ICY

It used to make us feel as if we could shake him when we saw how be would double himself up. And yet one never liked to attempt anything of the kind whenever he used that smile. Moreover, as he was over six feet in height and correspondingly strong, it would not have been politic. His was a baffling smile, recalling the peculiar smile of the " Mona Lisa," and, like it, unfathomable. He was a very quiet kind of chap, and when it was his turn to do fatigues, he would go and perform whatever was required of him without ever grumbling. His mates used to take a mean advantage of his good nature, and would shunt all the work, such as sweeping out the "possie" or trenches, on to him.

About the time of which I am writing we had noticed that Abdul was sapping somewhere down the gully. Sometimes we could distinguish dark shapes moving about, and no amount of sniping on our part would stop them. They worked only during the night, and each morning we found that the pile of new earth down the gully had grown higher. At last we understood his plan-and it came to our turn to make a counter move.

One evening I was told off among others to go out and dig a new trench in front of Abdul's new sap. We had to block him from getting to a certain place on the little ridge which hitherto had been in " No-Man's Land." I noticed that Icy had also been told off, but he was to be one of the covering party. All that night we worked hard, digging ourselves in and filling sandbags which we threw up in front of us. At first we were undisturbed, but suddenly the bullets began to ping-ping over our heads, and we knew that Abdul had tumbled. Still, as he was himself intent on digging he did not come out at us, but contented himself by sniping, thinking to drive us off in that way. However, it was a bit late in the day for that; since by the time he found us out we had already several good sandbags filled, and these protected us as long as we kept well down.

Several of our chaps were winged, but as none of the wounds was very serious we didn't mind that. When it had struck five in the morning we knocked off and retired to sleep away the day. Half a dozen bomb-throwers who had volunteered for the job then took our places, bringing with them a few bombs, their rifles, ammunition, water bottles, and a supply of bully beef and biscuits. There they spent the whole day, lying low under cover of the sandbags. But Abdul troubled them not! Next night we went out again to resume work, and then it was that certain things happened which made us look upon Icy in a different light.

We had no sooner started work than ra-ta-ta-ta-ta went a machine-gun somewhere out to the left, and the bullets came pinging round hot and close, winging three and killing two on the first discharge.

John Turk had stolen a march on us by placing a machine-gun away out on his extreme flank where he could to a certain extent enfilade us. That sort of thing could not be allowed to last, as we had to bury our noses in the ground each time the confounded gun opened up. Our covering party, being out ahead of us, escaped the hail of bullets better than we did. The place was now becoming too hot to stay in, so the order came along to retire independently to our trenches, until something could be done to stop the machine-gun.

When we mustered again in the trenches, we found that one man of the covering party was missing. The man was Icy. As we were talking about him - wondering who should go back to look for him-there came the noise of a commotion from the direction of the Turkish machine-gun. Bang! bang! went a couple of bombs, followed by cries and shouts from Abdul, and above it all we were certain we heard fragments of language, of the category known in Australia as " bullocky" *

What could it mean? By this time the alarm had spread along the whole of Abdul's front trenches, which belched forth liquid fire. In our own trenches everyone had mechanically sprung to arms; and we stood there wondering while for fifteen minutes the Turks fired without ceasing. Gradually the noise subsided-and we noticed that for some reason the machine-gun away on the left was strangely quiet.

An hour later we were stealing out again to have another attempt at completing our new trenches when I stumbled over the form of a man lying prone. Bending over to see him, I found it was Icy. His clothes were wet and sticky with blood, and half underneath his body there showed the muzzle of a machine-gun. As we lifted him up, we saw that the gun was there complete, tripod and all.

We took him into the lines and handed him over to the dressing station; and just before we came away he opened his eyes and told enough for us to realise that Icy had sneaked over and stolen that Turkish gun. To this day we don't quite know how he did it, as be never will talk about it; but before they took him on to the hospital ship next day-with his sixteen bullet wounds and scratches all told - there went down to see him a crowd in which I was amongst the foremost, which apologised to Icy very humbly.

