Wounded Soldiers PDF

# Wounded Soldiers ## Focus - Events have causes and effects. - People move between places, which has results for people and places. Even small things could become life-threatening. Cuts from prickly scrub and tins, and insect bites, took a long time to heal and often turned septic. Gangrene or in...

# Wounded Soldiers ## Focus - Events have causes and effects. - People move between places, which has results for people and places. Even small things could become life-threatening. Cuts from prickly scrub and tins, and insect bites, took a long time to heal and often turned septic. Gangrene or infected wounds often made amputation necessary. Many wounds were so bad doctors could do nothing. Worst was shrapnel from exploding shells. It ripped muscles and bones to bits, and gouged out craters in bodies. ## Evacuation of wounded from Anzac Cove Up in the gullies, Anzacs set up aid posts. Medics bandaged wounds. Stretcher-bearers, nicknamed body-snatchers, took wounded soldiers down to the beach. One group using mules to carry down wounded was the Zion Mule Corps. The men in it were Jews from Europe. Medics in field hospitals redressed wounds. Orderlies gave soldiers food and water. They put them in a place as sheltered as possible from Turkish shrapnel, the sun, and flies. At night, orderlies carried wounded to a pier and on to a barge. Steamboats towed barges out to a transport or a hospital ship. Turkish artillery and German submarines were threats. This meant steamboats towing wounded often had to search and search for a ship to take their cargo. Wounded, with and without stretchers, were put in a box or net and lifted up on deck. Orderlies on hospital ships took wounded for treatment, de-lousing, a hot bath and a meal. Serious cases were transferred to shore bases in Egypt, Malta, Gibraltar, or England. Transports were lucky to have a doctor on board; there might be a vet only. Every night many soldiers died on transports. Sailors wrapped them in canvas weighted down with lead and lowered them over the side. The New Zealand public gave money to have the Maheno fitted out as a hospital ship. Its nurses were commissioned officers but many male officers refused to recognise them. Once it got to the Mediterranean it became Hospital Ship No. 30. Each side had three red crosses and a green stripe. It made five visits to Anzac. In the heat and smell of dysentery and decay, nurses fought to save lives. **Explain/ Describe/ Discuss** ... what it must have been like for stretcher-bearers, wounded soldiers, and nurses. **NET:** Find out about the weapons and guns that Turks and Anzacs used to kill and injure each other. # Disease ## Focus - Events have causes and effects. - People move between places, which has results for people and places. Anzacs managed to get some chlorinated water. They scattered lime and cresol to disinfect areas such as latrines. Anti-cholera vaccine was available to inoculate soldiers. An Australian colonel demanded dentists be sent and some did arrive. He also ordered incinerators be built to burn dirty dressings and other rubbish. Disease, however, came to stay at Anzac. The rule was that no man was to relieve himself in any way except at a latrine. Anzac latrines were just slits in the ground. Soldiers were supposed to cover faeces with earth or disinfectant. But so many men got dysentery and diarrhoea, known as the 'Gallipoli Gallop' or the 'Turkey Trot', that this became impossible to do. There was no toilet paper. A soldier could be so sick he rolled into the latrine and because his mates had no strength to pull him out, he would drown. Turkish hygiene was less strict. Human faeces got mixed in with food rubbish and mule droppings. Flies loved it. Dysentery was so bad [at Anzac] that at one stage General Birdwood was losing as many men in a fortnight through disease as he would lose in a big attack. Soldiers also got 'enteric fever' (typhoid). There were no antibiotics in 1915. A soldier could reduce his risk of getting it by keeping clean, drinking only boiled or purified water, washing his hands after latrine visits, and eating vegetables and fruit which he had washed. On Gallipoli none of these were possible. The constant diet of greasy bully-beef and rock-hard biscuits did not help sick soldiers recover properly. They said they felt as if their intestines were being eaten away. On average, soldiers lost up to 25 percent of their body weight. Even when wounded and sick soldiers were sent to Lemnos Island, flies were there too, and nurses and doctors suffered from