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CHAPTER XXI
GURKHAS, WHITE AND BROWN

"Here you are," cried my friend Trooper Billy Clancy, of the Australian Light Horse, as I entered the convalescent camp. "Ask him. He knows what I'm saying is true." His very charming visitor regarded me doubtfully. "Go on; ask him," urged the soldier; "he knows." "Is it true," asked the fair ministrant to lonely Colonials, "that there is a real Australian language and a different way of comparing such adjectives as good?" "Good; bonza; boshter," I answered promptly. "There," crowed Trooper Clancy, "what did I tell you?" "I don't believe either of you," replied his visitor, and departed with an effect of dimples and blushes.

"These English ladies are awful kind-hearted," said Clancy, evading my eye, "but they do ask some rummy questions. Did you never hear what happened to Shorty Shaw? You know Shorty? He's six feet five and got a face like a grown-up baby's. Everybody likes old Shorty, but the lady I'm going to tell you about took the greatest fancy to him. She used to come in a motor-car and bring her little boy and girl to see him. She treated him as if he was a very nice, interesting specimen from the planet Mars. Why, when he said he felt the cold she brought him a contraption she made herself of Jaeger goods to wear next his skin.

"It was all patent fastenings and tied itself into knots when he tried to get into it. And when he had it on he couldn't sit still; kept hunching his shoulders and rubbing his back against the chair. She asked him how he liked it without batting an eye, and Shorty up and said he was all of a glow. Well, one day she was talking to Shorty when I heard a noise like a hen clucking, and saw her going out with her face very red and her nose in the air. And Shorty was squirming about like his wound was hurting him. It seems she had asked Shorty wasn't he proud to be called a White Gurkha? What Shorty said he would never tell us, but it was the last we ever saw of the kind-hearted lady.

"Of course she wasn't to know that Shorty's teaming business had been ruined by Afghan camel-men. She didn't guess that Shorty used to say that when he died the words 'A White Australia' would be found written on his heart. 'White Gurkhas!' he used to say; 'they'll be calling Chinamen smoked Australians next.' I tried to argue with him. 'Look here,' I said. 'Why do we call you Shorty?' 'Because you are a lot of naturals,' says he. 'No; because you're the longest chap in the brigade. Well, it's the same with the name of White Gurkhas. The Gurkhas are all little, short, broad chaps, and the Australians are all long, thin blokes. Don't you see?' But Shorty didn't; his prejudices prevented foreign travel from improving his mind.

"As a matter of fact, there was only one Australian I ever saw that looked at all like a white Gurkha; and that was Jimmy Young, the celebrated footballer. He was a cabdriver in South Melbourne, and the trickiest footballer that ever played the game. He was short and as broad as he was long; he wore whiskers and he was bandy-legged. His capers earned him the name of Diddly. He'd come down the field bouncing the ball and breaking evens. Being so short he seemed to be running even faster than that. When the other side tried to stop him they'd be tackling a man who wasn't there; and all the South Melbourne barrackers would call out, 'Oh, you Diddly!' He was a ringer, was Diddly Young.

"The first mob of Gurkhas we ever saw was in charge of a sergeant that must have come out of the same mould as Diddly. He and his push had come from Cape Helles way, where they'd been fighting with the English and the French. They hadn't been an hour at Anzac when this sergeant got in a hurry about something and started to run. At once about half a dozen of our chaps said at the same time, 'Diddly Young!' You simply couldn't mistake the action. And he answered to the name of Diddly with a grin a foot wide; it turned out that it wasn't so far from his real name.

"We saw a lot of the Gurkhas then, and soon got to like them fine. They were always laughing and joking; you never saw jollier little chaps. Not like the Tommies, who were solemn and worried; nor like the Sikhs, who were a bit sour. It was astonishing how quickly they picked things up; this Diddly learned to talk Australian in no time. One day he was chatting to me and a shell burst a bit close; and I said something. He burst out laughing. 'One shell go bang,' he says; 'Frenchman lie down flat. Two shell go bang, Englishman go in his dug-out. Three shell go bang, Australian look up and say "You – ."'

"Just about that time we were getting a lot more bursting shells than we altogether cared about. They came from all directions, but the two worst nuisances were two guns that had our beaches ranged from north and south. The one to the south was Beachy Bill, that they say has knocked out over 2,000 men and is still going. He lived somewhere among the mangroves between Gaba Tepe and Achi Baba. The other was Anafarta Anne, that was hid up in the hills – behind Suvla Bay. Anafarta Anne was our particular worry and there was nothing we wouldn't have done to shut her up.

