Glorious Deeds of Australasians in the Great War
"You'd better buck up; there's a man down at Quinn's who claims forty."
"Is there? Then tell him from me that he's a flaming liar."
Snowy's questioner retired, possibly to deliver this uncompromising message, and Snowy's mates started the usual chaff.
"I see you're getting very pally with the General, Snowy." Snowy's jaw dropped, and he stared in dismay. Then the slow grin of the Australian bushman crept over his hard face.
"Pally! I should think so. He called me Snowy. And I didn't know what to call him back. I s'pose I oughter called him 'Birdie.'"
A wound sustained during the early days of May, and General Birdwood's active devotion to duty while it was in the course of healing, completed his ascendancy over the men he commanded. Obedience to his commands was rendered in a cheerful and zealous spirit by every man; and this success in winning all hearts may serve to explain some of the impossibilities achieved by the Anzacs in the second week of August.
The commissioned officers from Australia and New Zealand are no less devoted to their distinguished leader than their men. To them he was a model of appreciative consideration. Many of them have been awarded decorations for services of special merit, but I have found that more prized even than these honourable awards are the few lines scribbled by Sir William Birdwood to his officers lying sorely wounded in hospital. He does not forget, even under the load of the heavy responsibilities that weighed upon him on Gallipoli peninsula. Nor will the officers and men of Australia and New Zealand ever forget Sir William Birdwood.
The dispatches of the Commander-in-Chief are testimony that he is as distinguished a General as he is sympathetic as a leader of men. Writing of the Anzac plans drawn up by General Birdwood Sir Ian Hamilton says: —
"So excellently was this vital business worked out on the lines of the instructions issued that I had no modifications to suggest, and all these local preparations were completed by August 6 in a way which reflects the greatest credit not only on the Corps Commander and his staff, but also upon the troops themselves, who had to toil like slaves to accumulate food, drink, and munitions of war. Alone the accommodation for the extra troops to be landed necessitated an immense amount of work in preparing new concealed bivouacs, in making interior communications, and in storing water and supplies, for I was determined to put on shore as many fighting men as our modest holding at Anzac could possibly accommodate or provision. All the work was done by Australian and New Zealand soldiers almost entirely by night, and the uncomplaining efforts of these much-tried troops in preparation are in a sense as much to their credit as their heroism in the battles that followed."
On the fourth of August reinforcements of British troops were landed by night at Anzac, and the work was continued through the following night, until the forces at the disposal of the General were 37,000 men and seventy-two guns; while two cruisers, two destroyers, and four monitors were detailed to support the operations from the sea.
The men were divided into two bodies. The 1st, 2nd and 3rd Brigades of Australian Infantry, and the 1st and 3rd Brigades of Australian Light Horse, were detailed to hold the original Anzac line, and from it to make demonstrations designed to hold the main body of the enemy in defence of the strong positions they had provided in front of the line.
The other body was ordered to attack the mountain mass of Chunuk Bair. It consisted of the New Zealanders, the 2nd Brigade of Australian Light Horse, and the 4th Brigade of Australian Infantry. British troops and Gurkhas co-operated with this body, as well as the Indian Mountain Battery, which had from the very day of landing rendered such magnificent service at Anzac.
The number of machine-guns along the Anzac line was notably increased, and large stores of ammunition had been accumulated in convenient spots. The report of these new machine-guns was entirely different to that of the original weapons with which the Anzacs had been armed; and this, as well as the activity of the warships during the days immediately preceding August 6, must have warned the Turks that some move was impending.
As far as can be ascertained the desired impression was created. The capture of Tasmania Ridge, and the activity along the right of the Anzac line misled the enemy into expecting a strong attack in that direction. Nor were they disappointed; but by massing their defences in that quarter they left the positions on the north of the Anzac line weakly defended. Most important of all, they took no precautions to hinder the great landing of British forces which had been planned to take place at Suvla Bay.
