NO. 3, TABLE TOP AND SUVLA BAY
The Regiment, stretched in close lines on the terraces, slept soundly.
For many days ahead there would be little opportunity of resting, and
for many there would be but one more sleep. They did not rouse till
well after dawn, for there was nothing to do that day but fill in time.
Mac again overhauled all his equipment, paying particular attention to
his rifle, bayonet and ammunition, seeing that everything was
accessible and that all ran smoothly. Then the section rigged a
blanket between piled arms, and sat down in its shade for a game of
cards. That palled after a time, and Mac drew from his knapsack a
book, _The Cloister and the Hearth_, and was soon deep in its pages.
Then came lunch, and in the afternoon orders were read, with inspiring
messages from the Generals, and a few words from the C.O.
A few aeroplanes burred overhead, the exchange of firing followed its
normal daily course, quieting rather in the heat of midday; but to the
waiting troops the long hours dragged. That wonder of what the future
held, that ominous quiet before the storm, the preparations for
battle--all made the day long.
At last the sun sank behind the rugged islands in a glorious riot of
colour, the high eastern hill-tops which should be British by dawn
gradually grew black against the appearing stars. The Regiment,
water-bottles filled and in final trim, stood leaning on their rifles.
Occasionally some one gave a hitch to his gear, others talked in
subdued tones, or gazed solemnly out to sea where the black outlines of
Imbros and Samothrace stood against the last glow of departing day. At
this glorious hour there drifted up from the darkness in the ravine
below such a sound as went deep to Mac's heart. Rich in tone, perfect
in key, unmarred by a single jarring note, and to the accompaniment of
battle sounds above, came the music of the soul, and Mac was awed. It
was the chanting of five hundred Maoris and their prayer before this,
their first great trial in modern warfare. Upon the next few hours
depended the reputation of their race. Would they be worthy of the
glorious traditions of their old chiefs?
Then came the word to move, and the Regiment, in single line, filed
down the slope and into the main sap to the north. It was already full
of troops filing to the attack, but, after many halts and
side-trackings, they reached the exit which led to the ravine. Here,
at the parting of the ways, stood the fine old padre, and, with a "God
bless you, my boy," he shook each by the hand as they passed out to
battle.
The several troops of Mac's squadron divided for their various
objectives. To his section fell the duty of going up the ravine to cut
enemy communication trenches, leading across it to their strong outpost
on the ridge above on the left. Magazines were empty, and the orders
were that the night's work must be done with the bayonet. The forty
silent figures crept up the sharp stony bottom for a short distance,
and then halted to await the critical moment of the attack. Then,
while they waited, the long white beam from a man-o'-war at sea settled
along the ridge on the left and showed the strong wired entrenchments
of the outpost. Whir-r-r went a shell overhead, and the first shot of
the battle burst in an eruption of black smoke among the Turkish wire.
More followed in rapid succession; but the first shot had been the
signal for the troop in the defile below to set off at a jog-trot up
its murky, twisty depths. They trotted along for five minutes,
machine-gun bullets from high above sometimes hitting up small spurts
of sand as they doubled round corners. Then, as they suddenly rounded
a sharp ridge, a dozen or so rifles burst on them from fifteen paces
distant. Some men went down in front of Mac, a cloud of dust sprang up
and he stumbled over one of the prone forms. Instantly they were in
among them, the terrified Turks shrieked, a few odd shots rang out, Mac
killed two with his revolver, and then, with bloody bayonets, shadowy
figures emerged from the murky depths of the trench, and passed on to
explore the ground beyond. They pushed up through the thick scrub to
beneath the outpost where a battle now raged, for the purpose of
catching fugitives and preventing reinforcements. But none came, and
the troop sat quietly in the scrub awaiting developments. The sound of
musketry echoed beautifully across the ravines in the clear stillness
of the night.
The Turks were lighting fires in the stunted pine growth a short
distance ahead, which lit with a red flickering light the overhanging
clay cliffs of Table Top rising sharply at the farther side of the
defile. Then the cold white glare of a searchlight settled on its flat
top, and in a few minutes heavy howitzer, 18-pounder and naval shells,
shrieked overhead and burst, flashing and roaring, on the crest. The
overhanging crag, her summit rent by an inferno of shell fire, her
inaccessible escarpment lit by the lurid glow of scrub fires, and the
fantastic smoke clouds eerily revealed by the searchlight, made
altogether a wild night battle scene of weird glory.
The bombardment ceased suddenly, the searchlight switched off, and part
of the regiment, who had crawled through the scrub on the more
accessible flank during the shelling, successfully rushed the Top. Mac
and his mates returned to their first scene of action and continued to
guard the communication sap. One or two Turks, who had hidden in the
scrub during the mêlée, gave their presence away, yelled with terror
and fell dead at the first shot. Poor old Joe, who had been severely
wounded by the first fusillade, lay dying, and soon his moans ceased
altogether. Others were dead, and some wounded.
