Read Ebook: On the Anzac trail: Being extracts from the diary of a New Zealand sapper by Anzac

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JOINING UP 1

OFF 13

LIFE IN EGYPT 28

EAST AND WEST 48

DAY BY DAY 68

"THE BATTLE OF THE STREETS" 98

AT GRIPS 108

THREE WEEKS 143

SITTING TIGHT 174

THE ORDER OF THE PUSH 204

JOINING UP

When the Great War struck Europe I was living with my people in Ireland. I had served in the South African campaign, so, of course, I realised that it was up to me to roll up again and do my bit towards keeping the old rag flying. It's a queer thing, but let a man once go on the war-path and it's all the odds to a strap ring he's off again, full cry, to the sound of the bugle. I reckon it's in the Britisher's blood; he kind of imbibes it along with his mother's milk. When all's said and done we are a fighting breed. A sporting crowd, too, and we tackle war much as we would a game of football--or a big round-up in the Never-Never.

When England took off the gloves to Germany I knew the Colonies wouldn't hang back long. They breed men on the fringes of our Empire. Hence I wasn't surprised when I saw a notice in the papers calling on all New Zealanders, or men who had seen service with the Maorilanders in South Africa, to roll up at the High Commissioner's office in London, to be trained for service with the "Down Under" contingents. Well, I had lived for years in New Zealand, and had fought Boers time and again side by side with New Zealand troops, so I sent in my name right away. In due course I received a polite letter of thanks, and was told to turn up at the office on a certain date, to be examined and attested. I did so, and in company with some two hundred other Colonials was put through the eye-sight, hearing, and other tests, said "ninety-nine" to the doctor's satisfaction, and was duly passed as fit for service.

And now began a period of stress and strenuous life. Morning after morning we repaired to Wandsworth Common, there to acquaint ourselves with the intricacies of "Right turn," "Left turn," "Form fours," etc., under the tutelage of certain drill-sergeants of leathern lungs and bibulous-looking noses. At noon we knocked off for an hour and a half, repairing for refreshment to a house of entertainment which stood fairly "adjacent" to our drill ground. Here we very soon found that our instructors' looks did not belie them. However, we consoled ourselves with the reflection that English beer was cheap as drinks went, and that all things come to an end in this world. The afternoons were repetitions of the mornings, with the added attraction of a largish audience composed principally of nursemaids and infants in arms--and prams. The audience enjoyed our efforts if we, the actors, didn't. It was thirsty work.

During this period we lived in London, "finding" ourselves, but receiving a slight increase of pay in lieu of quarters and rations. It's a gay city is the Rio London. Our pockets suffered, hence most of us, although we growled on principle , were secretly relieved in mind when the order came to transfer to Salisbury Plain, there to camp in tents until such time as huts should be prepared for us.

I think we all enjoyed our stay on the "Plain"--a sad misnomer, by the way, as I never ran across a hillier plain in my life. It was autumn in England, and when we first arrived, except for cold nights the weather was really good--for England! It soon broke, however, and we sampled to the full the joys of sleeping on rain-soaked blankets and ploughing our way through the sticky chalk soil that hereabouts is so strongly in evidence. Hence we weren't sorry to transfer our swags to the more kindly shelter of the huts. In fact, we took possession of them before they were quite ready for occupancy, electing to complete the work ourselves. Most of us were "bush carpenters," so the job was right into our hands.

Our camp lay within two miles of Bulford village, a kind of Sleepy Hollow inhabited by a bovine-looking breed, whose mouths seemed intended for beer-drinking but not talking--which, in a way, was just as well, for when they did make a remark it was all Greek to us. We wakened the place up a bit, however, and the Canadians, who settled down to the tune of over five thousand round about us, nobly seconded our efforts, so I reckon the power of speech was restored to the villagers--after we left! For all I know they may be talking yet. Come to think it over in cold blood, they had cause to.

