By JOHN MASEFIELD.
[E] _From “Gallipoli.” By John Masefield. (Heinemann.)_
The men told off for this landing were: the Dublin Fusiliers, the
Munster Fusiliers, half a battalion of the Hampshire Regiment, and the
West Riding Field Company.
Three companies of the Dublin Fusiliers were to land from towed
lighters, the rest of the party from a tramp steamer, the collier
_River Clyde_. This ship, a conspicuous seamark at Cape Helles
throughout the rest of the campaign, had been altered to carry and land
troops. Great gangways or entry ports had been cut in her sides on the
level of her between decks, and platforms had been built out upon her
sides below these, so that men might run from her in a hurry. The plan
was to beach her as near the shore as possible, and then drag or sweep
the lighters, which she towed, into position between her and the shore,
so as to make a kind of boat bridge from her to the beach. When the
lighters were so moored as to make this bridge, the entry ports were
to be opened, the waiting troops were to rush out on to the external
platforms, run from them on to the lighters, and so to the shore. The
ship’s upper deck and bridge were protected with boiler plate and
sandbags, and a casemate for machine guns was built upon her fo’c’sle,
so that she might reply to the enemy’s fire.
Five picket-boats, each towing five boats or launches full of men,
steamed alongside the _River Clyde_ and went ahead when she grounded.
She took the ground rather to the right of the little beach, some 400
yards from the ruins of Sedd-el-Bahr Castle, before the Turks had
opened fire; but almost as she grounded, when the picket-boats with
their tows were ahead of her, only 20 or 30 yards from the beach, every
rifle and machine gun in the castle, the town above it, and in the
curved, low, strongly trenched hill along the bay, began a murderous
fire upon ship and boats. There was no question of their missing. They
had their target on the front and both flanks at ranges between 100
and 300 yards in clear daylight, 30 boats bunched together and crammed
with men and a good big ship. The first outbreak of fire made the bay
as white as a rapid, for the Turks fired not less then 10,000 shots
a minute for the first few minutes of that attack. Those not killed
in the boats at the first discharge jumped overboard to wade or swim
ashore. Many were killed in the water, many, who were wounded, were
swept away and drowned; others, trying to swim in the fierce current,
were drowned by the weight of their equipment. But some reached the
shore, and these instantly doubled out to cut the wire entanglements
and were killed, or dashed for the cover of a bank of sand or raised
beach which runs along the curve of the bay. Those very few who reached
this cover were out of immediate danger, but they were only a handful.
The boats were destroyed where they grounded.
Meanwhile the men of the _River Clyde_ tried to make their bridge of
boats by sweeping the lighters into position and mooring them between
the ship and the shore. They were killed as they worked, but others
took their places; the bridge was made, and some of the Munsters dashed
along it from the ship and fell in heaps as they ran. As a second
company followed, the moorings of the lighters broke or were shot;
the men leaped into the water, and were drowned or killed, or reached
the beach and were killed, or fell wounded there, and lay under fire,
getting wound after wound till they died; very, very few reached the
sandbank. More brave men jumped aboard the lighters to remake the
bridge; they were swept away or shot to pieces. The average life on
those boats was some three minutes long, but they remade the bridge,
and the third company of the Munsters doubled down to death along it
under a storm of shrapnel which scarcely a man survived. The big guns
in Asia were now shelling the _River Clyde_, and the hell of rapid
fire never paused. More men tried to land, headed by Brigadier-General
Napier, who was instantly killed, with nearly all his followers.
Then for long hours the remainder stayed on board, down below in the
grounded steamer, while the shots beat on her plates with a rattling
clang which never stopped. Her twelve machine guns fired back, killing
any Turk who showed; but nothing could be done to support the few
survivors of the landing, who now lay under cover of the sandbank on
the other side of the beach. It was almost certain death to try to
leave the ship, but all through the day men leaped from her (with leave
or without it) to bring water or succour to the wounded on the boats
or beach. A hundred brave men gave their lives thus; every man there
earned the Cross that day. A boy earned it by one of the bravest deeds
of the war, leaping into the sea with a rope in his teeth to try to
secure a drifting lighter.
The day passed thus, but at nightfall the Turks’ fire paused, and the
men came ashore from the _River Clyde_, almost unharmed. They joined
the survivors on the beach, and at once attacked the old fort and the
village above it. These works were strongly held by the enemy. All had
been ruined by the fire from the Fleet, but in the rubble and ruin of
old masonry there were thousands of hidden riflemen backed by machine
guns. Again and again they beat off our attacks, for there was a bright
moon and they knew the ground, and our men had to attack uphill over
wire and broken earth and heaped stones in all the wreck and confusion
and strangeness of war at night in a new place. Some of the Dublins
and Munsters went astray in the ruins, and were wounded far from their
fellows, and so lost. The Turks became more daring after dark; while
the light lasted they were checked by the _River Clyde’s_ machine guns,
but at midnight they gathered unobserved and charged. They came right
down on to the beach, and in the darkness and moonlight much terrible
and confused fighting followed. Many were bayoneted, many shot, there
was wild firing and crying, and then the Turk attack melted away, and
their machine guns began again. When day dawned, the survivors of the
landing party were crouched under the shelter of the sandbank; they
had had no rest; most of them had been fighting all night; all had
landed across the corpses of their friends. No retreat was possible,
nor was it dreamed of, but to stay there was hopeless. Lieut.-Colonel
Doughty-Wylie gathered them together for an attack; the Fleet opened a
terrific fire upon the ruins of the fort and village, and the landing
party went forward again, fighting from bush to bush and from stone to
stone, till the ruins were in their hands. Shells still fell among
them, single Turks, lurking under cover, sniped them and shot them; but
the landing had been made good, and V beach was secured to us.
This was the worst and the bloodiest of all the landings.
[Illustration: THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME: THE COLDSTREAM GUARDS’ SPLENDID
CHARGE.
_Reproduced by permission of “The Illustrated London News.”_]