THE VINEYARD, LONE PINE, AND THE NEK
Friday, August 6, was the day fixed for the new attempt. The waning
moon was due to rise at 2 of the 7th. To have waited longer would
have meant a month’s delay, until moonless nights returned. A month’s
experience would have increased the fighting value of the new
Divisions, as was seen in the case of the 13th Division at Helles; but
the collapse of Russia in Poland, and the growing danger of Bulgaria’s
attitude, would have given the greater advantage to the enemy; and the
approach of autumn had to be considered. Accordingly, utterly untried
as four of his five new Divisions were, Sir Ian resolved to strike at
once, even before two of them had arrived, chiefly in hope of gaining
the incalculable advantage of surprise. To distract the enemy’s
attention, he had arranged a scare at Mitylene by sending a brigade and
a half (31st and 30th) of the 10th Division there, as we have seen; by
visiting the island himself on August 2; by causing maps of the Asiatic
coast to be distributed with surreptitious freedom; and by deputing Mr.
Compton Mackenzie and others to spread indiscreet rumours among the
gossips and spies there under pledge of deathlike secrecy. Beyond the
extreme left of his new line, of which Anzac had now become the centre,
he also arranged a smaller but more violent scare by dispatching a
party of about 300 men (chiefly Greek and Cretan “Andarti,” under
command of a Levantine, Captain Binns) to Karachali, on the northern
shore of the Gulf of Xeros, as though an attack on the Bulair lines
were contemplated.[149] But the two chief “containing” movements to
distract the enemy’s notice from the main attack, and at the same time
to make any possible local advance, were directed against the enemy
opposite the centre of our line at Helles, and opposite the right at
Anzac.
[Sidenote: ARRANGEMENT OF FORCES]
At noon on August 6 the forces were thus situated: At Anzac the
Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, together with the 13th Division,
the Indian Brigade, and the 29th Brigade of the 10th Division, all
of which had been secretly and with great skill added to the Anzac
force in the darkness of the two preceding nights, and stowed away
in prepared dug-outs among the most hidden ravines; at Helles, the
29th, the 42nd, the 52nd, the R.N.D., and the two French Divisions; at
Mitylene, the 31st Brigade and half the 30th of the 10th Division; at
Mudros, the other half of the 30th Brigade; and at Imbros, the 11th
Division. The infantry of the 53rd and 54th Divisions, to be kept as
general reserve, were on the sea, approaching Mudros, whence they were
ultimately hurried to Suvla without disembarking.
The day was fine; the water perfectly calm; and at Imbros the 11th
Division spent the hot and sunny hours in practising disembarkation
from the unaccustomed “beetles,” or playing in naked crowds among the
shallows of Kephalos beach. The first anniversary of the war had only
just passed; most of the men had volunteered at the very beginning; the
Division had been organised for nine or ten months, and held a high
reputation in the New Army. Nevertheless, the physique and bearing were
not exceptionally fine, and, though the men displayed the cheerful and
ironic stoicism usual among English working-people, observers noticed
an absence of eager enthusiasm--of that excitement straining for
adventure which had illuminated the departure from Mudros three months
before. Hope was not so high; knowledge of the enemy’s power, or the
depressing criticism which had permeated the nation at home, increased
the common apprehensions of war; and it may be that the unconscious
paralysis of cautious and uninspiring age had crept downwards from the
higher commands, through that infection of personality which acts as by
magic for good or evil.
[Sidenote: AUGUST 6 AT HELLES]
As though perceiving this absence of devoted enthusiasm, Sir Ian
issued a characteristic Order, calculated to stir the spirits of the
troops.[150] As Commander-in-Chief, he was himself compelled to remain
at Imbros, so as to retain communication with the three principal
scenes of action, and, in case of emergency, to visit one or other
point; Suvla, the most distant, being fifty minutes, and Helles,
the nearest, only forty minutes away by torpedo-boat. So narrow is
the dividing sea that all that afternoon of August 6 the booming of
the guns, and even the incessant rattle of rifle-fire at Helles and
Anzac, could be plainly heard in the headquarters at Imbros, and by
the newcomers enjoying their last security upon the beach. For that
afternoon the two main blows designed as feints to deceive the enemy
regarding our real objective, and to hold him to his positions, were
struck, the one at Helles, the other at Anzac, as far away as was
possible from our intended advance on the left.