The most northerly boundary of the original Anzac position was the range of hills known as Walker's Ridge, which culminates in the sheer height of Russell's Top. North of this ridge were three outposts, isolated from the main position and the scene of some fierce fighting in the early days of the Anzac occupation. Two of these outposts were connected with the main line by deep saps. Into the larger of these saps, connecting Walker's Ridge with Outpost No. 2, and known as Russell's secret sap, a party of charging Turks had once blundered, unaware of its very existence. The result was disastrous to themselves, for not one of them ever got out again.
By this sap a huge store of munitions and other requisites for an attack in force had been conveyed to No. 2 Outpost, which had been held by the Maori contingent attached to the New Zealand forces, and was consequently known as the Maori Outpost. And here, on the night of August 6, all the men detailed for the attack on Chunuk Bair were concentrated.
Such, in outline, was the plan laid by General Birdwood for the operations from Anzac. Examined in the light of after events, no flaw can be found in it, nor in the execution of that part of it which was entrusted to the men whose deeds are described in this book. Let it be remembered that every man knew what was coming, and that all had been keyed up to the keenest pitch of expectation by weeks of weary waiting and arduous preparation. On August 6, the long-expected moment had arrived, and on the evening of that day the first bolt was launched.
CHAPTER XI
THE STORY OF LONE PINE
The 1st Brigade of Australian Infantry, from the State of New South Wales, and led by General Smyth, had the honour of opening the ball. They were massed on the right of the Anzac line, in trenches that ran along a salient known as The Pimple. It was on the seaward edge of a heath-covered plateau, on the shoreward edge of which, almost among the formidable series of Turkish earthworks, stood one little solitary pine tree. Lone Pine plateau was a no-man's land, an open expanse swept by the fire from innumerable trenches.
From its south-western edge, held so strongly by the Turks on that afternoon of August 6, a dim view could be obtained of the forts at Chanak, across the Dardanelles. It not only commanded one of the main Turkish sources of water supply, but was, as Sir Ian Hamilton points out, "a distinct step on the way across to Maidos."
The preparation of the Turkish position had been elaborated for three months. Their trenches were protected by a network of that thick barbed wire that resists all but the very largest, sharpest and most powerful cutters. The trenches had been designed to enfilade one another, and artillery and machine-guns had been posted on heights in the background to cover the approach across the open plateau. Such was the position which the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Battalions of the 1st Brigade were asked to charge on the evening of August 6.
The affair opened with a heavy bombardment of the Turkish position from the warships and monitors, which lasted for an hour. Then, punctually at 5.30, the whistle for the charge was sounded, and the men sprang over the parapet, and rushed across the plateau.
As they left their trenches, the enemy rifle fire rang out, and the burden was rapidly taken up by machine-guns here and there. But the charging Australians ate up the distance, and were soon among the barbed wire and at the very loopholes of the parapet. Then the observers saw a strange thing. The men stopped as if puzzled; many of them ran hither and thither as though in search for something.
The reason soon became clear, for men stooped and tore up from the earth huge planks of timber. The trenches had been roofed over with heavy sleepers of timber, on which earth had been cast, thus constituting a shell-proof defence, and one which could only be entered from the rear save by such expedients as the men of the 1st Brigade now adopted. Some of them stopped and tore up the sleepers which roofed in the foremost trenches, others charged on over the roofs to the communication trenches which afforded an exit to the Turks. These took the Turks in the rear; while the others, making holes for themselves through the roofing, dropped down into the darkness where the Turks were waiting for them.
The enemy, taken in front and rear, put up such a fight as the Australasian forces had never before experienced on the peninsula of Gallipoli. In the dark and fetid trenches men fought hand to hand, with bayonets and clubbed rifles, with bombs or knives or anything that came to hand. The Turks had the advantage of knowing every turn and twist of the rabbit warren which they had constructed, and fought as desperate men in the 150 yards of darkness over which these underground trenches extended.
