Gallipoli (10 page)

Two days later, on the afternoon of 13 September, in the main square of Rabaul, the denouement …

And oh, the
glory
of it.

For, with all German resistance now ceased, the men of the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force line up in the tropical splendour of Rabaul's main square, a spot superbly positioned to be at the centre of Rabaul's business, administrative and social life – a lush, green space, dotted with palm and mango trees – and command the heights that look down upon the powerful Australian ships gloriously bobbing in Simpson Harbour, a vista of glittering blue surrounded by high mountains.

After the band of the
Australia
has formed up, it is time. While Admiral Sir George Edwin Patey and Colonel William Holmes – resplendent in their naval whites – stand to attention with a rigidity that rivals the central flagpole they are facing, it is Holmes's own son, Lieutenant Basil Holmes, who has the honour of unfurling, then attaching, then hauling up the good ol' Union Jack, while the ships in the harbour unleash a roaring 21-gun salute, ‘God Save the King' is sung and three cheers for His Majesty ring out.

Rabaul has now formally been claimed for the British Empire, and it is the Australians what have done it! Let all the villages and villagers throughout New Britain be told the wondrous news and let this document now pasted up all over the newly claimed territory be officially read to them:

The joy in Australia at the military victory is unbridled, led by the
Argus
, with its huge headlines:

Though there will continue to be some scattered German resistance, it does not last long. Australia soon will have control of all German territories in the Pacific below the equator, including Nauru, Bougainville, New Ireland, the Admiralty Islands and New Guinea, while New Zealand takes over Samoa.

More problematic than these triumphs, however, is the German East Asia Squadron that the Australians had been hoping to destroy. For it will soon emerge that, while Admiral von Spee had taken most of his cruisers across the Pacific to South America to attack British shipping there, he has left one cruiser, the
Emden
, behind, with an order for its
Kapitän
, Karl von Müller, to capture and destroy every Allied ship he can in the Indian Ocean.

14 SEPTEMBER 1914, AT SIMPSON HARBOUR, A SILENT WATCH KEPT

In the meantime, there is nothing for it but for the navy to look elsewhere for the German cruisers and other German ships, starting with the nearby St George's Strait, which separates New Britain from New Ireland.

No matter that the
AE1
has mechanical problems – for one thing, the port-side diesel-engine clutch is broken – today it is her turn to do the patrol, in company with the destroyer
Parramatta
. Stoker, at least amused that the natives have taken to calling the Australian submarines ‘Devil Fish',
²⁶
must bide his time with his team in Rabaul Harbour, waiting for their own turn the following day.

At 2.30 that afternoon, the
AE1
and
Parramatta
exchange signals, just as they have been doing all day, when a tropical haze starts to descend. Within an hour, the two lose sight of each other and
Parramatta
returns to base, arriving at Herbertshöhe at 6 pm. The captain of
Parramatta
, Lieutenant ‘Cocky' Warren, is surprised that
AE1
is not back yet, and all the more surprised that she does not return that evening. Perhaps she has had engine failure, or has beached herself on one of the many islands that abound all around?

But no. The next day, despite an extensive search by
Encounter
,
Parramatta
,
Warrego
,
Yarra
and the particularly devastated skipper and crew of the
AE2
– knowing there is only 24 hours of oxygen in the submarine if it is still intact – there is no sign of
AE1
. Nor the next day. Nor the day after that.

Lieutenant-Commander Stoker and the crew of the
AE2
are not only worried sick, like everyone else, but also haunted. Wherever their friends on the
AE1
are – and over the months they have all become close to the three officers and 32 sailors, who are, like them, half-British and half-Australian – it could just as easily have been the men of the
AE2.
Are they alive, trapped under the water and slowly, excruciatingly suffocating? Are they all already dead, after some cataclysmic event has sent them to the muddy bottom? Has the submarine exploded after one of the eight torpedoes it carries has detonated? Earnestly, desperately, the men of their sister sub, the
AE2
, scan the waters and the shores for the tiniest sign of debris. They look over the sides, hoping to see a dark shadow that might indicate a blob on the bottom. Something,
anything
. But there is nothing. Stone-cold, motherless
nothing
.

After three days – a good two and a half days after
AE1
would have run out of oxygen anyway – the search is called off.

Lieutenant-Commander Stoker accepts that the men are dead, but he will never stop mourning them. And nor will the rest of the crew members – one of them, Torpedoman John H. Wheat, later dedicating his memoirs to the crew of the
AE1
: ‘They lie coffined in the deep, keeping their silent watch at Australia's North Passage, heroes all …'
²⁷

17 SEPTEMBER 1914, OUT OF THE LOOP

Lieutenant-Colonel Mustafa Kemal, now serving as the Military Attaché in Sofia, Bulgaria, is isolated from the major decisions of his government. And he does not agree with many of them.