At Helles the main attack covered about two-thirds of a mile along the
right centre of the British lines, and was carried out by the 88th
Brigade of the 29th Division, and the 42nd (East Lancashire) Division.
The advance across open ground began just before 4 p.m., the brigades
pushing forward resolutely against massed fire from crowded Turkish
trenches, which our want of howitzers and trench-mortars prevented us
from suppressing. The Essex Battalion of the 88th Brigade especially
distinguished itself by plunging into a trench crammed with the enemy;
but, exposed to rifle-fire on both flanks and to showers of bombs, the
men were shattered. Nor could the 42nd Division make headway against
the withering fire. It was evident that in the pause of the last
three weeks the Turks had gained in confidence owing to the success
of their Allies in Galicia and Poland, their reinforcement by two
fresh Divisions, and the fast of Ramazan or its termination. Officers’
night patrols discovered that they had even designed an attack on
our lines that very evening, which was the reason why their trenches
were so crowded with men. Better intelligence, either by aeroplane
or the investigation of spies and prisoners, might have warned us of
this intention, and our object in holding the Turks to their position
would in that case have been gained with greater loss to them and less
terrible loss to ourselves.
[Illustration:
_J. Russell & Sons_]
GENERAL SIR IAN HAMILTON (1918)]
Nevertheless, Sir Ian resolved to renew the attack the following
morning. It was August 7, the first and critical day at Anzac and
Suvla--the day which was expected to be decisive. At all costs the
Turks at Helles were to be prevented from reinforcing their vitally
threatened positions, and as long as possible to be kept ignorant
of the threats. In the early morning they appear to have remained
ignorant, for they were preparing a counter-attack upon our centre when
they were confronted by our renewed onset along a half-mile front. Why
an advance was not then attempted by all the Divisions upon our
lines from sea to sea has not been stated. Guns and gun-ammunition
were short, but that was an invariable condition on the Peninsula, and
big attacks had been made in spite of helpless deficiency. Probably
the higher command had now concluded that frontal attacks against the
complicated works on Krithia and Achi Baba only implied fruitless
loss; but now if ever, when the enemy’s rear and communications were
threatened, an opportunity might have offered itself.
[Sidenote: FIGHT FOR THE VINEYARD]
Yet the attack was made only in the centre, chiefly by two brigades
of the 42nd Division (the 125th and 127th--Lancashire Fusiliers and
Manchesters). A few yards of ground were won, but lost again. Only
exactly in the centre of our lines the fighting continued all that day,
and indeed, with short intervals, for six days longer. Here there was
an oblong vineyard, running for about 200 yards beside the left of the
straight Krithia road, about 250 yards from the junction of the East
Krithia nullah with the West Krithia nullah still farther to the left.
The vineyard had hitherto lain just outside our firing line, but now
the East Lancashire Brigades seized and clung to it. All that day and
through the night they clung to it, in spite of a massed counter-attack
at night, the 6th and 7th Battalions, Lancashire Fusiliers, showing
the finest endurance. The next day (Sunday, 8th), when the chances
of our main strategy were just hanging in the balance, two more
counter-attacks were delivered, before dawn and after sunset, but still
the Lancastrians held, the 4th East Lancashire Battalion now coming
into action.[151] On the Monday the position seemed comparatively
secure, and these battalions were relieved, though fighting continued.
But three days later the enemy attacked in mass again at night, and
captured the vineyard. Next day (the 13th) they were bombed out of it,
and a line across the oblong, nearly up to the farther end, was finally
wired, loopholed, and consolidated. The actual territory gained was not
much--barely 200 yards--but “The Vineyard” will always remain a memory
in Lancastrian annals. The 42nd Division’s own C.O., Major-General
Douglas, who had taken over the command of the VIIIth Army Corps at
Helles after Hunter-Weston’s departure, shared the almost ruinous
honour. For on August 8, Lieut.-General Davies had assumed command of
the Army Corps himself, and Major-General Douglas had returned to his
Division.
Though the feint at Helles did not gain much local advantage, its
service to the general strategic plan must not be overlooked; for the
violence and partial success of the attack retained the new Turkish
divisions, which otherwise would have reinforced the enemy on Sari Bair
and at Suvla. The second great feint, from our right at Anzac, was even
more violent and more successful. It began about an hour and a half
later on the same afternoon (August 6), and its scene was the section
of Turkish trenches known as Lone Pine.
