THE LAST WATCH

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3198, 24 September 1917, Page 6

THE LAST WATCH

. / ON GALLIPOLI'S HILLS THE COMPANY OP PICKED MEN ■' (By Lawson.) ' j ' Whenever; -returned; soldiers,. of the Mam Body or icrirly " Eeinforceinents, meet,, the talk ultimately, turns to the ■ eubjoct nearest their hearts— on Gallipoli. Quito' casually,they, tell of . terrible nights and • cruet days when Death, was their comrade, and of beauti- • iTSI views from tho heights of tlioso warshaken hills. Here is a soldiers' epic of the last watch in tha front trenches: ,■ Dusk brooded/ ovar . tho ; hills of Gal : _ . lipoli.v There had been- a wonderful suri- , sheen of-"-glory on the -sea, with •Imbros: arid Samothrncc, the islands to / . .t'he westward,"showing .as radiant fingcr- ' yosts oil tho road that 1 tho sun was taking. On i the hillsides and on the beaches, thousands of soldiers watohed the sunset \ as they had watohed many others—always •with the same sense of .peace; for all ■ the trammels/of war that were so near tnem. But there was something different about' this ■ evening on tho hills, something deeper stirred in many hearts. For ' this was, the night of the CJreat Evncua- : tion. On the morrow there would be no . British or Allied troops on any part of .. the peninsula except at Hellesj and eves '• there they wAe preparing to leave.?. ' The darkness that trod on the hoel.s of dusk was baulked by a strong, clear moon, which made the loom of the ridges distinct, and showed the hulls of tho war- . ships lying off-show, and the hospital ships and transports and the fleets of lesser craft. The sea shimmered away • into the vague distance i arid the waves lap-lapped on s the woll-«sed beaches. - <' -"Like a dream sea," the teller of the f'tale' described it. Overhead a British aeroplane.soared, as a warning, to Johnny Tuft, that ,if he used his artillery his gnn positions would be observe?. Johnny Turk was not in the habit of using his big guns at night,, and he was a viery habitual person. So : the aeroplane was really a precaution; .with the idea of maßtSg quite certain— on this night-it iraa desirable that there should Be as little uncertainty as possible. The crackling, engine of the 'plane seemed to flog the silence with whips. The airman ciroled and patrolled on this boat, •vrhich was over a certain section of the 'bills, for some time. Then be moved on, till he was lost in the greyness. And Trhat he saw going on in-.this- section he would see in others—and what he could.not Bee he could guess, for tho ; plans for going off had been well laid and made quite clear to all concerned. Tlie Otago Hegimenfc held this section. .They wero divided into two detachments. ; Id One detachment had already left, in inno- " . cent-looking barges and small craft. They * went on the night of December 18 nnd 19, " 1915. The second detachment were to leave on the night of the 19th and 20th —tlie night* which is now being written of, the most remarkable arid silent nifent ! of all the nights spent on Gallipoli. This second detachment was divided into three parties, A, B, and C. A party left the. .- trenchesojit- dusk, and already they were / being ferficd out to the transports—while , 'Johnny Turk dug trenches iij anticipation. of a (strong attaok by troops, which he imagined were being landed at,Anzac Bay. B party were to leave "at 9.2 o clock p.m." ' ■ ... ~ "They ran the evacuation with the , ."exactness of a railway time-table/' C party were to leave at 2.2 a* lo * ™ 1G jokers soon discovered that A party .was hound for Alexandria.' for the / lieach, and C party for Constantinople. ' But it cannot be said that their,alphabetical prediction depressed the spirits of 0 party.

