The Great Gallipoli Escape

By Jackie French

Renowned for her historical fiction titles, Jackie French now tells the story of the brilliant and famous evacuation of Gallipoli.

Sixteen-year-old Nipper and his Gallipoli mates Lanky, Spud, Bluey and Wallaby Joe are starving, freezing and ill-equipped. By November 1915 they know that that there is more to winning a war than courage. The Gallipoli campaign has been lost.

Nipper has played cricket with the Turks in the opposing dugout, dodged rocket fire and rescued desperate and drowning men when the blizzard snow melted. He is one of the few trusted with the secret kept from even most of the officers: how an entire army will vanish from the Peninsula over three impeccably planned nights.

Based on first-hand accounts of those extraordinary last weeks of the Gallipoli campaign, this is the fascinating 'lost story' of how 150,000 men – and their horses and equipment – were secretly moved to waiting ships without a single life lost. An unforgettable story told through the eyes of a boy who lied about his age to defend his country.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Apr 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781460714935

Jackie French

Jackie French AM is an award-winning writer, wombat negotiator, the 2014–2015 Australian Children's Laureate and the 2015 Senior Australian of the Year. In 2016 Jackie became a Member of the Order of Australia for her contribution to children's literature and her advocacy for youth literacy. She is regarded as one of Australia's most popular children's authors and writes across all genres — from picture books, history, fantasy, ecology and sci-fi to her much loved historical fiction for a variety of age groups. ‘A book can change a child's life. A book can change the world' was the primary philosophy behind Jackie's two-year term as Laureate. jackiefrench.com facebook.com/authorjackiefrench

Book preview

DEDICATION

To Bryan, Jack and Tom, and to ‘Pa Jack’, who

was there, and to all who try to stop a tragedy like

Gallipoli from happening again.

CONTENTS

Dedication

Prologue: The Cricket Match

Chapter 1: In the Trenches

Chapter 2: Joey

Chapter 3: Rumours

Chapter 4: Let’s Pretend

Chapter 5: Tricking the Enemy

Chapter 6: The Blizzard

Chapter 7: Facing the Impossible

Chapter 8: What Now?

Chapter 9: Orders and Secrets

Chapter 10: Getting Ready

Chapter 11: The Cricket Match

Chapter 12: Preparing to Leave

Chapter 13: Goodbye Gallipoli

Chapter 14: It’s All Over

Epilogue: Goodbye, Johnnie

Author’s Notes

Gallipoli Inventions

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Jackie French

Copyright

PROLOGUE

THE CRICKET MATCH

Merri Creek, Wombat Flats, New South Wales

A was the anguish that spread o’er my face

When I saw the remarkable look of this place.

B’s for ‘Beachy Bill’ who fired at my ship

Punctured the funnel and gave me the pip.

C was the ‘crump’ which went by with a screech

As I jumped from a lighter, and fell on the beach.

From Another Attempt at an Anzac Alphabet, by ‘Ubique’, 21st Indian Mountain Battery

The Anzac Book 1915

30 April 1915

Dear Johnny,

You’ll never guess what — your dad was eating lunch down by the wool shed yesterday and a great kangaroo came up behind him and grabbed his sandwich! It took one bite and spat it out. Kangaroos don’t like mutton and chutney! Your dad was most put out, but your gran and I laughed and laughed.

We got your postcard! It is wonderful to hear from you. It was a relief seeing the ticked boxes saying you are well and thinking of us. We would love a real letter but know it must be hard to find time and paper to write.

We are so proud of you. The newspapers are all full of how courageous our Anzac troops were at the landing at Gallipoli. They are calling you all ‘the bravest of the brave’. Grandma has put your postcard up on the mantelpiece next to the Jubilee jug, where everyone can see it.

Here are another two pairs of socks I knitted, and a belly band — it’s important to keep your kidneys warm — from Auntie Iris, and a plum pudding in a billy that you might find useful, and some notepaper, envelopes and two pencils. Grandma wanted to send you some of her date scones, but we explained how far away Gallipoli is. She is making you a fruitcake instead.

There is not much more news here. We are all well though Grandma’s knee is playing up again and we could use some rain. We got the best prices ever at the ram sale. The price of wool has gone through the roof with all the material needed for uniforms! Dad has bought enough wire to fence the creek flats. Everyone is trying to fence their farms now there aren’t enough men to work as shepherds, but the wombats keep digging holes under the fences that the lambs can get through. There’s one wombat who never gives up — your dad fills in the hole under the fence every day, and every night the wombat digs his way through again. We’ve decided to call him ‘Digger’. Like you brave lads he doesn’t let anything stop him.

Daisy has had four pups. We think the father might be a dingo but will keep one of the pups and try to train it up. Dad has managed to plough the top paddock though it is hard with only one horse now. Did I tell you the others have been taken by the army? He is putting the paddock down to turnips for winter feed.

We miss you terribly but are filled with pride. Dad and Grandma and Auntie Iris send their love. The Hendersons wish to be remembered, and the Camilleris and the Sommers. Katie O’Leary said to say hello, then said to send you her love. She has been helping your dad with the fencing. I think she is a very nice girl, no matter what some people say about red hair.