[Sidenote: LEANE’S TRENCHES AT ANZAC]
Just a week before the action (on the night of July 31), the extreme
right of the Anzac position, close to Chatham’s Post where that
side of the triangle ended at the centre of “Brighton Beach,” was
further strengthened by a dashing sortie to destroy a hundred yards
of trench which the Turks, working through a tunnel, had constructed
within bombing distance of the so-called Tasmania Post. After two
rapidly excavated mines had been exploded at the ends of the trench,
four parties of fifty men each (11th West Australian Battalion, 3rd
Australian Brigade) crossed our wire entanglements on planks placed in
position by the sappers, and plunged straight into the midst of the
confused and chattering Turks, almost before the explosions were over.
After severe fighting, in which the Australians were heavily bombed
from the Turkish communication trenches, they succeeded in barricading
the entrances, transferring the Turkish parapets to the other sides of
the trenches, and including the position within the Anzac lines. The
Anzac loss was comparatively small--11 killed and 74 wounded, against
100 Turks killed; but Major Leane, who commanded the storming party,
was mortally wounded, and the trenches afterwards bore his name.[152]
This enterprise had strengthened the Anzac right at the extreme end,
securing that flank from attack across the comparatively flat and
low-lying ground between our lines and Gaba Tepe. The “containing
attack” or feint from Anzac was now to be delivered about half a mile
farther up the same right flank or side of the Anzac triangle.
[Sidenote: PREPARATIONS FOR LONE PINE]
From the beach past Chatham’s Post and along the Tasmanian trenches,
the Anzac lines rose steeply to a height of some 400 feet until they
crossed a small plateau, known as Lone Pine. The name was due to a
solitary tree which the Turks had left standing alone out of a small
wood or fringe of firs lining their side of the ground. They had
cut down the rest for their dug-outs or head-cover, and in fact the
solitary pine itself was felled just before the attack, or even on
the very morning; but the place kept its name, to be remembered in
all records of the war. Upon the plateau, which measured little over
300 yards across and was covered with heath and low bushes, our lines
bulged slightly into a salient, called the Pimple, separated from the
Turkish lines by an open space, in some points a little over 100 yards
broad, in others only 60 yards. Opposite this slight salient, over the
southern portion of the plateau, the Turks had been long and busily
engaged in constructing complicated lines and trenches to the strength
of an underground fortress. Always apprehensive of attack at this
point, as commanding a deep gully (known to Anzac as “Surprise Gully”),
up which they brought their water and supplies for the front in this
section, they had further covered the position and the open ground
between the lines by strongly fortifying another small plateau across a
shallow gully on their right, to the north. This fortress was known in
Anzac as “Johnston’s Jolly,” and the two fortresses combined to subject
any attack to a cross-fire of field-guns, machine-guns, and rifles.[153]
The chief feint from Anzac was directed against the Lone Pine fortress;
and it was not merely a feint, for the position itself was of value
in covering the approach of the main army to Maidos. For the attack,
the 1st New South Wales Brigade (Brigadier-General N. M. Smyth) of the
Australian Division, commanded now by that resolute British officer,
Major-General H. B. Walker, was selected, and it was soon to rival the
exploits of the 3rd Brigade at the landing, and of the 2nd Brigade on
May 7 at Helles. It numbered barely 2000 strong as it came up White
Gully and mustered round Brown’s Dip, a depression behind the firing
lines of the Pimple. The men wore white armlets and a square white
patch on the back, to distinguish them from the enemy in the dust
and confusion of such fighting. They carried their packs and full
equipment. The 2nd (Colonel Scobie, killed), the 3rd (Colonel Brown,
killed), and the 4th (Colonel Macnaghton) Battalions were to lead the
attack, the 1st Battalion (Colonel Dobbin) being held in reserve. The
three battalions took up their positions, crouching below the parapets,
from which the barbed wire had been cautiously removed. A small party
was stationed along an advanced subterranean trench or corridor,
connected with the main firing trench by tunnels, which the miners had
elaborately constructed. Thence it was to burst out through the thin
coating of earth overhead, and join in the charge.[154]
The attack was timed for 5.30 in the afternoon. A casual bombardment of
the Turkish guns in the olive grove behind Gaba Tepe had been carried
on all day by the monitor _Humber_, but at 4 o’clock the cruiser
_Bacchante_ appeared, and began shelling the Turkish lines in earnest.
