Frank Brent The Great War Interviews

BBC

Four Collections -

specially chosen programmes from the BBC archive.

For this collection, Max Hastings has

selected interviews with Great War veterans filmed in the 1960s.

More programmes on this theme

and other BBC Four Collections are available on BBC iPlayer.

Well, I was one of about 2,000 blokes stuck in the Galeka.

We left Moudros after nightfall

on the 24th

and we were all camped down

in the bowels of the ship.

The crew brought us

some hot tucker to get on with,

but I don't think any of us

felt like eating.

And then somebody said, "Well,

you'd better have a snore off -

"you've got a job to

do in the morning."

But we couldn't sleep,

but we just talked about anything

but the job we were going to do.

And we pulled in, I should think,

about

a quarter to six.

The Majestic was just behind us.

The 3rd Brigade had got on,

and it was pretty obvious that

Old

Joe Burke knew they were there

because there was plenty of firing,

and evidently he'd got some

field guns and they were dropping

quite a bit of shrapnel.

We lined up on the Galeka

and waited for the pinnaces

and the tows to come back

and as

we were lined up, the old

boatswain of the Galeka

came

along and said,

"Anybody got any letters to post?

"Anybody got any of those dirty

postcards that you bought in Cairo?

"If you have, you'd better put them

down on the deck

"because if you get knocked,

they send them to your next of kin!"

Well, by this time I was feeling

just about as brave

as a ring-tailed possum.

And I wished that I was anywhere

but on the Galeka.

Anyhow, the boats eventually

pulled alongside.

We were all done up like sore toes

with rifles and shovels

and ammunition and packs

and how we got down those rope

ladders, I just don't know.

What with the nervousness

and the excitement

and not knowing what was in front

of us,

I just felt washed out.

But as I got into the boat,

the first

thing that struck me

was about three chaps of the

9th

Battalion

who had been killed

and they hadn't had time

to lift them out.

So we had to walk gingerly over

these fellows.

And then I heard the voice

of the little middy that was pulling

these three boats.

It was a child's voice, really.

And I thought, "Well, if it's good enough for him,

"it's good enough for me."

And we packed in, the cobbers of us

together, and the shrapnel

was falling, the machine guns

were

pelting and as the pinnace

hit the shore, we boats at the back

were pulled up into anything

three, four foot of water, somebody

said, "Out you get!"

and out we got...

..lumbering this shovel and rifle

and pack and ammunition.

As I say, we were

loaded

like blessed elephants.

There were dead and wounded

of the 3rd Brigade all around

and we scampered as hard as we could

to a little bit of shelter,

dumped

our packs and dumped

the shovels and

the picks,

we'd had enough of those.

And then somebody said,

"Well, up you go"

and

away we went up the slope.

It wasn't too bad,

but just halfway

up somebody shouted out to me,

"Alan Cordon's stopped one."

Well, Alan was one of my best pals

and that made me feel a bit

better,

because if they'd got him,

I felt, "I'm going to get THEM."

Anyhow, we got to the top and the

3rd

Brigade had done a good job.

He'd pushed them back quite a bit.

And we were extending out

to the

right,

along the Gabe Tepe front.

And... It was scrub country.

Quite flat, but plenty of tea tree bush about.

And we'd go about 20 or 30 yards

and then we'd be held up by rifle

fire

and machine gun fire.

But we got down

and pitched into them.

Eventually they ran

and we went on and on.

But eventually,

we came to a post where

obviously one of the strong points

that he'd put up

and I suppose there was

about 20 of us in my group.

Nobody in charge.

The bloke with the loudest voice

seemed to take

charge of the setting.

And three or four blokes

got

knocked.

And then I heard somebody say,

"Well, this is no good to us!

"Come on, heads down, arses up

and get stuck into it."

And we went into it.

And we cleared them, bayoneted them,

shot them, and the others ran.

And we sort of dug in on that post

for a little while.

And a little while afterwards

a bloke out of the

8th Battalion said, "Here, look

at that bloody bush, it's moving!"

And we looked at it

and it was obviously a sniper.

He was a sniper and he was done up

like a Christmas tree.

He'd got branches out of his head,

out of his shoulders

and he was for all the world

like a bush.

But he didn't look like a bush

when we'd finished with him.

Well, we went on and on.

And I say, we kept getting held up,

firing back when they were firing.

Then somebody said... We'd got the

impression that we'd have got right

through if we'd have had plenty

of support coming with us,

but then somebody said

we'd got to go

back,

and by this time Old Joe Burke

had got plenty of reinforcements and

he was making it a bit sticky.

We got back to the first ridge

and we started to dig in.

There was no co-ordinated effort

about it.

We were just a crowd of diggers,

working with each other,

trusting each other blind.

And after we'd been digging

a little while,

the Queen Elizabeth let go

two

or three of her shells,

and the sound of those shells

was a real tonic.

One bloke shouted out, "Share that

amongst you, you bastards!"

And the bloke next to me

was Robbie Robinson,

a corporal in my battalion.

He was laughing at the remark

that this digger had

made

about sharing

these Queen Elizabeth shells.

And I can see him now,

grinning all over his face

and the next thing I remember

was his head fell on my shoulder

and a sniper had got him

through the jugular vein.

And I really think that

that was my baptism

because Robbie's blood

spent

all over my tunic.

Well, it was fairly obvious

that the position

we held on that first night was just

about as slender as it could be.

And I'm quite sure that

not any one of us

ever saw a possibility

of getting off alive.

For my point, I think

I'd have run as hard as I could.

But the fact that my cobbers

were there,

and they were ready to help me,

kept me there, because,

you know, in the diggers

we just trusted each other blind.

And while one bloke stood there,

he could bet his sweet life

that the other mate

was

going to be with him.

