"Over There" with the AustraliansKnyvett, R. Hugh (Reginald Hugh)
History
"Over There" with the Australians
Knyvett, R. Hugh (Reginald Hugh)
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, English
We also passed some other amazing-looking craft which were being towed
down the Red Sea. They looked like armored houseboats, and were for
use up the Tigris. I should not like to have been boxed up in one, for
it looked as if they would have to use a can-opener to get you out, and
it did not appear to me as though the sides were bullet-proof. But
trust the Admiralty to know what they are doing! Pages could be filled
with the mere cataloguing of the various kinds of ships used by the
navy in this war, and I am told that these river "tanks" were the prime
factor in the advance in Mesopotamia.
A marine court would decide that the _River Clyde_ was not a ship at
all but a fortress. There was a naval engagement in this war when two
ships were refused their share of the prize money for the capture of
German ships because they were anchored, the sea lawyers decreeing that
they were forts.
But the old, sea-beaten collier _River Clyde_ deserves to be remembered
as a ship that has passed, for before she grounded on the beach she
carried in her womb as brave a company of heroes as have ever
emblazoned their deeds on a nation's roll of honor. The wooden horse
that carried Ulysses and the heroic Greeks into the heart of ancient
Troy did not enclose a braver band than were these modern youths shut
within the ironsides of the old tramp steamer which bore them into the
camp of their enemies somewhere near the supposed site of the Homeric
city.
Doors had been cut in the sides of the old steamer, and lighters were
moored alongside with launches. When she ran aground these lighters
were towed round so as to form a gangway to the shore, and the troops
poured down onto them. The Turks were as prepared in this case to
repel an attack as at Anzac, and held their fire until the ship was
hard and fast. They then had a huge target at pointblank range on
which to concentrate leaden hail from machine-guns and rifles aided by
the shells from the Asiatic forts. Few lived in that eager first
rush--some jumped into the sea to wade or swim, but were shot in the
water or drowned under weight of their equipment. Again and again the
lighters broke from their moorings, and many brave swimmers defied
death to secure them. One boy won the Victoria Cross for repeatedly
attempting to carry a rope in his teeth to the shore. But the crosses
earned that day if they were awarded would give to the glorious
Twenty-Ninth Division a distinction that none would begrudge them. The
regiments of the Hampshires, Dublin, and Munster Fusiliers added in a
few hours more glory to their colors than past achievements had given
even such proud historic names as theirs.
The landing at Cape Helles and the wooden horse are beacons of the
Gallipoli campaign that shine undimmed alongside the Australian-New
Zealand landing at Anzac which, as a rising sun, proclaimed the dawn of
the day of their nationhood.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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