The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

LIEUT.-GENERAL SIR W. BIRDWOOD—"THE SOUL OF ANZAC."

Frontispiece.

AUSTRALIA IN ARMS

SOLDIER-SONGS
FROM ANZAC

By Signaller TOM SKEYHILL.

With an Introduction by Major-General J. W. McCAY, C. B.

Paper cover, 1s. net.

Private Skeyhill trained in Egypt from January 1915 to April 1915. He landed with his battalion on Anzac Beach on 25th April, taking part in the fighting of that first fierce week. The next week he was with his battalion at Cape Helles, and shared in the well-known charge by the 2nd Brigade on the 8th May, when a high-explosive shell burst beside him and sent him to hospital, a blind and helpless man. There are hopes that eventually he may recover his sight, but at best the time must be long. His poems breathe love of country and of courage, the spirit of battle, soldiers' comradeship, and sympathy for the fallen.

T. FISHER UNWIN LTD., LONDON

AUSTRALIA IN ARMS
A NARRATIVE OF THE AUSTRALASIAN IMPERIAL
FORCE AND THEIR ACHIEVEMENT AT ANZAC

BY
PHILLIP F. E. SCHULER

Special War Correspondent of The Age, Melbourne

WITH 9 MAPS AND 53 ILLUSTRATIONS

LONDON
T. FISHER UNWIN LTD.
ADELPHI TERRACE

First published in 1916

(All rights reserved)

TO
THE MOTHERS OF THE HEROES
WHO HAVE FALLEN
I HUMBLY DEDICATE THESE RECORDS OF
GLORIOUS DEEDS

TO THE MOTHER COUNTRY

Because you trusted them, and gave them dower

Of your own ancient birthright, Liberty—

Forwent the meagre semblances of power

To win the deepest truth and loyalty—

Now, when these seeming slender roots are tried

Of all your strength, behold, they do not move;

The stripling nations hasten to your side,

Impelled, as children should be, by their love.

And who shall grudge the pride of Motherhood

To this old Northern Kingdom of the sea?

Indeed our fathers' husbandry was good;

This is the harvest of our history;

Yet boast not. Rather pray we be not found

Unworthy those great men who tilled the ground.

F. D. Livingstone

PREFACE

One hot, bright morning early in the Dardanelles campaign, so the story goes, Lieut.-General Sir William Birdwood was walking up one of the worn tracks of Anzac that led over the hills into the firing-line when he stopped, as he very often did on these daily tours of the line, to talk with two men who were cooking over a fireplace made of shell cases. General Birdwood wore no jacket, therefore he had no badges of rank. His cap even lacked gold lace. Under his arm he had tucked a periscope. But the Australian addressed did not even boast of a shirt. Stripped to the waist, he was as fine a type of manhood as you might wish to see. He was burned a deep brown; his uniform consisted of a cap, shorts, and a pair of boots. His mate was similarly clad.

"Got something good there?" remarked the General as he stopped near the steaming pot of bully-beef stew.

"Ye-es," replied the Australian, "it's all right. Wish we had a few more spuds, though." Conversation then branched off into matters relating to the firing-line, till at last General Birdwood signified his intention of going, bidding the soldier a cheery "Good-day," which was acknowledged by an inclination of the head. The General walked up the path to his firing-line, and the Australian turned to his mate, who had been very silent, but who now began to swear softly under his breath—

"You —— —— —— fool! Do you know who you were talking to?"

"No!"

"Well, that was General Birdwood, that was, yer coot!"

"How was I to know that? Anyway, he seemed to know me all right."

Those were the types of soldiers with whom I spent the first year of their entry into the Great War. I watched them drafted into camps in Australia, the raw material; I saw them charge into action like veteran troops, not a year later. Never downhearted, often grumbling, always chafing under delays, generous even to an alarming degree, the first twenty thousand who volunteered to go forth from Australia to help the Mother Country in the firing-line was an army that made even our enemies doubt if we had not deliberately "chosen" the finest of the race. Since then there have been not twenty, but two hundred thousand of that stamp of soldier sent across the water to fight the Empire's battles at the throat of the foe.

This narrative does not pretend to be an "Eye-witness" account. In most instances where I have had official papers before me, I have turned in preference to the more bold and vigorous stories of the men who have taken part in the stirring deeds.

I left Melbourne on 21st October on the Flagship of the Convoy, the Orvieto, that carried the 1st Division of Australian troops to Egypt, as the official representative of the Melbourne Age with the Expedition. I landed with the troops and went with them into the desert camp at Mena. It was then that I realized what staunch friends these young campaigners were. Colonel Wanliss and officers of the 5th Infantry Battalion insisted that I should become a member of their mess. I can never be grateful enough for that courtesy.

I wish also to gratefully acknowledge the kindly help and courtesy extended to me at all times by the Divisional Staff, and especially by Brigadier-General C. B. B. White, C.B. (then Lieut.-Colonel), Chief of the Staff, whom I always found courteous and anxious to facilitate me in my work as far as lay in his power.

It was while witnessing the welding of the Australasian Army in Egypt that I met Mr. W. T. Massey, representative of the Daily Telegraph, London, and Mr. George Renwick, Daily Chronicle. We became a council of three for the four months we were together in Egypt, and it was a keen regret when Mr. Massey was unable to accompany me to the Dardanelles on the trip we had planned together, whereby, taking the advice of General Sir Ian Hamilton that we were "free British subjects and could always take a ticket to the nearest railway-station to the fighting," we had intended to witness together the landing. As it was, I went alone on a small 500-ton Greek trading steamer; but on arrival at Mitylene I was fortunate to find Mr. Renwick there and Mr. Stevens, who was now representing the Daily Telegraph, and they, having a motor-launch, invited me to join them in a little enterprise of our own. For a fortnight we watched the operations from the shores of Imbros and the decks of the launch, steaming up to the entrance of the Straits, living on what resources the island might deliver to us, which was mostly a poor fish, goat's milk, eggs, and very resinous native Greek wine. Eventually the motor-boat (and correspondents) was banished from "The Zone" by British destroyers.

So I returned to Alexandria at the end of May, and was able to visit the hospitals and chat with the men from the firing-line. Then in July, General Sir Ian Hamilton—who had told us prior to his departure that he intended to do all in his power to help Mr. Massey and myself to visit the Anzac front—wrote from his headquarters at Imbros giving me his permission to come on to the famous battlefields.

In four hours I was on my way to the Dardanelles on a transport, and by stages (visiting the notorious Aragon at Mudros Harbour) reached Kephalos Bay, where the Commander-in-Chief had pitched his tent. The cordiality of General Hamilton's welcome will ever linger in my memory. I remember he was seated at a deal table in a small wooden hut with a pile of papers before him. He spoke of the Australians in terms of the highest praise. They were, he said, at present "a thorn in the side of the Turks," and when the time came he intended that that thorn should be pressed deeper. He advised me to see all I could, as quickly as I could.

I received a passport through the British and French lines and travelled from Helles to Anzac and Suvla Bay at will. Lieut.-General Birdwood and his Staff, Major-General Legge and the officers throughout the 1st Australian Division, and Major-General Godley and the leaders of the New Zealand Brigades, extended to me such courtesies as lay in their hands. I was able to witness the whole of the August offensive from the closest quarters, being in our trenches at Lone Pine during the engagement of the 6th.

At Anzac I was heartily welcomed by Captain Bean, the official correspondent with the Australian forces, who of all men was the most enthusiastic, painstaking, and conscientious worker that I have ever met, and I desire to acknowledge my debt to him for kindly criticism and good fellowship.

I would never be able to record the names of friends in the force, both in the firing-line and at the base, from whom I have received valuable suggestions and practical help.

I wish to express my gratitude to Mr. Geoffrey Syme, proprietor of The Age, for permission to use certain of the war dispatches I sent him for publication; to Mr. Osboldstone for permission to utilize some of the photographs he had already printed; and to the Minister of Defence for the reproduction of photographs and orders.

I am deeply indebted also to Mr. J. R. Watson for the spontaneous manner in which he offered to handle the manuscript for me in London while I was far across the water and corrected the proofs, thus enabling me to join the ranks of our Army. The apparent delight with which he entered on the work removed from my mind all thought of overtaxing a friendship.

Finally, I am most anxious to remove, at the outset, any suggestion that might be gained from this narrative that the Australians alone were the outstanding heroes of the Dardanelles campaign. When the history of the British forces—the magnificent 29th Division, the Lowland Division, and the Yeomanry—comes to be recorded, and the story of the French participation in the assault of Achi Baba told, it will be seen that, glorious as has been the name won by the Australians, heroically as they fought, proudly and surely as they held all they gained, they played a part in this "Great Adventure," and it is of that part that I have written because it was the only one of which I had full knowledge.

PHILLIP F. E. SCHULER.

Melbourne, 5th April 1916.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

MAPS AND PLANS

PART I
AUSTRALIA ANSWERS THE CALL

CHAPTER I
THE TOCSIN IN AUSTRALIA

It is impossible to look back and recall without a glow of intense pride the instantaneous response made by the young manhood of Australia to the first signal of danger which fluttered at the central masthead of the Empire. As time goes on that pride has increased as battalions and brigades have followed one another into the firing-line; it has become now a pride steeped in the knowledge that the baptism of fire has proven the young nation, has given it an indelible stamp of Nationhood, has provoked from the lips of a great English soldier the phrase, "These men from Australasia form the greatest army that an Empire has ever produced." To-day that pride is the courage with which the people face and mourn the loss of their thousands of braves.

Let me recall the first dark days of August 1914, when the minds of the people of the Australian Commonwealth were grappling with and striving to focus the position of the British Empire in the war into which they had been so precipitately hurled. On Sunday, 2nd August, I well remember in Melbourne an army friend of mine being hastily recalled from a tennis party; and when I went to see him at the Victoria Barracks that same night, I found the whole place a glare of lights from end to end of the grim, grey stone building. It was the same the next and the next night, and for weeks, and so into the months. But even when the Governor-General, Sir Ronald Munro Ferguson, sent to the Prime Minister (Mr. Joseph Cook), at noon on 3rd August the telegram bearing the announcement that we all knew could not long be withheld, the strain seemed unlifted. "England has declared war on Germany" was the brief but terrible message quickly transferred to the broadsheets that the newspapers printed at lightning speed and circulated, while the crowds in the streets cheered and cheered again as the message was posted on the display boards.

That night the streets were thronged (as they were for weeks to follow), and there was a series of riots, quickly subdued by the police, where raids had been made on German premises. Feeling was extraordinarily bitter, considering the remoteness of the Dominion. The Navy Office was barred to the casual visitor. Military motor-cars swept through the streets and whirled into the barracks square. Army and Fleet, the new Australian Naval unit, were ready. More than one person during those grey days felt a thrill of satisfaction and comfort in the knowledge that of that Fleet unit the battle-cruiser Australia was greater and more powerful than any enemy vessel in Pacific waters.

Now it is no secret that arrangements exist with the British Admiralty under which the Commonwealth naval authorities receive at the first signs of hostilities a telegram in the nature of a warning. The second message simply says "Strike." The fact that the Navy Office in Melbourne received its warning cablegram not from the Admiralty, but from a message sent from H.M.S. Minotaur, then flagship of the China Squadron, asking particulars concerning the Australian unit, and "presuming" that the naval authorities had received their warning, was only subsequently whispered. Where, then, was the Australian message? The original cable apparently was sent at the moment when Mr. Winston Churchill and Prince Louis of Battenberg between them took steps to keep mobilized the Grand Fleet in British waters, subsequent to the review, and sent them forthwith to their war stations. According to the pre-arranged understanding, the Australian unit was to pass automatically under the control of the Admiralty. Urgent wires were sent to the then Minister of Defence, Senator E. D. Millen, who was absent in Sydney, and the missing cablegram was brought to light in his possession. As soon as that final message came, the Australian ships, having coaled and prepared, moved to their war stations. It is not within the scope of this brief review to go further into this naval mobilization, though I shall make reference later on to the Fleet unit and its war history.

On everybody's lips there now (4th August) arose the question of the young nation's part in the war. Would there be need of contingents? For the first period, at least, the Australian military authorities were too keenly occupied with home defence to vouchsafe much attention to this question, though high officers told me that it was inevitable that Australia would play her part very soon—to what extent and when, they could not judge. The immediate need lay in the mobilization of part or all of the available forces at hand for coastal defence. The nervous tenseness of the situation was apparent on all hands; an underflow of intense uncertainty was plainly traceable in all the military movements. At the barracks day and night I found the military machine that Australia had so recently set running, rapidly speeding up.

All leave had been stopped on 1st August, and officers were hurrying back to their posts from various States of the Commonwealth. The defences of the ports along the coast were manned, and on the day when war was declared arrangements were completed for the extension of these defences to a mobile army, certainly of no great size as armies now are, to be used as shore patrols round the entrances of the great harbours of the capital cities. These men were the first draft of the Citizen Army that the Australian nation was training, and the rapidity with which they were mobilized, albeit it was only a small group, gave off the first spark from the machine, tested in a time of need. Yet the question that was ever to the fore during the first forty-eight hours after the declaration of war, and in fact until the following Wednesday, 10th August, was whether the whole of the Citizen Army was not to be mobilized. In other words, would there be a general mobilization, the plans for which were lying ready waiting to be opened all over the Commonwealth? The higher commands were told to hold themselves in readiness, and every one, from the youngest cadet to the Chief of the Staff, was expecting the word.

What would have been the need for such action? Remotely, of course, the position of the German High Sea Fleet and the integrity of the British Grand Fleet, but more closely the proximity of the German Pacific Squadron, consisting of two powerful cruisers, the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, a number of smaller warships, colliers, and perhaps transports. Fortunately, the battle-cruiser Australia had been kept in Australian waters, and while she remained afloat, the German ships would not venture in her vicinity. But the possibility to which the military authorities looked was that of the German squadron eluding our patrols that stretched across the north of Australia from Darwin to the Marshall Islands, and convoying a landing party, arriving off our eastern or southern coasts. They might or might not land; they might content themselves with shelling the towns. At one time it was believed that secretly Germany had been pouring troops into German New Guinea and collecting stores there. That she had intended New Guinea or Papua as a base in the Pacific was evident enough. However, the worst fears were far from being realized. The British Fleet in the Pacific (now containing the Australian warships), and soon the Japanese Fleet cooperating, after an unsuccessful attempt to trap the enemy, edged them from the Australian coasts across the Pacific to South America, where they were eventually destroyed in the Falkland Islands engagement.

By this time the need for a general mobilization in Australia was daily becoming less, as the enemy's ships were swept from the sea and the High Sea Fleet had been reduced to the category of floating forts. Accordingly the Government and military authorities turned their attention to the sending of an army to help the Motherland. German hopes had led them to suspect that the war would present for the people of the Commonwealth an excellent opportunity for revolt. Never did a young Dominion cling more closely or show its deep-rooted sense of gratitude and affection and responsibility to the parent nation. Having helped to secure herself, Australia immediately offered troops for active service overseas. A tremendous wave of enthusiasm swept over the land, and the acceptance by the Home Government of the offer was the occasion of great outbursts of cheering by the crowds that thronged the streets of the chief cities and eagerly scanned the news sheets and official announcements posted outside the newspaper offices. Recruiting began without delay. Already, in anticipation of events, the Defence Department had received names of officers and men from every State offering their services and anxious to join the first force. The composition of the force, after due consideration and consultation with the War Office, was to be a complete Division and a Brigade of Light Horse, 20,000 men in all. Depots were established at the barracks, and soon in the suburban drill-halls—halls which were already the centres of the Compulsory Service movement in Home Defence—as well. The men poured into the depôts. There was the keenest competition for selection.