And, do you know, be only smiled back at us in that funny old way of his.

THE TROJAN WAR, 1915

• WE care not what old Homer tells 
  • of Trojan war and Helen's fame. 
  • Upon the ancient Dardanelles
  • New peoples write-in blood-their name.
• Those Grecian heroes long have fled,
  • No more the Plain of Troy they haunt; 
  • Made sacred by our Southern dead,
  • Historic is the Hellespont.
• Homeric wars are fought again
  • By men who like old Greeks can die; 
  • Australian back block heroes slain,
  • With Hector and Achilles lie.
• No legend lured these men to roam;
  • They journeyed forth to save from harm 
  • Some Mother-Helen sad at home,
  • Some obscure Helen on a farm.
• And when one falls upon the hill
  • Then by dark Styx's gloomy strand, 
  • In honour to plain Private Bill
  • Great Agamemnon lifts his hand!

J. WAREHAM, 1st Aust. Field Amb.

THE PRICE

• DEAD figures writhe and beckon in my dream; 
  • Wild eyes look into mine;
  • While , bewildered, watch the bloody stream 
  • With misty eyes ashine.
• It rends my heart, and I am nothing loath 
  • To have the murder cease.
  • Horror it is and carnage, yet are both
  • Part of the price of peace.

Corpl. Comus, 2nd Bat., A.I.F.

KILLED IN ACTION

• WHERE the ranges throw their shadows long before the day's surrender, 
  • Down a valley where a river used to tumble to the sea,
  • On a rising patch of level rest the men who dared to tender
  • Life and all its sweetness for their love o' liberty.
• In a thousand miles of ugly scrubby waste and desolation,
  • Just that little space of level showing open to the sea;
  • Nothing there to lend it grandeur (sure, it needs no decoration)
  • Save those rows of wooden crosses keeping silent custody.
• There's a band of quiet workers, artless lads who joked and chatted
  • Just this morning; now they're sullen and they keep their eyes away
  • From the blanket-hidden body, coat and shirt all blood-bespattered,
  • Lying motionless and waiting by the new-turned heap of clay.
• There are records in the office--date of death and facts pertaining,
  • Showing name and rank and number and disposal of the kit
  • More or less a business matter, and we have no time for feigning
  • More than momentary pity for the men who-have been hit.
• There's a patient mother gazing on her hopes so surely shattered
  • (Hopes and prayers she cherished bravely, seeking strength to hide her fear),
  • Boyhood's dreams and idle memories-things that never really mattered
  • Lying buried where he's buried 'neath the stars all shining clear.
• There's a young wife sorrow-stricken in her bitter first conception
  • Of that brief conclusive message, harsh fulfilment of her dread;
  • There are tiny lips repeating, with their childish imperception,
  • Simple words that bring her mem'ries from the boundaries of the dead
• Could the Turk have seen this picture when his trigger-finger rounded,
  • Would his sights have blurred a little had he heard that mother's prayer?
  • Could be know some things that she knew, might his hate have been confounded?
  • But he only saw his duty, and he did it, fighting fair.
• Just a barren little surface where the grave mounds rise ungainly
  • Monuments and tributes to the men who've done their share.
  • Pain and death, the fruits of battle, and the crosses tell it plainly,
  • Short and quick and silent suffering,  would to God it ended there.

HARRY MCCANN - Headquarters- 4th Aust. Light Horse

Loneliness garbed in a mantle of merging grey sea and grey sky, trimmed with the spires and turrets of grey and seemingly unsouled ships, whose presence in the blue and gold days was as that of old friends well met, but which now seem to be ragged rents in the solemn dress of Loneliness, reminding one of a derelict's slovenly covering held together over a hopeless breast by an old gold brooch - perhaps the gift of a mother or handed down from bygone ages. 

