many of the details of the brilliant withdrawal from the Peninsula, which he carried out as Commander of the Dardanelles Army.
The Anzac record on the Somme was equal to their record at Gallipoli. The capture of Pozieres and Mouquet Farm was an Australian achievement, and Flers fell to the New Zealanders. Since then, both in the German Retreat and in the later stages of the Battle of Arras (especially in the Hindenburg line at Bullecourt), they have shown the same fury and steadiness in attack. An observer with them on the Somme has thus described their behaviour :
"Hour after hour, day and night, with increasing intensity as the time went on, the enemy rained heavy shell into the area. Now he would send them crashing in on a line south of the road eight heavy shells at a time, minute after minute, followed by a burst of shrapnel. Now he would place a curtain straight across this valley or that till the sky and landscape were blotted out, except for fleeting glimpses seen as through a lift of fog Day and night the men worked through it, fighting the horrid machinery far over the horizon as if they were fighting Germans hand to hand; building up whatever it battered down; buried some of them, not once, but again and again and again. What is a barrage against such troops? They went through it as you would go through a summer shower, too proud to bend their heads, many of them, because their mates were looking. I am telling you of things I have seen. As one of the best of their officers said to me: 'I have to walk about as if I liked it; what else can you do when your own men teach you to?' "
