Fly Away Home; Cheeky Action; Pilgrimage; One Sunday Morning; 

FLY AWAY HOME

The sea rustled softly over the rocks at the foot of the hill; the pigeons in the loft strutted up and down and picked grain from the floor. They made the throaty, chuckling sound that pigeons make and he listened to them and smiled.

Eddie Bignell walked past the loft and clapped his hands at the birds. The man on the stool said quickly, "Don't do that. It frightens them."

"Won't hurt them. Some of 'em might have hiccups." Eddie turned around. "What you doing up here anyway, Sam?"

"Sweating on a couple of pigeons. They should be in any old time."

"You're always waiting for pigeons," Eddie told him." Why don't you give it a go? They know where to come home to."

"Yeah, I know, but I like to be here when they come in. They would think something was wrong if they came back and I wasn't around to roll out the red carpet."

"Where they coming from?"

"Wide Bay."

"How'd they get up there?"

Sam looked at his watch, then up at the sky. "I sent them up this morning on the two barges that went out at seven. They should have got to Wide Bay about four o'clock this afternoon."

"And do they send them straight back? "

"That's night."

"Well, why do you send them up there? Just for the exercise?"

"No." Sam was settling down to the conversation. So long as he was talking pigeons he was happy. As long as somebody would listen to him he would talk pigeons all day. "They go up in case the barges run into trouble," he said. "If they get jumped by Jap planes or go on to the reef or something they send the pigeons back with their bearing, then the Navy launches know where to pick them up."

Sam waited for Eddie to nod, then he hurried on, "And if they get to their destination all right, which in this case is Wide Bay, they send a pigeon back from each barge and let us know everything is O.K."

"How many birds do they take up with them?"

"Two to a barge"

"That means you got two coming in."

"That's right".

"And what about the two they don't send back , what happens to them?"

"They bring them back on the barges on the return trip. Then they've still got contact if they run into trouble coming back."

"Very sound. Very sound," Eddie said knowingly. "What's the name of the two birds you got coming in?"

"Ella D B and Marion."

"Two lady birds." Yeah!'

"'Lady bird, lady bird, fly away home.' See you later Sam," and Eddie walked off down the track.

When he had gone Sam uncrossed his legs and leaned back so he could watch the sky. He always liked to be watching when they came soaring in over the water and circled the loft in a fast low turn. It was darkening where the clouds met the water and the water was losing its greeny look. In the loft the chuckling and scraping of feet gradually died away as the pigeons settled down with the darkness.

Sam sat and waited. He figured out the flying time. If the birds left Wide Bay at four o'clock they should not be later than seven thirty. Ella D B would probably be first in because she was much the faster, but then they would probably fly as a pair and come in together. Night dropped down.

At eight o'clock he left the stool and walked up and down in front of the loft. Some of the pigeons stirred in the cages, and he walked over to the wire and looked through. He lit a cigarette and sat down on the stool again.

He tried to work it out again. There was no wind at Jacquinot, but maybe they had run into a bit of a blow up the coast. Then there were always the hawks. They could have been chased off course by hawks and that would hold them up. Only last week, one of the pigeons, Munga, flew in from Open Bay with his chest torn all the way down to legs. He must have run into one of the hawks that hunted over the peninsula, but he got back and he brought his message with him. He was up in the loft now with seventeen stitches in his chest. "Ah," Sam thought. Somebody ought to shoot all those hawks."

At nine o'clock the Signals officer came up the hill and asked him if the birds were in. He was surprised when Sam told him there was no sign of them. "Don't know what could have happened unless they ran into hawks," he said. "Should have been in an hour and a half ago."

"Maybe the barges were late into Wide Bay," the officer said.

"Or they mightn't have let them go as soon as they got in there," Sam reassured himself.

"Or maybe they lost their sense of direction and flew to Rabaul." The officer laughed at his own joke, but Sam didn't even smile.

He said, "Pigeons never lose their sense of direction."

At ten o'clock he left the stool and sat on the ground by the cages, his back rested against the wire. It was nice there. He could smell the pigeony smell and hear the shuffling and stirring of the sleeping birds. He wondered whether they were dreaming; soon he himself was asleep.

