THE DARE-DEVIL ANZACS
By the trouble that never will tame you,
By the toil that will never withhold,
Whatever the dull world name you,
I know you for Hearts of Gold.
WILL OGILVIE.
Here is no dread and no grieving;
Over us hurtles the fray:
Is yours a Heaven worth achieving,
If it be stormed in a day?
ARTHUR H. ADAMS.
On that narrow strip of ground above Gaba Tepe, the Australians and New
Zealanders have been living, at this writing, for a full six months.
They have burrowed the rugged hill-sides into human warrens, and when
they are not on duty in the trenches return to a manner of life that was
natural to the ancient cave-dwellers before the dawn of civilisation.
Here and there, between the hills, great pits that have been excavated
by bursting shells are transformed into convenient bathing-places; but
it has been a common thing to see parties of men come joyously down,
released from the firing line, to wash the feel of dust and grime from
them in the cool waters of the adjacent sea; and they have grown so
accustomed to their environment that even if the enemy breaks into
sudden activity they go on enjoying themselves there, indifferent to the
splash of bullets round about them and the occasional whine and shriek
of a shell that bursts overhead and scatters a rain of shrapnel that
does not always fall harmlessly. From the tents and huts on the beach,
where the stores are kept, they have made good roads up the cliffs to
facilitate the labour of transport. Behind their first line of trenches
they have turned the bit of territory they have won and hold so
tenaciously into a queer little town of snug caverns and bomb-proof
shelters, and have made all the place so peculiarly their own that
somebody has been happily inspired to christen the district Anzac, a
name formed from the initials of the force, the Australian and New
Zealand Army Corps; and by that name it has become officially and
generally known.
The marvel is that after living and fighting in such a dreary spot for
six months the men are still as high-spirited and as fertile in
contriving ways to amuse their leisure as if they had never known
anything better or fuller than the precarious, perilous existence on
this barren patch of land. They are not only indomitably cheerful, but
full of fight and enterprise, and indomitably determined to see this
terrible job right through, if only the homeland will back them as
efficiently as it ought to.
The foe they are holding up outnumbers them by two or three to one; and
they were never sent there with any notion that they could do more than
they have accomplished. They were sent there to keep as many of the
Turks as possible thoroughly occupied whilst the larger part of the
expeditionary force landed at Cape Hellas and fought its way up the
Peninsula to join hands with them; and they have achieved this
successfully, and more than this. "Anzac, in fact," as Sir Ian Hamilton
has told us, "was cast to play second fiddle to Cape Hellas, a part out
of harmony with the dare-devil spirit animating these warriors from the
south. So it has come about that the defensive of the Australians and
New Zealanders has always tended to take on the character of an attack."
Since the 28th April the French and British troops pushing in from
Hellas have hurled themselves again and again against the hills and
defences before the grim mountain of Achi Baba, whose great spurs,
stretching from Saros Gulf across to the Dardanelles, command the whole
southern section of the Peninsula; and again and again, after performing
prodigies of valour, strewing the soil with the enemy's dead and
capturing trenches over wide stretches of hard-fought ground, they have
been forced by the avalanche of shell and machine gun fire from the
mountain heights and the furious counter-attacks of irresistible numbers
to relinquish their winnings and fall back stubbornly to their own
positions.
[Illustration: AUSTRALIA'S SPLENDID CORPS OF MOUNTED AMBULANCE MEN.
A wounded man about to be transferred from an emergency blanket sling to
the regulation stretcher.]
[Illustration: THE DARDANELLES–MEN BATHING AFTER RETURNING FROM AN ATTACK.]
Between the 6th and 12th May a series of desperate attacks on the
powerful, scientifically prepared fortifications before Achi Baba were
repelled, but certain strategical points and some hundreds of yards of
front were taken and successfully held. One such attack, which saw some
of the most Homeric fighting that has been done even on this terrible
peninsula, lasted almost continuously for three days ending on 8th May.
The French and British forces all took part in it, and among the latter
were the 2nd Australian and the New Zealand Infantry Brigades. These
were at first kept in reserve, but on the evening of the 6th the
Lancashire Fusiliers, who had been trapped in a wood on the left wing of
the advance and suffered heavy losses from concealed machine guns, were
transferred to the base, and the New Zealand Brigade was sent to replace
them, with orders to go forward in the morning through the line held
during the night by the 88th Brigade, and develop the attack towards
Krithia.