In making these drill-halls centres for recruiting the authorities were anxious to link up the regiments of the established Citizen Army with those that were going forth to battle across the seas, giving them in this way a tradition for all time. Young as the new army was, some 10 per cent. enlisted, those whose age was just twenty-one years. In this way, throughout the battalions was a sprinkling of the young Citizen Army, while the rest of the men were from the old militia regiments that had existed in past years. There were, I suppose, 60 per cent. of these men who flocked to the colours, and of these a proportion had seen service abroad, mostly in the South African War. Only a small number that went sloped a rifle for the first time.

Who would lead the force—Australia's first complete Division to take the field? No doubt seemed to cloud the minds of the General Staff, however much the mind of the Minister of Defence, Senator Millen, was swayed hither and thither. Brigadier-General Bridges was just entering on the fourth year of his command of the Duntroon Military College. The success of that college was already an established fact; the men who have left it have since proved that beyond question. It was, therefore, on Brigadier-General Bridges (raised to the rank of Major-General) that the choice eventually fell, and he at once handed over the control of the college to Colonel Parnell, Commandant of Victoria, and immediately commenced, on or about the 14th August, the selection of his higher commands for the force designated "The First Australian Imperial Expeditionary Force."

His task was no light one. Essentially a just man, but a man who demanded the utmost capacity from those beneath him in rank, he soon drew round him a brilliant Staff. The college, indeed, he robbed of most of its English leaders, and their places were filled by Australian officers. The Brigadiers were left the choice of their battalion commanders, and that choice fell on the men actively engaged in leading the young Citizen Army in the various centres, each State contributing its quota. The battalion commanders at first had free choice to select their officers, but subsequently a Board was established. Thousands of names were available, and, with one or two exceptions, it is with satisfaction I can write that every man chosen has proved himself in that force again and again as being worthy of the trust put in him, from high leaders to the most junior subalterns.

While recruiting went on apace, the Barracks remained illuminated day and night, and the tension remained for many weeks at a high pitch. Though the matter had been pondered over, the truth was, little or no provision had been made to form the nucleus of an Expeditionary Force. All Australia's energies had been devoted to preparing her Home Defence Army. Yet the machinery that had been created for that army now proved itself to be capable of such expansion as to provide all the mass of material necessary for the organization and equipment of the Division under Major-General Bridges. The rapidity, the completeness, and efficiency with which that First Australian Contingent was equipped (referred to now by the men with such pride in comparison with other Empire troops) is eloquent enough praise in itself for the several war departments that met the strain, always remembering that in addition there was the partially mobilized Citizen Army to equip and maintain, and the growing army of 30,000 young soldiers each year, to train. Much impatience was exhibited at the delay in getting the Expedition away from Australia. That delay was inevitable in the circumstances, though apparently comparing so unfavourably with the Continental armies that were in the field in a few days, and in three weeks numbered millions of men. Australia in times of peace had never contemplated raising an Expeditionary Force, and what reserve supplies she had were not intended for such an emergency as this. Nevertheless, the General Staff rose to the occasion in a manner which, as I have said, reflects on them not only the greatest credit but high praise. Too much cannot be said either of the manner in which the general public co-operated in the assembling of the army, and especially in regard to the gifts of horses for all branches of the service.

I consider myself indeed fortunate in having had an opportunity of witnessing the march through the streets of Melbourne of 4,000 Victorians who were to form the backbone of Victoria's contribution to the first 20,000 men. When I think of those lads on that bright August morning, and the trained army which General Sir Ian Hamilton reviewed in the desert in Egypt, one can laugh at those croakers who predicted the need for eighteen months' training to make these men real soldiers. I remember them on this morning, a band of cheerful youths (for the army is, and always must be, thought of as a young army—a mingling of freshness, vigour, eagerness, and panting zeal, the stuff that veterans are made of), headed by a band of Highland pipes and bugles that had volunteered to lead them, swinging with irregular, broken step along the main streets. Their pride swelled in their veins as they waved brown felt hats, straw-deckers, bowlers to their mates watching from office windows and roofs. It was the first sight of the reality of war that had come to really grip the hearts of the people, and they cheered these pioneers and the recklessness of their spirits. There were men in good boots and bad boots, in brown and tan boots, in hardly any boots at all; in sack suits and old clothes, and smart-cut suits just from the well-lined drawers of a fashionable home; there were workers and loafers, students and idlers, men of professions and men just workers, who formed that force. But—they were all fighters, stickers, men with some grit (they got more as they went on), and men with a love of adventure. So they marched out to their camp at Broadmeadows—a good ten-mile tramp.

As they swung round through the break in the panelled fencing of Major Wilson's property (placed generously at the disposal of the Government), there was weariness in their feet and limbs, but not in their spirits. Some shuffled now, and the dust rose from the attenuated column right along the undulating dusty road, stretching back almost to the city's smoke, just faintly visible on the horizon, where the smoke-stacks and tall buildings caught the last rays of the setting sun. And they found their tents pitched, and they had but to draw their blankets and break up into groups of eight or ten or eleven for each tent. Then they strolled round the green fields till the bugle called them to their first mess, cooked in the dixies. And the rising odour of well-boiled meat and onions whetted their appetite.

Then on the morrow they rose before the sun. Every morning they were thus early roused, were doing exercises with rifle and bayonet, and the drab black of their clothing changed to khaki uniforms; and as rapidly as this change came, so the earth was worn more brown with the constant treading of thousands of feet, and the grass disappeared altogether from the camp and the roads became rutted. More men and still more men crowded in and filled the vacant tents till other lines had to be pitched. The horses began to arrive, and motor-lorries with immense loads thundered across the paddocks to the stores, where huge tarpaulins covered masses of equipment and marquees tons of meat and bread. From four thousand the army grew to ten; for fresh contingents were offered, accepted, and sent into training. Tents peeped from between pine-trees that enclosed a field, and guns began to rumble in and were parked in neat rows pointing to the road. They waited for the horses which the gunners were busily lashing into control. It was rapid, effective horsebreaking that I saw in this artillery school, where the animals were left to kick logs till they tired, and then were compelled to drag them, in place of the valuable artillery pieces. The foam gathered on their haunches at such times and they flung themselves to the earth—and then they threw their riders for a change—until at length they grew weary of the play and subsided as fine artillery horses as ever dragged guns

Into the jaws of death,

Into the mouth of Hell.

THE STAFF OF THE FIRST AUSTRALIAN DIVISION AT MENA CAMP.

To face p. 22.

All around the hills were green still. Each day they were covered with lines of moving troops. Infantry passed the guns on the road, and Light Horse passed the infantry and wheeled in through the same break in the panelled fence. The Commandant, Colonel Wallace, inspected the units in the making, so did the Brigadiers and the General himself or his representative. Then the State Governor, Sir Arthur Stanley, took a part, and the Governor-General spent an afternoon at the camp and reviewed the whole of the troops. The people flocked in thousands on holidays and Sundays to see their soldier sons. The camp each night was full of visitors till dusk, for those few precious hours permitted after the day's duties were done when family ties might be drawn close just a little longer. Every train and tram was filled with bands of soldiers; the traffic on the roads showed its quota of khaki. Bands turned the people's thoughts to war with their martial music, as they woke the troops with their persistent beating in the early morning.

What it was in Melbourne, so in every State capital of the Commonwealth, where the camps lay scattered on the outskirts of the suburbs. Each State trained its own men for a common interest for the First Division, and in each State the method, like the routine, was the same.

The time was approaching for departure. Camps were closed to the public. All leave was stopped. Nobody knew the date of going, and yet everybody knew it and chafed under the wait. But before the men went they showed "the metal of their pasture." In one never-to-be-forgotten glistening line they swept through the centres of the cities, marching from end to end. What once had been a heavy day—the march out to camp—they made light of now; and while the Light Horse headed the columns, the horses prancing and dancing to the drums, the guns rumbled heavily with much rattling after the even infantry lines. And still it was not farewell. Those tender partings were said in the quiet of the hearth. It could only be taken as the cities' greetings and tributes to the pioneers—those men of the 1st Australian Division—who went quietly, silently, without farewells to the waiting transports in the bright mid-October sunlight—train after train load of them—down to the wharves.

And the people who watched them go were a few hundreds.

CHAPTER II
THE ASSEMBLY

While it was general knowledge that the First Australian Contingent was about to leave its native shores—26th September—no exact date was mentioned as the day of departure. For one very sound reason. The German cruisers had not been rounded up and some of them were still known to be cruising in Australian waters. They could be heard talking in the loud, high-pitched Telefunken code, but the messages were not always readable, lucky as had been the capture early in the war of a code-book from a German merchant ship in New Guinea waters. The newspapers were prohibited by very strict censorship from giving any hint of the embarkation of troops, of striking camps, or of anything that could be communicated to the enemy likely to give him an idea of the position of the Convoy that was now hurrying from the northern capitals—from, indeed, all the capital cities—to the rendezvous, King George's Sound, Albany. That rendezvous, for months kept an absolute official secret, was, nevertheless, on the lips of every second person, though never named publicly. It was apparent that the military authorities had an uncomfortable feeling that though they had blocked the use of private wireless installations, messages were leaving Australia. I will say nothing here of the various scares and rumours and diligent searches made upon perfectly harmless old professors and others engaged in peaceful fishing expeditions along the coastal towns; that lies without the sphere of this book. It seemed almost callous that the troops going so far across two oceans, the first great Australian army that had been sent to fight for the Mother Country, should be allowed to slip away uncheered, unspoken of. For even the final scenes in Melbourne, where there were some four or five thousand people to see the Orvieto, the Flagship of the Convoy, depart, formed an impromptu gathering, and for days before great liners, with two thousand troops aboard, had been slipping away from their moorings with only a fluttering of a few handkerchiefs to send them off. Still, the troops had crowded into the rigging and sang while the bands played them off to "Tipperary." In every port it was alike. How much more touching was the leaving of the Flagship, when the crowd broke the barriers and rushed the pier, overwhelming the scanty military guards and forcing back Ministers of the Crown and men of State who had gone aboard to wish Major-General Bridges success with the Division. It was unmilitary, but it was magnificent, this sudden welling up of the spirit of the people and the burst of enthusiasm that knew no barriers. Ribbons were cast aboard and made the last links with the shore. Never shall I for one (and there were hundreds on board in whose throat a lump arose) forget the sudden quiet on ship and shore as the band played the National Anthem when the liner slowly moved from the pier out into the channel; and then the majestic notes of other anthems weaved into one brave throbbing melody that sent the blood pulsing through the brain.

Britons never, never will be slaves

blared the bugles, and the drums rattled and thumped the bars with odd emphasis till the ribbons had snapped and the watchers on the pier became a blurred impressionist picture, and even the yachts and steamboats could no longer keep pace with the steamer as she swung her nose to the harbour heads.

All this was, let me repeat, in striking contrast to the manner in which the ships in Sydney Harbour, in Hobart, in Port Augusta, and from other capitals had pulled out into the stream at dusk or in the early hours of the cold September mornings and hastened away to the rendezvous. Before the final departure I have just described on the afternoon of 21st October there had been a false alarm and interrupted start. The reasons for this delay are certainly worth recording. The Flagship was to have left Melbourne—the last of the Convoy from Eastern waters—on 29th September. That is to say, by the end of the month all the details of the Division had been completed, and were embarked or ready for embarkation. Indeed, some had actually started, and a number of transports left the northern harbours and had to anchor in Port Phillip Bay, where the troops were disembarked altogether or each day for a fortnight or more. For the reasons of this we have to extend our view to New Zealand. It was not generally known at the time that a contingent of 10,000 men from the sister Dominion were to form portion of the Convoy, and that two ships from New Zealand had already left port, when a hasty message from the Fleet drove them back. Now it became the Navy's job, once the men were on the ships, to be responsible for their safety—the safety of 30,000 lives. It had been arranged that the New Zealand transports should be escorted across the Southern Ocean to Bass Straits by the little cruiser Pioneer—sister ship of the Pegasus, later to come into prominence—and another small cruiser, as being sufficient protection in view of the line of warships and destroyers patrolling the strategic line north of Australia, curving down to the New Zealand coast. The German cruisers, admittedly frightened of an encounter with the Australia, had been successfully eluding that battle-cruiser for weeks, and were skulking amongst the islands of the Pacific destroying certain trading and wireless stations, and apparently waiting for an opportunity to strike at the Convoy. One scare was, therefore, sufficient. The Dominion Government refused to dispatch the troops without adequate escort, and in consequence all the programme was thrown out of gear, and the Minotaur—flagship of the escort—went herself with the Encounter and the two original cruisers to New Zealand and brought across the whole Maoriland Contingent. The alteration in the plans resulted in a delay of three weeks, for the warships had to coal again before proceeding across the Indian Ocean. However, it was better to be safe than sorry, and the delayed Australian Convoy was released in the third week of October and the ships commenced to gather at the appointed rendezvous.

Yet I am loath to think that this alone was the reason for the delay. One can read now into events happening at the heart of Empire a very significant cause for hesitancy to send this Australian Contingent to England for service in France. For matters in Turkey were already unsatisfactory. On 25th September messages had reached London of the preparations of the Turks on the Sinai Peninsula and the activity of the Germans in the Ottoman Empire, led by that extraordinary personality Enver Pasha. It was certain that every effort was being made by Great Britain to preserve peace with the Turks, but the Porte was taking a high hand, and it appeared that war would become inevitable. How far the Australian Government was taken into the confidence of the Foreign Office one can only guess. It must be supposed that Major-General Bridges, the Prime Minister, and Minister of Defence, together with the Governor-General of the Commonwealth, were in possession of the main points of the diplomatic relations between Great Britain and Turkey. Matters, too, in the Persian Gulf were very unsatisfactory in the beginning of October, and by the time that the last ship of the Convoy had left port it was certain from the attitude of Turkey, as reflected in the reports of Sir Louis Mallet, British Ambassador at Constantinople, that war would be declared. Military preparations pointed to an attack on the Suez Canal being pushed forward with all speed, and it was therefore necessary to have a large defending force available to draw on. So far as it is possible to read the inner history of events, this was the actual reason for the holding up (strange paradox as it may sound) of the Convoy until the destination of the 30,000 men should be determined. For it must be conceded that, with the Cape route open, not very much longer and far safer, with the venomous Emden raiding Indian waters and the German Pacific Fleet ready to dart out from the Northern islands, it was more feasible than using the Suez Canal with such a vast convoy of ships. As a matter of fact, this was the route chosen. True enough, when the time came, the landing of this army in Egypt for training "and war purposes" must have carried great significance to the Turks; and the plea of the badness of the English climate at the time preventing training in England, served as good an excuse as did the German cruiser menace in New Zealand waters. For while there may have been a lingering suspicion in Lord Kitchener's mind that perhaps the camps at Salisbury might not be ready, it was a trump card to have a body of 30,000 troops ready to divert either at once or in the near future to a strategic point against Turkey. Be all this as it may, the combined Convoys did not leave Australian shores until 1st November, and on the 30th October Sir L. Mallet had been told to ask for his passports within twelve hours unless the Turkish Government dismissed the German crews of the Goeben and Breslau from Constantinople. So actually when leaving the last port the Convoy were directed against Turkey. Yet I suppose no one for a moment read in all the portents of the future even a remote possibility of the landing of the Australian troops in Turkey. Later it was admitted that while training they would simply defend Egypt—to German plotting the one vital point to strike at the British Empire.

