JUNE AND JULY PREPARATIONS
There is no doubt that operations in May convinced General Sir Ian
Hamilton that neither at the southern nor in the northern positions
on the peninsula was his force strong enough to push back the Turks,
though he held what he had won strongly enough. Consequently he cabled
to the War Office, urging that reinforcements should be sent. But in
the middle of May the withdrawal of the Russians from the Gallipoli
campaign was declared from Petrograd, and the Commander-in-Chief found
it necessary to increase his estimate of the force he would require to
force his way across to the Narrows. His new demand was two additional
army corps. Already the Lowland Division (52nd) had been dispatched,
but this was but 20,000 men; four times as many were required to press
home the offensive. The abatement of the Russian attacks had released
about 100,000 of the finest Turkish troops, and these reinforcements
began to arrive on the peninsula in June. General Hamilton writes in
his last dispatch: "During June your Lordship became persuaded of the
bearing of these facts, and I was promised three regular Divisions,
plus the infantry of two Territorial Divisions. The advance guard of
these troops was due to reach Mudros by 10th July; by 10th August their
concentration was to be complete."
So thus before the end of May the Commander-in-Chief had in mind the
larger plan, beginning a new phase of the campaign, to be carried out
in July, or at the latest August. Therefore, it may be truly said, the
June-July Anzac battles were fought as preparatory actions (in the
absence of sufficiently strong forces) to clear and pave the way for
the great August offensive. The grip on the Turks was tightened.
Fighting round Quinn's Post, as already related, had been taking place
during the greater part of May. Sometimes the Australians attacked,
and, more seldom, the Turks counter-attacked. It was at any time a
desperately held position. It continued so till the end of the chapter.
Now, while the Anzac troops could not yet advance, they could help any
direct assault on Achi Baba, such as had been once tried in May with
but partial success. So it happened on the 28th June the Anzac troops
were ordered to make demonstrations to allow the pushing home by the
English and French of attacks that had commenced on 8th May, when the
Australians had taken so prominent a part in the advance on Krithia
village. In this 28th June action the Gurkhas were ordered, and did
advance, up the Great Dere, and flung the British flank round the
west of that village. It was a fine gain of some 800 yards. However,
the Turks had plenty of troops available, and they lost no time in
organizing terrific counter-attacks. Owing to the offensive taken at
Anzac the Australians were able to draw off a portion from this attack,
which tactics at the same time both puzzled and harassed the Turks. The
details I will briefly relate.
In June the 2nd Light Horse Brigade, under Brigadier-General Ryrie,
held the southerly portion of the line at Tasman's Post, that
overlooked Blamey's Meadow. Next them, holding the line, were the 3rd
Infantry Brigade, under Brigadier-General Maclagan, reinforced now
with new troops, though with still a proportion of the men that had
taken part in the landing. Except for patrol work and various small
excursions and alarms against the Turks, there had been no big attack
made yet. They were keen for battle.
All the night of the 27th-28th and during the morning masses of shells
could be seen bursting on the hills round Krithia, and sheets of flame
rolled along the slopes of the hills as the warships and the guns
ashore bombarded the Turkish trenches. Early on the 28th news had been
received that all efforts of the Turks to drive back the British had
failed. The troops at Anzac revelled in that great artillery struggle.
At midday their turn came.
For the first time, a day attack was planned. The Light Horse were
to leave their trenches at one o'clock. Destroyers moved close in to
Gaba Tepe and to the north of the Australian position, and began an
intense shelling of the exposed Turkish trenches, that in some places
were open to enfilade fire. Soon the artillery ashore began, and
added further havoc. In front of the southern part of our line, near
Harris Ridge, about 600 yards away, was a strong Turkish position on a
rise--one of the many spurs of the main ridge. This was the objective
of the attacking troops. All Queenslanders, Light Horse, and infantry,
had been selected--a squadron and two companies, about 500 men, who
were to lead the charge. They were to be led by Lieut.-Colonel H.
Harris. The Western Australian Infantry, about 300 in all, were chosen
to support the Queensland (9th) Infantry, led by Major Walsh; and New
South Wales (7th) Light Horse Regiment, to support the Queensland (5th)
dismounted squadron.
Just after one o'clock the guns ceased, and the storming parties
of Queenslanders dashed forward from their trenches, and, with
comparatively few casualties, gained a footing on the nearest slope
of the ridge, that was covered with thick brush. They found certain
protection, and there they commenced to entrench. Just over the ridge
was a plateau of cultivated ground, called "The Wheatfield," and across
this the Turks had dug trenches at right angles to the ridge. From the
trenches that the Light Horsemen had left, rifle fire could be kept up
on these trenches. Beyond, the strong Turkish positions on Wineglass
Ridge and Pine Ridge were being shelled by the destroyers and the New
Zealand artillery. However, it did not take the Turks long to bring gun
fire on these advanced troops, and high-explosive shell burst in the
shallow trenches. The brown and red earth was flung up in dense clouds,
but the troops held to their position. They went on digging. It was as
fine an example of courage as one might wish to see--these splendid
men calmly entrenching amidst the craters the shells left round them.
Soon, however, the very object of the offensive was disclosed to the
Australians themselves, for they could see Turkish reinforcements being
hurried up in the distant gullies (they had come from the village of
Eski Keui, half-way down the peninsula to Krithia). Turkish leaders
could be seen in the fierce sunlight signalling to their troops to keep
low, as they could be observed by our forces; and no doubt the Turks
with their white fezzes and skull-caps made excellent targets, as they
soon found, to their consternation and cost, by the accuracy of our
gun fire. These enemy reinforcements were scattered, and, in disorder,
sought what shelter they could in the gullies.
Having held the ridge and accomplished the diversion, the Light
Horse gradually retired and regained their own trenches. By 4.30 in
the afternoon the infantry too had been withdrawn from the advanced
position. So not only had the attack been successful in drawing up
Turks who would otherwise have gone to the assistance of their comrades
hard pressed around Krithia, but they were, through bad leadership,
brought up into positions in gullies which our guns had registered, and
terrible casualties resulted. Both the Queensland units--Light Horse as
well as infantry--had shown fine gallantry, and they were dashingly led
by Lieut.-Colonel Harris.
Once having stirred the Turk, it behoved the Australians to be ready
for a counter-attack. But Tuesday, 29th, remained still and quiet;
only the occasional bursting of a bomb round Quinn's and Pope's Posts
and the intermittent crack of rifles, broke the calm of a perfect
summer day. To the enemy there had been every indication that a serious
advance was contemplated from Anzac. During the afternoon, growing
nervous of the close approach of some of our mine tunnels under
their trenches, the Turks exploded their countermines, which would
effectively seal any advance from underground and through craters.
Just afterwards a summer storm arose, which enveloped the Turkish
lines in clouds of dust. What better opportunity could have presented
itself for our attack? No sooner had the wind driven the dust over the
trenches than the enemy commenced a fierce fire, which they maintained
without ceasing for two hours. The stream of lead that passed over our
trenches was terrific. Only when the storm abated did the Turkish rifle
and machine gun fire die away. All of this the enemy did to check an
anticipated advance which we had no intention of making. Millions of
rounds of Turkish ammunition had been wasted.
But the Turks now determined to turn the situation to their own
purpose, which apparently was to draw attention to their lines in this
southern section, while they prepared to launch, unexpectedly, an
attack from another quarter. The Australian leaders were already aware
of this method of surprise, and had come to look on it as part of the
Turkish "bluff"; for the enemy had tried it before, when they had blown
bugles and shouted orders and given loud commands in their trenches,
and nothing had happened--not at that spot. Now the firing ceased just
before midnight.
An hour and a half later the enemy began a violent attack on the
Nek, with new troops belonging to the 18th Regiment of the enemy's
6th Division. They had come recently from Asia Minor, and were some
of the best troops of the Turkish Regular Army. Enver Pasha himself,
the Commander-in-Chief of the Turkish forces, had ordered the attack
so that the Australians might, once and for all, be "pushed into
the sea." In this way began an attempt to rush our trenches at the
head of Monash Gully. The line was here held by New Zealanders and
Light Horse. On this left flank considerable rearrangement from the
earlier days had taken place. The Maories held the extreme left down
to the shore. On Russell Top were the New Zealand Mounted Rifles,
under Brigadier-General Russell, and the 3rd Light Horse, under
Brigadier-General Hughes. These fine men held the trenches opposite
the mass of Turkish lines, the Chessboard Trenches. Brigadier General
Chauvel's Light Horse Brigade was in the trenches at Quinn's and
Pope's, together with some New Zealand infantry regiments. Thus was the
gap at the head of Monash Gully up as far as Steel's Post, held.
From midnight till 1.30 an intense fire of musketry and guns was poured
on to our trenches on Russell's Top. It was still bright moonlight
when, in a series of lines, the Turks commenced to attack at 1.30.
They came shambling on, shouting "Allah! Allah!" towards the parapets
of our trenches, less than 100 yards across the Nek. At this spot the
Light Horsemen had been digging out two saps towards the enemy, and
it was into these some of the enemy charged, our troops dividing to
allow them to enter. Then the Australians fell on them from either
side with bombs, and none escaped. For it was the habit of the Turk
when he attacked, not to jump into the trench and come to hand-to-hand
encounters if he could help it, but to lie on top of the parapet and
fire down into the trench. Very few of the enemy, in these three
charges that came and faded away, reached our lines. When the first
charge had been so blankly stopped not many yards after it began, the
Turks tried to work along the northern edge of the ridge, where the
ground fell away steeply into the gullies below, and on the southern
side of the Nek, where the ground was no less difficult, but not as
deep, sloping down to the head of Monash Gully. Our machine guns
wrought fearful havoc, and 400 Turks at least perished in the charges.
Then the destroyers sent the rays of their searchlights farther up
the hill towards the rounded top of Baby 700, and revealed the enemy
reserves advancing. Gun fire destroyed these.
Meanwhile, a further attack was developing down the heads of the
gullies on either side of Pope's Hill, the hill that guarded the
entrance to the gully, and the centre of the position. I have already
told how from the sides of this hill machine guns were trained down
into the gully; and how the line of concealed sharp-shooters' posts
we had established, gave absolute command, and at the same time
protection, to the holders of the gully. The bright rays of the moon
aided the defenders, and they could easily detect the stealthily moving
figures. Towards one o'clock the Turks commenced to work down this
gully. It is related of that fight--an incident typical, no doubt, of
many--that a Light Horseman, seeing a Turk silhouetted on the edge of
the ridge, rushed at him with his bayonet, and the two men slipped over
the edge of the cliff, down through the bush and loose earth, till
they both were brought up almost face to face on a ledge. They crossed
bayonets--one pictures the two figures in the indefinite light of the
moon standing there motionless for a fraction of a minute--till the
Australian, realizing that he had in his magazine a cartridge, pulled
the trigger. When his comrades came to his assistance, dashing through
the undergrowth, they found him with the dead Turk, smiling.
Now, it was evident the Turks had meant to stay in that attack. The
few men that did reach the trenches on Russell's Top, and were killed
there, must have been men of the second or third lines. They carried
large numbers of bombs and digging implements. They had quantities of
provisions--figs, dates, and olives--and water-bottles filled. They
were evidently intended to be the holding party. As daylight came, some
of the enemy still lurked in the head of the gully on either flank of
Pope's Hill. Just before dawn a further line of 300 men attempted to
rush the head of the gully. They reached the edge of the cliff, and
then broke into small parties running this way and that, under the fire
of our machine guns, which played on them from the Light Horse lines
on Russell's Top (the main charge by this having faded away) and from
the side of Pope's Hill. At the same time a few of the enemy left their
trenches at Quinn's to rush our post on the side of the hill. None got
more than a few yards. All the men of that last desperate attack were
killed or wounded. A few were taken prisoners.
The scene next morning was ghastly. In the saps on the Nek twenty and
thirty dead Turks lay piled in a row. Before Pope's Hill, never very
strongly threatened that night, there were scores of dead. The total
loss must have been nearly 600 killed and 2,000 casualties. It is
historically important as the last Turkish attack against Anzac proper.
The Turks showed a desperate courage; for this attack on the Nek was
but sending troops to certain destruction; yet the men never flinched,
and they were soon to show the same valour again, in attacks on the
higher slopes of the Sari Bair ridge.
Throughout July it was always expected that the enemy's superstition
would lead him to make a bold effort in the season of Ramazan--the
end of July. Warnings had reached Anzac to this effect. Prisoners had
anticipated it, probably due to the orders of Enver Pasha to dislodge
at all costs the Australian forces. The enemy had been bringing up new
regiments. All through July the Turks showed a nervous disposition to
burst out into heavy fusillades all along the line. At night they sent
coloured lights over the gullies and our position. Our gunners did
the same, at the time when the moon dropped behind the hills of Troy,
between midnight and 3 a.m. The troops stood to arms at moonset. Our
trenches were then always fully manned. The reserves slept in the saps.
[Illustration: THE GREAT SAP LEADING FROM NO. 2 OUTPOST INTO ANZAC
ROUND ARI BURNU POINT.
Fishermen's huts were situated half-way along the beach (Ocean Beach).
Russell Top and Plugge's Plateau in the distance.]
[Illustration: TURKISH PRISONERS DIGGING NEW DUGOUTS FOR GENERAL GODLEY
NEAR NO. 2 POST, AFTER THE FIRST AUGUST OFFENSIVE.
To face p. 218.]
Ramazan passed; and still the Turks clung to the protection of their
trenches. The June battles had completely disheartened them. Their
ammunition was running short. Certainly ours had been none too
plentiful, and orders had been given since May to conserve it as
far as possible. Two rounds per gun a day was the limit, except under
special circumstances. As General Hamilton himself admitted, "Working
out my ammunition allowance, I found I would accumulate just enough
high-explosive shell to enable me to deliver one serious attack each
period of three weeks." It was exceedingly exasperating to the gunners,
this shortage. There came times when, owing to the necessity of getting
permission from headquarters, the gunners grew impatient, as they saw
targets escaping into the folds of the hills. A General told me on one
occasion how a column could be seen moving about 4 miles away, but
owing to the delay of hours in getting the necessary permission to
loose off some twenty rounds of shell, the column escaped. He had fired
his allowance per gun, as was his invariable custom, just to remind
"Abdul" he was awake, early in the morning.
It was not, however, Sir Ian Hamilton's plan to draw much attention
to Anzac just at present. He wanted the Turkish mind focused on Cape
Helles, which was one reason for the period of quiet that occurred in
July at Anzac, though care was taken that the moral ascendancy that had
been gained over the Turks by the Australians was never lost, and not
one whit less was given to the Turks now than had been given before
in vigilant sniping and bombing. But the effect on the spirits of the
Turks was noticeable, and at the end of July, long before the official
information leaked out to the troops, there appeared in the trenches
opposite Quinn's Post a notice-board, on which was printed in irregular
letters, "Warsaw is fallin." The result of which little enemy joke was
that thousands of rifle bullets shattered the notice. Notes began to be
thrown over stating that the Australians would be well treated if they
surrendered. In spite of which, Turkish deserters still continued to
come into our lines, all of whom told of the growing fear of the Turks
at the length of the campaign, and the disheartening of their troops.
Incidentally, I may say, prisoners all believed they were going to be
killed. I remember Major Martyn telling me how one party, on coming
through a communication trench to our lines, had tried to kiss his
hands in gratitude at being spared.
