Gallipoli (59 page)

‘From this morning onwards,' Bean would note, ‘the attitude of the ANZAC troops towards the individual Turks was rather that of opponents in a friendly game.'
⁴¹
One Anzac would recall, ‘They tried to drive us into the sea … They were a very brave enemy …'
⁴²

From this morning on, in London, Lord Kitchener knows that he, specifically, is the target of a campaign being mounted by Lord Northcliffe to have him removed from the position of Secretary of State for War. On this morning, the editorial of the
Daily Mail
could not put it more clearly:

Back at the Pimple on this morning, a different kind of man from Beech might have just accepted that there was nothing he could do about Turks killing his comrades, but, being a very practical man, he is determined to do something about it.
Now.

Living out the Australian axiom that there is ‘no problem so great that enough elbow grease and fencing wire can't fix it in the short term', Beech quickly sets about constructing something he has just thought of, an invention that just might give the advantage back to the Diggers. Taking a .303-calibre Lee-Enfield rifle, he constructs a timber frame made of broken boxwood, fencing wire and elbow grease, then reconnects them in the shape of a right angle – with angled pocket mirrors at the top and bottom. The top mirror looks directly along the sights of the rifle, while the bottom mirror is positioned to catch its reflection. Later, to those nosey parkers who will wonder what the hell the contraption is, he will have a standard reply:

‘I'm tired of fightin' Turks; I'm goin' to play them at cricket.'
⁴⁴

Now, by putting the end of the frame that holds the rifle to his shoulder
below
the parapet, by virtue of the mirrors he can still aim along the sights. With a string on the trigger, the whole thing can be operated in comparative safety.

In the late morning of that same day, after the firing has calmed down, Major Thomas Blamey, the 1st Division Intelligence Officer, accompanied by Charles Bean, is visiting the front trenches of the Pimple when he notices an amazing thing. There in a trench, two Diggers are working away, ‘engrossed with a framework of broken boxwood and wire, attached to a rifle …'
⁴⁵

But what is it?

‘An arrangement so that you can hit without being hit,' Beech explains with more deference than he has mustered for others.
⁴⁶
(It is one thing to mouth off at a nosey parker, and quite another to mouth off at
Major
Nosey Parker.)

And it works! When Beech puts his shoulder to the stock of the rifle, he is able to stay well below the level of the parapet, take careful aim, and fire.

Major Blamey is seriously impressed. And all the more so when, after testing, the contraption is found to be accurate at up to 300 yards.

That evening, in that twilight hour when there is oft a tacit agreement between the two sides to stop for tucker, John Simpson Kirkpatrick is laid beneath the sod, a simple cross put above his grave.

‘If ever a man deserved a Victoria Cross,' Padre George Green, the army chaplain who conducted the funeral, would later say, ‘it was Simpson. I often remember now the scene I saw frequently in Shrapnel Gully of that cheerful soul calmly walking down the gully with a Red Cross armlet tied round the donkey's head. That gully was under direct fire from the enemy almost all the time.'
⁴⁷

The truth?

There have been many brave stretcher-bearers at Gallipoli to this point – perhaps many as brave as Simpson – but none of them will come close to capturing the imagination the way Simpson and his donkey have. While Simpson is deeply respected by the Diggers at Gallipoli, by the time the story gets back to Australia and is endlessly repeated, it takes on a grandeur that, on a good day, can put the rising sun to shame.

And his donkey?

At least as legend would have it, the worthy animal is taken over by an Indian officer, who, from the first and ever after, looks after it like a silkworm.

In the meantime, after this major battle of 19 May, things really are different at Anzac Cove. Bean is not far away from the frontlines at half-past eight one morning when, from one particular section at Quinn's, something suddenly comes sailing from the Turkish trenches and lands just beyond the Australian parapet.

GET DOWN!

From long experience, the Australian soldiers know that it is most likely some kind of bomb … yet, strangely, there is no explosion. Very carefully, the sergeant closest to it takes a close look through his telescope. It seems to be … some kind of … package?

In fact, waving hands appear from the Turkish trenches, and then even a head pops up.

It seems the Turks are inviting them to have a closer look at the package? And now an Australian head goes up, and then another Turkish head, and soon many Turkish and Australian heads are lined up above the parapets.

Suddenly, even before the sergeant can give permission, the soldier next to him has jumped over the parapet, round the rolls of barbed wire, and darted out to bring back the package.

No shot is fired. Just grinning Turks, waving.
Go on, you Australians, open it!

Oh so carefully, the soldier does exactly that as his mates crowd around.

Inside is a small packet of cigarettes, together with a pencilled note, scrawled in bad French:

For their part, the Diggers have enough schoolboy French between them to translate: ‘To our heroic enemies.'

Who would have thought it? Those kind bastards! And a quick smoke reveals them to be slightly better than the ‘camel dung' cigarettes, as the Anzacs called them, that they'd been reduced to smoking in Cairo.

What can the Diggers send them in return? Perhaps a couple cans of bully beef …?

And so the two cans go sailing over the parapets and are quickly gathered up by the Turkish soldiers. What, the Diggers wonder, will they make of it?

It does not take long before they have an answer. Another message comes from the Turks, wrapped around a stone:

No to the awful bully beef. Do the Australians have anything else? The Diggers throw some sweet biscuits and a tin of jam, which are soon replied to with more cigarettes, more kind notes.

