THE BATTLE OF QUINN'S POST
Captain Von Mueller boasted that he would sink the Australian
cruiser _Sydney_. He lost his ship, and was carried a captive by
the Australians to a British prison camp. General Liman von Sanders
declared he would drive the Anzacs off the face of Gallipoli
Peninsula into the sea. The result of his attempt was a slaughter of
Turks that has not been equalled in the Dardanelles fighting, and the
return of so many wounded to Constantinople that a panic was created
in the Turkish capital. If any boasting is to be done, the proper
time is after the event.
The preparations made by Sanders Pasha for his great attack upon
the Anzacs were long and elaborate. For days beforehand he was
busy in organizing the transport of great stores of ammunition to
the neighbourhood of Maidos, a town on the neck of the peninsula,
opposite Gaba Tepe. Five fresh regiments were brought from
Constantinople to stiffen the attacking force; they afterwards
proved to have been chosen from the very _élite_ of the Turkish army.
He detached in addition heavy reinforcements from the main body of
defenders, who were holding back the Allies at Achi Baba. He had
determined to do the thing very thoroughly.
His attack was launched on May 18, and he himself assumed personal
charge of the operations. Shortly before midnight on May 18 he began
to expend his huge store of shell after the approved German fashion.
All the batteries concealed in the hills around set up a hideous
din, swollen by the roar of the machine guns, and the cracking of
countless rifles. In that shelling, 12-inch guns, 9-inch guns,
and huge howitzers were employed, as well as artillery of smaller
calibre. Naturally every Anzac was on the look out; and word was sent
to every post to be prepared for the frontal attack it was assumed
would follow. The assumption was a correct one; for soon countless
Turks poured over the ridges and made for the centre of the Anzac
line.
[Illustration: General Monash, Commander of the 4th Brigade,
Australian Infantry.]
It has already been explained that this line was a rough semicircle,
the left, or Northern wing being situated on high ground above
Fisherman's Hut. Here was a ridge facing North-East, named Walker's
Ridge after Brigadier-General Walker, and to the right of that was
Pope's Hill. These spots were North of the great central gully or
valley, which was at first known as Death Gully by the Australian
soldiers, but was afterwards called Monash Gully, after General
Monash, commander of the 4th Brigade. Immediately to the right of
the Gully was Dead Man's Ridge, and the point where the line takes a
sharp turn to the South was known as the Bloody Angle.
The Turkish lines, which were some 250 yards distant at the extreme
left of the position, continued to get closer to those of the
Australasians until here they approached very closely. At Quinn's
Post, named after a gallant Major from Queensland who fell fighting
bravely at the spot, the lines were only twenty yards apart. The
gap widened going South to Courtney's Post, and continued to do so
through the other main positions at Steel's Post and McLaurin Hill,
down to Point Rosenthal, which faced Gaba Tepe itself on the extreme
right wing.
Quinn's Post, at the extreme curve of the Australasian semicircle,
came in for the hottest attack of all. In this part of the line were
stationed the Fourth Infantry Brigade, which comprised the bulk
of the Second Australian Contingent, and is commanded by General
Monash. Of this 4th Brigade more will soon be told, but it suffices
to say that their steadiness and fighting qualities were put to the
supreme test on this early morning of May 19. The trenches here faced
the ridge called Dead Man's Ridge, and over this ridge the Turks
pushed one another to the attack. Their advance was covered by a
continuation of the heavy bombardment of the trenches from Hill 700,
and from the top of the ridge where guns, heavy, light and machine,
had been concentrated.
This fire, added to the bullets from thousands of rifles, kept all
Anzac heads down. Bravely the Turks dashed through the scrub, taking
all the cover it afforded, and regardless of the field guns and
howitzers of the Anzacs, which were concentrated on them with deadly
effect. Many of them got right up to the edge of the trenches, and
were shot down at point-blank range. Still they crept out of their
cover, massing in every thicket, and advancing under pressure of
those behind.
The first light of early morning revealed to the waiting Anzacs a
dense mass of the enemy, exposed and within easy range. Then the
rifles of the best shots in the world--for there are at least no
superiors to them anywhere--rang out, and as fast as each man could
pull the trigger, the Turk fell under that deadly fusillade. Still
they poured over the ridges, their officers driving them on from
behind with loaded revolvers, and still the discriminate slaughter
went on.
[Illustration: Australian Field Artillery in Action.]
It was discriminate slaughter, for each Anzac, before he fired,
marked his man and made sure of him. It was no time for sentimental
considerations of mercy; and besides, the Anzacs were fierce with
the anger of men who had been sniped for three weeks, without too
many chances of getting their own back. They had charged against
positions held as their own now was, and had seen their bravest and
best fall by hundreds as they drove on in the face of shrapnel and
machine-gun fire. Now it was their turn, and they fired until the
barrels of their rifles got too hot to be touched. "It was like
killing rabbits with a stick," said one man, who was in the hottest
part of the fray.
The most terrible execution of all was done by a battery of eighteen
pounders, which, with a number of machine guns, had been posted and
carefully masked at a spot on the Anzac line between Steel's Post and
the Pimple. The fire from these guns took the Turks all unawares and
tore great gaps in their ranks. This ambush was arranged by General
Johnston, the officer commanding the artillery, and the spot was
afterwards known to the Anzacs by the peculiar name of Johnston's
Jolly.