On the 7th, Sir Ian Hamilton reports, "at 10.15 a.m. heavy fire from
ships and batteries was opened on the whole front, and at 10.30 a.m. the
New Zealand Brigade began to move, meeting with strenuous opposition
from the enemy, who had received his reinforcements." They advanced
beyond the wood, or clump of fir trees, in which the Lancashires had
suffered so badly, and by 1.30 had gained about 200 yards beyond the
most advanced trenches that had been occupied by the 88th Brigade. Then
the French reported that they could not advance up the spur they were to
storm on the right till the British had made further progress. So at 4
p.m. Sir Ian gave orders that "the whole line, reinforced by the 2nd
Australian Brigade, would fix bayonets, slope arms, and move on Krithia
precisely at 5.30." After a quarter of an hour of effective bombardment
by the heavy artillery and the guns of the ships, the movement was
promptly and vigorously carried out. It was characteristic of the alert,
self-reliant spirit of all the Australasians that "some of the companies
of the New Zealand regiments did not get their orders in time, but,
acting on their own initiative, they pushed on as soon as the heavy
howitzers ceased firing, thus making the whole advance simultaneous."
Then the French swept forward and stormed the first Turkish redoubt on
the ridge that faced them with a wonderful élan that was not to be
baulked of its object. Decimated by shrapnel and machine guns, they were
driven back, but rallied and returned to the charge with redoubled fury,
were beaten back, and re-formed and dashed ahead once more, and as the
darkness fell "a small supporting column of French soldiers was seen
silhouetted against the sky as they charged upwards along the crest of
the ridge of the Kereves Dere." Then the night closed down, and all the
battlefield and whatever was doing on it were hidden in blackest
darkness.
"Not until next morning did any reliable detail come to hand of what had
happened. The New Zealanders' firing line had marched over the cunningly
concealed enemy's machine guns without seeing them, and these, reopening
on our supports as they came up, caused them heavy losses. But the first
line pressed on and arrived within a few yards of the Turkish trenches
which had been holding up our advance beyond the fir wood. There they
dug themselves in. The Australian Brigade had advanced through the
Composite Brigade and, in spite of heavy losses from shrapnel, machine
gun, and rifle fire, had progressed from 300 to 400 yards."
The result of those three days of stubborn fighting was a net gain of
600 yards on the British right, and 400 on the left and centre; and the
French had captured the redoubt they had fought for so heroically as
well as a considerable area of ground. In the next two days the Turks
made repeated and costly efforts, harried on by their German leaders, to
regain their losses; but their prodigal cannonading and reckless
hand-to-hand combats were unavailing and they were everywhere repulsed.
The Australian and New Zealand Army Corps "strengthened their grip on
Turkish soil," and on the whole, says Sir Ian, "now for the first time I
felt that we had planted a fairly firm foothold upon the point of the
Gallipoli Peninsula.
"The determined valour shown by these two brigades," he notes in
concluding this phase of his dispatch, "the New Zealand Brigade under
Brigadier-General F. E. Johnston, and the 2nd Australian Infantry
Brigade under Brigadier-General the Hon. J. W. McCay, are worthy of
particular praise. Their losses were correspondingly heavy, but, in
spite of fierce counter-attacks by numerous fresh troops, they stuck to
what they had won with admirable tenacity."
All along the line they had dug themselves in securely, and remained
immovable. The Turks threw away thousands of men in fruitless assaults
on the new positions; occasionally the British or the French by sudden
rushes captured here and there an enemy trench and scored small local
successes, but more and more the fighting became a matter of
reconnaissance, of sapping and mining, till by the first week of June
both sides had settled down to the dogged conditions of siege warfare.
During these same weeks the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps at
Anzac, between Gaba Tepe and Saribair, had held their little half-moon
of conquered land with its 1,100 yards of diameter, and were not to be
ousted from any part of it by intrepid massed attacks or by a constant
shelling of their trenches and the beach beyond, often with as many as
over 1,000 shells in an hour. How many bayonet charges succeeded these
merciless bombardments, how many fierce night-attacks boiled over from
the enemy trenches, which were everywhere within twenty and thirty yards
of the Anzac front, to be unfailingly dammed all along the line and
hurled back broken, decimated, defeated, I have given up trying to
count. Over and over again, when the Anzacs hurled the Turks back in
this fashion they swarmed out of their defences, chased the flying foe,
leaped after him into his own trenches, drove him out of them and kept
him out till he brought up a continuous stream of reinforcements and by
sheer weight of numbers forced the Australians and New Zealanders to
give up their new possessions and withdraw once more to their old ones.