Loneliness comes not to all of us garbed in this fashion. To others, who look eastward, she comes dressed in the somber clothes of the grey hill-side, and with yearning eyes beckons them on to the chances of the blue and gold life in Constantinople; or, perchance, if their luck is that of many another good. soldier, to that other grey life forever with the grey seas, grey skies and grey forgetfulness on these ghostly, forsaken grey shores of Gallipoli.

N. Ash, 11th A.A.S.C.

MY ANZAC HOME

• COME and see my little dug-out-way up on the hill it stands, 
  • Where I can get a lovely view of Anzac's golden sands; 
  • When " Beachy Bill " is shelling, I can see just where he lands, 
  • From my cosy little dug-out on the hill.
• It isn't quite as roomy as the mansions of the Tsar; 
  • From sitting-room to bedroom is not so very far, 
  • For the dining- and the smoking-room you stay just where you are, 
  • In my cosy little dug-out on the hill.
• The fleas they wander nightly, as soon as I've undressed, 
  • And after many weary hunts I've had to give them best.
  • As the ants have also found it, there is very little rest 
  • In my cosy little dug-out on the hill.
• I've a natty little cupboard, and it looks so very nice, 
  • 'Twas made to keep my bread and jam, my bacon and my rice; 
  • But now it's nothing other than a home for orphan'd mice, 
  • In my cosy little dug-out on the hill.
• There is no electric lighting in this blighted land of war, 
  • So I use some fat in syrup tins, and stand it on the floor
  • And when it's working overtime I sweat from every pore, 
  • In my cosy little dug-out on the hill.
• When the nights are clear and starry-then the scene is beautified 
  • By the silvery gleams and shadows that across the mountain glide; 
  • But if it's wet and stormy-well, I go to sleep outside 
  • Of my cosy little dug-out on the hill.*
• When the time comes round for parting from my little eight by four, 
  • And I can get a good night's rest without a back that's sore, 
  • Well-perhaps some day I'll miss you, and will long to live once more 
  • In the little cosy dug-out on the hill.

WHAT FRANK THOUGHT

He was interrupted in this by the attentions a "little friend" was paying him. This he located. He then lighted the end of a cigarette (which he had kept stowed away in the top of his puttees) before risking another glance at himself in the top of the two-bob tin of sardines.

"What a guy," he murmured. " If Jessie could see me now, would she turn me down for some cold-footed, well-groomed fellow? I don't think. She's all right, and would understand it's no gipsy tea we're at."

However, it was with some slight nervousness that he opened the letter. Following the customary greetings, Jessie wrote:

"Dearie, be sure to keep your hat on at all times. Egypt, I hear, is awfully hot about Christmas-time. The doctor was telling me the other day that he could hardly sit on the veranda of Shepheard's in the middle of the day. Keep your hat on, even when at Shepheard's. The climate is so treacherous. Doe. says he recommends this hotel. Shall we send letters to you there? Iced drinks and heavy meals are dangerous, doc. says."

This was more than flesh and blood could stand. " Am I having my leg pulled?" he asked. He looked at the envelope, and found it had been posted in Sydney thirteen months ago. He swore roundly at the expense of the postal people, and as all the rest of the letter was hopelessly out of date, he turned his attention to the next item of his very belated mail. It was another letter from Jessie. She again rambled on about Egypt, its climatic horrors and the dangers of Cairo's attractions.

He bit his lip and smiled sourly when he came across a passage which related to the dancing deeds of a male acquaintance of his.

"Frank, as you know, has not enlisted yet," she wrote. "He is not sure of a commission, because chaps are called upon to pass a beastly exam. He says it's rot to ask him to sit for an examination, and he would just hate to serve in the ranks. In his case, 'it would be super-patriotic,' he says, to do so. I don't understand what he means by this, but no doubt you will."

