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Title: "Over There" with the Australians

Author: R. Hugh Knyvett

Release Date: December 3, 2005 [eBook #17206]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK "OVER THERE" WITH THE AUSTRALIANS***



E-text prepared by Al Haines







Captain R. Hugh Knyvett.] [Frontispiece: Captain R. Hugh Knyvett.]




"OVER THERE"

WITH THE AUSTRALIANS


BY

CAPTAIN R. HUGH KNYVETT


ANZAC SCOUT
Intelligence Officer, Fifteenth Australian Infantry





NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

1918




COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

Published April, 1918




BILL-JIM'S CHRISTMAS

(Bill-Jim is Australia's name for her soldier)


Here where I sit, mucked-up with Flanders mud,
Wrapped-round with clothes to keep the Winter out,
Ate-up wi' pests a bloke don't care to name
To ears polite,
I'm glad I'm here all right;
A man must fight for freedom and his blood
Against this German rout
An' do his bit,
An' not go growlin' while he's doin' it:
The cove as can't stand cowardice or shame
Must play the game.

Here's Christmas, though, with cold sleet swirlin' down…
God! gimme Christmas day in Sydney town!
I long to see the flowers in Martin Place,
To meet the girl I write to face to face,
To hold her close and teach
What in this Hell I'm learning—that a man
Is only half a man without his girl,
That sure as grass is green and God's above
A chap's real happiness,
If he's no churl,
Is home and folks and girl,
And all the comforts that come in with love!

There is a thrill in war, as all must own,
The tramplin' onward rush,
The shriek o' shrapnel and the followin' hush,
The bosker crunch o' bayonet on bone,
The warmth of the dim dug-out at the end,
The talkin' over things, as friend to friend,
And through it all the blessed certainty
As this war's working out for you an' me
As we would have it work.

Fritz maybe, and the Turk
Feel that way, too,
The same as me an' you,
And dream o' victory at last, although
The silly cows don't know,
Because they ain't been born and bred clean-free,
Like you and me.

But this is Christmas, and I'm feeling blue,
An' lonely, too.
I want to see one little girl's sly pout
(There's lots of other coves as feels like this)
That holds you off and still invites a kiss.
I want to get out from this smash and wreck
Just for to-day,
And feel a pair of arms slip round me neck
In that one girl's own way.
I want to hear the splendid roar and shout
O' breakers comin' in on Bondi Beach,
While she, with her old scrappy costume on,
Walks by my side, an' looks into my face,
An' makes creation one big pleasure-place
Where golden sand basks in that golden weather—
Yes! her an' me together!
I do me bit,
An' make no fuss of it;
But for to-day I somehow want to be
At home, just her an' me.


(From the Sydney "Sunday Times")




CONTENTS


  An Introduction Mainly About Scouts


PART I

"THE CALL TO ARMS"
CHAPTER   I.   The Call Reaches Some Far-Out Australians II.   An All-British Ship III.   Human Snowballs IV.   Training-Camp Life V.   Concentrated for Embarkation VI.   Many Weeks at Sea




PART II

EGYPT
VII.   The Land of Sand and Sweat VIII.   Heliopolis IX.   The Desert X.   Picketing in Cairo XI.   "Nipper"




PART III

GALLIPOLI
XII.   The Adventure of Youth XIII.   The Landing That Could Not Succeed—But Did XIV.   Holding On and Nibbling XV.   The Evacuation XVI.   "Ships That Pass…"




PART IV

THE WESTERN FRONT
XVII.   Ferry Post and the Suez Canal Defenses XVIII.   First Days in France XIX.   The Battle of Fleurbaix XX.   Days and Nights of Strafe XXI.   The Village of Sleep XXII.   The Somme XXIII.   The Army's Pair of Eyes XXIV.   Nights in No Man's Land XXV.   Spy-Hunting XXVI.   Bapaume and "a Blighty"




PART V

HOSPITAL LIFE
XXVII.   In France XXVIII.   In London XXIX.   The Hospital-Ship XXX.   In Australia XXXI.   Using an Irishman's Nerve




PART VI

MEDITATIONS IN THE TRENCHES
XXXII.   The Right Infantry Weapons XXXIII.   The Forcing-House of Bestiality XXXIV.   The Psychology of Fear XXXV.   The Splendor of the Present Opportunity XXXVI.   Not a Fight for "Race" but for "Right" XXXVII.   "Keeping Faith with the Dead"   Poem, "But a Short Time to Live"