Those Kanucks were a hefty lot, and blessed with real top-knotch powers of absorption. They were sports, too. We beat them at Rugby football, but they took their change back at soccer. Honours were even, I think, at drill, but they drank our canteen dry every night. You see, there were five thousand of them and only a little over two hundred of us. As they were inclined to talk a bit in their cups we were forced to mount an armed guard in the canteen. The guard's principal duty was to stop scrapping on the premises, and the first sign of "peeling" operations being indulged in was the signal to round up the mob. Once outside, however, they could do as they liked. And they generally did! Discoloured optics and flattened nasal appendages soon ceased to be objects of curiosity down our location. On the whole we got on well with them, and we had many things in common. Poor fellows, they got stuck into it cruelly in France, between German gas and overpowering numbers, but they showed real grit right through--just as we who had been camp-mates with them knew they would.

Our daily work began with the usual before-breakfast breather--a brisk march over the hills, a spell of physical exercise, a pipe-opening "double," and then a free-and-easy tramp back to camp, soap-and-water, and breakfast. The feeds we used to take! I reckon the morning programme alone in the Army would fetch a double "lunger" back from the hearse door--if it didn't kill him outright. Dyspepsia disappeared from our camp, while as for stomachs, we grew to forget that such things formed part of our interior works--except when they reminded us in unmistakable terms that "Nature abhorred a vacuum."

The forenoon was generally spent on the parade ground, carrying out platoon and company drill. To give the reader an idea of the size of our fellows it is only necessary to state that in my platoon there were six men on my right--and I stand over six feet in height. I believe there was only one man in the platoon under five feet ten. They were not "cornstalks" either; they carried weight on top of their legs.

After lunch we usually went for a route-march, a form of training which was highly popular with all. On most days we did about ten miles, but twice a week or so we put in a fifteen to twenty mile stunt, cutting out the pace at a good round bat. Considering the state of the going and the hilly nature of the country, I reckon we'd have given points to most fellows when it came to hitting the wallaby. Once I remember taking part in a platoon marching competition. My platoon won it by a short neck, but we were all out. The distance was just over eleven miles of as tough and dirty going as they make, and when it is borne in mind that we cut it out at an average pace of four-and-a-half miles an hour the reader will guess that we didn't sprout much moss on the trail. We lost a goodish deal of sweat that trip, but the messing contractor didn't look like saying grace over our dinner that night.

"I've had my share of pastime and I've done my share of toil: Life is short--the longest life a span; I care not now to tarry for the corn and for the oil, And the wine that maketh glad the heart of man. For good undone and gifts misspent and resolutions vain 'twere somewhat late to trouble-- This I know, I'd live the same life over if I had to live again, And the chances are I go where most men go."

OFF

We slept in hammocks, and were packed in like sheep in a pen. The tucker wasn't much to write home about; still there was enough of it, and sea air is one of the best sauces I know of--when there isn't too much of it! Our deck space was a bit limited, of course, and after dark it almost vanished, so that a chap was never quite sure whether he was walking on it or on Territorial. Then there were other things which made the going even more treacherous--and we carried broken weather right down through the Bay!

Our lot were quartered in the 'tween decks. At the best of times the atmosphere there couldn't have been much catch, so the reader can imagine what it was like when every inch was taken up by living, breathing humans. I don't like rubbing it in where men who have rolled up to do their bit are concerned, but the habits of those Terrier shipmates of ours were enough to set you thinking. They brought homeliness to a fine art. Spittoons would have been scorned by them as savouring of artificiality. Socks were made to wear, not to be hung up at night and looked at. Feet were intended to be walked on--and soap cost money. As for toothbrushes, well, they were all right for polishing buttons. The spectacle of a big, husky bushman cleaning his teeth night and morning was a thing they couldn't understand at any price, much less appreciate. "If I did that," observed one in my hearing, "I'd have toothache bad"; which seemed to be the general opinion.

After leaving the Bay the weather took a change for the better; the sea calmed down and the atmosphere grew much more balmy. We were a little fleet of some five or six transports, escorted by a couple of small cruisers. Our ships were by no means ocean greyhounds, so we made slow, if steady, progress.

