Again and again in our fighting history, a regiment acting as one man
has performed a “deed of signal valour and devotion in the presence of
the enemy,” such as is required for the winning of the Victoria Cross.
There is, however, as we have seen, no V.C. for a regiment; but in one
case at least during the Great War a regiment selected by vote the
names of those men among them who were thought most worthy to wear the
Victoria Cross.
The First Battalion Lancashire Fusiliers landed on Beach W in the
Gallipoli Peninsula on April 25th, 1915--a day to be marked and
remembered by all lovers of heroic deeds. And having won immortal
glory by their valour they--or the survivors from among them--selected
for the V.C. three of their number, namely Private Keneally, Sergeant
Richards, and Captain Willis. The story of the landing, however,
concerns the whole regiment.
[Illustration: THE LANDING OF THE LANCASHIRES.]
Beach W was in a bay enclosed by hills through which a narrow gully
running down to the sea opened out a break in the cliffs. The Turks
had expected a landing on this beach, and had made every possible
preparation to repel the invaders. There were mines in the sea and
mines on the land. At the edge of the water there was a thick fence of
barbed wire.
There were trenches and gun positions on the slopes overlooking the
beach; and the guns were so cleverly hidden that the gunners on our
warships, even when helped by the airmen, could not find them out.
Behind each heap of sand and each tuft of brushwood a Turkish sniper
was concealed.
“So strong, in fact,” wrote the British general, Sir Ian Hamilton,
“were the defences of Beach W that the Turks may well have thought
them impregnable. And it is my firm conviction that no finer feat
of arms has ever been achieved by the British soldier--or any other
soldier--than the storming of those trenches from open boats on the
morning of April 25.”
Very early in the morning, the Lancashires under Major Bishop were
embarked in boats from the cruiser which had brought them to the scene
of action. As soon as they were ready, the British battleships began
a terrific bombardment of the Turkish positions. This lasted for an
hour, and at six o’clock eight lines of four cutters, each drawn by a
small steamboat, made for the beach. When shallow water was reached,
the steamboats cast off and the cutters were rowed towards the shore.
Meanwhile, the enemy had made no sign.
But as the first boat grounded upon the beach, a furious fire was
opened upon it from rifles, machine-guns, and pom-poms. Of the first
line of fearless men who advanced upon the barbed-wire hedge along the
shore nearly all were swept away. There was a pause, and the watchers
on the ships asked each other, “Why are our men resting?” not knowing
that most of the brave fellows had found the last great rest of all.
But the pause was only for a few moments. In a very short time the
Lancashires were hacking doggedly at the bristling hedge of wire.
Meanwhile, others of their comrades had been able to land on some rocks
at the end of the bay; and a few had already found out some of the
Turkish machine-gun positions and had accounted for the men who held
them. Others had got round the ends of the wire hedge and were now
steadily replying to the enemy’s fire.
But the struggle on the open beach was still going on. Captain Willis
and a few men were able, after desperate efforts, to break a way
through the wire and then ran forward to take cover behind a sandbank.
When the men looked at their rifles they found the barrels and locks
clogged with sand; but they coolly set to work to clean them, while the
bullets whistled and sang around them. At last the rifles were ready
for use and they did good service while other men of the Lancashires
were engaged in landing on the beach.
The newcomers worked their way through or round the ends of the
barbed-wire fence, and Captain Willis then led the charge upon the
enemy’s trenches. The Turks fought with great gallantry, but the
Lancashires drove them from their first line and gradually worked up to
higher and higher positions.
All this was done in the face of a withering fire from the Turkish
machine-guns and pom-poms; and the enemy also exploded several land
mines without checking the steady advance of our brave fellows. Just
before ten o’clock that morning more men were landed, and by this time
no less than three lines of enemy trenches were in British hands above
Beach W.
Sir Ian Hamilton afterwards wrote: “It was to the complete lack of the
sense of danger or of fear in this daring battalion that we owed our
astonishing success in this quarter.”
But no words can convey in the least degree the fierceness of the
struggle which took place that morning, or the dogged character of the
effort of the Lancashires to gain a footing on the beach. During the
Great War men rose to such a height of heroism that deeds of wonderful
daring became matters of daily routine. One unhappy result of this was
that people at home took brave deeds for granted, and forgot to do
honour to those who had done such great things for their country.