Free The Gallipoli Letter by Keith Murdoch

has been completely rested and refitted. But it is having only one month’s rest at Mudros. The New Zealand and Australian Division (Godley’s) also is reduced to only a few thousand men and has shot its bolt. But the men of Anzac would never retreat. And the one way to cheer them up is to pass the word that the Turks are going to attack, or that an assault by our forces is being planned. The great fighting spirit of the race is still burning in these men; but it does not burn amongst the toy soldiers of Suvla. You could imagine nothing finer that the spirit of some Australian boys—all of good parentage—who were stowed away on a troopship I was on in the Aegean, having deserted their posts in Alexandria out of mere shame of the thought of returning to Australia without having taken part in the fighting on Anzac’s sacred soil. These fine country lads, magnificent men, knew that the desertion would cost them their stripes, but that and the loss of pay did not worry them. How wonderfully generous is the Australian soldier’s view of life! These lads discussed quite fearlessly the prospects of their deaths, and their view was, “It is no disgrace for an Australian to die beside good pals in Anzac, where his best pals are under the dust.”
    But I could pour into your ears so much truth about the grandeur of our Australian army, and the wonderful affection of those fine young soldiers for each other and their homeland, that your Australianism would become a more powerful sentiment than before. It is stirring to see them, magnificent manhood, swinging their fine limbs as they walk about Anzac. They have the noble faces of men who have endured. Oh, if you could picture Anzac as I have seen it, you would find that to be an Australian is the greatest privilege the world has to offer.
    It is only these fighting qualities, and the special capacity of the Australian physique to endure hardship, that keep the morale at Anzac good. The men have great faith in Birdwood, Walker and Legge - not much in Godley. Birdwood struck me as a good army corps commander, but nothing more. He has not the fighting quality, not the big brain, of a great general. Walker is a plain hard-hitting soldier. We are lucky in these men. But for the general staff, and I fear for Hamilton, officers and men have nothing but contempt. They express it fearlessly. That however is not peculiar to Anzac. Sedition is talked round every tin of bully beef on the peninsula, and it is only loyalty that holds the forces together. Every returning troopship, every section of the line of communications, is full of the same talk. I like General Hamilton, and found him exceedingly kindly. I admire him as a journalist. But as a strategist he has completely failed. Undoubtedly, the essential and first step to restore the morale of the shaken forces is to recall him and his Chief of Staff, a man more cordially detested in our forces than Enver Pasha. What the army there wants is a young leader, a man who has had no past, and around whom the officers can rally. I am hoping strongly that Smith Dorrien will not be sent out, because whether he failed or not in France, he will be said to have failed; and the troops on the peninsula must not be allowed to harbour the suspicion that second rate goods are any longer considered good enough for them.
    I cannot see any solution which does not begin with the recall of Hamilton. Perhaps before this reaches you this recall will have occurred. Do not believe anything you may see about a large reinforcement and a new offensive before the winter. That I fear is impossible. If after the Suvla Bay disaster we had had another hundred thousand men to pour into the peninsula, we might well have got through. But as it is, we hold positions that are nothing more than costly embarrassments. It is not for me to judge Hamilton, but it is plain that when an army has completely lost faith in its general, and he has on numerous