Covering Column marched north to the Chailak Dere. A large body crossed
this Dere and marched on, but the rest turned up the Dere and soon came
to a barbed wire entanglement which blocked the ravine. They had met the
Turks' barbed wire before, on Anzac Day, and had won through it, but
this wire in the Dere was new to their experience; it was meant rather
as a permanent work than as an obstruction. It was secured to great
balks or blinders of pine, six or eight feet high, which stood in a rank
twenty or thirty deep right across the ravine. The wire which crossed
and criss-crossed between these balks was as thick as a man's thumb and
profusely barbed. Beyond it lay a flanking trench, held by a strong
outpost of Turks, who at once opened fire. This, though not unexpected,
was a difficult barrier to come upon in the darkness of a summer night,
and here, as before, at the landing of the Worcester Regiment at W
beach, men went forward quietly, without weapons, to cut the wire for
the others. They were shot down, but others took their places, though
the Turks, thirty steps away on the other side of the gulley, had only
to hold their rifles steady and pull their triggers to destroy them.
This holding up in the darkness by an unseen hidden enemy and an
obstacle which needed high explosive shell in quantity caused heavy loss
and great delay. For a time there was no getting through; but then with
the most desperate courage and devotion, a party of engineers cleared
the obstacle, the Turks were routed, and a path made for the attackers.
This success opened up the mouth of the Chailak Dere.
Meanwhile those who had marched across this Dere and gone on towards
Suvla, swung round to the right to clear the Turks from Bauchop's Hill,
which overlooks the Chailak Dere from the north. Bauchop's Hill (a rough
country even for Gallipoli) is cleft by not less than twenty great
gullies, most of them forked, precipitous, overgrown and heaped with
rocks. The New Zealanders scrambled up it from the north, got into a
maze of trenches, not strongly held, beat the Turks out of them,
wandered south across the neck or ridge of the hill, discovering Turk
trenches by their fire, and at last secured the whole hill.
This success, besides securing the Chailak Dere from any assault from
the north, secured the south flank of the Aghyl Dere beyond it.
Meanwhile the Left Covering Column (mainly Welshmen) which for some time
had halted at Old No. 3 Post, waiting for the sound of battle to tell
them that the Turks on Bauchop's Hill were engaged, marched boldly on
the Aghyl Dere, crossed it in a rush, taking every Turk trench in the
way, then stormed the Turk outpost on Damakjelik Bair, going on from
trench to trench in the dark guided by the flashes of the rifles, till
the whole hill was theirs. This success opened up the Aghyl Dere to the
attacking column.
As the troops drew their breath in the still night on the little hill
which they had won, they heard about three miles away a noise of battle
on the seacoast to their left. This noise was not the nightly "hate" of
the monitors and destroyers but an irregular and growing rifle fire.
This, though they did not know it, was the beginning of the landing of
the new Divisions, with their 30,000 men, at Suvla Bay.
For the moment, Suvla was not the important point in the battle. The
three Deres were the important points, for up the three Deres, now
cleared of Turks, our Attacking Columns were advancing to the assault.
By this time however, the Turks were roused throughout their line. All
the Anzac position from Tasmania Post to Table Top was a blaze of battle
to contain them before our trenches, but they knew now that their right
was threatened and their reserves were hurrying out to meet us before we
had gained the crests. Our Right Attacking Column (of English and New
Zealand troops) went up the Sazli Beit and Chailak Deres, deployed
beyond Table Top and stormed Rhododendron Spur, fighting for their lives
every inch of the way. The Left Column (mainly Indians and Australians)
pressed up the Aghyl, into the stony clefts of its upper forks, and so,
by rock, jungle, heartbreaking cliff and fissure to the attack of Hill
Q, and the lower slopes of Sari. They, too, were fighting for their
lives. Their advance was across a scrub peopled now by little clumps of
marksmen firing from hiding. When they deployed out of the Deres, to
take up their line of battle, they linked up with the Right Assaulting
Column, and formed with them a front of about a mile, stretching from
the old Anzac position to within a mile of the crests which were the
prize. By this time the night was over, day was breaking, the Turks were
in force, and our attacking columns much exhausted, but there was still
breath for a last effort. Now, with the breath, came a quick
encouragement, for looking down from their hillsides they could see
Suvla Bay full of ships, the moving marks of boats, dotted specks of men
on the sandhills, and more ships on the sea marching like chariots to
the cannon. In a flash, as happens when many minds are tense together,
they realised the truth. A new landing was being made. All along the
coast by the Bay the crackle and the flash of firing was moving from the
sea, to shew them that the landing was made good, and that the Turks
were falling back. Hardening their hearts at this sight of help coming
from the sea the Australians and Sikhs with the last of their strength
went at Koja Chemen Tepe, and the New Zealanders upon their right rose
to the storm of Chunuk.
