THE AUGUST BATTLES AT CAPE HELLES
In the history of the expedition to the Dardanelles, the August battles
in the area of Cape Helles figure as a pinning or holding attack by the
British Army, designed to occupy the enemy while the Suvla Bay landing
was effected. The line of communications that linked the Achi Baba
position with Maidos and Gallipoli was to be cut by our forces operating
from Suvla and Anzac, and the Narrows were to be opened to our fleet by
the capture of Sari-Bair. The epic of the actual Suvla effort has been
nobly told in both Sir Ian Hamilton's dispatches and Mr Masefield's
_Gallipoli_.
The Regimental officer at Cape Helles naturally knew very little of the
strategy underlying these operations, and nothing of events at Suvla or
Anzac, though Suvla was but thirteen miles and Anzac but five from
Fusilier Bluff. His could only be the impressions of an eyewitness in an
orbit limited to his Brigade. During the whole of our Gallipoli
experiences, we were only conscious of Divisional organisation and
personnel through the literature and correspondence of the orderly-room,
or from mere glimpses on the occasion of our rare visits to the base on
Gully Beach. I am glad to have once seen the Commander-in-Chief, Sir Ian
Hamilton. He passed our Headquarters on the Western Mule Sap, walking
briskly towards the trenches. The fine appreciation of the Manchester
Territorial Brigade's work on the 4th June, which he wrote in his
dispatches, made his name a name always to conjure with, but to the man
in the trenches, an Army Commander can at most be but a shining name.
Consequently, the story of the fighting in August, as we saw it, must
needs be silent on all vexed questions of high policy, and also on the
more famous struggle to the north of Achi Baba. Its limitations are true
to life.
On the 5th August we learnt that our Army was to assault the enemy's
position simultaneously with the enterprise at Suvla.
Three points were emphasised in our instructions. First, the frontage
and depth of the sector to be carried by each unit was carefully and
personally explained to us by General the Hon. H.A. Lawrence, who was at
that time our Brigadier. Secondly, we had to tell our men that the
Turkish lines would have been rendered almost untenable before their
advance, in consequence of the heavy bombardment, which was to precede
the attack. Thirdly, we were to emphasise to the men that Turkish morale
was on the wane. Prisoners, whose only words were "English good; Turkey
finish," were, I fancy, responsible for this last venture in optimism.
We had every reason to anticipate that the attempt was to be a thorough
onslaught, not a mere demonstration, and would probably lead to success.
The discovery that the Turks had in reality been massing for an attack
on our lines within a few hours of our own assault was only made
afterwards.
At 2.20 P.M. on the 6th August, the British guns opened on the Turkish
positions in front of the 29th Division, and at 3.50 P.M. we could see
our infantry advance under a hail of musketry and machine-gun fire. Our
guns lengthened range, and we saw shells fired by our warships in the
Gulf of Saros bursting along the crest of Achi Baba. Through the
periscope we watched the tin back-plates, worn by our men for the
enlightenment of artillery observers, twinkling under the dust and
smoke. Some other Manchesters were lending a hand in the battle already,
and were struggling under heavy shrapnel fire to gain a footing in the
trenches immediately to the north of the sector to be assaulted by the
Brigade on the morrow. Then gradually the firing sank. By 4.45 P.M.
there was a distinct lull. One of our Companies (C Company) under
Captain G. Chadwick, was sent as reinforcements. A stream of wounded
(Manchesters, Worcesters, Munsters) began to file past our lines into
the winding nullah. We knew little as to what had happened. The sky
above the shell-riddled ridge of Achi Baba was serene and purple in the
glow of evening, but the fog of war was upon us.
Suddenly, at 6.40 P.M., a message came that two of our Companies were
required at once to help the Worcester Regiment, who had taken part in
the assault about a mile to the north of where we were. A Company
(Captain A.E.F. Fawcus) and D Company (Captain H. Smedley) were ordered
to comply. The men were resting for the work planned for the next day.
They got ready hurriedly, and moved in fast-gathering darkness along a
labyrinth of unfamiliar trenches to a position from which the Worcesters
had advanced in the afternoon.
Our information was most vague. The Worcesters had gone "over the top"
many hours earlier and had disappeared. They were believed to be holding
trenches somewhere beyond, but they were out of touch with our line, and
it was intended to reinforce them. The night was dark, and the direction
to be taken after leaving our trenches could only be roughly indicated.
A Company lined up first, and went over the top like one man. D Company,
which was to move to the right of A, then lined up along the fire step
and followed.
Our men passed into a tornado of fire, and drifted forward on a broken
moor, already littered with dead and wounded. Both Companies eventually
lined up in shallow depressions of ground, but there was no trench to
receive them.