the same dysentery, diarrhoea and gastroenteritis. **Explain/ Describe/ Discuss** ... how the environment helped disease become established. **NET:** Find out how soldiers caught typhoid, cholera, dysentery and diarrhoea and how these diseases spread. # Burials ## Focus - Events have causes and effects. - People move between places, which has results for people and places. Soldiers who had to bury mates, or bits of mates, dug shallow graves and marked them with a peg or small cross or stones. Digging graves for the dead who had inflated stomachs or were badly decomposed and giving off a terrible smell, made many toughened soldiers vomit. Dead bodies piled up in no-man's-land. In May, after 42,000 Turkish troops tried to drive Anzacs on to the beach to kill them, thousands more dead lay there. ## Armistice Day, May 24, 1915. One day Anzacs saw a Turk waving a white flag on Gaba Tepe. An Anzac patrol went out. The two groups met on the beach. Anzacs blindfolded a Turkish officer and escorted him to Army Corps Headquarters. 'We would like a ceasefire,' said the officer. 'A truce to bury the dead.' Anzacs agreed. It took several days to work out rules for the armistice. It would happen on May 24 from 7.30am to 4.30 pm. Down the middle of no- man's land a line was to be made. Turks would bury on their side of the line and Anzacs on their side. Dead enemies were to be put on stretchers and carried to the middle. No soldier was to carry a rifle. Bolts would be removed from enemy guns, and guns put on the line. On May 24th at 7.30 am, a group of Turks with Red Crescents on their arms and a group of Anzacs with Red Crosses on their arms, met. They walked down the middle of no-man's-land and stuck in stakes with white strips of calico on top as flags. Eyes peeped out from trenches on both sides. Soon heads appeared, then soldiers climbed out. Burying began. It was impossible to carry bodies whose limbs fell off so both sides dug trenches for badly decomposed bodies and rolled them in. Some soldiers wore handkerchief masks to fight the smell. Chaplains checked for identity discs and read the burial service. The armistice gave Anzacs the chance to see how little ground they had gained. Turks and Anzacs swapped cigarettes, and Turkish brown bread for Anzac hard biscuits. By 4 pm work ended. Everyone went back to their trenches. For the next half hour there was total silence. At 4.30 pm the white flags were removed and the armistice ended. War began again. **Explain/ Describe/ Discuss** ... possible experiences and thoughts of soldiers taking part in the armistice. **NET:** Find out about another armistice that took place in World War I. # Responses to Challenges ## Focus - People respond to challenges as individuals and groups. For Anzacs the environment produced nothing to eat, nothing to build with, and hardly any water. Most provisions came from Alexandria, over 800km away. Anzacs scavenged every bit of timber and corrugated iron they could for dugouts. They swarmed down to claim any boat grounded on the beach. For a while transports were in danger of becoming skeletons because raiding parties went out and tore timber from them. On the Western Front in Europe barbed wire entanglements were a vital defence in no-man's-land. In Gallipoli enemy trenches were closer together. This made it hard to put out wire entanglements. Just tapping in stakes to hold wire would alert Turks. The solution came from the beach workshop. Workers made wooden frames and wrapped barbed wire round and round them. Soldiers carried them up to the front line. At night they pushed them over trenches and as far out as possible. The Army issued hand grenades to Allied soldiers on the Western Front but Anzacs had to wait several months before they got any. In the meantime they set up a bomb factory. They made several brands. The most popular were from green fuse tins of 18-pounder guns or jam and tobacco tins, wire from hawsers off trawler wrecks on the beach, and packing of dry guncotton primer or half a stick of gelignite, a detonator and a few-seconds fuse, bullets and old nails. When guncotton and gelignite were hard to get, soldiers used powder explosive. To wrap the powder up, they used bits of shirt material. One day an Australian corporal had a brainwave. 