Chapter 77 – Jayjay

Arthur Butler describes in Official History of the Australian Army Medical Services, 1914-1918, Volume 1, Part 1: The Gallipoli Campaign (p. 293) how engineers tunnelled and trenched forward to join the new position taken at Lone Pine, and how these new connections were used to retrieve wounded after dawn on 7 August, including those of 1 Battalion. Butler states that regimental aid officers from 1 Battalion worked from the original line, and from the old front line, wounded were cleared by the 3rd and 1st Field Ambulance working in relay. Butler describes how many walking wounded reached floating hospitals while stretcher cases (including those with fractured legs) accumulated on shore where little more than first aid was given. Hospital ships took lighter wounded than was intended and filled quickly (p. 309-310).  Mental cases”, including traumatic neurasthenia and other psycho-neuroses were given the “unfortunate generic designation of ‘shell shock’” and these “were to give the Great War its most characteristic medical feature”. State lunacy laws in NSW and other states were relaxed to allow these mental cases to be retained without certification of insanity, however, the conditions were not well understood and no special arrangements were made for treatment. (p. 541).

Michael Tyquin includes a map in Gallipoli – An Australian Medical Perspective (p. 45) showing the medical evacuation route from Lone Pine to Anzac Cove via Victoria Gully during the August 1915 offensive. The map shows advanced dressing stations around 100 yards behind the regimental aid posts at the old front line. Tyquin states that field ambulance gave morphine for pain and wrote out a ticket with patient details (p. 62-63). Morphine often caused vomiting (p. 64). Soldiers with a broken leg often had the foot of the injured leg tied to the handle of the stretcher and were carried head first down the gully to provide automatic traction (p. 68). Hospital ships off Anzac Cove were full by the end of 7 August, and there were over 1000 wounded lying on the beach by the end of 8 August (p. 49). Tyquin concludes that “…the August Offensive suffered some of the same shortcomings seen in April. There were insufficient hospital ships and small boats, a lack of effective communications, and a shortage of stretchers.” (p. 135).

AWM photo C01127 shows an Australian advanced dressing station in August 1915. The basic dugout has a tin roof and a stack of stretchers out front.

Peter Rees describes in The Other Anzacs – Nurses at War, 1914-1918 how the hospital ships were anchored about half a mile from the firing line, close enough to hear a bugle sounded each time a lighter left the shore (p. 99). A nurse’s account describes the ticket with the nature and severity of the wound being pinned or tied to the front of wounded soldiers (p. 55).

The expression “bastard of a place” is taken from a diary entry by Trooper Ion Idriess of the 5th Australian Light Horse Regiment, when describing frustration at the flies that swarmed into his jam and mouth while attempting to eat in at Lone Pine in September 1915. Idriess concludes that “Of all the bastards of places this is the greatest bastard in the world.” in The Desert Column , 1932, p. 42.