“What about a drop of water, Digger?”
Water shortages were a constant problem for the thousands of men based at Gallipoli in 1915. Natural water was scarce on the peninsula and attempts to solve the problem by using water condenser units to convert sea water for drinking proved inadequate. Water supplies, often from as far away as Egypt, had to be brought in by boat and landed on the beach, sometimes under fire. Then the various containers had to be dragged over the rugged landscape to the thirsty men in their trenches.
The unidentified New Zealand veteran in this interview recalls how the mateship between Kiwis and Australians meant they sometimes gave each other preferential treatment with water rations.
Year:1915 (Recorded 1968)
Location:Gallipoli Peninsula, Turkey
“What about a drop of water, Digger?”
Water shortages were a constant problem for the thousands of men based at Gallipoli in 1915. Natural water was scarce on the peninsula and attempts to solve the problem by using water condenser units to convert sea water for drinking proved inadequate. Water supplies, often from as far away as Egypt, had to be brought in by boat and landed on the beach, sometimes under fire. Then the various containers had to be dragged over the rugged landscape to the thirsty men in their trenches.
The unidentified New Zealand veteran in this interview recalls how the mateship between Kiwis and Australians meant they sometimes gave each other preferential treatment with water rations.
Year: 1915 (Recorded 1968)
Length: 00:38
Source: Radio New Zealand Collection, Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision
Catalogue Reference: 247794 ANZAC: the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps at Gallipoli. A documentary by Laurie Swindell, 1969.
Location: Gallipoli Peninsula, Turkey
Image Title: A fatigue party of New Zealand Māori soldiers drag a large water tank up the hill from Anzac Cove onto a terrace built on the seaward side of the slope running up to Plugge's Plateau.
Image Source: Courtesy Australian War Memorial https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C01812/
Although interviewed in their old age, many veterans could still remember the thirst they suffered at Gallipoli. The heat, and their salty diet of tinned bully beef, dry ship’s biscuits and occasionally salted bacon, only made it worse. Their drinking water, sent from Lemnos Island and Egypt, was strongly tainted with kerosene, benzene or petrol from the containers it was shipped in. A lucky few men recalled their excitement at getting water which had been shipped in old rum barrels!
Once the water containers were landed on the beach at Anzac Cove, they had to be dragged up the steep hills and gullies to the trenches. Mules and donkeys were used, and the men themselves would carry two full kerosene tins hung from long poles carried over their shoulders.
An Australian soldier recalled seeing members of the Māori Contingent “hauling up one of these big (water storage) tanks … all yelling and puffing. Great big men. Golly! That tank fairly flew up. All Australia stood still to watch and afterwards gave them a cheer.”(1)
The use of the nickname “Digger” came into its own during the First World War, although the term had been used on both sides of the Tasman since the previous century, possibly because of the gold-mining heritage of both countries. Soldiers from Australia and New Zealand called themselves and each other diggers, but troops from other countries such as Britain sometimes referred to the New Zealanders as ‘Kiwis” and used “Digger” for Australians. After the war, returned veterans sometimes referred to each other as “old Digs.”
1. The Gallipoli Diary of Sergeant Lawrence of the Australian Engineers, Sir Ronald East (ed), Melbourne 1983, p.55