Soldier Boy Read online

  ‘You know what I’m going to do, Mum. Give your consent, and I’ll keep in touch. If you don’t, I’ll go anyway …’

  Jim had already started packing his few things. He meant what he said. So that, in the end, Amelia Martin gave way. She sat at the kitchen table and wrote on a piece of paper: ‘I hereby consent to my son James Martin joining the Expeditionary Forces.’

  She signed and dated it 10 April 1915. Charlie signed after her. He was more hesitant, wanting to insist that Jim stay home. But Amelia persuaded him.

  ‘He says he’ll run away! He says we won’t hear from him again. And Charlie, I couldn’t bear that …’

  Thus, at last, Charlie signed his consent too.

  Two days later, on a wet Monday morning, amid tears but also a certain pride at his gallantry and patriotism, his family kissed Jim farewell. Waving to some of the boarders who stood on the steps of Forres to wish him good luck, he went out the gate carrying his kit bag. He walked to Glenferrie station and caught the train to the city. And there, Jim made his way up Swanston Street to the Melbourne Town Hall and the recruiting office of the Australian Imperial Force.

  In after years, Amelia always remembered Jim telling her that the enlistment officer had said Jim was the fittest specimen he’d seen that day: standing in line with fifty or so other men who had volunteered; filling in his papers at a long wooden table; Jim giving his age as eighteen, a farm labourer by trade, his parents’ consent attached. It was considered sufficient proof of age. No birth certificate was required. Tellingly, though, Jim gave Amelia as his next of kin. Charlie’s name was written in much later.

  Then to the medical room, every inch of Jim Martin inspected for signs of disease or a defect which might make him unsuitable as a soldier. Sight, hearing and intelligence good. He hopped across the floor on one foot and back again with the other. His teeth were sound, and he could say ‘Who comes here?’ in a loud voice, as required. There were no head lice. Height, weight and chest measurement were all within regulation. They’d recently lowered the minimum height – though one man went to pieces when told that, at five feet three and a half inches, he was still too short.

  ‘I’ve given up me job and everything,’ he cried, ‘and I’m knocked back for want of half an inch! It’s not fair.’

  The army could afford to be choosy. More men were coming forward than were needed. But in time, when recruiting became harder as the casualty figures rolled in, the height was lowered to five feet two inches and even five feet, as the maximum age was put up from thirty-eight to forty-five.

  ‘The fittest specimen we’ve seen all day,’ said the attesting officer, Lieutenant Dalton, when Jim presented him with the Medical Officer’s certificate. And then, holding the Bible in his right hand, Jim took the Oath to well and truly serve the King until the end of the War; to resist His Majesty’s enemies; and in all matters of service to faithfully discharge his duty according to law.

  ‘So Help me God.’

  ‘Welcome to the army, soldier.’

  His pay was five shillings a day. Six shillings when he embarked for overseas and became, as the soldiers joked, one of the ‘six-bob-a-day tourists’ – though one shilling was deferred pay until service was ended by death or discharge.

  That afternoon, in the first good rains of the year, the new recruits went by train to the Depot at Broadmeadows. They brought their razors and soap with them, an extra suit, a change of underclothes, a second pair of boots and a coat.

  Over the next few days they were given their basic uniforms from the quartermaster’s store. Khaki service jacket, not too tight, with deep pockets at the chest and waist, and khaki cord breeches. The felt slouch hat, left side turned up, so distinctive and so loved by every Australian soldier, though for a time they also wore the small, peaked British service caps. Grey flannel shirt and woollen underclothes. Tan ankle boots and – hated by almost everyone – strips of cloth called ‘puttees’, wound around the leg from ankle to knee for some support and protection. Off duty around the camp, the men wore blue dungaree overalls and soft, floppy white hats against the sun and rain.

  Some things were late being issued, however: their heavy woollen greatcoats and waterproof groundsheets. There were many complaints about that at the time Jim went into camp. As the April rain poured down, Broadmeadows became sodden. Without groundsheets, the straw-filled mattresses on which the men slept eight or ten to a tent got damp; and without greatcoats, their clothes were always wet. Amelia Martin wasn’t the only one who worried about the risk of pneumonia among the troops.