Let us return, however, with an apology for the digression, to the gathering up of the Convoy. King George's Sound, the chosen rendezvous of the fleet, is a magnificent harbour, steeped already in historical associations. It offered as fine an anchorage as could be wished for the forty transports and escorting warships. The harbour might have easily held three or four times the number of ships. Yet was this host of forty leviathians sufficient to find no parallel in history! True, the Athenians in ancient times, and even the Turks in the sixteenth century, had sent a fleet of greater size against the Order of St. John at Malta, had entered on marauding expeditions, but hardly so great an army had they embarked and sent across the Mediterranean. Here was a fleet crossing three seas, still disputed—though feebly enough, it is true.

ANCHORAGE OF AUSTRALIAN
AND
NEW ZEALAND TRANSPORTS
IN
KING GEORGE SOUND
ALBANY, OCTOBER 31^st 1916

Of many thrilling scenes it needs no great effort of memory to recall that Albany Harbour as those on the flagship saw it first through the thick grey mists of the early morning of 26th October. Almost the last of the Australian ships to enter port, the wind drove the waves over her bows and cast the spray on the decks. Most of the Divisional Staff, barely daylight as it was, were on deck, peering through the mists to catch the first glimpse of the host that they knew now lay at anchor in the harbour. First it was a visionary, fleeting glimpse of masts and funnels, and then, as the coast closed in darker on either bow and the beacons from the lighthouses at the entrance flashed, I could see ships gradually resolving themselves into definite shape, much in the way a conjurer brings from the gloom of a darkened chamber strange realities. The troops were astir and crowded to the ships' sides. They stood to attention as the liner glided down the lines of anchored transports, for the mass of shipping was anchored in ordered lines. The bugles rang out sharp and clear the assembly notes, flags dipped in salute to the General's flag at the mast-head. It was calm now inside this refuge. A large warship was creeping under the dark protection of a cliff like a lobster seeking to hide itself in the background of rocks, and the men learned with some surprise it was a Japanese cruiser, the Abuki. She remained there a few days and then steamed out, lost in a cloud of dense black smoke, while in her place came the two Australian cruisers, the Melbourne and Sydney. Each night the troops watched one or others of these scouts put to sea, stealing at dusk to patrol, and not alone, the entrance to the harbour wherein lay the precious Convoy.

On the morning of the 28th the New Zealand Convoy, consisting of ten ships, arrived, and anchored just inside the entrance of the harbour. From shore the sight was truly wonderful. Three regular lines of steamers, each crammed with troops and horses, were lying in an almost forgotten and certainly neglected harbour. What signs of habitation there were on shore were limited to a whaling station on the west and a few pretty red-roofed bungalows on the east; while the entrance to an inner harbour, the selected spot for a destroyer base of the Australian Navy, suggested as snug a little cove as one might wish. Opposite the main entrance behind the anchored Convoy was the narrow channel leading to the port where the warships anchored, protected from outer view behind high cliffs from which frowned the guns of the forts. It was from these forts, commanded then by Major Meekes, that I looked down on to the ships—that was after nearly being arrested as a spy by a suspicious vigilant guard. Each day three ships entered the port to coal, until the bunkers of the whole fleet were filled to overflowing, to carry them across the Indian Ocean. All was in readiness. It only needed the signal from the Admiralty to the Convoy and its escort and the army of 30,000 would move finally from Australian shores. This was the mustering of a complete Division for the first time in the history of the young Dominion. It had not as yet even been operating as an army in the field, but here it lay, taking thirty ships to transport (with ten more ships for the Maorilanders), in the same historical harbour where as early as 1780 a British frigate had put in for refuge from a storm and for water. It was this port, too, that two Princes of royal blood had visited; while later, at the beginning of the present century and a new era for Australia—the Commonwealth era—the King of England, then the Duke of York, had come. His visit was as unavoidable as certainly it was unexpected, for he had sought refuge, like the ancient British frigate from a violent storm; but, liking the spot, the King decided to stay, and festivities were transferred to Albany in haste. In 1907 the American Atlantic Squadron, under Rear-Admiral Speary, during its visit to Austral shores, had anchored in the broad bay. Thus had tradition, in which this assembly of the First Australian Expeditionary Force marked so deep a score, already begun to be formed round the beautiful harbour.

It will not be out of place to quote here the disposition of the troops and the ships bearing the men of the Contingent. It was the largest of any convoy during the war, steaming over 6,000 leagues. The records need no comment beyond pointing out that the indicated speeds of the ships show how the speed of the Convoy had to be regulated by the speed of the slowest ship—the Southern—and that the arrangement of the three divisions of transports was based on the pace of each, the object of which is apparent when viewed in the light of the necessity of the Convoy scattering on the approach of enemy ships, and avoidance of slow ships hindering those of greater speed.

In the closing days of October the message was flashed through the fleet that the Convoy should get under way on 1st November, and that right early in the morning, for Major-General Bridges, no less than Captain Gordon Smith, who had command of the Convoy (he was Second Naval Member on the Australian Naval Board), was anxious to be off to his destination. That that point was to some degree fixed when the ships left port I have no doubt, though the masters of the transports actually did not know the route until they were some hundred miles clear of the coast and the Minotaur set the course to the Equator. Incessantly all through the night previous the tug-boats had churned the waters round our vessel's sides, darting off now to the uttermost ship of the line—the Miltiades (she had English reservists on board), now to return from the lighted town which lay behind the Flagship with rebellious spirits, who had come near to being left behind, to explain away their return now as best they might. To and fro panted the motor-boats, with their eyes of red as if sleepy from overwork. The General of the Division, in fact all his Staff, were up late settling these cases. I wondered at the matters that needed his personal attention; even though the ships were to be together for weeks, still they were in a sense isolated. When the last tug had departed and the last lingering soldier been brought from the shore and sent off to his own ship, there stole over the whole sleeping fleet a great peace. It was Sunday morning.

Heaving up her anchor at six o'clock by the chimes of the distant clocks on shore, the Flagship led the way from port. The waters were calm. No white-winged yachts came to circle round the fleet, only a tug with a cinematographer on board waited for the ships as they slowly went forth on to the perilous deep, each ship dipping its flag, paying tribute to the General on the Flagship, even down to the New Zealand transports, painted all a dull warship grey. The cruiser Melbourne lay in harbour still, while the other warships had gone ahead to the open sea, the Minotaur and Sydney gliding gracefully through the dull waters, leaving in their wake a terrible wash of foam, as warships will. The bugles still rang in our ears, though the wind from the south blew the notes astern. Amongst a group of officers I was standing on a skylight of the dining saloon watching the moving panorama behind. To bring the fleet, anchored facing the head of the Sound, into motion meant the gradual turning of each ship so that they passed one another, and because the entrance to the harbour was not quite wide enough, the Flagship went out first, barely making 10 knots, followed by the Southern, and the others in their line behind. We watched her bows buried in the sea one minute and then

DISPOSITION OF UNITS OF THE 1ST DIVISION IN THE CONVOY AND PLACES OF EMBARKATION.

DISPOSITION OF UNITS OF THE 1ST DIVISION IN THE CONVOY AND PLACES OF EMBARKATION.

DISPOSITION OF UNITS OF THE 1ST DIVISION IN THE CONVOY AND PLACES OF EMBARKATION.

ORGANIZATION OF CONVOY.

NEW ZEALAND TRANSPORTS.

the red of her keel, and saw her speed cone at the mast-head. We smiled at the efforts of this craft to keep pace, a smile which later in the voyage became wry at the mention of the ill-speeded vessel's name. Gradually on either quarter there crept towards us the leaders of the other lines or divisions, the Euripides and Wiltshire and their nine followers. Each ship was coaling and threw her smoke in the air, and each ship that left made a smoky trail, till the harbour became obscured like in a fog. As the Orvieto, following the course of the Minotaur half a mile ahead, now turned to the westward, astern we saw nothing but a bank of dark grey cloud, and from it masts and funnels and sometimes the bows of a ship protruding. It was all so smoothly and finely planned that it seemed almost unreal, as the ships took up their positions, our central line slowing down to permit of the other ships making up leeway. As I looked down the lines of ships each became a little smaller and a little more indistinct, until the last was scarcely more than "hull up" on the horizon. On either hand a warship; ahead a warship. The coast faded to a dim blue, more distinct once the sun rose over the hills, but soon vanishing over the swelling horizon. It was the last link with the Homeland, and who knew how many would see those shores again—and when! It was at last the real start.

Two days out—on the 3rd November—during the afternoon, the last two transports joined the fleet, escorted to their places by the Japanese cruiser Ibuki and the Pioneer. They came through a storm, I remember, and slipped into line without the least fuss. The Minotaur had signalled across to the Convoy, and soon we saw the warships that brought our escort up to five. This is how they lay beside the Convoy: the Minotaur a mile ahead marked the course (at night we steered by a stern light); the Ibuki on our right and starboard beam, a mile away; the Sydney on the left a similar distance. The Melbourne was a mile astern of the last New Zealand ship that followed hard in the track of the Australian Convoy, their ten ships ranged up on either side of the central division. The Pioneer turned back. Each transport was two cables length ahead of the one following; each division (on parallel courses) four cables from the other. So went the fleet with its precious Convoy into the Indian Ocean.

CHAPTER III
ADVENTURES ON THE CONVOY

Now the course set by the Minotaur, once the Convoy was well clear of the Western Australian coast, was not the ordinary trade route to Colombo. In the first place we steamed farther west, and then shaped a course to pass some 60 or 70 miles to the east of Cocos Islands. This was on the opposite side of that group to the ordinary track of the mail steamers. The reason for the change of route was to ensure protection. Other courses were open to us; for instance, the one which would have led us amongst the Deia Garcia Islands off the Madagascar coast. However, our destinies were guided by information received by wireless on the Flagship from the Admiralty. The troops were not aware of it, but there was a Japanese squadron operating round the coasts of Java and in this distant way protecting our flank. The speed of the Convoy varied from 9½ to 11 knots an hour, though the usual run for a day was about 244 knots.

The black sheep of the fleet—if one may call a vessel such—was the Southern, the 4,000-ton vessel which I have already referred to as following the Orvieto, the Flagship of the central line. She became the cynosure of every eye, regarded in turn with interest, mirth, derision, and finally anger and compassion. There was something in the attitude of the steamer with her great heavy bows that suggested she was always doing her best to keep up, and always she seemed to be stoking. One pictures her ghost stalking each night along her confined decks looking with alarm at the terrific pace! (10 knots) and wondering for how long it would continue. Not the least amusing part was that sometimes, gathering speed, she made spurts, and all but "came aboard" the Orvieto, taking this opportunity of hauling her speed cone part way down the mast, with an arrogance that she hastily had to abandon some ten minutes later. It was never quite understandable why she was chosen as a transport, and I have heard since that it was a hasty bargain of the Government when an early departure of the force was contemplated. The Medical Board had condemned certain ships as overcrowded, and this ship was taken on as an extra vessel, thereby reducing the speed of the Convoy by at least a knot an hour. The shortsightedness of this policy will be apparent when one calculates that the ships were hired by the day. With the Southern absent, one and a half knots an hour would have been added to the speed of the Convoy. This meant the dropping of 36 knots in a day, which in a voyage of thirty-five days was the same as two days wasted. Now, reckoning coal at 15s. a ton, as a Government price, the cost of that first Convoy a day was at least £6,000. That is to say, probably a great deal more than £12,000 was flung away by keeping the Southern. I cannot help including this incident. Captain Kiddle, of the Minotaur, had been given power by the Navy Office to discard the vessel if she was a nuisance, and it was thought at one time of turning her into a hospital ship at Colombo; in fact, that zealous officer signalled to Captain Gordon Smith, commanding the Convoy, telling him "to distribute the horses and men when you get to Colombo, and then allow her [the Southern] to return to the obscurity from which she should never have emerged." Unfortunately, for some reason this was not done, and she remained there faithfully with us till the end of the voyage—the constant source of our gibes.

Routine on the transports was not a very strenuous affair after the hard days of drill in the training camps and the long marches. To begin with, there was very little marching; only on the Orvieto and ships like the Euripides, where there was a certain length of deck available, did it permit of companies of men being marched round the ship. Many is the time I have sat writing in my cabin listening to the steady tramp of unbooted feet along the decks above, and the bands, stationed amidships, thumping out march after march. Never, however, could I grow accustomed to the distant squeal of the bagpipes, a band of which we were unfortunate enough to have with us. One threw down one's pen and tried to piece together some melody in the panting pipes.

A QUIET AFTERNOON ON A TROOP DECK.

TATTOOING WITH HOME-MADE ELECTRICAL NEEDLE.

To face p. 36.

Each day the men roused out at réveillé, sounded at six o'clock, and did physical jerks (exercises) before breakfast. Then they cleaned ship and prepared for the ten o'clock inspection by the officer in command of the troops, who went round with the Medical Officers and the Captain. The troops by this time would be mustered on deck, gathered in groups, learning all about rifles, machine guns, signalling, listening to lectures by the officers on trenches and the way to take cover, sniping, observation, and even aiming at miniature targets realistically made by enthusiastic leaders. At 11.30 the main work was over for the day. For an hour or two in the afternoon there were more exercises, but as the ships steamed into the tropics this afternoon drill was relaxed. The officers attended classes, and regular schools were formed and an immense amount was done to advance their technical knowledge. Besides all this, there were boat and life-belt drills and occasional night alarms to vary the monotony—but a precaution very necessary indeed. As the Convoy for the greater part of the six weeks' voyage steamed without lights, or only lights very much dimmed, work for the day ceased at dusk. Always there were guards and orderly duties, for the correct running of the ship, which occupied about a hundred men on the largest transport with a definite duty each day.

It was on the voyage that the skin sun-tanning process began, to be carried to perfection in Egypt, and later on the Gallipoli Peninsula. A pair of "slacks" (short pants) and a shirt and white hat was enough for the men to wear on deck. They did not put on boots for three weeks, and their feet became as hard as those of the mariners. One heard them stumping round the deck with muffled tramp. But the physical exercises regularly given, the rifle exercises and the earlier training, and high standard demanded on enlistment, made this first contingent into a force of young athletes.

