Gallipoli (94 page)

For the most part, the day proceeds according to plan, with the exception that one group of soldiers assigned to break up jars of rum and pour them into the Aegean just can't help themselves and, in the end … practically have to be poured into their boats themselves.

Most worryingly, after a long, tense afternoon, there comes a horrifying report that enemy troops are on the march north from Cape Helles, but nothing seems to come of it.

Ah, but the Turks are starting to notice that something is going on, all right. The sounds of a heavy bombardment coming from Cape Helles is one indication. Given recent form, ‘something unusual might be occurring at Anzac and Suvla'.
³⁵
And there is something else, too.

Just before the sun goes down, they can see an unusually high number of steamers coming from Imbros, perhaps as many as 35. Is this to be
another
landing?

Everyone must be on full alert.

Just before 4 pm, Brudenell White sits, sipping afternoon tea with a handful of other officers in a little dugout just back from the beach at Anzac Cove. They take their final sips before hopping up, placing their knives and forks in their pockets – nothing is to be left behind – and gathering around an old kerosene tin. Without a word, one of the officers takes ‘an opened bottle of whisky and breaks it across the kerosene tin'.
³⁶
And with that, it is time.

They pace down to the shore to have one last look around.

It's ‘all ready'.
³⁷

Brudenell White heads back up to the almost emptied HQ and sits somewhat nervously at his table. Taking pencil in hand, he begins to write the first of a series of notes about the night's proceedings. He plans on staying on the ground until the last of his men come down safely from the trenches above. And if he's going to do that, with all the waiting it will entail, he may as well have something to occupy himself with. Lighting his pipe and letting it hang in its usual place out the right side of his mouth, he begins to write:

‘We have finished our high teas, and the sun is going down … it is all very still. It has been flat and calm all day and there is not a ripple on the water and that means a good deal to us … Last night we saw away 9,900 …'
³⁸

The sun sets at 5 pm, and just 30 minutes later the first of the final three lots of troops due to come off tonight – this one dubbed ‘A' section, 4000 soldiers strong – starts to leave their trenches and make their way to the piers far below.

With just a handful of men holding what had been held by tens of thousands, the air is thick with tension. All are aware of just how vulnerable they are. Anxiously, they wait for the partial protection of darkness to fall and the near-full moon to rise to give them the illumination they need. When at last it does, one of the Die Hards, Major Gordon Carter, notes the moon is ‘very bright with a fine rainbow round it for half an hour or so',
³⁹
even as a low mist gathers on the beach, making the most perfect shroud imaginable for the cutters and motor lighters now gathering there.

As the men start to embark, HMS
Grafton
hovers just off North Beach, ready to provide covering fire on specific targets should the troops be heavily pursued and need support. Charles Bean
lifts up his eyes unto the hills
, looking for some sign of abnormality, of alarm … but so far, mercifully, nothing.

Thousands of Indians, Gurkhas, Norfolk Yeomanry, Suffolk Yeomanry, Welch Horse and Anzacs continue to stream, mostly to the North Beach piers – and in lesser numbers to the ones at Anzac Beach – and from there onto the motor lighters and barges, and away to the larger vessels offshore. From the dot of 8.30 pm onwards, the next 4000 soldiers begin to descend – floating phantoms in the night, the ghosts of Gallipoli gliding silently through the soft, aching light. Again, no alarm is sounded and the entirety of this ‘B' Section is away by 11.30.

A breeze caresses from the north, the only movement of nature on an otherwise completely still night. On the Aegean Sea, just offshore, the vessels continue gliding on dark glass.

Staggeringly, there are now fewer than 1500 men holding the 11,000 yards of the Anzac frontline – with, in fact, just one per 20 yards manning a gun or moving around firing other guns, while the rest of the Diggers make their final preparations for departure. This includes shooting most of those horses and donkeys that cannot be embarked, to prevent the Turks having use of them.

At least one notable animal is spared, however. Archie Barwick will ever after recall his last vision of Anzac from the departing boat: Simpson's donkey, ‘little Murphy … standing on a little rise overlooking the cemetery. It was a pity they could not have brought him off, he was such a pet too.'
⁴⁰

The cruiser
Chatham
is chugging slowly up and down the coast just off Anzac and Suvla. On the bridge, Birdwood and Wemyss have their glasses trained on the coast, trying to get some idea of how the evacuation is proceeding.

Of course, they can see very little, but that in itself is encouraging – every hour that passes without the sounds of the Turkish Army falling upon the thin ranks of the Anzacs, or in the first instance sending a rain of shells onto the beaches and piers, is a great hour.

And those Anzacs are busy, all right. Over the last few weeks, some of the soldiers, with ingenuity that would do Lance-Corporal William Beech and his periscope proud, have worked out a way to have their rifles fire long after they have gone. The best method, invented by Lance-Corporal Bill Scurry, involves filling a kerosene can with water and then puncturing the can so that it slowly drips into a second can.
⁴¹
At a certain point, when the second can – attached by string to the trigger of the rifle – has sufficient weight, it will topple and the rifle will fire. Another way is to have two pieces of string attached to a weight, with the short string wrapped around a candle. When the candle burns down, it burns the string too, meaning the weight – with the longer piece of string attached to the trigger – drops, thus firing the rifle.

All the various systems are put into play as the Diggers continue destroying the supplies that they won't be able to take with them. Captain Aubrey Wiltshire records, ‘Into our latrine pit we threw 70,000 rounds SAA, 1500 grenades and bombs. The enemy are welcome to this if they like to clean it.'
⁴²

Many of them also put final touches to their endlessly diverse farewell messages to the Turks, written on whatever pieces of cardboard or paper they can find:

And yes, of course, there is the odd aggressive message as well, in one case mixed with an unspeakably crude drawing of Kaiser Bill and the Sultan above the scrawled words
Abdul: you silly c--!
⁴⁷

There is also the odd booby trap, with cans of food that have been punctured the day before to ensure they have gone off and will make anyone who eats them sick.