So, chafing under the delayed advance, the Australians waited for
their chance to teach "Abdul" a lasting lesson.
PART III
_THE GREAT ADVENTURE_
CHAPTER XXI
THE AUGUST PHASE AND NEW LANDING
It will have been gathered from the fighting that followed the
terrible May attack of the Turks, when they lost so heavily in trying
to dislodge the Australians from Anzac and British from Helles, that
nothing would have satisfied our commanders better than for a Turkish
attack to develop during the end of July. This, I feel certain in
saying, would have been repulsed, as others had been repulsed, and
would have left the Turkish army weak, just at the moment when General
Sir Ian Hamilton had completed all his plans for the continuing
of the Great Adventure begun in April. The rumours of a projected
Turkish attack at Anzac proved groundless. The Australians were left
unmolested, while the Turks, conceiving that the British still intended
to attempt the assault of Achi Baba, had gathered on the end of the
peninsula great reserve forces. General Hamilton's strategy had had
much to do with this (the great sacrifices of the attacks on Krithia
would not then have seemed so vain had the full plan succeeded),
for in his mind was just the reverse idea--that Anzac should be the
turning-point, the pivot of all operations, as it had been intended
from the first. It was to become the centre of an unlinked battle
front, of which Cape Helles was the right flank and Suvla Bay was to
be the left. An attack launched from this left--a new and an entirely
unexpected left--would leave a way for the centre to push forward. Then
automatically would the right have advanced.
This strategy was really an elaboration of the early plan of the
Commander-in-Chief, aimed at the cutting of the Turkish communications
to the great dominating fortress of Kelid Bahr, which afterwards could
be reduced at leisure with the co-operation of the Navy. It has been
often asked what advantage would have accrued from the Australians and
the new British troops reaching Maidos and holding the heights of Koja
Chemen Tepe. None less than the forcing of the Turkish communication
from Europe into Asia, and that they should be compelled to undertake
the very hazardous and doubtful operation of keeping intact the
Gibraltar of the peninsula--the Kelid Bahr fortress--by supplying it
across the Narrows from Chanak and the badly railwayed coast of Asia
Minor.
But there were alternative plans open to General Hamilton, and such
will always give opportunity to military strategists to debate the
one adopted. What General Hamilton knew in May was that he would have
200,000 new British troops by August at his command, with 20,000
Australian reinforcements on their way and due to arrive about the
middle of the same month. His army, as he commanded it then, was about
150,000 strong (including the French Expedition), and its strength
might easily be diminished to 100,000 by August owing to normal
wastage, Turkish offensives, and sickness that began to make itself
evident. Two hundred thousand men to attack an Empire! In the days of
its Byzantine glory, in the times of the early struggles for Balkan
supremacy, such an army would have been considered noble. Now, though
British, it was not enough. Apparently the situation on the Western
front did not warrant another 100,000 men that General Hamilton had
asked for more than once, to give him a safe margin, being granted
him. The Turks, released from their toils against Russia on the east
in the Caucasus--the Mesopotamian front not seriously threatened and
the attack on the Canal being impossible--found ample men at their
disposal. On the other hand, they had a long and vulnerable coast-line
to guard, but the 900,000 men of that German organized and commanded
army, made a powerful fighting force. Nearly 400,000 troops were
apportioned for service on the peninsula. I am not asserting that that
number of men were facing the landed armies, but they were available,
some perhaps as far away as Adrianople or the Gulf of Enos. If General
Hamilton's problem was a difficult one, Enver Pasha's way was not
exactly smooth. He was harassed by lack of heavy ammunition, the
populace were wavering, while above all hung the terrible threat of
another landing on the European or Asiatic shores.
But one factor the British leader had to ponder deeply was the
submarine menace that had been threatening the very existence of the
already landed armies. Two fine warships, the _Triumph_ and _Majestic_,
had been sunk in May while shelling and guarding the positions ashore,
and the fleet had been compelled to seek shelter in the harbour of
Mudros. Even though monitors, with 14-in. guns, were soon available to
maintain the invaluable support that the battleships had previously
given to the army, there was not the weight of artillery of a highly
mobile nature, ready for any emergency, without the Admiralty were
prepared to hazard a great loss. Transportation of troops and stores
was dangerous and subject to irritating, and even dangerous, delays.
General Hamilton sums up the situation in a masterly fashion in his
final dispatch:--
Eliminating the impracticable, I had already narrowed down the methods
of employing these fresh forces to one of the following four:--
(_a_) Every man to be thrown on to the southern sector of the peninsula,
to force a way forward to the Narrows.
(_b_) Disembarkation on the Asiatic side of the Straits, followed by a
march on Chanak.
(_c_) A landing at Enos or Ibrije for the purpose of seizing the neck of
the Isthmus at Bulair.
(_d_) Reinforcement of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps,
combined with a landing in Suvla Bay. Then with one strong
push to capture Hill 305 [971], and, working from that dominating
point, to grip the waist of the peninsula.
As to (_a_) I rejected that course--
1. Because there were limits to the numbers which could be landed
and deployed in one confined area.
2. Because the capture of Krithia could no longer be counted upon
to give us Achi Baba, an entirely new system of works having
lately appeared upon the slopes of that mountain--works so
planned that even if the enemy's western flank was turned and
driven back from the coast, the central and eastern portions of the
mountain could still be maintained as a bastion to Kelid Bahr.
3. Because if I tried to disengage myself both from Krithia and Achi
Baba by landing due west of Kelid Bahr my troops would be
exposed to artillery fire from Achi Baba, the Olive Grove, and
Kelid Bahr itself; the enemy's large reserves were too handy;
there were not fair chances of success.
As to (_b_), although much of the Asiatic coast had now been wired and
entrenched, the project was still attractive. Thereby the Turkish
forces on the peninsula would be weakened; our beaches at Cape Helles
would be freed from Asiatic shells; the threat to the enemy's sea
communications was obvious. But when I descended into detail I found
that the expected reinforcements would not run to a double operation.
I mean that, unless I could make a thorough, whole-hearted attack on
the enemy in the peninsula I should reap no advantage in that theatre
from the transference of the Turkish peninsular troops to reinforce
Asia, whereas, if the British forces landed in Asia were not strong
enough in themselves seriously to threaten Chanak, the Turks for their
part would not seriously relax their grip upon the peninsula.
To cut the land communications of the whole of the Turkish peninsular
army, as in (_c_), was a better scheme on paper than on the spot.
The naval objections appeared to my coadjutor, Vice-Admiral Robeck,
well-nigh insurmountable. Already, owing to submarine dangers, all
reinforcements, ammunition, and supplies had to be brought up from
Mudros to Helles or Anzac by night in fleet sweepers and trawlers.
A new landing near Bulair would have added another 50 miles to the
course such small craft must cover, thus placing too severe a strain
upon the capacities of the flotilla.
The landing promised special hazards, owing to the difficulty of
securing the transports and covering ships from submarine attack.
Ibrije has a bad beach, and the distance to Enos, the only point
suitable to a disembarkation on a large scale, was so great that the
enemy would have had time to organize a formidable opposition from
his garrisons in Thrace. Four divisions at least would be required
to overcome such opposition. These might now be found; but, even so,
and presupposing every other obstacle overcome, it was by no manner
of means certain that the Turkish army on the peninsula would thereby
be brought to sue for terms, or that the Narrows would thereby be
opened to the fleet. The enemy would still be able to work supplies
across the Straits from Chanak. The swiftness of the current, the
shallow draft of the Turkish lighters, the guns of the forts, made it
too difficult even for our dauntless submarine commanders to paralyse
movement across these land-locked waters. To achieve that purpose
I must bring my artillery fire to bear both on the land and water
communications of the enemy.
This brings me to (_d_), the storming of that dominating height, Hill
305 [971], with the capture of Maidos and Gaba Tepe as its sequel.
From the very first I had hoped that by landing a force under the
heights of Sari Bair we should be able to strangle the Turkish
communications to the southwards, whether by land or sea, and so clear
the Narrows for the fleet. Owing to the enemy's superiority, both in
numbers and in position; owing to underestimates of the strength of
the original entrenchments prepared and sited under German direction;
owing to the constant dwindling of the units of my force through
wastage; owing also to the intricacy and difficulty of the terrain,
these hopes had not hitherto borne fruit. But they were well founded.
So much at least had clearly enough been demonstrated by the desperate
and costly nature of the Turkish attacks. The Australians and New
Zealanders had rooted themselves in very near to the vitals of the
enemy. By their tenacity and courage they still held open the doorway
from which one strong thrust forward might give us command of the
Narrows.
From the naval point of view the auspices were also favourable.
Suvla Bay was but one mile further from Mudros than Anzac, and its
possession would ensure us a submarine-proof base, and a harbour
good against gales, excepting those from the south-west. There were,
as might be expected, some special difficulties to be overcome. The
broken, intricate country--the lack of water--the consequent anxious
supply questions. Of these it can only be said that a bad country is
better than an entrenched country, and that supply and water problems
may be countered by careful preparation.
It has been pointed out before what need there was for studying the
moon at Anzac. In the fixing of the date for the new landing the
Commander-in-Chief had to find a means of "eliminating" the moon. That
is, he had to find the night which would give him the longest hours
of darkness, after the arrival of his forces. He found that on 7th
August the moon would rise at 2 p.m. The weather might be depended
on to be perfect, so that before the light would be fully cast over
the movements of the troops ashore it would be almost dawn. General
Hamilton would have liked the operations to have commenced a month
earlier, he says, but the troops were not available. He had to fill
in the time by keeping the enemy occupied and wearing them down with
feints. To have waited for another month till the whole of his command
had actually arrived on the adjacent islands of Mudros and Imbros,
where their concentration had been planned, would have been to come too
close to the approaching bad season and increase the element of risk of
the Turks discovering the plans. So the die was cast.
Early in July, I was in Alexandria--the main base of the army. Even
there the general opinion seemed to be that surely soon there must be
an attack, for such vast quantities of stores were being sent to the
peninsula. Never could one forget the sight of the wharves at that
seaport, burdened to their utmost capacity with cases that contained
not only the staple food of the army--beef and biscuits--but butter,
cheese, jams, and vast quantities of entrenching weapons. The whole
of Egypt was scoured for the last man that could be spared. Whole
companies of Australians were organized from the men who had been left
on guard duty--men who were keen to get away, but had been compelled to
stay. Reinforcements were hurried forward to complete their training,
even in the rear of the firing-line of Anzac. Hospital ships were
prepared, hospitals were cleared in anticipation of the thousands of
returning wounded.
[Illustration: GALLIPOLI PENINSULA AND THE OUTSTANDING FEATURES OF THE
AUSTRALIAN AND BRITISH POSITIONS. THE SHADED PORTION REPRESENTS THE
ORIGINAL ANZAC LINE.]
At Mudros Harbour camps and bivouacs were scattered all round the
harbour front. I saw a whole brigade of British troops disembarked from
the massive _Mauretania_ and bivouacked under the open sky. Immensely
cheery bodies of men they were, waiting for the weeks to slip by
till the appointed day. This island of Lemnos lay 40 miles from the
firing-line. Closer by 30 miles to the firing-line was Imbros, where
thousands of other troops were gathered as far as the capacities of
the island (the water supply was the problem; a ship was moored close
inshore and pumped water all day into long lines of tanks) permitted.
In order to refresh the men already in the fighting-line they were
rested at Imbros in battalions, the only relief they had had, since
they landed, from the roar of the shells. But there came a day when
this had to cease, for the resources of the naval and trawling services
were strained to the utmost collecting stores and bringing forward
fresh troops.
Kephalos Bay, at Imbros, was not much of an anchorage, but a boom and
protecting nets kept out the submarines, and good weather favoured
the operations. Gurkhas, Maoris, New Zealanders, Australians, and
British troops were on the island, camped amongst the vineyards, that
were just ripening. General Hamilton's headquarters were on the most
southern promontory of the island, and near by were the aeroplane
hangars, from which, morning and evening, patrols rose, sweeping up the
Straits. Never out of sight of the land, never out of the sound of the
guns, one viewed from this point the vast panorama of the peninsula.
General Hamilton guided the operations from that spot, as being the
most central and giving rapid access to any one of his three fighting
fronts. Wharves had been built by parties of Egyptian engineers, who
had been brought up specially from Cairo. The presence of Turkish
prisoners in camp in a hollow and the native Greeks in their loose,
slovenly garments, completed the extraordinary concourse of nations
that were represented on this picturesque and salubrious island.
In the harbour were anchored some of the weirdest craft that the Navy
possessed--the new heavy monitors that had been of such service already
along the Belgian coast and the baby monitors that had been down the
African coast and up the Tigris River. Four large and two small of
these shallow-draught craft there were, whose main attribute was their
unsinkableness. In the same category must be ranged the converted
cruisers of old and antiquated patterns--for naval ships--from whose
sides bulged a false armour-shield which was calculated to destroy
the torpedo before it reached or could injure the inner shell of the
vessel. And, lastly, to this extraordinary fleet must be added the
armoured landing-punts, that sometimes drifted, sometimes steamed about
the harbour, crammed with a thousand troops each. The motive-power was
an oil-engine that gave them a speed of just 5 miles an hour. From the
front there hung a huge platform that could be let down as required:
across it the troops, emerging from the hold, where they were packed
behind bullet-proof screens, might dash ashore. As all the weight of
the craft was at the stern, its blunted prow would rest on the shore.
From these strange vessels the troops destined for service at Suvla Bay
practised landing assiduously.
Finally, there were the preparations on the peninsula itself. Terraces
and trenches had to be prepared for the new army that was to be
secretly conveyed at night to the Anzac and from which they would issue
forth to the support of the Australians and form the link with the
British armies to operate on the left flank at Suvla Bay. I suppose
the observers in the German aeroplanes that were chased from above
our lines might well have wondered why the ledges were being dug in
the sides of the small valleys--that is, if they could detect them at
all. What they certainly would not see would be the huge quantities of
ammunition, millions and millions of rounds, that for days was being
taken out through the long sap to our No. 2 outpost on the north,
already strengthened with reinforcements from the Light Horse and New
Zealand Rifle regiments. Both at Imbros and at Anzac there were vast
numbers of Egyptian water-cans and ordinary tins (which probably once
had contained honey or biscuits), ready filled with water for the
landing troops. Down at the wells in the valleys pumps had increased
the capacity of the daily supply, and the tanks in the gullies were
kept full--except when the wretched steam-engine employed at Anzac,
broke down. Why so poor a thing should have been obtained it is
difficult to conceive, when more up-to-date plant might easily have
been found.
But the greatest feat of all was the landing of guns, both at Helles
and at Anzac. At the end of July there were at Cape Helles one hundred
and twenty-four guns, composed of the following units:--
VIIIth Army Corps, comprising the artillery of 29th Division, 42nd
Division, 52nd Division, and Royal Naval Division. Attached were 1st
Australian Brigade (Colonel Christian): 6th Australian Battery (Major
Stevenson), 3rd New Zealand Battery.
At Anzac there were over seventy guns, under Brigadier-General Cunliffe
Owen, when the great offensive began, from 10-pounder mountain
batteries to a 6-in. battery of field guns, howitzers, and a 9-in gun.