It was the raiding Emden that rendered the precautions taken on the first Convoy that left Australia so very essential—a matter which subsequent contingents knew nothing of, with the German commerce and warships swept from the seas. The anxiety of Captain Gordon Smith—the naval officer on the Flagship of the Convoy responsible for the safe conduct of each transport, as the Minotaur's captain, and subsequently Captain Silver of the Melbourne, was responsible for the whole fleet—at times turned to exasperation as he watched the lines of transports through his telescope. The dropping out of a ship from the long column through a temporary engine defect, the losing of position, the constant disregard by the New Zealand transport of instructions (they pulled out of the line deliberately to engage in target practice), and other matters, caused caustic, and characteristically naval, signals to go flying up and down the divisions. Once, when boxes and the like were being thrown overboard, providing ample evidence to the enemy, if found, of the track of the Convoy, the signal was made: "This is not a paperchase." At night too, when some ship incautiously showed lights through an open porthole, or a saloon door was left open on deck, after certain warnings, would buzz the message: "You are showing too much light; turn off your dynamos." When it came to the merchant skippers steering by stern lights hung over each vessel just above the propeller, throwing a phosphorescent light on the whitened waters, it was a task at the same time their terror and their despair, especially when orders came to draw closer together, during the nights' steaming in the vicinity of Cocos Islands. The transports were forbidden to use their wireless, and a buzzer was provided, with a "speaking" radius of about 15 miles, for intercommunication throughout the fleet. Relative to the tension at this period, I will make an extract from my notes written on the Orvieto:—

"So we sailed on, drawing nearer and nearer into the middle of the Indian Ocean. Looking at the chart each day, I feel that while we are a large fleet, the largest that has ever crossed this ocean, after all the seas are very broad. There is comfort as well as uneasiness in the thought. It will be as difficult for a foreign ship to find us as for us to run into a foreign ship by some chance. However, the lads are taught to grow accustomed to meet any emergency and to muster on deck with lights out.... It was on the night before we reached Cocos Islands—to be exact, 7th November—shortly after our evening meal, while the troops were lying about the decks loath to turn in on such a hot night, that the lights suddenly went out altogether. I remember wandering out of the saloon, having last seen the glowing end of General Bridges' cigar, and stumbled on companies of troops falling into their lines. I got to my station amidships, and remained there for what seemed hours, but which in reality was fifteen minutes, while I could only hear whispering voices round me, and just make out dim, silhouetted figures and forms. There were muffled commands. It was eerie, this mustering in the dark. I had been in alarms at night in a darkened camp, when I had risen from warm blankets and the hard ground and stumbled over guide-ropes to one's company down the lines, but to feel one's way round a crowded deck was a very different proposition. Over the whole fleet had been cast this shadow, for, in turn, each of the ships disappeared from sight. I hardly like to contemplate what would have happened to the soldier who ventured, thoughtlessly, to light a cigarette at this moment. The Australian is a good talker, and it seems impossible to absolutely stifle conversation. The ship was strangely quiet. However, the alarm was exceedingly well carried out.... Yet little did we dream that this testing was shortly to be put into stern actuality. On the following Saturday night, while we were steaming with very dimmed lights, cabin shutters closed, making the interior of the ship intensely stuffy, all lights went out. Yet that night, with a single light thrown on the piano, we held a concert. But the very next night the evening meal was taken before dusk, and at 7.30 all lights were again extinguished. In not one of the ships was a dynamo generating. The fleet had become almost invisible, like phantom ships on a still sea. One undressed in the dark, and felt one's way from point to point, bumping into people as one went. A few candles stuck in heaps of sand flickered in the smoke-room. It did not take long to get round that the reason for this drastic step was because it was thought that, if any danger threatened—which none of us thought it did, with the escort of warships around us—then to-night was the night...."

How we passed the Emden on this very evening, quite ignorant of our danger and of that daring cruiser's destruction, needs to be related in a separate chapter.

CHAPTER IV
THE FIRST PAGE OF AUSTRALIAN NAVAL HISTORY
I. From the Decks of the Convoy

Taking events in their chronological order, I halt here in the narrative of the advance of the Australian Contingent into Egypt to deal with the incidents relating to the chase and destruction of the notorious raiding cruiser Emden by the Australian cruiser Sydney, which, together with her sister ship, the Melbourne, at the time of the action was part of the Convoy. It was singularly significant that this first page of Australia's naval history—a glorious, magnificently written page—should have occurred in the very presence, as it were, of an Australian army. Well did it merit the enthusiasm and relief that followed the exploit not only throughout India, but through the Straits Settlements and amongst all the Allied merchant service that sailed the seas. About this time the Minotaur, till then the Flagship of the escort, had departed and was over 300 miles away on the route, I believe, to the Cape of Good Hope to replace the Good Hope, sunk by the German Pacific Squadron off Valparaiso a few days before. She left at 5.30 on the evening of the 8th November with the parting message: "Off on another service. Hope Australians and New Zealanders have good luck in Germany and give the Germans a good shaking." This had reduced our escort to the two Australian cruisers and the Ibuki. It was, however, very evident that there was nothing now to fear from the German ships after their short-lived victory off the South American coast, so only the Emden remained at large (the Königsberg meanwhile having been successfully bottled up on the South African coast). At the risk of tiring the reader's patience I will tell first of the relative position of the Convoy, believing that the knowledge that this great fleet, carrying 30,000 Australasians, had so narrow an escape will strengthen the dramatic interest of the naval battle when it shall be told. I intend to quote from a letter written at this time, but which the Censor in Australia, for some reason I have been unable to discover, refused to allow to be published, although approved by the naval officers directly connected with the fight and the escort. In consequence of which action, I may mention, much nonsense appeared in the Press from time to time relating to the closeness of the Emden to the fleet.

Little did the people in Australia, when the news of the victory was announced, know of the danger which their transports had run. The bald announcement made some days later by the Minister of Defence (when the news leaked out) that the Convoy had been within 100 miles of the sea fight, was the only information vouchsafed. Sea romances have been written by the score, but I doubt if there is any more thrilling than the tale from mid-Indian Ocean of a fight to the finish which took place quite unexpectedly in a calm tropical sea on a bright morning in November. It seemed, indeed, nothing short of a fairy-tale (Captain Silver's own words were: "It seems like a fairy-tale just to think that when we are trying our utmost to avoid the Emden we should run across her tracks") that the ship for which the fleet—and no mean fleet—was seeking high and low, which had eluded capture so long, should be caught red-handed in the very presence of a Convoy of forty ships that were creeping across the ocean, anxious above all else to avoid such an awkward meeting.

In the light of what actually occurred, events previous to the fight (which I described in the last chapter) had a curious significance. I suppose that none of us at the time fully appreciated the reasons which actuated the very drastic precautions against detection which were taken three days before we reached Cocos Islands. We had boat drills and day and night alarms. "On the evening of the 8th," I find I wrote, "we were called to our evening meal earlier than usual, and by dusk the fleet was plunged in darkness for the whole night. Of all conjectures for this action, the one which gained most support was that before dawn we would reach the danger-point of our voyage—the Cocos Islands—the only possible rendezvous for a hostile ship in mid-Indian Ocean. We knew that our course would carry us 50 miles to the eastward of the islands and was far away from the ordinary trade route, but still danger might lurk at this spot. Even mast-head lights were extinguished, and not a gleam could be seen from any ship. So they travelled through the night, while barely three hours ahead of them the Emden was crossing their path, silently, very secretly, bent on a very different mission from what she might have undertaken had she known of the proximity of the fleet. One, however, can only conjecture what might have happened had the lights not been doused."

On Monday morning, 9th November, the troops were already astir when they saw, at seven o'clock, the Sydney preparing for action. Half an hour previously they had watched the Melbourne, then in charge of the Convoy and at the head of the line, dart away towards the south-west. Captain Silver had not gone far on this course when he remembered he was in charge, and there remained for him but to stay at his post and send forward the sister ship, the Sydney, into action. It was a sad blow for him and for the keen crew on board, who saw thus the opportunity for which they had been longing snatched from under their eyes. Nevertheless, he honourably stuck to his post, and I saw him gradually edge his cruiser towards the Convoy until it almost came alongside the Orvieto, the Flagship. Meanwhile the searchlight on her forward control was blinking speedily, in the pale, chill morning air, messages in code that sent the Sydney dashing away to the south from the position she had held on the port beam of the Convoy. In less than ten minutes she disappeared behind a cloud of smoke. When the troops saw, as I could with good glasses, a warship travelling at 26 knots an hour with a White Ensign run up to her fore-peak, an Australian ensign at her truck, and the Union Jack floating from her after-mast, with the decks being cleared for action, they realized that some trouble was brewing, though the Convoy as a whole knew nothing very definitely for hours. On the Flagship we knew that a strange warship had been seen at the entrance to the harbour of Keeling Island, then 40 miles away. As the officers came on deck at 7.30, the Melbourne was still signalling and the Ibuki was preparing for action. The wireless calls for help had ceased abruptly, and we could see nothing but the two threatening warships. For all on board it was a period of supreme suspense and suppressed excitement. Captain Gordon Smith, Mr. Parker (Naval Secretary), and General Bridges were on the bridge waiting for the messages coming through from the Sydney as she raced south. Scraps of news were reaching me as they were taken by the operators in the Marconi-room amidships. "It was Cocos Island that had called, about 50 miles away—it might not be the Emden, but some other ship—probably there was more than one, perhaps five!" Who was the enemy? Would the Sydney reach her in time? Would the other ships go? Those were the thoughts drumming in our ears. The Melbourne, quite near us again, was semaphoring rapidly, and then she darted away between the lines of ships to a position 10 miles on our port-beam, lying almost at right angles to the course we were taking. Obviously she was waiting to catch any messages and act as a shield against the approaching enemy should she escape the Sydney and try and push in on the Convoy.

H.M.A.S. "SYDNEY" IN COLOMBO HARBOUR AFTER THE COCOS ISLAND ENGAGEMENT.

To face p. 42.

Meanwhile the Japanese cruiser Ibuki presented a magnificent sight. Long shall I remember how her fighting flags were run up to the mast-heads, as they had been on the Sydney, where they hung limp until the breeze sprung up and they floated out great patches of colour. The danger was imminent enough for her to move, slowly at first, and then rapidly gaining speed as she swept across our bows towards the west. So close did she pass that I could see plainly enough the white figures swarming over her decks. They worked in squads of twenty or thirty and very rapidly, standing on the gun-turrets and on the fire-control stations fastening the sandbags and hammocks round the vulnerable points to stop the flying splinters of the shells. The sun caught the dull colour of the guns and they shone. Masses of thick smoke coiled from her funnels, growing denser every minute. Each thrust of the propeller she was gaining speed. As the cruiser passed, there flew to the truck of her after-mast the national ensign, with another at her peak, half-way down the mast. Lit by the sun's rays, these flags looked blood-red streaks on a background of white. In battle array the cruiser won the admiration of all. Barely ten minutes after being signalled was she ready. The breeze was so light that the smoke rose in a column 40, 60 feet in the air; but as she gathered way the wind caught it, and drew it back behind, just as it caught and stretched the limp flags. And all the while were the great 12-in. guns being turned this way and that, as if anxious to nose out the enemy. We watched them swing in their heavy turrets.

Both Melbourne and Ibuki during the hours of the battle were constantly changing their course, the latter turning and twisting, now presenting her broadside, now her bows only, to the direction in which the Sydney had disappeared. Both were edging farther away, but always lay between the enemy and the Convoy. Warning had come from the Sydney that the enemy was escaping northward, and a thrill ran through the watchers on board as it was spread around. It seemed as if any moment the Japanese guns might boom with their long range of fire. At five minutes to ten we heard from the Australian cruiser, "I am engaging the enemy," and again that "The enemy is escaping north." In suspense for another hour we waited, until the message arrived at 11.20, "Enemy ran ashore to save sinking." Though sent to the Melbourne, these signals were received on the Orvieto, being the Flagship of the Convoy, and knowing the code, as we had the chief naval transport officer on board, they were quickly interpreted. At 11.28 we heard, "Enemy beached herself to save sinking; am pursuing merchant collier." Meanwhile the Minotaur had been asking for information, and accordingly the Sydney sent the message, "Emden beached and done for" at 11.44 to that cruiser, which, I believe, had turned back ready to give assistance if needed. A cheer rose from the troop decks and spread through the fleet as the message, definitely stating it was the Emden that was destroyed, was semaphored from ship to ship down the lines. By noon flashed the message across the calm, vivid blue waters that our casualties had only been two (later three) killed and thirteen wounded. I well recall what relief that news brought, no one daring to hint how much the Sydney had suffered. I thought, as I watched the troops talking excitedly on deck, of Wordsworth's line:—

Smiles broke from us and we had ease.

That tense two hours had bathed us all in perspiration. The troops had broken from their drill to look longingly in the direction of the battle which was raging 50 miles away. Not even the distant rumble of a gun reached us on the transports. A little calculation showed that the Sydney must have steamed nearly 70 miles in the three and a half hours before she dispatched her quarry. The victory seemed to draw us all closer together. A kind of general thaw set in. That night at mess, besides the toast of "The King," General Bridges proposed "The Navy, coupled with the name of the Sydney." Need it be related how it was honoured by soldiers?

Now that it was known that the other enemy ship was but a collier, there was no need for the other cruisers to remain in fighting trim. But before I saw the fighting flags stowed away on the Japanese cruiser there was yet another instance of the fine spirit which animated our Ally. From the captain of the Melbourne she sought permission a second time to enter the fight and join the Sydney, with the request, "I wish go." Indeed, at one time she started like a bloodhound straining at the leash towards the south, believing that her services were needed, when Captain Silver reluctantly signalled, "Sorry, permission cannot be given; we have to rest content in the knowledge that by remaining we are doing our duty." So in accordance with that duty she doubled slowly, and it seemed reluctantly, back, and went, unbinding her hammocks and sandbags, to her former post. Now, early in the morning there had come the same message sent from Cocos Island from the Osaki, a sister ship of the Ibuki, which ship, too, had picked up the call for help. This led us to the knowledge that a Japanese squadron was cruising off the coast of Java, a few hundred miles on our right, as part of that net which was gradually being drawn round the Emden.

It will be realized that amongst the crews of the two warships excluded from a share in the fight there should be a certain disappointment. Captain Silver's action showed that high sense of, and devotion to, duty of which the Navy is justly proud. And feeling for brother officers, Captain Gordon Smith, as officer in charge of the Convoy, sent across to the two cruisers the typically facetious naval message:—

"Sorry there was not enough meat to go round."

CHAPTER V
THE FIRST PAGE OF AUSTRALIAN NAVAL HISTORY (continued)
II. The Destruction of the "Emden"

It may indeed be considered a happy omen that the first chapter of Australia's naval history should be written in such glowing colours as those that surrounded the destruction of the German raider Emden, for whose capture no price was deemed too high to pay. Hearing the recital of that chapter by Captain Glossop in the cabin of the Sydney two days after the engagement, I consider myself amongst the most fortunate. In the late afternoon I had come on board the Sydney, then lying in the harbour of Colombo cleaning up (having just twenty-four hours before handed over the last of her prisoners), from one of the native caïques, and except for the paint that had peeled from her guns and the wrecked after fire-control, I saw, at first glance, very little to suggest an action of the terrific nature she had fought. But as I walked round the lacerated decks I began to realize more and more the game fight the Emden had put up and the accuracy of her shooting (she is alleged to have been the best gunnery ship in the German Fleet). On the bow side amidships was the yellow stain caused by the explosion of some lyddite, while just near it was a dent in the armour-plated side where a shell had struck without bursting. The after control was a twisted wreck of darkened iron and steel and burnt canvas. There were holes in the funnels and the engine-room, and a clean-cut hole in an officer's cabin where a shell had passed through the legs of a desk and out the cruiser's side without bursting. The hollows scooped out of the decks were filled with cement as a rough makeshift, while the gun near by (a shell had burst on it) was chipped and splattered with bullets and pieces of shell. Up in the bow was a great cavern in the deck, where a shell had struck the cruiser squarely, and had ripped up the decks like matchwood and dived below, where it burst amidst the canvas hammocks and mess tables, splintering the wood and riddling a notice board with shot. A fire had been quickly extinguished. Mounting then to the top of the forward fire-control, I saw where the range-finder had stood (it had been blown away), and where the petty officer had been sitting when the shell carried him and the instrument away—a shot, by the way, which nearly deprived the Sydney of her captain, her range-finding officer, and three others. Returning to the after deck we found Captain Glossop himself. He was walking the decks enjoying the balmy evening, and he went with Captain Bean, the Australian Official War Correspondent, and myself below to his stateroom, where he told us in a beautifully clear and simple manner the story of the action. I saw, too, the chart of the battle reproduced here. After what we then heard, what we had already seen and learned from the officers at mess later that evening (they sent us off to the Orvieto in the picket boat), we hastened back to set down the story of the fight. Perusal of reports, plans, and data obtained from one source and another leads me now to alter very little the first impressions I recorded of that famous encounter, which, I may add, was taken in a spirit of modesty mingled with a genuine and hearty appreciation of the foe by all the officers and crew of the Sydney.