But for the most part, the tone of the Digger farewell is friendly, in the manner of one of two brothers who have fought each other to a bloodied standstill, before one reaches out to the other and gives him an exhausted pat on the back – that's enough now, mate.

Among Trooper Bluegum's fellow Diggers, they leave boxes of cigarettes, tins of jam, pouches of tobacco.

And they might have even left the Turks some cases of rum, too, but after one too many cases of drunkenness, ‘the order had gone out that all liquor except that in the casualty clearing stations should be poured out on the ground or into the sea'.
⁴⁸
A pity.

Still, in the absence of rum, many of them do what they can.

In one dugout, the Diggers go to the effort of setting up a gramophone, ‘so as soon as they touched it, it would play
The Turkish Patrol
…'
⁴⁹

In another nearby dugout, the men go to a similar effort, albeit with a twist …

‘A light horseman set up a table for four,' Bluegum would recount. ‘There was jam, bully beef, biscuits and cheese. And a note: “There are no booby traps in this dug-out”. It was almost true. He had added black powder from cartridges to the packet of tobacco he left behind.'
⁵⁰

Someone
is in for a non-lethal surprise.

Soon enough, though, it is time. Time to prepare for the last phase of the entire operation to be put into action as the 1500 Die Hards to beat them all – ‘C' section – get ready to leave their posts, with the first due to depart at 1.30 am.

Their boots covered with ‘socks, moccasins, bits of underpants, sleeves of shirts and all manner of things',
⁵¹
they quickly move from gun to gun and either fire them or set off the mechanism that will make most of them fire in the next 30 minutes, and some as long as 45 minutes hence.

Nervous?

Rather.
In the delicate diary words of Captain Aubrey Wiltshire, the tension of leaving ‘caused excessive secretions and the rear trenches and dugouts were systematically fouled …'
⁵²

And now it really is time. It is an extraordinary thing for many of these Diggers, on this clear, freezing night, to turn their backs on the trenches that so many of their mates have given their lives to defend, turn their backs on their foes to face the calm, moonlit waters of the Aegean far below. But so they do, to the minute.

Those on the far north and far south of the perimeter, in staggered sequence, start following the white powder lines and drain straight down the hill some 1500 yards to the piers, where cutters wait to whisk them away.

In the near distance, there is the exchange of musketry fire here and there along the line, while from further away comes the occasional belch of a blast from Beachy Bill, providing odd comfort – for all is sounding as it usually does at this time of night. And from the far south, at Cape Helles, comes the rolling roar of a fierce exchange of artillery fire, but this, too, is as planned by Brudenell White – their brethren there are trying to shift the Turkish focus to them, away from Anzac Cove.

The mood, however, remains on a knife's edge for the first of these Die Hards. For the first time in eight months, there is a breach in the Anzac line, with nothing between them and 80,000 Turks but a skeleton crew of soldiers softly padding down the slopes. At all times, they are expecting to hear shouts of discovery from behind, followed by the inevitable cries of ‘
Allah! Allah! Allah!
' as the heathen hordes fall upon them.

But to their considerable surprise there is no attack. They are not followed.

Yet.

At least not by the Turks …

‘Tread softly, boys,' one soldier comments as they steal down the hill, ‘and don't let them hear us deserting them.'
⁵³

This genuine worry of what their dead mates would think of what they are doing is a common emotion, most particularly as they pass the graveyards.

‘I am sure,' another soldier would record of his thoughts, ‘that they will turn in their graves and wonder where we are when the Turks begin to walk over them.'
⁵⁴

The Die Hards keep descending as post after post continues to be abandoned, but …

But where the bloody hell is
Fred
? High in the hills west of Chunuk Bair at Durrant's Post, Private Fred Pollack of the 13th Battalion has gone missing. A rough-and-ready bloke from Sydney, Fred had been so exhausted by the sheer tension of the last 48 hours that he was given permission to have a kip in a nearby dugout, just down from the front trenches. But now at 2 am, when it's time to scarper and his mates go to get him, he is not there.
Fred is not there!
He must have meant a different dugout.

In an agony of worry, unable to shout his name as that might alarm the Turks, his mates race from dugout to dugout, but Fred is not to be found. Finally, their Captain orders them to abandon the search. Fall in. Get down. Down to the beaches. They obey orders.
Bloody Fred!

Gazing shoreward, Charles Bean keeps consulting his watch and his copy of the timetable, marking off company after company who he knows are leaving post after post. Intermittent fire comes from the Turkish trenches, and the first of the self-activated Anzac rifles fire back.

As Bean sips a delightful cup of hot cocoa on the bridge with Captain Grace, he knows soon enough that only the centre is manned now. At 2.40 am, Lone Pine, and the spirits of 1000 dead Australian soldiers, is abandoned by the 37 men of 24th Battalion, with Courtney's going five minutes later, followed by Quinn's and Pope's at 2.55 am.

Russell's Top, opposite the Nek, is the last occupied frontline post.

It has been so hard-won, with so many Australian lives lost there that it is hard to leave, but, at exactly 3.14 am, the raggedy remnant of the 20th Battalion, those phantoms of the trenches, turn on their padded heels and walk away …

Quickly and quietly now, lads. In the near distance, shots ring out spasmodically as the self-firing rifles do their work. These last men head towards the beaches, following the instructions that have been so minutely worked out for them. At successive points, they pull rolls of barbed wire across the paths behind them, as well as activating booby traps and lighting fuses. Clouds obscure the moon and the mission becomes so much darker.