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And in and out of this debris wandered the German front line. We jumped down into those trenches where some shell had broken them in. They were deep and narrow, such as we had in Gallipoli.
Their deeds at Gallipoli speak for them and will forever speak for them the men of Australia and New Zealand. There the word Anzac was made made from the first letters of these words: Australian New Zealand Army Corps. It is a word that will never die. Even in the midst of war they had time to give me a welcome that warmed my heart.
The gear and stuff scattered casually about the tent tell it is the abode of an old hand of long service, who worries little about the frills of base and peace-time armies. And there, too, sprawled half-way across a camp bed is Mac. They yarn about old times, Gallipoli days and after, laughing often, though sometimes in affectionate, quieter tones they speak of a fallen comrade.
For the tale I'm telling is simply this: that in these moments, when every turn of the ship's screw brought us nearer Gibraltar, the gate of the Great Sea, and God alone knew what awaited us in the Gallipoli corner of that Mediterranean arena, came Padre Monty, crashing up to us with his Gospel of the saints.
Tim had driven starving, rickety sheep across his native plains when the earth's surface had been powdered to red sand and driven by shrivelling westerlies in travelling sandhills from mirage to summer mirage. Tim was used to hot places. That is why he became a stretcher-bearer for his company in Gallipoli, and transferred to the regimental bombers when they reached France.
Was it in a fine spirit of official irony, or on the lucus a non lucendo principle, or was it in respectful but rather slavish imitation of the organisation of the Expeditionary Force in France? They had Bomb Schools, Training Camps, Rest Camps and all sorts of luxuries. We on Gallipoli must therefore have the same.
So it was that when events did not transpire as expected, and the allied troops were still hanging desperately to their bases on Gallipoli Peninsula, when the Germans had subdued Serbia, and arrived in triumph in the capital of the Ottoman Empire via the Berlin to Constantinople Express, there was no longer any hope of starving the Turkish guns nor, having even forced the Dardanelles, any certainty of the capture of Constantinople.
I notice fast enough, and I am so interested that I hope to see the condemnation, already passed in England, against Kaiser, Kronprinz and Company, for "wilful murder," executed, even if I cannot live to see Germany invaded. This is what you get for saying, "You make no comment on the overrunning of Servia or the murder of Edith Cavell, or the failure of the Gallipoli adventure."
There was a fine old stock of deadly weapons mostly machine-guns and some field-pieces, and enough shells to blow up the Gallipoli peninsula. All kinds of shell were there, from the big 14-inch crumps to rifle grenades and trench-mortars.
He realised that it was neither very wonderful nor exceptionally tragic now to have a son at the front. "My boy is in Gallipoli," said one. "It's tough work there." "My lad's in Flanders," said Mr. Britling. "Nothing would satisfy him but the front. He's three months short of eighteen. He misstated his age." And they went on to talk newspaper just as if the world was where it had always been.
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