In his sleep his memory skipped and took him back to the ship where he sat on the deck with his pigeons and sailed again for New Britain. "Sam the Pigeonaire" they called him then. They didn't call him a Pigeonaire now because he had shown them what a big job pigeons could do.

He woke and looked at his watch. It was twenty to twelve. He shone his torch around the loft, but the landing board was bare.

"I must have been asleep for a couple of hours," he said softly to himself; then he laughed as he remembered the dream.

The days were nice with the sun and the gentle rocking of the boat, but when the night came it usually brought the rain. Once it had poured from evening until dawn and he had covered the cages with his ground sheet and slept on the deck in his clothes. The next day it drizzled rain and he couldn't get his clothes dry.

Even then one of the birds had caught cold and he had sat up with her all the following night. It had been Marion and she almost died. He couldn't help having a special feeling for her; now she was out somewhere up the coast and it was the middle of the night.

"It's a worrying game, pigeons," Sam thought, "You never know when they're coming in and when they're a bundle of feathers floating out on the sea." It was especially hard on someone who felt about pigeons as Sam did.

So he sat there and worried about the birds and he was still worrying when he dropped off to sleep again. But this time he didn't dream. He slept soundly, propped up against the cage wire until the chill of the dawn crept through his shirt and trousers and goose-pimpled his flesh.

It was almost half-past four when he woke and the silver patch that had been the moon was no longer in the sky.

The pigeons were waking. They shuffled and beat their wings and shook their heads from side to side. He rose and watched them as they began to move up and down the cage,

-then he turned and walked down the track to the Signals office. As he picked his way among the stones he wondered about Marion. Somehow she was different from the other birds. Maybe it was because it had taken so much to save her life; he knew that if it wasn't for him she wouldn't be flying down from Wide Bay now. "Or is she flying down?" he wondered. "That's the point. Where is she and where is Ella D B?" Sam shook his head.

He walked through the doorway of the lighted hut and over to the man who sat behind the switchboard reading a book. As Sam walked over to him he looked up, squinted against the light and said, "What the hell are you doing down here?"

"I fell asleep," Sam told him. "I was up at the loft waiting for a couple of birds and I fell asleep."

"You mean to say you been up there all night? "

"Yeah."

"Waiting for pigeons?"

"No. I fell asleep. I only waited until about twelve o'clock then I must have dozed off."

"What are you going to do now?" the man at the switchboard asked him. "You going to get some sleep?"

"What's the use. I may as well hang around until breakfast then go back up the loft again."

"I'd hate to see you if one of your pigeons was going to have a baby."

"Pigeons don't have babies. Any mug knows that".

"Well, having an egg. It's the same thing only one comes wrapped up."

"You're crazy."

"Who ain't?"

Sam yawned and smoke drifted out of his mouth in tiny clouds. He stroked the back of his neck and scratched his head. He was thinking. Eventually he said, "Any of our barges ever run into trouble around Wide Bay? "

"Some of 'em do. Six eighty four shot down a Zero just before we came up here. Don't anyone ever tell you what goes on?"

"Nobody ever told me about a Zero."

"You want to come down from that pigeon loft once in a while. It's getting tough when you take to sleeping with them." The thin man nestled his chin in his hands again and went on reading his book. Sam sat and stroked a finger backwards and forwards over his bottom lip.

He went down before breakfast and washed. Some of the boys asked him where he had been all night. He didn't answer them. It wasn't because he didn't like talking, but he didn't hear most of the questions. He was thinking about Marion and Ella D B and wondering what could have happened to them. As he washed he imagined them being jumped and dropping lifeless into the sea. He wasn't so worried about Ella D B, it was Marion who kept jumping back into his mind. After breakfast he took a packet of cigarettes from his haversack and went back to the pigeon loft.

The birds were all strutting up and down the wire, watching for Sam to come walking up the track with their breakfast. They gathered against the wire in a group, pushing and shuffling one another when he walked past to the feed tin. The chuckling grew chucklier and Sam said, "Righto, righto. You'll get it all in good time," but he was smiling as he scooped the seed into the loft feed tins and hung them back on the inside of the wire.