  Families came out at weekends, squelching through mud, to see the Light Horsemen on parade and to watch the great horse-drawn guns of the artillery on manoeuvre. But mostly they came to see how their menfolk were coping with the routines of army life …

  Reveille at 0615 hours and wash in canvas buckets before parade at 0700. An hour of physical exercise and drill. Breakfast at 0800, the men from each tent moving in lines past the cookhouse, a tin plate for stew and bread in one hand and a pannikin for coffee in the other. More drill at 0900, marching round the parade ground by section, platoon and company. Rifle drill. Practice and instruction with full-sized .303s at the range. Dinner at 1300 – meat, bread and potatoes – and either a route march with full pack or more drill in the afternoon. Skirmishing. Learning to move quickly and surely under fire to attack an objective. To obey every order by instinct. Being taught how to use the bayonet.

  PARRY! THRUST! ON GUARD!

  And there were always officers to salute and call ‘sir’. There were always the non-commissioned officers, the NCOs – sergeants and corporals and lance-corporals – whose every word was law and who must never be answered back, even when they were wrong.

  Discipline. Discipline. Discipline.

  Amelia thought Jim would soon get sick of it and want to come home. That he’d own up he was only fourteen and get discharged.

  But he didn’t. Jim loved every moment of the life. No, it wasn’t playing, like school cadets. It was real life. A soldier’s life. Even the hardships and monotony of more stew and tea at 1800, one tin of jam for each tent, with milk and butter to be bought extra from the canteen – these things were real.

  As was the companionship of the men with whom he shared that life. Older men like Alf Leonard, who was thirty-eight and a railway porter living with his wife in the hills – until he joined up the same day Jim did, and was to go on to win the Distinguished Conduct Medal. Some, like Arthur Lee, were still in their teens – though none were as young as Jim Martin, even if he never let on.

  He watched them and copied them: adopting the swagger and rougher language of older men, pretending to an experience he did not have. He would go with them at night to the tent fixed up as a stadium to watch boxing matches – grudge matches, often, between soldiers – and concerts. Sometimes, before the bugle call to retire and Last Post at 2130, Jim went to the Salvation Army tent which had a piano and books, pen and ink. And, as promised, he wrote home.

  ‘Dear Mum and Dad, just a few lines hoping all is well as it leaves me at present …’ His letters always started the same way. It helped get some of those awkward words on the page. He went on to tell them about some missing pictures. ‘I seen about those photos this evening. He had sent them to the wrong Martin …’

  A few days earlier Jim had been granted leave, and went into town to have his photograph taken with his sisters. There they are, fixed for ever on the print. Jim so tall and casual in uniform between the five young women. Esther and Alice sitting in cane chairs, looking pensive. Mary, Annie and Amelia standing almost to attention in their dark dresses, white collars and bows in their hair. They took a number of poses. A close-up of Jim in his peaked cap. Another standing next to young Millie, perched on top of a plant stand. And who, unless they were told otherwise, could say that Jim Martin did not look eighteen?

  Afterwards, they went back to Mary Street for tea. Cakes and biscuits fresh from the oven, much better than
the slabs of bread and rationed jam at Broadmeadows. The whole family was there. Esther’s daughter, little Essie, and Charlie Anderson who was talking of joining up too. But Jim told him not to be silly!

  ‘You’re a husband and a father now,’ he said. ‘There are plenty of single blokes like me who should go first.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Esther.

  Alice was seeing a young fellow called Percy Chaplin. He was a military policeman, stationed at the South Melbourne barracks. Percy was also at tea and he greatly admired Jim’s spirit.

  ‘Good on you, lad.’

  But when he found out Jim’s true age, he was sworn to secrecy. The whole family was afraid Percy Chaplin would consider it his duty to report the fact to the military authorities. And what then? Not only had Jim lied about his age, Amelia and Charlie Martin had gone along with it. Was that perjury? Could they be punished?