"It afterwards turned out that she lived in a deep cutting, driven sixty feet in the hillside, and was run out on rails when they wanted to use her. The kick of her recoil drove her back into her hole and shut a door in the front that was dodged up to look like the hillside. Everybody was out after Anafarta Anne. Cruisers used to come along and shell the hillside where she lived. A destroyer came fussing up every day almost to give her a round or two. They sent up captive balloons to watch for her and aeroplanes observers hovered over the spot. All to no purpose.

"Then there would come a day when the cruiser was away at Cape Helles. The destroyer would be engaged on important business elsewhere and the captive balloon deflated. Perhaps the aeroplane man was away dropping bombs on Maidos. And there would be a score or two of our chaps in swimming after a fortnight in the firing line without so much as a rinse. Then Anafarta Anne would pop out of her hole and send a great shrapnel shell that would spread a spray of bullets over a piece of water a hundred yards long by fifty wide. Our chaps would be lucky if they ducked in time and could swim under water to the beach. They would come out nearly black in the face, but not so strangled that they could not find breath to curse the name of Anafarta Anne.

"One day Anne went a bit too far. There was a mule team coming up from the beach with water. There were five mules with Indian drivers and two kerosene tins to each mule. The water was pukka Malta water sealed in the kerosene tins and was most important water indeed, as it turned out. You see, it was specially reserved for the sacred ablutions of the Gurkhas. Well, this Anafarta Anne had no more sense than to drop a high-explosive shell right on top of the procession. Up in air went three good mules and every drop of the water was wasted. I believe there was a mule-man or two missing as well, but I never counted them myself.

"The boss mule-driver was an excitable Punjabi who loved mules like a pawnbroker loves diamonds. He came leaping down to the Gurkha camp, making a chattering noise like the whole Turkish army, and the first Gurkha he ran into was Diddly. What he said I couldn't tell you, but he must have rubbed it in about the Gurkhas' holy water, for Diddly got very serious and very busy. He got all his push together and sent somebody for the white officer sahib. In his presence they all drew their big knives and nicked one another's thumbs and swore an oath. They swore they would put an end to Anafarta Anne. So much I gathered from Diddly afterwards.

"Naturally there was a good deal of interest among our chaps to see what would happen. Fellows like Shorty Shaw said it was all nonsense for a pack of Gurkhas to expect to do what everybody else had failed in. It seemed a tall order, and some of the boys betted long odds against the thing ever being done that way. I don't mind telling you that I had my little bit at five to one on little old Diddly. He gave me confidence somehow or other; I don't know why.

"Well, every night some of the Gurkhas would be out of the trenches. As for Diddly, he used to be missing for days on end. And when you saw him he was no longer laughing and full of jokes. He looked just about as happy as a Belgian farmer. This went on for a bit, and then one day Diddly turned up all jokes and smiles again. The odds went down to six to four that night, and even Shorty Shaw admitted that little old Diddly must know something.

"Then came the Suvla Bay landing on August 6. The night before all the Gurkhas went off somewhere, and we were left behind. We had our own troubles early next morning, and they were bad enough. But not so bad, but every man was on the keevee (qui vive) for some sound of Anafarta Anne. When there was not a word from that quarter we all allowed that Diddly had done it on the Turks; and that night I could have had my money if I had insisted on it. But, as it turned out, it wasn't so.

"It was a good time afterwards that I had the true story of what happened from a man in the – th, who was in the big night march from the Maori Outpost. The – th were hot after Anafarta Anne, too, and got to the gun emplacement a few minutes after Diddly and his Gurkhas. He says he found them there in possession of the place, and of a lot of dead Turks pretty badly cut about with knives. But Anafarta Anne, drawn by a mule team, was just showing her tail around a bend of the hills half a mile or so away. He said Diddly was very sore about it; but I never heard that till much later.

"I saw Diddly himself the following day, but only at a distance. The Gurkhas were just going out to charge, and that was worth seeing. Each man of them had his rifle slung over his back, and his big knife in his teeth, so as to leave his hands free. They had been laughing like in camp; a very gay push. Then they got the word to go. An English officer ran first, a fair-headed man a foot taller than his Gurkha band. He was in front, but not a pace away ran old Diddly and another Gurkha tough. They had only eyes for one thing: the sahib officer. So I saw them charge away into the dusk of early morning.

"You know that charge carried them right away to the top of the big hill, and to a sight of the Dardanelles beyond. But Diddly never saw the Dardanelles. We moved up behind them in support, and found Diddly in a little spur of the gully. He and his tough little mate were lying dead, and underneath them was the dead body of that fine white officer. The left hands of the two Gurkhas were all cut to ribbons, where they had grabbed the Turkish bayonets, and there was awful evidence that they had known how to use the notched knives they still gripped in their other hands. The rest of that day, and of some bad days that followed, I felt as if I had lost another dear old mate. And I wasn't the only one that felt like that about good old Diddly.