It was not to be. The guns behind them backed them. They did what mortal
men could do, but they were worn out by the night's advance, they could
not carry the two summits. They tried a second time to carry Chunuk; but
they were too weary and the Turks in too great strength; they could not
get to the top. But they held to what they had won; they entrenched
themselves on the new line, and there they stayed, making ready for the
next attack.
Two or three have said to me: "They ought not to have been exhausted;
none of them had marched five miles." It is difficult to answer such
critics patiently, doubly difficult to persuade them, without showing
them the five miles. There comes into my mind, as I write, the image of
some hills in the west of Ireland, a graceful and austere range, not
difficult to climb, seemingly, and not unlike these Gallipoli hills, in
their look of lying down at rest. The way to those hills is over some
miles of scattered limestone blocks, with gaps between them full of
scrub, gorse, heather, dwarf-ash and little hill-thorn, and the
traveller proceeds, as the Devil went through Athlone, "in standing
lepps." This journey to the hills is the likest journey (known to me) to
that of the assaulting columns. Like the Devil in Athlone the assaulting
columns had often to advance "in standing lepps," but to them the
standing lepp came as a solace, a rare, strange and blessed respite,
from forcing through scrub by main strength, or scaling a crag of rotten
sandstone, in pitch darkness, in the presence of an enemy. For an armed
force to advance a mile an hour by day over such a country is not only
good going, but a great achievement; to advance four miles in a night
over such a country, fighting literally all the way, often hand to hand,
and to feel the enemy's resistance stiffening and his reserves arriving,
as the strength fails and the ascent steepens, and yet to make an effort
at the end, is a thing unknown in the history of war. And this first
fourteen hours of exhausting physical labour was but the beginning. The
troops, as they very well knew, were to have two or three days more of
the same toil before the battle could be ended, one way or the other. So
after struggling for fourteen hours with every muscle in their bodies,
over crags and down gullies in the never-ceasing peril of death, they
halted in the blaze of noon and drew their breath. In the evening, as
they hoped, the men from Suvla would join hands and go on to victory
with them; they had fought the first stage of the battle, the next stage
was to be decisive.
The heat of this noon of August 7th on those sandy hills was a scarcely
bearable torment.
Meanwhile, at Suvla, the left of the battle, the 11th Division, had
landed in the pitch-darkness, by wading ashore, in five feet of water,
under rifle fire, on to beaches prepared with land mines. The first
boat-loads lost many men from the mines and from the fire of snipers,
who came right down to the beach in the darkness and fired from the
midst of our men. These snipers were soon bayoneted, our men formed for
the assault in the dark and stormed the Turk outpost on Lala Baba there
and then. While Lala Baba was being cleared other battalions moved north
to clear the Turk from the neighbourhood of the beach on that side. The
ground over which they had to move is a sand-dune-land, covered with
gorse and other scrub, most difficult to advance across in a wide
extension. About half a mile from the beach the ground rises in a roll
of whale-back, known on the battle plans as Hill 10. This hill is about
three hundred yards long and thirty feet high. At this whale-back (which
was entrenched) the Turks rallied on their supports; they had, perhaps,
a couple of thousand men and (some say) a gun or two, and the dawn broke
before they could be rushed. Their first shells upon our men set fire to
the gorse, so that our advance against them was through a blazing common
in which many men who fell wounded were burnt to death or suffocated.
The Turks, seeing the difficulties of the men in the fire, charged with
the bayonet, but were themselves charged and driven back in great
disorder; the fire spread to their hill and burned them out of it. Our
men then began to drive the Turks away from the high ridges to the north
of Suvla. The 10th Division began to land while this fight was still in
progress.
