Read Ebook: Trooper Bluegum at the Dardanelles Descriptive Narratives of the More Desperate Engagements on the Gallipoli Peninsula by Hogue Oliver

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Ebook has 581 lines and 54347 words, and 12 pages

"Curse our luck!" That was moderate.

But when Trooper Newman said, "To hell with the ship!" most of us felt that he showed a proper appreciation of the position.

For days and days we had ploughed our way across the Indian Ocean, and, as the long leagues in front joined their comrades behind, we felt that we were getting farther and farther from sunny New South Wales. But we were steering straight for Ceylon, and looking forward with keen anticipation to a few days of the picturesque Orient. Some of the impressionable young subalterns were singing "Cingalee, Cingalee, I have lost my heart to a Cingalee." All of us for the last day or two had been taking station on the forecastle-head, shading our eyes and gazing into the misty horizon for the first glimpse of the enchanted isle.

But alas for hopes unfulfilled! Ceylon's spicy breezes, after all, were not to fan our fevered brows, neither were Cingalese to minister to our need with "tea in the morning, tea in the evening, tea in the afternoon." Early in the morning of January 12 we got word that a special squadron of three ships was to be detached from the main fleet, and with Colonel Ryrie in command, steam straight to Aden. So we stood on deck and swore unrestrainedly.

However, there was still corn in Egypt, and we would be the first to get there. Besides, there was quite a chance that there was something doing--a Dervish expedition or an Arab raid might be on, and we would have the laugh at the other chaps if we could have first smack at the unspeakable Turk. So by the time the bugle sounded for the usual inspection, we were all in high good humour again. The three liners swung out from the convoy and, cheering a farewell, were soon steaming westward. One after another the transports dipped down under the horizon, and soon a few grey smudges on the rim of the ocean were all that remained to remind us of the fleet.

We had seen no land since leaving Australia. It seemed such a long time. So when, a couple of days later, somebody shouted "Land-ho," we rushed to the nearest post of advantage. Far away to eastward, like a green pimple on the blue face of the waters, was a tiny little island. In an hour we were abreast of it--Minikoi, surely one of the islands of the blessed; how green it looked after the everlasting blue of the Indian Ocean; from end to end it was covered with cocoa-nut palm. A long line of snow-white surf beat upon the sandy shore. Gleaming in the tropical sun was the lighthouse--a silent sentinel. And in the offing were a score of picturesque canoes, and dhows, with brown hempen sails, managed by gaudily-dressed islanders, who seemed rather annoyed that the transports did not stop and purchase their fruit-offerings.

Passing by the rugged Socotra, we soon sighted the mountainous southern coast of Arabia, and by midday on January 20 we were focussing our binoculars on the picturesque gate of the Indian Ocean, Aden. Curious it is how Britain has secured all the great strategical points of the world--Gibraltar, Suez, Aden, Singapore, Thursday Island, the Cape of Good Hope, and the rest. And one has only to see Aden, with its rocky peaks piercing the skyline, to realize how strong it is, and how futile would be any effort to capture it. For all the defences of Aden seem to be hewn out of solid granite.

Aden is a curious mixture of the Orient and the Occident. In the streets silent Arabs stalk along with camels, and Europeans buzz around in automobiles. One section of the port belongs to the Asiatics; the other is all Western. Arab dhows float across the harbour and steam tugs scurry hither and yon. One section of the town has thatched roofs; the other is all galvanized iron. And one of the natives sang us "Songs of Araby." They yelled harshly for baksheesh all the while. Clad in their own coloured loin cloths, or in discarded khaki tunics from the Force, they were a motley tatterdemalion crowd. Here East and West met--but did not mingle.

Egypt! What memories! What life here! What a quest we have set out upon! What Alexanders are we!

I feel the blood coursing through my veins as I have never felt it before. I live in the present, but the past stands up before me. Dead kings and emperors pass in endless succession. Libyans and Ethiopians pass by, Assyrians and Macedonians, Babylonians and Persians, Romans, Arabs, Turks and Mamelukes--and French and British. Great names are sprinkled over the pages of Egypt, from Menes, the first king, and Rameses the Second, down to the present day. Nebuchadnezzar and Alexander the Great, Constantine, Saladin and Napoleon, Mohammed Ali and Kitchener have all left their mark on the Nile Delta. What history! and here are we--soldiers of King George V, from Australia--treading this historic ground, making new history. Nebuchadnezzar knew us not. Constantine never dreamed--and they used to dream dreams in those days--that from a land he knew not of would one day come armed men marching on the wonderful city he built.

Nor did I, nor did any of us, know it--well, not yet.

I know what it means to see the blush clouds beating the night shades back in the van of a golden morning, but there is a quality of richness about the sunrises of Egypt that Australia lacks. Egypt has the glint of gold, the cloud ridges of rosy red, the blaze of amethyst and opal. So also has the Australian sky. But Australia has no pyramids. The first beams of the sun in this land tip the cones of the age-old pyramids, and soon these drab giants shine like molten copper. Then the sky turns all gold, and the scene is duplicated in the placid bosom of the ancient Nile, which skirts our camp. In the murky distance the desert is shrouded in a misty haze which has the same blue that one sees in the distance on the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, but once the sun is fairly above the horizon, the brilliant transformation scene dissolves itself into a glaring white light that lasts till sunset. Then the morning's glory is reenacted with softer tones and a riot of colour that I can never describe.