Meanwhile, many of our wounded had straggled back to the trench from
which they started, and numbers of wounded Regulars of the 29th
Division who had lain out for many hours were brought in by our men
during the long night. This was the one bright touch in its story. We
laid down these brave men on the narrow fire-step, and our
stretcher-bearers worked nobly. Several men went out with stretchers
under heavy fire, and fetched in as many survivors as they could find.
One, I remember, was called Corris. At midnight the Colonel and Captain
P.H. Creagh, our Adjutant, left for Headquarters, where the morrow's
plan of operations was being partially recast. The hours passed. At last
two messengers clambered back with reports from Fawcus and Smedley.
Lance-Corporal H.L. MacCartney brought the former's.
The only sensible course was for our parties to come in. I noticed that
MacCartney's hand was broken and bleeding, and suggested to him that
someone else should go back with my message of recall. He insisted on
his ability to go, and with a companion he climbed over the parapet. A
few moments later he was shot through the heart. Smedley's messenger was
Lance-Corporal G.W.F. Franklin, whose services on the field won him a
commission, and who played a splendid part in the subsequent annals of
the Battalion. He was given a like message of recall for Captain
Smedley, and with it he too clambered back over the parapet and passed
out into the night.
At 3.30 A.M. on the 7th August the two Companies toiled homewards,
having lost heavily. Davidson, a plucky Australian officer attached to
us, was among the killed. He had been in charge of a working party which
wandered in the darkness into the Turkish lines, and was there
destroyed.
After a couple of hours' sleep, we rose to take our part in the renewed
offensive. A heavy bombardment was to precede a general advance. As the
front-line trenches lay within a few yards of the Turks, they were now
practically cleared of men in order to avoid casualties from our own
gunfire. The scheme laid down for our Battalion required a north-east
advance by C and B Companies out of the narrow defile known as Krithia
nullah. A gap was therefore made overnight in the barrier that had
hitherto crossed the mouth of the defile and linked our fire trenches
with those neighbouring. A machine gun was placed at the north-west
corner of this gap under cover of the end of our fire trench. On the
south-east side of the gap, a barricade ran up a steep slope to the
trenches of other Manchesters, whose assault was to be simultaneous with
ours. Owing to the clearance of the fire trenches, the assaulting
parties had, unfortunately, to move across the open. The nullah was
twisted and partly covered by curving banks on either flank; so that it
was hoped that our men might nevertheless avoid complete exposure. The
great hope, however, was that the British guns would succeed in wrecking
the redoubt that commanded the outlet of the nullah before the infantry
moved.
We waited at the spot where the support line ran down to the nullah and
from which C Company was to emerge, while our artillery thundered
against the enemy's position. Then the hour came, and C Company, under
Chadwick (bravest of the brave), moved in single file into the nullah
and onward towards the gap in the front-line barricade and the Turkish
redoubt beyond.
B Company, under Captain J.R. Creagh, followed in their wake.
At the same time a battalion of the Manchesters, commanded by
Lieut.-Col. Darlington, was launched against the Turkish line on the
left of the redoubt, and another, under Lieut.-Col. Pilkington, against
the line on its right. The redoubt itself was at the apex of a broad
angle of trenches.
It was at once obvious that our guns had been unable to affect the
strength and resisting power of the enemy's front line. Each advancing
wave of the Manchesters was swept away by machine-gun fire. A few of
them gallantly reached the Turkish trenches and fell there. Long
afterwards, during the last flicker of a British offensive in December,
some Lowland Scots soldiers of the 52nd Division found in trenches on
the west of the nullah the bodies of some of the Manchester men, who had
also this day fought a way to their objective and perished.
We saw shrapnel bursting along the nullah, through which C Company was
passing, and progress seemed stopped. I ran along the deserted saps
that connected our support line with the front firing trench, and came
to the gap. Some twenty yards ahead, a group of about thirty men were
lying together in the shallow water-course, mostly dead. Another group
was gathered under cover by the gap. The rest of C and B Companies were
still running up to the gap from the support line through the long grass
of the nullah, and dropping in their tracks under the constant fire of
the redoubt. Chadwick and J.R. Creagh were both in the forefront of the
advance, and Chadwick signalled back its hopelessness. His subaltern,
Bacon, had been the first to pass the gap, and had been killed on
emerging. The whole battle in this sector was really over, and I stopped
the men under cover from moving out into the open. In the late afternoon
the survivors of the little group in front crawled back to safety. The
dead were gathered in by the devoted stretcher-bearers under Sergeant
Mort, during the evening. One party, under Corporal F. White, had alone
penetrated to within a few yards of the redoubt. He held his men
together through the afternoon and brought them in under cover of
darkness, for which the D.C.M. was his reward. Mort had won the D.C.M.
earlier in the campaign.
