Soldier Boy Page 6

  They passed through a Strait they called ‘The Gate of Tears’ and into the Red Sea, the sunset the colour of blood. These soldiers neared their destination and wondered what might happen …

  There was Harry Barker, who was to become a sergeant and show great presence under fire in France, winning the Distinguished Conduct Medal; the Francis brothers, Ted and Frank, who also lived in Hawthorn and had enlisted at the same time as Jim Martin. Both were in their twenties. Both were killed on the same day at The Somme in 1916.

  Now’s the day, and now’s the hour;

  See the front o’ battle lour!

  … the lines of Robbie Burns, from the little book of verse Cec Hogan also carried with him throughout the war. It was a present from home. He knew the poetry by heart, and would quote it from time to time.

  All of them were wondering, but not knowing, as the Berrima docked on 26 July at Suez, where they were to disembark, with Sergeant Retchford shouting his orders:

  ‘Hammocks rolled up ready for inspection. Blankets folded square in four folds and placed in piles for checking. Mess tins to be thoroughly cleaned. Any questions? Right then!’

  They left the ship for the railway station in marching order, carrying rifles and kit bags, their water-bottles filled. The train journey took six hours. The line ran through desert beside the Suez Canal for some distance, and for the first time these troops really saw the louring ‘front o’ battle’. The Turks were active in the area, and both banks of the canal were entrenched and patrolled by Allied soldiers.

  The railway branched away at Ismailiya. And passing through Zagazig they crossed irrigated country, green with maize and date palms, until they reached the great city of Cairo sprawled beside the River Nile.

  8: EGYPT

  Like all the Anzacs, Jim Martin and his mates were fascinated by the sights and smells of Egypt.

  There were the mosques and minarets, crowded streets and bazaars; hawkers and beggars; women, mysterious behind dark yashmak veils; fat men in suits wearing red fez caps, or flowing past in Arab robes. All the clamour and potent odours of the strange and exotic.

  Feluccas sailed the broad waters of the Nile, where peasant fellahin cultivated the rich river floodplains in the timeless traditions of the centuries. In the city, opulence and marble and ancient magnificence stood side by side with squalor and poverty and dark, dirty alleys that made the dens of Little Bourke Street in Melbourne look like paradise.

  Impatient troops, fresh from the Berrima, had to wait to savour Cairo’s delights, however. The train took them to a railway siding near Heliopolis, a fairly new suburb just outside the city. From there, they marched in full uniform carrying their kit, to Aerodrome Camp some miles away.

  After a month at sea, it was hard going. The desert, which looked rather picturesque from a train window, was a grim place outside. It was even crueller during the weeks that followed. The new reinforcements faced a tough training schedule to bring them up to the same level of fitness and readiness as the whole battalion.

  A few days after the reinforcements arrived at Heliopolis, the platoons of the 21st Battalion had their group photographs taken: men staring formally but gamely into the camera, wearing not only their Anzac uniforms but also the pith helmets that British Tommies always wore in the tropics.

  When, in mid-August, the 1st Reinforcements officially joined the battalion, Jim was assigned to 4th Platoon, A Company, under Sergeant Henry Coates. There were four platoons of about forty men in each of the four rifle companies which, together with officers, signallers, pioneers, machine gunners, transport and headquarters staff, gave a battalion strength of over 1000 men.

  The platoons were further divided into four sections of ten men under a corporal. Jim and Cec Hogan were together in their section. This was good. They were mates. They shared their secrets. They were part of that close-knit bond of fellowship without which soldiers cannot fight effectively in battle – let alone survive the rigours of training in the Egyptian desert!

  There was sand. Sand everywhere. Sand in your mess tin, in your boots, in your blankets, and in your eyes when the wind blew. Sand that harboured gnats and fleas and crawly things when you were out on night attack exercises with sister battalions of the 6th Brigade, or on picket duty back at camp.

  Sand and heat. The sun rose like a burning eye as you slogged through an early morning route march, scorching the sand when they had you digging trenches; turning the camp huts into ovens during lectures on manoeuvres or signalling. Heat leapt up at you from the paved streets of Heliopolis – the very name meant ‘City of the Sun’ – when you strolled into town of an afternoon.

