While the days dragged slowly by on the Anzac front, and the armies had been brought to a standstill at Suvla Bay, events at the seat of the Allies' War Council were moving rapidly. After the last fight and the failure of the great adventure, General Hamilton estimated his force at 95,000 men. He was 45,000 men below his normal strength for the units he held. Sickness was wasting his army at an alarming rate. He cabled to the War Office for more reinforcements, pointing out that the enemy against him was 110,000. They were all fine fighters, brought up from the best regiments that had been employed against the Russians. General Hamilton writes:—

What could the Commander-in-Chief do under such circumstances? He might have resigned; that was not his temperament. He would fight to a finish. What troops remained in Egypt were reorganized, and the attack, as soon as possible, began again on the Suvla Bay front.

All was in vain. By September the whole Gallipoli front had settled down to trench warfare, and a winter campaign seemed inevitable. Meanwhile events on the Balkan frontier were hastening the Turkish plans. Additional troops were available for service on the peninsula with the Bulgarian frontier free, and that nation joined to the Central Powers. The failure of the Allies to save Serbia was of enormous significance to Turkey. It meant the prolongation of her sickness, for it left the way free from Germany to Constantinople. Big-gun ammunition, which the Turks had undoubtedly always conserved, began to flow in freely from Austrian and German works, across the Danube through Bulgaria. Then the Turks, finding, too, that the attacks on Achi Baba were never likely to be renewed in any great force, and that the Allied forces left there were comparatively weak, removed numbers of their heavy artillery batteries to the Anzac position and began again with renewed fury to enfilade the beach. The Olive Grove guns and the batteries from Mai Tepe thundered their shells on the Anzac slopes; at Suvla Bay the plain was swept with Turkish shrapnel. Though the weather remained fine and the Allies continued to land stores and munitions with ease, the Navy let it be understood that after the 28th October they would guarantee no further regular communications. All September was wasted by the British Cabinet deliberating on the wisdom of continuing the Gallipoli campaign, a far longer time than it had taken to embark on the enterprise at the very beginning of the year. During that month sickness further wasted the army. By the 11th October the Cabinet came to a decision. They asked General Hamilton the cost of lives that would be involved in withdrawing from Gallipoli. Fine soldier that he is, the Commander-in-Chief refused to entertain the idea; whereupon he was recalled to London for the official reason "that a fresh and unbiased opinion from a responsible commander might be given upon an early evacuation."

General Hamilton's departure was a matter of the keenest regret to the Australian troops. They had often met him in the saps at Anzac, and his tall, commanding figure was well known by all on the beach. It had been the custom for various battalions and regiments to supply guards for his headquarters, situated at Imbros on the south of Kephalos Bay, and on many occasions he had inspected and complimented them on their bearing. His farewell order to the troops, and, later, the concluding words of his last report, show the affection he held for his men whom he has described as "magnificent." He left the Dardanelles on the 17th October on a warship bound for Marseilles.

General Sir Charles Monro, one of the ablest of the new British leaders, and a man who had come to the front since the beginning of the war, was chosen to succeed General Hamilton. It must be presumed that even his unbiased report evidently left the matter in doubt. The casualties of evacuation were put down at probably 20 per cent. of the force, or even higher—20,000 men. Thereupon Lord Kitchener himself determined to visit the Levant and thoroughly investigate the situation. There were more reasons than the approach of winter and the drain on the reserves of the army, the munitions, and maintenance of lines of communication, that necessitated some very vital alteration in the action and attitude of the Allies in the Levant and Mesopotamia. Greece was wavering. There was distinctly a pro-German feeling amongst the Greek population and a widespread German propaganda on lines that ended so successfully with Bulgaria a few months before. The Serbian Army was shattered before the landing of the Allies at Salonika could prevent the free passage to Turkey of everything that the sorely harassed and depleted Ottoman Army needed.

In Egypt, British prestige was at a low ebb. There were already signs of revolt on the western frontier, where the Senussi had been organized by Enver Pasha's brother. A further attack on the Canal was threatening, while the campaign in Mesopotamia looked far from reassuring. Egypt was a vast arsenal and rapidly becoming an armed camp. The strain on the transport service and lines of communication was rapidly growing acute—in fact, the position that faced the Allies was that by some means or other their energies would have to be narrowed. Anzac, Helles, Salonika, Egypt, and Mesopotamia all needed regular supplies throughout the severe winter months, and these had to be transported by sea. Yet the submarine peril had grown more menacing, three or four ships being sunk daily, despite the greatest vigilance of the fleet. Even the Greeks were engaged in helping these under-water craft in their endeavours to starve out the armies of the Allies. It seemed obvious one or several of the fronts had to be abandoned, or else the Gallipoli offensive completed rapidly. For Egypt had to be kept safe at all costs: so had the army in Mesopotamia, guarding the Persian oilfields. To release a grip on the Eastern theatre of Europe at Salonika would mean perhaps that the Greeks would go over to the Central Powers. There was no alternative, once the necessary forces were denied to General Hamilton to end the task which I have endeavoured to show was so near successful completion, but that the work of evacuating Gallipoli should be attempted. It was a hazardous undertaking.