Your loving mother,

Mum

xxxxxx

oooooo

xxxxx

24 May 1915

D was the daring I failed to display

When fragments of shrapnel came whizzing my way.

E was the earth that I found in my hair.

As I woke in the morning and crawled from my lair.

F were the fleas, and also the flies

Who feed on a fellow wherever he lies.

From Another Attempt at an Anzac Alphabet

Nipper stood at the wicket, bat in hand, eyes on the ball. Sunlight poured like butter onto the stony ridge. Above him seagulls swirled white against a blue-tinted sky. Far below the tiny waves lapped against the golden sand of the cove.

Mehmet One bowled the ball towards him. Nipper raised his bat.

THWACK!

The ball rose high, then down, soaring over their trench and down the cliffs, impossible to catch.

‘A sixer!’ yelled Spud, waving the flies away from his face.

‘Run!’ called Lanky from the opposite wicket.

‘Go, Nipper!’ screamed Bluey. Wallaby Joe gave Nipper a thumbs up from the sidelines. Wallaby Joe wore the Anzac summer Gallipoli uniform: boots, trousers cut off at the knees to make shorts, his identity disc and a sunburned nose under a smear of mud.

Like most of the men, he’d stitched a bit of cloth under his forage cap to protect his neck from the sun, already fierce even in spring. He’d clipped his hair as short as possible — they all had, to try to get rid of the lice.

Suddenly an unknown hand threw the ball back up the cliff.

The ball thudded on the rocky ground. Mehmet Two ran forward and caught it. He grinned at Nipper. ‘Bende ne var, Johnnie!’ he yelled triumphantly. He tossed the ball to Mehmet One.

Mehmet One lined up to bowl again, his face as tanned and filthy as the Aussies’, his grin as wide as theirs.

Nipper held the bat steady, enjoying the spring warmth on his bare chest. Lanky had been out for eighteen today, but Nipper had made ninety-eight not out in the last cricket match at Wombat Flats. He’d show them what he could do . . .

Thwack! The ball soared over the fielders and landed behind a brushwood fence next to one of the Turkish trenches.

‘Nipper! Spud!’ Curly’s voice came urgently from the trench. ‘Captain Withy’s coming up the gully! Skedaddle!’

Nipper quickly threw the bat into the nearest bit of branch. It wasn’t really a bat, but a bit of the packing crate that held the bully beef cans. Now it would just look like a bit of wood again. The wickets were sticks of packing crate, too. Nipper gave them a quick kick with his boot. Now there was no sign that an illegal cricket match had ever been played here on the heights of Gallipoli. But what about the ball? It was still over on the Turkish side. Nipper was proud of that ball. He’d rolled mud and straw into the right shape, and let it dry in the sun, then tied a bit of torn-off shirt he’d found in the trench and tied the whole lot up with string.

Nipper shoved it into the pocket of his shorts then glanced at Mehmet Two apologetically, gesturing down as the captain strode up the gully.

Mehmet Two smiled. He looked as if he was in his late twenties, the same age as Lanky and Curly. Nipper wondered what his real name was. ‘Hoşçakal, Johnnie,’ Mehmet Two said, glancing down at the captain as if he understood exactly. Mehmet One had already vanished between the sandbags that led to the narrow sap and then to the enemy trenches.

Nipper watched as Mehmet Two dashed towards the Turkish trench about sixty yards from the Australians’, past the line of flags with their red crescents set out for today’s truce.

Nipper hesitated in the muck-stained ground between the trenches. Fraternising with the enemy was a court-martial offence. It might even get him shot. The men had also been ordered not to leave the trenches during today’s truce, which had been arranged so the men could bury the bodies from both sides, piled four deep in places, rotting, swelling and even exploding when anyone trod on them in the heat.

Only the burial parties had leave to be outside, in case emerging from the trenches gave the Allied position and numbers away to the enemy. It was a sensible order, too. Many of the Turkish trenches had been invisible before the truce: it was only when lines of Turks emerged to sit on the edges that the Allied army had realised how many of the enemy they were facing.

But there’d been no officers to see them today. When Nipper and Curly had come out of the trench to have a bit of batting practice, Mehmet One and Two had cautiously emerged from their trench, then joined in when the Aussies grinned at them. It seemed that Turks liked cricket too. And Nipper’s ball was still in their trench! Nipper didn’t want to lose that ball. The trenches were too narrow for a game of cricket, but they sometimes had a bit of a kick around down on the beach when the firing was slack.

Captain Withy was hidden for a moment behind a brushwood fence. Nipper raced over to the Turkish trench and gave a half-salute to the startled faces looking up at him. Yet there was Mehmet Two, holding the ball. Mehmet Two copied Nipper’s half-salute then tossed the ball to him. Nipper caught it gratefully. It had cracked a bit with that last shot, but he was pretty sure a slather of mud would fix it.

There was no sign of any German officers — they must all be down with the burial parties. Nipper doubted any of the Turks would have joined the game with officers watching. Nipper scrambled past their own line of Red Cross flags then slipped down into his own trench just as Captain Withy wound up the narrow sap and up into the