Hughie knew that the man referred to was big enough to push all the Turks off the Peninsula; and Jessie proved a Job's comforter when, later on, she told him that Frank only attended dances given for patriotic purposes.

The next item was a parcel containing hair-oil, twenty-five costly cigars, a cigar-bolder, a suit of pyjamas, and a booklet given away by a firm of tobacconists, explaining to would-be-recruits that "Henry Clays" would be forwarded to any part of the Australasian front free of carriage. The parcel was addressed to Gallipoli.

"Darling," wrote Jessie, in the letter that accompanied the parcel, "keep these things in your tent. It must be a fag getting the oil you liked so much. I suppose you have to walk some distance from the firing-line to the nearest shops*. No doubt the cigars will be acceptable after dinner, and, later on, the pyjamas. Don't think me forward in sending the latter. But I know fellows do wear them. I've seen them advertised in the Herald. I am sending these things for use in Turkey.

* It may be necessary to explain that every man in the Gallipoli Peninsula was within easy range of the Turkish artillery. For anything except a hospital to use a tent would have been to give an open invitation to shrapnel. "The nearest shops" were about three miles behind the Turkish lines.

"I have read all about the charge you chaps made on the 25th of April, and hope you were allowed to get well up in the front. It would just suit you. I know it is dangerous, but Frank says if it is dangerous for the men, how much more dangerous must it be for the officers. He says he will insist upon leading his men in all charges. Between you and file though, Hughie, I don't think he will enlist. He has several pairs of lovely socks to hand by to-day's delivery from David Jones's, and if they are not for the yachting that is to start next week, then I'm slow. Frank and I are going to Ran wick Races on Saturday, and if we see anything in your battalion colours we will back it and buy something for you with what we collect. Frank says he is sure you would like us to do this.

" Please don't get shot, dear. We intend to send you lots of nice things for Christmas."

Hughie, a gay dog in the good old ante-bellum days, who occupied a cosy job and circulated his sovereigns, tramped back to his dug-out through the saps, revolving wicked thoughts about Frank. Always a philosopher, be cleaned his rifle with the hair-oil, cut up the pyjamas to make pull-throughs, and to newly arrived reinforcements distributed the cigars. He and the old hands had lost any appetite they ever had for such comforts.

A. J. BOYD, A.N.Z.A.C

ARCADIA

• I've stayed in many a boarding-house, 
  • From good, to fair, to rotten, 
  • Seeking the comfort of a home 
  • With all its cares forgotten. 
• In pubs I've dwelt and drowned the  cares
  • Which canker life by meeting
  • With open hand each casual friend,
  • And moistened well each greeting.
• I've dwelt in many a town and shire,
  • From Cairns to Wangaratta;
  • I've dropped into the Brisbane show
  • And Bundaberg Regatta.
• But now I've struck an ideal spot
  • Where pleasure never cloys.
  • Just list' to the advantages
  • This choice retreat enjoys
• The rent is free, no board to pay,
  • No land or income taxes,
  • And on my tail no middleman
  • Nor fat man fatter waxes.
• If I should say I need some clothes,
  • Someone will just "take action"
  • No tailors' bills can worry me
  • And drive me to distraction.
• And should my health appear to fail
  • And appetite grow fine,
  • My doctor hands me - not a bill,
  • But just a Number 9.*
• The scenery is glorious,
  • The sunsets are cyclonic;
  • The atmosphere's so full of iron,
  • It acts as quite a tonic.
• And even parsons preach the Word,
  • Nor take up a collection.
  • While politicians don't exist,
  • Nor e'en a by-election.
• No scandal ever hovers here
  • To sear our simple lives;
  • And married men are always true
  • To absent, loving wives.
• But the crowning gift of all is-no
  • One's happiness is marred,
  • Finding answers to the questions
  • On that d----d War Census Card.
• And should you doubt if there can be
  • A spot which so excels,
  • Let me whisper-it is ANZAC!
  • Anzac by the Dardanelles.

THE CAVEMAN