On the Anzac trail: Being extracts from the diary of a New Zealand sapperAnzac
History
On the Anzac trail: Being extracts from the diary of a New Zealand sapper
Anzac
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, New Zealand
We were hard pressed. The strongest men in the world are only human.
Loss of sleep, insufficient food, and practically no water, combined
with the exertions we had already gone through, began to tell their
tale. Our losses were also very heavy; and owing to the slippery state
of the clay soil, following on an all-night of rain, our reserves could
not get up quickly enough. Thus yards and yards of trench were at times
empty of all save dead and wounded men, and in some cases the Turks
effected a footing in them; they were always driven out again, however,
or bayoneted to a man. Our fellows were simply magnificent; budge they
would not. To capture those trenches meant the killing of the men who
held them; you couldn't _drive_ them out. And the officers were just
the same.
But it was cruel to hear the continual cries of—
"Stretcher bearers!—Stretcher bearers to the right!"
"Stretcher bearers to the left!"
"_Ammunition!_ Send up ammunition—we haven't a —— round here!"
"Reinforce! _For God's sake reinforce!_ They're into No. 8! _Christ!
boys, get a move on!_"
At this time we had neither support trenches nor communications—just
one thin line, which, if broken, meant the loss of the ridge with
all that _that_ meant. We were also so clogged up with dead in our
trenches that to make room for the living we had to throw the bodies
out over the back. In many cases where our line was cut on the edge
of the ridge these bodies rolled right down to the foot of the cliff.
At "Quinn's Post" things were about as bad as they could be. There
was only the merest apology for a track from the "Gully" up to the
trenches situated on the very lip of the crest, and at one time when
reinforcements were making their way in single file up this track they
had to scramble in and out through and over dead men lying tossed about
anyhow, while all the way, right down to the valley the wounded were
lying "heads and tails" awaiting transport to the beach. It wasn't the
most encouraging sight in the world for the fellows coming up straight
off the transports.
In one place quite a little stack of bodies had been huddled together
to one side of the track; there might have been eighteen or twenty in
the lot. Owing to the water running down this stack began to move,
and kept on moving till it blocked the track up altogether. I don't
know how many chaps tumbled into that heap and got tied up in it, but
eventually a fatigue party had to be told off to build up the bodies as
you would build sheaves on a wagon. We had no time to bury our dead for
the first few days—and in that climate you don't want to keep them
above ground for many _hours_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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