The Other Anzacs (17 page)

A ward at No. 2 Australian General Hospital at Ghezireh Palace. Soldiers returned from Gallipoli with horrific injuries. Gangrene and amputations were common, leaving men crippled and challenging the professional detachment of the sisters. (Photo courtesy of the Australian War Memorial P00152.009)

The eyes of the soldier on the right, recovering from a head wound at No. 1 Australian General Hospital at Heliopolis, reflect the horror of Gallipoli. (Photo courtesy of the Australian War Memorial P00229.010)

Picnics were a popular escape. Here, at Spinney Wood, Ismailia, Australian officers and nurses enjoy time away from the wards and the battlefields. (Photo courtesy of the Australian War Memorial J05885)

On the first Anzac Day in Cairo, Australian soldiers and nurses visited graves of fallen comrades to lay wreaths and bouquets after attending a memorial service and marching through the city streets. In the foreground is the grave of Sister Norma Violet Mowbray of the Australian Army Nursing Service, who died of pneumonia on 21 January 1916. (Photo courtesy of the Australian War Memorial C01794)

Alice gave ‘the kid’ her special attention during the voyage and believed she had helped him deal with his trauma.

Captain Eric Sexton, who sat beside Alice in the mess, had been shot in the left arm and right shoulder at Gallipoli. From South Australia, he was a ‘beautiful manly boy of 21’. He would blush healthily. ‘Evidently brought up in a home with a good mother. Does not drink or smoke and is thoroughly clean I believe.’
⁶
As the voyage progressed, he became her ‘dear friend’, and Alice was teased constantly about their liaison. But, she assured her diary, she ‘never flirted with him’. Indeed, her ‘special pal’ turned out to be the married Captain Hanson, who pretended to be in love with her. ‘Anyhow we have sworn eternal friendship—exchanged photographs, locks of hair etc.’
⁷
Nobody on board suspected.

When the
Ballarat
anchored at Albany, its first Australian port of call, things started to go awry. While she might have regarded her flirtations as innocent, it seems that Captains Hanson and Sexton saw things differently: ‘It was a beautiful moonlight [
sic
] night and the boronia was fragrant but most of it was spoilt for me by H. being jealous of Sexton during the first part and by Sexton being bad tempered over H. the latter part of the night.’
⁸

All through the voyage, the men on board had been ‘very restless’ and ‘hard to keep in hand’. Word reached them (falsely, as it turned out) that the people of Albany had prepared a banquet for them. Although no leave was granted while the
Ballarat
was in port, a group of about forty men succeeded in launching a lifeboat. They rowed ashore, where they ‘painted the town red . . . The others sat on a coal lighter beside the ship and cursed and swore and raised Hell generally, ’ Alice wrote.

At 4 a.m. one lot came back in the lifeboat bringing drink with them. Just as the ship was starting in the morning another lot arrived in a boat they had ‘borrowed’. This they left tied to one of the buoys. Two sergeants got themselves locked into a cabin and nearly fought each other to death. 7 orderlies got so drunk that they were unable to work for a few days. One orderly who had been a bit strict with the men was knocked down and given two black eyes and had 7 pounds stolen from him. From Albany on, the troops forward (VD) gave a great deal of trouble. They have broken all the electric light bulbs just for the fun of hearing them pop. Now when they have no lights they collected a bit of paper and wooden boxes and made a bonfire on the [wooden] deck.
⁹

When the ship left Albany, leaving stragglers behind, the men on board broke into the hold and stole forty-eight dozen bottles of beer. As soon as the theft was discovered a search was made, but the troops poured out most of the beer through the portholes.

In Adelaide, all leave from the ship was stopped. Anyone who went ashore would have to stay there. Alice saw ‘a strong guard around the wharf with fixed bayonets but the troops went mad’. The disembarkation of those choosing to leave the ship was the signal for other patients to try and escape.

They resisted the guard. Two or three of them were roughly bayoneted. Then commenced a real rough up. They got hold of several bags of potatoes and made war upon the officers and guard with well-aimed potatoes. The visiting Lieut. Colonel got a potato fair in the back of the neck. By midday it was found to be impossible to hold them, so they were put on their honour for good behaviour and to return to the boat before 6 a.m.
¹⁰

Eric Sexton’s family met him, and he immediately asked his brother to go and get some flowers for Alice. That afternoon Eric took her sightseeing. Driving through the Adelaide Hills with the wattle just blooming and the waters in the distance shining as the sun’s rays broke through the clouds, Alice was entranced. She spent a happy evening with Eric and his family before heading back to the ship.

The men had gone out on the town, and the train Alice boarded for the return journey was crowded ‘with our boys all more or less merry . . . Poor little Sparks was a bit gone too, but he promised me to go straight to bed and he did.’
¹¹
Next morning they had to wait for ‘the boat load of boys’ who had been left behind at Albany.