The fiercest, most sanguinary fighting went on round about such advanced
positions as Pope's, Courtney's, and Quinn's Posts–especially about the
last, which was won and lost and went on changing hands at frequent
intervals until it was finally taken by the Anzacs, and strengthened and
strongly garrisoned and permanently retained. On 9th May the Turkish
trenches in front of Quinn's were carried at the point of the bayonet,
but at dawn next morning the enemy came hurtling back in such multitudes
that the Anzacs had to retire to the Post, and stubbornly repel a hot
attack upon that. Day after day the same sort of thing continued with
little cessation, here and at all sections of the line. Between the
attacks there were endless bomb-throwing, tempests of shells from big
guns and howitzers, sniping, withering outbursts of machine gun fire,
subtle sapping and mining, in which now one side, then the other
successfully blew up trenches, and, dashing for the breach, made grim
onslaughts that had to be held off and beaten and cleared out of the way
before the shattered defences could be repaired. In our second and third
and fourth line trenches the men might sit in dug-outs and bomb-proof
shelters and yarn and play cards or write letters or sleep as
comfortable under the roaring, whistling hail of shells and bullets and
almost as safe as if they were at home; but some of the foremost
trenches were little more than giant gullies on the verge of steep
precipices, and if they more or less commanded the enemy's positions in
the valley, they were in turn commanded more or less by the enemy's guns
and trenches on higher ridges farther in-shore.
The stories of individual heroism and self-sacrifice–of the carrying of
wounded comrades in under fire, of scouts crawling out on exposed
heights and calmly completing their observations after they had been
discovered and become targets for hundreds of rifles, of the bringing of
supplies of food and ammunition to the firing line over hills and bare
plateaus that were swept by the enemy's guns–these are numberless. There
were bombing parties who went out unobtrusively at twilight or at dawn
to raid an apparently inaccessible trench on the opposite hill-side and
silence a troublesome gun, and as often as not they succeeded, though
few of them returned to tell the tale; there was a doughty little
remnant of Anzac heroes who fought and slew terribly and had to be shot
or bayoneted to the last man before the Turks could get back into a
trench that had been newly wrested from them. And there is a story of an
unnamed New Zealander that stands out even amidst the splendour of the
rest. This man, during an attack in force, found himself isolated and
cut off from his friends. He was on a high, bald promontory, and the
Turks were swarming on all sides of him. Escape was impossible; he had
been wounded and left behind, overlooked by his comrades when they were
compelled to retire; and there seemed nothing for it but surrender. The
full strength of the reinforced Turks was unknown to our commanders, but
from his lofty eminence the New Zealander could see the oncoming hordes
flooding the lower levels, and proceeded to take careful observations.
And a chief scout of the New Zealanders who, from the distance, had
detected the solitary figure aloft there was suddenly amazed to see the
man begin signalling with his arms; he was signalling information as to
the position and numbers of the Turks. How many shots reached their mark
in him nobody will know; twice he fell, but each time he regained his
feet to semaphore with his arms and continue his message. "The last shot
disabled one arm," says the scout, "yet the dying man raised himself and
completed the message before he dropped dead." If one started to repeat
such stories one would never know where to end, and there is the less
need for me to make the attempt since I hear that the best of them are
now being gathered into a book of their own by another hand.
Through all that thunderous storm of conflict, the incessant attacking
and counter-attacking, our losses were appallingly heavy, but those of
the Turks exceeded them enormously. A diary found on a dead Turkish
officer showed that in the stern engagement on the 10th May alone, two
Ottoman regiments lost 3,000 in killed and wounded. They had been mown
down and bayoneted in tens of thousands round Anzac and in the titanic
struggle at the southern end of the Peninsula, but they had been so
reinforced that their power had increased rather than diminished; and so
by degrees at both places the opposing forces fought each other to
something of a standstill. All the Turkish boasts that they would fling
the invaders into the sea proved futile; all our attempts to advance
beyond the territory on which we were immovably established proved
equally unavailing; and by degrees things at Anzac as well as between
Cape Hellas and Achi Baba settled down to that condition of siege
warfare.