About three in the morning they went on again to join the rest of the
regiment on Table Top. Struggling up the trench-like bottom of the
ravine, through the inky blackness of the thick scrub, they found
themselves at length in a _cul-de-sac_, with clay cliffs on either
side. The officer went on to reconnoitre, and then, to the great
discomfiture of the forty fellows huddled together in the clay
watercourse, a hundred or so Turks put in an appearance on the brink of
the steep cliff on the left. Babbling excitedly they looked curiously
down on the silent crouching troopers. Trapped, and entirely at the
Turks' mercy, Mac momentarily expected annihilation, and wondered
vaguely why it did not come. Retreat was hopeless, and he counselled
scrambling up the steep bank and attacking them. A tense half hour
passed. Then came a guarded whistle from high up on the right, and he
heard the faint command from his officer, "Climb up to the right."
Quitting the troop, he scrambled up the soft yielding cliff, slid back
to the starting point several times, still puzzled why the Turks on the
opposite brink did not shoot, and at last found his officer near the
top, quite bewildered as to the whereabouts of his men. Mac, exhausted
with his exertions, was sent to report the night's events to the
Colonel, while his officer returned to guide the others up.
Table Top was a level, scrub-covered plateau, about four chains across,
flanked on the north, west and south by steep cliffs, and on the east
gently sloping up towards the higher hills. Mac found the Colonel on
the far side, answered his questions, heard from him that progress
everywhere had been splendid and that the brigade had disposed of all
its objectives, and then found a few spare moments to view the country
from this high point.
Dawn was breaking--just the same old beautiful dawn they had so often
watched silhouetting the trenches opposite and the hills beyond, but
now, with the exhilaration of victory thrilling through his body, Mac
stood there with the most glorious dawn of all his days, or of anyone
else's he thought, lighting the eastern sky.
From the heights of the Table Top, Mac surveyed the scene below him.
To his right as he faced the north, the Table Top was connected by a
series of ridges with the hill summits about a mile away, which the sun
was just topping. To his front the ground fell abruptly in a deep
ravine, beyond which lay ridge after ridge, and beyond again the high
range behind Anafarta, three miles away, all standing out clearly in
sun-topped ridges and shadow, in the refreshing air of early morning.
Out to sea were the two islands, rugged and beautiful as ever, which,
together with the whole glory of the morning, the hills and the sea,
were unconscious and unaffected by the battle of men developing on
those beaches and hills to decide the fate of nations.
The Anzac shore swept away to the north-west in a splendid curve to
Lala Baba, the point of Suvla Bay; and there, where no vessel floated
at sundown, lay now the strategy of the battle, a great fleet of
transports, warships, lighters, pinnaces and destroyers, encircled
already by a great torpedo-net. Farther out, every detail reflected in
the clear blue water, lay a dozen clean, sweet hospital ships. Already
round the little mound of Lala Baba were gathered small bodies of men,
horses and artillery, and occasionally Turkish shrapnel burst above
them. The warships were sending shells up the Anafarta valley and on
to the Turkish positions behind the great white patch of the Salt Lake.
Having thoroughly taken in the situation, Mac turned again to business.
Some of the fellows were digging trenches on the enemy side of the
plateau, the medicals were bandaging the wounded, Turkish and New
Zealand, in a sheltered spot in the scrub, and Mac was told off to
disarm and guard several hundred prisoners who were trooping up the
steep slope from the rear. This was the garrison of the old No. 3
Outpost who had found their retreat cut off by the capture of Table
Top, and were the same Turks who had, earlier in the morning, gazed
down on Mac as he had crouched in the ravine bottom fifteen feet below
them. He decided that they must have been demoralized then, or else he
and his comrades had been no more.
The prisoners threw down their arms and bandoliers in a pile, and
seemed to feel no regret. They beamed with happiness, offered
cigarettes, biscuits, money and mementoes to their guards, and
embarrassed them by crowding round in an effort to shake their hands.
Eventually they were despatched under escort to the beach, and Mac
seized a few spare moments to watch an attack, half a mile to the
south, which was being made by Light Horsemen from the main position on
Russell's Top.
Destroyers close in below sent high explosive shell whirring upwards to
burst in a pall of black smoke and dust on the narrow neck between the
Turkish and Australian lines. There was a tornado of machine-gun fire
which reached Mac's ears only as a high-pitched continuous note. The
shelling lasted about ten minutes only, a hopelessly inadequate
preparation, he knew, on such positions. The storm of machine-guns
rose to terrific violence, ripping and roaring. A grey fog of smoke
and dust partially screened the scarred hill-tops, and shielded the
mêlée from his vision, but, knowing those tiers of Turkish trenches as
he did, he was awed with the thought of what must be passing. For
fifteen minutes it lasted in all its fury, then lulled slightly, to
burst forth again for a few minutes only to diminish once more to a
steady burr, which left nothing decided in his mind. What had happened
he did not know, but when he turned his attention there later in the
morning he gathered, from the fact that the machine-guns still rattled
in the same locality as before, that ground had not been gained.
