Trooper Bluegum at the Dardanelles

A FORGOTTEN COUNTER-SIGN-"LET'S AT 'EM"-POLITE TURK

rienced infantry laughed, and said, "They're only 'canaries'." Again, when the shrapnel came hurtling aloft and burst with an ugly roar, we crouched and waited for death; but the old

staring mad. It is this saving grace which makes our Australians such a wonderful fighting force. They go laughing into the firing-line. They come laughing out again. They la

e came to Egypt as horsemen," said a Hunter River man; "then we did foot-slogging at Cair

ever thought of evolution in connexion with our Light Horse Brigade. We soon fo

is the story of how the 2nd Light Horse Brigade became the Lost Horse Brigade. Australia sent four Light Horse brigades to uphold the honour of the Commonwealth; first, Colonel Chauvel; second, Colonel Ryrie; third, Colonel Hughes; fourth, Colonel Brown. At first we thought we were going to be a

om prospective cavalry to mounted infantry, to foot-sloggers, to pick and shovel artis

ase. Ours at first felt like the Burden to Christian. But gradually we, too, developed the necessary back and shoulder muscles for the infantryman's job. We trudged up and down the hills of Anzac; we filed into the trenches and took our stations at th

ng. It meant a little more work when the Turkish (or German) guns smashed in our parapets and half-choked, half-blinded and half-buried us. Now and then some of our chaps stopped a bullet or a bit of shrapnel. But we dealt out more than we got. Every day the Officer Command

s were offering bribes of tobacco and cigarettes to the men in the firing-line to swap places with them just for ten minutes. Our night patrols had great fun

iful badges with a fighting cock and the motto "Fight on, fight ever." We've got a new badge n

"Patria te Salutamus." Now the troopers sport a shield with a picture

k their posts as observers or snipers. Night after night they manned the loopholes or did patrol work or sapping.

re begging the men in the first line to give them a chance: "Come on down, and let's at 'em; I'm a better shot than you." With men clamouring for positions in the firing-

dea.) In a Gallipoli paper we were referred to as Australian blacks, with the comment that this was "the first time cannibals had landed on Gallipoli." But after the wild bayonet charges our men mad

about their only vice, and they have all the soldierly virtues that a general could desire. When the Turks made their big attack, and advanc

p a bomb and started to run back to his trenches. A Turkish officer ran after him, kicked him, and returned the bomb with a bow to one of our officers, thus observing chivalrously

e deep sea. If they came with their rifles towards our trenches we shot them. If they came without them, th

it was Latimer, and others that it was Simpson; and he was a stretcher-bearer. He used to hurry up with water to the firing-line, and carry back the wounded. It was a terribly heavy pull up and down Shrapnel Gully, from the cove to the top of Braund's Hill, so Murphy "pinched" a couple of mules, and did yeoman service. He used to leave the mules just under the brow of the hill and dash forward himse

Mules a

te on the right, and little

ed cried "For God's sake, send 'Murphy's mules'!" Later on they found the mules grazing contentedly in

demanded one of

" answered the sergeant, "h