It was not a condition that suited the temperaments of these active,
energetic fellows; they were not the sort to find much satisfaction in
systematically peppering the other side with lead and wearing them down
from behind the safe shelter of barricades; but they were practical
enough to see that for the time there was no other effective course open
to them, and, with occasional sudden sallies into the midst of the
enemy, when they killed a few and captured a few and gathered in some
guns, they grimly suited themselves to a state of things that did not
suit them, and made the best of it.
The Turks knew enough of them by now to have a wholesome respect for
their fighting qualities, and seemed contented to shell them
occasionally from a distance or let them alone, so long as they did not
come out and make trouble. And the fact that this was the hottest period
of the year may have helped to reconcile the Anzacs to the necessity of
going slow for a while. The blazing heat, indeed, was more intolerable
than the fire of the Turks, and to cope with it they discarded one
garment after another until, at length, they were to be seen on duty or
amusing themselves, when they were not lying cool in holes and shelters,
dressed in nothing but a pair of breeches cut down to "shorts" which did
not nearly reach to their knees. Some, with a lingering sense of
propriety, or tender feet, retained their boots and socks, but others
abandoned even these. Mr. Ashmead Bartlett, who saw them, says, "I
suppose that since the dervishes made their last charge at Omdurman no
such naked army has ever been seen in the field."
It must have puzzled the Turks considerably to find themselves
confronted by trenches filled with apparently naked warriors, and to
ascertain, when they came to the test, that these naked warriors were as
tough and as full of ginger as the men in khaki who had mysteriously
vanished. Possibly they suspected this was a new wild race of secretly
landed reinforcements from some remote end of the British Empire,
especially after a few weeks, when the skins of the Anzacs had become so
tanned and burnt by the sun that they were as dark as the Maoris. And of
the Maoris the Turks had all along had suspicions, even when that
contingent was clothed in full khaki. For they have weird war-cries and
a weird dance of their own, and to hear and see these mysteries in
operation is calculated to disquiet those who are not accustomed to
them. On special occasions, after the General had been addressing them
and complimenting them on their fighting ability, or when they had
caught a rumour of the joyous possibility that they would quit the
monotonous trenches and move out against the enemy to-morrow, they liked
to indulge in this dance by way of expressing the intensity of their
satisfaction. An officer of the New Zealand contingent described the
dance in _The Times_ in the following terms:
"The Maoris, officers and privates, lined up. With protruding tongues
and a rhythmic slapping of hands on thighs and chests, with a deep
concerted 'a-a-ah,' ending abruptly, they began the Maori haka–the war
dance. Shrill and high the leader intoned the solo parts, and the chorus
crashed out. As the dancers became more animated the beat of their feet
echoed through the gullies of Gallipoli. The leader now declaimed
fiercely, now his voice sank to an eerie whisper, still perfectly
audible, and as he crouched low to the ground so the men behind him
posed. Suddenly, after a concerted crash of voices, the chant ended with
a sibilant hiss, a stamp of the right foot, and the detonation of palms
slapping the high ground."
From their trenches, less than a hundred yards away, the Turks could not
see the dancers, for the dancers knew better than to show themselves,
but they must have heard the strange, rhythmic stamping of their feet
and their startling outcries, and you get a notion of what they must
have thought of them from a passage which the same New Zealand officer
quotes from a Constantinople newspaper of about that date in which the
Ottoman journalist remarks that he is still without information as to
the composition of the enemy's forces, but has reason to believe that
they consist of black men from Africa and Australia, and "thus the
Straits for the first time in history have had to endure attacks by
cannibals." So it is worth adding that though the Maoris delight, as
they should, in keeping up the old customs of their race, theirs is a
contingent of as gallant and chivalrous men as any in the British
millions, and the leader in that particular war dance was a highly
educated gentleman who has the distinction of being an M.A. and an LL.D.
The state of siege lasted for some two months, and I have not spoken to
any man who endured it and was prepared to say that he wished it had
been longer.