This early fighting had won for us a landing-place at Suvla and had
cleared the ground to the north of the bay for the deployment for the
next attack. This was to be a swinging round of two Brigades to the
storm of the hills directly to the east of the Salt Lake. These hills
are the island-like double-peaked Chocolate Hill (close to the lake) and
the much higher and more important hills of Scimitar Hill (or Hill 70)
and Ismail Oglu Tepe (Hill 100) behind it. The Brigade chosen for this
attack were the 31st (consisting of Irish Regiments) belonging to the
10th Division, and the 32nd (consisting of Yorkshire and North of
England Regiments) belonging to the 11th Division. The 32nd had been
hotly engaged since the very early morning, the 31st were only just on
shore. The storm was to be pushed from the north, and would, if
successful, clear the way for the final thrust, the storm of Koja-Chemen
Tepe from the northwest.
This thrust from Suvla against Koja Chemen was designed to complete and
make decisive the thrust already begun by the Right and Left Attacking
Columns. The attack on Chocolate Hill, Scimitar Hill and Ismail Oglu was
to make that thrust possible by destroying forever the power of the Turk
to parry it. The Turk could only parry it by firing from those hills on
the men making it. It was therefore necessary to seize those hills
before the Turk could stop us. If the Turks seized those hills before
us, or stopped us from seizing them, our troops could not march from
Suvla to take part in the storm of Koja Chemen. If we seized them before
the Turks, then the Turks could not stop us from crossing the valley to
that storm. The first problem at Suvla therefore was not so much to win
a battle as to win a race with the Turks for the possession of those
hills; the winning of the battle could be arranged later. Our failure to
win that race brought with it our loss of the battle. The next chapter
in the story of the battle is simply a description of the losing of a
race by loss of time.
Now the giving of praise or blame is always easy, but the understanding
of anything is difficult. The understanding of anything so vast, so
confused, so full of contradiction, so dependent on little things
(themselves changing from minute to minute, the coward of a moment ago
blazing out into a hero at the next turn) as a modern battle is more
than difficult. But some attempt must be made to understand how it came
about that time was lost at Suvla, between the landing, at midnight on
the 6th-7th August, and the arrival of the Turks upon the hills, at
midnight on the 8th-9th.
In the first place it should be said that the beaches of Suvla are not
the beaches of seaside resorts, all pleasant smooth sand and shingle.
They are called beaches because they cannot well be called cliffs. They
slope into the sea with some abruptness, in pentes of rock and tumbles
of sand-dune difficult to land upon from boats. From them, one climbs
onto sand-dune, into a sand-dune land, which is like nothing so much as
a sea-marsh from which the water has receded. Walking on this soft sand
is difficult, it is like walking in feathers; working, hauling and
carrying upon it is very difficult. Upon this coast and country,
roadless, wharfless, beachless and unimproved, nearly 30,000 men landed
in the first ten hours of August 7th. At 10 A.M., on that day, when the
sun was in his stride, the difficulty of those beaches began to tell on
those upon them. There had been sharp fighting on and near the beaches,
and shells were still falling here and there in all the ground which we
had won. On and near the beaches there was a congestion of a very
hindering kind. With men coming ashore, shells bursting among them,
mules landing, biting, kicking, shying and stampeding, guns limbering up
and trying to get out into position, more men coming ashore or seeking
for the rest of their battalion in a crowd where all battalions looked
alike, shouts, orders and counter-orders, ammunition boxes being passed
along, water carts and transport being started for the firing line,
wounded coming down or being helped down, or being loaded into lighters,
doctors trying to clear the way for field dressing stations, with every
now and then a shell from Ismail sending the sand in clouds over
corpses, wounded men and fatigue parties, and a blinding August sun over
all to exhaust and to madden, it was not possible to avoid congestion.
This congestion was the first, but not the most fatal cause of the loss
of time.
Though the congestion was an evil in itself, its first evil effect was
that it made it impossible to pass orders quickly from one part of the
beach to another. In this first matter of the attack on the hills, the
way had been opened for the assault by 10 A.M. at the latest but to get
through the confusion along the beaches (among battalions landing,
forming and defiling, and the waste of wounded momentarily increasing)
to arrange for the assault and to pass the orders to the battalions
named for the duty, took a great deal of time. It was nearly 1 P.M. when
the 31st moved north from Lala Baba on their march round the head of the
Salt Lake into position for the attack. The 32nd Brigade, having fought
since dawn at Hill 10, was already to the north of the Salt Lake, but
when (at about 3 P.M.) the 31st took position, facing southeast, with
its right on the northeast corner of the Salt Lake, the 32nd was not
upon its left ready to advance with it. Instead of that guard upon its
left the 31st found a vigorous attack of Turks. More time was lost,
waiting for support to reach the left, and before it arrived, word came
that the attack upon the hills was to be postponed till after 5 P.M.