He changed the water and counted the birds and sat down on the stool and started to figure it out. He figured that if Ella D B and Marion were flying back at night it was very improbable that hawks would get both of them. And it didn't matter if it was light or dark,

they could always find their way home. It must be something else. Last reports from the Navy had given fair weather. The barges wouldn't be lost; even if they were they would have released a couple of birds and they would be back in. Whichever way Sam figured it he got no answer and it worried him.

"What's this I hear about your birds not coming in? "

The Signals captain had come from around the loft and Sam told him, "That's right, sir. They were due in at seven last night, but there hasn't been a sign of them."

"How many did you send up?"

"Four. Two to each barge."

"Funny thing. I wonder what's gummed up the works."

"I wish I knew," Sam said.

"You going to stick around here?"

"Yes, sir. I'll stop in case they come in hurt."

The officer left and Sam sat down again and started to hum to himself. He was still sitting there at lunchtime, humming to himself, lighting cigarettes and smoking them half way down, getting off the stool every now and then to walk around the loft, worrying, watching his watch and watching the sky. The morning dragged slowly.

Then at three o'clock he saw her dip down from the clouds, circle the loft and wing away in a turn over the coconut plantation. It was Ella D B. He recognized her the first time she went over the loft. The blue under the wings and the sizzling speed.

She settled on to the landing board and walked up and down, her head held high. Her breast was puffed out, the feathers ruffled, and around her left leg, she carried a message tube. Sam took her down and stroked her back gently, then he took the tube from her leg and unfolded the rice paper.

The message was scrawled in pencil in small, untidy handwriting. He shouldn't have read it, but he did and as he read he whistled through his teeth and looked from the note to Ella D B.

"There's no doubt about you," he said. "You're a lady and a half," and he hurried down the hill. Halfway to the Signals office he started running and when he stood in front of the captain he was excited and out of breath. He handed the message over and watched the officer read.

"Well of all the flaming lunatics," and the officer turned the message over. "Did you read it?" he asked Sam.

"Not all of it sir. Just the part about the barges missing Wide Bay in the blow and going on towards Rabaul."

The officer spread the message out on the table. "Well, it says one barge is on the rocks drawing fire from the shore and the other is standing by." He looked up and back at the note. "And it goes on to say they released one pigeon at a time as soon as they ran into trouble. The bird that brought this message in was the last they let go."

"I wonder where the other three are?" Sam was frowning.

"The barges were drawing fire from the shore," the officer told him.

Sam walked back up the hill slowly. He sat on the loft and watched the Navy launches weave white lines down the bay and turn at the headland and fall into line astern and disappear. They could make eighteen knots and would be at the barges by nightfall; they would pick up the crew from the grounded flat bottom and try to tow it from the rocks. There would be a certain amount of lead flying around and they would cover the other barge back into Wide Bay and that would be that. They had released four pigeons: Marion, the Drake, Mickey Mouse and Ella D B, and only one came in. She had done a hundred and fifty miles.

So he sat there and waited until nightfall, but there was no sign of the others. Ella D B swanked up and down the cage with her head on the side and he looked at her and thought, "She could do another hundred and fifty. What a lady."

When the silver patch wormed its way up out of the sea Sam rolled his sleeves down and walked back along , the track to his tent. He was tired and his legs felt stiff and his stomach empty.

He remembered what Eddie had said the day before, "Lady bird, lady bird, fly away home,"' and he rolled on to his bunk and put his hands behind his head. He was worn out.

LEE ROBINSON, Second A.I.F.

A CHEEKY ACTION AT ENDAU BAY

the harbour and on fire, the two Jap destroyers opened fire on the smoke float. The third, unaware of this, went in close to investigate. It is easy to imagine that the Nip gunners on the first two destroyers thought their belief in another Allied ship justified when they saw a ship's outlines hazily through the smoke screen. They must have, for they redoubled their fire -to such good effect that their target, one of His Imperial Japanese Majesty's own destroyers, just managed to reach the beach before she sank, stem first!

