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He had to prove himself to them before he could develop the Anzacs into a war unit worthy of their fighting quality. Such is democracy where man judges man by standards, set, in this case, by Australian customs. When he understood them he knew why he was fortunate. He was one of them and at the same time a stiff disciplinarian.
The reason why they always avoid calling themselves "the Anzacs" is that the term was at one time associated in the Press with so many highly coloured, imaginative, mock heroic stories of individual feats, which they were supposed to have performed, that its use from that time forth was, by a sort of tacit consent, irrevocably damned within the force.
Twice, whilst their six precious mortars have been firing, I have stood for half an hour with Birdie, watching and drinking in encouragement. About one bomb a minute was the rate of fire and as it buzzed over our own trenches like a monstrous humming bird all the naked Anzacs laughed. Then, such an explosion and a sort of long drawn out ei-ei-ei-ei cry of horror from the Turks.
A sea fog robbed him of two hours' precious time; and although the Wady Ghuzze and other defences of Gaza were taken and a force of Anzacs actually got behind Gaza and were fighting in its northern outskirts at sunset, night fell with the task unfinished and the British divisions out of touch on their various fronts.
To right and left of us there were Imperial troops, Anzacs, Africans, and they held over fifty-five miles of line. We advanced four miles, and papers on this continent blazed with the news. The English advanced nine miles on the same day, and there was not so much as a paragraph about it on this side of the Atlantic.
The 1st Australian Light Horse took 300 prisoners and a considerable quantity of ammunition and stores at Ameidat, and with the remainder of the Anzac Division reached Tel Abu Dilakh by the evening, and the Australian Mounted Division filled the gap between the Anzacs and the Londoners, but having been unable to water could not advance further.
"You were the Fusileer major they lent to the Jordan Highlanders fine force that no advance without security lost two men, if I remember snakebite one; the other shot for looting. Am I right? So they've made you a brigadier! Aren't you the staff officer they sent to strafe a regiment of Anzacs for going into action without orders? We chased you to cover!
At that moment a battalion of Anzacs just out of the trenches at Pozières were passing. The sight was very wonderful, and the King saw with his own eyes some of his brave Colonials returning from their triumph, covered with clay, looking dog-tired but happy.
I cannot say whether the instructors arrived or not, but the Anzacs clung to their captured guns like leeches and continued to use them in spite of the furious counter-attacks immediately delivered by the incensed Turks.
They have been proud to fight by the side of grand regiments and divisions; but I fancy they would rather fight beside other Australians or New Zealanders than beside the most famous units in the world. Chaffing apart, that is the feeling of the oldest unit towards the newest. France, November 28th. "You don't call us the Anzacs, do you?" asked the man with the elbow sling appealingly.
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