'Why don't we fix a periscope to an ordinary rifle?' he asked. They had no mirrors but out at sea were a lot of transports waiting to unload supplies. A party got a ride out on a trawler and visited each transport. They took all the mirrors from cabins and saloons. Back at Anzac, sappers cut mirrors into small pieces and slipped pieces at angles into wooden frames attached to rifles. Soon soldiers all along the front line were using the new periscopic rifle. **Explain/ Describe/ Discuss** ... some of the challenges Anzacs faced and how they responded. **NET:** All sorts of vessels visited Gallipoli, such as warships, transports, lighters, pinnaces, steamboats. Find out about the different vessels and why only barges and rowing boats could come ashore. # Mental Stress ## Focus - Events have causes and effects. - People move between places, which has results for people and places. Anzacs always had to be alert for danger. For example, even though the ground was rough, winds were changeable, and Turkish trenches were close to those of Anzacs, there was always the fear that Turks might use gas as a weapon. Primitive gas helmets were sent from England. Anzacs never needed them. Turks and Anzacs took prisoners of war and kept them in camps which were mainly just enclosures. Some prisoners died. Turks had been warned about cannibals from the South Seas and Anzacs had been warned about being captured by fierce Turks. Both sides grew to respect fighting qualities of the other. Some captured Turks bowed and kissed the hands of their capturers. An example of the stress men lived under all the time was duty at Quinn's Post. The post was at the sharp point of the Anzac line and was the hardest post to defend. Access was a long stretch of steps made of brushwood. It was too steep for mules so soldiers had to carry up all supplies. As they were prepared to do anything to save Quinn's they had many trips in the dark carrying items such as bombs. The post was so close to Turkish trenches that it seemed a miracle Anzacs held it. If Turks had shelled it, the post would have vanished. But Turks could not risk shelling because it was too close to them. Anzacs thought that holding Quinn's was a symbol of holding Anzac. When Turks threw bombs some Anzacs caught them and threw them back. At some places they put up netting to stop bombs falling into trenches. Turks tried to tunnel and blow the post up. Anzacs decided to tunnel as well. There were no special tunnel companies but some soldiers were miners and tunnellers from places like Waihi and Westport. They tunnelled right round the front of the post and used the tunnel as a base to drive out more tunnels in the direction of the Turk's advancing tunnels. There were no listening devices so tunnellers had to guess when to lay a charge to attack Turkish tunnels. At the end of May a Turkish mine wrecked a bit of the post and in the fighting that followed Major Quinn was killed. The new commander of the post was Lieutenant-Colonel Malone of the Wellingtons. Under him the New Zealand Infantry Brigade and the New Zealand Engineers made it as safe as possible. **Explain/ Describe/ Discuss** ... what mental stress for soldiers must have been like. **NET:** Find out more about Quinn's Post and what happened there. # Maori at Gallipoli ## Focus - People move between places, which has results for people and places. - Events have causes and effects. In 1915, official documents referred to Maori as natives. The first Native Contingent sailed from Wellington in early 1915. Its motto was Te Hokowhitu a Tu, the 140 warriors of the war god Tu-mata-uenga. Its crest had two traditional Maori weapons, taiaha and tewhatewha, crossed through a crown. Britain worried about natives using weapons against Europeans. Some New Zealanders thought Maori should be an exception. The Minister of Defence wrote to Major-General Sir Alexander Godley: 'Although they are a coloured race I think it would be apparent on their arrival that they are different to the ordinary coloured race.' Despite other pleas for Maori to be allowed to fight in the front line, Godley got Maori soldiers sent to Malta for more training and garrison duties. The casualty list for Allied soldiers climbed. Gallipoli needed reinforcements. Britain had to change its mind about native people. The Native Contingent landed at Anzac Cove in July. A lot of their work there was as pioneers. Pioneers were not fighting units but a military labour force. They worked under fire from Turks and got wounded and faced hardship like all other soldiers. They did engineering jobs, dug trenches, built tracks and roads. They won admiration from soldiers for their super-human efforts such as dragging water tanks from the beach to Plugge's Plateau. Not all Maori were in the Native Contingent. Some had enlisted in provincial infantry battalions. They had