Hi guys, the mentioning of Kitchener reminded me of my Grandfather seeing him on Gallipoli just prior to their evacuation. The following is the relevant chapter from my Grandfather's military memoires. Please note that I transcribed his verbal stories word for word. He was a bit of a back woods, pioneer type of guy, therefore his language reflects that environment.
Evacuation
I said to some of the chaps, we’ll be out of this in about a fortnight by the way they’re dumping stuff at the jetty down there. They’re dumping a lot of reasonably good stuff, rifles and other equipment that could be repaired. They said don’t be mad, how could we get off, I said the same way we got on - by boat. Anyway it might have been a week after, it might have been a bit more, damned if Kitchener didn’t happen to land in our trenches. He was walking along, he was a big fellow, well over six foot with a big red staff cap on like. I don’t think the Turks fired a shot at him, he never bent his head once while I seen him. He just walked straight along with his head above the line of the trench, anyway they didn’t laugh at me after that.
Previous to that, when we were moving in to our position, I said when I seen the position we had to go in. Christ I said, we haven’t got a hope in hell of taking that place there. They said what are you Greeny, a bloody General or something. I said no I’m not a General and no ambition of being one, but I think I’ve got a fair amount of common sense. I said just picture yourself trying to get up the side of that cliff, up to where the Turks were entrenched there. I said sounds like they’ve got their families there, you could hear roosters crowing, they had their wives with them I think. It’s what we called the Camels Hump, the military called it Number One Outpost, it was an outpost alright it was right out on its own. But we had no hope of shifting them from there and they couldn’t shift us. They had several goes at it but we repulsed them every time, we were entrenched pretty well.
They began to wonder how I worked out that we were leaving, but it was plain for anyone to see, if they had any sense like. They were dumping stuff that otherwise would have been useful if we were staying. The next thing of course they arranged for the big depot to be set alight. There was millions of pounds worth of goods, food, and clothing, general material there under canvas covers, tarpaulins like. It would be bigger than Anthony Horden’s old building, you know that was a fair size. It was built up with boxes into different rooms and compartments. When we wanted something we went and pinched it, just went and took it. I was only pulled up once and I put a good tale I was from head quarters or something and got away with it.
When Kitchener ordered us out of it I said well, I’m not a general but I must think some of the same as Kitchener because he’d ordered us out of it, ‘cause they had no argument against that. When we were going out we had to go out through the sunken road, it would have been about fourteen foot wide and about eight to ten feet deep, dug into the hill like. All along one side of the bank they had big rolls of barbed wire entanglements ready to pull in after us. So if the Turks woke up to it we were getting out like they couldn’t get after us and get us on the beach, they would get an open go at us if they had.
When they gave us the order just before the day we were to move out that night like, they sent ‘round orders to pull all the spare socks we had over our boots, wouldn’t matter if it was a dozen pairs put ‘em all on. I thought you silly so and so, what would they want us to do that for. Anyway we went down onto the beach and I know most of us were lying down where we could between the rocks and that, there was a bit of gravel, a bit of sand, not much. We were lying down on the ground and you could hear like a big thunderstorm in the distance. It was thousands and thousands of troops marching you know their footsteps the vibration in the earth, you wouldn’t believe it without you heard it like; it was just one constant roar.
Of course we finally got on to the destroyer and got on to Imbros Island, then we were loaded onto a destroyer and were taken back to Egypt again. The same whole bloody rigmarole of starting in training again. You know, field training, route marches, drill and god knows what to fill in the time.