  There was that, at least. In the Egyptian summer, troops in training usually had the afternoons off. Reveille might sound ungodly early. But between lunch and parade at 1700, the time was generally your own. To write letters home, or read your mail if there was any. To go into town if you felt like it, to buy postcards or gifts, and to get a snack for only a couple of piastre – a few pence – at the Broadmeadows Cafe. The names were just like home! They even had a Luna Park at Heliopolis – until it was turned into a hospital.

  Jim and the others often went in after tea. You had leave, so long as you were back for rollcall at 2200 and lights out. He bought handkerchiefs for Amelia and Charlie, and ‘Twenty-four Nice Views of Heliopolis’ for his sisters. And one Sunday after Church Parade, when they went into Cairo (only half an hour on the electric tram), Jim stopped at a stall in the bazaar, and ordered his mother an embroidered centrepiece for the table. The souvenir sellers ran it up on a sewing machine from the design Jim picked.

  Amelia looked after it well over the years: a square of white cotton, polished like satin, with a silvery blue fringe. Jim chose a red star and crescent moon in each corner, with a date palm, the pyramids, the Nile, and a sphinx (grinning like the Cheshire Cat) in the middle. There were two flags, the Union Jack and the French Tricolour. Above the picture, in purple, were the words, A souvenir from Egypt. Cairo 1915. And below, in blue, he had written, To Mother from Jim. Good Luck. With violets and daffodils.

  The Anzacs sent souvenirs like this home by the thousand. Some would be turned into cushions. Some would be framed and hung on the wall. Some would be carefully put away. But however familiar and worn they became, there would still be something ineffably poignant in the naïve sentiments they conveyed.

  Jim left his order. And while his gift was being made up, he went to the pyramids with Cec and his mate, Bob Briggs, the butcher. A whole group of them went. They took the tram across the river, and rode the last bit of the way on donkeys. They climbed up the great pyramid of Cheops, where the first Anzacs had planted an Australian flag and carved their initials into the stones. They saw the real Sphinx, her nose shot away by Napoleon’s soldiers, but still staring inscrutably over the desert as she had for 6000 years.

  They explored the tomb of Kephron, sliding on their bums down a long, low ramp, and crawling on stomachs through a tunnel into the burial chamber to see the pharaoh’s coffin. It was a cold, dank place, carved with hieroglyphs, where an old Egyptian told the soldiers’ fortunes by torchlight for half a piastre each.

  He rooked them. Their fortunes were all the same! He said they’d all go home heroes. Even Bill Farrell. But like Jim, he’d not leave Gallipoli alive.

  While they were there, Cec Hogan jotted down sketches of the pyramids and the camels. He bought a postcard of the designs and hieroglyphs that decorated the temple walls and mummy cases, and copied them out in his notebook.

  ‘You draw pretty good,’ said Jim, admiring his work. ‘You should be an artist.’

  ‘I want to be an architect,’ said Cec, ‘if I get home in one piece. I was going to be, too. Doing well at school and then … I didn’t want to miss this fun.’

  Doing well! He was dux of his class. It was why his mother was so upset.

  ‘You’ve got the chance of a good education, son, and you’re throwing it away in the military!’

&nbs
p; Emily Hogan had a good education herself. A bush nurse and midwife, and close friend of Ned Kelly’s family, she also wrote articles for the Bulletin magazine, kept the Benalla Registry of Births and Deaths, and became a Justice of the Peace. It was from her that Cec got his love of poetry and interest in the world around him. The family had little money, but Cec was one of the few working-class lads of his time who went on to high school.

  ‘You’ve got talent, boy. You could win scholarships. You could become whatever you wish!’

  So said his headmaster, pleading with Cec to stay at school and not run off to war. Though when the boy insisted, he said it was ‘like finding a pearl in the sand, and seeing the waves wash it away.’

  Cec kept that bit to himself. A feller didn’t embarrass himself by talking a lot of guff.

  Still, there was something about Cec Hogan – something in his ability and manner – that stood out from others. He was a mate worth having. In France, Cec was to become a sergeant: almost the only one of his whole platoon left alive after an attack. But they couldn’t know that during their first innocent month in Egypt. Even if they had, it would have made little difference.