There were guns on every available ridge and in every hollow; they
were along the great northern sap, firing over it on to the northern
slopes of the Sari Bair ridge, until they gradually were dragged out
along the beach to the new ground won by the Australian and New Zealand
Division. Owing to the closeness of the enemy positions, the small
space available at Anzac, and the height of the hills, the guns were
firing across one another's fronts.
In all this magnificently conceived plan of General Hamilton's, one
thing that stands out above all others is the manner in which the Turks
were deceived. This in some measure may be attributed to the way in
which the Turkish and German observing aeroplanes were chased from the
skies, for the French and British aviators had the upper hand. On a few
occasions the enemy did venture forth, but only at great altitudes;
invariably very swiftly they were compelled to return to their lines
by the Allied aviators. The enemy's hangars behind the forts at Chanak
were destroyed during one air raid, organized by Flight-Commander
Sampson, from Tenedos. Now, General Hamilton determined on certain main
ruses, and left the formulation of any plans to help the Anzac position
to Lieut.-General Birdwood, which I shall mention in their place. As
for the general scheme, the Commander-in-Chief writes:--
Once the date was decided, a certain amount of ingenuity had to be
called into play so as to divert the attention of the enemy from
my main strategical conception. This--I repeat for the sake of
clearness--was:--
1. To break out with a rush from Anzac and cut off the bulk of the
Turkish army from land communication with Constantinople.
2. To gain such a command for my artillery as to cut off the bulk of
the Turkish army from sea traffic, whether with Constantinople or
with Asia.
3. Incidentally to secure Suvla Bay as a winter base for Anzac and all
the troops operating in the northern theatre.
My schemes for hoodwinking the Turks fell under two heads:--
_First_, strategical diversions meant to draw away enemy reserves not yet
committed to the peninsula.
_Second_, tactical diversions meant to hold up enemy reserves already on
the peninsula.
Under the first heading came a surprise landing by a force of 300 men
on the northern shore of the Gulf of Saros; demonstrations by French
ships opposite Mitylene along the Syrian coast; concentration at
Mitylene; inspections at Mitylene by the Admiral and myself; making
to order of a whole set of maps of Asia, in Egypt, as well as secret
service work, most of which bore fruit.
Amongst the tactical diversions were a big containing attack at
Helles. Soundings, registration of guns, etc., by monitors between
Gaba Tepe and Kum Tepe. An attack to be carried out by Anzac on Lone
Pine trenches, which lay in front of their right wing, and as far
distant as the local terrain would admit from the scene of the real
battle. Thanks entirely to the reality and vigour which the Navy and
the troops threw into them, each one of these ruses was, it so turned
out, entirely successful, with the result that the Turks, despite
their excellent spy system, were caught completely off their guard at
dawn on the 7th August.
Therefore, if I may be pardoned the term, the 1st Australian Division
was to be, in this huge offensive, the "bait" that was to be flung to
the Turks, to keep them in their trenches massed before Anzac, while
their attention was distracted at Cape Helles by the offensive planned
there. Thus there would be left a clear road round the left flank from
Suvla Bay across the Salt Lake, through Bijak Anafarta, and so on to
the northern slopes of the great crowning position of this, the central
portion of the peninsula, Koja Chemen Tepe, or Hill 971, to give it its
more familiar name. But once the Turks were trapped, as they surely
would have been, the way was clear for the long-desired advance of the
Australian and New Zealand Divisions on to Pine Ridge, to Battleship
Hill, advancing and attacking from both its slopes up to the Sari Bair
ridge, and so to possession of the plains that stretched to Maidos.
And in this carefully prepared scheme the 1st Australian Infantry
Brigade, under Brigadier-General Smyth, were to make the first
move--how vital a trust for a young army!--by an attack on Lone Pine
trenches on 6th August.
CHAPTER XXII
LONE PINE
Lone Pine was the first big attack that the 1st Brigade had taken part
in since the landing. Indeed, it was the first battle these New South
Welshmen had as a separate and complete operation. It was, perhaps, the
freshest and strongest infantry brigade of the four at Anzac, though
barely 2,000 strong. The men had been in the trenches (except for a few
battalions that had been rested at Imbros) since April. They were ripe
for a fight; they were tired of the monotony of sniping at a few Turks
and digging and tunnelling.
It is necessary first to go back a few days prior to this attack, to
the night of the 31st July, when there had been rather a brilliant
minor operation carried out by the Western Australian troops of the
11th Battalion, under Lieut.-Colonel J. L. Johnston, who had issued
forth from Tasmania Post. The Turks had largely brought this attack on
themselves by having tunnelled forward to a crest that lay not very
many yards distant from our position. We had been unable to see what
their preparations consisted of, though it was known they were "up to
mischief," as Major Ross told me. Exactly what this amounted to was
revealed one day, when they broke down the top of their tunnels and
there appeared on the crest of the small ridge a line of trenches about
100 yards in extent. The enemy had come within easy bombing distance,
but it was difficult for them to locate our sharpshooters and machine
guns, that were so well concealed behind the growing bush.
To overcome this the Turks would creep up near to our lines--they were
very skilled scouts indeed--and would throw some article of clothing
or equipment near where the rifles were spitting. Next morning these
garments served as an indication (that is, if we had not removed them)
for the directing of fire.
On the night of 31st July at 10.15 the attack began. The Turkish
trenches were heavily bombarded, and mines which had rapidly been
tunnelled under their trenches were exploded, with excellent results.
Four assaulting columns, each of 50 men, led by the gallant Major
Leane, then dashed forward from the trenches, crossing our barbed-wire
entanglements on planks that had been laid by the engineers. The men
had left the trenches before the debris from our two flanking mines
had descended, and it took them very few seconds to reach the enemy's
line, which was fully manned with excited and perturbed Turks, who,
immediately the mines had exploded, set up a fearful chattering. The
Australians fired down into the enemy's ranks, and then, having made
a way, jumped into the trenches and began to drive the Turks back on
either side.
On the extreme right a curious and dangerous situation arose. The Turks
had retired some distance down a communication trench, but before our
lads could build up a protecting screen and block the trench, the enemy
attacked with great numbers of bombs. While the men were tearing down
the Turkish parapets to form this barricade a veritable inferno raged
round them as the bombs exploded. Our supplies were limited, and were,
indeed, soon exhausted. The parapet still remained incomplete. Urgent
messages had been sent back for reinforcements, and the position looked
desperate. By a mere chance it was saved. An ammunition box was spied
on the ground between the lines. This was dragged in under terrible
fire, and found to contain bombs. Very soon the Australians then gained
the upper hand. The parapet was completed, and this entrance of the
Turks, as well as their exit, blocked.
But in the charge a short length of the Turkish trenches (they wound
about in an extraordinary fashion) had remained uncaptured, and this
line, in which there were still some 80 Turks fighting, was jammed in
between the Australian lines. The enemy were obviously unconscious that
some of their trenches that ran back on either flank of this trench,
had been captured. Scouts were sent out by Major Leane, and these
men, after creeping up behind the enemy's line, that still continued
to fire furiously, cleared up any remaining doubt that it was still
a party of the enemy. A charge was organized, but was driven back.
Then a further charge from the original lines was made direct at the
trench. The Turks turned and fled down their own communication trench,
but, as we held either flank, were caught by bombs and rifle fire, and
killed. The Turkish dead in this attack were estimated at 100. The
enemy soon turned their guns on the position, and under high-explosive
shell fire all night, our troops worked with the sapper parties, under
Major Clogstoun (3rd Field Company), deepening the captured trenches
and transferring the parapets, which faced our lines, to the westerly
side, facing the Turks. Their own trenches had been wretchedly shallow,
barely 3 feet deep. By dawn our troops had ample protection. But
unfortunately their brave leader, Major Leane, fell mortally wounded.
Ever after the trenches were known as Leane's Trenches--one of the
many men to leave an honoured name on Anzac. Machine guns shattered a
Turkish attack that was being formed in a gully on the right. The Turks
never attempted to retake the trench during the next days immediately
preceding Lone Pine. General Hamilton regarded the action as most
opportune.
Now, while the higher commands realized the scope of the pending
operations, the troops knew very little. "The 1st Brigade is for it
to-morrow" was the only word that spread along the line, very rapidly,
on the evening of the 5th. That it was to be the commencement of a
great coup was only guessed at from various local indications. So
far as was definitely known, it was to be a purely local attack. By
our leaders it was rather hoped, however, the Turks would be led to
believe it was but preliminary to a flanking movement from this point
out towards Maidos and the plains of the Olive Grove. That was the
situation on the morning of the 6th August--a bright, rather crisp
morning, when the waters of the gulf were a little disturbed by the
wind, and barges rocked about violently in Anzac Cove. Perhaps the
arrival of the old comrade to the Australians, the _Bacchante_, that
had been so good a friend to the troops during the early stages, might
have been taken as a signal of hard fighting. She replaced the monitor
_Humber_, that had been at work shelling the guns on the Olive Grove
Plains and on Pine Ridge, 800 yards or more in front of our right
flank, for some weeks.
On the morning of the 6th the heart of Anzac was wearing rather a
deserted appearance, for the Divisional Headquarters of the 1st
Division had been moved up to just behind the firing-line at the head
of White Gully, so as to be nearer the scene of action and shorten
the line of communications. Major-General H. B. Walker was commanding
the Division, and was responsible for the details for this attack.
The New Zealanders also had left Anzac, and Major-General Godley had
established his headquarters on the extreme left, at No. 2 post, where
he would be in the centre of the attacks on the left. On the beach, I
remember, there were parties of Gurkhas still carrying ammunition and
water-tins on their heads out through the saps. Ammunition seemed to be
the dominant note of the beach. Other traffic was normal, even quiet.
Now the Lone Pine entrenchment was an enormously strong Turkish work
that the enemy, while they always felt a little nervous about it,
rather boasted of. It was a strong _point d'appui_ on the south-western
end of Plateau 400, about the centre of the right flank of the
position. At the nearest point the Turkish trenches approached to
within 70 yards of ours, and receded at various places to about 130
yards. This section of our trenches, from the fact that there was a
bulge in our line, had been called "The Pimple." Their entrenchments
connected across a dip, "Owen's Gully," on the north with Johnston's
Jolly and German Officers' Trench, all equally strongly fortified
positions, with overhead cover of massive pine beams, railway sleepers,
and often cemented parapets. The Turks had seen to it when constructing
these trenches that the various positions could be commanded on either
side by their own machine-gun fire.
[Illustration: AUSTRALIAN AND TURKISH TRENCHES AT LONE PINE.]
Why was it called Lone Pine? Because behind it, on the Turkish ridge,
seamed with brown trenches and _mia mias_[2] of pine-needles, there
remained standing a solitary pine-tree amongst the green holly-bushes.
Once there had been a forest of green pines on the ridge. The others
had gradually been cut down for wood and defensive purposes. Singular
to relate, on the morning of the attack the Turks felled this last
pine-tree.
[2] Aboriginal word for a shelter made of gum leaves, branches, and
bark.
Immediately in the rear of our trenches was "Browne's Dip," and
it was here that the reserves were concealed in deep dugouts.
Brigadier-General Smyth had his headquarters there, not 80 yards
from the firing-line, and barely 150 from the Turkish trenches. It
was at the head of the gully that dipped sharply down to the coast.
The position was quite exposed to the Turkish artillery fire, but by
digging deep and the use of enormous sandbag ramparts some little
protection was obtained, though nothing stood against the rain of
shells that fell on this area--not 400 yards square--in the course of
the attacks and counter-attacks.
To properly understand and realize the nature of the Lone Pine
achievement it must be explained that our trenches consisted of two
lines. There was the actual firing-line, which the Turks could see, and
the false firing-line, which was a series of gallery trenches that ran
parallel to our first line beneath the ground, and of which the enemy
had little cognizance. These two lines were separated by from 10 to 40
yards. The false line was reached through five tunnels. It was one of
the most elaborately prepared positions on an intricate front. Three
main tunnels from these gallery trenches ran out towards the Turkish
line. In each of these, on the morning of the 6th, a large charge of
ammonel was set by the engineers, ready to explode at the beginning
of the attack. Now, the idea of the gallery trenches had been, in the
first place, defensive. The ground had been broken through, but no
parapets had been erected on the surface, as the enemy did not know
exactly the direction of this forward firing-line. At night these holes
in the ground gave the men a chance to place machine guns in position,
in anticipation of a Turkish offensive. Later, however, they were
blocked with barbed-wire entanglements, while _cheveaux de frise_ were
placed outside them, much, it may be stated, to the disgust of the
engineers, who had prepared this little trap for the enemy with keen
satisfaction.
Before the attack all this barbed wire was removed, and it was decided
that while one line of men should dash from the parapets, another
line should rise up out of the ground before the astonished eyes
of the Turks, and charge for the second line of the Turkish works,
leaving the men from the actual firing-line to capture the Turkish
first works. All that was needed for the success of this plan was the
careful synchronizing of watches, and an officer stationed at every
cross-section of trenches and tunnels to give the signal.
Lifeless the beach and the old headquarters may have been, but
there was no mistaking the spirits of the men as I went along those
firing-line trenches at three o'clock on this beautiful, placid
afternoon. Lying so long without fighting, there now rose up the old
spirit of the landing and fight within them. "It's Impshee Turks
now!" said the men of the 4th, as they moved along the communication
trench from the centre of the position to the point of attack. Silence
was enjoined on the men; isolated whispered conversations only were
carried on. The seasoned troops knew the cost of attack on a strongly
entrenched position. Most of the others (reinforcements) had heard
vivid enough descriptions from their mates, and had seen little
engagements along the line.
I was moving slowly along the trenches. The men carried their
entrenching tools and shovels. At various points their comrades from
other battalions, who watched the line of heroes who were "for it,"
dashed out to shake some comrade by the hand. There was a warmth about
these handgrips that no words can describe. It was the silence that
made the scene of the long files of men such an impressive one. It
was a significant silence that was necessary, so that the Turks in
their trenches, not more perhaps at that point than 100 yards away,
might gain no inkling of the exact point from which the attack was to
be made. As the men went on through trench after trench, they came at
length into the firing-line--the Pimple--where already other battalions
had been gathered. There were men coming in the opposite direction,
struggling past somehow, with the packs and waterproof sheets and
impedimenta that made it a tight squeeze to get past. Messages kept
passing back and forth for officers certain minor details of the attack.
Our trenches before the Lone Pine position were only thinly manned by
the 5th Battalion, who were to remain behind and hold them in case of
failure. These men had crept into their "possies," or crevices in the
wall, and tucked their toes out of the way. Some were eating their
evening meal. Other parties were just leaving for the usual supply of
water to be drawn down in the gullies and brought up by "fatigues" to
the trenches. So into the midst of all this routine, marched the new
men of the 1st Brigade, who were going out from this old firing-line to
form a new line, to blaze the path, to capture the enemy's strongest
post. They went in good spirits, resigned, as only soldiers can be, to
the inevitable, their jaws set, a look in their faces which made one
realize that they knew their moment of destiny had come; for the sake
of the regiment, for the men who were around them, they must bear their
share. It was strange to still hear muttered arguments about everyday
affairs, to hear the lightly spoken words, "Off to Constantinople."