We killed time in the usual way--concerts, boxing, etc. on weekdays, and Church Parade on Sundays. Life on a trooper is about the last thing God made. I've had my share of it, and I don't want any more. I'm not greedy.

On reaching Gibraltar our escort left us, signalling to the transports to follow their own courses. We didn't stop at Gib., but pushed straight on up the Mediterranean. The weather was now quite summer-like, and all on board began to perk up considerably. The sea was a beautiful deep blue, the air had the wine of the South in it, the sun shone brightly, and its setting was glorious.

The weather all through the Mediterranean remained as near perfect as they make it, hence seasickness was a thing of the past. We had the usual boat-drills, fire alarms and so forth. At that time there were no submarines down south, so we travelled with all lights going, both aloft and below. What with sea games, boxing, concerts, and cards the time passed quickly. Likewise our money. Faro and Crown and Anchor were the favourite card games; you could lose your partable cash fairly slickly at either. I have seen more than one pound resting on the turn of a single card. I reckon Colonials are to a man born gamblers, so it wasn't surprising that our available capital should be "floating"--in more ways than one. However, some one introduced a roulette table, and our cash soon floated all one way, the "bank" taking no risks and the "limit" being strictly enforced. Needless to say, the bank was never broken--but I fancy the wheel was.

Being in wireless communication with the shore we got an almost daily smattering of news, which was typed out and read aloud in various parts of the ship. Thus we heard straight away of the German bombardment of the Hartlepools. The Russians, also, seemed to be going strong, but we were never quite sure where, as the wireless operator made a queer fist of the names on the map. Come to think of it, it wasn't surprising, for they seemed to get most all of the alphabet into those Eastern front locations, and they sounded jolly like an assorted mixture of coughs and sneezes. It is easy to account for the illiterate state of the inhabitants of those parts; it would take them a lifetime to learn to spell their own names. So I reckon they just give the whole thing best.

English money, we found, would pass in Alexandria--with profit to the merchant who accepted it. Thus we were enabled to purchase oranges, figs, grapes, tobacco, cigarettes--in fact, 'most anything one had a hankering for. The native hawkers and bumboat men are a picturesque-looking lot of blackguards enough, in a comic opera way; they are to a man top-knotch liars, and invoke the aid of Allah to help them out in their perjuries. They are truly Eastern in their love of bargaining; also in their smell.

We left the same evening by train for Cairo. The Egyptian State Railways are, on the whole, not bad; the trains got over the ground much faster than I had anticipated: about forty miles an hour, I should say. The accommodation was good enough , and the whole outfit appeared to be kept fairly clean. The carriages were hitched on to each other like a series of tramcars, a corridor running down the centre of each, and a couple of overlapping metal plates taking the place of the concertina-like arrangement used in corridor trains in England. If you got tired of sitting inside the cars you could always find an airy perch on the platform outside. To go from one car to another necessitated a climb over the platform guard on to the afore-mentioned metal plates. The officials appeared to be all Egyptians, and I am bound to admit they were as civil and courteous a lot as one could wish to bump up against. They knew their work, too, and didn't grow flies. The fares were reasonable--and soldiers only paid half.

Being a troop train, we travelled third class. On ordinary occasions, however, it is only natives who do so, whites going first or second. There are reasons for this; lively ones, too.

LIFE IN EGYPT

Christmas Day on the edge of the desert, within sight of the Pyramids of Gizeh! The very last place in which I ever thought I should celebrate the festive season. And the outlook was far from "Christmassy": A big wide stretch of yellow sand; a rough, trampled track styled a road; a straggling collection of low, flat-roofed, mud-built native houses that looked as if they had been chucked from aloft and stuck where they happened to pitch; a few vines, date palms, and fig-trees, disputing the right to live in company with some sun-baked nectarines and loquats; a foreground made up of tents, both military and native, wooden shanties, and picketed horses; a background of camp stores, mechanics' shops, and corded firewood, closed in by a line of dusty poplars; in the distance the desert, a vast study in monochrome, the horizon line broken in places by an Arab village and cemetery, a camel train, and the forbidding walls of some Egyptian grandee's harem; overhead a scorching sun shining in a cloudless sky; underfoot the burning sand--and everywhere the subtle aroma of the East, at once repellent and yet attractive, calling with ever-increasing insistence to some nomadic strain that has hitherto lain dormant in our beings--calling with the call of the East....