(Bush French for ‘take at your pleasure'.)

 

Finally, though, after 45 minutes of such pleasantries, it is time for the day's work to begin – trying to kill each other – and after one of them waves with both hands and shouts, ‘
Finis!
– Finish!' they all know they must get back to it.

Quickly, heads on both sides go back down and the bombs start sailing back and forth once more.

20 MAY 1915, AN ILL WIND

Typically, it is Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett who gets wind of it first among the correspondents. With both Cape Helles and Anzac Cove at an effective stalemate, all either side can do is pour in even more men to hold what terrain they possess. General Hamilton is planning some kind of fresh ‘breakout', something to definitively break the stalemate, using what Ashmead-Bartlett describes as ‘the old army reinforced by two fresh divisions. The idea is preposterous and can only lead to a fresh massacre of the innocents. How strange this attitude of mind, namely, to risk your army and endanger your country rather than worry Kitchener for the right number of troops and guns!'
⁵⁰

And the truth is, even with those reinforcements, Ashmead-Bartlett has no confidence that the Allies can make headway. For him, so far the whole affair has been a debacle, and as he had confided to his diary the night before, ‘I feel certain the Military Authorities out here are concealing the truth from the Authorities at home and that they will not tell them the real facts about the situation because they are afraid they will be withdrawn altogether and then good bye to K.C.Bs, K.C.M.G. and all the other damned Gs and Peerages they have in mind. But this is only playing with a great question when the whole safety of your country is at stake. But our leaders in the field are very little men. That is the trouble.'
⁵¹

And now they want to have a breakout and attack the Turks? It is
sure
to lead to disaster.

‘I went to bed in despair.'
⁵²

MORNING, 21 MAY 1915, LONDON, SOME MAIL FOR YOU, LORD KITCHENER

Another day, another attack on Lord Kitchener, this time written by Lord Northcliffe himself and put in the mass circulation
Daily Mail
beneath a headline:

This proves to be merely Lord Northcliffe's opening remarks …

Yes, there is a reaction – a strong one. Many people are outraged at such an attack on such a national icon as Lord Kitchener – a servant of the people, who has risked his life for the Empire on so many occasions! – and there is significant fall-out. Copies of
The Times
and the
Daily Mail
are burned on the floor of the London Stock Exchange.-

Several important advertisers flee and, practically overnight, circulation of the
Daily Mail
falls from 1,386,000 to 238,000.-

But Lord Northcliffe simply does not blink.-

‘I mean to tell the people the truth,' he tells his chauffeur, ‘and I don't care what it costs.'

He says much the same to his panicked staff: ‘I don't care. What I wrote was true. Our men out there are being killed because there are no shells to smash the German defences. I'm determined that they shall have them.'
⁵⁴

23 MAY 1915, CONSTANTINOPLE, VON MÜCKE'S RETURN FROM HELL

Kapitänleutnant Hellmuth von Mücke can barely believe it. Their staggering journey over six months has taken them all the way from the Cocos Islands on
Ayesha
(the yacht they had stolen from the Clunies-Ross family), across the perilous Indian Ocean (dodging British ships all the way), through to the Dutch East Indies and into the Middle East. The angel of death stalked them closely, flapping her wings in their faces when they had been attacked by 300 Bedouins as they approached Jeddah in the Kingdom of Hejaz.
⁵⁵
By charging, they had managed to scatter the natives, killing 15 of them, with only one of their own men wounded in the process. And now, after another seven weeks of perilous trekking through the farthest reaches of the Ottoman Empire, they are at last approaching its heart – Constantinople.

Their train is even now pulling into the ancient city, where the Chief of the Mediterranean Division, Admiral Wilhelm Souchon, has honoured them by arriving at the station with his senior staff.

On catching sight of the Admiral, von Mücke barks a few brief commands, at which point his men instantly line up, snap to attention and salute – proving to their Kapitänleutnant ‘that the brigand existence we had led for months had not destroyed our military trim'.

Lowering his sword before his superior officer, Kapitänleutnant von Mücke stares straight ahead in the best military fashion and says, ‘I report the landing squad from the
Emden
, five officers, seven petty officers, and thirty-seven men strong.'
⁵⁶

He then takes their war flag – complete with its stunning red, white and black colours, with iron cross and eagle – which they have brought with them all this way, clicks his heels, bows and presents it to the Admiral.

Reporting for duty,
Herr Admiral
.

(As later noted by German writer R. K. Lochner, back in the Fatherland, ‘the safe return of this part of
Emden
crew aroused a storm of joy. Mücke was the hero of the day, he was enthusiastic, and his men were welcomed everywhere. The onward journey from Turkey via the Balkans and Austria to Germany became a triumphal procession.')
⁵⁷

Not far away, at the same station – and indeed, at many stations all over Constantinople – yet more soldiers are readying to head south to the Gallipoli Peninsula, via a trip to a nearby port.

‘All of us who left Constantinople for Gallipoli,' one Turkish soldier would later reminisce, ‘had already heard of the hellish fighting that destroyed thousands of lives in a matter of hours. Because most of those who went were reported dead almost immediately, those getting ready to leave kissed and embraced their families with great affection. They showed their love and care for each other probably for the last time. I kissed my mother the same way, and she cried constantly as I left her. I didn't want to upset her more, so I didn't tell her we were going to the front-line at Helles.'
⁵⁸