It is quite beyond the region of doubt to suppose that the Emden knew anything of the approach of the Convoy, or of the presence of Australian cruisers in Indian waters. What she did believe was that the warship she saw approaching her so rapidly was either the Newcastle or Yarmouth, and right up to the concluding phases of the action she believed this. On the other hand, the Emden herself had been mistaken for the Newcastle by the operators at the wireless station on Cocos Islands when she had put in an appearance on the evening before the action, 8th November, just at dusk. The coming of the cruiser to the island at sunset had not excited the suspicions of the people on shore, for her colour was not distinguishable, and she had apparently four funnels similar to the Newcastle. Having reconnoitred the harbour and seen all was safe, the Emden had lain off all night, and next morning before dawn had steamed into the harbour and dropped anchor close inshore. Still the people at the station were unsuspicious until by some mischance (I have heard also, by orders) the astonished islanders saw one of the funnels wobble and shake, and then fall to the deck in a heap. It was the painted dummy canvas funnel. Meanwhile the Emden had sent off a landing party, and there was just time for the operators to rush to their posts and send through the message by wireless which the Convoy had received, and which the Melbourne and Sydney had heard: "Strange cruiser at entrance to harbour" and the S.O.S. call. At the same time the cable operator was busy sending over the cable message after message, which was being registered in London, of the approach of the landing party, ending with the dramatic: "They are entering the door"—and silence.

This revelation of the identity of the vessel at once explained to the operators where the German wireless signals, that had been choking the air overnight, had been emanating from. The endeavour of the cruiser to drown the calls for assistance by her high-pitched Telefunken waves was frustrated, and, as I have said, the arrival of the landing party put a stop to further messages. Still, the call had gone forth and was picked up at 6.30 a.m. by the Convoy, with the result that the Sydney went into action steaming considerably over 20 knots an hour, and at each revolution of the propeller gaining speed until she was tearing through the water, cutting it with her sharp prow like a knife. It was not long before the lookout on the cruiser saw lights ahead from the island and the tops of palm-trees, and almost at the same moment the top of the masts of the "strange warship." Quickly the funnels rose over the horizon, and by the time the whole ship came into view there was very little doubt that it was the Emden. Yet the enemy showed no signs of attempting to escape and make a long chase of it (which she might have done, being a ship with a speed of 25 knots) and a dash for liberty, although the Sydney's smoke she must have seen come up over the rim of the seas, probably long before she saw the ship itself. Even with the knowledge that her guns were of smaller calibre than her antagonist, she dashed straight at the Sydney and tried to close.

The Emden opened fire at 9.40 at the extreme range of her guns, slightly under 10,000 yards. She let loose a whole broadside, but while this was in the air our guns had been trained on her and had fired too—the port-side batteries coming into action. With a shriek the German shells went over the heads of the men and the masts of the Sydney, while it was seen that the Sydney's shots had also carried over the chase by about 400 yards. The next broadsides from both ships fell short, and the water was sent into the air like columns of crystal before the eyes of the gunners. Within the next few salvos both ships found the range, halving the first ranges, and hit the target. The air was filled with the sickening swish of the shells and the loud, dull explosions. As the German opened fire an exclamation of surprise broke from the lips of the officer in charge of the Sydney's range-finder. That a cruiser with such light guns was able to open and engage a cruiser carrying 6-in. guns at such extreme range was disquieting. With the next shell his cap was almost raised from his head as it whistled past between him and his assistant and carried away the range-finder that was immediately behind him in the centre of the control. The man seated there was instantly killed, while the captain and another officer, a few feet away, were flung back against the sides of the control station. Lucky it was that this shell, the blast of which had scorched the men, passed through the starboard side of the lofty station and, without exploding, over the side of the ship. It was shells from this salvo, or ones following hard on it—for the Germans were firing at a furious rate, and three of their shells would be in the air at one time—that made the most telling hits on the Sydney. A shell had searched the after control and gouged a cavity the size of a man's body along the wall nearest the after funnel, and passed on without exploding there, but it struck the deck, scooping out a huge mass of iron before it ricochetted into the water. The five men had been thrown to the floor of the control, wounded in the legs, and while still stunned by the impact another shell tore its way through, completely wrecking the control and bursting inside as it struck the opposite wall. As the enemy's guns were firing at extreme range the angle of descent was steep, and therefore the impact not so great, for the Sydney, with a superior range of fire, kept edging off from the Emden, still trying to close. Again the enemy scored, and the next minute a shell blew two holes in the steam-pipe beside the funnel and exploded behind the second starboard gun, killing two of the gun crew and wounding others, while it ignited a quantity of guncotton and charges lying on deck. That, due to the remarkable coolness of a gunner, was at once thrown overboard and the fire extinguished. Great gashes were made in the deck where the bits of the shell (it was high explosive) had struck, and the gear of the gun itself was chipped all over, while one of the breech pins was blown away. At the time the gun was not in action, and when the Sydney doubled, as she soon did, conforming with the move by the Emden, the gun was ready again for firing, worked by the port-side crew. Meanwhile shells had hulled the cruiser, and there had been a shudder through the vessel as a shell burst through the deck just below the forward control and wrecked the mess deck. But so intent on the enemy were the gunners that none I have talked to, seemed to have noticed the shells very much.

PLAN OF THE SYDNEY-EMDEN FIGHT
at Cocos Islands 9^th November 1914
as prepared by Gunnery Observing Officer HMAS Sydney.

But what of the Emden? The greater power of our guns and the appalling accuracy of our fire had, in that first half-hour—when the air was thick with shot and shell and the stench of lyddite fumes filled the nostrils, when faces were blackened by the smoke from the guns and funnels—wrought fearful havoc in the enemy's ship. The Sydney was not firing so rapidly as her opponent, but her fire was surer, and the shells went swifter, because more directly, to their mark. It was, I believe, the third or fourth salvo when the fore funnel of the Emden went with a terrific crash over the side, dragging with it stays and rigging. Each of our salvos meant five guns aimed, and each of these appeared to be finding the mark. The water round the cruiser was alive with shell that sent the spray over her decks. In another few minutes a whole broadside hit the stern by the after port-holes. The shells—there must have been fully three of them—exploded in the interior of the ship, blowing and bulging up the deck, and twisting the iron plates as if they had been so much cardboard instead of toughened steel. Fires broke out from all points astern, and it has been learned since that this salvo wrecked the steering gear and communication system. After this the Emden's speed appreciably diminished and she was compelled to steer by her propellers. In this manner were the whole of the after guns put out of action, and, indeed, one of the gun's crew was blown into the water by the shock of the impact and the blast of the arriving shells. The ship trembled in her course, and shuddered over her whole length. In between decks the fires were gaining, licking up the woodwork and the clothing of the crew. Smoke enveloped at this time the whole of the stern. It gushed from the hatches and the rents in the side, smothering the wounded that lay about the decks. The iron plates became white hot, and the crew were forced further and further forward as other fires broke out. Then, too, the after funnel came crashing down, cut off near the deck, and the inner funnel fell out and dragged in the water. Already the after control had gone by the board, and another salvo shot the foremast completely away, wrecking the whole of the forward control and bringing the rigging, iron plates, sandbags, and hammocks tumbling down to the decks on the crew below, mangling them in an indistinguishable, horrible heap.

By this time the Emden's fire had slackened considerably, as the guns were blown out of action. In the first quarter of an hour the Germans had been firing broadside after broadside as rapidly as the shells could be crammed into the breeches of the guns. The ship had doubled like a hare, bringing alternate broadsides into action, but the Sydney, unscathed as to her speed, and her engines working magnificently (thanks to the work of the chief engineer), at one time topped 27 knots, and was easily able to keep off at over 6,000 yards and, taking the greater or outside circle, steam round her victim. On the second time of doubling, when the fire from the Emden had died down to an intermittent gun fire, the Sydney ran in to close range (4,000 yards) and fired a torpedo. The direction was good, but it never reached its mark. It was seen that the enemy was beaten and must soon sink. A fresh burst of fire had greeted the Australian cruiser, which continued to pour salvo after salvo into her foe, sweeping the decks and riddling her sides until she crawled with a list. Early in the action a lucky shot had flooded the Emden's torpedo chamber, and in this regard she was powerless. Fires now burst from her decks at all points, and smoke indeed covered her from stem to stern. For one period she was obscured from view by a very light yellow smoke that seemed to the Sydney's gunners as if the ship had disappeared, as she had stopped firing. The gunners ceased fire.

"She's gone, sir—she's gone!" shouted the men, their pent-up feelings for the first time bursting forth. "Man the lifeboats!" Cheers filled the air, but the next minute the Emden emerged from the cloud, fired, and the men returned to serve their guns. It was then that the third and last remaining funnel went by the board. It was the centre one of the three, and it came toppling down, and lay across the third and after funnel, which had fallen over to port. The fires had driven the crew into the bows, which were practically undamaged, but the ship was in flames. The decks were unbearably hot. The German shells were falling very short, the guns no longer accurate. The Sydney had ceased to fire salvos, and for the last half-hour individual gun fire had been ordered. The end came when the Emden, already headed for the shores of the north Keeling Island, struck on the reef and remained with her bows firmly embedded in the coral. It was just 11.20, and while the Emden's flag was still flying Captain Glossop decided to give the foe two more salvos, and these found a target below the waterline. Still the German ensign flew at the after mast-head.

In the meantime the enemy's collier, ignorant of the fray, had come up (it was arranged that the Emden should coal at Cocos at 1 o'clock), and soon showed herself bent in some way or other on assisting the cruiser. The Sydney kept guns trained on her, and now, when there was breathing space after an action lasting an hour and forty minutes, she gave chase, and at ten minutes past twelve caught up with the collier and fired a shell across her bows. At the mast-head was flown the international code signal to stop. This the Germans proceeded to do, first having taken measures to scuttle the ship by removing the sea-cock, and to make doubly sure they destroyed it. An armed crew put off from the Sydney to the collier, which was now found to be the captured British merchantman s.s. Buresk. They finding it now impossible to save the ship, her crew were brought off, offering no resistance. There were eighteen Chinamen aboard, an English steward, a Norwegian cook, and a prize crew from the Emden consisting of three officers, one warrant officer, and twelve men. When these had been taken in tow by the Sydney's boats, the cruiser fired four shells into the collier, and she quickly subsided beneath the waves.

Turning south again, the Sydney proceeded back to the Emden and picked up some survivors of the battle who were struggling in the water. They were men from the after guns who had been blown into the water when the salvo had struck the Emden, doing such fearful execution to her stern. These men had been in the water from ten o'clock, and were almost exhausted. As the waters hereabouts are shark infested, their rescue seemed all the more remarkable. Arriving now back before her quarry at 4.30, the Sydney found the Emden had still her colours flying. For some time she steamed back and forth, signalling in the international code for surrender, but without obtaining any answer. As the German flag still fluttered at the mast, there was nothing to do but to fire further broadsides, and these, with deadly accuracy, again found the target. It was only when the German captain hauled down his ensign with the Iron Cross in the middle and the German Jack in the corner and hoisted a white flag that the firing ceased. As it was after five o'clock, the Sydney immediately steamed back to pick up the boats of the Buresk before it grew dusk, and returning again, rescued two more German sailors on the way. A boat was sent off, manned by the German prize crew from the collier with an officer. Captain Müller was on board, and he was informed that the Sydney would return next morning to render what assistance was possible. To attempt rescue work that night was impossible for one reason above all others—that the Königsberg might still have been at large and coming to the scene. The German cruiser was an absolute wreck on the southern shores of the island, and the surf beat so furiously that it would have been dangerous for boats to have approached in the dusk. The island itself was quite deserted.

Leaving these unfortunate men of war, let me turn to a section of the chapter which is really a story within a story. For, as the Sydney approached the cable station on Direction Island, the largest of the Cocos Group, she learned for the first time that much had been happening on shore. The Germans had at daybreak that eventful morning landed a crew, consisting of three officers (Lieutenants Schmidt, Kieslinger, and Capt.-Lieutenant Von Möcke) and fifty men, including ten stokers, with four maxims, in charge of the first officer of the Emden, for the purpose of taking possession of the cable station and wireless plant. The majority of the men were the best gunners from the cruiser. Not having met with any resistance, as the population of the island is in all not more than thirty-eight whites (it belongs to the Marconi Company), the Germans proceeded leisurely with their work until they found the Emden signalling furiously to them. They had no time to get away to their ship in the heavy boat before she up-anchored and steamed out to meet the smoke that was soon to resolve itself into the Sydney.

With the other people on the station the Germans then proceeded to the roof of the largest of the cable buildings, where they watched the fight from beginning to end. With absolute confidence they seemed to have anticipated a victory for the Emden, and it was not till the broadsides from the Sydney carried away the funnel that the inhabitants were hurried below and placed under a guard. With what feelings the gunners must have seen their cruiser literally blown to pieces under their eyes can but be imagined. They hardly waited until the Sydney went off after the collier before they seized a schooner lying in the harbour. She proved to be the Ayesia, of 70 tons burden only. She had no auxiliary engine, so that if the raiders were to escape, which they had now determined to attempt, their time was very limited. The party, on landing, at first had proceeded to put out of action the cable and wireless instruments, which they smashed, while they managed to cut one of the cables. Fortunately, a spare set of instruments had been buried after the experience of a station in the Pacific, raided some weeks before by the German Pacific Squadron. Beds were next requisitioned, and supplies taken for a three months' cruise. Water was taken on board, and the schooner was loaded, so that just before dusk she slipped out and round the southern end of the island at what time the Sydney was again approaching from the north after her last shots at the Emden. In fact, had not the Sydney stopped to pick up another German sailor struggling in the water, she in all probability would have sighted the escaping schooner, which was later to land this party of Germans on the coast of Arabia. Having learned of the situation, the Sydney was unable to land any men on the island, as it was imperative that she should lie off and be ready for any emergency, such as I have already hinted. This prohibited her going to the aid of the Germans on the vanquished Emden. All night she cruised slowly and her crew cleared away the wreckage, while the doctor tended to the wounded and made what arrangements were possible for the reception of the prisoners and wounded next day. The space on a cruiser is always cut to a minimum, so not much could be done. Fortunately, her own casualties had been slight for such an action. There were three killed, five seriously wounded (one of whom subsequently died), four wounded, and four slightly wounded.