They are keen on the dollars, are the Egyptians. They swarmed round our camp like a mob of steers round a water-hole in a dry spell; everywhere you ran across their matchboard stores where you could buy 'most anything, from a notebook to a glass of ice cream, made from camel's milk! They had the time of their lives, especially the orange-sellers. I have bought seven jolly good oranges for a half-piastre more than once, but as a rule the price ranged from eight to twelve for a piastre Barrows or baskets aren't in favour with the Gippy fruit-sellers. They wear loose shirts and wide skirts, and by making full use of these garments one man will carry nearly a sackful of oranges--and at the same time help complete the ripening process. It paid to wipe the fruit before eating it.

In Egypt a man's wealth and standing is usually reckoned on the basis of the number of wives he possesses: when our crowd arrived many of the fruit-sellers had only one--or one and an old one--yet inside a week or two the same johnnies were bossing up a tidy little harem of prime goods. So indirectly I guess our pay helped keep polygamy going--and increased the population.

Egypt exists by favour of the Nile. Outside the irrigation belt lies desert and nothing but desert--the Hinterland or Never-Never of Northern Africa. Except for an oasis here and there the eye searches in vain for a trace of greenery. A huge rolling plain of yellow sand mixed with limestone, and carpeted in places with round, seemingly water-worn pebbles, amongst which one finds agates in abundance; here and there broken and serrated rocks outcropping boldly in fantastic shapes from great drifts of storm-driven sand; a brooding loneliness--there you have it.

The climate of Egypt was rather a surprise to us. True, it was winter when we arrived, but we had an idea that such a season existed in name only in the Land of the Pharaohs. The first night, however, made us sit up and think things, it was bitterly cold. Even packed nine in a tent with two blankets and a greatcoat over us we could hardly get to sleep; the tent felt like a refrigerator. Indeed, until we hit on the plan of donning our greatcoats, and pulling on a pair of woollen socks, we were anything but comfortably warm. The days were hot enough, it is true, even in mid-winter, but it was not till towards the end of February that the nights lost their bite. Before we left for Gallipoli, however, we found a single blanket quite all right; as for the days, they were something to remember in your prayers, the sun seemed to get right down clear to your backbone, and stew the stiffening out of your spine.

I saw rain only twice during the three months and a half we put in in Egypt; it wasn't more than an anaemic Scotch mist on both occasions. I reckon the average annual rainfall for those parts would figure out at about point ten noughts and a one. We were told, however, that once in every three years or so, the rain came down good-oh, and washed half the houses away, at the same time cleaning things up generally. But the natives take such things as a matter of course; being highly religious, they observe that Allah wills it so, and set about rebuilding their happy homes. I expect it's really a blessing in disguise, and the overflow from these villages of theirs should certainly fertilise the soil that receives it.

We were told by the local residenters that February was the month noted for sandstorms. Well, we ran across two--or, rather, they ran across us. We didn't like them a little bit. There was only one thing to do--get under cover straight away and stay there till the beggars blew themselves out. You would see them coming, for all the world like a big yellow smoke-cloud stretched right across the desert. Then it was a case of hop into your tent, fasten up the flap, and pray that some one else had driven the pegs home. If even a single one should draw--ugh! it gives me the shivers even now! Once I saw a pole go clean through the top of a tent, the canvas, of course, sliding down like a parachute and "bonneting" the inmates: I reckon it says something for the power of their language when we heard it rising high above the storm.