  How often, in time to come, did Amelia wish she’d not made Percy Chaplin keep his silence? If only he had said something to someone higher up in the military …

  Yet Jim’s threat was always there, hanging over her like a doom. If you let me go I’ll write to you and stay in touch. But if you don’t…

  Besides, it was too late. Jim was committed. The whole country was committed. Just two weeks after Jim Martin enlisted, Australian and New Zealand troops went into action. With British and French forces, they invaded Turkey: landing at a place on the Dardanelles coast few had then heard of, but which was to echo around the nation.

  Gallipoli.

  6: LEAVING

  The landings on the Gallipoli peninsula took place at dawn on 25 April 1915.

  After the Allied fleet failed to force a passage through the minefields guarding the Dardanelles, a land invasion was planned to silence the Turkish forts and clear the way to Constantinople. The Turkish Army, with their German advisers, used the time well to strengthen their positions on the rugged Gallipoli peninsula. When the Allies attacked, the defenders were waiting for them.

  The main body of British forces landed at Cape Helles, at the foot of the peninsula. The Australian and New Zealand troops came ashore at a sandy cove to the north, below a range of three steep ridges leading to the summit of a hill the Turks called Koja Chemen Tepe, the Hill of the Great Pasture, which dominated this part of the battlefield.

  They landed at first light on Sunday morning. Silently, under cover of darkness, the first assault troops filed from the transports anchored offshore and into strings of row boats which were towed by steam launches to the beach. At the tillers sat young naval midshipmen: mere boys, it seemed. At 0429 the first shot rang out from the heights above. As day broke, the fire became more and more intense. It seemed to rain bullets and death. Some men died still sitting in the boats. Some were hit and dragged down by their heavy packs while wading ashore. Many were killed racing across the beach to the cliffs. ‘The key,’ one Anzac said, ‘was being turned in the lock of hell.’ But still the young midshipmen kept ferrying their boatloads of soldiers to shore – showing a courage the men who survived that day never forgot.

  Night currents had carried the boats further north than expected. Instead of flat, open country, troops faced ravines and sharp, scrubby hillsides. Men and companies became separated as soldiers fought their way up to the first ridge … to the second ridge … A few of them got to the third ridge, for a brief view of the Dardanelles, before Turkish forces led by Major Mustafa Kemal counter-attacked and pushed them back … Back to the second ridge and defensive positions about half a mile inland.

  By nightfall, 16,000 men had landed. By nightfall, more than 2000 were dead or wounded. By nightfall, General Bridges realised his troops were unlikely to take the third ridge. Through the Anzac commander, General Birdwood, he asked if they shouldn’t withdraw. But there wasn’t enough time before dawn, nor enough boats. The commander of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, General Hamilton, sent back the message, ‘There is nothing for it but to dig yourselves right in and stick it out.’

  So stick it out, they did. Through eight months of bitter fighting. Dig themselves in, they did. Into trenches and saps, dugouts and snipers’ nests, sometimes separated from the Turkish lines by only a few yards. Digging in at places they called Quinn’s Post, The Nek, Lonesome Pine …

  The cove where they landed they named after themselves. Some time after arriving in Egypt their infantry brigades had been formed into a corps, the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. The initial letters were used as a post mark on mail sent home: ANZAC. As ‘Anzacs’ they became known. The word gained currency. At Gallipoli it gained meaning. So they called the little beach Anzac Cove.

  News of these great events reached people at home four days later. The newspapers were filled with reports of the gallantry and boldness shown at the Gallipoli landings.

  Something tremendous had happened! For the first time our soldiers had been tested on the ancient battlefields of Europe, and had not been found wanting. For the first time they fought not as Victorians or Queenslanders – but as Australians. Army recruiting figures doubled and trebled as men rushed to be part of it.

  For wives and mothers, of course, the war came ever closer. The first casualty lists appeared in early May. No one was immune. General Bridges was shot by a sniper and died three days later on 18 May. Next day, shrapnel killed a humble stretcher bearer, one Private Simpson, carrying the wounded on his donkey.

  For men already encamped and in training, the news from Gallipoli was immediate and intoxicating. They, too, could soon expect to be sent there! Their rifles, aimed at targets down the range, would soon be shooting enemies. The bayonets they stuck into straw dummies would soon be pushed into living flesh.

  PARRY! THRUST! TAKE THAT YOU FILTHY TURK!