One man who fought in that dark inferno told me a moving experience of its mysterious horrors. He found himself alone, a man with whom he had been engaged in a fierce hand-to-hand fight having suddenly fled into the encompassing darkness. The Anzac straightened himself, and after taking breath advanced, dully noting that he was treading on the bodies of the dead. He was brought to a standstill by the sound of hurrying feet and had time to shrink behind the angle of a traverse when a body of six Turks came running by.
As they passed him crouching there, he made a lunge with his bayonet, and a yell told him he had found his mark. Freeing his weapon he discharged his magazine at the invisible backs of the retreating foe. It was a dangerous experiment, for in another second he realized that three of them had turned back and were attacking him with their bayonets. How long that struggle in the semi-darkness lasted he could not say; it seemed ages, though it could only have been of a few seconds' duration.
As he fought he shouted lustily, back to wall, and striving to anticipate each move of his adversaries. His shouts brought him timely help, and in another second he was stooping over the dead bodies of his recent assailants, who had been dispatched by quick shots from an officer's revolver.
From both sides more men came to mingle in the fight, and the passages became choked with dead and dying men. They fought there in the darkness with the corpses piled three deep under their feet. It had been said that the Turks would not resist the bayonet, but here in the darkness many Australians died of bayonet wounds, and were clubbed to death by the desperate men they had taken in front and rear. Finally, the Turks were driven out of the underground trenches and an attack was delivered upon the positions behind them.
Here again the Turks stood up to their enemies, and fought with the bayonet. They had little option, for those who tried to flee through the open were caught by fire from well-posted machine-guns, and mown down in scores. Some hundreds of them were driven into incompleted saps of their own digging, and forced to surrender.
The trenches were so cumbered with the dead that they were piled up shoulder high, and held in place by ropes, so that a passage might be kept clear on the other side of the trench. All the horrors of modern explosives helped to make that fight more hideous; the rending of deadly bombs in confined places, the rattle of machine-guns that cut off from desperate men the last hopes of retreat. Men who lived through that fight will preserve to their dying day a new estimate of the horror of war under such conditions. It was possibly the fiercest hand-to-hand fight even in the history of the Great War.
Eventually every Turk was cleared out of the Lone Pine trenches, but the position was still a most precarious one. The approach to the position was swept by heavy artillery and machine-gun fire from the enemy, so that the supporting battalions lost heavily in charging to the help of the first bold stormers of the position. From the gloom of the underground trenches over 1,000 dead bodies of friend and foe were dragged, and as a counter-attack was developing these were hastily piled in a parapet to help the defence of the position.
The 1st Battalion (N. S. Wales), and the 7th (Victoria), which had been in reserve, were now brought forward. It was time, for by seven in the evening the Turkish attack was at its height. They came in dense masses armed with an abundance of bombs, and fought as no Turk had ever fought before in the experience of the Anzacs. All night the attack was maintained, but the Anzacs meant to hold what they had got. A section of a trench was lost here and there, owing to the showers of bombs which the Turks lavished on their former position. But always the men of Anzac recovered what they had lost.
At midday on August 7 the Turks once more advanced to the attack, and for hours fought like demons. Every man that could be mustered was thrown forward in the Anzac defence. The 4th Battalion lost an important section of trench owing to persistent showers of bombs, but Colonel McNaghten led them back to it, and they killed every Turk in occupation of it. At five the attack ceased, only to be resumed at midnight, and maintained until dawn broke over Lone Pine Ridge.
The 1st Brigade of Light Horse was brought up later to help in the defence of this position, which continued to be assaulted through the succeeding days. The ramparts of corpses festered under the sun, and bred corruption, so that the trenches crawled. The fire of the hill batteries was concentrated on the spot, and there was no respite, night nor day. But the men of Anzac held on.
Six Victoria crosses were awarded for acts of individual bravery in the course of that week. The men who received them were abashed at being singled out among so many who had fought as deathless heroes. It was a long-sustained and bloody fight, but in the end the Turks had to relinquish possession of this important position.
