If I had run out of hiding places, there were other ploys to be utilised. My long experience with gastro provided me with considerable skill in faking or even provoking the condition—in many ways it was not dissimilar to fear. But soon they wised up to the coincidence, and kept a closer watch on me. A more devious approach was to report to the headmaster’s office for supervised detention as punishment for offences that were never committed—which worked well for a time, but teachers will talk to each other. Best trick of all was to make a highly illegal departure from the school at the right time, and bolt. But really, in the end none of these things proved to be quite worth the ridicule that they incurred. Having a reputation as a gutless wonder could bring on problems of its own.
On those few occasions when there was no escape and I was forced to participate, I quickly learned that there were strategies that could be employed to survive the game of Trojan Crunch. Placement was critical. You learned who to get behind and who to stay away from. Areas near particularly enraged or belligerent bodgies were to be avoided. The opposing forces would tend to close in on those who drew their attention most, which in turn opened gaps to their flanks that could be safely slipped through.
Here finally was the moment for which they had been trained: the men jumped out of the boats and began wading the last fifty yards to the land. A few were hit, a few were dragged down by the weight of their packs and drowned, but the rest stumbled through the water to the beach. A group of Turks was running down the shore towards them. Forming themselves into a rough line and raising their absurd cry of ‘Imishi Yallah’ the Dominion soldiers fixed their bayonets and charged. Within minutes the enemy before them dropped their rifles and fled. The Anzac legend had begun.
Thus the landing at Anzac Cove in Alan Moorehead’s Gallipoli. Weak in detail of the experience of the men, the book is far more about the errors and incompetence of the British commanders, and how they turned a situation where they outnumbered the enemy six to one, out-manoeuvred them and achieved all their objectives on the first day, and yet still managed to lose the conflict. It was because in the British mind, it would not be right to allow the Dominion troops to capture the peninsular—the victory had to be won by proper British soldiers. So the Anzacs were pulled back to hold the beachhead and wait for the Poms to arrive, only they never did. Bogged down in France, Churchill no longer had the troops to spare and by then Attaturk had flooded the region with Turks. The chance was lost, and eventually (far too late) the Anzacs were quietly withdrawn. The betrayal of the Australians by the British, written at a time when no one wanted to believe it.
