The Auckland Regiment

VIII. Anzac Life

VIII. Anzac Life

" Whilst seated one day in my dugout,
Weary and ill at ease,
I saw a gunner carefully
Scanning his sunburnt knees.
I asked him why be was searching,
And what he was looking for?
But his only reply was a long-drawn sigh,
As he quietly killed one more."

"Suffering from toothache, owing to the slurring of a fat and sleek dentist who stays at home in comfort and sends the soldier to eat hard biscuits."

Biscuits! Army biscuits! What a part they took in the daily routine.—the carrying of them, the eating of them, the cursing of them. Crawling from their earthy dens at the dawning of the day, men devoured biscuit porridge. They ate their meat, not with thankfulness, but with biscuits. They lengthened out the taste of jam with biscuits. Biscuits were pounded to powder, boiled with bully, stewed in stews, fried as fritters.

Consider the hardness of them. Think of the struggle and strain the crushing and crunching as the two molars wrestled with some rocky fragment. Think of the momentary elation during the fleeting seconds, when it seemed that the molars would triumphantly scrunch through every stratum of the thrice-hardened rock. Try to imagine the agony of mind and body as the almost victorious grinder missed its footing, slipped and snapped hard upon its mate, while the elusive biscuit rasped and scraped upon bruised and tender gums. Plates cracked. Teeth broke and splintered. The finest gold crown weakened, wobbled, and finally shrivelled under the terrific strain of masticating Puntly and Chalmers' No. 5's.

They had the delicious succulency of ground granite, or the savoury toothsomeness of powdered marble, with a delicate flavouring of ferroconcrete and just a dash of scraped iron railings. The choicest dishes of civilised life, baked or boiled, stewed or steamed, fried, frizzled, roasted or toasted, have no taste like to that of Army biscuits. It is a debatable question, indeed, as to whether they had any taste at all. If it be granted that they did possess the faculty of stimulating the peripheral extremities of a soldier's taste-buds, then it must also be con-ceded that the stimulation was of an unpleasant sort. The soldier's feeling, apart from the joy, the pride and the satisfaction at his completed achievement in transferring a whole biscuit from his outer to his inner man without undue accident or loss of teeth was one of pain and disappointment.

Apricot jam was another infliction—that and a detestable mixture known as Deakin's marmalade. "Apricot again!" Why on earth there was not more variety no one knows. One explanation given was that in the clear liquid it was impossible for drowned flies to masquerade as black currants. This is quite the line of reasoning that would appeal to the type of mind responsible for the selection of the supplies sent to Gallipoli, and is therefore quite likely correct. The crowning atrocity, however, as far as food was concerned, was bully-beef of the Fray Bentos variety. If General Birdwood was the soul of Anzac, then bully-beef was its "flesh and body." Bully was always in evidence. It came ashore at the first landing, and remained even after the evacuation. On the beach the A.S.C. made palatial residences of it; in the front line whole boxes were used for parapet building. It was salt, stringy and unpalatable. The only recommendation it had was that some kinds were not as bad as others, and that sometimes the less bad kinds were served out.

There was never any lack of food on Gallipoli. The trouble was that the abundant supplies were of the wrong sort. Meagre supplies of fresh meat, bread, vegetables and milk did commence to come ashore, but never in sufficient quantities. Of cheese and fat bacon there was never any lack. The cheese was utterly useless, but the bacon was very useful as fuel, and, after being rendered down, to make "slushlights." Tinned fruit, fresh vegetables, and tinned milk should have been sup- plied in great quantities. The elimination of waste would amply have repaid all the extra expense.

Day by day the sun grew hotter and hotter. At midday it burned down blazingly, scorchingly hot. With the heat came the flies—a very venomous lot of brutes, the lineal descendants of those which plagued the unrighteous Pharoah. Flies formed a staple part of the Anzac's diet. They shared his meals, drowned themselves in his tea, and in massed formation rushed his apricot jam, refusing to be driven off with blows and curses. It was no use slaying them by thousands, for they returned in tens of thousands. They bit like young scorpions. Their only redeeming virtue was that they slept well at night. The lice, beasts of prey of a most voracious and ferocious nature, did not sleep, and the chillier breezes of the night seemed only to spur them on to greater efforts. They refused to die, except under great pressure. They throve exceedingly on Keating's Powder, sent by anxious mothers in Auckland. The flies were the light cavalry, the lice the heavy armed infantry. They moved slowly, but surely. They could not fly but they could crawl, and they always "got there." They were imbued with a certain cold, passionless persistence. The next generation was always in readiness to carry on fighting-the good fight in which the generation before had perished. The grandparents were done to death at dawn. The parents were suppressed at midday, the children were massacred in "the evening hate," but the next generation was attacking fiercely by midnight.

Water was at a premium. Dust, heat, flies, vermin, thirst, bad food, the terrible stench of the unburied dead, and then a new experience—the frightful monotony of war. It may seem almost inconceivable to the ordinary civilian that a dangerous life is not necessarily an exciting one. Danger becomes part of the atmosphere. It is not something that can be guarded against. It does not interfere with the hours of waking or sleeping, of rest or of labour. Men were sniped at breakfast, sniped on working parties, sniped while bathing, sniped during the watches of the night, or just as they stood down. Shrapnel

Lieutenant R. Judson, V.C., D.C.M., M.M.

Lieutenant R. Judson, V.C., D.C.M., M.M.

burst at all times and in all places. These dangers could not be avoided. They were exceedingly annoying, but as a general rule not exciting. After the fierce rush of the first battles life was quieter, and a daily routine was established. Soon nothing was new, nothing was interesting, nothing was profitable. The bully-beef was always salt, the biscuits like armourplate. Nothing mattered. One thing was just as bad as another, and nothing could be worse than some of the things that had gone before. Men became surfeited with experience. Life was a dreadful and barren existence. The strain and weariness of life reacted upon the mental tone. The bad food, the tropical heat, the smell, the flies wore down the physical condition. Then came the spectre of disease. Many men went down in June with diarrhoea, dysentery and enteric. In July they were going down in scores.

Hell was to be an infantryman at Anzac; Heaven was just two miles away, a great white ship with yellow funnel, green band and great Red Cross. Fortunate was he who "landed a buckshee" or ran up sufficient temperature to impress the doctor. For him were stored up all delights, clean white sheets. dainty foods, rest, ministering angels to care for him. Dreams of paradise were of the smells from mother's cooking stove and of fair girls in clean clothes far away in New Zealand.

Men quickly became most dilapidated and disreputable scarecrows. The fewer clothes, the fewer lice to sort out; and so, as there were no girls to "swank up" for, clothes lost their ornamental and acquired value. In the blazing heat little covering was required, and what little was worn was purely a matter for the individual concerned. The Battalion had landed in "Tommy Caps," but these were by this time replaced either by Australian felts, khaki sun helmets, or the New Zealand issue belonging to unfortunate members of the reinforcement drafts. The upper part of the body was clothed in an identity disc. A pair of trousers very raggedly shortened, and boots completed the outfit. For the rest, a very decent coat of sunburn sufficed to complete the picture. Men bathing showed fine impressionist studies in brown, black and white.