I have mentioned that we came out from England as an infantry company. Well, naturally we hoped to be attached to some battalion of the N.Z.R.'s . Failing that we reckoned on being split up and spread over the various infantry battalions. So it came rather as a bit of a facer, when we were paraded, told that a Field Company of Engineers and an Army Service Corps Company was required straight away, and given our choice as to which crowd we should care to take on. At first we were inclined to think it was a bit of a bluff; but no, there was no get out about it. Boiled down, it meant service with the Engineers, the A.S.C.--or our discharge and passage back to New Zealand. We didn't like this stunt at all, and at first some of the boys felt like shaking things up some; but, of course, no one held for going home, so they made the best of a bad deal and took their choice. I plumped for the Engineers; I had no hankering after the A.S.C.--or "'Aunty' Sprocket's Cavalry," as it was promptly dubbed, from the name of one of our officers who took on with it.

We had already been through the mill as infantrymen: we had now to start in to train as engineers. It meant hustling some, for the time at our disposal, we were told, didn't amount to much. Well, we had made our choice, and although we felt a bit sore over being rushed, we knew it was up to us to see the thing through to rights. So we got into the collar straight away, consigned the war, the Army, and the New Zealand Government to an even warmer location than Egypt--and put in overtime imbibing engineering knowledge.

We had our work cut out, for we had to learn in the space of a few weeks a course that, in the ordinary run, would have been spread over more than the same number of months. But most of our fellows had done work of a similar kind, so it was fairly well into their hands. I reckon we had just about every trade and occupation that ever was in our crowd, from civil engineers, miners, surveyors, marine and electrical engineers, master mariners and mates, right down to shearers, boundary riders, roustabouts and bushmen generally. Even a few "cockies" were not missing. Hence we made progress like a house on fire, and the officers congratulated themselves on the kind of chaps the Lord had sent them. Indeed, some of the sappers could have turned the commissioned officers down had they chosen when it came to getting about a ticklish job--and I guess the officers knew it. So we simply took the course on the run, as it were, building bridges and blowing up same, digging trenches, fixing up and fortifying positions, and so on.

I think, taking all in all, the lectures were the most popular items on the list. Sometimes we had one every day, generally after dinner--which is about the sleepiest time of the day in a hot country. Snorers weren't liked; they disturbed both lecturer and audience. Apart from the value of the lecture itself one was always sure of a quiet, after-dinner smoke. Yes, I fancy those pow-wows ranked first in popularity.

Then there was bomb making and throwing. There is a lot of excitement to be got out of that racket--especially when you go in for experimental work. Some of our home-made bombs were fearsome contraptions. Most of us had quite a number of narrow shaves, and even the niggers, keen as they were to sell their oranges, wouldn't come within coo-ee of our mob when engaged in bomb-throwing operations. They knew a thing or two, did those niggers.

I almost forgot to mention field geometry. I fancy it about divided favour with bomb-work as an occupation. For one thing, it was more restful and distinctly quieter; for another, it was a jolly sight safer. You could sit down on the sand, when it wasn't too hot, and get right into field geometry without having to keep your ears open for a constantly recurring yell of: "Look out, boys! Here she goes!" or--"Duck, damn you! I've got a whole slab in her!"

Once or twice we took part in field manoeuvres--or Divisional Training, to use the proper term. For our little lot such things usually meant hard graft with the pick and shovel plus a lot of tough marching. The fun seemed to go to the infantry and mounted men--if there was any fun in the game. Sometimes we were out for only a single day, but it mostly worked out at a night and a day. Once we were away from camp for five days and nights. In all cases actual war conditions were observed.

I shan't forget the last Divisional Training we took part in. The idea was that the enemy, an infantry column, was strongly entrenched at some point unknown out in the desert. The attacking party, a division of Australian and New Zealand infantry, was to march out of camp at sunset, duly discover the enemy's position, and deliver a night attack with its full strength. The "enemy," to which my company was attached, left early the same morning, being given a day in which to select the position and fortify it.

Our luck was out when it came to dig. My word that subsoil was hard! In some places, graft as we might, three feet was all we could sink the trenches; we seemed to have struck the bedrock of Egypt. After messing up our tools badly and losing a lot of sweat we gave it best, contenting ourselves with raising the parapet where necessary, so as to afford the requisite cover and shelter to the defenders.

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