Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

George's enlistment story is included in the book "Citizen to Soldier" by J N I Dawes & L L Robson; he is referred to on page 214

The first real test of my skills as a storyteller was interviewing Gallipoli veteran George Laslett. The experience not only helped me find my voice as a writer, but taught me valuable lessons about being a journalist and the responsibilities that come with it.
I was only about 18 when I met George - very young, very green, not unlike the young men that stormed the beach at Anzac Cove on April 25, 1915. By then 88 years old and Mount Gambier's last surviving Anzac, George had just released a modest book of memories and sketches. I was given the job of writing about it for The Border Watch at Mount Gambier.
I sat with George in the paper's small, crowded newsroom, as he explained in considerable detail what daily life was like in the trenches. He spoke with a frankness rare among returned servicemen, and it shocked me to the soles of my sheltered-country-girl boots.
George was born in 1893, at Allendale East, south of Mount Gambier. He left school just before his thirteenth birthday and went to work on the family farm. But George was a bright lad, and despite his minimal education he had ambitions to be a teacher. At the age of 21, he passed an examination and was accepted into teachers' college in Adelaide. A month after he started his training, war broke out so George left his dreams behind him, and in January 1915 enlisted with the Light Horse.
The young soldier first set foot on the sands of Anzac Cove in late August 1915, four months into the campaign. He recalled landing at about three o'clock in the morning, under heavy shell fire. After struggling ashore with a full load of equipment, he and his mates rested on the beach, while they waited for orders. Later that day George was feeling extremely ill so he reported to the doctor only to be diagnosed with measles. He was evacuated to a hospital ship and put into isolation. Then he was taken to Lemnos, where the Australians had set up a hospital under "very primitive conditions".
George returned to Gallipoli at the end of September, just in time for his 22nd birthday. He spent the day struggling to find his unit, as he worked his way along Shrapnel Gully, the 'highway' that acted as a conduit for men and supplies. As the name implied it was far from safe - Turkish shells burst overhead and snipers took aim from above. George recalled seeing stretcher bearers removing the bodies of four men who had been killed while playing cards in their dug-out. He took particular note because they were the first dead soldiers he had seen. They were far from being the last.
George eventually found his squadron near the Apex, about a mile from the beach, near the junction of Cheshire Ridge and Rhododendron Ridge. The highest point held by the Anzacs, this small patch of ground overlooked a deep gully, filled with hundreds of bodies following heavy fighting the month before between New Zealanders and Turks during the Battle of Chunuk Bair. Looking through field glasses George spotted one particularly grim sight - foes frozen together in death, a New Zealander suspended in a stooped position above a Turk, both held in place by their rifles and the bayonets thrust through their bodies.
Even though it was the highest point held by the Anzacs, the Apex was overlooked by the Turks who bombarded it daily with rapid shell fire, especially when anyone emerged from their dugouts to go to the cook house. George's initial dug-out comprised a shallow hole with a blanket for a roof, kept in position by sandbags. At one stage he tried to dig a connecting trench to the main trench to make it safer to move into position, but there were too many buried bodies in the way. This was one of George's most distressing memories. With limited opportunity and ground to bury the dead, it was common to unearth bodies when digging trenches, and living with exposed body parts showing through the trench walls.
He was particularly scathing about British command and the tactics employed, and the living conditions he and his fellow soldiers were forced to endure. Limited blankets in the colder months, poor hygiene, and appalling rations, particularly the bully beef, which was stored in cases, sitting in the sun. "The very name of the brand Fray Bentos still leaves an unpleasant memory. Bread was rarely issued as this was replaced by Army biscuits, mostly of unbelievable hardness. It was not unusual to pound them in a sand bag to break them up. Water was very scarce - heavily chlorinated... and issued at the rate of one pint per day per man, and this was to cover eating, shaving, cooking and drinking."
Washing was out of the question. George slept in his clothes, still wearing his web equipment with 90 rounds of ammunition, and his rifle in readiness in case of attack. Dysentery and jaundice were prevalent, and plagues of flies and heavy infestations of lice added to the men's enormous discomfort. "But through it all the dry army humour prevailed and the louse hunt turned into a competition as to who had the greatest number of kills," George wrote. Further into the campaign George volunteered to be a machine gunner. His daytime post was Table Top. He recalled a blizzard in late November, when the water he was carrying froze in its tin and his overcoat was solid with ice from the waist down.
When it came time for the famous evacuation in December, George was one of the last to leave. As a machine gunner, he was responsible for keeping the Turks in check. "I can remember the hand-shakes of the men prior to the final move and their 'See you later,' knowing full well that they thought as we did that our chances were very small... Very heavy casualties on the final night were expected, stretchers were stacked at different places alongside the paths to the beach so that the wounded could be carried." As history recounts, not a life was lost.
George remained the Middle East for the rest of the war, training machine gunners in both the Australian and British armies. He took some leave in England before eventually getting back to Mount Gambier in August 1919. The following year he married Elsie Earl, and took up land at OB Flat as part of a repatriation scheme.
In 1955 George returned to Gallipoli for a ceremony marking the 40th anniversary. He was touched by the respect shown by their Turkish hosts, but he found it surreal to be sitting down to an official lunch, set out resplendently on green turf brought in for the occasion, laid over the very spot where so many of his mates had died. It also "seemed strange to walk along the skyline and over areas that cost so many lives to gain, or were never gained," he wrote.
Liz Harfull