"I was fed up with it," said a bronzed giant, convalescing from his
wounds in London, with whom I foregathered by chance in a railway
carriage. "We were sick of sitting in our holes potting an odd Turk when
he bobbed his head up. We wanted to be getting ahead. The boys down by
Hellas had got a tough job, too, but we just prayed that they might make
a big push up and we might be ordered to go out and cut a way through to
meet them. It was no fun, living like rabbits and doing nothing, or next
to nothing, and when I was hit by accident while I was fooling around,
having a dip at Hell Spit, I wasn't sorry to get out of it for a change.
I should have been, though, if I'd known we were in for a real, good
scrap a few days later."
That was a pretty general feeling, he said; the inactivity, the sameness
of the trench fighting, the sense of being cooped up within narrow
limits and not given a chance to do anything, was infinitely boring.
Everybody was impatient to be moving, and would sooner have gone on at
all risks than have stopped there strategically marking time. Moreover,
there was a shortage of tobacco and of the smaller luxuries of
civilisation that might have helped to make that dull period of waiting
endurable. You get a vivid glimpse of this in the report of Mr. W.
Jessop, who went out in charge of a mission from the Y.M.C.A., which has
done such magnificent service in looking after the welfare of the troops
in all the fighting areas, with comforts for the men at the Dardanelles.
"It was pathetic," he says, "to see the eagerness with which the men
viewed our preparations and the way they came about the tent.... I
looked up two batteries of artillery I had been told about, and took
with me several pounds of Havelock tobacco and some pipes. To the first
of these men I came across I held up a tin of the tobacco and asked him
if it was a friend of his (Havelock is Australian tobacco, and very
popular in the Colonies). His eyes glistened, and then he said, 'It's
all I have' (holding up a sovereign), 'but if you will give me a pipe
with it I shall be glad to exchange, as I have not had a smoke for three
weeks.' When I told him the pipe and tobacco were his for nothing, he
was greatly touched. I went round to about fifty of these men and made
similar gifts."
But such minor inconveniences would not have worried them if it had not
been for the wearisome waiting for something to happen; and when the
word went round that a new British force was to make a surprise landing
higher up the gulf at Suvla Bay, and that the Anzacs were to create a
diversion and keep the Turks fully occupied whilst it was done, there
was no more grousing; it was exactly what they wanted.
The unquenchable ardour of the men was of a piece with the splendid
spirit of brotherhood and good comradeship that prevailed among all
ranks. It could not well have been otherwise, led by such officers as
they had and under a commander so gallant and so genially considerate of
them as General Birdwood, who from the outset, as Sir Ian Hamilton
testifies, "has been the soul of Anzac. Not for one single day has he
ever quitted his post. Cheery and full of human sympathy, he has spent
many hours of each twenty-four inspiring the defenders of the front
trenches, and if he does not know every soldier in his force, at least
every soldier believes he is known to his chief." He was invariably
under fire with his troops, and wounded in one engagement had his wound
dressed on the field and refused to retire. No wonder his men are
devoted to him, and that when you mention his name to any among those
who are here, invalided home, they answer you with the warmest
enthusiasm.
In preparation for the new movement fresh British and Indian troops had
been landed at Anzac under cover of darkness two nights in succession.
The Turks were aware of this; they had shelled the transports and the
beach unstintedly, but so deftly were the landing parties handled by the
naval service that the landings were successfully carried out with only
two casualties. On the 6th August the British at Cape Helles commenced a
heavy and continuous bombardment of the Turkish positions round Krithia,
below the Achi Baba heights; at the same time the Anzacs got busy with
guns and howitzers along the whole of their front to discourage the
enemy from dispatching reinforcements in any direction.
[Illustration: HEROES FROM THE DARDANELLES.
Wounded from the Dardanelles, leaving the hospital train in Egypt.]
[Illustration: HEROES OF THE DARDANELLES.]
During the night of the 6th a vast array of transports, accompanied by
warships, destroyers, and smaller craft, passed quietly up the Gulf of
Saros and glided into Suvla Bay, six or seven miles north of Anzac Cove.
