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out of place among the soldiers.
    The view from the top of Bean’s hill must have enthralled Keith Murdoch. Men were burrowed in their thousands into the side of the cliff opposite, their home when they were not in the front-line trenches. An Anglican chaplain, Walter (‘Bill’) Dexter likened the scene to his days in the ministry in Gippsland in Victoria, where forest workers camped and at the end of the day would make their camp fires to cook the evening meal and boil the billy. It was just like that on Anzac, Dexter wrote. The smoke from hundreds of fires drifting lazily upwards as men began to settle in for the night. Men yarned; checked their shirts and pants for lice; repaired their clothes or read their mail. Perhaps they read an Australian newspaper or magazine, weeks out of date, but a link with home nonetheless—apparently as occupied by the footy at home as with the Turks above and in front of them.
    Charles Bean was quite ill when Murdoch was on Anzac and would shortly be evacuated. Many of the men were sick, Bean told Murdoch, some of the best men too—illness had become a grave issue. There was an awful shortage of water and much of what was there was of doubtful quality and possibly harmful. There was little fresh food, Bean continued and no variety at all in the diet. As Bean was forced to lie-in for the rest of the time Murdoch was on the peninsula the question of the health of the troops was very much to the fore in their discussions. More needed to be done for the troops, Bean thought, and he feared the prospect of winter, the cold weather just a couple of months, or even a matter of weeks, away.
    In the few days he had Murdoch made his way around the Australian positions at Anzac. At Lone Pine he met up with General Harold Bridgwood (‘Hooky’) Walker, who was commanding the First Australian Division. The Australians had just won possession of the Pine—now a bulge in the Turkish line—after ferocious fighting there from 6 to 9 August.
    The ordinary soldier knew that the failure of the August offensive, except at Lone Pine, meant the continuation of the stalemate that had prevailed at Gallipoli since the second day of the fighting. Since then the Turks had settled behind their defensive line, as had the Australians and New Zealanders at Anzac and the British at Helles and now at Suvla. The August offensive—an attempt to push the Turks off the high ground and win the advantage by taking Chunuk Bair, a high point on the third ridge line, and Hill 971—was a sensible plan, indeed the only possible way that the Allies might have won at Gallipoli.
    These were the crucial points in the August offensive. The fighting within the Anzac lines, lower down the battlefield at Lone Pine and later at the Nek, was merely a feint designed to draw off Turkish troops from the heights and, by weakening the defences there, to give the advantage at Chunuk Bair to the Allies. Though a feint, the fighting at Lone Pine was not any less intense. Indeed it was ferocious, conducted largely underground in the Turkish trenches across three days and nights—seven Australians fighting there would be awarded the Victoria Cross. (None of these awards dated to the first hours of the fighting because no officer survived to make a recommendation.)

    PLATE 4 Keith Murdoch stands outside C.E.W. Bean’s dug-out. Tall, vigorous in attitude, hair closely cropped, earnest-looking, Murdoch was certainly not out of place among the soldiers. The view from the top of Bean’s hill must have enthralled Keith Murdoch: men were burrowed in their thousands into the side of the cliff. AWM Neg. No. A05396
    Hooky Walker was a British general who had replaced the Australian general William Bridges in charge of the First Australian Division when Bridges was killed by a sniper in early May. Walker had dropped back to command the First Brigade when James Legge, an Australian, took over the division but by