Early next morning the Sydney once again steamed back to the Emden. The task before her was as difficult as it was awful. The ship was a shambles and the decks too appalling to bear description. The Germans lent what assistance they could, but the whole ship was in the most shocking condition. The men who remained alive on board were either half-mad with thirst or so stunned and stupefied with the detonation of the guns that they did not comprehend anything at all, or were unable to appreciate their position. They had all been without water for almost two days, as the Sydney's salvos had wrecked the water-tanks. The fires had to burn themselves out, and though the decks were now cooled, the charred bodies that lay around showed only too plainly what an inferno the vessel must have been when she ran ashore. "At 11.10 a.m.," writes an officer, "we arrived off the Emden again in one of the cutters. Luckily, her stern was sticking out beyond where the surf broke, so that with a rope from the stern of the ship one could ride close under one quarter with the boat's bow to seaward. The rollers were very big and surging to and fro, and made getting aboard fairly difficult. However, the Germans standing aft gave me a hand up, and I was received by the captain of the Emden." Nevertheless, it was a work of the utmost difficulty getting the wounded (there were fifteen bad cases), and even those who were only slightly injured, into the boats. Water was what the men wanted most, and a cask was hauled on board and eagerly drunk. The boarding party found the stern of the cruiser a twisted mass of steel, and her decks up to the bows were rent and torn in all directions, while plates had buckled, bolts had sprung, and the vessel was falling to pieces in some parts. Nearly every gun had been put out of action, and whole gun's crews had been incinerated inside the armoured shield. Our lyddite had done appalling, even revolting, execution. The aim of the gunners was deadly in the extreme. As one prisoner quite frankly admitted to an officer, "Your artillery was magnificent."

The last man was rescued from the ship at 5 p.m. The captain and a nephew of the Kaiser, Prince Joseph of Hohenzollern, who was torpedo officer and just twenty years of age, were amongst those who had not sustained any injuries. During the absence of the Sydney a party of twenty Germans had managed in some way to get ashore to the island. Either they had scrambled from the bows of the wrecked cruiser on to the reef and taken their chance in the surf or they had been washed ashore. It was, at any rate, too late that evening to rescue these men, and it was not till the next morning that a cutter and some stretchers were put off and ran up on the westward side of the island on a sandy beach, just at 5 a.m. The Germans on shore were in a terrible state. They had been too dazed to attempt even to get the coco-nuts for food and drink. The ship's doctor, through the strain, had insisted on drinking sea-water, and had gone mad and had died the previous night. In the meantime the Sydney had returned overnight to Direction Island and brought another doctor to tend the wounded. She was back again off Keeling Island by ten o'clock, and the remaining wounded and prisoners embarked at 10.35 and the Sydney started to steam for Colombo.

PRISONERS FROM THE "EMDEN" ON THE FLAGSHIP GUARDED BY SENTRY AS THEY TAKE EXERCISE ON DECK.

The group, from the left, is the German Doctor Captain Finklestein, Captain Debussy (in charge of prisoners), the Prince of Hohenzollern, Captain Gordon Smith, who is talking to Captain Müller, hidden behind sentry.

THE DIRK OF PRINCE FRANCIS JOSEPH OF HOHENZOLLERN.

It was beautifully embossed but greatly damaged by the fire on the "Emden."

To face p. 56.

On the Sydney's decks the men were laid out side by side and their wounds attended to as far as possible. The worst cases were given accommodation below, the doctor of the Sydney with the German surgeon working day and night to relieve the men of their pain. The heat from the ship and from the tropical sun made the conditions dreadful. The prisoners had in most cases nothing but the clothes they stood up in. One man, who had received a gash in his chest, had tied a kimono in a knot and plugged the wound with it by tying round a piece of cord. Otherwise he was naked. The death-roll on the cruiser had been appalling. There were 12 officers killed and 119 men. The wounded taken on board numbered 56, while there were 115 prisoners, including 11 officers. Many of the wounded subsequently died of their wounds. The prisoners were placed in the bows, with a small guard over them. The cruiser, at no time meant to carry extra men, was horribly congested. The less seriously wounded were removed to the Empress of Russia, which had passed the Convoy, hastily summoned from Colombo, about 60 hours' steam from that port, and this gave some relief.

It was only after close inspection that I realized the full extent of the Sydney's scars, which her crew point to now with such pride. A casual glance would hardly have detected a hole, about as big as a saucer, on the port side. This was the result of one of the high trajectory shots that had made a curious passage for itself, as I described earlier. This tracing of the course of the shells was most interesting. I saw where the paint had been scorched off the fire-control station, and where the hammocks that were used to protect the men from flying splinters had been burned brown, or black, or dyed crimson with blood. I saw, too, the shape of a man's leg on a canvas screen where it had fallen. Looking in at the door of one of the petty officers' mess-rooms below, I was told I was just in the same position as one of the crew who had been standing there when a shell struck the side of the ship opposite him and tried to pierce the armoured plate, though he himself had not waited long enough to see the great blister it raised, almost as large as a football, before it fell back spent into the sea. The men were below, writing home, when I went through to the bows to see the damage done by the shells that had torn up the decks. They laughed as they pointed to places now filled up with cement, and laughed at the notice board and draught-flue, riddled with holes. So far as the interior of the ship was concerned, there was nothing else to suggest the stress she had been through. The only knowledge the engineers had of the action was a distant rumbling of the guns and a small fragment of shell that tumbled down a companion-way into the engine-room. And I wonder if too great praise can be bestowed on the engineers for their work in this crisis. From 9.20 a.m., which was when the cruiser sighted the Emden, until noon, when she left the Emden a wreck, the Sydney steamed 68 miles at speeds varying between 13 and 27 knots.

As I grew accustomed to look for the chips off the portions of the ship, I marked places where shells must have just grazed the decks and fittings. All the holes had been filled with cement till the cruiser could get to Malta to refit. Stays had been repaired and the damaged steam-pipe was working again. The only break had been a temporary stoppage of the refrigerating machinery, owing to a shell cutting the pipe. So I went round while the officers accounted for fourteen bad hits. I wondered how many times the Emden had been holed and belted. Our gunners had fired about 650 rounds of ordinary shell, the starboard guns firing more than the port guns. The German cruiser had expended 1,500 rounds, and had practically exhausted all the ammunition she carried.

I am unwilling to leave the story of the battle without reference to the action of a petty officer who was in the after fire-control when it was wrecked, at the beginning of the fight. It will be recalled that there were two shells that got home on this control, and the five men stationed there were injured, in some extraordinary way, not seriously. The wounds were nearly all about the legs, and the men were unable to walk. Yet they knew their only chance for their lives was to leave this place as soon as possible. Shells were streaming past, the ship was trembling under the discharge of the guns. Less badly damaged than his mates, a petty officer managed to stand, and though in intense pain, half-fell, half-lowered himself from the control station to the deck, about 5 feet below. The remainder of the group had simply to throw themselves to the deck, breaking their fall by clinging to the twisted stays as best they might. All five of them pulled themselves across the deck, wriggling on their stomachs until they reached the companion-way. They were all making up their minds to fall down this as well, as being the only means of getting below, when the gallant petty officer struggled to his feet and carried his mates down the companion-way one by one. As a feat alone this was no mean task, but executed under the conditions it was, it became a magnificent action of devotion and sacrifice.

Before concluding this account, let me say that Major-General Bridges was anxious that the Sydney should be suitably welcomed as she steamed past the Convoy on her way to Colombo, and sent a request to Captain Glossop asking that she might steam near the fleet. The answer was: "Thank you for your invitation. In view of wounded would request no cheering. Will steam between 1st and 2nd Divisions." The same request to have no cheering was signalled to Colombo, and it touched the captain of the Emden deeply, as he afterwards told us. But the Convoy were denied the inspiring sight, for it was just 4.30 in the morning and barely dawn when the Sydney and the Empress of Russia, huge and overpowering by comparison with the slim, dark-lined warship, whose funnels looked like spars sticking from the water, sped past in the distance. Once in port, however, when any boats from the fleet approached the Sydney, hearty, ringing cheers came unchecked to the lips of all Australasians.

CHAPTER VI
UP THE RED SEA

At Colombo the Australian troops found the sight of quaint junks, and mosquito craft, and naked natives, ready to dive to the bottom for a sou, very fascinating after coming from more prosaic Southern climes. Colombo Harbour itself was choked with shipping and warships of the Allied Powers. There was the cruiser Sydney, little the worse for wear, and also several British cruisers. There was the five-funnelled Askold, which curiously enough turned up here just after the Emden had gone—the two vessels, according to report, had fought one another to the death at the very beginning of the war in the China seas. There was a Chinese gunboat lying not far from the immense Empress liners, towering out of the water. The Japanese ensign fluttered from the Ibuki (now having a washing day), her masts hung with fluttering white duck. There were transports from Bombay and Calcutta and Singapore, with ships bringing Territorials from England, to which now were added the transports from Australasia. Most of these latter were lying outside the breakwater and harbour, which could contain only a portion of that mass of shipping.

So after two days' delay the great Convoy, having taken in coal and water, steamed on, and a section waited by the scorched shores of Aden for a time before linking up again with the whole.

On the evening of the 27-28th November the destination of the Convoy, which was then in the Red Sea, was changed. A marconigram arrived at midnight for Major-General Bridges, and soon the whole of the Staff was roused out and a conference held. It had been then definitely announced from the War Office that the troops were to disembark in Egypt, both the Australians and New Zealanders, the purpose being, according to official statements, "to complete their training and for war purposes." The message said it was unforeseen circumstances, but at Aden I have no doubt a very good idea was obtained that Egypt was to be our destination, owing to the declaration of war on Turkey, while it seems quite probable that the G.O.C. knew at Albany that this land of the Nile was most likely to be the training-ground for the troops. The message further announced that Lieut.-General Sir William Birdwood would command. He was in India at the time.

That the voyage was going to end far sooner than had been expected brought some excitement to the troops, though most had been looking forward to visiting England. None at this time believed that the stay in Egypt would be long. It was recognized that the climatic conditions would be enormously in the army's favour, which afterwards was given out as one of the chief reasons for the dropping down like a bolt from the blue of this army of 30,000 men, near enough to the Canal to be of service if required. There, too, they might repel any invasion of Egypt, such as was now declared by the Turks to be their main objective, and which Germany, even as early as October, had decided to be their means of striking a blow at England—her only real vulnerable point.

But I hasten too fast and far. Arrangements, of course, had at once to be made for the distribution of the ships and the order of their procedure through the Canal (Alexandria was to be the port of disembarkation owing to lack of wharf accommodation at Suez). At the last church parade on Sunday the troops began to appear in boots and rather crumpled jackets that had been stowed away in lockers, and the tramp of booted feet on deck, with the bands playing, made a huge din. But the troops were looking marvellously fit—such magnificent types of men. The Flagship hurried on, and was at Suez a day before the remainder of the Convoy, so as to disembark some of the Staff, who were to go on to Cairo to make arrangements for the detraining and the camp, which of course was already set out by the G.O.C. in Egypt, General Sir John Maxwell. On 30th November, in the early morning, the Orvieto anchored at Suez, and during the afternoon the rest of the ships began to come in, mostly New Zealanders first, and by three o'clock our ship started through the Canal. By reason of the nearness of the enemy an armed party was posted on deck with forty rounds each in their belts, for it was just possible that there might be raiding parties approaching at some point as we went slowly through, our great searchlight in the bows lighting up the bank. Before it was dusk, however, we had a chance of seeing some of the preparations for the protection of the Canal and Egypt, including the fortified posts and trenches, which are best described in detail when I come to deal with them separately when discussing the Canal attack.

THE FIRST TENTS IN THE MENA DESERT CAMP ON 4TH DECEMBER, 1915.

VIEW OF MENA CAMP (COMPLETED) LOOKING ACROSS THE ENGINEER TO THE ARTILLERY LINES.

To face p. 62.

A general impression I shall give, though, indicative of the feelings of many Australians travelling for the first time this great waterway. Not half a mile from the entrance to the Canal, with the town of Suez lying squat and white on the left, is the quarantine station of Shat. It was surrounded by deep trenches, out of which now rose up Indian troops, Sikhs and Gurkhas, and they came running across the sand to the banks of the Canal, where they greeted us with cheers and cries, answered by the troops, who had crowded into the rigging and were sitting on the ships' rails and deckhouses. Close beside the station was a regular, strong redoubt, with high parapets and loopholes and trenches running along the banks of the Canal, connected up with outer posts. About 20 miles farther on we came across a big redoubt, with some thousands of men camped on either side of the Canal. They belonged to the 128th Regiment, so an officer told us, as he shouted from a punt moored alongside the bank. It was just growing dusk as the transport reached this spot. The hills that formed a barrier about 15 miles from the Canal were fading into a deep vermilion in the rays of the departing sun that sank down behind a purple ridge, clear cut, on the southern side of the Canal outside of the town of Suez. Between it and the Canal was a luxurious pasturage and long lines of waving palm-trees. It was deathly still and calm, and the voices broke sharply on the air. "Where are you bound for?" asked an officer, shouting through his hands to our lads.

"We're Australians, going to Cairo," chorused the men eagerly, proud of their nationality.

"Good God!" commented the officer; and he seemed to be appalled or amazed, I could not tell which, at the prospect.

Then there came riding along the banks a man apparently from a Canal station. A dog followed his ambling ass. "Get any rabbits?" shouted the Australian bushmen, and the man with the gun laughed and shouted "Good luck!"

The desert sands were turning from gold into bronze, and soon nothing but the fierce glare of the searchlights lit up the banks. The bagpipes were playing, and this seemed to rouse the instincts of some of the Indian tribesmen, whom we saw dancing, capering, and shouting on the parapet of trenches as we swept slowly and majestically on. The troops on shore cheered, and our troops cheered back, always telling they were Australians, and, in particular, Victorians. We came across a sentinel post manned by Yorkshiremen, who spoke with a very broad accent. One such post, I remember, had rigged up a dummy sentry, and a very good imitation it was too. Out in the desert were hummocks of sand which had been set up as range marks for the warships and armed cruisers which we began now to pass anchored in the lakes. We asked one of the men on the Canal banks, who came down to cheer us, were they expecting the Turks soon to attack across the desert, and the answer was in the affirmative, and that they had been waiting for them for nights now and they had never come. Various passenger steamers we passed, and the Convoy, which closely was following the Flagship (almost a continuous line it was, for the next twenty hours), and they cheered us as we went on to Port Said, reached just after dawn.

In those days Port Said was tremendously busy; for there were a number of warships there, including the French ships the Montcalm, Desaix, and Duplex. The strip of desert lying immediately to the north of the entrance to the Canal, where there had been great saltworks, had been flooded to the extent of some 100 square miles as a safeguard from any enemy advancing from the north by the shore caravan route. Beside which protection there were patrol and picket boats, which we now saw constantly going up and down the coast and dashing in and out of the Canal entrance. On the 1st December I watched the transports as they tied up on either side, leaving a clear passage-way for the late arriving ships that anchored further down towards the entrance to the Canal, near the great statue of De Lesseps that stands by the breakwater overlooking the Mediterranean. Amongst the transports were the warships, and a few ordinary passenger steamers outward bound to India. I remember that they were landing hydroplanes from a French "parent" ship, and we could see three or four being lifted on to a lighter, while others were tugged, resting on their floats, up to the hangar established at the eastern end of the wharves. Coaling was an operation that took a day, and gave the troops plenty to occupy their time, watching the antics of the Arabs and causing endless confusion by throwing coins amongst them, much to the distress of the chief gangers, who beat the unruly lumpers until they relinquished their searchings.