  One afternoon they visited wounded soldiers, evacuated from Anzac and recovering in the Australian General Hospital at Heliopolis. It was a huge place, converted from a hotel, with thousands of beds filled with sick and injured.

  Men blinded by shrapnel pellets and wounded by flying metal. Men with limbs blown off. Men with their flesh burnt and their bodies punctured by bayonets. Men who spoke of new and terrible battles in early August, as the Anzacs fought to break the Gallipoli stalemate and capture the high ground.

  They told of three days’ bitter fighting with bomb and bayonet, much of it underground, when they captured and held the Turkish trenches at Lonesome Pine: a dreadful fight that entered their collective memories. Lone Pine, as it became known, cost them more than 2000 casualties.

  They told of 230 Light Horsemen killed as they charged in waves against Turkish machine guns on a narrow strip of land they called The Nek … Of more Anzac assaults up the ridges as the British made another landing at Suvla Bay … Brave and glorious, but in the end failing to reach the heights, as both sides fought to exhaustion.

  These things the boys, fresh from Australia, heard from the wounded off the hospital ships. But far from making them wish they’d stayed at home, the effect was the opposite.

  ‘I just want to be at Anzac now and able to take their place,’ said George Broadbent. ‘I’m sick of Egypt. I’m sick of training. I want real work to do.’

  George was eighteen and, like Jim, came from Hawthorn. He was to get his real work. He won a Military Medal with Percy Mortimer as a runner for Brigade Headquarters under heavy fire in France.

  In any case, they hadn’t long to wait. Things were stirring. In mid-August the 20th Battalion, with whom they’d sailed in the Berrima, was ordered to Gallipoli to take part in a last attempt by the Anzacs to cross the peninsula.

  ‘It’s not fair,’ said Jack Piggott.

  ‘Why can’t it be us?’ asked his brother, Frank.

  It couldn’t be them because the 21st Battalion was otherwise engaged. For eleven days, its men formed part of the Cairo city garrison – the first Australian troops to do so – although the newly arrived reinforcements were kept in training back at camp.

  From the beginning, Egyptians had been alarmed by rowdy Anzac behaviour. Mothers warned naughty children the Australians would get them! There’d even been riots in the brothel district known as the ‘Wasser’, the most recent only a few days after the 1st Reinforcements arrived in camp. Furniture was smashed and a piano thrown out the window. Five houses were torched, and when the fire brigade arrived Australians cut the hoses. Men were protesting at lousy beer, high prices charged by the women, and the way their mates who caught venereal disease were treated by the military. They were confined behind barbed wire in camp, their pay books stamped ‘VD’, and they were often sent home.

  ‘Disgusting … disgraceful … men unable to control themselves,’ sniffed the officers.

  ‘Don’t the silly beggars know that soldiers always face danger on active service? Clap from the harlots and bullets from the enemy,’ said older, more experienced diggers.

  They saw the battles in the Wasser as a bit of fun, men letting off steam. But the authorities took them seriously. The 21st Battalion’s stint with the city garrison was a gesture of peace and goodwill. Yet within days of their return to Heliopolis, rumours swept Aerodrome Camp. They were leaving for Gallipoli!

  Rumours became fact. At parade the Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Hutchinson, announced they were breaking camp next day. Everyone started cheering. The band, practising near by, broke into the ragtime tune ‘Sailing Down the Chesapeake’. Some blokes started dancing the cakewalk and – sensibly – parade was dismissed early.

  ‘Dear Mum and Dad,’ wrote Jim, ‘We are going tomorrow, Friday 27th August, to the Dardanelles to have our share of the Turks. I hope to be …’ jim paused, thought, scratched out the words and wrote instead, ‘I think I will be well in it by the time you get this letter. We are packing up now.’

  He’d been ‘going pretty solid’ this past fortnight, he told them, getting fit. He’d not received any mail from home, but perhaps he hadn’t been in Egypt long enough to get a return from one of his own letters. His few gifts had been given to a wounded chap returning to Australia, and he asked if the family had got them yet.