ILLUSTRATIONS R. Hugh Knyvett . . . . . . Frontispiece From inland towns … men without the means of paying
    their transportation … started out to walk the three or four
    hundred miles … to the nearest camp "On Show" Before Leaving Home Anzac Cove, Gallipoli An Australian Camel Corps "Us—Going In" My Own Comrades Waiting for Buses Ammunition Going Through a Somme City




AN INTRODUCTION MAINLY ABOUT SCOUTS

I am a scout; nature, inclination, and fate put me into that branch of army service. In trying to tell Australia's story I have of necessity enlarged on the work of the scouts, not because theirs is more important than other branches of the service, nor they braver than their comrades of other units. Nor do I want it to be thought that we undergo greater danger than machine-gunners, grenadiers, light trench-mortar men, or other specialists. But, frankly, I don't know much about any other man's job but my own, and less than I ought to about that. To introduce you to the spirit, action, and ideals of the Australian army I have to intrude my own personality, and if in the following pages "what I did" comes out rather strongly, please remember I am but "one of the boys," and have done not nearly as good work as ten thousand more.

I rejoice though that I was a scout, and would not exchange my experiences with any, not even with an adventurer from the pages of B. O. P. [1] Romance bathes the very name, the finger-tips tingle as they write it, and there was not infrequently enough interesting work to make one even forget to be afraid. Very happy were those days when I lived just across the road from Fritz, for we held dominion over No Man's Land, and I was given complete freedom in planning and executing my tiny stunts. The general said: "It is not much use training specialists if you interfere with them," so as long as we did our job we were given a free hand.

The deepest lines are graven on my memory from those days, not by the thrilling experiences—"th' hairbreadth 'scapes"—but by the fellowship of the men I knew. An American general said to me recently that scouts were born, not made. It may be so, but it is surprising what opposite types of men became our best scouts. There were two without equal: one, city-bred, a college graduate; the other a "bushie," writing his name with difficulty.

Ray Wilson was a nervous, highly strung sort of fellow, almost a girl in his sensitiveness. In fact, at the first there were several who called him Rachel, but they soon dropped it, for he was a lovable chap, and disarmed his enemies with his good nature. He had taken his arts course, but was studying music when he enlisted, and he must have been the true artist, for though the boys were prejudiced against the mandolin as being a sissy instrument, when he played they would sit around in silence for hours. What makes real friendship between men? You may know and like and respect a fellow for years, and that is as far as it goes, when, suddenly, one day something happens—a curtain is pulled aside and you go "ben" [2] with him for a second—afterward you are "friends," before you were merely friendly acquaintances.

Ray and I became friends in this wise. We were out together scouting preparatory to a raid, and were seeking a supposed new "listening post" of the enemy. There had been a very heavy bombardment of the German trenches all day, and it was only held up for three-quarters of an hour to let us do our job. The new-stale earth turned up by the shells extended fifty yards in No Man's Land. (Only earth that has been blown on by the wind is fresh "over there." Don't, if you have a weak stomach, ever turn up any earth; though there may not be rotting flesh, other gases are imprisoned in the soil.) This night the wind was strong, and the smell of warm blood mingled with the phosphorous odor of high explosive, and there was that other sweet-sticky-sickly smell that is the strongest scent of a recent battle-field. It was a vile, unwholesome job, and we were glad that our time was limited to three-quarters of an hour, when our artillery would re-open fire. I got a fearful start on looking at my companion's face in the light of a white star-shell; it might have belonged to one of the corpses lying near, with the lips drawn back, the eyes fixed, and the complexion ghastly. He replied to my signal that he was all right, but a nasty suspicion crept into my mind—his teeth had chattered so much as to make him unable to answer a question of mine just before we left the trench, but one took no notice of a thing like that, for stage fright was common enough to all of us before a job actually started. But "could he be depended on?" was the fear that was now haunting me.

Presently some Germans came out of their trench. We counted eight of them as they crawled down inside their broken wire. We cautiously followed them, expecting that they were going out to the suspected "listening post," but they went about fifty yards, and then lay down just in front of their own parapet. After about twenty minutes they returned the way they came, and I have no doubt reported that they had been over to our wire and there were no Australian patrols out.

This had taken up most of our time, and I showed Wilson that we had only ten minutes left, and that we had better get back so as not to cut it too fine. I was rather surprised when he objected, spelling out Morse on my hand that we had come out to find the "listening post," and we had not searched up to the right. The Germans were evidently getting suspicious of the silence, and to our consternation suddenly put down a heavy barrage in No Man's Land, not more than thirty yards behind us. There was no getting through it, and we grabbed each other's hand, and only the pressure was

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