This spirited engagement of the Japs left Vampire a free hand. There was one thing only barring their chances of a getaway.

The Captain leaned over the bridge to his for'ard guns.

"'A' and 'B' guns. Take the searchlight!"

The blackened barrels trained round from their last target till they bore full on that circle of incandescent light. The first salvo scored a direct hit. There was a flash of yellow flame, the beam jerked abruptly up into the sky, then went out. Darkness rushed in over the harbour.

Vampire crashed out into the open sea, turned hard-a-starb'd and headed south with every ounce of steam she could raise. In every heart was a thankful prayer.

At dawn she closed up at action stations, all eyes straining astern. The grey light spread gradually over the sea, revealing the coast to starb'd, then, far astern, the unbroken rim of the horizon. On all the immensity of ocean nothing stirred. They grinned, one at the other, these sweaty, grimy men, then with a last look up at the sky and still only half-believing they were safe, went below to breakfast.

Some days later, in Singapore, they met survivors from Thanet. When all was over a Jap destroyer had gone alongside her motorboat and taken prisoner the men therein. With typical initiative a score of men, unnoticed in the dark on rafts and floats, reasoning that where the Jap had looked once he wouldn't look again, clambered into the empty boat.

Paddling with pieces of board ripped from the woodwork, they cleared the harbour mouth and headed for home - miles away.

With sails improvised from the canvas coverings of life-jackets and laboriously stitched together, the boat finally made a green-clad island down the coast, and from there, commandeering a Malayan junk, the party set sail for Singapore, arriving safely four days later.

J. E. MACDONNELL, R.A.N.

A TALE OF THE TERRITORY

E. M. SHAW, A.W.A.S.

PILGRIMAGE

The driver turned a hooked nose and a mouthful of flashing white teeth. "Not fast? Go slow, mister?"

"Yeah. Go slow."

The taxi abruptly slowed down and they continued at a more decorous pace, the driver's fingers beating an impatient tattoo on the wheel.

"IS it much farther?" she said.

He grinned back. "You know I'm not interested in dogs." He looked ahead, leaning forward in the seat. "We should be coming to the olive grove where we were camped, pretty soon. I'm not sure of it, this all looks alike along here, but it was somewhere just here.... Slow down a bit, George.... Yeah, that's it, I think. We used to drive in there and the camp was down in the olive groves."

She leaned forward, then looked back as they went past. "It doesn't look like it did in the photos, does it? I mean, it looks just like all the other groves, doesn't it?"

He sat back. "Yeah, I suppose it does. Maybe that wasn't it, after all. I don't know. It's longer than I thought. Six years now. Six years this month since we crossed the border and the campaign started. Time gets around."

She smiled ruefully. "I was only twenty five then. I wasn't battling the thirties."

"You old hag, you."

Then they had left the olive groves behind and the sea was on their right, running smooth and shining out to the far sky. Offshore, a rust-brown sail moved like a slow beetle beneath the bright sun and on the sandy waste between the road and the water a few ragged Palms moved in the breeze.

"Was the weather really as glorious as this all the time the fighting was going on?"

"Just like this," he said. "We used to come down sometimes, if we were close enough, and swim during our relief periods. You could lie in the water there and see the shells bursting up in the mountains."

"You mustn't have felt very much like going back."

"That's it, you did. Or I did. I was always more scared when I was out than when I was in. You got too much time for thinking-"

They passed the radio station and then they were coming into Damour. They went down through the main street with the houses crowding in on them, the driver continually pressing the horn to clear his high-handed way through the crowd, and suddenly memory was very sharp and near: The convoy was going through here at night., the vehicles ten yards apart and moving slowly, the town as quiet as a graveyard about them and reeking with the heavy stench of death. He sniffed deeply now but all he got was the smell of all Middle East shopping streets.

"I told you about this place. This was where we had the last big scrap. They were really finished after this town fell."

"Was this where they had the dogs to warn them if you tried to cross the river?"

"Yeah. Your memory's as good as mine."