The Desaix and Requiem were lying just opposite to the Orvieto, and also an aeroplane ship, so M. Guillaux, a famous French aviator, who was on board, told me. It carried only light guns, but had stalls for camels on the forward deck and a workshop amidships. It was altogether a most curious-looking vessel. The Swiftsure was a little further down, and one of the "P" class of naval patrol boats, with Captain Hardy, of the Naval Depôt, Williamstown, curiously enough, in charge. As I went on shore to post some letters, for the first time I saw at the Indian Post Office written "The Army of Occupation in Egypt," and proclamations about martial law and other military orders, rather stern to men coming from the outskirts of Empire, where such things were unnecessary as part and parcel of dread war. I heard here rumours of the approach of the Turkish Army to the Canal, and it was in this spirit, and amidst thoughts of a possible immediate fight, that the troops looked forward to disembarking.

It is impossible, almost, to describe the excitement amongst the troops on board (steadily growing and being fomented during the 1st and 2nd December) as the transports came past one another close enough for friends to exchange greetings. Each ship saluted with a blare of trumpets, and then the bands broke into a clatter. Never shall I, for one, forget the departure for Alexandria, twelve hours' steam away.

The men, to add to their spirits, had received a few letters, one or two scattered throughout the platoons, and, as soldiers will in barrack life in India, these few were passed round and news read out for the general company. On the afternoon of the 2nd December the Flagship drew out and passed down between lines of troopships. Bugles challenged bugles in "salutes"; the bands played "Rule Britannia," the National Anthem, and the Russian Hymn, while the characteristic short, sharp cheers came from the French and British tars on the warships, in appreciation. We must have passed eight or ten ships before the entrance was cleared. The men, so soon as the salute had been duly given, rushed cheering to the sides to greet their comrades and friends, from whom now they had been separated some seven weeks.

Early next morning the Flagship reached Alexandria Harbour, and by the tortuous channel passed the shattered forts (that British guns had smashed nearly forty years before), and at length, at eight o'clock, the long voyage came to an end. The men, their kitbags already packed and their equipment on, rapidly began to entrain in the waiting troop trains. It was the 5th—I call them the Pioneer 5th Battalion, under Lieut.-Colonel Wanliss, who landed first, while at adjacent wharves the Euripides disgorged New South Wales Battalions and the New Zealand transports landed their regiments. Thus I saw three troop trains away into the desert before, with the officers of the 5th, I boarded one for the camp at Cairo.

CHAPTER VII
THE CAMPS AROUND CAIRO

Mena Camp, when I saw it at daybreak on the morning of 4th December, consisted of a score of tents scattered about in a square mile of desert, and perhaps a thousand men lying in their great-coats, asleep in the sand, their heads resting on their packs. The men of the 5th Battalion—those that are left of them—are not likely to forget that march out from Cairo on the night of the 3rd-4th, and the subsequent days of settling down to camp, and the greetings they gave to regiment after regiment as they came crowding into the camp. On the night the first troop trains came into Abbu Ella station, near Cairo, which was the siding on the southern side of the city, it was cold and sharp, but a bright moon came up towards midnight. Outside the sprinkling of Staff officers present to meet the train was a line of dusky faces and a jabbering crowd of natives. Electric trams buzzed along outside the station yard, and after the men had been formed up and detrained, they had a few minutes to get, from a temporary coffee-stall, some hot coffee and a roll, which, after the journey, was very much appreciated. It was nine o'clock. Guides were ready waiting. Territorials they were, who had been in Cairo for some time, and they led the men out on a long 10-mile march to Mena Camp. Baggage was to go by special tram, and it went out, under guard, later.

Less a company of the 5th which had been sent forward as an advance party from Port Said, the battalion set out, pipes and bands playing, through the dimly seen minaretted city. These Australians will remember the long, hearty cheers they got as they tramped past the Kasr El Nil Barracks, situated on the banks of the River Nile, where the Manchester Territorials turned out to do honour to the new army in Egypt. Across the long Nile bridge and through Gezirah, down a long avenue of lebbock-trees, out on the main road to the Pyramids, the troops marched, singing, chipping, smoking, their packs getting a wee bit heavier at each step. Life on board ship had not made them as hard as they believed, and by the time they left the gem-studded city behind and turned on to the road that ran between irrigated fields they began to grow more silent. Overhead, the trees met in a vast arabesque design, showing only now and then the stars and the moon. The shadows on the path were deep, dispersed for a few seconds only by the passing electric trams, which the men cheered. Then they began, as the early hours of the morning drew on, to see something of the desert in front of them and the blurred outline of the Pyramids standing there, solemn sentinels, exactly as they had stood for over six thousand years. They grew in hugeness until the troops came right to the foot of the slope which led up to their base. Their thoughts were distracted from the sight by the advance party of their own battalion coming to meet them and conduct them through a eucalyptus grove (what memories of a fragrant bush!) along a great new-made white road, and through the sand for the last quarter of a mile to their camp lines. Was it any wonder, therefore, in the face of this, that when at dawn next morning I came amongst the troops they were still lying sleeping, and not even the struggling rays of the sun roused them from their slumber?

How cheery all the officers were! Gathered in one tent, sitting on their baggage, they ate the "twenty-niners," as they called the biscuits ("forty-threes" they had been called in South Africa), with a bit of cheese and jam and bully beef. There was the Padre, Captain Dexter, and the Doctor, Captain Lind, Captain Flockart, Major Saker, Captain Stewart, Lieutenant Derham, and Lieutenant "Billy" Mangar, and scores of others, alas! now separated by the horror of war. That morning their spirits were high, and as soon as possible most of the regiments set out on what might be called an exploration expedition to the ridges of hills that ran along the eastern side of the camp, and above which peeped the Pyramids in small triangles. That day, I must say, little effort was made to settle down to camp, and the 5th, pioneers that they were, was the first Australian regiment to scramble over the ancient holy ground of Mena, the City of the Dead and burial-place of the forgotten monarchs of ancient Egypt. But what could be done? Tents had not yet arrived, and it was, indeed, weeks before all the troops were under canvas, though in the meantime they made humpies and dugouts for themselves in the sand with the help of native matting.

AUSTRALIANS COMING INTO CAIRO FROM THE CAMPS.

To face p. 68.

I turned back from the hill, dotted with whooping Australians, to watch another battalion march into camp, one of the New South Wales regiments of Colonel M'Laurin, and saw the wheeled transport drawn by mules (the horses, of course, being yet unfit for use after so long a sea voyage) almost stick in the sand, until shoulders were put to the wheel and they got the heavy vehicles to the lines. The whole camp had been laid out by the engineers on the Staff of the General Officer Commanding (General Sir John Maxwell) the week before. It must be remembered that barely a week's notice was given of the landing of the great overseas force, and it was one of the happy features of the troops' arrival in Egypt that they found arrangements so far advanced as they were. I remember walking along the white road, which a couple of steam-rollers were flattening, into the desert. The stone was being brought on a string of camels from quarries in the hills. Lines of small white stones marked where the road was going to lead right through the centre of the camp. It was a rectangle at that time, branching off from the Mena road through an orchard belonging to the Mena House Hotel, where the main road ended abruptly at the foot of the Pyramids; hard it was, too, as any cement, and each day lengthening, with cross sections sprouting out further into the desert. A loop of the electric tramway was being run along by one side of it, a water-pipe by the other, to reservoirs being constructed in the hills. Nevertheless, I cannot help commenting that the site of the camp lay in a hollow between, as I have said, two rows of hills running south into the desert and starting from a marsh in the swampy irrigation fields. Later on, the follies of such a site were borne out by the diseases that struck down far too high a percentage of the troops during their four months' residence there.

Day after day, enthralled, I watched this encampment growing and spreading out on either side of the road, creeping up the sides of the hills, stretching out across the desert, until the furthermost tents looked like tiny white-peaked triangles set in the yellow sand. The battalions filed into their places coming from the seaboard, where twelve ships at a time were discharging their human cargoes; while each day ten trains brought the troops up 130 miles to the desert camps. After the men came the gear, the wagons, the guns, the horses. For this was the divisional camp, the first divisional camp Australia had ever assembled. It was, also, the first time that Major-General Bridges had seen his command mustered together. With his Staff he took up his headquarters in a section of Mena House for use as offices, with their living tents pitched close by. This was the chance to organize and dovetail one unit into another, work brigade in with brigade, artillery with the infantry, the Light Horse regiments as protecting screens and scouts. The Army Service Corps, Signallers, Post Office, all came into being as part of a larger unit for the first time. The troops became part of a big military machine, units, cogs in the wheel. They began to apply what had been learnt in sections, and thus duties once thought unnecessary began to be adjusted and to have a new significance.

Of course, it could not all be expected to work smoothly at first. For some six weeks the horses were not available for transport work, and so the electric tramway carried the stores the 10 miles from the city, and brought the army's rations and corn and chaff for the animals. Donkeys, mules, and camels were all to be seen crowding along the Pyramid road day and night, drawing and carrying their queer, ungainly loads.

Besides Mena Camp, two other sites had been selected as training areas for the army corps, which, as I have said, was commanded now by Lieut.-General (afterwards Sir William) Birdwood, D.S.O. One of these was at Zeitoun, or Heliopolis, some 6 miles from Cairo, on directly the opposite side of the town—that is, the south—to the Mena Camp; while the other was situated close to an oasis settlement, or model irrigation town, at Maadi, and lying just parallel with Mena Camp, but on the other (eastern) side of the river, and some 12 miles distant from it. Zeitoun was the site of the old Roman battlefields, and later of an English victory over an Arab host. In mythology it is recorded as the site of the Sun City. The troops found it just desert, of rather coarser sand than at Mena, and on it the remains of an aerodrome, where two years before a great flying meeting had been held. For the first month, only New Zealanders occupied this site, both their infantry and mounted rifles, and then, as the 2nd Australian and New Zealand Division was formed, Colonel Monash's 4th Brigade (the Second Contingent) came and camped on an adjacent site, at the same time as Colonel Chauvel's Light Horse Brigade linked up, riding across from Maadi. Then into the latter camp Colonel Ryrie led the 3rd Light Horse Brigade.

As sightseers I am satisfied that the Australians beat the Yankee in three ways. They get further, they see more, and they pay nothing for it. Perhaps it was because they were soldiers, and Egypt, with its mixed population, had laid itself out to entertain the troops right royally. It must not be thought I want to give the impression that the Australian soldier, the highest paid of any troops fighting in the war, saved his money and was stingy. On the contrary, he was liberal, generous, and spoiled the native by the openness of his purse. Some believe that it was an evil that the troops had so much funds at their disposal. It was, I believe, under the circumstances—peculiar circumstances—that reflects no credit on the higher commands, and to be explained anon. It would be out of place just at the moment to bring any dark shadow across the bright, fiery path of reckless revelry that the troops embarked on during the week preceding and the week following Christmas. It was an orgy of pleasure, which only a free and, at that time, unrestrained city such as Cairo could provide. Those men with £10 to £20 in their pockets, after being kept on board ship for two months, suddenly to be turned loose on an Eastern town—healthy, keen, spirited, and adventurous men—it would have been a strong hand that could have checked them in their pleasures, innocent as they were for the most part.

In all the camps 20 per cent. leave was granted. That meant that some 6,000 soldiers were free to go whither they wished from afternoon till 9.30 p.m., when leave was supposed to end in the city. Now, owing to lax discipline, the leave was more like 40 per cent., and ended with the dawn. Each night—soft, silky Egyptian nights—when the subtle cloak of an unsuspected winter hung a mantle of fog round the city and the camps—10,000 men must have invaded the city nightly, to which number must be added the 2,000 Territorial troops garrisoning Cairo at the time that were free, and the Indian troops, numbering about 1,000. The majority of the men came from Mena and from the New Zealand camp at Zeitoun. The Pyramids Camp was linked to the city by a fine highway (built at the time of the opening of the Canal as one of the freaks of the Empress Eugénie), along the side of which now runs an electric tramway. Imagine officials with only a single line available being faced with the problem of the transport of 10,000 troops nightly to and from the camps! No wonder it was inadequate. No wonder each tram was not only packed inside, but covered outside with khaki figures. Scores sat on the roofs or clung to the rails. Generally at three o'clock the exodus began from the camps. What an exodus! What spirits! What choruses and shouting and linking up of parties! Here was Australia at the Pyramids. Men from every State, every district, every village and hamlet, throughout the length and breadth of the Commonwealth, were encamped, to the number of 20,000, in a square mile. An army gains in weight and fighting prowess as it gains in every day efficiency by the unitedness of the whole. Now, the true meaning of camaraderie is understood by Australians, and is with them, I believe, an instinct, due to the isolated nature of their home lives and the freedom of their native land. When the troops overflowed from the trams, they linked up into parties and hired motor-cars, the owners of which were not slow to appreciate the situation. They tumbled ten or twelve into these cars, and went, irrespective of speed limits, hooting and whirring towards the twinkling city. And when the motors gave out, there was a long line of gharries (arabehs), which are open victorias, very comfortable, and with a spanking pair of Arab steeds, travelling the 10 miles to the city.

GENERAL HAMILTON RETURNS THE SALUTE OF THE 4TH AUSTRALIAN INFANTRY BRIGADE AT ZEITOUN.

Brigadier-General Monash immediately on the left of the Commander-in-Chief.

Imagine, therefore, this Pyramid road arched with lebbock-trees that made a tunnel of dark living branches and green leaves. By five o'clock night had fallen, coming so suddenly that its mantle was on before one realized the sun had sunk behind the irrigated fields, the canals, and the waving sugar-canes. Imagine these men of the South, the warm blood tingling in their veins (and sovereigns jingling in their pockets), invading the city like an avalanche!

So much was novel, so much strange and entrancing in this city of Arabian fables. Cairo presents the paradox of the Eastern mind, and the reverse nature of events and incidents amused and excited the imaginations of the Australians.

By midnight had commenced in earnest the return of the troops along that great highway, an exodus starting each night at nine o'clock. Again was the tram service inadequate, nor could the motors and gharries cope with the rush of the men back to the lines before leave expired. Donkey-men filled the breach with their obstinate asses, and the main streets were crowded with wild, shouting troops as a drove of twenty or thirty donkeys went clattering past, whooping Australians on their backs, urging on their speed to a delicate canter. But it was hard work riding these donkeys, and a 10-mile ride brought resolutions not to again overstay leave or, at least, to make adequate arrangements for return by more sober and comfortable means. The main highway such nights became a stream of flickering fire. The motors picked their way at frantic speed through the traffic, past the burdened camels and loaded carts of rations and fodder for the camp. No speed was too high; the limit of the engines was the only brake. By great good fortune no disaster occurred: minor accidents were regarded as part and parcel of the revels.

Whatever may have been the attitude of the military authorities when the troops landed and up till Christmas week, the very first day of the New Year saw a vast change in the discipline of the camp. It was really a comparatively easy matter, had a proper grip been taken of the men, to have restrained the overstaying and breaking of leave that occurred up till New Year's Day. Mena Camp, situated 10 miles from the city in the desert, with only one avenue of practicable approach, required but few guards; but those guards needed to be vigilant and strong. True, I have watched men making great detours through the cotton-fields and desert in order to come into the camp from some remote angle, but they agreed that the trouble was not worth while. Once, however, the guards were placed at the bridge across the Canal that lay at right angles to the road and formed a sort of moat round the south of the camp, and examined carefully passes and checked any men without authority, leave was difficult to break. From 20 it was reduced to 10 per cent. of the force. General Birdwood's arrival resulted in the tightening up of duties considerably, while the visit of Sir George Reid (High Commissioner for the Commonwealth in London) and his inspiring addresses urging the troops to cast out the "wrong uns" from their midst, at the same time bringing to their mind the duty to their Country and their King that lay before them still undone, settled the army to its hard training. He, so well known a figure in Australia, of all men could give to the troops a feeling that across the seas their interests were being closely and critically watched. After a few weeks of the hard work involved in the completion of their military training, even the toughening sinews of the Australians and their love of pleasure and the fun of Cairo were not strong enough to make them wish to go far, joy-riding.