All along the other side of the Dardanelles, from Kum Kale to Chanak,
and at Anzac and in the southern extremity of Gallipoli, the Turks were
either under attack or on the alert and expecting it. But here, at Suvla
Bay, they were anticipating no danger, and hundreds of small boats had
rushed the invading force safely ashore before they were aware of their
coming. An observation post was taken by surprise; its garrison of fifty
surrendered, and the British had marched six miles inland and it was
getting on towards evening before an enemy force came into view
hastening forward to oppose the advance. The Turks had been warned of
what had happened, and before next morning had swiftly concentrated as
many as 70,000 men to bar the way. All night there were numerous
spasmodic and furious local fights for points of vantage, and all night
the two forces were rapidly throwing out barbed-wire entanglements and
digging themselves in, and as soon as the day came the battle developed
in deadliest earnest.
Both sides were well supplied with artillery, and all day the merciless
struggle raged with growing fury; in repeated attacks and
counter-attacks first the Turkish, then the British lines swayed this
way and that, but always straightened out again and could at no point be
broken through. A dozen times the Turks flung themselves forward in
dense masses, and when they shattered and came thundering in over and
past the wire entanglements, the British leaped from their trenches to
meet them and fell upon them with spades and bayonets till they fled
panic-stricken, leaving their dead and wounded heaped about the ground.
The enemy had the advantage in position; they were on the higher levels,
and they were superior in numbers; but when night fell again over the
field of carnage, if the British had made no further advance they still
held every inch of their line, and they passed the night in entrenching
it more firmly.
The plan of campaign was for one section of the force to push on
straight across the Peninsula whilst another section moved to the
south-east towards Anzac, whence the Australians and New Zealanders were
to fight a way up and join them.
The Anzacs carried out their part of this arrangement with a dash and
daring that were irresistible. They had been reinforced by a brigade of
Gurkhas and by regiments of our new armies, and it was resolved to make
a beginning by sending the First Australian Infantry Brigade to attack
the Lone Pine plateau. "The Third Brigade," writes Captain C. E. W.
Bean, the Official Press Representative with the Australian forces
there, "had immortalised itself on the day of the landing–they were the
miners' brigade from Broken Hill and the gold-fields and Queensland and
Tasmania. The Second Brigade–the Victorians–had made their wonderful
charge at Helles, when for a quarter of an hour they went straight as a
die for 1,000 yards across country as bare as the palm of your hand, in
the face of shrapnel and withering rifle fire. Now, at last, it was the
chance of the First Brigade–the men from New South Wales."
The officers' whistles shrilled the signal, and in a moment the First
Brigade was out and making a bee line for the low, scrub-covered hill on
which the Turks were entrenched; but when they came to the trenches they
found them stoutly roofed with logs and timbers, and spread out
scattered along them looking for a way in, fired at through loopholes
and by machine guns, and pelted with shrapnel from a battery in the
rear. But they were not there to be beaten. Here and there along the
roof man-holes had been left; some of the Anzacs dropped recklessly down
these small openings ("like burglars through a sky-light," says Mr.
Bean) on to the Turks below; others by sheer force of muscle tore up
logs or planks to make an entry and flung themselves in and clubbed
their rifles or got to work with their bayonets, and after a short,
sharp fight the enemy either lay dead in their burrow or were in full
flight up their communication trenches. Other of the Australians had run
right on over the roof of logs and as swiftly captured the second trench
and thence poured on into the communication trenches to stop the fleeing
Turks or give chase and shoot them as they fled.
In other parts of the field the battle was spreading mightily and the
Australians and New Zealanders, with the Gurkhas and their new comrades
from the homeland, were carrying all before them. The Maoris and New
Zealand Mounted Rifles, fighting afoot, cleared the foot-hills with the
bayonet, and soon over all the lower hills, in the rugged gullies and
ravines and up the sides of the Anafarta height, the fighting became
general, gathering tempestuously in sound and fury.
For four days and nights it continued with little intermission–desperate
and bloody fighting, much of it, with bayonets and clubbed rifles; and
steadily the combined force of Anzacs, English, and Indians forced their
way up the steep slopes towards the ridge that was pouring a blasting
hail of lead and fire down upon them perpetually. Trench after trench on
the savagely contested ascent was taken and left behind, choked with
Turkish dead. Generals and colonels, armed with rifles, fought shoulder
to shoulder with their men, and many of them, including General Baldwin,
who through the nightmare of those four days of carnage fought
heroically beside his men, were killed; but by the evening of the 10th
August, though the formidable heights of Anafarta, which had been
stormed with almost incredible heroism by the Australians, the New
Zealanders, and some English regiments, for lack of support, could not
be held, all the lower ground on the western side was in our possession,
and the army from Anzac Cove had triumphantly linked up with the troops
that had landed at Suvla Bay.