She smiled. "I told you: this is a return visit for me, too."

He waved his hands. "All these banana plantations were honeycombed with machine-gun nests. We had to just about flatten the earth around here with our guns. I remember that barrage. It happened at night. When the sun came up you couldn't see this area here for dust and smoke."

"You told me about that, too. You said something about the morning mist of war."

He grinned. "That was the literary streak in me coming out."

They crossed the river and the road curved round to the right then they were below the ridge of Es Sadiyatt.

"This is it, George. Turn up here to the left."

The taxi bumped up the rocky road and now he began to feel nervous, almost afraid: he was coming back to familiar ground and yet he was waiting for the unexpected.

"This'll do, George. Stop here."

The taxi pulled up and they got out. The driver looked at them, puzzled. "Here? You want something here, mister?"

"Yeah," Sam said, and then unaccountably felt he had to offer an explanation. "We're looking for something."

He took her arm and they walked up the road and turned off on to a path among the rocks. They had to scramble a couple of times, he holding her hand and pulling her after him. Then they were on top of the ridge, and the tree, with the low broken stone wall beneath it, was just ahead of them.

"There it is," he said, and they walked across.

"Oh look! " she said. "You can still see the initials".

They stepped close to the tree walking in under the gnarled branches. The initials were there, four sets of them in a column, like figures to be added up.

She said: "E.N. That's Ted Neal. S.M. That's you. J.B. That's Joe Barry. And K.S. Who's that?"

"That's Simmo. Ken Simmons. He was the one who was killed. I didn't tell you about that in my letters."

She stood beside the wall with her hands resting on it, looking north toward Damour and beyond that to the southern point of the Bay of St George.

"So you've made it at last," she said.

He stood beside her. "Yeah. This is it. This is where I got my first taste of war. July the second, nineteen forty one."

He looked to the right, up through the Damour gorge to the high brown mountains ragged against the clear sky, recognizing the peaks but not remembering the names. He picked them out, remembering how he had stared at them every day for a week, trying to pick up the Vichy gun-flashes but seeing nothing but the bare heat-shimmering hills; remembering how in the night you could see the gun-flashes easily, too frighteningly easily, but then you couldn't see the mountains. He looked over toward the razorback ridge on the other side of the river, beyond the town, and another memory came back.

"That's the ridge where the convent was. You can't see it from here, but you remember I used to tell you how we could hear the bell tolling at Angelus time, just as if there was no war on at all."

"It must have been a bit uncanny."

"It was, especially if it came in a lull between barrages. And yet in a way it was comforting. Simmo found it that way. He was a Catholic and every time he heard it he used to bless himself. He said it reminded him of what he was fighting for."

"I think I would've liked to meet Simmo."

"You'd have liked him."

He continued looking down toward the town, at the quiet peacefulness of it, the white buildings clear against the green of the banana plantations, and the traffic moving on the road into it, and felt again that something was missing.

He turned back to the tree. E.N. Ted was back at his old )ob, a clerk in the Lands Department, stuck there for the rest of his life, unless there was another war. J.B. Joe had spent all his time over here talking of his wife and what they were going to do when the war was over. When the war was over she had left him and the last he'd heard of Joe he was somewhere up in Queensland, working in the canefields. K.S. Simmo had been just a kid, with everything before him, but everything had suddenly become the past two days after they had come up here when the ricochetting shrapnel went right through him.

And S.M. That was himself. The sentimentalist, the man who'd wanted to come back to the past, the old soldier to the war returning.

"What are you thinking about?" she said.

He turned and looked at her and suddenly everything about him seemed to become remarkably clear. He saw a bare rocky hillside, glary in the bright sun, a broken stone wall such as you'd see anywhere, a gnarled old tree on which were hacked some initials, initials that meant nothing because he didn't need them to remember the men they identified. He looked across to Damour and saw -a quiet Syrian town and when he looked toward the mountains he knew he'd been waiting to hear the faraway boom of a gun. He'd remembered this place with the same memory that recalled fear and danger and death and now in peace there was nothing to it, nothing but the commonplace.