Lord Kitchener's visit to the Anzac battlefields was regarded as a great compliment by the troops. So bad had become the Turkish shelling of the Anzac Cove that it was not without the greatest anxiety that the leaders watched the landing of the Minister for War. Accompanying him were General Maxwell from Egypt and General Birdwood. Though the time of arrival had been kept as secret as possible, the news spread like lightning over Anzac. Lord Kitchener went straight to Russell's Top, a climb of twenty minutes up a roughly hewn artillery road, from which he could overlook the whole of the Anzac position, across the mass of huddled foothills at Suvla Bay. He chatted to the many men and officers. "The King has asked me," he said to various parties he met, "to tell you how splendidly he thinks you have done. You have indeed done excellently well; better even than I thought you would." He was astonished at the positions won. Lord Kitchener went right through the trenches on the Nek; he saw every important position and over thirty leaders. As he returned to the beach the troops cheered lustily. The hillside had suddenly, on this wild afternoon of November, grown animated. On the beach—it was only three hours later—he turned to Colonel Howse, as he had turned to others, and asked if he wanted anything done. Colonel Howse promptly brought a number of matters regarding the medical arrangements forward. "I think I can promise you your first and your second request," the great War Lord assured him, "and we will see about the third." It is curious to note that not a shell was fired at the departing launch or the destroyer as it steamed swiftly away.

Lord Kitchener left no one long in doubt of his impressions of the Australasians and the position they had made. A man not prone to superlatives, he spoke then, and since, in the highest terms of the valour of the deeds that won those Anzac heights. In a special Army Corps order General Birdwood wrote:—

The order proceeds:—

"Boys," General Birdwood adds in his characteristic way, "we may all well be proud to receive such a message, and it is up to all of us to live up to it and prove its truth."

The story of the last three months at Anzac may be swiftly told. It was a struggle during September and October to prepare for the coming winter months. Quantities of wooden beams, and sheet-iron, and winter equipment began to pour into Anzac. Preparations were made for the removal of the hospitals and clearing stations from the beach and from the beds of the creeks, to higher ground. For the weather could no longer be depended on, and the narrowness of the beach rendered it imperative that all the stores should be moved, as the waves would lash against the foot of the cliffs in the sudden storms that arise in the Ægean—storms that are the mariner's constant anxiety. Then at the end of October the activity suddenly was modified. The question of evacuation had brought a new commander and Lord Kitchener to this front. A winter campaign was in abeyance.

Engineers used to tell me that they did not see where the wood was coming from to shore up the trenches against the rains, and that they would all be washed down into the gullies at the first storm. The Australians had only a few days' experience of wet weather, and not very heavy showers at that, in April, when they had landed; but Turkish farmers captured told what might be expected. Ever ingenious, the troops commenced collecting tins, and anything that would keep their "possies" and dugouts dry. In some places great caverns were dug into the side of hills by the battalions of the 2nd Division, where they might be protected from the storms and from the severest shelling. General Monash had planned for the 4th Brigade a huge barracks on the side of Cheshire Ridge—a wonderful piece of engineering. The weather, though still fine, had become decidedly colder. At night the wind was biting, and rain early in November, gave a taste of what the conditions were to be like at Christmas-time. Saps were running with water; the soft, clayey mud clung in clods to the men's boots. The 1st Division and the Australian and New Zealand Divisions came back gradually from the rest camp at Mudros—the men fit again now, but the battalions still below strength in point of numbers.

Hostilities had been confined almost entirely to mining operations along the whole of the front. Mines and countermines were exploded. In some places—particularly at Quinn's Post—the tunnels had met, and an underground battle had ensued. Once we had reconnoitred a whole Turkish gallery, and found the sentries nodding at their posts with the guard in a tunnel, arguing and chattering away in a rapid, unintelligible tongue. These operations were not always accomplished without loss and severe casualties. Fumes overcame a large party near Lone Pine, and many lives were lost, some in the efforts to rescue those who had been suffocated in the mine tunnel. In one instance the Turks exploded a mine that trapped some sappers in a tunnel. After three days the men dug themselves out, and appeared before their astonished and delighted friends over the parapets of our trenches.