As I got closer to the vital section of trenches (some 200 yards in
length), they were becoming more congested. It was not only now the
battalions that were to make the charge, but other men had to be ready
for any emergency. They were filing in to take their place and make
sure of holding what we already had. Sections got mixed with sections
in the sharp traverses. It wanted, too, but a few minutes to the hour,
but not the inevitable moment. There was a solemn silence over the
hills, in the middle of that dazzling bright afternoon, before our guns
burst forth, precisely at half-past four. Reserves were drawn up behind
the trenches in convenient spots, their officers chatting in groups.
Rapidly the shells began to increase in number, and the anger of their
explosions grew more intense as the volume of fire increased. Amidst
the sharp report of our howitzers amongst the hills, and the field
guns, came the prolonged, rumbling boom of the ships' fire.
There was no mistaking the earnestness of the _Bacchante's_ fire. Yet,
distributed over the whole of the lines, it did not seem that the
bombardment was as intense as one expected. In fact, there came a time
when I believed that it was finished before its time. One was glad for
the break, for it stopped the fearful ear-splitting vibrations that
were shaking one's whole body. Yet as the black smoke came over the top
of the trenches and drifted down into the valleys behind, it gladdened
the waiting men, knowing that each explosion meant, probably, so much
less resistance of the enemy's trenches to break down. But to those
waiting lines of troops the bombardment seemed interminably long, and
yet not long enough. What if the Turks had known how our trenches were
filled with men! But, then, what if they really knew the exact point
and moment where and when the attack was to be made! So that while
in one sense the shelling gave the Turks some idea of the attack, it
actually told them very little. Such bombardments were not uncommon.
Their gun fire had died down to a mere spitting of rifles here and
there along a line, and an occasional rapid burst of machine-gun fire.
A few, comparatively very few, shells as yet came over to our trenches
and burst about the crests of the hills where our line extended.
It was ordered that the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Battalions should form
the first line, and the 1st Battalion the brigade reserve. The
1st Battalion was under Lieut.-Colonel Dobbin, the second under
Lieut.-Colonel Scobie, the third under Lieut.-Colonel Brown, and the
fourth under Lieut.-Colonel Macnaghton.
We were committed. At 5.30 came the avalanche. The artillery ceased. A
whistle sharply blown was the signal prearranged. A score or more of
other whistles sounded almost simultaneously. The officers, crouching
each with his command under the parapets, were up then, and with
some words like "Come, lads, now for the trenches!" were over our
parapets, and in a long, more or less regular line the heavily-laden
men commenced the dash across the dead ground between. They ran under
the protection of the intense fire from our rifles and from our machine
guns that swept their outer flanks; but it was impossible to fire
or attempt any shooting over our advancing lines. The sun was still
high enough to be in the eyes of the Turks, but they were ready to
open rifle fire on the advancing line of khaki. With their machine
guns, fortunately, they were less ready. They had the range for the
parapet trenches, but not the intermediate line between, from which
the first line of troops, 150 men about--50 from each of the three
battalions--sped across the intervening space without very serious
loss, the Turkish machine guns on this, as on most occasions, firing
low.
[Illustration: LOOKING FROM THE PIMPLE DOWN INTO OWEN'S GULLY:
JOHNSTON'S JOLLY AND BATTLESHIP HILL ON THE EXTREME LEFT, AND LONE PINE
TRENCHES ON THE RIGHT; PINE RIDGE IN THE DISTANCE.
To face p. 228]
The 2nd Battalion were on the extreme right, the 3rd in the centre,
and the 4th Battalion occupied the left flank, adjacent to Owen's
Gully. The men ran at full speed, so far as their equipment permitted,
some stumbling, tripping over wires and unevennesses in the ground;
others stumbling, hit with the bullets. A thousand dashes of brown
earth, where the bullets struck, were flicked up right across that
narrow patch. There was no cheer, just the steady advancing, unchecked
line, till the men threw themselves on the first and second trenches.
Barely a minute and they were across.
It must have been with a feeling akin to dismay that the gallant
line found the Turks' overhead cover on their trenches was undamaged
and extremely difficult to pierce. The first line, according to the
arranged plan, ran right over the top of the first enemy trenches, and,
reaching the second line, began to fire down on the bewildered Turks,
regardless of the fact that enemy machine guns were playing on them all
the time. This was how so many fell in the early charge. A very few
managed at once to drop down into the trench. I know with what relief
those watching saw them gain, after that stunning check, a footing. But
the greater number could be seen lying on the face of the trench, or
immediately beneath the sandbags under the loopholes. Like this they
remained for a few minutes, searching for the openings that our guns
must have made. Gradually, sliding down feet foremost into the trench,
they melted away. Each man, besides the white arm-bands on his jacket,
had a white square on his back. This badge was worn throughout the
attacks during the first two days, as a distinguishing mark from the
enemy in the dark; a very necessary precaution where so many different
types of troops were engaged. This made the advancing line more
conspicuous on a bare landscape. Men could be seen feverishly seeking
a way into the trenches. One man rendered the most valuable service by
working along the front of the Turkish trenches beneath the parapet,
tearing down the loopholes that were made of clay and straw with his
bayonet.
It was still only barely five minutes since the attack had commenced,
yet the Turkish artillery had found our trenches, both the firing-line
and the crest of the hill behind, and down into the gully. The whole
hill shook under the terrific blows of the shells. Our replying
artillery, six, eight, or more guns, firing in rapid succession over
the heads of the men, and passing where the enemy's shells were
bursting in the air, made in a brief five minutes an inferno that it
seemed a matter of madness to suppose any one would escape.
Following hard on the heels of the first men from our trenches went
a second line, those on the left suffering worse than on the right.
Again some did not wait at the first trench, but rushed on to the
second Turkish trench. Soon there appeared a little signal arm sending
back some urgent call. It turned out to be for reinforcements. It
was not evident at the time they were needed, but they went. Our
firing-trenches were emptying rapidly now, and only an ordinary
holding-line remained.
The Turkish guns lowered their range, and shrapnel burst over the
intervening ground, across which troops, in spite, and in the face of
it, must pass. Signallers ran lines of wires back and forth, only to
have them cut and broken, and all their work to be done again. Five
times they drew the reel across from the trench where the troops were
fighting. You could gain little idea of what actually was happening
in Lone Pine. Occasionally butts of rifles were uplifted. On the left
flank, round the edge of the trenches on Johnston's Jolly, for a few
minutes the Turkish bayonets glistened in the sun as men went along
their trench, but whether they were hurrying to support their harried
comrades or were the men our troops had turned in panic we could not
see.
Then the wounded commenced to come back. They came back across the
plateau, dripping with blood, minus all their equipment and their
arms. Some fell as they came, only to be rescued hours afterwards.
News was filtering back slowly. In a quarter of an hour we had won
three trenches; at 6.30 we held them strongly after an hour of bloody
fighting. Further reinforcements were dashing forward, taking advantage
of what might seem a lull, but suffering far worse than their comrades.
Shouted orders even could not be heard in the din; whistles would not
penetrate.
In the midst of the whole attack one prayed that something would
stop the vibrations that seemed to shake every one and everything
in the vicinity. Our trenches were rent, torn, and flattened, and
sandbags and debris piled up, blocking entrances and exits. Men worked
heroically, clearing a way where they could. Doctors were in the
trenches doing mighty work. Captain J. W. Bean went calmly hither and
thither until wounded. Major Fullerton had gone with the first rush,
had tripped, and fell. He was thought to be wounded, but went on and
reached safely the Turkish trenches, where, for six hours, he was the
only doctor on the spot.
Wounded men came pouring back to the dressing-station behind the hill
in "Browne's Dip," where friends directed them down the hill. It
seemed horrible to ask the men to go farther. The stretcher-bearers
were carrying cases down. I saw them hit, and compelled to hand over
stretchers to willing volunteers, who sprang up out of the earth. They
were men waiting their turn to go forward. The ground was covered each
minute with a dozen bursting shells within the small area I could
see. The dirt, powdered, fell on our shoulders. The shrapnel, luckily
bursting badly, searched harmlessly the slopes of a hill 40 yards away.
The great 6-inch howitzers of the enemy tore up the gully and hillside,
sending stones and dirt up in lumps, any one of which would inflict
a blow, if not a wound. They ripped an old graveyard to pieces. They
tore round the dressing-station. We watched them on the hill amongst
the trenches. Would our turn be next? No one knew. You could not hear
except in a distant kind of way, for our guns fired at point-blank
range, and their noise was even worse than the bursting shells. Yet
when the call came, there rose from their dugouts another company of
men of the 1st Battalion, and formed up and dashed for the comparative
cover of a high bank of earth prior to moving off. The men went with
their heads down, as they might in a shower of rain. A foul stench
filled the air from explosives.
"Orderly, find Captain Coltman [machine-gun officer]!" called Major
King, Brigade-Major. Away into the firing-line or towards it would go
the messenger. "Orderly, Orderly!" and again a message would be sent
to some section of the line. The officer giving these directions was a
young man (he had already been wounded in the campaign). His face was
deadly white and his orders crisp and clear. He dived into his office,
only to come out again with a fresh message in his hand (ammunition was
wanted) and dash off himself into the firing-line. He was back again
in a few minutes to meet his Brigadier. They stood there in the lee,
if one may so call it, of some sandbags (the office had been blown
down) asking in terse sentences of the progress of the battle. "I
think it is all right. They say they can hold on all right. They want
reinforcements." I saw the signallers creeping over the hill, feeling
for the ends of broken wires, trying to link up some of the broken
threads, so that information could be quickly sought and obtained.
Doctors I saw treating men as they passed, halting with a case of
bandages; men past all help lay in a heap across the path leading into
the sap. It was, after all, just a question of luck. You kept close
into a bank, and with the shells tearing up the earth round you, hoped
that you might escape. After a time there was so much else to think of,
especially for the men fighting, that it was no time to think of the
shells. They arrived with a swish and sickening explosion and a thud.
Where the next was coming, except it was sure to be in the vicinity,
was a matter for the Turks and Kismet. Men ran like rabbits and half
fell, half tumbled into the dugouts. Somehow the whole thing reminded
me of people coming in out of a particularly violent storm. Once in the
firing-line, the shells were going overhead, and curiously enough one
felt safe, even in the midst of the dead and dying.
To look with a periscope for a minute over the top of the parapet.
The machine guns were traversing backwards and forwards, not one, but
five or six of them. I was with Captain Coltman. He went from end
to end of the line, inspecting our machine guns. Some were firing,
others were cooling, waiting a target, or refitting, rectifying some
temporary trouble caused by a bullet or a shell. Men were watching with
periscopes at the trenches. It was exactly an hour since the battle had
begun, and the Turkish trenches, now ours, were almost obscured by the
battle smoke and the coming night. Yet I could just see the men rushing
on. The 1st Battalion reinforcement launched out at 6.20 to consolidate
the position and strengthen the shattered garrison. They disappeared
into the trenches. In some cases the best entrance had been gained by
tearing away the sandbags and getting in under the overhead cover. I
was down a tunnel that led to our advanced firing-line when I faintly
heard the men calling, "There goes another batch of men!" I could hear
a more wicked burst of fire from the enemy's machine guns, and then the
firing died down, only to be renewed again in a few minutes. In the
captured trenches a terrible bomb battle was being fought. Gradually
the Turks were forced back down their own communication trenches, which
we blocked with sandbags. By 6.30 the message came back, "Everything
O.K.," and a little later, "Have 70 prisoners." These men were caught
in a tunnel before they could even enter the battle.
[Illustration: COOKS' LINES IN BROWN'S DIP JUST BEHIND LONE PINE
TRENCHES.]
[Illustration: AUSTRALIAN AND TURKISH DEAD LYING ON THE PARAPETS OF THE
CAPTURED LONE PINE TRENCHES.
All the Australian troops in the August offensive wore a white armlet
and white square cloth on their backs as a distinguishing mark.
To face p. 232.]
Cheerful seems hardly the right word to use at such a grim time, yet
the men who were behind the machine guns, ready to pop them above
the trenches for a moment and then drop them again before the enemy
could blow them to pieces, never were depressed, except when their gun
was out of action. Soon they got others to replace them. They were
watching--so were the men round them, with bayonets fixed, in case the
Turks drove us back from Lone Pine. As we made our way along the old
firing-line, it meant bobbing there while the bullets welted against
the sandbags and the earth behind you. You were covered every few yards
with debris from bursting shells. The light was fading rapidly. The
sun had not quite set. The last departing rays lit up the smoke of the
shells like a furnace, adding to the grim horribleness of the situation.
Of the inner fighting of those first two hours in the Turkish trenches
little can be written till all the stories are gathered up and tangled
threads untied, if ever that is possible. But certain facts have
been revealed. Major Stevens, who was second in command of the 2nd
Battalion, was charging down a Turkish trench when he saw a Turk about
2 yards from him in a dugout. He called over his shoulder to the men
following him to pass up a bomb, and this was thrown and the Turk
killed. Then Major Stevens came face to face with a German officer
at the mouth of the tunnel. In this tunnel were some 70 Turks. The
Australian was fired at point-blank by the German, but the shot missed
its mark and the officer was shot dead by a man following Stevens.
The Turks in the tunnel surrendered. They had gone there on the
commencement of the bombardment, as was their custom, and had not had
time to man the trenches before the Australians were on them. The first
warning that had been given, it was learned from a captured officer,
was when the sentries on duty called, "Here come the English!"
Farther down the trench a party of Australians were advancing against
the Turks, who were shielded by a traverse. The first Australian
that had run down, with his bayonet pointed, had come face to face
with five of the enemy. Instinctively he had taken protection behind
the traverse. He had called on his mates, and then ensued one of the
scores of incidents of that terrible trench fight when the men slew one
another in mortal combat. Their dead bodies were found in piles.
Captain Pain, 2nd Battalion, with a party of three men, each holding
the leg of a machine gun, propped himself up in the middle of one
trench and fired down on to the Turks, massed for a charge, till
suddenly a bullet killed one of the party, wounded Pain, and the whole
gun collapsed.
The Turks had in one case a machine gun firing down the trench, so
that it was impossible for us to occupy it. By using one of the many
communication trenches that the Turks had dug a party managed to work
up close enough to bomb the Turks from the flank, compelling them to
retire. Every man and every officer can repeat stories like these of
deeds that won the Australians the day; but, alas! many of those brave
men died in the trenches which they had captured at the bayonet's point.
At seven o'clock, when the first clash of arms had passed, the enemy
made their first violent and concerted effort to regain their lost
trenches. It was a furious onslaught, carried on up the communication
trenches by a veritable hail of bombs. In some places we gave way, in
others we drove back the enemy farther along his trenches. From the
north and the south the enemy dashed forward with fixed bayonets. They
melted away before our machine guns and our steady salvos of bombs.
The Australians stuck to their posts in the face of overwhelming
numbers--four to one: they fought right through the night, and as they
fought, strove to build up cover of whatever material came nearest to
hand. Thousands of sandbags were used in making good that position.
Companies of the 12th Battalion were hurried up towards midnight to
strengthen the lines, rapidly diminishing under the fury of the Turkish
attack. But these men found a communication-way open to them to reach
the maze of the enemy's position.