  It couldn’t come quickly enough.

  At Broadmeadows Depot, Private James Martin was assigned to the 1st Reinforcements of the 21st Battalion and given his regimental number – 1553. The battalion had been forming since March, and even now was getting ready to leave for Egypt. Fighting troops constantly needed new men to replace casualties. When the 21st Battalion sailed in the troopship Ulysses on 8 May, Jim and the reinforcements still in training knew it wouldn’t be long before they joined them.

  Besides, in mid-May came more glorious fighting at Gallipoli. The Turkish army launched a massive attack to push the invaders back into the sea. They were met by devastating fire from the Anzac trenches. In a few hours, 3000 Turks lay dead and dying in no-man’s-land. It roused the blood lust in those still at home. If only they, too, could have their share of killing!

  But then something curious happened. On 24 May – Empire Day – Turks and Anzacs arranged an eight-hour truce to bury their dead, now stinking and rotting under the sun. Soldiers from both sides took advantage of the break in fighting to leave their trenches, to exchange cigarettes and talk in broken bits of language. Before going back to kill each other. Strange. Fraternising with the enemy!

  Indeed, something even stranger was happening. Among the Anzac diggers, the mood began to change. Instead of hatred and contempt for their Turkish opponents, a sense of respect developed. Turks, too, were brave in the face of terrible fire. They, too, stuck by their own. They, too, shared the same hardships. The nicknames ‘Abdul’ and ‘Jacko Turk’ became terms of – if not friendship – at least of fellow-feeling

  Yet these things the reinforcements at home didn’t know. Nor could they, until it was their turn to land on that shore.

  Amelia Martin hoped and prayed they wouldn’t send her son away just yet. Not when there was still time … surely … for someone to find out he was only fourteen, and send him home for good. Except, she knew, it wouldn’t be for good. Jim would find a way to go to this war, whatever they did. So, on his brief visits, she fed him. And kissed him. And when he went back she gave him a photo of herself and Charlie in the back garden of Forres, smiling grimly into the camera. It was one way to remember.

  ‘I’ll send you some photos of m
e and the blokes in our tent,’ said Jim.

  ‘I’d rather have you here with me.’

  ‘Come on, Mum! We’re expecting to go overseas any time now.’

  As it turned out, they went to the army camp at Seymour, north of Melbourne, to complete their training in early June. It was just as the 21st Battalion arrived in Egypt and marched into base at Heliopolis, near Cairo. Seymour was much less exotic. A dreary plain with a few trees and low hills. The same rows of tents and horse lines as Broadmeadows. The same stews. The same drills. The same route marches across country. The same rain pouring down.

  ‘The road up here is no better than Broadmeadows,’ Jim wrote home. ‘In fact it is a lot worse it is just like soup.’

  He asked them to send him more warm underwear, and the girls were knitting khaki socks to help keep his feet dry in the mud and slush. But something went wrong, and the parcel didn’t turn up at the railway station.

  Few families made the train trip to Seymour at weekends. The place was miserable in the wet. Jim missed them. Besides, the rumours were flying. They were going on Monday! They were sailing on Wednesday! He might not see his people again. So one Saturday after parade, Jim slipped away from camp and caught the train to Melbourne. He was Absent Without Leave – a serious military offence. If caught, Jim could be charged and confined to the guard house. But he didn’t care. Time was short. And lots of blokes nicked off briefly. It was worth the risk.

  Saturday was always best at Mary Street. It was baking day. When Jim arrived home unexpectedly, Amelia gave him a huge tea of cakes and scones that she and the girls took fresh from the oven. Alice’s boyfriend, Percy Chaplin, wasn’t there – luckily. You wouldn’t want a military policeman about the place when you were Absent Without Leave!

  They sat around the table, telling Jim their news. School had closed for a couple of weeks and was being fumigated because of an outbreak of diphtheria, from which several children had already died. They told of a grand patriotic concert at the Town Hall, and fund-raising for war relief. And they asked him a thousand questions. About Seymour, and was he used to sleeping on a straw mattress yet? Had he got the parcel? And did he like the scarf young Millie was knitting for him?