The beach at Anzac Cove was congested with boats and barges offloading men and supplies. Overcrowding remained a problem inside the tiny Anzac perimeter until the Sari Bair Offensive in August 1915.
Life for New Zealand soldiers on Gallipoli was tough. Packed inside the tiny Anzac perimeter they endured extreme weather and primitive living conditions during their eight months on the peninsula.
During summer temperatures soared; winter brought rain, snow and bone-chilling winds.
After a few months in crowded conditions on the peninsula, soldiers began to come down with dysentery and typhoid because of inadequate sanitation, unburied bodies and swarms of flies.
Poor food, water shortages and exhaustion reduced the men's resistance to disease.
LIVING CONDITIONS
The area the New Zealanders and Australians at Anzac Cove occupied was tiny -- less than 6sq km. Conditions were harsh. The area had no natural water so there were constant shortages. Water, food, ammunition and other supplies arrived on ships and were landed on the beach with great difficulty.
Whenever possible, whether in the line or out of it, a man paired off with a mate and established a 'bivvy'. With pick and shovel a cut was made in a slope that gave protection from the bullets of the snipers, and if possible from the bursts of shrapnel. A couple of salvaged oil sheets pinned across with salvaged bayonets made a roof that would keep out the dew at night and the sun glare by day. Furnishings consisted of commandeered sandbags or old overcoats for softening the hardness of the baked floor, a cut down petrol tin for a 'bath' and whole one for storing water.
SUPPLIES
Poor food contributed to a general deterioration in the men's health. Troops lived on tinned bully beef, army biscuits and jam; fresh fruit and vegetables were non-existent. Sanitation was also a problem. With up to 25,000 men packed into such a cramped space, latrines filled up fast and there was limited space for new ones. Body lice became endemic, and diarrhoea, dysentery and enteric fever (typhoid) flourished in the unsanitary conditions.
Bully beef and biscuits. You couldn't eat your biscuit dry. It was like chewing rock. You'd break your teeth on the biscuits if you got stuck into them. You had to soak it. For pudding we used to have biscuit soaking in water and the jam all mixed up together. They issued you with a small tin of jam.
The stench of the dead made living conditions even worse. Unburied corpses littered no man's land, and others lay in shallow graves close to the dugouts of the living. I
n the searing heat of summer, the rotting corpses, food and body waste were a breeding ground for flies and the diseases they spread. Swarms of flies tormented the men, turning simple tasks such as preparing and eating food into horrible ordeals.
Psychological pressures magnified the physical hardships. Service in the front line was always dangerous.
Opposing trenches were extremely close, barely 4m apart in some places. At this range enemy hand-grenades, or "bombs", caused a steady stream of casualties. Danger also lurked behind the front line. No place within the tiny perimeter was safe from enemy fire, and Ottoman shells and snipers took a toll of troops in support areas.
MEDICAL TREATMENT
For those wounded on Gallipoli the wait for treatment and evacuation was often long and agonising. Compared with the organisation and efficiency of the Western Front, medical services at Gallipoli were a shambles. The evacuation framework for casualties -- moving wounded from field ambulances to casualty clearing stations and then military hospitals -- fell apart, as poor planning and the sheer scale of casualties overwhelmed the available medical resources.
During the April landings and the August offensive the advanced dressing stations in the gullies and the casualty clearing stations on the beach could not cope with the large numbers of wounded.
The stations themselves often came under fire because of their exposed positions. From the field ambulances and casualty clearing stations, wounded were evacuated by boat to hospital ships and ambulance transports -- dubbed "black ships" -- waiting offshore. Poor co-ordination and mismanagement meant that many serious cases were left on the beach too long; once on board they found appalling conditions.
There were no beds. Some were still on the stretchers on which they had been carried down from the hills, some on the palliasses thrown down on the hard decks. The few Red Cross orderlies were terribly overworked. For 12 hours on end an orderly would be alone with 60 desperately wounded men in a hold dimly lit by one arc lamp. None of them had been washed and many were still in their torn and bloodstained uniforms. There were bandages that had not been touched for two or three days -- and men who lay in an indescribable mess of blood and filth. Most of them were in great pain, many could get no ease or rest, and all were parched with thirst. Those who slept dreamed troubled dreams and those waked were in torment.
The ships transported wounded to hospitals in Egypt, Lemnos, Malta or even England. Such was the chaos that relatively lightly wounded men ended up in England, while convalescents were sent back to Gallipoli.
UNIFORM
Infantrymen carried a rifle, ammunition, bayonet, water bottle, entrenching tool, haversack, and a pack containing more than 30kg of extra rations, water, firewood and clothing. Individual food rations, known as iron rations, consisted of tinned bully beef, hard biscuits, tea, sugar and beef cubes.
Soldiers attached most of this kit to webbing, which they wore over their uniforms.
Most New Zealanders on Gallipoli wore Territorial Force uniforms introduced in 1912. These were a darker shade of green than the khaki-brown British uniforms and had coloured piping on the epaulettes to distinguish branches of service.
As the campaign dragged on to summer, comfort and practicality became more important to the Anzacs than maintaining dress regulations and appearance. Soldiers stitched bits of cloth to the back of their peaked "forage caps" for better sun protection, rolled up or cut off shirtsleeves, and turned trousers into shorts. Most kept their hair short to deter lice.
The Gallipoli campaign, nzhistory.net.nz/war/ (Ministry for Culture and Heritage)