  ‘I will try to write as much as I can over there. There is nothing to tell you as everything is Desert and work …’

  He sent his best love to them all. Aunt Mary and Bill Musgrave, his sisters (with a question mark after Alice, was she married yet?), Mum and Dad. And nine kisses. ‘I remain your loving Jim.’

  Then he remembered. ‘Many happy returns to Mary and Alice and Mum’s Birthdays. Be sure to write soon.’

  Jim addressed his letter and took it to the mailbag. He needed a good night’s sleep. They were striking camp in the morning, for the Dardanelles. He was going to be ready for it.

  9: THE SOUTHLAND

  Jim Martin woke briefly from his dreams. He felt the water lapping against the hospital ship, riding on the sea swell. White light touched his eyes. He heard voices, drowsy and distant, and drifted into thoughts of another day. Another voyage. Another ship …

  The Southland, out from Alexandria, with a thousand men of the 21st Battalion on board, bound for Lemnos Island and Gallipoli. A troopship full of soldiers, like sitting ducks, about to be torpedoed by a German submarine …

  Remember that time, getting ready to go! They broke camp with much excitement – and then had to hang around Heliopolis for another two days! Which meant sleeping out and getting wet. The desert may be hot as hell by day, but at night it’s cold and the dew heavy.

  A big mail arrived on Sunday. Some men got more than twenty letters and newspapers from home. There was nothing for Jim Martin. He turned away and asked himself if they had the right address. Were they even writing? Other reinforcements got mail, so what was wrong …?

  Jim tried to push such thoughts aside.

  Late that afternoon, well before the bugler sounded Fall In, the men were all on the parade ground, dressed and standing easy. Then to Attention! And with the band playing ‘Liberty Bell’, they marched to the railway siding and the train that was to take them to the port of Alexandria. More waiting. They didn’t leave until dark, and arrived at the wharf fairly rowdy at 0230. Blokes who managed to sleep on the train floor were roused, shouted at, formed up and, with daylight breaking, marched aboard the transport Southland.

  She was a fine-looking liner with twin funnels, at one time part of the German passenger fleet and known as the Vaterland – the Fatherland. But she’d been seized by the British when war broke out, and given a new name and occupation, carrying troops.

  Or trying to. Once again, the battalion and others sharing the voyage to Gallipoli – some signallers, an
artillery brigade, B Company of the 23rd Battalion – spent the day waiting on board. They were anxious to be on their way, but were delayed by the big brass who were to join them: Major General Legge who commanded the 2nd Australian Division, with his headquarters and signal staff, and the headquarters of 6th Brigade – their own brigade – under Colonel Linton.

  The battalions who landed at Anzac and had already won such renown were the 1st Division of the AIF. The 2nd Division, to support and relieve them, had been formed in July from three new brigades: the 5th Brigade (17th to 20th Battalions from New South Wales), the 6th Brigade (21st to 24th Battalions from Victoria), and the 7th Brigade (25th to 28th Battalions from Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia).

  Each battalion had its own spirit and self-identity, to which men held with a fierceness of pride and loyalty that lasted down the years. From the beginning it was there in the 21st Battalion to a high degree. That afternoon, as the Southland waited at Alexandria and the band gave a concert, men broke into the battalion song they’d first sung on the voyage from Australia.

  Here’s luck to the old Twenty-first

  Here’s luck to the bold Twenty-first,

  For the flag of our country will float higher

  When held by the proud Twenty-first.

  The words had since been drilled into the new reinforcements. But none of them knew how much luck they were going to need.

  The Southland finally left Alexandria late on 30 August, with the transport Haverford carrying the 23rd Battalion. Men quickly settled again to the routine of shipboard life: sleeping in hammocks on the troop decks; morning and afternoon parades. They were given life jackets and shown their boat stations, though the chances of their being needed seemed remote. Britannia and the Royal Navy ruled the waves. Few thought about enemy submarines lurking beneath the Mediterranean. There was no anti-submarine drill on board and the Southland, under Captain Kelk, was only lightly armed as it steamed for Lemnos Island, where the whole brigade was assembling for the final voyage to Anzac itself.