At 4.30 the land batteries joined in, but the bombardment was not
more severe than usual, so that the Turks continued uncertain of the
approaching event. Slowly the minutes passed, the officers standing
watch in hand, as time ticked out for so many the remaining seconds
of life. Only fifty from each of the three battalions were to spring
over the parapet first, but so thickly did the men press up against the
fire-step to get a good start that there was hardly room along the 200
yards of front.[155]
[Sidenote: ASSAULT AT LONE PINE]
Just before 5.30 the guns suddenly stopped. The officers passed the
word, “Prepare to go over.” Next second the Brigade-Major blew his
whistle. Whistles sounded all along the trench. The 150 clambered over
the sandbags without a word. There was no cheering. With eyes fixed
upon the low white line of loopholed parapet in front, the heavily
laden men trotted and stumbled forward across that open patch of heath,
rugged with pitfalls, fragments of shell, and wire. The Turkish guns,
sighted for our trenches, could not range upon them, and in the first
rush few fell. In less than a minute from the start, nearly all had
reached that white and loopholed line, and, with sharpened bayonets
raised, were prepared to burst through the entanglements and leap into
the trench below. They burst the entanglement, but there was no visible
trench below. The whole trench was thickly roofed with heavy baulks of
fir timber, railway sleepers, branches of trees, earth, and rocks. The
trench was one prolonged, impenetrable dug-out, loophooled along the
front line like a subterranean castle.
Some of the advanced party ran forward over the solid roof, reached the
open second line of trenches, reached the communication trenches up
which the Turks were crowding, and fired into the thick of the enemy
wherever they found them. They sprang down separately into the midst
of them, and fought single-handed with bayonet and bombs, spreading
terror and confusion before they died. But the majority scattered out
in line along the face of the first parapet, as though along a curb,
peering and poking for an entrance, while the Turks poured bullets
upwards upon them through loopholes and imperceptible apertures. Some
of our men fired back through the loopholes; some, in groups, with
desperate strength, wrenched up the heavy beams and tore the roof open;
some discovered narrow man-holes left in the covering for the exit and
entrance of “listeners” at night. Wherever a sufficient opening was
made or found, a man wriggled feet foremost down through it, helpless
and exposed until he dropped into the thick of foes scarcely visible
in the cavernous obscurity. It took fifteen minutes for all the men
standing exposed in the open to get down.
Close upon the heels of the advanced party, the main bodies of the
three battalions had followed, leaving only their reserves. Before
twenty minutes had passed, the reserves also went forward. Within a
few minutes of the start, the Turkish guns had the range of the open
ground, and swept it from end to end with a cross-fire of machine-guns
and low-bursting shrapnel. At the same time, Turkish 6-in. howitzers
continued to fling their crunching shells sheer into the emplacements
of the Anzac guns, drawn right up among the parapets of the firing
line. So thick was the air with shrieking missiles of death that it
seemed impossible to live unsheltered. Yet as soon as the gun parapets
were shattered, they were rebuilt, and across that deadly open space of
heath, now thickly strewn with lumps of khaki marked with white, group
after group of companies steadily ran forward, and the wounded--only
the wounded--came staggering or crawling back. Along the foot of that
first white parapet the dead lay in line, and here, as at the landing
on W Beach, eager watchers in our trenches asked each other what the
men were doing there.
[Sidenote: FIGHTING IN THE TRENCHES]
Fifty minutes from the start, the 1st Battalion was sent up to
reinforce and consolidate, but the blind struggle for life or death
continued in the trenches. No one will ever fully describe what
happened in those twisting galleries and passages and pits, for
neither actors nor witnesses of the deeds survived. Crowded in places
so tightly together that they could hardly use their rifles, in other
places hidden singly in dark corners, or lurking in groups behind
angles of traverses, the unhappy Anatolians, Syrians, and peasants
from the Asiatic shores awaited and repelled the fiery and tumultuous
onset with unyielding persistence. Rifles were fired at scorching
range; bayonet clashed with bayonet, and plunged into the softness of
living bodies full of blood; bomb-thrower flung his bomb into the face
of bomb-thrower flinging at him. It was like a battle of infuriated
beasts tearing each other to death in the narrow confines of a pit. The
bottom of the trenches was soon so thick with the dead and dying that
Australians and Turks alike trampled upon bodies without discrimination
of race, and the sides of the trenches no longer sheltered from fire
the heads of those who still fought on.