CHAPTER VIII
RUMOURS OF THE TURKS' ATTACK

News in Egypt travels like wildfire. Consequently, during the end of January, just prior to the first attack on the Canal and attempted invasion of Egypt by the Turks, Cairo was "thick," or, as the troops said, "stiff," with rumours, and the bazaars, I found from conversation with Egyptian journalists, were filled with murmurs of sedition. It was said hundreds of thousands of Turks were about to cross the Canal and enter Egypt. The Young Turk party, no doubt, were responsible for originating these stories, aided by the fertile imagination of the Arab and fellaheen. So were passed on from lip to lip the scanty phrases of news that came direct from the banks of the Canal, where at one time rather a panic set in amongst the Arab population.

Naturally these rumours percolated to the camps, and, with certain orders to brigades of the 1st Division and the New Zealanders to get equipped and stores to be got in as quickly as possible, it was no wonder that the troops were eagerly anticipating their marching orders. They would at this time, too, have given a lot to have escaped from the relentless training that was getting them fit: the monotony of the desert had begun to pall.

At any rate, on 3rd January the 3rd Company of Engineers, under Major Clogstoun, had gone down to the Canal to assist the Royal Engineers, already at work on trenches, entanglements, and pontoon bridges. To their work I shall refer in detail later on, when I come to deal with the invasion. In the first week of February the 7th Battalion, under Lieut.-Colonel Elliott, and 8th Battalion, under Lieut.-Colonel Bolton, V.D., and the whole of the New Zealand Brigade of Infantry were hastily dispatched to the Canal, and were camped side by side at the Ismailia station. Meanwhile the New Zealand Artillery had already been sent to take up positions on the Canal banks.

During January the Buccaneer Camel Corps, under Lieutenant Chope, met, during reconnoitring and patrol duty, a strong party of Arabs, Turks, and Bedouins, to the number of 300, and he gallantly engaged them and carried on a running fight in the desert for miles, successfully putting to flight the enemy and capturing some of their number, while they left dead and wounded on the sand. For this Lieutenant Chope was decorated with the D.S.O.

Fresh rumours began now to float into Cairo as to the estimate of the Turkish force and the number of Germans likely to be in it. Djemal Pasha was known to be in command, but it was said that he was under the German General Von der Goltz, who had stiffened the force with about 300 of his barbarians, mostly non-commissioned officers and officers. The Turkish force, which was certainly a very mixed host, was declared to number about 80,000, which was more than four times the number that actually made the raid on the Canal, though I have no reason to doubt that there were that number on the borders of Egypt, ready to follow up the attack were it successful. Some dissent existed amongst the Turkish force, and was faithfully reported to the War Office in Cairo, and many Arabs and some Indians captured on the Canal told how they had been forced into the service and compelled to bear arms. Serious trouble had occurred with a party of Bedouins in Arabia, who brought camels to the order of the Turkish Government, and who found their animals commandeered and no money given in payment. On this occasion a fight occurred, and the Bedouins promptly returned to their desert homes.

Summing up the opinion in Egypt at that time, it appeared tolerably certain, in the middle of January, that the Turkish attack was to be made. In what strength it was not quite known, but it seemed unlikely to be in the nature of a great invasion, as the transport troubles and the difficulties of the water supply were too great. One day the Turks would be said to have crossed the Canal, another that the Canal was blocked by the sinking of ships (from the very outset of the war one of the main objects of the invaders, using mines as their device). I suppose that British, Indian, and Egyptian troops (for the Egyptian mounted gun battery was encamped on the Canal) must have numbered over 80,000, not including the force of 40,000 Australians held as a reserve in Cairo, together with a Division of Territorials.

If ever troops longed for a chance to meet the enemy, it was these Australians. The Engineers had been down on the Canal, as I have said, since January, and it was rumoured every day towards the end of January that there was to be at least a brigade of Australians sent down to the Canal. Imagine the thrill that went through the camp, the rumours and contradictions as to which brigade it should be. Finally, on the 3rd February the 7th and 8th Battalions, under Colonel M'Cay, Brigadier of the 2nd Infantry Brigade, were dispatched, and encamped outside of Ismailia. I saw these troops go from the camp. They were enormously pleased that they had been told off for the job, not that other battalions did not believe they would soon follow. As they marched out of the Mena lines (and from the desert, for they had to go at a moment's notice right from drill, with barely time to pack their kits) they were cheered lustily by their comrades, who deemed them "lucky dogs" to get out of the "blasted sand." However, they were going to far worse, and no tents; but then there was before them the Canal and a possible fight, and, anyway, the blue sea and a change of aspect from the "everlasting Pyramids." They entrained in ordinary trucks and got into bivouac somewhere about midnight. They found the New Zealanders there, two battalions of them. On the way down they passed a large Indian encampment, which I subsequently saw, where thousands of camels had been collected, ready to go out to meet the invaders or follow them up in the event of their hasty retreat. The camp lay sprawled out over miles of desert, and, just on the horizon, about 4 miles from the Canal, was an aeroplane hangar. I used to watch the aeroplanes going and coming on their reconnaissances out over the desert to the Turkish outposts and concentration camps. The Territorial guns, 15-pounders, were already in position round, or rather to the east of, Ismailia.

On the 2nd February the attack began to develop. It was important enough, rather for its significance than its strength or result, to be treated at length.

CHAPTER IX
FIRST SUEZ CANAL BATTLE

The Turkish Army, gathered under the direction of General Liman von Sanders, the German Military Governor of Turkey, was composed of Turks, Bedouins, Arabs, refugees from Asia Minor, and a few Germans. About 20,000 men in all, under the command of Djemal Pasha, they crossed the peninsula, dashed themselves vainly against the defences of the Canal, and fell back broken into Turkey again. Very briefly, or as concisely as is consistent with accuracy, let me review the Canal and the approaches to the waterway, and the troops that the Turks had available. Small as was the operation in actual degree of numbers, its purpose, likely to be repeated again, was to dislocate the machinery of the British Empire. The link that narrow waterway, 76 feet wide, means to Australia, is something more than a sea route. It was, therefore, not inappropriate that Australians should have taken part in its defence then, as well as later.

One day, talking to a British officer who knew well the character of the Sinai Peninsula, he remarked, "This is a race to water for water." He was not sanguine of any success attending an attack, though he remembered the crossing of the desert by 10,000 men under the Egyptian General Ibraham, and without a railway line near the frontier at the end of his journey. But I do not want to convey the idea that the desert tract of 150 miles which lies between the Suez Canal and the borderland of Turkey is waterless, or that it is level. On the contrary. During January and February, when the chief rainfall occurs, there are "wadis," or gorges, where the water runs away in raging torrents until at length it disappears into the sand. So it comes about there are any number of wells, some good, some rather bad; but if carefully guarded, protected, and additional bores put down, the wells would make a sufficient water supply for any invading host, even up to as many as 40,000 men. Now this figure was, I believe, about the actual number of the army that took part in the attempt to pierce the line of the Canal. It was a quarter of the army stationed in Syria, and contained some of the finest, as it did some of the poorest, of the Turkish troops at that time under arms. It was impossible for the Turkish military authorities to draw away from the coast-line of the Mediterranean all of the army that had to be kept there in anticipation of a British landing at such spots as Gaza and Adana, where the railway to Constantinople runs close to the coast. Nor was the army well trained or well equipped. On the contrary, scouting parties that were captured, were in tattered garments and often without boots. Throughout the army the commissariat was bad in comparison with what it was when the Gallipoli campaign started.

Now, the Canal is approached by caravan routes from three points, a northern, southern, and central zone. Gaza might be said to be the starting-point of the northern route, and it runs just out of artillery range along the coast until El Arisch is reached. It was along this sea route that Napoleon took his 10,000 men in retreat from Egypt. From this last town the route branches south towards El Kantara. The intervening space between that important crossing and Port Said is marshy, and is occupied with saltworks. In order to make Port Said impregnable these were flooded, giving a lake of some 300 miles in area and about 4 feet or 5 feet deep. Kantara therefore remained the most vital northerly spot at which the Canal could be pierced, and next to that, Ismailia. The northern route lies along almost level desert. But the further one gets south, the loftier become the curious sandstone and limestone ridges that, opposite Lake Timsah, can be seen, 12 or 14 miles from the Canal, rising up to 800 feet in height. Southwards from this point there lies a chain of hills running parallel to the Canal, with spurs running towards the central portion of the peninsula, where the ranges boast mountain peaks of 6,000 and 7,000 feet in height. There are gullies and ravines of an almost impassable nature, and the route winds round the sides of mountains, which features made the armies on the march hard to detect, as I learned our aviators reported.

Maan may be described as the jumping-off point for the starting of any expedition against the central and southern portions of the Canal. To Maan leads a railway, and it runs beyond down past the Gulf of Akaba, parallel with the Red Sea. From Maan the caravan would go to Moufrak, and from thence to Nekhl, high up in the hills and ranges of the desert. Nekhl is not a large settlement, but, like most Arab and Bedouin villages, just a few mud huts and some wells, with a few palms and sycamore-trees round them. But when the end of January came there were 300 Khurdish cavalry there and a great many infantry troops. Nekhl is exactly half way on the direct route to Suez, but the force that was to attack the Canal branched northward from this point until it came over the hills by devious routes to Moiya Harah, and over the last range that in the evening is to be seen from the Canal—a purply range, with the pink and golden desert stretching miles between. Just out of gun range, therefore, was the camp which the Turkish force made. I am led from various official reports I have read to estimate that Turkish force here at nearly 18,000. A certain number of troops, 3,000 perhaps, came by the northern route, and linked up on a given date with the forces that were destined for the attack on Ismailia, Serapeum, and Suez. That is to say, half the army was making feint attacks and maintaining lines of communication, while the remainder, 20,000 men, were available to be launched against the chosen point as it turned out, Toussoum and Serapeum. But one must remember that, small as that force was, the Turkish leader undoubtedly reckoned on the revolt of the Moslems in Egypt, as every endeavour had been tried (and failed) to stir up a holy war; and that at Jerusalem there must have been an army of 100,000 men ready to maintain the territory won, should it be won, even if they were not at a closer camp.

Therefore, the Turks overcame the water difficulty by elaborating the wells and carrying supplies with them on the march, and they got the support of artillery by attaching caterpillar wheels to get 6-in. and other guns through the sand towards the Canal (I am not inclined to believe the statements that the guns were buried in the desert years before by the Germans, and had been unearthed for the occasion), and for the actual crossing they brought up thirty or forty pontoons, which had been carried on wagons up to the hills, and then across the last level plain on the shoulders of the men. It was in very truth the burning of their boats in the attack if it failed. They had no railway, such as they had built in the later part of 1915, but relied on the camels for their provision trains. The rainfall in January, the wet season, was the best that had been experienced for many years, and so far as the climatic conditions were concerned, everything favoured the attack.

This brings us down to the end of January 1915. For the whole of the month there had been parties of Turkish snipers approaching the Canal, and in consequence, the mail boats and cargo steamers, as well as transports, had had to protect their bridges with sandbags, while the passengers kept out of sight as far as possible. On all troopships an armed guard with fifty rounds per man was mounted on the deck facing the desert. It was anticipated that the Turkish plan of attack would include the dropping of mines into the Canal (which plan they actually succeeded in), and thus block the Canal by sinking a ship in the fairway.

Skirmishes and conflicts with outposts occurred first at the northern end of the Canal defences, opposite to Kantara. The Intelligence Branch of the General Staff was kept well supplied with information from the refugees, Frenchmen, Armenians, and Arabs, who escaped from Asia Minor. They told of the manner in which all equipment and supplies were commandeered, together with camels. This did not point to very enthusiastic interest or belief in the invasion. By the third week in January the Turkish patrols could be seen along the slopes of the hills, and aeroplanes reported large bodies of troops moving up from Nekhl.

On 26th January the first brush occurred. It was a prelude to the real attack. A small force opened fire on Kantara post, which was regarded as a very vital point in the Canal line. The Turks brought up mountain guns and fired on the patrols. At four o'clock on the 28th, a Thursday morning, the attacks developed.

The British-Indian outpost line waited purely on the defensive, and with small losses to either side, the enemy withdrew. Minor engagements occurred from this time on till the attack which synchronized with the main attack—40 miles away—on 3rd February. Reinforcements were observed entrenched behind the sand dunes. Now, that night the Indian outposts successfully laid a trap for the Turks by changing the direction of the telegraph line and the road that led into Kantara. They led the Turks, when they eventually did come on, into an ambush. At this post was stationed the 1st Australian Clearing Hospital, and very fine work was performed by it. Sergeant Syme, though contrary to orders, drove a motor ambulance out under fire and brought in a number of wounded.

Never have new troops won quicker appreciation from their officers than did the companies of Australian Engineers, under Major H. O. Clogstoun, who began in January to build up the defences of the Canal. They were a happy, hard-working unit, and showed rare skill and adaptability in making a series of bridges at Ismailia. You would see a large load of them going up the Canal perhaps to improve trenches, and they began a friendship (that Anzac cemented) with the Indian troops, which I doubt if time will do anything but strengthen. There were seventeen to twenty pontoons, or rowing boats, which they applied to the purpose, constructed, while the materials for other floating bridges were obtained from iron casks. In, I believe, eleven minutes these bridges could be thrown across the width of the Canal. Tugs were available to tow the sections to whatever point they might be required. As the traffic of shipping was heavy, the bridges were constantly being joined and detached again. Bathing in the Canal was a great luxury, and the men at the time, and the infantry later on, took full advantage of it. Before passing on, let me give the comment of Colonel Wright, the Engineer officer on General Maxwell's Staff, on a suggestion of removing these Engineers back to Cairo after having completed the bridges:—

I sincerely hope that you are not going to take this company from me until the present strife is over. They are simply invaluable, both officers and men, and have thoroughly earned the excellent reputation they have already acquired everywhere they have been. They have worked up till 2.30 by moonlight. Their work has been excellent. The men have been delighted with the work, and they have been exemplary in their conduct. Even if you can produce other companies as good, I should be rather in a hole if No. 3 were to be taken away.

Thus we arrive at the day before the main attack was delivered. It was intended by the Turkish and German leaders that there should be feints all along the 70 miles of fightable front, and that between Toussoum and Serapeum the main body would be thrown in and across the Canal. Plans were formulated to deceive the defenders as to the exact point of the attack, troops marching diagonally across the front (an operation which had brought disaster to the German Army at the Marne), and changing position during the days preceding the main venture; but, nevertheless, this manœuvre was limited to a 20-mile section, with Ismailia as the central point.

The Turks commenced on the afternoon of Tuesday, 2nd February, to engage our artillery at a point some miles north of Ismailia, called El Ferdan, but there was little force in the attack. Really it seemed only designed to cover the movement of bodies of troops which had been massed at Kateb el Kheil, and which were now with camel trains proceeding south and taking up position for the attack. A party of British and Indian troops moved out to locate, and silence if possible, the artillery, but a sandstorm of great violence compelled both the Indian and Turkish forces to retire within their camps.

AUSTRALIANS MANNING A COMMUNICATION TRENCH LEADING TO ISMAILIA FERRY POST.