"Thus," writes Sir Ian Hamilton, "was Lone Pine taken and held. The Turks were in great force and very full of fight, yet one weak Australian brigade, numbering at the outset but 2,000 rifles, and supported only by two weak battalions, carried the work under the eyes of a whole enemy division, and maintained their grip upon it like a vice during six days' successive counter-attacks. High praise is due to Brigadier-General N. M. Smyth and to his battalion commanders. The irresistible dash and daring of officers and men in the initial charge were a glory to Australia. 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.
"From start to finish, the artillery support was untiring and vigilant. Owing to the rapid, accurate fire of the 2nd New Zealand Battery, under Major Sykes, several of the Turkish onslaughts were altogether defeated in their attempts to get to grips with the Australians. Not a chance was lost by these gunners, although time and again the enemy's artillery made direct hits on their shields.
"For the severity of our own casualties some partial consolation may be found in the facts, first, that those of the enemy were much heavier, our guns and machine-guns having taken toll of them as they advanced in mass formation along the reverse slopes; secondly, that the Lone Pine attack drew all the local enemy reserves towards it, and may be held, more than any other cause, to have been the reason that the Suvla Bay landing was so lightly opposed, and that comparatively few of the enemy were available at first to reinforce against our attack on Sari Bair. Our captures in this feat of arms amounted to 134 prisoners, seven machine-guns, and a large quantity of ammunition and equipment."
CHAPTER XII
THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT HORSE
By midnight on August 6 the British forces were landing at Suvla Bay. It is probable that by that time the Turks were in full possession of this outstanding fact. The attack delivered successfully on the Lone Pine position during that afternoon had drawn a large number of the enemy from positions farther to the north to the defence, and so had helped to protect the landing. With the same object attacks were made from the Anzac trenches on strong positions in front of their line farther north than Lone Pine.
One of the positions so attacked was that mysterious stronghold known as the German Officers' Trench. It was only a short section of trench, but had early attracted the attention of the observers because of the elaborate preparations that were made for its defence. The interest excited by these preparations was heightened by the accounts given of it by Turkish prisoners. According to these accounts no Turk of any degree whatsoever was permitted to enter this section of trench, access being only granted to the German officers with the Turkish forces.
Many theories existed among the men of Anzac as to the purpose for which this trench existed, the most popular one being that it contained the apparatus for making and projecting poisonous gas. An opportunity for testing the truth of this conjecture was now afforded, for the 2nd Brigade was allotted the task of charging the German Officers' Trench.
The attack was delivered at midnight, while the struggle for Lone Pine farther to the left was at its height. The 6th Battalion, which had suffered severely in the charge at Krithia on May 8, but had since received welcome reinforcements, was sent out to show the way, after some bombardment from the ships in the bay.
The men knew only too well what was before them. The sixty yards of plateau that separated them from their objective was clear and flat, and was swept by well-posted machine-guns, and by rifle fire from cleverly placed enfilading trenches. They ran for the trench silently, but their silence was of no avail to them. No sooner had the first man climbed the parapet of the Anzac trench than the storm of bullets began. It was, as one of the assailants said, "like rice at a wedding." Not a man ever reached the trench.
Later another charge was made for this trench, with as little success. Humanly speaking, the position was an impregnable one, but it had to be attacked. The men of the 2nd Brigade had a hopeless task, but their devotion was not all unavailing. Their opponents, who were badly needed elsewhere to resist the landing at Suvla Bay, were fixed to the spot, and kept fully occupied in resisting their gallant and self-sacrificing attacks.
It was not otherwise at Russell's Top, the supreme point of Walker's Ridge, where the 3rd Brigade of Australian Light Horse were entrenched. One side of this peak fell a sheer 200 feet to the valley below, while inland it was joined by a narrow neck to the slope of the hill called Baby 700. On this neck was concentrated the fire of more than a score of machine-guns, while the approach to the hill beyond was scarred by trench after trench, each one enfilading that before it.