And if we went,

we'd all go together.

Well, having dug in, there was

only one thing to do,

was to stop where we'd dug in.

If he'd come at us

and been successful,

he could've got us back into the sea.

And all during the night

there was

plenty of shrapnel

and machine guns,

snipers as busy as they could be.

But we lived through and at about

nine o'clock the next day

we could see that he was bringing up

plenty of stuff to have a go

and I think he'd made up

his mind to thump us.

And, oh, somewhere about

half past

nine,

I should think, in the

morning,

we could hear him shouting

Allah,

and blowing trumpets

and things like that,

and there was quite

a lot of heavy firing,

and plenty

from us, and he, as far

as I know,

he hit the dais,

and then the Royal

Naval Division

came on to relieve us

from the front line, as it were.

Oh, there...and there was another

thing, on the night of the 25th,

they brought up some Indian Mountain

Batteries, I think they called them.

Well, they could only dig in about

20 yards behind where we were

because if they'd dug any farther

down they'd have been shooting

into the hillside.

And having got their guns in,

they joined in the general shelling

and bombardment, and they were

firing what they called grapeshot.

Well, this was shrapnel that

evidently burst the moment

it left the gun muzzle.

And blimey, we had to scatter

each time those batteries went.

Well, and then on the 28th,

as I say,

the Royal Naval Division came

and we were evacuated from the line

into these little humpies

just on the sandhills.

And it was then, for the first time

since the landing,

that we'd been

able to look round for our cobbers.

Because on the first day,

we were just mixed up

and running about like a lot

of rabbits.

Nobody could see who was who

or what was what.

And it was then, for the first time,

we realised what the taking of

Anzac Ridge had cost, because hardly

any of our mates were left there.

Well, we cooled off there for a day

or two and one or two of us got

into the sea and washed ourselves

of the mud and that sort of thing.

And then we were told

we were going over to Cape Helles.

That was my brigade,

the 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th Battalion,

to give the 29th Division a hand

and then attack over there.

And I remember they put us

into all sorts of little boats

and monitors, and the old Vicanti

was our escort along.

When we got over to Helles,

we saw what a hell of a job

the 29th division had had - barbed wire in the water.

And my battalion actually landed

on Helles

through the River Clyde,

which had been beached.

And the story of the

Munster

and Dublin Fusiliers'

effort off that boat everybody knows.

Anyhow, they got us into a sort

of a dried-up watercourse

and we were told that we were going

to take part in a general

attack on the afternoon of the 8th.

And just before the advance,

the guns of the battleships,

the artillery that we'd been able

to get ashore and around

and about

put

up a barrage, and I've

honestly listened to several,

but I can't ever remember a more

concentrated or heavy barrage.

Well, it was indescribable.

The noise, the dust... You just

couldn't hear each other speak.

And that went on

for about a quarter of an hour

and then everything

was as silent as the blessed grave.

And that was the time

when we had to hop out.

And the barrage had been

so heavy that we thought,

"Well, this is going to be a cake

walk, there's nothing to stop us."

But the mistake we made

was that after

we got out of our hop-out trenches,

our own artillery began to

put down a barrage

just in front of us.

Some of it was firing short.

You could see your mates

going down right and left.

And you were face-to-face with

the stark realisation that this

is the end of it.

And that was the thought

that was

with you the whole time,

because despite the fact that we

couldn't see a Turk,

he was pelting us with everything

he'd got from all corners,

and the marvel to me is how

the dickens he was able to do it

after

the barrage that had fallen on him.

And sure enough, we got to within

about a mile of Krithia village

when I copped my packet.

And as I lay down I said,

"Thank Christ for that."

Well, without doubt,

Pozieres

was

the heaviest,

bloodiest,

rottenest stunt

that ever

the Australians were caught up in.

Er... It's...

The carnage is just indescribable.

And I can remember as we were

making our attack after

the 3rd Brigade had gone through,

that we were literally walking

over

the dead bodies of our cobbers

that had been slain by this barrage.

I can't imagine anything more...

..concentrated than

the artillery

barrage of the Germans

at that particular stunt.

He was even shelling our front line

with great coal boxes.

And...

I remember twice...

I'm

sorry about the remember,

you'll have to cut that out,

the bay on our left went in,

two or three chaps were killed,

the bay on our right went in.

I said to the chap whose knees I was

sitting on, "It's our turn next."

I hadn't said it

before WE were buried.

I was quite unconscious,

but eventually a pick hit me

on the shoulder.

I was picked up and sent down to

the

battalion first aid post.

I think I was given a drop of

sal

volatile or something.

I wish it had been rum.

And I was sat in a corner at this

aid post for a little while.

But then the wounded just streamed

in

and the chap in charge of the

post said, "Well, you've had enough,

you'd better get back again."

And I went back

and during the whole of that period,

I can't remember anything

more

nerve-racking than

the continuous shelling,

without stop, day and night.

And the number of casualties that

we

suffered there must have been

greater than any other

engagement in the war.

We lived like wild animals.

And each time

we got into the forward area,

every action of ours

was a wild animal action.

With the difficulties of getting

supplies up, we scrounged,

we robbed dead bodies to get food.

And it was inevitable

that we

developed the animal

characteristic of killing.

And apart from the short feeling

of nervousness as you knew that

you were moving up to carry out

another operation,

there was

a feeling of exultation

that once

again you were going to be

able to, with rifle, bayonet and a

couple of Mills bombs in your

pocket,

to overcome any opposition

that you ran into,

and at the same

time,

extract retribution

from the

fellows that had killed your mates.

So many of them, that each time you

were able to push another one

out of it, you felt that you'd done

something to compensate

for the loss of these fellows that

had become part of your very life.