Here they dug themselves in; a lull of exhaustion fell over the
contending armies, and the British profited by the interval to
consolidate their greatly extended lines and secure their
communications.
The original purpose of the Suvla Bay landing had been to strike right
across the Peninsula at that point, cut the Turks off from their
supplies, so that they would be compelled to abandon or weaken the
defences of Achi Baba and thus make it possible for the British and
French at Helles to drive a path over that impregnable mountain and
sweep up the length of Gallipoli and crush the enemy between our
northern and southern forces. The scheme is said to have failed through
the blundering of one officer at Suvla, who should have rushed his corps
promptly and straightway through and seized certain dominating heights
before the Turks were aware of the surprise attack and could rally to
make any effective resistance.
We are still very much in the dark about the details of this enterprise.
All we know is that whatever blundering there may have been in the
higher command, the men of all ranks and all regiments met every demand
that was made upon them with the most unflinching steadiness and
acquitted themselves with a valour and efficiency that no troops in the
world could excel. "The Anzac Corps fought like lions," says Mr. Ashmead
Bartlett, "and accomplished a feat of arms, in climbing those heights,
almost without a parallel.... It was a combat of giants in a giant
country, and if one point stands out more than another it is the
marvellous hardihood, tenacity, and reckless courage shown by the
Australians and New Zealanders."
This magnificent tribute is amply confirmed by the special order that
was issued by Sir Ian Hamilton whilst the great battle was still
unfinished:
"The Commander-in-Chief, Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, desires
formally to record the fine feat of arms achieved by the troops under
the command of Lieutenant-General Sir W. R. Birdwood during the battle
of Sari Bair. The fervent desire of all ranks to close with the enemy,
the impetuosity of their onset, and the steadfast valour with which they
maintained the long struggle, these will surely make appeal to their
fellow-countrymen all over the world. The gallant capture of the almost
impregnable Lone Pine trenches by the Australian Division, and the
equally gallant defence of the position against repeated
counter-attacks, are exploits which will live in history. The determined
assaults carried out from other parts of the Australian Division's line
were also of inestimable service to the whole force, preventing as they
did the movement of large bodies of reinforcements to the northern
flank.
"The troops under the command of Major-General Sir A. J. Godley, and
particularly the New Zealand and Australian Division, were called upon
to carry out one of the most difficult military operations that have
ever been attempted–a night march and assault by several columns in
intricate mountainous country, strongly entrenched, and held by a
numerous and determined enemy. Their brilliant conduct during this
operation and the success they achieved have won for them a reputation
as soldiers of whom any country must be proud. To the Australian and New
Zealand Army Corps, therefore, and to those who were associated with
that famous corps in the battle of Sari Bair–the Maoris, Sikhs, Gurkhas,
and the new troops of the Divisions from the Old Country–Sir Ian
Hamilton tenders his appreciation of their efforts, his admiration of
their gallantry, and his thanks for their achievements. It is an honour
to command a force which numbers such men as these in its ranks, and it
is the Commander-in-Chief's high privilege to acknowledge that honour."
There was memorable fighting again above Helles on the 21st August, when
a Yeomanry corps, in action for the first time, delivered a determined
assault on the hill known as Hill 70, charging right up to the summit
without a halt, and chasing the Turks down the other side. But the enemy
clung on to one strongly fortified knoll, and in the night enfiladed the
victors with such a deadly fire from artillery and machine guns that
they were forced to abandon their hard-won position, and by daylight had
withdrawn to their own lines.
Since then, there, as on the seven-mile front from Anzac to Suvla Bay,
the war has resolved itself again into steady trench fighting and a
state of siege. Since then, too, there has been a change in the command,
and General Sir C. C. Monro has succeeded Sir Ian Hamilton, who has
returned home, honoured with the goodwill and admiration of troops whose
confidence in him is unshakable; and in these latter days of October the
next step in the Dardanelles expedition is still a matter of rumour and
conjecture.
9
THE AUSTRALASIAN IDEAL
[Illustration: THE DARDANELLES OPERATIONS.
Ambulance wagons passing through gully.]
[Illustration: THE DARDANELLES–AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND TROOPS
IN A RAVINE.]