. In. the Watches of-the Night. '. About ten o'clock the aeroplane toturned, its mission still being to keep <lown~ any Turkish artillery wlj}ch might "be inclined to let loose promiscuously. "With its clatter sounding in their ears, , B party, who had left at 9.2, continued down the long pully. A party had not relished, leaving B and C. Much less did B like leaving C the last and . most trying vigil of all, and. there had , - . been, some silent farewells, hands gripping ' .liands with the .warmth of comradeship."A man didn't- like to say. good-bye. We just . shook hands and said Good ' luck-.'" Away over the waters, the lights of the steamers and cruisers showed, the hospital ships making brilliant splashes of colour. Everything was ready for . whatever 'fortune might attend the get- , "ting-off. But it-seemed as though the Turks never dreamed what tho real pnr pose of those .ships -was. JPor several nights past'many hundreds of men had been marched down, to the beach 111 the darkness—very quietly; and whon dawn '•came they were marched up, very ostentatiously, from the beach to the trenches. The fleets of lighters played ttieu^part in'these mock landings, too. Tne Turks, •were thinking hard and .working hard to strengthen their trenohes. ' , : C party in each section consisted of 4 major and 30 men.. The major in the ■Otago section had chosen them, one by one; from- a throng of volunteers. He ' knew them to be men who would never let him down, which was'important. > , . "Hard-doers, lots of them, but white ■ v right through!" ' ■ . ':■■■-. The orders for this, last' act m the ' drama of Gallipoli wereverv definite and • a little grim. Grim, *bec&use, i£ the Turks attacked these picked men were not to retire; they were to hold on till' the last moment, till every man in that section, but themselves, was on his ship. -And,-when that last moment came, the ■wounded were to be placed by the roadside where: the' Turks could see them in tho morning; it:would'be impossible lor < them to be removed, the orders said. "The orders said, too,'that the throats of all the artillery horsea were-to be cut;, it would be too noisy to ■ snoot them. Bnt the boys got them all away an the barges, packed like sardines.. If where had. been any wounded, we would have managed somehow."- .. . , > "For five hours after B party left, . party were to man the trenches, and r.UiKo the Turks believe that they were Jieut ■ in force." The men were at high tension.'; But they were cheerful. They joked, and passed-messages, along the attenuated line; and the noise tliey maao - helped -to deceive the Turks.. As the .time tvore on, the men occupied themselves in destroying and burying bombs, trench mortars, catapults, 'and other wea.pons of war which could not be carried away. But there were bombs also "which were not buried 'or destroyed. Eor several nights previously men li'd been sent out beyond the front line, to lay out bombs. The- pile were straight--1 ened, and a piece of wito attached to" each and made fast to a stump or clump of scrub. ' .If the enemy tried to rush tho Otago trenches, he would have fouled the wires and exploded the bombs. Tq while away tho vigil of those dragging hours, the men set. the "trick ritles" which had J>een made. Some had sawn-off slocks. They were loaded and set to go off at a certain tjme by means of tins of water. ilie ' liquid drlpipwl thought a small hole m a full tin into an empty one, and as the lfrtter slowly filled it Teached, at length, the point when it tipped a weight over, and the weight (set the rifle off. > Another method was to leave a candle burning near a piece, of string. When the - candle, burned down to the string, i t - severed it, and released a weight which - fired tlie rifle. Long after the last man •had reached the ships, these "lies could be heard "pop : popping" in a lonely, eerie way, doing their duty till the last. "It was the rummiest feeling, tn hear tli'em. Nearly made a man cry." > The strain of waiting fell most heavily on the O.C. He was wondering how the previous parties had fared, and listening for signs of trouble from the Turks. To him the minutes seemed very long. ~ ~ ' As the time, for the final evacuation of the front trenches drew near, he saw that the machine-gunners, sentries, and trench-mortar people were all at (heir posts. About twenty minutes before the order came to move out, the U.&. and a sergeant crept over towards the Turkish ' trenches to reconnoitre. fliey saw the Turks, very busy indeed, driving in stakes and putting up barb-wire, in -•' anticipation of the heavy attack they expected. The two scouts returned to their position, satisfied .with what thc.v -- had'seen. Then the thirty were divided • into three parties. -At intervals of a ■•few minutes they stole away down the derry, down to tho ships. The third party fired a final round from their -machine-guns, put tho guns on their ■ "boulders, and followed their comrades. It was a long, deep derry, with rough, «lav sides, and tho moonlight made it

seem longer. Yet these men were not in a hurry to leave—that was the strange part of it. Tlioy marched in perfect order, yet here and there a man would step out, near a mound or where lie know a mound was. In tho dim light tho'mounds were not always easily 6een. These hardy, iron-nerved men felt this going more ithan the strain of waiting. They wero leaving comrades,. brothers, behind. them, -under these low mounds, and in other places. And, as they stood for a moment at the salute, their thoughts wero a little bitter and a littlo hard, and wholly sad. "So long, Snowy, we'll come back," a hard-case whispered, as he marched on. They had come to regard tiallipoli a3 British. soil—at least the portion tli'ey held—and they , were leaving it, leaving comrades who had died to win it, and make it British. But they were soldiers,. and orders were orders to them. So down the dark, shadowy derry they went, to the beach and the barges and the ships. . The last barge carried the field hospital staff. They had 1 remained at their posts on the beach, and were ready to stay behind altogether had there been casualties to claim their attention. As it was there were none. So they came off, and-'left everything standing, tho hospital spick. and span and lully stocked." Clear! Over the growing distance of water, between these barges and the beach came the sounds of rifles and bombs exploding; and suddenly there came a flare of light on Russell's Top, and a dull roar which told of a mine oxploding, and tnen another. A man in a leading* barge laughed hysterically. ;, , ■ ~ ~ "It's the boys we left behina that,s doing it," he 3hout«d. • '' But the mines had been set with timefuses.. After the explosions, along the whole Turkish line there was an outbreak of heavy rifle fire, tho wild shooting which the enemy usually gave way to when there was a night alarm. v lO barges passed through a hail of fallitifc" bullets from this random shooting ', t one man was slightly wounded. v The smaller transports took the troops from tlie barges to Lemnos; there the men were transhipped into the larger which carried them to Alexandria. The officers and all hands on t&o transports could not do enough for the weary and worn warriors who had kept the last watch during that i-ast night on Galtipoli. . i When the sun rose in the nnd east there were no Bntislt a"f Anzac; ana though the sun set behind Jmßros ami Somothrace, as it has set since the be-ginning-of Time, no British eyes watched its setting from the hillß of Galnpoli. „ , , "Those sunsets made a nian a Christian; they sorted out the things that mattered. You knew that dead men did not matter—they- lay all' around us—it was the spirit tnat made them die. and what they 'died for, that mattered,' the teller of the tale concluded.