From one end of the position to the other, right in the heart of the Turkish hills below the famous Sari Bair ridge, infantry and engineers dug down under the Turkish trenches. I remember talking to Lieut.-Colonel Martyn, of the Divisional Engineers, about his plans. He was considering the possibility of going down 40 feet, tunnelling right through the hill at German Officers' Trench, and in one great effort breaking through in the rear of the Turkish position. If they went deep enough there seemed little likelihood of the Turks hearing the picking and tapping. Whatever may have been the eventual plan, the end of November and the first week of December saw most of the energies of the men engaged in making storm shelters for themselves. That period was one fraught with misfortune for the troops.

Whether the Turkish reconnaissance on the 27th November was intended as a mere bluff, or whether the Turks were anxious to discover if an offensive was in preparation by us, they attacked in thin lines all along the Anzac position. They were driven back with severe loss, and hardly a man reached our parapets.

On the 29th November the Turks commenced a terrible bombardment with heavy howitzers—8, 9, and 10-in. pieces—of the Lone Pine trenches, which were pounded and flattened. A series of mines were exploded under them, and we had to evacuate portions of this dearly held post. But the Turks dared make no fresh attack. Our casualties were heavy.

The day previously a snowstorm had swept down on the north wind that wrought havoc with the shipping in the Cove. Pinnaces broke from their moorings and barges went ashore and were smashed. How wonderful the hills on the morning of the 29th, covered with a snow mantle, which astonished the Australians, the great majority of whom were experiencing their first snowstorm! Icicles hung from the trenches—the sentries stamped up and down. The wind howled down the gullies, that were soon turned into morasses; the trenches were ankle-deep in mud. For three days the frost continued, but the troops were in good spirits and fairly comfortable. Many of the men suffered frost-bite, but on the third day of December the sun shone and the conditions had materially improved.

And now, in this strange eventful story comes the last stage of all. Though the decision for the evacuation was taken in November, the troops guessed nothing of it even up to a week before it took place. They had no realization that the series of very quiet evenings, when scarcely a shot was fired along the whole of the 5-mile front that Anzac now comprised, had in them any definite end. It was all part of the plan conceived by General Birdwood (now commanding the whole Gallipoli forces in place of General Monro) for beginning the education of the Turks to our leaving. But the main proposition to be faced was how to remove 200 guns and hundreds of tons of stores, equipment, and munitions and men, and keep up a semblance of normal activity of throwing supplies into Anzac. Cloudy skies and a first-phase moon helped at night, when the guns were stealthily drawn from their covered pits. There was no unusual gathering of transports by day, though the waters at night might resemble the days of the early landing, when the pinnaces and trawlers had crowded inshore with tows. The tows they removed now contained arms and munitions. More often they contained men declared not absolutely fit.

It was often remarked in the trenches, as December began, that it was an easy matter now to get a spell. The very slightest sickness was sufficient excuse to send men to the beach, from whence all the serious cases had long ago been removed, and so to the transports or hospital ships, as the case might be. Yet during the day, when Turkish aeroplanes hung menacingly over the position, observers might have seen bodies of men marching up the tortuous sap to the trenches. There was more indication of permanency, even of attack, than of evacuation.

So on the 10th December there was left at Anzac barely 20,000 men—very fit, very sound, and very determined men. It wanted nine days to the day of evacuation. Still there was no hint that any unusual step was anticipated. Some regiments were removed for special duty—they anticipated another fight, even a new landing. They left by night. They arrived at dawn at Mudros, safe from the firing-line and Anzac for ever. The greater part of the army service, engineer, and hospital units had left with their equipment. They came down the deep saps from the south and from the north, right from under those hills from the crest of which the Turks could look down almost to the heart of our position. No longer could we hope to make a firm resistance to the Turkish attack, which it had been hoped would develop in November. Rearguard actions were contemplated and evolved, to resist any onslaught. On the beach the heavy ammunition was being loaded on to lighters. All except nine worn guns had gone. Two were left still, almost in the firing-line, where they had been from the first. Quantities of stores and equipment were destroyed on the 16th and 17th rather than they should fall into the hands of the Turks. The "archives" of the brigades and divisions had been removed too, for some time. The administrative dugouts were bare of books, typewriters, and correspondence. Final orders had been issued. It was now only a question of supervision and Staff work to get the men away. And what Staff work it was on the part of General Birdwood to remove that whole army of 40,000 men (I include those troops brought out of the trenches early in December) from such a perilous position! One may write in terms of the highest praise of the demeanour and discipline of the men in those last days, but it is to the leaders that must fall inevitably the greatest praise—the leaders of the army and the leaders of the men: men such as Brigadier-General White, the Chief of Staff to General Birdwood, Brigadier-Generals Antill, Monash, Johnston, Forsyth, and Holmes, who worked on the beach till the very last.