All along the line from Quinn's Post to Courtney's the dead were
piled in heaps; and still they came on. Some of them died grasping
the barbed wire protections in front of the trenches, others fell
dead into the very trenches themselves, only stopped by a bullet met
on the parapet. They had the support of all the guns Sanders Pasha
had been able to muster, and all his huge store of ammunition was
expended in trying to drive those Australians into the sea. But not a
man budged from his post.
From daylight till ten o'clock that morning the bombardment and the
frontal attack were continued; then the Turks would have no more of
it. Sullenly they fell back, and as they did so shrapnel completed
the disorganization which had now begun. Soon after ten they turned
and ran for their trenches, and there they sheltered for hours while
the heavy cannonade continued. In the middle of the afternoon their
officers made another attempt to drive them forward, but it was a
half-hearted response that was elicited. Once more they faced that
deadly accurate rifle fire of the men from the South, and before it
they crumpled up and fled again for shelter. All night they kept
up an incessant fire from their trenches, but in the morning it
died away into nothingness. General Liman von Sanders had made a
mistake, and the most expensive mistake yet made on the peninsula of
Gallipoli. Such was the end to his boasting.
Not a Turk had entered an Anzac trench except dead Turks, not a yard
of ground had been gained in any direction. And from Quinn's Post all
along the line to Courtnay's, the ground was piled with the dead and
dying. "Eight acres of dead bodies," estimated one literal bushman,
after a close scrutiny of the field of battle through a periscope.
Another essayed to count the bodies in sight from his trench, and
stopped at an estimate of 4,000. At least 30,000 Turks took part
in that frontal attack, and on a conservative estimate, one-third
of them were put out of action. The wounded were sent back to
Constantinople literally by thousands, and the sight of them spread
panic and dismay far and wide through that city.
Mr. Ashmead Bartlett, who went over the lines on the following
day, presents a grim picture of the slaughter wrought by the
straight-shooting Australians.
"The ground presents an extraordinary sight when viewed through the
trench periscopes. Two hundred yards away, and even closer in places,
are the Turkish trenches, and between them and our lines the dead lie
in hundreds. There are groups of twenty or thirty massed together, as
if for mutual protection, some lying on their faces, some killed in
the act of firing; others hung up in the barbed wire. In one place
a small group actually reached our parapet, and now lie dead on it,
shot at point-blank range or bayoneted. Hundreds of others lie just
outside their own trenches, where they were caught by rifles and
shrapnel when trying to regain them. Hundreds of wounded must have
perished between the lines, for it was only on the 21st that the
enemy made overtures for an armistice for burying the dead; but up
to the present this has not been granted owing to the suspicious
number of troops in his front trenches.
"In places the Turks made four or five separate efforts to charge
home, using hand-grenades, but they all failed dismally."
"Ever alert," writes one who took part in the slaughter, "the
Colonials were ready to meet the strain when it came. The sight of
seemingly endless masses of the enemy advancing upon them might well
have shaken the nerve of the already severely-tried troops. Our
machine-guns and artillery mowed down the attackers in hundreds, but
still the advancing wall swept on. On, still! Would the ranks never
waste in strength? Not till the wave was at point-blank range from
the nimble trigger-fingers did it break and spend itself amongst our
barbed-wire entanglements. Turks were shot in the act of jumping into
our trenches. Corpses lay with their heads and arms hanging over our
parapets. Our fire gradually dominated the ground in front. Those who
turned to fly were mowed down before they could go a dozen yards. The
Germans sent their supports forward in droves. It was sickening to
behold the slaughter our fire made amongst the massed battalions as
they issued from concealment into open spaces.
"These unfortunate Turks scrambled along towards us over piles of
dead bodies. In an instant a company would be enveloped in the smoke
of a shrapnel salvo. When the smoke cleared that company would be
stretched or writhing on the ground, with another company approaching
and ready to share its predecessor's fate."
The Anzacs did not lose one man for every twenty they put out of
action. Coolly and methodically they took the chance sent them by
Sanders Pasha, and every bullet was sent home in memory of the brave
comrades they had lost, and the grand general who was even then
breathing his last. They had previously displayed bravery, hardihood,
and resource beyond imagination; the qualities shown at the battle
of Quinn's Post were steadiness, accurate shooting, and a reasoned
discipline that would have done the utmost credit to the most
seasoned veterans of the British regular army.
Two days later the Turks craved an armistice to bury their thousands
of slain. Too great indulgence could not be given them in the
performance of their gruesome task, for under the tuition of their
German masters they are apt to employ such breathing spaces for
purposes to which they ought not to be devoted. The requests for
armistices became very frequent after that slaughter of May 19, but
the Anzacs knew just how to deal with them.
And so the Anzacs got their own back with enormous interest. After
being sent forward over open country against big fields of barbed
wire, with enfilading machine-guns hidden at every turn, it was a
sheer luxury to lie in the trenches and let the other fellow do a bit
of self-immolation. They knew, too, that they had struck a deadly
blow at German prestige with the Turk. General Birdwood told them so
when he inspected their defences, after the fight was over.
A THORN IN THE FLESH