They were brought on as prisoners. The sea was very choppy and they were transferred in a small tug. There was great difficulty in landing them on to our ship at all. They came on quite pleased with themselves but our boys were annoyed with them for keeping the
Ballarat
waiting and they were met with hoots instead of the reception they expected.
¹²

According to Alice, the new guard from Adelaide ‘came on intoxicated, so we had a merry picnic. From Adelaide round to Victoria we had it very rough and the men were in a very nasty mood by the time they got to Port Melbourne.’

On the wharf in Melbourne, the mood was restive. Friends and relatives waited behind a line of cars on the dock. The troops, fed up with their cramped quarters, wanted to disembark. Alice observed that it was almost impossible to hold them in check. ‘They were ready for anything. A drunken man on the pier commenced to hand up bottled beer and the guard stopped him. That made the men wild. They started to throw mouldy cigarettes down to the bystanders and to complain of the food.’
¹³

Eventually the disembarkation was completed without incident. The forty remaining venereal patients were transhipped to the Mornington Peninsula, south of Melbourne, where a special tent hospital for soldiers with venereal disease had been established. Herded behind barbed wire and guarded by 200 militia men, the infected troops were regarded as untouchables. If the troops had been farewelled as heroes, the return of those on the
Ballarat
opened the eyes of many Australians to the wildness war could unleash.

Alice’s duty of care did not end when the last soldier left the
Ballarat
. She booked into a hotel where some of the troops were also staying. Two of them bought tickets to the theatre and invited Alice, who was happy to go, ‘as I wanted to keep them off the whisky’. Next day, while she dined at the hotel with her mother, the two men returned after having ‘met the mob from the boat and had all come home feeling very merry. Fortunately I did not see them.’ Also at the hotel was the ‘brave kid’ Sparks, who had evidently joined in the mob’s drunken exploits. Alice was unimpressed by their behaviour. Later that week she got a group together to attend a reception at the Melbourne Town Hall for the returned wounded. Alice Martin came, along with one of the two men who had gone to the theatre with her. ‘It was great to see our lambs on their best behaviour all looking very self conscious and drinking ginger beer and sandwiches. We who knew how those sandwiches would disappear if the boys were not on their best behaviour. It was very funny.’
¹⁴

Eric Sexton wrote to Alice. Captain Hanson also came to see her, and a platonic friendship was consolidated. Her time in Melbourne was over all too soon. Less than three weeks after her return, Alice boarded another troop transport, the
Anchises
, for the long journey back to Cairo. There were 1400 men on board, and Alice was saddened as she watched ‘the pain in the faces of the women left behind on the pier’. She knew that for many there would be more pain to come.

At sea, new friendships were soon struck up. Alice loved a chat, and the stories she heard were often poignant, and redolent of young love.

Yarning to one this afternoon who was married 8 days before leaving. She is a sweet-faced girl. Their wedding photographs are taken on postcards, the boy is in uniform. He is only a lad of 22. Another is an orderly who proposed by letter to a girl after leaving Sydney. He got her wire of acceptance at Fremantle today.
¹⁵

A few days into the voyage Alice vaccinated 100 men. She also surveyed them for romantic potential. ‘Nobody is standing out of the crowd very clearly yet except a tall fair man with glasses—Lieut. Moffitt. I think he has the common touch but he seems more interested in Martin than in myself.’
¹⁶
Blue-eyed Harry Lowry Moffitt was a thirty-two-year-old accountant from the Victorian town of Gisborne. Alice was also interested in Lieutenant Samuel Montgomery, a Briton who had been ‘getting colonial experience’ in Australia for the previous six years. He was thirty-three, of medium build and also blue-eyed. Alice thought him ‘the most beautiful man I have met’. But Harry Moffitt was ‘making a fuss’ of her. ‘I think he is only out for “fun” though and does not understand things properly yet. I am terrified that he will spoil my friendship with Montgomery.’
¹⁷

Moffitt and Montgomery were soon in competition for Alice’s company. When the ship anchored at Fremantle, she went for an evening stroll with Montgomery and some others. ‘On the way down at 9 p.m. Moffitt managed to cut me away from the mob and I had to fence very much to avoid getting too friendly. Moffitt is one of those men who believe in [Arab poet-philosopher] Omar Kyam [
sic
] and think there is nothing after death. He is such a contrast to Monty who is full of idealism.’
¹⁸
Alice and Harry were soon friends, however.

Two evenings later Alice was with Harry on the deck, leaning over the rails looking at the phosphorescent water. ‘A little officer came up. He did not see us but he threw himself down on the dark deck and rolled in agony of mental pain. It hit Moffitt up badly because in his cabin they have been holding a gambling school and already a great deal of money has been lost and a good deal of bad influence going [on] generally.’
¹⁹
Alice was spending time with both Moffitt and Montgomery. She thought Harry was pretending to be serious, but she did not know whether she could trust him. ‘Just now he appeals to me as a clever man with a keen sense of the beautiful only in material things. I mean he would admire the artist who did the thing well more than he would admire the beauty of the picture.’
²⁰
By the next evening, Alice had decided that Harry was ‘really serious’ but ‘not the kind of man that I would like to love really and truly’.