preserved in some institutions in Australia, and to several of us it had seemed that a museum housing these would form the most natural, interesting, and in- spiring memorial to those who fell. General Birdwood, General White and some others probably derived their interest in such inuseunis from the Royal United Service Institute in London, with its Nelson and other relics. hIy own interest dated from when, as one of a young family brought by its parents from Australia, I lived for two winters in Belgium and frequently visited with my father the old battlefield of Waterloo. There, waiting to lunch in the airy dining room of the Hotel du Muske, we youngsters had steeped ourselves in the contents ot‘ the museum room, behind the glass double-doors just across the tiled hall, where the walls and glass cases were crowded with relics largely found on the battlefield- caps of Napoleon’s Old Guard, casques of French heavy dragoons and of British dragoons, a cuirass with a grape- shot hole, a British infantryman’s red coat, round cannon balls (not unlike the Dutch cheese that we would pre- sently be enjoying); old muskets, bayonets, pouches, sabre-taches, lances, ram-rods; a curious leathern instru- ment of music known as a “serpent” from a British band; many round lead bullets, some of them deep in tree-trunks; even a soldier’s skull chipped by a sabre (was he one of Napoleon’s cavalrymen or ours?); some of Napoleon’s kitchen utensils left with his baggage in the rout, and much else of absorbing interest which made the old battlefield live again.

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