Where all displayed a reckless disregard of life beyond the imagination
of peace, it is hard to select conspicuous courage. But one may mention
Major Fullerton, an army surgeon, who stumbled through the rain of fire
across the open ground, and stayed for six hours dressing the wounded
in the midst of the fighting; also Captain J. W. Bean, who went to and
fro under the terrifying shell-fire which crumbled up the parapets of
our former line, and attended to the wounded till he fell wounded
himself. Of the calm gallantry of some signallers, his brother, Captain
C. E. W. Bean, the correspondent, made mention in some notes which
he jotted down hour by hour on that wild evening and night, until he
himself fell wounded also; at 7 p.m. he wrote:
“Presently two men come racing back carrying a reel between them. One
drops suddenly out of sight below the scrub; the other, who overran
him, drops in also; they had hit a concealed pit in our front line of
trenches. They were signallers, and carried a telephone at least five
times across that space, but the line was generally cut by shrapnel.
“I can see a few bayonets sticking out from the Turkish trench
immediately to the north” (probably Johnston’s Jolly). “A
report comes along that Turks have been seen massing for a
counter-attack.... Messengers say the head-cover of the Turkish
trench consisted of beams 9 inches by 4 inches.”
At 7.30. “Messages sent back from all commanders in the captured
trenches say the position is satisfactory. Seventy Turkish prisoners
are awaiting an opportunity to be sent across. We have taken three
trenches, about 200 to 300 yards ahead. Fire is quietening, although
shells are still falling thick.”[156]
[Sidenote: TURKISH COUNTER-ATTACKS]
The Turks thus seen were indeed massing for a counter-attack. At
6.30 the signal, “Everything O.K.,” had been passed to the Brigade
Headquarters, but about half an hour later the enemy came swarming
up the slope through communication trenches, bent upon recovering the
position with bombs and bayonets. The desperate hand-to-hand conflict
was renewed in the gathering darkness; but, impeded though they were
by prisoners, wounded, and the numbers of dead bodies (which they
attempted to arrange in rows along the sides of the trenches so as to
leave a gangway clear), the Australians held the ground already won.
Again, at 1.30, in the blackness of night, the Turks in great masses
attempted to bomb them out with showers of hand missiles, and for seven
hours the counter-attacks continued. So heavy were the losses that the
12th Battalion (South Australian, West Australian, and Tasmanian),
which had been held as reserve for the 3rd Brigade, was thrown in to
reinforce. At 1.30 p.m. of Saturday the 7th, the attacks were renewed,
and the struggle lasted till about 5 p.m. (twenty-four hours after our
first assault), broke out again at midnight, and was continued till
dawn on Sunday the 8th.
Meantime, the peril of crossing the open ground had been to some extent
averted by parties of sappers under Colonel Elliott and Major Martyn.
In the early afternoon of the 6th, before the attack began, three mines
had been exploded from tunnels thrown forward from the subterranean
trench or gallery above mentioned. Taking advantage of the craters thus
made, the sappers hurriedly bored tunnels through into the Turkish
trenches, so connecting the gallery with the Lone Pine position. Down
these new tunnels the wounded and prisoners could be safely conveyed
on the 7th, past the craters into the gallery, and from the gallery
down the old tunnels into our original trenches on the Pimple. It was a
noble piece of engineering, saving many lives, and for the rest of the
campaign all communication with the Lone Pine outpost passed through
tunnels.
Sunday was chiefly spent in barricading the entrances of the enemy’s
communication trenches with hundreds of sandbags, and in fortifying the
position at other points. As it was impossible to bring away all the
dead for burial, some of the bodies, both Turk and Australian, were
buried by being built in among the sandbags and other barricades, so
that for many weeks afterwards the position was haunted by the smell of
corruption. During this fortification, the men were continually exposed
to bombing and assaults. So heavy had been the 2nd Battalion’s loss
that on Sunday it was relieved by the 7th Battalion (Victoria), which
had been held in reserve for the 2nd Brigade. The reinforcement was
fortunate, for at dawn on Monday the 9th the new battalion was called
upon to resist the last of the violent counter-attacks, when for nearly
three hours the Turks attempted to recover the position by repeated
assaults up the southern and eastern slopes. After this repulse, the
enemy continued to attack with bombs and guns till Thursday the 12th,
but with less determination. Thus the conflict lasted for six days
and nights in all. The position was finally won and held, but Lone
Pine remained a dangerous or “unhealthy” point to the end. Our losses
were very heavy. After the first counter-attacks, 1000 dead--Anzac and
Turk--were roughly reckoned in the trenches. But the service in gaining
the fortress, and in holding a large Turkish force in position, was
incalculable. Praising the resolute tenacity of the Australian men and
officers, Sir Ian wrote in his dispatch:
“The stout-heartedness with which they clung to the captured ground
in spite of fatigue, severe losses, and the continual strain of
shell-fire and bomb attacks may seem less striking to the civilian;
it is even more admirable to the soldier.”