Seeing the danger of delay and that Chocolate Hill at least should be
seized at once, the Brigadier General (Hill) telephoned for supports and
covering fire, held off the attack on his left with one battalion, and
with the rest of his Brigade started at once to take Chocolate Hill,
cost what it might. The men went forward and stormed Chocolate Hill, the
7th Royal Dublin Fusiliers bearing the brunt of the storm.
At some not specified time, perhaps after this storm, in a general
retirement of the Turks, Hill 70, or Scimitar Hill, was abandoned to us,
and occupied by an English battalion.
During all this day of the 7th of August all our men suffered acutely
from the great heat and from thirst. Several men went raving mad from
thirst, others assaulted the water guards, pierced the supply hoses, or
swam to the lighters to beg for water. Thirst in great heat is a cruel
pain, and this (afflicting some regiments more than others) demoralised
some and exhausted all. Efforts were made to send up and to find water;
but the distribution system, beginning on a cluttered beach and ending
in a rough, unknown country full of confused fighting and firing,
without anything like a road, and much of it blazing or smouldering from
the scrub fires, broke down, and most of the local wells, when
discovered, were filled with corpses put there by the Turk garrison.
Some unpolluted wells of drinkable, though brackish water, were found,
but most of these were guarded by snipers, who shot at men going to
them. Many men were killed thus and many more wounded, for the Turk
snipers were good shots, cleverly hidden.
All through the day in the Suvla area, thirst, due to the great heat,
was another cause of loss of time in the fulfilment of that part of the
tactical scheme; but it was not the final and fatal cause.
Chocolate Hill was taken by our men (now utterly exhausted by thirst and
heat) just as darkness fell. They were unable to go on against Ismail
Oglu Tepe. They made their dispositions for the night on the line they
had won, sent back to the beaches for ammunition, food and water, and
tried to forget their thirst. They were in bad case, and still two miles
from the Australians below Koja Chemen Tepe. Very late that night word
reached them that the Turks were massed in a gulley to their front, that
no other enemy reserves were anywhere visible, and that the Turks had
withdrawn their guns, fearing that they would be taken next morning.
Before dawn on the all-important day of the 8th August, our men at Suvla
after a night of thirst and sniping, stood to arms to help out the vital
thrust of the battle.
Had time not been lost on the 7th, their task on the 8th would have been
to cross the valley at dawn, join the Australians and go with them up
the spurs to victory, in a strength which the Turks could not oppose. At
dawn on the 8th their path to the valley was still barred by the
uncaptured Turk fort on Ismail; time had been lost; there could be no
crossing the valley till Ismail was taken. There was still time to take
it and cross the valley to the storm, but the sands were falling. Up on
Chunuk already the battle had begun without them; no time was lost on
Chunuk.
Up on Chunuk at that moment a very bitter battle was being fought. On
the right, on Chunuk itself, the Gloucester and New Zealand Regiments
were storming the hill, in the centre and on the left the Australians,
English, and Indians were trying for Hill Q and the south of Koja
Chemen. They had passed the night on the hillsides under a never-ceasing
fire of shells and bullets, now, before dawn, they were making a
terrible attempt. Those on Chunuk went up with a rush, pelted from in
front and from both flanks by every engine of death. The Gloucesters
were on the left and the New Zealanders on the right in this great
assault. They deployed past The Farm and then went on to the storm of a
hill which rises some four hundred feet in as many yards. They were on
the top by dawn; Chunuk Bair, the last step, but one, to victory, was
ours and remained ours all day, but at a cost which few successful
attacks have ever known. By four o'clock that afternoon the New
Zealanders had dwindled to three officers and fifty men, and
the Gloucester battalion, having lost every officer and senior
non-commissioned officer, was fighting under section-leaders and
privates. Still, their attack had succeeded; they were conquerors. In
the centre the attack on Hill Q was less successful. There the English
and Indian regiments, assaulting together, were held; the Turks were too
strong. Our men got up to the top of the lower spurs, and there had to
lie down and scrape cover, for there was no going further. On the left
of our attack the Australians tried to storm the Abd-el-Rahman Bair from
the big gulley of Asma Dere. They went up in the dark with Australian
dash to a venture pretty desperate even for Gallipoli. The Turks held
the high ground on both sides of the Asma gulley, and were there in
great force with many machine guns. The Australians were enfiladed, held
in front, and taken in reverse, and (as soon as it was light enough for
the Turks to see) they suffered heavily. As one of the Australians has
described it: "The 14th and 15th Battalions moved out in single file and
deployed to the storm and an advance was made under heavy rifle and
machine gun fire. After the 15th Battalion had practically withered
away, the 14th continued to advance, suffering heavily, and the Turks in
great force. As we drove them back, they counter attacked, several
times. The Battalion thus got very split up and it is impossible to say
exactly what happened."
