the only qualities of the Australian fighting men, but
these alone could have succeeded on that day. When the time came for
evacuation of those hardly won and held trenches, these same troops
gave evidence of the possession of the opposite attributes of coolness,
silence, patience, co-ordination; every man acting as part of a single
unit, under control of a single will--which is discipline!

[1] Robert W. Service.

CHAPTER XIV

HOLDING ON AND NIBBLING

There are people who think that the Australian dash petered out with
that one supreme effort of landing. We had achieved the impossible in
landing--why did we not in the many months we were there, do the
comparatively easy thing and advance? Surely, now that we had stores
and equipment and artillery, we could more easily drive the Turks out
of their trenches. So many seem to think that so much was done on that
first day, and so little thereafter.

But the Peninsula is not a story of mere impetuosity and dash, it is a
story of endurance as well. As a matter of fact, those eight months of
holding on were as great a miracle as the landing. There is a limit to
the physical powers even of supermen. These men were not content with
the small strip of ground that they held, and they did attack and
defeat the Turks opposing them again and again, but as soon as a
Turkish army was beaten there was ever another fresh one to take its
place. The Turks could not attack us at one time with an army
outnumbering us by ten to one, not because they had not the troops, but
because there was not room enough. As a matter of fact, that little
army (only reinforced enough to fill up the gaps) defeated five Turkish
armies, each one larger than its own. Remember, too, that the Turks
were always better equipped and supplied--it was so easy with their
chief city of Constantinople just within "coo-ee." Our little army had
to be supplied with every single thing over thousands of miles of
water. General Hamilton said the navy was father and mother to us, and
when it is remembered that every cartridge, every ounce of food, every
drop of water, every splinter of firewood had to be brought by the
ships, it will be seen that we could not have existed a single day
without their aid. The Turks said often enough that they would push us
into the sea--they continually called on Allah to aid them--we were
only a handful after all; we only held a few hundred acres of their
filthy soil, b