Our mines, that had been exploded at the head of the three tunnels
mentioned earlier, had formed craters, from which the sappers, under
Colonel Elliott and Major Martyn, began to dig their way through to
the captured positions. Only two of these tunnels were opened up that
night, just six hours after the trenches had been won. The parties dug
from each end: they toiled incessantly, working in shifts, with almost
incredible speed. It was the only way to get relief for the wounded;
to go across the open, as many of the gallant stretcher-bearers,
signallers, and sappers did, was to face death a thousand times from
the Turkish shrapnel. So part tunnel, part trench, the 80 yards was
sapped and the wounded commenced to be brought in in a steady stream.
It took days to clear the captured trenches. Australians and Turks lay
dead, one on top of the other, three or four deep. All it was possible
to do was to fill these trenches in. That night down the tunnel on
the right kept passing ammunition, bombs--some 3,000 were used in the
course of the first few hours--water, food, rum for the fighters,
picks, shovels, and machine guns. Every half-hour the Turks came on
again, shouting "Allah!" and were beaten back. The resistance was
stubborn. It broke eventually the heart of the Turks.
Officers and men in that first horrible night performed stirring deeds
meriting the highest honour. The names of many will go unrecorded
except as part of that glorious garrison. It was a night of supreme
sacrifice, and the brigade made it, to their everlasting honour and
renown.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE HEROIC LIGHT HORSE CHARGE
So far as the 1st Australian Division was concerned, their offensive
in the great battle of August began with the capture of Lone Pine,
late on the afternoon of the 6th August, and ended with the desperate,
heroic charge of the 8th and 10th Light Horse Regiments on the early
morning of the 7th. Lone Pine had started the whole of the operations,
and the Australian Division throughout the night was to carry them on
by a series of offensives from their trenches right along the line.
All this fighting, as has been explained, was to cover the main object
of the plan, the landing of the new British force at Suvla Bay and the
seizing of a base for winter operations; and, further, the capture of
the crest of the main ridge, Chunak Bair and Koja Chemen Tepe, or Hill
971. So naturally the operations fall into sections. From what has
been subsequently learned, the Turks, immediately after their crushing
defeat at Lone Pine, hurried up reinforcements from Bogali and diverted
others that were on their way to Cape Helles. It did not stay their
attack at Cape Helles, however, which had been planned, by some curious
chance, to take place almost at the identical hour that the British, on
the 7th, were to attack the Turkish lines, which was the reason for the
British being hurled back after desperate fighting.
But if there was a success for the Turk at Cape Helles, it was nothing
to the blow they suffered by the loss of their declared impregnable
Lone Pine trenches and the successfully accomplished landing at Suvla
Bay. But in between these two operations were the long hours of the
night, when the captured trenches at Lone Pine were subjected to
fearful bombing attacks, and successive Turkish regiments were hurled
against the closed breach, operations which lasted over all for four
days. Two Divisions at least were massed by the Turks against the Anzac
forces by midnight of the 6th. The enemy's trenches positively bristled
with bayonets. Our green and red rocket shells showed them up; we could
see them moving along the gullies and over the hills in the early dawn.
The Light Horsemen on the Nek knew that the enemy were waiting to meet
the charge they were in duty bound to make at grey dawn.
To retrace in detail the events of that night. On the Lone Pine section
of the line the Turkish bombardment began to ease at eight o'clock,
and the Turks, for a time, gave up searching the valleys of Anzac for
our reserves and for the guns. Every available piece of artillery must
have been trained on the position. Then the warships and our Australian
and New Zealand howitzers kept up a regular, almost incessant fire. A
gun banged each minute on various sections of the line. It had been
determined by Major-General Walker that there should be an offensive by
the men of the 2nd Infantry Brigade, occupying the trenches opposite
German Officers' Trench. Our lines were but thinly held, as there had
been a gradual easing off to the right towards the Lone Pine trenches,
that had swallowed up the whole of the 1st Brigade, so that now the 2nd
Brigade only was left to hold the position.
Lieut.-Colonel Bennett with the 6th Battalion was charged with the
task of taking the almost impregnable German Officers' Trenches.
Crowned with massive beams, bristling with machine guns, it had been
demonstrated on more than one occasion what the Turks intended should
be the fate of any men who dared attack these trenches. At eleven
o'clock on the night of the 6th, the sappers exploded the first mine
underneath the Turkish trenches immediately in front of them. Another
charge was fired at 11.30, and two at 11.40. The battalion then began
to occupy the forward gallery positions that had been prepared.
Unfortunately, the guns did not do the damage that was anticipated. On
the contrary, they did nothing but warn the already thoroughly roused
enemy of an impending assault.
The first attack was planned for twelve o'clock. At that time the
bombardment of the section of the Turkish trenches ceased. From the
tunnel trenches the men scrambled up, a few only from each hole, as
there was little space. The enemy's machine guns raged and raked our
ranks from end to end. Few of the men got more than a yard or two. The
tunnels became choked with dead and dying. The attack withered at its
birth. What else could be expected under such conditions? Yet a second
attempt was made at 3.55 a.m., but with no better result. A score or
more of machine guns firing at various angles, with the range set to a
nicety, swept down the attackers almost before they had time to leave
their trenches. The position was desperate. Had the whole of the attack
to be sacrificed because this line of men failed to do their duty? But
did they fail? They charged twice, and were preparing to go a third
time, on the determination of General Walker (but against the judgment
of Brigadier-General Forsyth, who saw the hopelessness of it all),
when, realizing that the object had already been served, as news came
through of the successful landing at Suvla Bay, the third charge was
cancelled at the last moment.
Dawn was beginning to steal into the sky behind the Turkish position. A
thin, waning moon shed but little light over the terrible battlefields.
From a forward observation station I noted the battle line spitting red
tongues of flame all along to the Nek, while at Quinn's Post occurred
every few minutes, terrible explosions of shell and bombs from either
side. A gun a minute was booming constantly--booming from the heart of
Anzac. The destroyers, the rays of their searchlights cast up on to
the hill, swept the top of the Sari Bair ridge with the high-explosive
shell from their 6-inch guns. Fearful as had been the night, the dawn
was more horrible still, as an intense bombardment commenced on the
Chessboard Trenches on the Nek. Howitzers and high-explosive shells
fell thickly round those masses of Turkish trenches, so often and
accurately registered in the weeks of waiting. The surmise that the
Turks had brought up reinforcements had indeed proved correct, for they
were waiting now in the trenches on the Nek--confidently, we learn,
waiting any "English" attack, which now seemed inevitable. It was
inevitable.
[Illustration:
_Approximate Scale 1 inch = 50 yds._
_OPPOSING TRENCHES ON THE NEK_]
At this time the 3rd Light Horse Brigade, under Brigadier-General
Hughes, held the Nek. I have already described this position. It was
barely 120 yards wide. The Turkish trenches were scarcely 80 yards
away from our line. They sloped backward slightly up the ridge to the
sides of Baby 700 and Chunak Bair. On the right of this narrow causeway
was the head of Monash Gully, a steep drop into a ravine, and across
it, Pope's Hill and Quinn's Post. On the left the sheer precipices
fell away down into the foothills of the Sari Bair ridge. Row after
row one could see of the enemy trenches--Chessboard Trenches; the name
significant of their formation.
It fell to the 8th and 10th Light Horse Regiments to storm these enemy
redoubts. They were to charge at 4.30 in the morning--the morning after
the bloody battle of Lone Pine, after, as I heard Colonel Antill,
Brigade-Major of that Light Horse Brigade, say, we had gone along the
whole of our battle front "ringing a bell." Then, when that had tolled
and sounded, were the Light Horse to face their certain death. The
story is simply told. It is very brief. The attack was to be made in
four lines. The 8th Light Horse (Victorians) were to supply the first
two lines, 150 men in each. Besides scaling ladders that had been
specially made to enable men to get into the trenches, these Light
Horsemen each carried two empty sandbags. They had food supplies,
and plenty of ammunition. But they were not to fire a shot. They had
to do their work with the cold steel of the bayonet. Following them
was a third line of 150 men of the 10th Regiment, and yet another
line--the last--ready with picks and shovels and bombs--any quantity of
bombs--and reserves of water and ammunition. They were to help to make
good the trenches when they were won.
Against the sandbags of our lines thumped the bullets as the Turkish
machine guns traversed from end to end of the short line. A hard
purring and the whistle of bullets, then a few minutes' pause. Still
the bombardment continued furiously, smashing, it was thought, the
Turkish trenches to atoms. But while the communication-ways were
blocked and heavy casualties were inflicted, the front Turkish
trenches remained practically unharmed. In three lines of trenches,
their bayonets fixed, standing one above the other to get better
shooting, resting on steps or sitting on the parados of the trenches,
the Turks waited the coming of the Light Horsemen. The trenches were
smothered in a yellow smoke and dust from the bursting lyddite from
the ships, that almost obscured from our view the enemy's position.
It was a bombardment the intensity of which had never been seen yet
on Gallipoli; the hill was plastered with awful death-dealing shells.
Just at 4.25 the bombardment slackened significantly. Immediately there
began to pour a sheet of lead from the Turkish trenches. Musketry and
machine guns fired incessantly. Could anything live for a minute in it?
At the end of three minutes our guns ceased.
Lieut.-Colonel A. White elected to lead the men he loved. He made a
brief farewell to his brother officers. He shook them by the hand
and went into the firing-line. He stood waiting with his watch in
hand. "Men," he said, "you have ten minutes to live." And those Light
Horsemen of his regiment, recruited from the heart of Victoria, knew
what he said was true. They waited, listening to the terrible deluge
that rained against the parapets of their trenches. "Three minutes,
men," and the word came down from the far end of the line, did the
order still hold good? It was a sergeant who sent it, and by the time
he had received the reply passed back along the waiting line, the
whistle for the charge sounded. With an oath, "---- him!" he leaped to
the parapet of the trench; he fell back on his comrade waiting below
him--dead.
The whole line went. Each man knew that to leave those trenches was
to face certain, almost immediate death. They knew it no less than
the glorious Light Brigade at Balaclava. There is surely a comparison
between the two deeds, and shall not the last make the young Nation
more honoured! Those troops, with all the knowledge, after months of
waiting, of what trench warfare meant, of what they might now expect,
never flinched, never presented a braver front.
Theirs not to reason why; theirs but to do--and die.
They charged.
Lieut.-Colonel White had not gone ten paces when he fell dead, riddled
with bullets. The first line of 150 men melted away ere they had gone
half the distance to the trenches, and yet the second line, waiting
and watching, followed them. One small knoll alone gave a little
protection for a few dozen paces to the advancing line from the Turkish
machine guns, that rattled from a dozen different points along that
narrow front, and swept from the right flank across from the enemy
trenches opposite Quinn's Post. Adding to the terror of it all came
the swish of the shells from the French "75" guns that the Turks had
captured from the Servians, and which were now firing ten shells a
minute on to the Nek. The parapets were covered with dead and dying.
Stretcher-bearers rescued men where they could from just above the
parapets, and dragged them down into the trenches, while over the same
parapets went other men, doomed like their magnificent comrades.
Just a handful of men--how many will hardly ever be known, probably it
was not ten--managed to reach the section of the Turkish line facing
the extreme right of our position. At other places some few others had
pitched forward and fallen dead into the Turkish trenches. But those
few men that won through raised a little yellow and red flag, the
prearranged signal, the signal for the second part of the attack to
develop. It were better that those gallant men had never reached that
position. The third line were ordered to advance, and went over the
parapets. There was nothing else to do. Comrades could not be left to
die unsupported. At the same time from Bully Beef Sap (that was the
trench that ran down into Monash Gully from the Nek) the Royal Welsh
Fusiliers attacked up the head of the gully. Their first two lines,
so soon as they came under fire, fell, crumpled; at which moment the
third line--Western Australian Light Horse--had gone forward from the
Nek. But before the whole of the 150 men could rush to their certain
destruction, Brigadier General Hughes stopped the attack. So it
happened that a small party of 40 on the left managed to crawl back
into the trenches. The remainder fell alongside their brave Victorian
brothers who had charged and died.
For the flag in the enemy's trench soon disappeared, and the fate of
the brave men who erected it was never told. Late the next night a
private named McGarry crawled back from beneath the parapet of the
Turkish trenches, where he had feigned dead all day. He told of the
forest of Turkish steel that stood in the series of three trenches,
ranged one behind the other. Another man, Lieutenant Stuart, 8th Light
Horse, who, after going 15 yards, fell wounded, and managed to crawl
into the crater of a shell-burst, where he lay until the signal was
given to retire, returned from amongst the dead and dying lying under
the pale morning light on no man's ground between the trenches.
Thus in a brief fifteen minutes did regiments perish. Only an incident
it was of the greatest battle ever fought in the Levant, but an
imperishable record to Australia's glory. Nine officers were killed, 11
missing, 13 wounded; 50 men killed, 170 wounded, and 182 missing: and
those missing never will return to answer the roll call--435 casualties
in all.
What did the brigade do but its duty?--duty in the face of overwhelming
odds, in the face of certain death; and the men went because their
leaders led them, and they were men. What more can be said? No one may
ask if the price was not too great. The main object had been achieved.
The Turks were held there. It was learned that many of the enemy in the
trenches had their full kits on, either just arrived or bidden remain
(as they might be about to depart). And so right along the line were
the enemy tied to their trenches, crowded together as they could be,
packed, waiting to be bayoneted where they stood or disperse the foe.
Above all, the Australians had kept the way clear for the great British
flanking movement already begun. For all this, will the spot remain
sacred in the memory of every Australian of this generation and the
generations to come.
Now, while the 3rd Light Horse Brigade was charging from the Nek there
was also a charge from round Quinn's Post by the 1st Brigade, under
Brigadier-General Chauvel, who held this sector of the line. The 2nd
Regiment attacked the Turkish position opposite Quinn's Post in four
lines. Fifty men went in each. Major T. J. Logan led one section of
the first line. Led! It was only fifteen or twenty paces to the enemy,
yet few of the men managed to crawl up over the parapet. They were
shot down as soon as they began to show themselves, and fell back into
their own trenches. Major Bourne led the other party. Both gallant
leaders fell dead before they or any of their troops could reach the
Turkish lines. One man only, who returned unwounded, declares that he
escaped by simply watching the stream of bullets from the enemy's
machine guns striking the parapets of our trenches and leaping over
it; for as usual, the Turkish guns were searching low. And as this
assault was launched the 1st Regiment, led by Major T. W. Glasgow,
charged from Pope's Hill, on the left of Quinn's. There was in front
the small ridge--Deadman's Ridge--which had been attacked on the 2nd
May, and won in parts by the 4th Infantry Brigade. It was covered with
trenches, dug one above the other. From all three the Light Horsemen
drove the Turks. In the forward line the men for a few minutes had the
awful experience of being bombed by the Turks in front and their own
men behind, until the mistake was suddenly recognized by Major Glasgow,
who immediately charged with his men over the parapets to the third
trench, and joined up the whole of the regiment. But the Turks held
the higher ground above, and from their trenches it was an easy mark
to throw bombs down on to the Light Horsemen in the trenches lower on
the ridge. Our bomb supplies had all to be brought forward from Pope's
position under machine-gun fire. The valiant men who still clung to
the trenches they had gained, suffered cruel loss from bombs that the
Turks hurled overhead and along the communication trenches. After two
hours' desperate fighting, at 7.30 a.m. the order was reluctantly given
to retire. Then only the right section of our line ever got back, and
with them the gallant commander, without a scratch. Major Reed and
Lieutenant Nettleton both died in those trenches. Twenty-one men were
killed and 51 were missing after the attack.
