This account of a desperate engagement is brief, but it tells a
wondrous story. It appeared in the London _Times_:
The first capture of a Turkish trench and its retention deserve special
notice because this brilliant exploit fired the whole of Anzac, after
fifteen weeks of monotonous trench fighting, for the great aggressive
operations of August and September. The work was known as Northern
Turkish Despair Trench, or Tasman Post, and it was stormed under severe
fire on July 31, by a composite company of the 11th Battalion (West
Australia) of General E. G. Sinclair-MacLagan’s Third Brigade, under
Captain R. L. Leane. After two days a heavy counter-attack was launched
by a battalion of Turks, who regained a section of the work, but were
again driven out. The episode cost Anzac 300 casualties, but showed
what could be done. Near the close of the series of attacks which this
success began was another charge, the simple truth of which was worth
accomplishing, even at the cost. It was the charge of the First and
Third Light Horse Brigades, differing from the charge of the Light
Brigade at Balaclava only in that it was made by horsemen who had
volunteered to fight on foot, and that it succeeded in one object—that
of holding large bodies of Turks who would otherwise have been used
against the new British landing at Suvla Bay.
The Eighth and Tenth Regiments of the Third Brigade went out from
Walker’s Ridge. It was a charge into death from the first moment,
and before the men of the second line leaped from their trenches they
shook hands, knowing that they could not survive. They were met by a
fusillade that became a continuous roaring tempest of machine gun and
rifle fire, and out of the 300 men in the first line only one returned.
The Second Regiment of the First Brigade was sent out from Quinn’s
Post, charging into so impossible a fire that the first line had to be
left to its fate, and the second, third, and fourth lines held in the
trenches. The First Regiment of the First Brigade charged up the slopes
of Dead Man’s Ridge and found a similar fate. It was all over within
ten minutes—in the case of the charge from Quinn’s Post within a few
seconds. “The Turkish machine guns drew a line across that place which
none could pass,” wrote Captain C. E. W. Bean, official observer with
the Australian Division, “and the one man who went out and returned
unwounded put his escape down to the fact that he noticed the point on
our sandbags on which the machine gun bullets were hitting, and jumped
clear over the stream of lead. The guns were sweeping low, and a man
who was hit once by them was often hit again half a dozen times as he
fell through the stream which caught him. The whole of the first line
was either killed or wounded within a few seconds of their leap from
our trenches.” But though the charges shattered four regiments of as
good fighting men as the Empire possessed, they created an imperishable
impression.
Approximately 23,709,000 males in the United States, between the ages
of 18 and 45, inclusive, registered under the terms of the Selective
Draft Law.
Returns on casualties in the American Expeditionary Force up to
November 18, 1917, include deaths from disease as well as battle
casualties, slightly as well as severely wounded. Deaths from battle
alone would be about 36,000. Compared with the reported British
battle deaths of 659,000 for the period of the war, our losses were
astonishingly light.