All through that hot afternoon the wounded Manchesters trailed back to
the busy dressing-stations, pictures of suffering and patience. The
attack still further reduced the numbers of the original Territorial
units, already greatly diminished by casualties.
[Illustration: In Khartum Station.
Col. Gresham. General Wingate.]
[Illustration: In the Turkish trench captured on 4th June.]
We wondered to what extent the effort at Cape Helles had eased the great
task of the armies operating from Anzac and Suvla Bay. The guns used to
boom all day long from the hidden north until the 22nd August, when the
attempt was given up. Several weeks passed before we realised that the
valiant armies there had laboured in vain, and that Sari-Bair had
remained unconquered.
We were far more conscious of the limited results of the battle on the
Cape Helles side of Achi Baba.
To the right of the line attacked by the Manchester Brigade and some 200
yards east of Krithia nullah, the Lancashire Fusiliers succeeded, with
great gallantry, in capturing a small plot known as the Vineyard, which
the Turks in six days' hard fighting were unable to regain.
Regarded purely as a holding attack during the main enterprise from
Suvla, the offensive fully achieved its purpose. It was, however,
difficult to look upon it in this somewhat narrow light from the point
of view of a Regiment which took part in the actual adventure.
Of the many personalities that struck one's imagination during this
August battle, the majority were simply of the rank and file, whose
pluck and unselfishness were incomparable. Of most I have forgotten the
very names. There was a postman from Bradford, who was forty-seven years
old and had thirteen children. I remember his telling me of South
African experiences. He fell. Most of our men were far younger. Many
were mere boys, whose days in the Camel Corps at Khartum had been their
first taste of manhood. Their Company Sergeant-Major, Leigh, was
mortally wounded by shrapnel while running up the nullah.
Of our officers, Captains Smedley and Chadwick survived to be pillars of
strength during the whole campaign. About the time when I finally left
the unit Captain Smedley joined the Egyptian Army as a Bimbashi, and
Chadwick the Royal Flying Corps. Chadwick received a Serbian decoration.
Fawcus, who distinguished himself by his cool leadership on the night of
the 6th August, left the Battalion very soon afterwards to conduct a
newly formed Bombing School on the Peninsula. He was the recipient of
many well-earned honours, and ultimately, as a battalion commander, won
wider fame in another theatre of war.
A number of the men received cards from Divisional Headquarters,
expressing appreciation of their gallantry: Sergeants W. Harrison and
M'Hugh; Corporal (afterwards Company Sergeant-Major) J. Joyce;
Lance-Corporal (afterwards Lieutenant) G.W.F. Franklin; Lance-Corporal
(afterwards Lieutenant) W.T. Thorp; Corporals Hulme and Cherry; Privates
Anderson, Beckett, Bradbury, Fletcher, Hayes, Hamilton, Maher, Murphy
and Walsh. Joyce was afterwards awarded the Russian Order of St George.
On the 15th August 1915 we were relieved by a Lowland Scots Brigade of
the 52nd Division, and moved to what were then called the Scotch
dug-outs, a bivouac about two and a half miles behind the fire trenches
upon the central plateau of the Peninsula. It was hot and dusty, but
five minutes' walk led the weary to the cliff. We used to go down its
steep side on to the coast road, full of soldiers of the Allied Armies,
of carts and mules with long tassel fly protectors, and of Indian or
Zionist muleteers. Across the road a lighter was moored, from which we
bathed happily in a peaceful sea, with the pale blue contours of Imbros
and Samothrace cut clearly against the sky, and our trawlers and
cruisers moving up and down on their ceaseless watch between Cape Helles
and Anzac. Here and here alone was it possible to forget the brown
wilderness above the cliff, and all the toil and bloodshed between
ourselves and the summit of Achi Baba.
Casualties are soon forgotten in war. In the dusty and exposed dug-outs,
which were now our refuge, men revived. After the recent losses, it was
good to see our clever Territorials transforming what looked like dog
biscuits into a palatable porridge, cooking rice and raisins, picking
lice from their grey woollen shirts, reading papers (all very light and
very old), grumbling, but ever cheerful. It was in the Scotch dug-outs
that we heard of the loss of the _Royal Edward_ and of the German entry
into Warsaw; but already mails and food held the first place in our
minds. Man readjusts his sense of proportion as he enters a theatre of
war.
On the 19th August, Colonel Canning became temporary Brigadier. I thus
became Commanding Officer in his absence. The same day we left our
bivouac, and after a long, hot, march, through the dusty gorge called
Gully Ravine, we relieved another unit in the firing line on the
northerly side of that great artery of British life and traffic.