"You haven't shown me anything yet," she said. "Where the enemy was and where anything interesting happened. Don't tell me you've forgotten? "

"No," he said. "I haven't forgotten. I remember it all only too clearly."

She looked at him for a moment, then with the intuitive understanding for which he loved her she said: "Come on, Sam. Let's go back. The glare up here is hurting my eyes."

They scrambled down the path to the road and walked down to the taxi. They had just opened the door when they heard the faint distant tolling of the bell.

"Listen!" she said. "There it is. Oh, it's just like I said, even now. Uncanny. Sort of lonely and hollow and empty. Can't you hear it?"

"Yeah," he said. "It is like that."

They got into the car and he closed the door, shutting out the sound of the bell. The driver turned round in his seat.

"You find it, mister? You find what you look for? "

Sam stared at the cheerful inquisitive face then he shook his head.

"No," he said quietly. "No, it wasn't there."

 JON CLEARY, Second A.I.F.

ONE SUNDAY MORNING

Before and around them as they climbed rose a broken, bitter world, an upflung mass of peaks and deeps wrapped in dark shadows and grim uncertainty. As they mounted and killed, and were killed, the sheer physical effort of movement alone had the wind whistling in their throats. Where in hell are we? What Christ-forsaken place is this?

But none could answer, none waited for any answer as they split and advanced, vanishing up dim ridges and into blind gullies that hissed with death. Down sheer slopes their dead began to plunge; men shot on the crests would roll grotesquely like tumbleweeds in a wind until at last they crashed and were forever still. Others let out the red stream of their lives under the pungent wild thyme that ever afterwards made its sickly scent synonymous with slaughter. But on and up and in they went, scattered, out of touch, but of high courage and inflexible determination, a brigade sworn to fight it out to the last man, men who knew other men behind them were depending on them. That was enough to know. The 3rd Brigade went in.

The first rattling snarl of battle, then the thin but unmistakable Australian cheers came over the sea to warships and transports, and as the 2nd Brigade went down the steel sides they saw on the pale skyline far inland the moving dots that were the men of the 3rd. Rising steadily in volume was the sound of cracking rifles and chattering machine guns. The men of the 1st Brigade and of New Zealand, standing in their platoons near the rope ladders of their transports, waited with jest and drawled comment for the destroyers to come alongside. 

How young they were, how splendid this hand-picked, hard trained army of Anzacs. Quietly, as they waited, everything was checked and checked again: ammunition, field-dressings, water, rations, entrenching tools, maps, all were examined.  Through the cut away sides of the ships the ridges of Gallipoli could be seen coming closer as the ships nosed in. Here and there were the black and silver bursts of Turkish H.E. and shrapnel heralding the coming hurricane that soon was to lash the centre 400 Plateau and the bloody ridges leading up to Baby 700, that grim, commanding hill of death on the left flank, over which the men of the 3rd had already thrust.

All now could see the setting for the stark drama of Anzac, all knew that the day would be deadly, that many would never again see the bright stars in the night sky. Many remembered the Corps Commander as he made his last address to a battalion massed on a troopship deck, remembered the tears in his eyes as he looked down upon them, remembered his last words before the landing:

"and God be with you all".

How the thoughts of these erect young men must have ranged while they stood waiting for their hour, must have sped over the curve of the earth to their homes in the southlands. It was Sunday morning. Ever so far away their loved ones would even now be listening to the sweet chime of church bells, following the leafy paths of fragrant bush tracks, walking in the peaceful southern sunshine beside mountain, river, lake and seashore, watching perchance the green rollers curl in to break in sparkling white froth on long, golden beaches, wondering what their men of the Anzac Corps-brothers, husbands, fathers, sweethearts, sons-would be doing on this tranquil Sunday morning. What visions of their people rose before those armed, waiting men ?  What thoughts gave that light to their eyes, that twist to their lips?

