Unorthodox but Stanch
“And of their discipline, which was attacked because it was sometimes unorthodox, what better can be said than what was told in the undying story of the Southland? The Southland was torpedoed by a German submarine in the Ægean Sea, when conveying the 21st Australian Infantry Battalion and part of the 23rd, 1,500 strong, from Alexandria to Mudros. They were Victorian country boys, recruited for the most part from the farms and stations of the Wimmera and the Goulburn Valley. Panic ensued among the ill-assorted crew of this converted German liner. Three of the four holds filled with water, the hatches of the hold first damaged were blown out and in the water there the Australians could see the dead bodies floating of their comrades killed by the explosion. No one thought that the ship could keep for long above water. But the soldiers stood at their stations. They waited for their turn. One went to the piano, and played favorite airs. Others, when volunteers were asked for, jumped into the water to right overturned boats. When at last all the men were off the stricken vessel, standing on half-submerged rafts, clinging to the edges of boats, swimming alongside improvised supports, volunteers were called for to stoke the ship into port, all the men within hearing offered for the hazardous task. Six officers and seventeen men climbed the rope ladders again, and with her bows under water and her stern low down, the ship was brought into Mudros and beached. It was a triumphant vindication of the discipline of Dominion troops. ‘The discipline was perfect,’ wrote Captain C. E. W. Bean, official reporter at Anzac. ‘The men turned out immediately. There had been boat drill on the voyage and the men ran straight to their proper places and lined up.’”
This praise of discipline which, though “unorthodox,” meets and never fails to meet the required end, reads quite as if it had been written of the boys of the United States’ expeditionary force.