So in the course of a terrible hour the Light Horse Brigades, National
Guardsmen of Australia, won deathless glory by noble sacrifice and
devotion to duty, and formed the traditions on which the splendour of
the young army is still being built.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE BATTLE OF SARI BAIR--FIRST PHASE
It must be recognized that except for the 4th Infantry Brigade the
offensive of the Australians was completed on the morning of the 7th.
Part had succeeded--part had failed. Their further advance rested
entirely on the success of the second phase of the great scheme, the
assault of the Sari Bair ridge. This terrible task fell mostly on the
New Zealanders, but partly, too, on the new British army and the Indian
brigades. The Australians were the connecting link between this greater
Anzac and Suvla Bay landing. When the time came, they joined in the
general offensive on the crest of the Sari Bair ridge and the attempt
to take Hill 971--Koja Chemen Tepe. As my story mainly rests with
the Australians, if more details necessarily are given of their part
in this action, it must not be considered as a slur on the brilliant
achievements of the New Zealanders and Britishers. What fighting I did
not see at close fighting quarters I learned from the officers of those
splendid battalions, later.
The vital movement to extend the Anzac position, connecting it with
Suvla Bay, enveloping and taking of the summit of the mass of hills
that dominated the central part of the peninsula and the Narrows, was
entrusted to the care of General Sir William Birdwood. He had prefaced
it with the offensive from Anzac proper. Now, under Major-General Sir
Alexander Godley, the attempt to sweep up the northern slopes was to be
carried out by a mixed force of Australians, New Zealanders, British,
and Indians, numbering in all some 12,000 men.
The complete capture of the Sari Bair ridge would have brought into
action again the 1st Australian Division, whose left wing at Anzac
might have been relied on to advance over Baby 700 and up to Battleship
Hill. What is too often overlooked, or forgotten, is that the capture
of the great Hill 971 was a separate operation, though a natural
corollary to the holding of the ridge, as a deep ravine separated
this peak from the Sari Bair ridge. From Hill 971 the northern slopes
(called the Abdel Rahman Bair), ran back within a mile to the Bijuk
Anafarta village. It was separated from the foothills that fell away
to the sea by the Asma Dere. Therefore a column, it was hoped (of the
British troops and the 4th Australian Brigade), would make good this
ridge and advance alongside it to the main peak. The operations, owing
to the nature of the ground, fell into two stages. The first was the
advance over the foothills to the Sari Bair ridge, the landing at Suvla
Bay and first advance. The second stage was the united effort to take
the hill and main ridge. To foretell the conclusion--now alas, passed
into history as a splendid failure--the second stage was only partly
possible, because on the right, from the direction of Suvla Bay, the
British attack never developed; that is to say, it never reached even
the foot of the Abdel Rahman Bair.
I have been in the heart of all that mass and tangle of hills and
ravines. The country resembled, on a less grand scale, that of the
Buffalo Ranges of Victoria, or the Blue Mountains, near Sydney. It
might be ideal bushranging country, but the worst possible for an
army fighting its way forward to the heights; gullies and precipices
barred the way. Even with expert guides, and maps compiled by the
Turks themselves, which we captured and had copied, there were many
battalions that lost their way, and only by dogged perseverance and
extraordinary pluck did they extricate themselves and reach points of
vantage from which they could link up their positions. I say this of
all forces engaged, because I know that many miscalculations occurred
even after three days of fighting as to the exact gullies in which the
troops were that had linked up with the units holding "The Farm" and
Rhododendron Ridge. Gullies were cut by creeks, hills divided by spurs.
Into this tangle was first hurled an army of 12,000 men--mostly fine
bushmen, it is true, used either to the gum forest of Australia and its
wide expanses, or to the jungles of the tropics.
General Hamilton had accepted General Birdwood's plans, that there
should be two covering columns to reach the two ridges that met at the
Hill 971, almost at right angles (Sari Bair, running from west to east,
and Abdel Rahman Bair, running nearly due north and south), and two
assaulting columns to capture the positions.
General Hamilton sets forth the plan thus:--
The right covering force was to seize Table Top, as well as all other
enemy positions commanding the foothills between the Chailak Dere and
the Sazli Beit Dere ravines. If this enterprise succeeded, it would
open up, at the same time interposing between, the right flank of the
left covering force and the enemy holding the Sari Bair main ridge.
This column was under Brigadier-General A. H. Russell, who had the New
Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade, the Otago Mounted Rifles Regiment,
Colonel A. Bauchop; the Maori Contingent and New Zealand Field Troop.
The left covering force was to march northwards along the beach to
seize a hill called Damakjelik Bair, some 1,400 yards north of Table
Top. If successful, it would be able to hold out a hand to the 9th
Corps as it landed south of Nibrunesi Point, whilst at the same time
protecting the left flank of the left assaulting column against enemy
troops from the Anafarta Valley during its climb up the Aghyl Dere
ravine. Brigadier-General J. H. Travers commanded the column which
consisted of headquarters 40th Brigade, half the 72nd Field Company,
4th Battalion South Wales Borderers, and 5th Battalion Wiltshire
Regiment.
The right assaulting column was to move up the Chailak Dere and Sazli
Beit Dere ravines to the storm of the ridge of Chunuk Bair.
The column was under Brigadier-General F. E. Johnston, commanding New
Zealand Infantry Brigade, Indian Mountain Battery (less one section),
one company New Zealand Engineers.
The left assaulting column was to work up the Aghyl Dere and
prolong the line of the right assaulting column by storming Hill
305 (Koja Chemen Tepe), the summit of the whole range of hills.
Brigadier-General (now Major-General) H. V. Cox was in command of
the 29th Indian Infantry Brigade, 4th Australian Infantry Brigade;
Brigadier-General Monash, Indian Mounted Battery (less one section),
one company New Zealand Engineers.
It may be roughly estimated that there were 3,000 troops with each
column. A divisional reserve was formed from the 6th Battalion South
Lancashire Regiment and 8th Battalion Welsh Regiment (Pioneers),
mustered at Chailak Dere, and the 39th Infantry Brigade and half 72nd
Field Company at Aghyl Dere.
The two assaulting columns (writes Sir Ian Hamilton) which were to
work up three ravines to the storm of the high ridge were to be
preceded by two covering columns. One of these was to capture the
enemy's positions commanding the foothills, first to open the mouths
of the ravines, secondly to cover the right flank of another covering
force whilst it marched along the beach. The other covering column was
to strike far out to the north, until, from a hill called Damakjelik
Bair, it could at the same time facilitate the landing of the 9th
Corps at Nibrunesi Point (Suvla Bay) and guard the left flank of the
column assaulting Sari Bair from any forces of the enemy which might
be assembled in the Anafarta Valley.
Old No. 3 Post was the first objective of that right covering force
which General Birdwood had prepared, and No. 2 Post was its jumping-off
place. You reached this outpost, either day or night, by travelling
along the great sap that for two miles wound out from the heart of
Anzac. All the troops that were to take part in this new attack had
come from Anzac. That night they had marched out under the cloak of
darkness across the broad open flats that reached from the foothills to
the water's edge. At the post they found its garrison ready to move.
Major-General Godley had his headquarters there already. Here, too, had
been marshalled all available water-cans and ammunition supplies.
So the first dash into what was practically the unknown was to
commence at 9.30 p.m. Just in front of No. 2 Post was Old No. 3 Post,
a steep-sided position which the Turks had captured from us on 30th
May. They had since strengthened it by massive woodworks, protecting
the avenues of advance by great stretches of thick barbed-wire. Behind
the post again was Table Top, very flat on the summit, and about 400
feet high. On either flank of these hills ran a gully. On the left
Sazli Beit Dere, and on the right the Chailak Dere. Both entrances
through the valleys so formed to the inner hills were dominated by Old
No. 3 Post, a veritable fortress with its revetted earthworks and its
naturally steep sides.
General Birdwood had planned a ruse to take this hill. Every night,
just at the same time, the destroyer _Colne_ bombarded the post.
Earlier in the evening her rays had gone wandering round the hills,
but always at 9 p.m. there was a steady streak of light fixed on Old
No. 3 Post, and the 6-in. guns belted the position for ten minutes.
There was then a pause, and the beams disappeared, only to reappear
again with the shells at 9.20. The bombardment continued till 9.30 p.m.
For weeks this operation had continued. The Turks, it was learned
from deserters, had got into the habit of retiring to their tunnels
and never worrying much about the bombardment. After it was all over
the New Zealanders used to hear an old Turk (they saw him once and
christened him "Achmet"), a wire-mender, who came along the front of
the line to repair the damage. They would not shoot him, though an
attempt was made to trap him one night.
On the evening of the 6th August the bombardment continued, as it had
every night for weeks, but under the noise of it, the Auckland Mounted
Rifles Regiment, under Lieut.-Colonel Mackesy, stole from the trenches
down into the gully and up to the lip of the Turkish trenches on the
outpost. As the bombardment ceased, they rushed into the trenches
without firing a shot, and bayoneted or bombed the astonished enemy.
Many of the Turks were found to have removed their boots and coats
and were resting. Seventy were captured. It took several hours in the
darkness to clear the hill and the trenches that ran down into the
gullies; the Turks gathered in small parties, resisting.
Meanwhile the attack on the left had been launched under the gallant
leadership of Lieut.-Colonel Bauchop against the hill that bore
his name. It had fallen to the Otagos to clear this hill and the
Chailak Dere. By one o'clock Bauchop's Hill had been stormed and
won. The enemy, surprised, made a stout resistance, and it was some
time before the machine guns, cunningly concealed in this hill, were
located. Colonel Bauchop fell mortally wounded in this assault. The
New Zealanders worked with the bayonet round and over the hill, never
firing a shot until they found their further progress barred by a
terrible wire entanglement and trench that the Turks had placed across
the mouth of the gully, which effectively sealed it. It was a party of
New Zealand Engineers, under Captain Shera, with Maories in support,
who broke a way through and left the path clear for the assaulting
columns, by this time following.
Simultaneously, to the east, on the right of this attacking party, a
violent, almost silent struggle for the possession of Table Top was
also in progress. The destroyers had been bombarding the hill, which
had now to be carried at the point of the bayonet by the dismounted
mounted brigades of General Russell. The Canterbury men led the attack
with bayonet and bomb. Their magazines were empty, under orders. For
the first hours of this hill-fight all was silence. In the gullies and
amongst the wooded spurs of the hills, parties of Turkish patrols were
bayoneted and gave no alarm. Then from the north echoed the cheers
of the Maories as they took Bauchop's Hill. It was caught up by the
Canterbury men, now on Table Top. It was flung up to the lower slopes
of the Rhododendron ridge, where the Turks still were. It was the
battle-cry for the assaulting columns, which were advancing now through
these protecting screens to the attack on the main ridge and on 971.
The 4th Australian Brigade, under General Monash, formed the head
of the assaulting column that went out from the left, followed by
General Cox's Indian Brigade--the whole command under General Cox.
Already the way here had been blazed by the left covering force, under
Brigadier-General Travers, consisting of South Wales Borderers and
Wiltshires, who had marched out swiftly to the Damakjelik Bair--a
hill that guarded the entrance to the Aghyl Dere, up which the left
assaulting column of General Cox had to turn. The Turks at eleven
o'clock still kept up a flanking fire from the northern slopes of
Bauchop's Hill, but gradually they were driven off, and when the new
columns arrived at this point--late, it is true--it was only to find
isolated and terrified parties of Turks sniping from different points
as they were driven back and back. The full story of this advance may
be briefly told.
It was while the attention of the Turks was riveted on the fall of
their trenches along the plateau at Anzac, that the Australian 4th
Infantry Brigade had left Rest Gully, below the Sphinx Rock, just on
the left of Anzac (where it had been for the past ten weeks), and in
silence made for the seashore, actually traversing under a torrent of
shell fire part of the same ground and foreshore where the troops had
landed first on the peninsula. It was a start warranted to depress more
seasoned troops than these browned Australians, for shrapnel fell over
them, while shells skimmed above their heads on their way to the beach.
But they pushed steadily on. Fortunately the casualties were light. In
the far distance, from the hills on their right, came the sound of
the clatter of rifles. That was the attack on No. 3 Post, for, as the
troops watched the three beams of the destroyers' searchlights playing
on the ridges, they saw one suddenly turned up into the sky and the
noise of the ship's guns died away. The beam was the signal for attack.
[Illustration: TURKISH MIA MIAS OCCUPIED BY THE 4TH INFANTRY BRIGADE IN
THE AGYHIL DERE ON 8TH AUGUST.]
[Illustration: SOLVING THE WATER PROBLEM.
Tanks in the gullies into which water was pumped from Anzac.
To face p. 250.]
Immediately the taking of the foothills by the New Zealanders was
assured, the way was clear for the 4th Infantry Brigade, under
Brigadier-General Monash, to advance from the outskirts of our
furthermost outpost line. It was hardly a week since I had been to
the edge of our flank and looked across the flats and ploughed lands,
over which then it would have been instant death to have advanced.
Now that the Turks had been to some extent cleared from the hills on
the right, the column, with one flank exposed to the hills and the
other on the seashore, set out, in close formation, from under cover
of our outposts. The column worked in towards some raised land that
made a sort of road running round the foot of the hills, and met with
no resistance. But there was a considerable amount of shrapnel being
thrown over the column, and the ranks were thinned. A mile from our
outposts the brigade swung round into a gully called the Aghyl Dere,
and was at once met by a hot rifle fire from the Turks, who had taken
up positions behind hastily thrown-up ramparts in the gully. The nature
of the country made it easy to defend the valley. General Monash found
it necessary to spread out a screen. It was composed of the 15th
Battalion, under Lieut.-Colonel Cannan. The advance was constantly
checked by the narrowness of the defiles through which the troops had
to pass. At the head of the column was a Greek, and also a Turkish
interpreter.
There were evidences of considerable occupation at some time by the
Turks, for a series of _mia mias_ were found in the gully. But the
enemy were hastily fleeing before the advancing Australian Brigade.
At the junction of the gully with a branch that ran east towards
the slopes of the main ridge, there came a serious halt. Already
the leading battalion, the 13th, had deployed and was scouring a
grassy plain out to the left--that is, the north. It was by this time
eleven o'clock, and absence of any idea of the numbers of the enemy,
now at bay, rendered the position critical. General Cox, with the
Indian troops, had deployed to the right and was making as rapidly
as possible for the slopes of the main ridge on the sector allotted
to them. At this confluence of the two streams it was decided by
General Monash that the 13th and 14th Battalions of the 4th Brigade,
under Lieut.-Colonel Burnage and Major Rankine respectively, should
be turned to the north to join up with the British force, who were
holding the hills overlooking the Chocolate Hills and Anafarta Valley,
the line being extended as the battalions advanced and covered a wider
front. With the 15th Battalion, under Lieut.-Colonel Cannan, and the
16th, under Lieut.-Colonel Pope, General Monash pushed on. It was
soon evident that the opposition here met was the screen the Turks
had placed to enable them to get away two field guns (they were the
"75's" which had given so much trouble), for the emplacements were
soon discovered. The advance had been a series of rushes rather than a
steady march forward.