[Sidenote: GERMAN OFFICERS’ TRENCHES ATTACKED]
In this manner Lone Pine was taken and held. But before the sun rose
on August 7, the remainder of the Australian Division’s line from the
Pimple running left or north to the apex of the triangle at the Nek was
the scene of contests no less heroic though less successful. The whole
line was engaged, but the points from which our attacks issued were
four--Steel’s Post, Quinn’s Post, Pope’s Hill, and Russell’s Top--from
right to left. The 2nd Infantry Brigade (Victoria) was holding the line
at Steel’s Post, and the 6th Battalion (Colonel Bennett) was chosen
for an assault upon the opposite Turkish stronghold, known as German
Officers’ Trenches, because at the armistice some German officers
came out of them. It was a position of strength almost equal to Lone
Pine, and here also tunnels had been dug forward from our lines and
connected by a gallery at the end. Three mines were exploded between
eleven and twelve on the night of the 6th, and a heavy bombardment was
concentrated on the Turkish position, but without much effect beyond
warning the enemy to expect attack. On the stroke of midnight, the
first line struggled out of the gallery through holes in the surface,
but were at once mowed down by concentrated machine-gun fire. Few
advanced more than 2 yards. Most fell back dying or wounded into the
gallery. A second attempt was made just before 4 a.m. on the 7th, but
failed in like manner. It seems that a third attempt was contemplated
by General Walker, but Brigadier-General Forsyth perceived the
uselessness of further sacrifice, believing that the object of holding
the Turks in position had been gained now that the main attacks on Sari
Bair and at Suvla were in full progress.[157]
Farther to the left, the line was held by the 1st Light Horse Brigade
(Brigadier-General H. G. Chauvel), and from Quinn’s Post the 2nd
Regiment (Queensland) was ordered to attack in four lines of fifty
each, apparently about dawn. The Turkish trenches were barely more than
15 yards away, but not one of our first line reached them, unless it
was Major Logan, who led one of the two parties into which the line was
divided, and is believed to have fallen dead over the Turkish parapet.
Lieutenant Bourne, who led the other party, was killed in the first 10
yards. All in the line were killed or wounded, except one man, who said
he observed where the machine-gun bullets were striking our parapet
most thickly, and leapt clean above them and over the top. So terrible
was the loss that the order for the other three lines to attack was
cancelled.[158]
During this brief and deadly attempt, the 1st Regiment (New South
Wales) of the same Light Horse Brigade made a sortie from Pope’s
Hill, lying to the left of Quinn’s but slightly in rear. The object
was to recover some trenches dug by the 4th Infantry Brigade on May
2 upon the farther side of a steep cleft in which one of the ravines
contributing to Monash Gully ends. From these trenches, one above the
other, the Turks harassed, not only Pope’s Hill and Monash Gully,
but exposed parts of the main Shrapnel Gully itself. Soon after dawn
Major T. W. Glasgow led the attack with two squadrons, and succeeded
in storming the first three trenches, though at one moment the men
in the second trench were bombing their own comrades in the third,
in ignorance of their rapid advance. It was a fight with bombs, and
our supply had to be brought from Pope’s across the open. The Turks,
flinging bombs from the top edge of the steep gully, which is only
40 or 50 yards across at this point, had every advantage, and after
two hours’ conflict the survivors of the squadrons were withdrawn,
but carried in the wounded. Major Glasgow, though in the thick of the
fighting throughout, was almost the only man untouched.