"So, you see, it doesn't do to judge a man by the colour of his skin. I knew a good Chinaman once. And my Uncle Fred, who used to spar with Peter Jackson, often used to say he would as soon shake hands with Peter as with any white man he ever knew. That's why I say to Shorty Shaw that I'm never going to worry if nobody never calls me nothing worse than a White Gurkha."

CHAPTER XXII
THE MAN WHO WASN'T LET

Perhaps he was Let, eventually. But when I met him he was emphatically the man who wasn't Let to fight.

I met him in London, a tall, well-set Australian, wearing the all-wool khaki of the Commonwealth and the neat leather cap of the Australian Divisional Supply Column. In his own words he was a "Leatherhead." He was a thirteen-stone man, but without a spare ounce of flesh on him anywhere; one could quite believe him when he said he was "as strong as a Monaro steer." And over his right eye he wore a pink celluloid patch.

This decoration moved my curiosity, for I knew the Leatherheads had not taken part in the Dardanelles fighting but were at that time destined for very active service elsewhere. In fact, they were on the very eve of embarking; therefore I opened a conversation by asking if he were off "to the front."

"No, worse luck," he said, "I'm the only man staying behind. They won't let me fight." This with some bitterness.

A little sympathy, judiciously expressed, started him talking; and in the monotonous drawl affected by the men of the Australian bush – natural to them, it may be – he unfolded a strange story of his wanderings in search of a fight. He told me who he was, and what he was; they are not essential to the point of his story. It is enough to say that he sacrificed a very good income and excellent prospects to join the Australian Expeditionary Force.

"You see," he said, "I've got only one eye, my left; but it's a good one. I lost the other eight years ago – mining. Since then I've come to the conclusion that a man doesn't need two eyes, except in case of accident, like mine. I had a glass eye fixed up in Sydney, just like the other one, and you couldn't tell the difference; well, when I tell you, you'll know that you couldn't.

"I was always fond of soldiering, and joined the militia. I got my musketry certificate, so that shows you a man with one eye can shoot as well as any man with two, and a sight better than most of them. I've done some 'roo shooting, too, and a fellow that can knock over an old man running at three hundred with a worn Martini, don't want any spare eyes.

"When I was in Sydney I learned to drive a motor-car, and never had any trouble. A man who can take a fast car through the Sydney traffic don't want to worry about being shy of one eye. And nobody ever noticed; I used to get on well with girls, and all that; and they're the first to grumble if a man's got anything wrong with him.

"I've seen a lot of bush life; done thirty miles a day with a big swag in my time, and was never sick or sorry in my life. All this leads up to what I'm going to tell you.

"Naturally I volunteered when the war came, having no one dependent on me. Besides, I never liked Germans. I passed the medical examination all right; and they are mighty particular over there. Of course the doctor never tumbled to my glass eye, and there was nothing else the matter with me.

"When they found I could drive a motor, they put me among the Leatherheads; but I had to pass a driving test first, and that was no child's play. But still nobody tumbled to my glass eye, and I wasn't saying anything. I went into camp in the Domain, and everything was all right till they inoculated me against typhoid.

"It took pretty bad with me; they tell me that's a good sign. But I was feverish and felt rotten, and had to go into hospital. When the doctor came round the second day, I had a dirty tongue and a temperature, and he whistled a bit.

"'Let's look at your eye,' he said; and before I knew what he was after, he had pulled back my bottom lid to see if there was any inflammation there. Of course, my old glass eye rolled out on the pillow.

"You oughter seen that doctor jump. He went quite white in the face, too. Well, there was nobody about, and presently he burst out laughing, which I took to be a good sign. So I said, 'Are you going to be a sport, doctor? No one knows but you, and there's no need for you to know.'

"'Are you sure nobody knows?' he asked, still laughing fit to burst. 'Not a soul,' I told him. He tried the eye. 'Wonderful,' he says; 'don't know either.' So I got away with the Contingent."

"When our boys got off at Egypt we came on here, because our motor outfit was no manner of use in the sand there. We never went to the Dardanelles for the same reason; but have been five long months in camp at Romsey. All that time I've been doing the same work as the rest; transporting gravel in the motor wagon, and all the rest of it. And not a soul ever tumbled to my glass eye.

"Then it was settled that we should be sent – somewhere. But before we could go, the whole lot of us had to go through a fresh medical examination; British Army doctors this time. I was going to chance it; and I don't think they would ever have found me out. But you never know what you're doing with these English doctors; they're not reasonable chaps like in Australia, as you shall see. And I didn't want to get the C.O. into trouble; he's a grand chap, Tunbridge.

"So when the doctor came to me, I made a clean breast of it; you ought to have seen the C.O.'s face. He was dead surprised; so would any one be. But the doctor turned nasty. 'I can't pass you,' he said. 'A one-eyed man driving a car! Disgraceful!' And so on.