I have seen no country that more resembled the Australian bush. The
bushes grew very tall in the creek-bed. The whole battle was a running
fight right up to the head of the _dere_, where, rather than lose touch
with the British on his left, General Monash halted his troops. Dawn
was just appearing in the sky, and as the men reached the fringe of the
foothills there lay between them and the main ridge only a broad valley
and a series of smaller knolls. On this ridge, above the Asma Dere,
they therefore entrenched. Knowing that their lives depended on their
speed, the men dug rapidly, and when I met the brigade, just after ten
o'clock on the 7th, the reports came back that the fire-trenches were
completed and, except for shrapnel and sniping, the enemy had shown no
signs of a counter-attack.
It is now necessary to trace the events on the right, where the New
Zealand Infantry, at midnight, had started on the second great phase
of this night's venture--the storming of the Chunak Bair ridge. From
the Table Top to the Rhododendron spur ran a thin razor-back ridge
and a communication trench. The Turks had fled along this. The cheers
of the army forging its way into the hills, had roused the Turks.
Our infantry, in four columns, were advancing to the assault. General
Monash's progress I have already described. The Indian troops of the
29th Brigade (Sikhs and Gurkhas) were on his right, having turned east
where the Aghyl Dere forked, and now were approaching the foot of the
main ridge, making for the hills called "Q." This point, in the Sari
Bair ridge, was immediately to the south of the dominating peak--Koja
Chemen Tepe. They held a ridge at dawn just west of "the Farm" that
nestled in a shoulder of the main ridge immediately below Chunak Bair
summit.
On the right the Otago and Canterbury Infantry Battalions were forcing
their way up to the Rhododendron ridge. They had fought up the thickly
wooded valley of the Sazli Beit, deploying men to the right and left
to clear Turks from knolls, where they gathered to impede the progress
of the army. Shrapnel now began to burst over the advancing companies
as the enemy gained knowledge of the assault. The din of battle grew
more awful as the morning came. From Anzac there resounded the fearful
crashing of the bombardment of the Turkish trenches on Battleship
Hill and the eastern slopes of the main ridge and the bomb battle at
Lone Pine. The Light Horse at 4.30 had charged across the Nek and
perished. Two battalions of New Zealanders met on the northern slopes
of the Rhododendron ridge, and gathered in a depression quite well
distinguishable from the No. 2 Post, and which was promptly termed the
"Mustard Plaster." It was the one cramped position that the Turkish
guns could not reach, where the troops were now digging in along the
edge of the offshoot of the main ridge. Shrapnel, in white woolly
balls, began to burst over the halted column. The 10th Gurkhas had
advanced to within 300 yards of the crest of the ridge, about the
vicinity of the Farm, while the 5th and 6th Gurkhas had fought their
way on to the ridge farther to the north. There they had linked up with
the 14th Sikhs on the right, who were in touch with the Australians,
now brought to a standstill on the ridge above the Asma Dere.
Amongst the hills, the New Zealanders cleared the Turks from their
bivouacs. Either they were bayoneted, or fled, or else surrendered. The
Otagos had taken 250 prisoners before dawn. It was a curious incident,
for the Turks piled their arms, cheered, and willingly left the fight.
They were captured on Destroyer Hill, which was one of the knolls
that had been passed in the first onward rush and left uncleared. The
Canterbury Battalion, advancing up a southern gully, and the Otago
Battalion, in the northern direction, swept the few remaining Turks
before them, and met on the Rhododendron spur at seven o'clock. Above
them lay the rugged line of Chunak Bair, 850 feet high, and just 200
feet higher than the position they held, and still some 400 yards away.
This Rhododendron spur cut into the main ridge along a narrow neck.
Turkish machine guns and enemy trenches, dug along the top of the crest
of Sari Bair, commanded that spot. The New Zealanders were compelled
to dig their trenches just below the edge of the Rhododendron spur. In
support they had some light mountain batteries and machine guns, under
Major Wallingford.
Having reached so near to victory early on this first morning (the
7th), they were ordered to advance again, first at 9.30 a.m. and then
again at eleven o'clock, when a general assault by all the forces along
the ridge took place. It was in vain that efforts were made to advance
up the slopes of those terrible hills. But the Auckland Battalion
gallantly charged across the bridge of land that linked the spur with
the main ridge below, and to the south of Chunak Bair. It was only a
narrow neck of some 30 yards wide. It was raked by Turkish fire. Up the
bushy slope scrambled the gallant New Zealanders. They were checked at
noon 200 yards from the crest of the ridge by a fearful musketry fire.
They dug in.
At dawn, from the hills, I watched the Suvla Bay Landing spread out in
a magnificent panorama before me. I saw the sea, usually just specked
with a few small trawlers and a monitor or destroyer, covered with
warships and transports and craft of all descriptions. I discerned
through the pale morning light the barges and boats, close inshore,
discharging troops round the Suvla Bay and Nebrunesi Point. As the sun
mounted over the crest of Hill 971, the rays caught the rigging and
masts and brasswork of the ships, and they shone and reflected lights
towards the fleeing Turks. I saw, too, the British troops pouring over
the hills immediately surrounding the Salt Lake. The warships were
firing steadily, and, when there was light enough, the observation
balloon rose steadily, and stayed in the sky, until attacked by a
hostile aeroplane. But, as if anticipating this event, our aeroplanes
darted up, and the Taube fled precipitously, and descended in a
terrific volplane down behind the high hills. The sea was alive with
small pinnaces and boats from the ships. Hospital ships lay in a long
line from Gaba Tepe to Suvla Bay. I counted six of them, and they were
coming and going all day.
So during the rest of the day the two assaulting columns clung to
what they had won--a great gain of 2 miles on the left of Anzac--and
the new base at Suvla Bay was secured. But, while the first part of
the British 9th Army Corps plans had been successful, and the Navy
had achieved another magnificent feat in landing the troops, stores,
water, and munitions round the shores of Suvla Bay, the newly landed
army under Lieut.-General Stopford were held back all that long day
on the very fringe of Salt Lake. I remember how anxiously from the
various commanding positions we had gained we watched for the signs of
the advance of that British column. Our line bent back sharply to the
Damakjelik Hills, that had been captured early the previous night. I
am not in a position to explain the delays that occurred on the beach
round Nebrunesi Point. Turkish officers have stated how the first
reports from their outposts at Suvla Bay, believed the landing to be
only a feint. Also how two regiments of gendarmes had held back, with
some few machine guns, the British Divisions advancing towards the
Chocolate Hills (the first of the series of hills that ran right into
Buyak Anafarta), the capture of which was so urgently needed by us to
control the attack on the Abdel Rahman Bair ridge, and to protect and
support the attack on the main peak, Hill 971.
The great offensive had been auspiciously launched; it had gone well
till dawn, in spite of the terrible difficulties of the maze of hills
that clustered beneath the Sari Bair ridge. The new expedition had been
landed, and had been left an open door to pass through (if it had but
had the "punch") into the heart of the Turkish main positions. It is
not too much to say that the Turks were thoroughly alarmed, surprised,
and bewildered; they knew not now at which spot the great attack was
to come. They had massed all their main forces at Cape Helles for an
offensive there. Their supports had been hurried up to Anzac. Their
reserves were still only on their way up the peninsula, coming from
Gallipoli to Suvla Bay. Ignorant of the impending landing, the enemy
dashed battalion after battalion against the captured Lone Pine; they
recoiled before the stubborn and gallant resistance of its garrison.
But by the next dawn they had recovered from the shock, and their
resistance had grown powerful. Even then it was not too late. General
Hamilton anxiously hastened the final assault.
CHAPTER XXV
THE BATTLE OF SARI BAIR--THE CAPTURE OF THE RIDGE AND ITS LOSS
As night fell on the 7th August, death and destruction was spread
around the hills by the guns of the warships. It began on the farther
deep-tinted purple mountain ridges overlooking Suvla Bay; it continued
in a series of white shell-bursts on to the Sari Bair ridge. Grass
fires lit the sky and smudged the landscape in the valley of the Salt
Lake. After midnight the assault of the highest peaks was to commence.
New columns had been organized. The New Zealanders, supported by
British troops, were to press home their advantage on Chunak Bair.
The Gurkhas were to take "Q" Hill; the Australians and Sikhs were to
attack the Abdel Rahman ridge, and advance due east along its crest and
capture the crowning hill, Koja Chemen Tepe. Monitors, battleships, and
destroyers covered the hills of these positions with high-explosive
shell, the searchlights blazing white patches on the ridges from 3.30
a.m. till 4.15. Under this cover of screaming steel the attacks were
commenced.
At a conference between the Brigadier of the 4th Brigade and General
Russell it was decided to storm the slopes of Abdel Rahman Bair.
Sufficient time had elapsed to enable an inspection to be made of the
country immediately in front of the ridge, but not time to reconnoitre
the best route through difficult, unknown country. At 3 a.m. the
brigade moved from the trenches. It was perfectly dark, and the first
country crossed was the narrow crest of the bush-covered hills they
held. It was barely 30 yards. Then the men slid down into the gully
below, for the reverse slope was an almost precipitous sandstone
ridge. Once down into the dip the brigade moved in column quietly,
and swung on toward Anafarta over the crest of a low hill and down
into a cornfield. The troops, lest the rustling through the corn, not
yet harvested, might warn the enemy, were kept to the gully until a
hedge of furze and holly, that ran east in the direction required, was
reached. Following this closely, so as to pass unseen, the Australians
reached a stubble field. The 15th Battalion, under Lieut.-Colonel
Cannan, had spread out as a screen in front, but before this again a
platoon was deployed to pick off the scouts of the enemy. The distance
covered must have been nearly half a mile, and, except for a stray shot
or two on the right, where the outposts of the enemy were encountered,
no opposition had been offered.
The ridge of Abdel Rahman Bair was now just at right angles to the
course of the advancing column as set by the guides, some 150 yards
away. It rose, a black obstacle in their path. Along the back of this
they were to push their way up towards the main heights, or as far
as was possible with the troops at the disposal of the commander. In
this general assault it was the 4th Brigade that was this time to be
the decoy, or covering brigade, for the advance which the Indians
simultaneously were making direct on the main ridge of Sari Bair.
To screen the troops from observation in the advance across the cropped
field (it was not yet four o'clock), the column kept close to the edge
of the scrubby land. No sooner had the right of the protecting screen
touched the slopes of the densely scrubby hills than, at short range,
there came from every nook of the hill, rising in tier after tier, a
murderous fire from machine guns and rifles. At once the troops were
hurried to the right. They swept back the Turks there, who retreated,
under the fire of their own guns, still higher up the ridge.
But it was essential that our left flank, that faced Anafarta, should
be protected. Again the platoons had to advance amidst a terrible
fire from machine guns. Meanwhile the 16th and 14th Battalions,
under Lieut.-Colonel Pope and Major Rankine respectively, advanced
in extended platoons, trying to force a passage up the ridge. The
men attacked bravely, but it was one continuous roar of musketry and
machine guns they faced. Our own machine gunners in the now coming
dawn, managed to locate the Turkish guns. Two were soon put out of
action, but still the hills seemed alive with these terrible weapons,
and the bullets tore gaps in our ranks.
At five o'clock it was apparent, unless reinforcements were brought up,
the ridge could not be taken. Soon the order for withdrawal was given.
It was skilfully carried out under a covering fire from our machine
guns, splendidly handled by Captain Rose, which undoubtedly saved many
lives by momentarily silencing the enemy's fire, and enabling our
troops to get back to the protection of our trenches. By 9 a.m. on
the 8th, the withdrawal had been completed, and every man, including
the wounded, was within the protection of the well-prepared trenches,
left but a few hours before. It will be apparent that, great as this
sacrifice was, it had necessitated a large force of the enemy being
drawn away from the main objective, and gave the chance, which the New
Zealanders so gallantly seized, of taking the crest of the hill; and it
also enabled the Indian troops to work their way on to the uppermost
slopes of the great ridge. The 15th Battalion suffered most severely,
and came to closest grips with the enemy. Many hand-to-hand encounters
took place, and ghastly bayonet wounds were received, but the Turks
suffered quite as heavily as our lines. Looking across the valley I
could see, days later, the hill covered with their dead. The brigade
lost in the two days' fighting nearly 1,000 men.
In the half light of the early morning the attack began on the Sari
Bair ridge. For the storming of Chunak Bair the Wellington Battalion
and Auckland Mounted Rifles had been chosen, together with the
Maoris--all that remained of that band--and Gloucester Battalion. The
force was led by Lieut.-Colonel Malone, the gallant defender of Quinn's
Post in the past months. At the head of the Wellingtons Lieut.-Colonel
Malone led his men up through the long Turkish communication trench,
which was perfectly visible from our outposts, to the summit of the
hill. The Turks had retired during the night from this section of the
ridge, leaving only a machine gun and a few men, who had come from
Achi Baba, to defend the crest. The Gloucesters at the same time, in
the face of heavy fire, gained a footing on an adjacent section of
the ridge, and held on. It was a magnificent achievement, and only
the grim determination of the troops engaged could have scaled that
shell-swept slope--covered but thinly with bushes--and held it in poor
shallow trenches, with short supplies, on the third day of a great
battle.
Meanwhile the Gurkhas, supported by battalions of the 13th Division,
pushed up the slopes of "Q" Hill, and reached a point within 150
yards of the top. But no sooner had these positions been won than the
Turks directed a terrific fire on the ridge. The Wellingtons' ranks
thinned rapidly, but the Auckland Mounted Rifles managed to reach the
firing-line in time to reinforce it, before the enemy commenced to
attack in force. The Turks poured up the reverse side of the ridge,
where our Anzac guns decimated them. Colonel Malone, seeing that the
Turkish plan had been carefully laid and the trenches marked for
destruction, ordered the troops to dig a new trench 15 yards in the
rear--a perilous operation under the shrapnel fire that was pouring on
to the attackers. Yet that shallow trench was dug and held against the
Turks. Bombs and water were running low. It was two and a half miles
back down through the gullies to the beach. The heat of the sun was
terrific, and under it the men had been fighting for nearly three days.
They were bloodstained and parched. I never have seen such appalling
sights as the men who came in wounded during those days. Nevertheless
there, on the top of the ridge, fluttered the small yellow and red
flags, marking a section, barely 300 yards long, which had been won and
held, the first foot set on the desired ridge.
A shell-burst killed Colonel Malone during that afternoon in the
trenches, which he and his men had so gallantly won. Colonel Moore, who
succeeded him, was wounded before midnight. Shell fire destroyed the
whole of a section of the front line of the trenches. The men rebuilt
them and still fought on. The next morning the remaining section of the
hill "Q" was to be charged by the Gurkhas and the South Lancashires.
[Illustration: THE OVERHEAD COVER OF PINE LOGS IN THE CAPTURED LONE
PINE TRENCHES.]
[Illustration: A SAP LEADING UP THE SIDE OF A HILL SWEPT BY TURKISH
SHELLS AND MACHINE GUNS, ON THE EXTREME RIGHT OF THE ANZAC POSITION.
The bushy nature of the ground makes a striking comparison with the
bared slopes where the shrubs and roots have been used for firewood,
and covered with dugouts.
To face p. 260.]
So dawned the third morning of this fearful fight to dislodge the
Turks from the ridge. The support that was expected from the British
armies landed at Suvla Bay had failed, as now the Turks had brought up
reinforcements, and all idea of a swift advance from this quarter was
impossible. But General Hamilton realized that even yet there was
time to snatch a victory. The chance lay in smashing a way through at
the highest and most distant points gained on the crest of the ridge.