Thousands of men were removed from Anzac during the night of the 18th. They came down rapidly through the gullies, silently, and with empty magazines. They embarked swiftly, according to a carefully adjusted timetable. By morning the sea was calm and passive. A sudden storm was the one thing now which might yet cause havoc to the plans. It was during this last day that the situation was so tense. Turkish observers might, one thought, have easily detected the thinly held lines and the diminished stores on shore. The enemy remained in utter ignorance. They would have seen—as the gunners surely saw from their observation positions on Gaba Tepe and Kelid Bahr—parties of Australians ("smoking parties," as they were called) idling about in saps and on exposed hills, meant to attract the fire of the Turkish guns; for "Beachy Bill" could never resist what the troops called "a smile" at parties on the beach. The destruction of stores continued. To the enemy, Anzac firing-line was normal that day.

At dusk on the 19th began the final phase of this delicate and extraordinary operation. A force of 6,000 men were holding back 50,000 Turkish troops. The communications at Anzac were like a fan: they all led out from the little Cove in the very centre of the position. They went as far as 3 miles on the left (the north), and half that distance to Chatham's Post on the right (the south), almost to Gaba Tepe. In the centre they were short and very steep. They led up to the Nek and to Russell's Top and to Quinn's Post. From these points the Turks could have looked down into the heart of our position. If that heart were to pulse on steadily until suddenly it stopped altogether, it must be protected till the last. Therefore the flanks of the position were evacuated first.

From the Nek to the beach it was a descent of some 500 yards—a descent that might be accomplished in ten minutes. It was the head of our second line of defence that had been so hastily drawn up in the early days. There was now the last stand to be made.

Three columns, A, B, and C, held the Anzac line; 2,000 picked men in each, and the whole unit chosen men from infantry battalions and regiments of Light Horse. The last were the "die hards." Darkness spread rapidly after five o'clock over the front hills, wrapping them in gloom. The sea was still calm. Clouds drifted across the face of the moon, half-hidden in mist. Already men were leaving the outskirts of our line. They would take hours to reach the beach, there joining up with other units come from the centre, and closer positions to the shore. They marched with magazines empty: they had not even bayonets fixed. They might not smoke or speak. They filed away, Indian fashion, through the hills into the big sap, on to the northern piers on Ocean Beach. Their moving forms were clearly distinguishable in the glimmer from the crescent moon. The hills looked sullen and black. No beacon lights from dugouts burned. That first column began to leave Anzac shore at eight o'clock on the transports that were swiftly gliding from the shore. Another two hours and some thousands of men had gone. Parties of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade had left Destroyer Hill; most of the 1st Light Horse had evacuated No. 1 Post, the 4th Australian Brigade the line on Cheshire Ridge, the New Zealand Mounted Rifles, Yeomanry, and Maoris the famous Hill 60, position.

But still small detachments, 150 to 170 in each, belonging to these seasoned regiments and brigades remained at their post, holding quietly the Anzac line.

Midnight. The head of the second column reached the Cove and the piers so often shelled. Those on the beach knew that only 2,000 lone men were holding back the enemy along the front. They were in isolated groups: the New Zealand Infantry on the Sari Bair ridge, the 20th Infantry at the Nek, the 17th Infantry at Quinn's, the 23rd and 24th Infantry at Lone Pine, the 6th Light Horse Regiment at Chatham's Post, on the extreme right, down by the shore. On the beach there was no confusion. Units concentrated at fixed points in the gullies. They left at a certain time. They arrived just to the moment, marching hard. They found the Navy ready to clear them to the transports. There must be no hitch: there was none. On either flank could be heard a feeble rifle fire. Overhead came the answering "psing-psing" of the Turkish bullets.

At 1.30 began the withdrawal of the "die hards" from the points they were holding with such a terrible peril hanging over them. A bomb burst at "the Apex," on the slopes of Chunak Bair, with a resonant thud, with the rapid answer following from the Turkish rifles. But nothing else happened. What could happen? The New Zealand garrison had gone from this dearly-won ridge, with a parting message left under a stone for the Turks. By two o'clock the small parties of the 19th Infantry at Pope's, the 18th Infantry at Courtney's Post, and the 17th Infantry at Quinn's Post, were still further reduced. A few hundred desperate fighters were hurrying in from the outposts of the line on the left and the right, each firing a shot as they left. The right stole away at 2.30 from Chatham's Post, men of the 6th Light Horse. Still there were "die hards" of the 1st Brigade, and the 7th Battalion next them, in Leane's Trench up to Lone Pine, held by the 23rd and 24th Infantry of the 2nd Division. Here the Turks in their trenches were within 15 feet of them. There were a few score of determined men left at Quinn's Post, a strong party on the Nek, but yet not 800 men in all holding the whole front. Yet our line from end to end was spluttering. Ah! that was through a device whereby the running sand from an emptying bucket, fired an Australian rifle.

