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Chapter XII.
Evacuation of Gallipoli.

The rumours that the forces were to be withdrawn from the Peninsula which had heen current for some time, were finally verified. On the 15th December, 1915, when General Godley issued his now famous Army Corps Order No. 21 to his subordinate commanders that orders had been received by him for the re-embarkation of the Army Corps and its transfer to Mudros.

The news reached the Regiment, of course, first through the Divisional Orders emanating from the Corps Order, and all officers and men were acquainted with the news.

The success that attended that great enterprise is well known. How 19,940 souls were evacuated from the confined area occupied by them in two days without the enemy having the faintest suspicion of the movement will ever be recorded as one of the best executed tactical movements of the whole War.

Every man from the Commander himself to the private soldier had, during those anxious hours, a grave responsibility, and every individual accomplished his task as befitted the men who held the line at Gallipoli.

The Wellington Battalion was at the Apex with Ruahine and Taranaki Companies in front line and Wellington-West Coast and Hawke's Bay Companies in the reserve trenches. In order to keep the information from the Turk, orders had been issued to keep the condition of affairs apparently normal.

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On the 17th, the day preceding the first day of the retirement, all ammunition, bombs and trench stores not actually in the trenches were buried. Nothing was burned in case of attracting the Turks' attention. To the occupants of the Apex a huge fire of stores on the beach near the North Pier was visible. It began at 2 a.m. in the morning of the 18th and caused some concern lest it should alarm or inform the enemy of what was going on. At 8.50 p.m. of this day one officer and 44 other ranks left the battalion sector for the beach, where, at 11.30 p.m., they embarked on a lighter.

The next party to move was the Wellington-West Coast Company and the balance of Hawke's Bay Company, totalling three officers and 131 other ranks. They left the reserve trenches at 10.45 p.m. and embarked at midnight. On the second day of the evacuation the enemy registered our reserve trenches with some heavy artillery. It was, perhaps, the 8th Austrian Battery, of which information had been obtained from a deserter. The registering took the form of a very heavy bombardment, and the reserve trenches, which had only been vacated a few hours, were badly knocked about. That night the battalion completed its part of the evacuation. At 5.30 p.m., the first party of three officers and 92 other ranks left the Apex: at 9.15 p.m., the next party of three officers and 76 other ranks moved off, and the third and last party, consisting of eight officers and 59 other ranks, left at 2.10 a.m. on the 20th December. During the evacuation on the second day, men were detailed to walk rapidly along the trenches and fire rifles and throw bombs from different positions to mislead the enemy into believing that normal occupation of the trenches prevailed. The night of the 19th was beautiful—no wind to trouble the sea, and moonlight made the difficult and delicate task easier.

The evacuation was accomplished without casualty of any sort. It seemed that, whether from a high sense of duty or a great longing to be quit of the place, every man obeyed the special message that General Godley sent him on the 17th. The first, two paragraphs of the message, written by General Godley himself and characteristic of the confidence he reposed in his Australasian troops, reads as follows:—

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"1. The Army Corps Commander wishes all ranks of your Division to be now informed of the operations that are about to take place and a message conveyed to them from him to say that he deliberately takes them into his confidence, trusting to their discretion and high soldierly qualities to carry out a task, the success of which will largely depend on their individual efforts.

If every man makes up his mind that he will leave the trenches quietly when his turn comes and see that everybody else does the same, and that up to that time he will carry on as usual, there will be no difficulty of any kind and the Army Corps Commander relies on the good sense and proved trust-worthiness of every man of the Corps to ensure that this is done."

The transports conveying the battalion proceeded at once to Mudros East and the battalion reassembled and camped at Lemnos.

The next day an advance party left Lemnos for Alexandria and on the 24th and 25th the rest of the battalion left by the "Simla" for Alexandria. Thanks to the Australian troops on board and to the ship's commissariat, Christmas was a day of cheer. For eight months the troops had been living on hard food with generally something a bit short of full ration. The food, if it could generally be described as wholesome, was uninviting. On board every man was treated to a feast for Christmas with Christmas pudding included. Spirits of troops move like mercury and already the troops, who for so long had become inured to a hard, cheerless life, showed in their animation a new outlook and fresh hopes.

For three days the troopship journeyed to Alexandria, and on arrival at port the troops were held on board another twenty-four hours before they were entrained for Moascar, near Cairo.

On arrival at Moascar, the battalion went into camps consisting of hutments. The battalion became a unit in the Canal defences, and it may be appropriate here to explain the nature page 87of the defence falling to the lot of the Army Corps. The defence of the Canal consisted of three lines to the East of the Suez Canal. These lines were known as the Front Line, the Intermediate Line and the Inner Line respectively. The Front Line consisted of a series of strong points sufficiently close to each other to cover each other's position with effective rifle fire. These points ran in a straight line about 11,000 yards East of the Canal. The line included all important points from which observed fire could be directed upon the Canal and would suffice to prevent interference by shell fire with the traffic. The Second or Intermediate Line was about 4,500 yards in the rear and approximately parallel to the Front Line. It was sufficiently in advance of the Canal to prevent effective enemy shelling, though from its position it surrendered many points whence the enemy could observe movement on the Canal. The Third, or Inner Line, ran along the Canal and consisted largely of the old defences which had already been used against the Turk by our troops before the Gallipoli campaign.

The lines were not continuous and were defended by garrisons varying in number from a battalion to a brigade. The garrisons were supplied with as many machine guns and as much artillery as possible so that each garrison could meet any enveloping attack from the enemy. While the primary object of the situation was passive defence, the garrisons were so situated as to enable other troops to advance between the points in attack on the enemy or in counter attack and to receive full assistance from the neighbouring defended points. Each garrison entrenched itself either by continuous line of trench sufficiently long to take all the troops of the garrison or in a series of shorter trenches with communicating saps to enable the whole garrison to move about under cover. This class of defence was formulated mainly on the assumption that the enemy, coming from a distance over the desert and having, accordingly, an attenuated line of communication and unable to carry much artillery or water, would have to carry out an attack, to be successful, covering only a few days.

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The attack, never really expected, did not come while the New Zealand Division was in Egypt and the troops were able, therefore, to settle down to a system of training which, based on the experience of the fighting in France, proved of incalculable service later on when the troops took their place in the line in France and Belgium.

The Battalion rested in camp until the 1st January, 1916, when the whole of the brigade shifted camp to a point a half mile further west of the camp they were occupying at Moascar.

The different companies of the Wellington Regiment, as, indeed, of all the units of New Zealand troops which had been to Gallipoli, was decimated through casualties of all classes, and it was impossible without reinforcements to carry out any systematic training of much use. On the 8th January, 1916, however, seven officers and 266 other ranks, comprising the Wellington quota from the Seventh Reinforcements, were taken on the strength and the reorganisation of the battalion was at once set in hand. When the reinforcements had been allotted to their respective companies, it was then possible to start a programme of training.