More than this, he is unsure of the leadership of General Enver, and his move to plunge the Ottomans into war. When he had heard of Enver's appointment as War Minister earlier in the year, he had written in confidence to a member of his party, the CUP, warning of the move: ‘Enver is energetic and will want to do something. But he doesn't stop to reflect.'
²⁸

And now, with the Ottomans plunged into war, this opinion has only strengthened. He writes to his friend, ‘This is very dangerous. It is not clear which way we shall head. It is very difficult to keep a large army idle for any length of time. Looking at Germany's position from a Military point of view, I am by no means certain that it will win this war.'
²⁹

And again, today, he sits to pen a letter to another friend in Constantinople arguing that there is no need for haste, and that they are better off delaying their entry into war. He writes, ‘Our comrades will accuse me of pessimism, if the Germans are in Paris by the time you receive this letter. But I don't care.'
³⁰

Indeed, it is likely for this very reason that General Enver and the Ottoman inner clique would prefer Mustafa to stay where he is for the moment, so that his dissenting voice cannot be heard in the central seat of the government.

But even if Mustafa Kemal doesn't agree with the decisions of the government, he is sure of one thing: he needs to be in the fold, to fight for his country. He cannot be a Military Attaché in Sofia while his country is at war! And he has written to General Enver communicating just that. As he writes to his friend, ‘I am yet to receive [Enver's] response. If for any reason they do not want to allow me to return, let them say so clearly and I shall then decide my course of action.'
³¹

21 SEPTEMBER 1914, A BLESSING WITH NO DISGUISE …

A cry in the night.

And unto them a child is born …

In the wee hours of the cool morning, in their home at 11 Cole Street, Elsternwick, a son is born to the newly commissioned Commanding Officer of one of the just formed Light Horse Regiments, Major Alexander Henry White, and his beloved wife, Myrtle.

Like father, like son, the baby is called Alexander White, and he is the joy of their lives from the first, notwithstanding that the 32-year-old Major White transfers from the Victorian Mounted Rifles to the AIF on this day and will soon be busy as never before in training his newly formed 8th Light Horse Regiment at Broadmeadows.
³²

Major White is an officer and a gentleman, kind, resolute, strongly conservative and opposed to all vices, such as drinking, swearing and gambling. He and his senior officers will gather at Broadmeadows and throw themselves into the task of laying the foundation stones for their regiment. Their motto, they decide, will be ‘
More majorum
' – ‘After the manner of our ancestors' – with a badge showing a rearing horse, under the Imperial Crown, flanked by two sprigs of wattle.

Badge of the 8th Light Horse Regiment

For a uniform, of course, they have the usual khaki, but also their many polished leather accoutrements and spurs, together with the famed slouch hat, out of which emerges what will soon become the Light Horse trademark: the emu-feather plume
³³
(often claimed by the proud troopers, when asked by curious foreign soldiers, to be ‘kangaroo feathers').
³⁴

There is also something almost undefinable about them, but it is close to an
aura
. As their official historian, H. S. Gullet, would later describe them, they are ‘in body and spirit the true product of the Australian countryside … the very flower of their race'.
³⁵

In Sydney on this day, the 6th Light Horse is also coming together. One of their new recruits is 34-year-old
Sydney Morning Herald
journalist Oliver Hogue, who was knocked out in the early rounds of the ballot to become the official war correspondent and so has decided the next best thing is to go to war as an actual soldier, and become an unofficial correspondent, sending back articles and columns to his newspaper under a
nom de plume
: ‘Trooper Bluegum'.

Oh, how thrilled he had been, four days earlier, when he was accepted, writing to the love of his life, Bonnie Jean:

Indeed! Nothing less than ‘Trooper James Bluegum, 333, D Troop, B Squadron, 6th Light Horse Regiment, 2nd Brigade, Australian Imperial Force'.

One last thing, though, before he is truly committed … Just as the sun is setting over Sydney Town, and the clouds are all gold and rose and amethyst, he steadies himself. First kissing the Bible, and then putting his hands upon the holy book, he utters the sacred words: ‘I, James Bluegum, swear that I will well and truly serve our Sovereign Lord the King in the Australian Imperial Force, until the end of the War, and a further period of four months thereafter unless sooner lawfully discharged, dismissed or removed there from; and that I will resist His Majesty's enemies and cause His Majesty's peace to be kept and maintained; and that I will in all matters appertaining to my service, faithfully discharge my duty according to law. So Help Me God.'
³⁷

It is done.

‘They are a splendid lot of fellows,' he writes to his Jean. ‘It's astonishing what a big proportion are moneyed men – sons of wealthy farmers and squatters. The few city men we have are for the most part sons of station folk; and amongst them are bankers, solicitors, journalists, dentists, surveyors, university students and such like. I doubt if anywhere in the Allied armies you could find a regiment in which the rank and file were men of such high average ability and intelligence.

‘I know you'll laugh at that, my sweetest. Here I've only belonged to a regiment for a few hours and I'm singing its praises as if we had centuries of glorious traditions behind us. Note the birth of
esprit de corps
.'
³⁸