of our nation, mateship, honour and all that. Maybe Gloria was just getting in early. But not as early as another equally famous - or perhaps infamous - Alan. Bond. As Australia II contested the America's Cup in 1983 the then businessman, later jailbird, said: ''We had our backs to the wall there and we won that one.'' He was talking about Gallipoli where, for the record, ''we'' didn't actually win but retreated from, at night, just before Christmas 1915. But only after 8141 Australians were killed in an eight-month stand-off that achieved little or nothing. The Australians' lot was tough in World War I. Not just at Gallipoli but in Egypt, Palestine and Syria (where about 1400 Australians died) and the European Western Front (where some 46,000 were killed, 18,000 of whom remain missing or could not be personally identified at death). Trench humour was, according to the returned, a fatalistic way of coping with watching friends and enemies die, with mud, heat, flies, the smell of rotting flesh and the imperative to kill to save oneself. It wasn't unique to Australians; Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front attests to the acerbic gallows humour of the Germans. This week I've been rereading the diary of Trooper Ernest Pauls of the 12th Australian Light Horse Regiment. Pauls, from Dorrigo, fought in Gallipoli and Palestine. On September 28, 1915, he wrote at Gallipoli: ''Had some successful sniping at Turks today. Gave one a headache from a .303 pill.''