Many a time had the men of Anzac peered through their periscopes at that neck, and shaken their heads over the probable fate of any bold fellows who might venture to assault it. At dawn on August 7 the time had come for this arduous operation to be attempted, and the 8th and 10th Light Horse were selected for the experiment.
I am told that a previous bombardment of the position by the warships had been ordered, but men who took part in the charge are positive that nothing of the sort took place. Like the 2nd Brigade before the German Officers' Trench they were under no misconception of what was before them. Colonel White, who led the 8th, shook hands with Colonel Antill and said good-bye before the signal was given. He knew he was going to his death.
Twenty yards separated them from the enemy trench at the centre of the position and about fifty at the wings. No man crossed that twenty yards alive. One man of the 8th, it is said, reached the enemy parapet and sheltered under it, afterwards to crawl back unobserved to safety.
The 10th were hot on the heels of the 8th. This is a crack regiment raised by Major Todd of Western Australia, a fine soldier who had won his D.S.O. in the African War. Every man provided his own horse, and among them were some of the finest horsemen and athletes of their State.
They passed over a ground strewn with the bodies of their comrades. Some of them, taking advantage of slight depressions in the ground, threw themselves down to shelter from the tornado of bullets that met them. One little group, consisting of a lieutenant and half a dozen men, found themselves sheltered by a little hillock. They knew it was certain death to go on; without orders they would not retire.
As they lay as close to the ground as they could squeeze, the lieutenant made a suggestion. "Boys, a shilling in, and the winner shouts." (Shout is the Australian word for treating.) The suggestion was eagerly accepted, and the men chose their numbers, and proceeded to "sell a pony" after a time-honoured Australian custom. But before the lottery was decided they heard the "retire" whistle blow. "And so," said the narrator of the incident mournfully, "we never knew who ought to stand the drinks."
Men who can so behave in the very shadow of death are beyond any comment of mine.
The survivors returned to their trench, and made occasional dashes out to assist single wounded men, who were crawling painfully back to shelter. The whole affair was very soon over, and any one curious to know what it cost may turn up the casualty list of the 3rd Brigade of Light Horse for that date. But the enemy, who had packed their effects to turn on the landing force at Suvla, and on the New Zealanders who were now attacking Chunuk Bair, were held to the spot, so that the sacrifice of the Light Horse was not made in vain.
Almost simultaneously with the charge of the 3rd Brigade of Light Horse across the Neck to the Baby 700 trenches, the 1st Brigade (1st, 2nd and 3rd Regiments) made an equally desperate charge across the corner known as the Bloody Angle, the objective being the Turkish trenches at the foot of Dead Man's Ridge.
The 2nd Regiment (Queensland), under command of Major Logan, were supposed to charge from Quinn's Post, while the 1st Regiment (New South Wales) charged from the trenches at the foot of Pope's Hill. The first line of the Second left Quinn's Post at the signal, and as they crossed the parapet most of them crumpled up under a steady stream of machine-gun bullets. The remainder of the fifty men were all killed or wounded, with the exception of one man, before they had covered the twenty-five yards which separated the two lines. That one man, who came back unscathed, is said to have jumped high in the air at the place where he imagined the stream of bullets to be pouring across the line of charge, and so escaped even a scratch.
The 1st Regiment reached the line of trenches and took five in succession. These they held for two hours, but the Turks had the upper ground and counter-attacked with bombs most desperately. The positions were no use, in any case, and after this fact had been recognized the First retired, taking their wounded with them. Of 250 men who went out only fifty-seven returned unwounded.
I am indebted to Sergeant-Major Wynn of the 1st Regiment for some graphic details of that charge from the foot of Pope's Hill.
"While we were preparing on the evening of August 6," he says, "the scrap down at Lone Pine began. I wish I could tell you what I saw through my glasses in the odd spare moments (very few, you may be sure). It was marvellous to see the reserves dash in through the blazing scrub, without arms, to bring in any of the first or second line who had gone down. There's not enough bronze to spare to V.C. those chaps.