Swiftly the fate of Anzac was being decided now. All the trenches at Lone Pine were deserted by 3.15 a.m. The garrisons at Quinn's and Pope's Hill—the ever-impregnable post of our centre—were silently, swiftly moving down Monash Gully into Shrapnel Gully, through the sap, and towards the longed-for beach. The Anzac line was contracting rapidly. The moon slid behind some clouds as the party passed the deserted walls and tanks. Empty dugouts gaped like bottomless pits on either side of their path. Suddenly behind on the heights, like a thunderclap, there was a roar, as a vivid flash lit the sky, and tongues of flame rolled along the hills. The whole of the Nek was thus blown up by an immense series of mines. Three and a half tons of Amenol, placed there by the 5th Company of Australian Engineers, were used to throw a barrier across this entrance. The sight, awful in its meaning to the army now embarked, lent speed to the steps of those brave rearguards. From off that same Nek the Australians were rushing down the track to the boats waiting by the piers. The Turkish fire broke forth, growing, swelling in volume, as if a door were suddenly opened on a raging battle. Guns from the warships began to pound the hills. It was not yet four o'clock, but the dawn was creeping in, and with it the Turks to our trenches. Fearful of a trap, they began their exploration of Anzac as the guns of the Navy completed the destruction of our few guns on the beach (that had fired till the end) and on the piers, and swept the ranks of the advancing enemy.

Suvla Bay was also evacuated on the same evening, and with the same success, for, as the news broke on an astonished world, it was reported—and will be recorded—as one of the most extraordinary feats of naval and military history, that only three men at Anzac and two at Suvla Bay had been wounded in this astonishing masterpiece of strategy.

Before the closing days of the year, the English and French positions at Cape Helles had been abandoned also, and the Gallipoli campaign was brought to a sudden but very deliberate close. I have suggested that there were strong enough reasons for its commencement, and others for its conclusion. As to the failure, it can but be attributed to the lack of men, the lack of reinforcements, the lack of munitions. When and where these armies and reinforcements should have been landed, the campaign shows significantly enough. But in the contemplation of this failure there comes a not unpleasant feeling of achievement, the full significance of which has not yet been recognized, and will not be fully understood till the Turks lay down their arms and sue for peace. The exhaustion of the Turkish nation and its army during that Gallipoli campaign was great, and how near to collapse historians will discover. The new Russian offensive in the Caucasus found it ill prepared to resist. Over 250,000 casualties were suffered by the Turks in the Dardanelles; a great mass of the Turkish mercantile fleet was lost. And still their coast lies as open as ever to invasion, so that large armies are compelled to be kept along it.

No one can regard the evacuation (whatever relief it gave to the army) without a tinge of sadness and bitterness at relinquishing positions that had been so dearly won, to the troops engaged most of all. But it stands to the credit of the Australians that they took the situation calmly as it developed. The army made a masterly retreat, after suffering 40,000 casualties, of whom 8,000 had been killed. But the Commonwealth and the Dominion of New Zealand offered fresh battalions to the Motherland as the only sign on the changing of the tide of battle.

In one day—25th April—Australia attained Nationhood by the heroism of her noble sons. "Anzac" will ever form the front page in her history, and a unique and vivid chapter in the annals of the Empire. The very vigour of their manhood, the impetuosity of their courage, carried slopes that afterwards in cold blood, seemed impregnable. And they held what they won, and proved themselves an army fit to rank alongside any that a World Empire has produced. But yet in all their fighting there was no bitterness—not against the Turks—but a terrible, earnest fearlessness that boded ill for lurking enemies. They found a staunch and worthy foe, who, whatever their treatment of the people within their own borders was, abstained from the brutalities of the Germans.

Above all, the young army won its way into the hearts and confidence of the British Navy and the Indians from so near their own shores. They gained a respect for themselves and for discipline. They formed for the generations of new armies yet unborn on Australian soil, traditions worthy of the hardy, freeborn race living under the cloudless skies of the Southern Cross. Open-hearted, ever generous, true as gold, and hard as steel, Australia's first great volunteer army, and its valorous deeds, will live in history while the world lasts.