Chapter 64 – Jayjay

Charles Bean provides an account of the Armistice of 24 May 1915 in Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-18 , vol II (p. 167-168). Bean states that the armistice to bury the Turkish dead took place from 7:30am, and that the men “exchanged souvenirs, and, when at 4.30 both sides retired to their trenches, parted as friends.” Rifle fire started at 4:45pm.

A statement by Private Jack Nicholson of the 1st Battalion is included by Harvey Broadbent in The Boys Who Came Home, in relation to his memory of the armistice of 24 May 1915 (p. 75-76). Jack Nicholson states “When the armistice was set, the men were picked—all six-footers. No one under six foot went out…that was to make Johnny Turk think that we were all big blokes.”

Les Carlyon includes a quote from Australian Compton McKenzie recounting his experience of the armistice on 24 May 1915 in Gallipoli (p. 287): “Looking down I saw squelching up from the ground on either side of my boot like a rotten mango the deliquescent green and black flesh of a Turk’s head.”

Harvey Broadbent describes the scene following the 19 May Turkish offensive: “The putrefying corpses sent an acrid stench wafting over the battlefield.” And states that “Both sides planned to use the truce as an opportunity to see as much as they could of each other’s lines.” In Gallipoli – The Fatal Shore (p. 155)

The English officer Captain Aubrey Herbert provides a modest account of his involvement in arranging and overseeing the armistice of 24 May 1915 in his book Anzac, Mons and Kut.

In his role as translator, he includes the quotes from Turkish officers which have become well known, including “At this spectacle, even the most gentle must feel savage, and the most savage weep.” And “That’s politics. That’s diplomacy. God pity all of us poor soldiers.” (p. 117).