been at Gallipoli since April 25. An example was Second Lieutenant Thomas (Hami) Grace of Wellington Battalion. He had played rugby for New Zealand Maori teams. At Gallipoli he was a good sniper. He was killed at Chunuk Bair. **Explain/ Describe/ Discuss** ... how experiences of Maori in the Native Contingent at Gallipoli differed to that of Maori in other infantry units. **NET:** Find out the death toll for Maori at Gallipoli and awards they won. # Transport and Communications ## Focus - People respond to challenges as individuals and groups. If a New Zealander owned a horse when he enlisted he joined the Mounted Rifles. Thousands of horses sailed to Egypt with the troops. But soldiers charging on horseback, called cavalry, were not suitable for Gallipoli. New Zealanders had to leave their horses behind in Egypt. Some other horses were landed for couriers to ride between headquarters in Anzac and Suvla. Mules were attached to the Indian Mule Cart Transport Corps and the Zion Mule Corps. With and without their carts, they carried supplies from beach to depots. Runners had the job of delivering messages the fastest way possible. The average life span of a runner at Gallipoli was said to be 24 hours. If a runner was sent down from the front line to the beach with a message asking for more ammunition or men he had no time to run along trenches. He had to go straight down and jump across them. Turks were good shots. There were no mobile phones or computers in 1915. Underwater cables let Sir Ian Hamilton's Headquarters at Imbros communicate by telephone to Anzac. Field telephones often broke down. Up on Chunuk Bair in August after New Zealanders attacked, Cyril Bassett managed to lay a telephone line from an old position to a new one. It was daytime and as Turks knew how important communications were, they kept firing at him. He stayed for almost three days fixing telephone lines. He said he was so short bullets just passed over him. For his work he won the Victoria Cross. The few British planes were based on Tenedo Island and later Imbros. They were too small and basic to be used for transport; the pilots took photos and observed. Turkish and German pilots sometimes threw long steel darts. Later in the campaign planes on both sides dropped tiny bombs. Once a Turkish plane appeared above a British football match on Tenedo. The pilot flew round and round and then flew off to sand dunes where he dropped his bombs. **Explain/ Describe/ Discuss** ... how the environment of Gallipoli, and technology of the time, made warfare different to that of today. **NET:** Find out what forms of transport and communication were used by the British at Helles. # The Donkey Men ## Focus - People pass on and look after culture and heritage. - People move between places which has results for people and places. Several donkeys were landed at Anzac. Some ran off into gullies. Private Simpson from the Australian Field Ambulance grabbed one and put a wounded soldier on its back. He took the donkey down to the beach and unloaded the soldier. From then on Simpson and the donkey worked together. The main tracks for bringing down wounded soldiers were Shrapnel Gully and Monash Gully. Turkish snipers fired on both gullies. Simpson put the donkey in a gully to keep it safe. He crawled up ridges to collect wounded soldiers. He and the donkey brought down 12 to 15 a day. On his return, Simpson always brought water up for wounded. Simpson may have used more than one donkey. He had pet names for it, or them, such as Duffy, Murphy, Abdul, Queen Elizabeth. The Indians called him 'Bahadur' which means bravest of the brave. Anzacs called him Scotty, Murphy, Simmie, the man with the donk. In May, Turks killed him. It is said that the donkey came down the track to the beach without Simpson. It carried a wounded soldier on its back. Dick Henderson was born in Waihi, New Zealand. He enlisted as a stretcher-bearer. He used a donkey to bring down wounded. A private took a photo of Henderson and his donkey. New Zealander Horace Moore-Jones was an official war artist on Gallipoli. He used the private's photo as a subject for a water-colour. He called it Simpson and his Donkey. This is why there is sometimes an argument over who is featured in the Moore-Jones painting. **Explain/ Describe/ Discuss** ... why the story of Simpson and his donkey became part of the culture and heritage of both Australia and New Zealand and why the Moore-Jones painting is an icon. **NET:** Find out what happened to Dick Henderson at Passchendaele, another battleground of World War I.