His Squadron were instructed to make perches in the seaward cliff of
the crag where they would be safe from shrapnel which was now bursting
occasionally in the vicinity. Mac endeavoured to do so, but so steep
was the cliff that he only managed to make a ledge sufficiently wide to
sit on, while his legs dangled over the abyss below, and the sun blazed
on him in undiluted fury. But the greatest discomfort was the steady
fall of a stream of powdered clay from the constructors of perches and
paths higher up. A veranda of Turkish bayonets with Turkish rifles
roofed crossways on them, failed to improve the situation greatly, so
he gave it up as a bad job, and moved to the shade of a fine arbutus
bush on the less steep enemy side of the Top. He preferred shade,
comfort, and clean arms and ammunition, with the risk of Turkish
shrapnel, of which he had no great fear, to the drawbacks of the cliff
face without the risk.
The Squadron lay in reserve all day, and Mac, from his shady altitude,
revelled in being just so situated with a great battle in progress,
with almost the whole battlefield in view, and him with nothing more to
do than sit there in comfort watching it. He surveyed it all through
his glasses, tracing the present limits of the advance. The high hills
seemed still to be Turkish, for different bodies of white-patched
troops made a rough line some distance below the summit, running down
laterally towards Suvla Bay. Distant ridges lined by the same
white-patched men showed that all the foothills had been taken; but Mac
watched eagerly, though in vain, for the appearance of British troops
on the higher ridges. Chocolate Hill and Osman Oblu Tepe at the inner
end of the Salt Lake, which were the main obstruction to the success of
what seemed to be the plan of attack. He saw only a few Turks on these
hills, and odd ones scurrying about near Anafarta, but never a body of
them, large or small.
There was a great mass of troops gathered round the small mound of Lala
Baba, on whose top was now a wireless station and a signal mast. There
were horses, artillery, limbers, mobs of men and increasing piles of
stores. From huge four-masted transatlantic liners came lines of seven
or eight crowded boats in tow of a pinnace, and already the same lines
were threading their way back to the hospital ships farther out. But
the troops on shore were scarcely moving. During the whole day only a
few small bodies advanced a short distance, with little opposition it
seemed, at any time. Why did they not make a general advance? Shells
fell occasionally on different sections of the general line, the
diminishing music of the machine-guns floated, almost unnoticed, across
the hot stillness of the midday hours, the freshness of the morning had
given way to the summer glare, softened rather by the blue haze from
fires which here and there crept through the scrub. Men-o'-war, close
inshore, were shrouded in a murky pall from their flashing broadsides,
while their shells tore holes in the village of Anafarta, or sent scrub
and earth flying as they searched enemy ridges or passed to unseen
billets beyond the summits.
Hospital ships weighed anchor and passed into distance, and destroyers
patrolled unceasingly to guard against submarine attack.
Up the narrow, twisting sultry bottoms of ravines swarmed confused
trails of sweating men and animals, mules laden with ammunition and
water, with their Punjab muleteers, Sikhs with their mountain pieces,
and fresh troops, British and Purkha, New Zealand, Australian, passing
up to the line. Trickling rearwards, moving when opportunities
offered, went limping the bandaged wounded, the stretcher-cases,
blood-stained and grey, but patient, splendidly patient, the unladen
mules, often waiting long periods for a clear passage, and all the odd
men, messengers, prisoner escorts and others who move up and down the
communications during a battle.
A few fellows of the Regiment were caught by snipers hidden still in
the scrub behind the advancing line. Otherwise the Table Top was
undisturbed, and the trenches grew deeper. Some went back to bury
those who had fallen in the night encounters. Mac, Bill and Charley
stuck to their shady spot most of the day. In a hollow at their feet
half a dozen dead Turks turned black in the sun. Midday came, and they
consumed the last of the Mudros luxuries; then they cleaned their gear,
slept awhile and awoke at five, expectant of great activity after the
lethargy of the day.
The Suvla Bay force had at last roused itself, and now steady extended
lines of men were advancing across the dazzling whiteness of the Salt
Lake towards Chocolate Hill and Osman. White puffs of bursting
shrapnel broke here and there above them; but only occasional men fell.
Naval artillery raked the hills in front of them, where no Turk could
be seen. The lines went forward slowly, too slowly, for there seemed
to be little opposition to the advance and no hand-to-hand fighting.
They did not even appear to have reached the base of Chocolate Hill
when deepening shadows made it no longer possible to follow their
progress.