So for this undertaking he flung forward a complete new column under
Brigadier-General Baldwin, two battalions each from the 38th Infantry
and 29th Brigades, and one from the 40th Brigade.
There began at 4.30 p.m. on the 9th, as a prelude to this supreme
effort, the shelling of the whole of the Sari Bair ridge--north of the
position held by the New Zealanders. The destroyers' fire was terribly
accurate. From Anzac the howitzers and field guns tore up the ridge
from the east where the Turkish reserves had been massing. It was as
if the hill was in eruption; smoke and flame rolled from its sides. At
the "Mustard Plaster" it was intended that the assaulting column of
General Baldwin should wait, and from there debouch up the hillside,
prolonging to the north the crest-line held by the New Zealanders.
But in the darkness the valleys and gullies of those chaotic hills,
baffled even the guides. The column, advancing up the Chailak Dere to
the support of the men on the hill, lost its way. The tragic result
will be apparent when it is stated that already the 6th Gurkhas, led by
Major C. G. L. Allanson, crept as rapidly as the steepness of the hill
and the density of the undergrowth would permit to the very summit of
the great ridge--and gained it--at a point midway between "Q" Hill and
the Chunak Bair summit. It was, after all, only a handful of sturdy
men who had to face whole battalions of the Turkish army. Still, the
advantage gained was enough to stiffen the sinews of any leader and his
army. There before them, at their feet one might write, lay the whole
of the enemy's main position, and the road leading down the peninsula
into Bogali. Beyond, glittering in tantalizing fashion, were the placid
waters of the Dardanelles, on which the first light of the rising sun
began to pour, outlining the score of ships bringing supplies to the
armies.
Into the ranks of the astonished and panic-stricken lines of Turks,
the Gurkhas and the South Lancashire Regiment began to pour a torrent
of lead, sweeping down the reverse slopes of the ridge. But in the
very hour of their wonderful success came the first horrible check.
Mistaking the target, the destroyers dropped 6-in. high-explosive
shells amongst the Indian troops. The havoc was appalling. No course
was open but to retire to a point of safety down the side of the ridge.
The Turks were not slow to grasp the situation, and by the time that
the mistake had been rectified, the Turks charged again and reoccupied
the trenches they had so hastily evacuated. In spite of which disaster,
even yet victory was imminent, had but General Baldwin's troops been
at the moment (according to prearranged plans) swarming over the very
crowning summit of the Chunak Bair position. Instead, they were still
only on the sides of the ridge just above the Farm, advancing steadily,
pressing up in line. But the Turks had launched their blow. They came
pouring over the crest of the hill, and fired down from the commanding
position into the ranks of the storming columns. A small battery placed
on the very top of the summit of Chunak Bair compelled General Baldwin
to withdraw his troops to below the Farm, while the enemy turned the
full force of their blow on to the New Zealanders and British troops,
who still stood their ground. Till night fell the Turks attacked. Our
regiments clung on exhausted, desperate. They were then relieved by the
6th Loyal North Lancashire Regiment, and the 5th Wiltshire Regiment.
Worn with the three days' fight, almost famished, but in good heart,
buoyed by the feat of arms they had achieved, never have men deserved
more the honours that have been paid them, than those New Zealanders.
Through no fault of theirs, they left to the new garrison trenches that
were not deep--they were not even well placed. The Turkish fire had
left little chance of that. The crest remained dead ground. Even while
the line was being reformed by Lieut.-Colonel Levinge, the fiercest of
the Turkish counter-attacks began. To the enemy the possession of the
ridge by the foe was like a pistol pointed at the very heart of their
army. Unfortunately, only half our new troops were dug in when that
counter-attack came (the Wiltshires finding constant checks in the
gullies and hills through and up which they had marched to reach the
firing-line).
It is estimated that the attacking force which the Turks launched
against that garrison of 1,000 men, was a division and a regiment
and three battalions. Probably 30,000 men swarmed over the crest of
the hill on the 10th. In one huge effort the Turks were staking all.
The German leaders found no obstacle in the loss of life. As these
masses of enemy, line after line of closely formed men, came up on to
the crests, the warships opened fire from Ocean Beach, while on the
reverse slope the Anzac guns caught the Turks as they advanced along
the communication trenches and on to the hill. From the beach our newly
placed guns, near No. 2 Post, drenched the hillside with shells. The
British were overwhelmed certainly. At a fearful cost did the enemy
accomplish it.
Watching the commencement of the bombardment from a distance of 2,000
yards, I was more than ever convinced the Turk was a brave soldier.
For thirty hours now he had been working under an intermittent fire
to gain a footing on Rhododendron spur. From a range of 1,700 yards
he was attacked by a group of machine guns from our position on
Snipers' Nest west of the Nek, and driven from his hasty trenches by
the lyddite shells that sent tons of earth and stones into the air at
each explosion and cast for a moment a haze over the hill. The Turk, as
he crawled away or went at a shuffle back over the ridge, was caught
by the machine-gun fire. His plight was desperate. The shells fell at
the rate of about ten a minute for an hour and a half, and recommenced
for two hours more in the afternoon. Those shells dropped from one
end of the ridge to the other, only a matter of 300 yards, and then,
lowering the range, the gunners hurled shells into the hollow, drove
out the Turks, and followed them as they fled back up the side of the
hill. Turk after Turk came from those broken trenches, some wounded and
without equipment, some still with rifles and packs. Some were moving
slowly and painfully, while others were running low and quickly across
the sky-lines. I watched them struggling from newly made trenches down
the slope of the hill, which the gunners on the ships could see equally
well with the artillery observing officers directing the field guns on
the beach. I have never seen such accurate or persistent fire.
As the 8-in. or 10-in. shells from the warships struck the hillside,
above the dust and dirt, one could see, almost with every shot, men
blown into the air. Once three Turks went skywards, and four men, whom
a minute before I had seen crawling amongst the scattered bushes,
disappeared. The striking of the shells on the hill was seen before the
double thunder of the guns was heard. Sometimes shrapnel, bursting just
over the crest, laid low men who had escaped the larger shells. The
guns of the 1st Australian Division were playing on that side as well.
The Turk was caught between two fires. For hours I watched the enemy
crawling out of that gully over the hill. It was appalling. The slopes
were thick with their dead. Never had a hill been so dearly lost, so
dearly won, and now lost again, to become, as it was for days, no man's
ground; for with the continued bombardment that night and the machine
gun battery playing along the ridges next morning (11th), the Turks
were content to hold the trenches behind the crest on the eastern side.
But for the rat-a-tat-tat of our machine guns on this morning--the
sixth day of the battle--all was perfectly still along the now extended
battle front.
And all through those appalling five days of the fiercest fighting that
had ever been fought on the peninsula, never for a moment did the Turks
relinquish their idea of recapturing the cherished Lone Pine trenches.
In the first day's fighting the Australian casualties had been nearly
1,000. By the end of the fourth day they had doubled. It was one huge
bomb battle, with short respites. As the fight continued, overhead
cover was erected by the sappers to prevent the Turks firing down the
length of trenches. I saw men tired--so tired that they could not even
stand. Yet they clung on. Colonel Macnaghten handed over his gallant
4th to Colonel Cass, only because he could not stay awake to once again
refuse to relinquish his post. Relief was given to his battalion for a
few hours by Light Horse regiments and infantry battalions drawn from
other sections of the line. Thus the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 12th Battalions
and squadrons of the 2nd Light Horse Brigade all played their share in
repelling the Turks in that unforgettable four-day bomb battle. But so
terrible was the position that men were only kept for short periods
in the trenches. Through these rapid changes was the sting gradually
drawn from the Turkish attacks. But it took five days to extract, and
in that time many deeds of priceless heroism, devotion, and sacrifice
were performed by men whose names will ever be associated with that
fighting. I can name but a few of them.
There was Captain Shout, 1st Battalion, who could throw two bombs,
and even three, in quick succession. Having charged down one of the
innumerable Turkish trenches, he endeavoured to dislodge the enemy from
the other end of a sap. Reckless of his life, he hurled the missiles as
if they had been so many cricket balls. He killed eight Turks before he
was himself killed by a bomb.
Lieutenant Symons led a charge and retook a portion of an isolated
sap that the Turks had occupied. It happened at 5 a.m. on the morning
of the 9th. Six officers of ours had been killed or wounded in that
trench. With an extraordinary courage, Lieutenant Symons led a small
party down the sap and dislodged the Turks, himself killing many. He
then built a sandbag barricade under the very nose of the enemy. A
somewhat similar charge was made by Lieutenant Tubb, of the 7th, backed
by Corporal Burton and Corporal Dunstan, two of his men. All of these
men received the Victoria Cross for their bravery.
Never before in any hundred square yards of ground have so many honours
been won and such wonderful gallantry shown. Men and officers fighting
in that inferno seemed to be inspired with unparalleled courage.
Private Keysor (1st Battalion) threw back enemy bombs into their own
trenches, and, though twice wounded, continued till the end of the
engagement to act as bomb-thrower wherever there was need. Private
Hamilton (1st Battalion) on the 9th sat calmly on the parados, thereby
getting fire to bear on the enemy. He rallied his comrades, and they
drove back the enemy.
Major Sasse (1st Battalion) won distinction by charging at the head
of a small body of men down a Turkish sap, and then directing a bomb
attack from the parados of the captured trenches. One has only to turn
to the stories of the Military Crosses gained, to find how attack was
met by counter-attack; how trenches were taken at the bayonet's point
during the four days that battle lasted.
The men who sold their lives in these herculean efforts to shake off
the Turks, numbered nearly 800. Officers made noble examples for their
troops. Colonel Scobie, 2nd Battalion, was leading back a small section
of his command from an ugly sap from which they were being bombed, when
he was killed by a bomb. Colonel Brown, passing the head of one of the
many dangerous saps that led to the Turkish position on the other side
of the plateau, was shot through the breast and fell dead at the feet
of his men.
Lone Pine on that second day, when I was through it, presented a
spectacle of horror. The dead Australians and Turks lay deep in the
trenches. Parapets had partly buried them.
It was at the entrance to a tunnel that I saw our lads sitting with
fixed bayonets and chatting calmly to one another. There was a horrible
odour in the trenches that compelled one to use the smoke helmet for
some little relief. At the end of this tunnel, 40 yards away, so one
of the men told me, were 30 dead Turks. In through a shell hole that
had broken open a Turkish tunnel, and over these dead bodies, a wounded
sapper had crawled on the day after the battle from the battlefield
above, thereby saving himself from exposure and probable death. How
these men had died none exactly knew. A shell may have broken through
the tunnel--probably had--and those who had not been killed outright
had died of suffocation from the shell fumes. It became necessary now
to fill in the end of the tunnel, to prevent any entry by the enemy as
much as to safeguard the health of our men. The thousands of rifles,
broken belts, scattered cartridges, clothing of all descriptions that
were to be seen belonging to either side were being collected in order
to make the way clear. One realized that there must be days before the
trenches could become normal again. For all the time, simultaneously
with the relief of the wounded, existed the need for the protection of
the fighting troops, the changing over of the parapets, the filling
of sandbags to pile up the traverses, the erection of the overhead
cover. All that involved a horrible waste of men--the ruin of scores
of lives--in the accomplishment. Yet never must it be forgotten that
the enemy was driven from what might well have been considered an
impregnable position, had been shaken, had lost five to every one of
our troops.
As I walked down the trenches it was impossible to avoid the fallen men
lying all around. They lay on the parapets and their blackened hands
hung down over our path. While this bombing continued it was no use
trying to clear the way. Amidst the horribleness of the dead, the men
fought and lived. They fought, too, knowing that behind the ramparts
that protected them, must lie their comrades.
It was the most touching sight in the world to see units that had won
the fight being withdrawn on the second day. Perhaps only a few hundred
came back. They were covered with blood; they were unrecognizable in
the dirt that had been scattered over them; they were lean and haggard
from want of sleep. But they bore themselves without the least touch
of fatigue as they passed by British troops working behind the lines.
They had in their demeanour that which showed a confidence in something
accomplished and a pride in a victory won. They acknowledged modestly
the tribute of those who had known the fury of battle--who had seen the
charge. As they came out of the tunnel which led from the firing-line
there were comrades who waited to grip their hands. For news travels in
a curious manner from trench to trench of a comrade hit, wounded, or
one whose life has gone. You hear it soon even down on the beach.
And amidst these brave men and those waiting to take their turn at
defending, the dead bodies of the enemy were drawn, to be buried in a
great pile on a hill slope. The tracks of the canvas shroud showed in
the loose earth, the air polluted by the stench of the passing corpse.
Not far away was a heap of Turkish equipment, 30 feet high, piled up,
waiting sorting, which had been taken from the trenches. Of Turkish
rifles we had enough for a battalion. Already I had seen a party of our
men in the trenches handling with a certain satisfaction, and no little
rapidity, the captured machine guns, which, with the ammunition also
captured, gave us a splendid opportunity of turning the enemy's weapons
on himself. The spoils of victory were very sweet to these men.
I have referred more than once to the bravery of the Turkish soldier.
The fight he put up on these Lone Pine trenches would be enough
to establish that reputation for him were there not other deeds to
his credit. Not that that diminishes one degree the glory of the
achievement of our arms. The fury of the fire of shot and shell was
enough to have dismayed any troops. The Australians went through that
with heads bent, like men going through a fierce pelting rain.
Taken all round, the Turks are by no means an army of poor physique.
They may not be as well clad as our troops, but they looked healthy and
well fed. A sergeant, a fine-built man, standing nearly 6 feet, who
had served in the Balkan War and also the gendarmerie, when captured,
accepted his fate, but showed no signs of relief that he was to be
led away captive. If anything, his tone suggested that he would have
liked to have gone on fighting. In this attitude he was different from
the large majority of the prisoners. He never expected an attack,
and the first thing that was known in the enemy trenches was a shout
from the look-out. He had at once rushed to get his men out of the
tunnel to line the fire-trenches, but before he could reach a position
the "English," as the sergeant persisted in calling our troops, had
arrived, and were jumping down on top of them. He believed that all his
officers had been killed. It was Kismet, the will of Allah, that he
should be taken.
After the constant boom of the guns, the tearing whistle of the shells
overhead day and night, distant and near, the cracking of rifles for
five days and nights, the morning of the sixth day broke so calm
that the bursting of a shell on the beach broke a kind of peaceful
meditation. The troops began to ask one another what had happened or
was happening. If you listened very carefully the soft patter of a
machine gun came from the distant hills across at Suvla Bay. The battle
was evidently not ended there.
That evening (12th August) the quiet of the lines was broken by the
appearance, in close proximity to our observation balloon over the
shipping in Suvla Bay, of a German aeroplane. As it sailed overhead I
could just hear the throbbing of the engine. It was heading south, when
from the direction of the Narrows came one of our airmen. He was flying
a little lower than the enemy. At first he apparently did not see the
hostile machine. There was no mistaking the two types--the enemy,
dark in colour, grey, with black crosses painted on the wings, and
ours yellow, with red eyes on the wings. Suddenly the British turned
directly towards the enemy, which promptly veered and fled towards
the Turkish lines at Bogali, dropping behind the ridges. The Turkish
aviator thus robbed us of the chance of witnessing a battle in the air.