Conditions at Anzac, 18th July 1915

Veteran war correspondent Henry Nevinson wrote on 18th July 1915 describing life at Anzac: “The flies were so numerous that one had to shake or blow every mouthful before it went further. The glare of the sun was so intense that one lived in perpetual sweat.”

“THE HUMAN ANTS.

“VIVID DESCRIPTION OF LIFE IN GALLIPOLI.

“WHAT SEA-POWER MEANS.

“Mr. H. W. Nevinson, the special correspondent of the Nottingham Guardian with the forces in Gallipoli, writes:

“During a recent armistice for the burial of Turkish dead, Turkish officers told how parties of Australians and New Zealanders continued to rush onward, firing as they went, after they were isolated and surrounded, so that, as the Turks said, “we were obliged to kill them because they would not surrender.”

“Certainly that first assault which won this three-mile front of shore and cliff was a great deed of war, but the persistence with which the colonials have clung to the positions then gained, and organised themselves upon the steep and barren triangle of land, displays perhaps a still more valuable military capacity.

“The first quality of a soldier, says one Napoleon's maxims, is fortitude and endurance. Courage is only the second. And I was reminded of this saying by an observation made to me yesterday (July 17th) by a colonel in command of the furthest advanced and most dangerous post on these cliffs.

“The art of war,” he said, and he repeated it two or three times so as to impress the truth upon my mind, “the art of war consists in the exercise of the domestic virtues.”

“FORTITUDE AND ENDURANCE.

“Now every grown man and woman knows that the very basis of the domestic virtues is fortitude and endurance. That colonel was living in a dug-out or artificial cavern near the summit of cliffs so steep that steps had to be cut for the ascent, as on an ice slope, and a hanging rope from the top was useful in places.

“His plank bed and other savage furniture were thickly covered with a layer of blown sand. The flies were so numerous that one had to shake or blow every mouthful before it went further. The glare of the sun was so intense that one lived in perpetual sweat. The labour of bringing up water was so great that the morning bath and shaving water appeared combined in one teacup (as they do even at lower levels like the cavern in which I write).

“IN A MOMENT OF EMERGENCY.

“Here was full scope for the exercise of the domestic virtues, and they were exercised within the various limits of the situation. Absolute cleanliness was enforced. The duty of every man in the detachment was regulated to time. All were practised every day to take their exact positions at the moment of any possible emergency. Each was trained to know the communication trenches, shelter holes, and subterranean passages as familiarly as miners know the galleries of their mine. There could be no doubt, no confusion, no sloppiness, or mess.

“In the human rabbit-warren on the top of that sun-baked and thirsty cliff, those domestic virtues which constitute the art of war are displayed at their highest development. But let envious mistresses at home remember that this “post,” as upon many of the positions here, the least carelessness means death. Show your head above the shelter or passage for more than a moment, and ten to one a Turkish sniper ends your earthly career.

“THE PERIL OF DEATH.

“Strangely indifferent to danger as one becomes in such situations — for even timid people can acquire a kind of courage by infection — still the peril of death gives a certain stimulus to the domestic virtues, and the peril is very close. From certain trenches which I visited the Turkish trenches were only a few yards distant. One can hear the Turks moving about in their galleries, and on the narrow intervening space between the frontiers one can see the fast shrivelling little heaps of clothes and bones which once were men.

“So here we are clinging, tight and firmly established, among the sandy cliffs and gullies. South of us, just beyond a strip of open beach and level land, projects the rocky little promontory of Gaba Tepe, where the Turks have guns, perhaps, hidden in trenches. North of us the coast becomes flatfish again, running out to Cape Suvla, where the Gulf Saros turns suddenly north-east up the isthmus of Bulair.

“RESULT OF OUR SEA POWER.

“Only our sea power prevents the enemy placing large guns on that sandy cape, and driving us from these cliffs, but our sea power is sufficient. At a point some distance inland, however, the Turks have at least one in a line of trees called “the olive grove.” Below the heights of Kilid Bahr, south-east of our position, they have others. All these guns can command our main landing beach by casual and indirect fire, and their “Hymn of hate,” new every morning and evening, is annoying to our bathers. For bathing is the one form of pleasure here, all the more welcome after the teacup wash, and no risk from shrapnel or high explosive will keep us out of the water.

“This morning (July 18th) a German aeroplane varied the National Hymn (it is Sunday) by drooping a bomb. It fell harmlessly in the sea near the bathers, but exploded apparently on contact with the surface of the water, which I did not expect. So here the Anzacs live, practising the art war by the exercise of the domestic virtues amid varied and interesting fortunes.

“OVER MILES OF BLUE SEA.

“Sitting amid the dust and flies of the mouth of the neat little cave which has been lent me upon the face of the cliffs, I look over miles of blue sea to the precipitous heights of Samothrace, where I have reason to believe that Zeus once dwelt. Up and down the steep and narrow paths around me the gallant colonials arduously toil like ants bearing burdens for the race. Uniforms are not always of the regulation type. They usually consist of a bearskin dyed to a deep reddish copper by the sun, frequent tattoo decorations — a girl, a ship, a dragon — and a covering that can hardly be described as trousers or even as “knickers.”

“But the “boys” are practising the art of war with superb fortitude. Every kind of store and arms has to be dragged or carried up these vast ant-hills of the cliffs, and deposited at its proper hole or gallery. Food, drink, cartridges, shells, buildings, timber, mineral stores — up the tracks all of them must go, and, besides, the wounded must come down.

“So the practice of the simple life proceeds with greater simplicity than any garden city can boast, and the domestic virtues which constitute the art of war are exercised with a persistent endurance rarely maintained upon the domestic hearth.”

'Nottingham Evening Post', 5th August 1915.

Image: http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portraitLarge/mw163573/Henry-Woodd-Nevinson