Then, as the Pyramids of Gizeh were due west from Ma'adi, we always saw these giant triangles sharply silhouetted against the red horizon. They looked like little toy tents, yet when alongside them their magnitude staggered us.

The day was so hot that helmets were necessary. Some "went down" under the fierce rays of the sun, but there were some with us who said it was not hot at all. They spoke of the sun-baked Western Plains. They spoke of Bourke. They spoke of Northern Queensland. But they wore helmets, nevertheless.

Yet was Ma'adi, for all its heat, a joy to the senses. If we had the everlasting desert wilderness on one side, we also had the oasis of Ma'adi on the other. The irrigationist has caused the desert hereabout to blossom as the rose, and Ma'adi is like an English village, with gracious gardens and green, luscious fields and rippling canals.

I have spoken of the blue of the desert haze that is like that of the Blue Mountains. And here and there one finds other touches of old Australia. I went out one day to Sir Alexander Baird's beautiful mansion near Zeitoun, and there I saw some fine old gums and wattles; and it just felt like home.

And the people, how kind they all were! Even the shopkeepers did all they could to make us feel at home. "Special Australian Shop," "Australian Soldiers' Rendezvous"--signs like these met us at every turn. Especially grateful did we feel for the warning one Cairo shopkeeper gave us: "Don't go elsewhere to be cheated, Australians. Come here!" Nor shall we ever forget the laborious days and nights which that shopkeeper who put out the sign must have spent in mastering our language--"English and French spoken; Australian understood."

Truth to tell, the Australian soldiers were as a shower of gold to the thirsty Cairo traders. They all loved the Australians. We scattered money far and wide--till we had none left. We threw piastres to the winds--thinking nothing of them, they were such little coins--till we had none left. From morning till night we distributed largess. It was baksheesh everywhere and all the time. Whichever way we turned we found somebody dangling something in front of our eyes--ready to sacrifice it for our sake. Even Trooper Newman, who previously had expressed his best wishes to the ship, comes up to me with a gaudy handkerchief he has just bought for ten piastres. It has King George in one corner, Kitchener in another, French in another, Jellicoe in another, and generals and admirals and dukes and earls all round it. "It may be the only chance I'll get," says he, "of poking my nose into high society."

THE FIRST FIGHT

ACROSS FORTY CENTURIES--EGYPTIAN MAGIC--A SCARAB SELLER--THE ENEMY REPULSED--THE UBIQUITOUS GERMAN SPY--SPREADING DISAFFECTION--ATTACKS ON KANTARA, TOUSSOUM, ISMAILIA AND SERAPEUM--FIRST BRUSH WITH THE ENEMY.

For there is something about these living ones that brings the dead to life. Sometimes when I look into their eyes I seem to see a strange, mysterious light in them--a light that never was on sea or land. It is then that I think of the things these people have seen in the forty centuries of which Napoleon spoke. I don't believe in magic, but I have seen strange things--things that make me remember that the magicians of Pharaoh were able to turn their rods into serpents!

A dragoman wanted to sell me some scarabs.

"You like fine scarab?"

"No scab here," said I, "all good Unionists."

"Not scab. Scarab--good scarab."

"Oh!"

"Beautiful scarab. Very precious."

"Ah!"

"I buy them for English officer; beautiful scarab. Now he go to Suez Canal. I sell cheap."

"Very cheap?"

"Yes, very cheap. Sell now, lose plenty money, sir."

"How much?"

"Five pounds."

"Five pounds a dozen!"

"No, no, no! Five pounds for one beautiful scarab."

"Ha ha!"

"Too old. Show me a new one."

"You no understand. Very old, very valuable, out of tombs in pyramid."

"Any more there?"

"No more--all gone."

"Oh, well I oughtn't to take them from you."

"Yes, you take. I sell you for five pounds."

"Not me."

"Try again."

"Three pounds ten."

"Once more."

"Two pounds ten. Finish."

When I was leaving the Museum one afternoon a dragoman shuffled up to me in a mysterious kind of way and thrust an antiquated statuette into my hand. "Five shillings," he whispered hoarsely. He wanted me to think it genuine, and, I suppose, stolen. I examined it with the concentrated gaze of a connoisseur in Egyptology, scratched it with my knife, and then exclaimed, "Bah, rubbish! One piastre." And the old sinner cried, "Yes, yes," and put his hand out eagerly for the money.

And all this time we were "training for the front." We did not know when we were likely to leave for the front, nor what front it would be, but already some of the Australians and New Zealanders had been in a fight. That was before we came. Egypt had been "invaded"; there had been a fight at El Kantara, some prisoners had been taken, and then the invaders turned their heads north and eastward, folding their tents, like the Arabs they are, and silently stealing away. The Great Invasion of which Kaiser Wilhelm had dreamed for months had simply petered out.

I am no historian--I write only of the little things I care about--but I would be no Australian if I failed to mention this invasion which some of the Australians helped to stamp out. It was almost inconceivable that the "thorough-going, methodical" Germans could have started an army of 75,000 men across the desert, sent only 25,000 of them into action, and then decamped. But that is what happened.

Then the Australians arrived.

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