It is now possible to say exactly that that 14th Battalion fought like
heroes in little bands of wounded and weary men, and at last, with great
reluctance, on repeated orders, fell back to the Asma Dere from which
they had come, beating off enemy attacks all the way down the hill, and
then held on, against all that the Turk could do.
By noon, this assault, which would have been decisive had the men from
Suvla been engaged with the Australians, was at an end. Its right had
won Chunuk, and could just hold on to what it had won, its centre was
held, and its left driven back. The fire upon all parts of the line was
terrific; our men were lying (for the most part) in scratchings of
cover, for they could not entrench under fire so terrible. Often in that
rough and tumble country, the snipers and bombers of both sides, were
within a few yards of each other, and in the roar and blast of the great
battle were countless little battles, or duels to the death, which made
the ground red and set the heather on fire. Half of the hills of that
accursed battlefield, too false of soil to be called crags and too
savage with desolation to be called hills, such as feed the sheep and
bees of England, were blazing in sweeps of flame, which cast up smoke to
heaven, and swept in great swathes across the gullies. Shells from our
ships were screaming and bursting among all that devil's playground; it
was an anxious time for the Turks. Many a time throughout that day the
Turkish officers must have looked down anxiously upon the Suvla plain to
see if our men there were masters of Ismail and on the way to Koja
Chemen. For the moment, as they saw, we were held; but not more than
held. With a push from Suvla to help us, we could not be held. Our men
on the hills, expecting that helping push, drew breath for a new assault.
It was now noon. The battle so far was in our favour. We had won ground,
some of it an all-important ground, and for once we had the Turks with
their backs against the wall and short of men. At Helles they were
pressed, at Lone Pine they were threatened at the heart, under Koja
Chemen the knife point was touching the heart, and at Suvla was the new
strength to drive the knife point home and begin the end of the war. And
the Turks could not stop that new strength. Their nearest important
reserve of men was at Eski Kevi, ten miles away by a road which could
scarcely be called a goat track, and these reserves had been called on
for the fight at Krithia, and still more for the two days of struggle at
Lone Pine. All through that day of the eighth of August Fate waited to
see what would happen between Suvla and Koja Chemen. She fingered with
her dice uncertain which side to favour; she waited to be courted by the
one who wanted her. Eight hours of daylight had gone by, but there was
still no moving forward from Suvla, to seize Ismail and pass from it
across the valley to the storm. Noon passed into the afternoon, but
there was still no movement. Four hours more went by, and now our
aeroplanes brought word that the Turks near Suvla were moving back their
guns by ox-teams, and that their foot were on the march, coming along
their breakneck road, making perhaps a mile an hour, but marching and
drawing steadily nearer to the threatened point. The living act of the
battle was due at Ismail: from Ismail the last act, the toppling down of
the Turk forever among the bones of his victims and the ruin of his
ally, would have been prepared and assured. There was a desultory fire
around Ismail, and the smoke of scrub fires which blazed and smouldered
everywhere as far as the eye could see, but no roar and blaze and outcry
of a meant attack. The battle hung fire on the left, the hours were
passing, the Turks were coming. It was only five o'clock still; we had
still seven hours or more. In the centre we had almost succeeded. We
could hang on there and try again, there was still time. The chance
which had been plainly ours, was still an even chance. It was for the
left to seize it for us, the battle waited for the left, the poor, dying
Gloucesters and Wellingtons hung on to Chunuk for it, the Gurkhas and
English in the trampled cornfields near The Farm died where they lay on
the chance of it, the Australians on Abd-el-Rahman held steady in the
hope of it, under a fire that filled the air.