But of these things they did not speak. War gives to youth an armour of hardness behind which their souls are hidden and things dear to their hearts are concealed from others. War is a time of blasphemy and blood, of implacable purpose, of men prepared to die, and nerve and brain and sinew are all drawn taut like strands in a steel cable to take the coming strain and shock of death and wounds, to enable a man to laugh as the light leaves his eyes, to allow his lips to smile even as they stiffen.

Why were they here on this Sunday morning? Was it for the six shillings a day they received? No. Men do not chance their entrails being blown on a bush for that reward. Adventure? For some, yes; but not for all. The true reason of their being at Anzac this day went deeper than mere superficial causes. The blood-lusting Germanic and Ottoman Powers had loosed upon the world the everlasting curse of mankind - conquest and subjugation. The men of Anzac were standing beside the men of England and the Empire to defeat that foul ambition.

At last full daylight lit the tremendous scene and revealed to those still on the sea the immensity of the task before them. All around and far down the miles were the big and little ships, and now the guns of the Navy roared their deep, proud challenge. Over the sea and back from the hills rolled the sound of the broadsides. Warships shuddered and were hidden from sight behind belching, black-brown smoke split by crimson flashes. Through the still morning air shrieked the heavy shells as they sped to burst in fountains of flame on hillside, crest and plateau. And rising in a crescendo of vicious fury were the rifles and machine guns of Turk and Anzac as the fight raged on the shrapnel-swept ridges. All along that skyline now were bursting fleecy clouds that rained steel over the hills and gullies.

The cruiser Bacchante, moving close to the transport Minnewaska, opened with a broadside of 6-inch guns on the promontory of Gaba Tepe to the south. Instantly the low, green headland vanished in flame and gushing earth and the gun there that already had shelled Anzac Cove was silent. But not for long. As the cruiser ceased fire the Turks thumbed their noses and opened again. Then began a duel between Bacchante and Gaba Tepe, but the Turkish artillery survived not only this Sunday morning's smother of steel, but all the long, blasting months of the campaign.

Constantly, as the steam pinnaces brought their strings of boats alongside destroyer and transport, the rope ladders trembled with the mass of descending, armed men. Ceaselessly the landing went on. With the passing of the hours the tempo of battle quickened and Turkish guns searched for ships and landing points. From the start the Navy had suffered casualties and on this Sunday morning the Anzacs saw and admired the courage and efficiency of the Senior Service. Never did the Navy fall them, always was it there to support and succour, but once again this colossal conflict proved that ships alone are not determining factors when battle is joined between them and the land.

As the small boats touched in, their living freights leapt over into the water and waded ashore. Many were drowned when they did not get bottom, many were killed as they sat in the boats, many as their feet touched the alien shore. Passing along the beaches now and coming down the ridges, were stretcher-bearers with their bloody, broken burdens. Never was merciful work more gallantly performed than it was by these men this day. Casualty clearing stations were established and were filled at once with shattered men. 

Dumps of ammunition, food, water, tools, began to rise as supplies were piled ashore. Units assembled hurriedly, threw off their packs, went up and over the first ridge into battle. Down valleys and across heights swept the unseen scythe of death, reaping, ceaselessly the grim harvest of conflict. Up on 400 Plateau where the Indian Mountain Battery hurled its tiny shells at Scrubby Knoll and where a lone pine tree stood, Turkish shrapnel tore and ripped every inch of ground and their machine guns sent ropes of bullets swishing through the stinking scrub. 

Up and on the impossible ridges where Quinn's, Pope's, Courtney's and Steele's posts were later established, and were at this moment held, in behind the mocking dome of Baby 700, over beyond the slope of Battleship Hill, far down south near Gun Ridge and Anderson's Knoll, the remnants of the 3rd Brigade with advanced elements of the 2nd and 1st Brigades, still clung to the ground they had won. Creeping up to support them, fighting doggedly up the ridges, were the New Zealanders.

Troops became separated and disorganized almost as soon as they landed. Battalions were split, companies broken into detached parties, platoons were divided and lost for days. Because of the drift north beyond the planned invasion points the whole scheme of battle was now different. The tasks confronting divisional and brigade staffs were appalling in their magnitude and urgency. The gaping maws of valleys, with their tooth-like connecting ridges, swallowed line after line of advancing men. In these first blind hours the senior commanders could give few directions for the conduct of the battle, could get little information as to its true significance tactically, and the fighting was controlled mainly by junior officers, N.C.Os and often by the men themselves when their leaders had all been killed or knocked out of the fight.

