Baylebridge - An Anzac Muster: The Captain's Tale
Chapter One of Baylebridge's 'An Anzac Muster' - Lone Pine: The Captain's Tale
Note: Baylebridge was in England when the war broke out, and it was thus difficult to enlist in the Australian Armed Forces. Nevertheless, it is suspected that he was employed by the secret service of the British Government – he was in Egypt, its base of operations, during the Gallipoli Campaign in 1915, and he was in contact with troops there. It is possible, and even likely, that although not serving as a soldier, he was present at the Gallipoli Peninsula. An Anzac Muster was probably written about 1920, and was first printed, in England, in 1921 or 1922. It was one of the first major literary treatments, in any language, of the First World War, and quickly gained a reputation as one of the greatest works of Australian literature. Since then, however, this book, as well as his other poetic and philosophical works, have faded from public consciousness. The story’s structure is like that of The Canterbury Tales – a group of story-tellers each relate their tale, and the characters, for the most part, go unnamed. Some of the ‘avant-garde’ considered his style ‘mannered’; this was done to wed his work and its subject to the great traditions of English prose – the ‘diggers’ not as larrikins, or louts, but as great fighting men, like the many who went before them.
His work has long been out of print and is expensive or inaccessible - I have begun transcribing some of it. You can read some of his essays here: New Nationalism and Morals , and Eugenics.
The prologue to the present work can be found here.
Chapter One: Lone PineTHE CAPTAIN’S TALE
TURNING to the Captain, who had been considering what subject it would be fit to begin with, the Colonel, with a reassuring smile, asked him to lead off; and the Captain, who had now made his choice, thus began.
OF ALL THOSE BATTLES fought by our troops at Anzac, none, it may well be, was more fierce, and few were more bloody, than that waged at Lone Pine. This battle was the best work. Not only did our bayonets bring it through to a right end, but such things they did here as put the fashion of their blood for ever past doubt. Shut too long into their trenches, with little room to pass beyond them, be it this way or that, and taking death, night and day, from the shells the Turks hurled into their lines, they could ill bear the holding back before that business. They had great joy to get this job done.
This Lone Pine stood right over against the centre of our line. It was high land, and lay south from the Jolly. So strong was the Turk’s position there, both in defence works and in men, that a soldier, skilled in his trade, would have held it such as to be taken hardly at all. Their front trenches they had roofed in with heavy logs; and these logs they had covered up with earth. Shells, from our own guns as from our ships, could find little way there. Machine guns were let into this, their front line. Room, too, the Turks had made there for snipers, and for those who threw bombs out. And outside this line, and in front of all these traps for us, lay an ugly tangle of barbed wire. As for the open land further out, it was swept clean by rifle fire from both ends – from a dozen positions north, and south from the Pine Ridge. Turkish guns too, had the range of this country well-nigh to a hair.
On the sixth day of August, some hours after noon, a great shell fire, both from our ships behind us and our batteries on land, was poured into the wire and the foe’s back trenches at Lone Pine. These back trenches were not covered up. This shell fire lasted for some time, and did much hurt in them: great numbers of the Turks had been there got together to defend that position; and those back trenches were choked up with dead men and wounded. This we found out to be so later on. While this was going on, too, the Turkish gunners, shooting as often as they might, gave back something of what they got; so that, what with the roaring of guns, and the screeching of that flying shell, you may well think there was little peace then in Anzac.
All at once our guns gave over. The charge was blown. Like hounds loosed from a leash, off raced our men: with bayonets fixed, up and over the parapet they leapt, and charged. Well might that have stirred the blood up in any man! There raced these men, spat hard upon by fire from every loophole, cut down by machine guns, torn through by a rain of shrapnel, and not one who could but held on. Thick they fell here, thick there; but they cared not. Believe me, it was no hard thing later to see what way they had gone by: heavy-sown it was with men dead. Thinned out, but with Australian hearts yet, those who could swept on, pushed through the twisted wire, and swarmed at last up the parapet of the Turks.
Once up and on to that parapet, did these Australians wait? Not so! They tore up the roof from those front trenches; they leapt down into a darkness ripe with death. Then, then, was there bloody work! In and home went their steel; it had a thirst in it, I warrant, for the blood of those Turks. Give they did then like the men they were, ay, and they took then too – now thrusting, now holding off, now twisting, now turning, now wrenching out their bayonets from this crush of flesh to bury them in that, now dropping down with their limbs shattered, with their bowels slit and torn out by the foe. Along through those trenches, dark and very stinking, men fought hand against hand. Many, with clubbed rifle, spilt out the brains of others, trodden soon to mud on the floor there. Bombs, knives, whatever came next to hand, both foe and friend into use enough. The bombs, charged in high style, and bursting in little room, often did much hurt: many a press of tough men they tore up, limb away from limb. This made a right sickening mess. The Turks, here now, and now there, got together in knots that they might the better hold out; but the steel of Australia ploughed always a stayless passage through those trenches. Could they stop that? They could not. Little then did it help those Turks to know every corner, each turn and short cut, of that place; little then did their valour help them. As the two sides fought on in the heat and choking stench of that darkness, the dead lay think under foot, here two-deep, three-deep there, and there four-deep.
While all this was doing, I will now show what fell out elsewhere. You have heard how these men of Australia, that tore the roof up and off those trenches, got their part done. There were others too; they took those Turks in the rear. These men had charged on over the roof told of, and struck out for the trenches behind. Coming up to these trenches – filled now with the death our guns had dealt – they pushed in, and sealed up behind them the passages that linked the back with the front lines there, so that the Turks could by no manner of means get out. And thus, taking the foe both in the front and upon the rear, our steel drove them in and back upon themselves, and slew them off thick, like sheep in some accurst shambles. Ay, and too many of our own men were slain there! Where friend nor foe escaped, the ways were choked all up with dead men and dying. So thick lay the dead, we later piled them to the height of a tall man, and had, moreover to prop them up behind logs, and hold them up out of the trench with ropes, so that one side of this might be kept clear for passage. Never, surely, was there battle, fought with hand striking against hand, more fierce!
Our men, at last, got most of those Turks, yet alive and stirring, driven up out of the ground. Heavily then did we fall upon them. What, then, were the foe but dead men? Some we slew fighting; some, making off as they best might through the open, we caught with out machine guns; some, again, we pushed up into saps – right glad were they then to give over.
As for the counter attacks, the Turks made many, and in fine style; but, though they cost us much in good men, they cost the foe more, and were but lost labour.
Three days and three nights, yes, and more than that, did this battle last. Apart from the loss upon our side – a hard loss – we buried above a thousand slain of those Turks; and that was no light matter. As for the men who fought there, all infantry, they were these – men of the First Brigade in the attack; in the relief and making good, men of the Second Brigade.