[Sidenote: THE NEK]
Even more terrible than these lesser contests along the right side
of the Anzac triangle was the attempt to capture the open Nek, still
farther to the left, just at the apex of the whole Anzac position,
as has been before explained. The Nek itself is an isthmus of high
cliff, flat and open at the top, connecting the main range of Sari
Bair with the elevated Anzac position known as Russell’s Top. It is
about 80 yards long and little over 100 yards in breadth across. On
the right or south-east side it falls steeply down into Monash Gully,
and looks across to Pope’s Hill and Quinn’s. On the left or north-west
side it falls as a precipitous and almost inaccessible cliff, looking
over the deep ravines that run to Ocean Beach. Since the furious
counter-attacks in the days following the landing, the Nek had been a
vital point for both sides, and at their end, to guard against a sortie
across the isthmus, the Turks had constructed a powerful redoubt,
known as “The Chessboard” from its complicated chequer of trenches.
Behind this redoubt the ground slopes gradually up to the smooth, round
knoll, called Baby 700, whence the main ridge could be easily ascended
to the height of Chunuk Bair. But Koja Chemen Tepe (Hill 971), the
loftiest point of the Sari Bair range, is divided from Chunuk Bair by a
precipitous ravine visible only from the Suvla district.
[Sidenote: THE LIGHT HORSE CHARGE]
The assault from Russell’s Top across this terrific position was
entrusted to the 8th (Victorian) and the 10th (West Australian)
Regiments of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade (Brigadier-General F. G.
Hughes). Two parties of 150 men apiece were selected for the charge
from each of the two regiments--600 men in all. Just before dawn on
Saturday, the 7th, they filed into the Russell’s Top trenches, all
in their shirts and “shorts,” with sleeves rolled up, but carrying
water-bottles and their packs containing food, photographs, letters,
and “souvenirs,” such as soldiers like, though hardly one of them
wanted food or looked at mementoes again. Each man had 200 rounds also,
but was ordered to trust to the fixed bayonet alone. The first line
took two scaling-ladders, and the fourth was provided with picks and
shovels.
[Illustration: MONASH GULLY, LOOKING TOWARDS THE NEK]
At 4 a.m. a heavy bombardment from all available guns was poured
upon the carefully registered Chessboard, and it lasted twenty-five
minutes. Lieut.-Colonel A. H. White, commanding the 8th Regiment,
said to the Brigade-Major, “Good-bye, Antill!” and with two other
officers stood by the parapet watching the minute hand move. “Three
minutes to go,” he said, and then simply “Go!”[159] Springing from pegs
placed in the parapet as foot-rests, the 150 leapt into the open. They
leapt into a blinding storm of bullets. Turks, raised tier above tier
in the Chessboard, poured bullets upon them at 80 yards’ distance.
Machine-guns in the Chessboard and in the trenches opposite Quinn’s
pumped bullets upon them as from fire-hoses in convergent streams.
A French “75,” captured by the Turks from the Serbians in the first
Balkan War, burst shrapnel low above their heads every ten seconds.
Many rolled back from the parapet to die in their own trenches. Colonel
White was killed within the first 10 yards. Not one of the 150 got more
than half-way across the brief space of the Nek.
Two minutes later, the second line sprang over the parapet in like
manner, and followed to the same destruction. But by some means unknown
a few of them--probably not more than five or six--actually reached an
enemy’s trench opposite our extreme right; for a small red and yellow
flag was seen for about two minutes waving over the enemy’s parapet,
and this was the agreed signal for another stage in the attack. It
disappeared, but none the less a party of the 8th Royal Welsh Fusiliers
(40th Brigade, 13th Division) answered the signal by attempting to
force their way up the end of Monash Gully on to the Nek, and their
first two groups shared the fate of the Australians on the open top.
Almost at the same moment (ten minutes after the second line had gone)
the third line (Western Australians) followed them. But while about
forty were still under cover of a depression on our left, General
Hughes, no doubt appalled at the useless slaughter, ordered the attack
to cease, and a few crawled back into safety. The next night a private
who had shammed death all day at the foot of the Turkish parapet also
came in. The assault lasted just a quarter of an hour, and so far as
holding a large force of the enemy went, it was successful. But in that
quarter of an hour the loss was 435, including 20 officers and 232 men
killed or missing--the words were identical.
If we seek a parallel to the 600 at Balaclava, it was there. But a
Turkish schoolmaster, who fought in the first trench of the Chessboard
that morning and was afterwards taken prisoner, said that the Turks did
not lose a single man.[160] Our two scaling-ladders remained abandoned
in the open.