"Nothing I could say or do was any use; I was rejected. I'm as strong as a Monaro steer, and my eye is as good as three ordinary ones. But – no good.

"So I got a week's leave, and went off to see a bit of England. Down at Southampton I fell in with some Canadians; real good sorts, they were. We had a drink or two, and I found they were off to the front that very night. Here was a chance! I fixed things up with them, and borrowed a slouch hat; then I made my cap into a neat parcel, and left it at the railway parcels office. There was I, as good a Canuck as any of them. Except that I had 'Australia' on my shoulders instead of 'Canada,' but that didn't matter.

"It was dark when we lined up on the pier and they called the roll. I got into the back row, and they called everybody's name but mine; and everybody said 'Here,' except me. Bit neglectful, I call it; but I was there all right. 'Australia will be there.'

"We got over to Havre, and everybody was fussing about his dunnage, so I fussed about mine. Of course I didn't have any, but I gave such a good description of it that to get rid of me the fellow said, 'It's over there.' So I got on to the train, and up to the front at a place I think they called Dickiesborough. It sounded like that.

"We were all billeted in a big barn with stacks of grub; and next evening my pals were detailed to go out into the trenches. I got hold of a rifle and some ammunition; there was no difficulty. And I went off with them.

"It was dusk, and about 400 yards from the communication trench we all went down on our hands and knees and crawled. I crawled, too, and kept low, as they told me, when we got to the communication trench; and presently we were all snug in the first line of trenches.

"Then my luck turned. Along came a Canadian officer, to inspect. 'Are you all right here, sergeant?' he says. 'How many men have you got?' 'Twenty-one, sir,' says the sergeant in quite a little voice. 'Twenty, you mean.' 'No, sir, twenty-one. There's a long Australian galoot here, that wants to have a shot at the Germans, so we brought him with us.'

"Now if that'd been an English officer there'd have been a row, and I should have been shot, or something. But this captain says, 'Here, that won't do. Let's have a look at you.' So he ran the rule over me, and examined my papers, and felt my khaki – he even felt my khaki! He knew a bit, that Canuck captain.

"Then he said, 'I believe you are telling the truth, but I can't have you here. You'll be getting wounded or something; you're just the sort of fool that would.' He spoke very nice. 'You wouldn't have the sense to get killed,' he said. 'You'd be wounded, and I couldn't account for you. So, get,' he says.

"'How am I to get out?' I asked. 'The same way you got in,' he says, very short. 'And where am I to go?' And I wouldn't like to tell you where he told me to go to.

"Well, I stooped and went back along the communication trench. I wasn't going to draw the fire on the boys who were in the firing line. But when I got to the end of it, I stood up, and put my fingers in my mouth and I whistled as loud as I could. I couldn't shoot at the Germans, but I did want a bit of fighting. I put my hands in my pockets and strolled back over that ground where we'd been crawling; and I whistled 'The Wild Colonial Boy'. Nobody took a bit of notice.

"I slept in the billet that night, and had a real good breakfast; then the wounded began to come in. There was a pretty lively scrap through the night; of course I slept through it all – just my luck. I made myself useful – stretcher-bearing and what not. But I could see that if I stayed there, I'd only get myself into trouble, and somebody else, too, very likely.

"I went to the little base hospital, and I said, 'Can you give me an eyeshade. My eye is paining me.' And they gave me this. They were just making up a hospital train for the coast, so I chucked away my glass eye – I was disgusted with it anyhow – and put on the shade. Then I got on the train as one of the poor wounded.

"Presently another doctor comes round – this place seems stiff with doctors – and examined me. 'That's getting on nicely,' he says, looking very hard at me. 'Yes, doctor,' I says, as if I was in pain. Of course he must have seen there was something wrong, but he was too busy to worry about a little thing like that.

"We had a pleasant journey down: nurses fussing around, and so on. And what do you think I struck on the ship? 'Another blooming doctor!' (unconsciously quoting Kipling).

"He was so pleased with my quick recovery that he brought an assistant to look at me. They seemed quite dazed about it, but they were busy men: plenty to keep them occupied without troubling about me, which is just as it should be.

"I got my cap at Southampton, and joined up with my old corps. No fighting for me.

"Now I've got to send in my papers. But I've not come 12,000 miles for a fight with the Germans to go home without firing a shot. I'm getting a new eye made here in London; I've seen it in the rough and it's a boshter, the real thing. They know how to make them here.

"And I'm going to have it riveted in, and soldered down and fastened in its place with concrete; then I'm going to enlist with Kitchener's boys. If they find me out, they can only jug me. Do you think they would?"

I could not tell him. It is more than likely. A strong man with a glass eye, who insists on fighting the enemy at a time like this, is apt to be considered a danger in this country. Especially when he has an undetectable glass eye.