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Then, suddenly he stood up, faced the Arab, and bent on him a sternly penetrant look. "Rrisa," said he, impressively, his voice slow, grave, sonorous, "only for me thy bones would today be moldering in the trenches at Gallipoli or maybe rotting in a Turkish grave. The life that is in thee belongs to me! That is thy ancient law. Is it not true?" "It is true, Master. Nahnu malihin."
When he went to Gallipoli, some persons predicted that he would never come back. There was a hot meeting of the Cabinet at which he was asked to go to Russia, to make a sort of return visit for the visit that important Russians had made here, and to link up Russia's military plans with the plans of the Western Allies.
To-day the eyes of mankind were converged on this point just as, in remote centuries, they had been fixed on the war of Troy. "We also have been there," said Ferragut with pride. "The Dardanelles have been frequented for many years by the Catalans and the Aragonese. Gallipoli was one of our cities governed by the Valencian, Ramon Muntaner."
And throwing the weather and wet trenches and the rest all in, that difference more than makes up for all of them. "You see, a fellow must look after himself a bit," one of them said to me the other day. "A man didn't take any care how he looked in Gallipoli; but here with these young ladies about, you can't go around like what we used to there."
The same situation occurred in Gallipoli in 1915 when we were facing the Turk and the result was also the same. On the 23rd July the Battalion was relieved by the 4th R.S.F. and passed into Divisional reserve at Wadi Simeon. It was about this time that fate transplanted in our midst a medical officer from Kirkliston.
Of his early life little is known, but as far as can be gathered, he made his way to France by way of Egypt and Gallipoli and was presented by a grateful patient to the nursing sisters and ambulance staff of One-Three-One, and by them was adopted with enthusiasm. Hector O'Brien did precious little to earn either fame or notoriety until one memorable day.
The cause was fairly clear; the occasion was provided by the failure of the Germans at Verdun, the success of Brussilov, the apparent likelihood of Turkey's collapse before the Russian advance in Asia Minor, and the promise of an Entente offensive from Salonika. Turkey, indeed, had exhausted the credit she had won at Gallipoli and Kut.
That the expedition failed was not the fault of the commander-in-chief nor of the troops. And, anyway, we Australians are good enough sports to realize that there must be blunders here and there, and we're quite ready to bear our share of the occasional inevitable disaster. But Gallipoli was not the failure many people think.
"Eighty years," said Ferragut, terminating his account of the glorious adventures of Roger de Flor around Gallipoli, "the Spanish duchy of Athens and Neopatria flourished. Eighty years the Catalans governed these lands." And he pointed out on the horizon the place where the red haze of distant promontories and mountains outlined the Grecian land. Such a duchy was in reality a republic.
As it is, I fear lest the remnants may form too narrow a basis for proper reconstruction when ultimately the drafts do make their appearance." The drafts we received on Gallipoli were the cream of the 2nd and 3rd reserve lines, which had been organised at home under Colonels Pollitt and Hawkins.
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