Here, during these vital hours, Australian and New Zealand soldiers showed those remarkable qualities of initiative and battle discipline that distinguished them throughout this and subsequent campaigns. Continually in the hell's cauldron bubbling beneath and around Baby 700 efforts were made to close the vital gaps between parties lining the

Crimson-flecked ridges. In that nightmare tangle of spewed-up country men were shot even from behind by snipers and concealed sections of Turks who knew every fold and comer of that deadly domain. Turkish batteries had the ranges to a yard, the Anzacs had no guns other than the heroic Indian Mountain Battery of 10-pounders, and the eager but unsuitable big guns of the Navy. Had there been monitors floating just off the beaches with howitzers lobbing on to the heights and into the broken gullies the story of this Sunday morning would have been different. 

But the storm of shrapnel and high explosive sweeping the hills was from Turkish guns and the Anzacs had no answer during these hours. It was heartening indeed to hear the roar of the naval monsters, to see the gush of flame and earth where the shells struck, but they were not the guns for this operation, they could not search, their shells sped flat and low and did not drop down upon a target, and their support was more moral than actual.

The ridges were taken and held with rifles, machine guns and bayonets. There were no trenches yet. The only cover was concealment, but there cannot be concealment during an advance except at night and it was not yet night. All through that savage day the only parapets of the Anzacs were their bodies. So fluid was the fighting that the few holes scratched hastily were soon abandoned for fresh positions. Nowhere was there shelter, except temporarily under some ledge and here the wounded were placed, to be cared for by the gallant medical officers, orderlies and stretcher-bearers. 

Hundreds of men lay dead, with hundreds more wounded under the quivering, bullet-smashed bushes. Many indeed were the individual and collective feats of valour. Men fought and died, their fierce pride forbidding weakness or weakening. Men with shattered limbs still fought on, and died. Epic was their endurance and high courage.

Now, at last, the Anzacs knew war. Mingled with the screaming shells overhead were the drumming hooves of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse-War, Pestilence, Famine, Death-as they rode the wind and looked down upon carnage. Here was the scarlet carnival of slaughter and battle, here the end, and here the beginning.

And the Turk died bravely that Sunday morning. His was the land being invaded and he fought with a stubborn, grim resolution that first slowed down, then checked, then beat back the tide of invasion. As the dav wore on he pinned the exhausted Anzacs to ridges and valleys less than a mile in from Anzac Cove and not during all the Iona, bloody months of Gallipoli did the Anzacs ever get farther inland, nor could the Turk wrest from them the thin slice of hell they had seized.

Ah, if only there had been one more division to go in fresh at dusk, to pass through the thinned and tired men who had done so much, then, without any doubt, Gallipoli would have been won. But there was no fresh division. At one critical time there were practically no reserves even for the most threatened points. Only the will to hold and to win saved the Anzacs from destruction, only their superb fighting qualities, revealed and manifest now to the Turk and to the world, kept for them the ground and the glory they had won.

It is a long time now since the moon sank early on that Sunday morning, another World War has been fought and won; another A.I.F. and another army from New Zealand have thrust their bright shields between new enemies and the loved ones of the southlands, and have brilliantly upheld the undying flame passed on to them.

But there, at Anzac, it all began. From the grim hills of Gallipoli came the tradition and the standard. There, in that narrow compass of suffering, sacrifice and death, was born a shining heritage. From the blood of Australians and New Zealanders that soaked those bitter ridges and ravines has flowed steadily ever since the red stream of valour that has distinguished their regiments in battle, and earned for them the reputation of being the finest shock troops ever known. All the proud battle-standards that tell of Anzac, and of even grimmer and bloodier later battles, stem directly from the men who died there on those convulsed hills;

One Sunday morning.

E. Y. TIMMS, First and Second A.I.F.

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