Gallipoli (47 page)

Thirty minutes later, at Hamilton's request, Admiral de Robeck has positioned
Queen Elizabeth
off Y Beach, where they can see
Sapphire
,
Dublin
and
Goliath
lying inshore and a steady trickle of British soldiers coming down the hills, some of whom are being ferried out.

But there are none going
up
the hills.

‘I disliked and mistrusted the looks of these aimless dawdlers by the sea,' Hamilton would record. ‘There was no fighting; a rifle shot now and then from the crests where we saw our fellows clearly. The little crowd and the boats on the beach were right under them and no one paid any attention or seemed to be in a hurry.'
¹⁷

Watching them mill about aimlessly, he clenches his fists in rising frustration. He has come up with this scheme, and he still believes in it, but in all his planning with his senior officers, ‘no one doubted that once our troops had got ashore, scaled the heights and dug themselves in, they would be able to hold on: no one doubted that, with the British Fleet at their backs, they would at least maintain their bridge-head into the enemy's vitals until we could decide what to do with it'.
¹⁸

He would like to take a hand, call his commanders on the shore to account, give them orders of his own, but he is persuaded against it by his senior officers on the grounds that he does not know all the facts.

So he does nothing.

27 APRIL, ON A BRIGHT WARM DAY, THE ANZACS ARE JUST HOLDING ON

Constantinople has never been so far away. From the day they landed, that great city has been the Anzacs' ultimate destination, but now it seems far from certain that they will even be able to hold on
here
. This thunderous morning, as the shells continue to rain down upon them, it seems the spot bearing most of the Turkish attack is Walker's Ridge – behind the Sphinx, on the First Ridge. It is here that the 1st Brigade's 2nd Battalion, who have been fighting all but continuously since the landing, is very lightly dug in among the bushes, with little cover. They are commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel George Braund, who in civilian life had been the Member for Armidale in the New South Wales Parliament.

What is making matters particularly precarious for them is that overnight the Turks have dug themselves into a trench in the bushes on the slope in front, far too close for comfort. At 8 am, it takes one bayonet charge by one company to clear them and take the trench. True, the Turks quickly launch a counter charge and take it back, but after Braund reinforces the first company with another 30 soldiers, they are able to wrest it back again.

As the morning wears on, the situation becomes ever more perilous and Braund's 2nd Battalion is only just able to hold on until midday, when they are reinforced by the worthies of Colonel William Malone's Wellington Battalion, led by the man himself.

All together they dig in under the heavy fire now coming from the Turks on Baby 700.

The invaders are multiplying and moving forward once more? Colonel Mustafa Kemal
cannot
allow them to stay there, whatever the cost. At 2.30 pm, he sends successive blocks of his soldiers charging at them.

The first Braund knows of it is when his soldiers in the forward trenches come running back, yelling, ‘The Turks are coming in thousands.'
¹⁹

And so they are, rushing down Battleship Hill. Can nothing stop them?

Frantically, a request is signalled, asking for naval artillery to plaster Battleship Hill, and the devastating barrage begins just in time.

‘As the dust of each explosion cleared,' Bean records, ‘the Turks could be seen running around, dazed, like ants on a disturbed nest. For a few minutes scarcely anything of the hill was visible except a low-lying curtain of green smoke.'
²⁰

By the time the smoke clears, it is obvious that the Turkish advance has been broken. They have now gone to ground and are digging in once more.

Side by side, the Australians and New Zealanders keep firing, and though their own casualties are fearful, and they have to retreat from their most advanced positions on Russell's Top, they are able to hold a line across Russell's Top from where they can see across to their right to the 16th Battalion on Pope's Hill.

By the time the 2nd Battalion is withdrawn, they have lost just under half of their number to casualties, as Bean would report: ‘16 officers and 434 men killed and wounded.'
²¹

And yet, as Bean would also chronicle, there was a legacy.

‘Day and night Australians and New Zealanders had fought together on that hilltop. In this fierce test each saw in the other a brother's qualities. As brothers they had died, their bodies lay mingled in the same narrow trenches; as brothers they were buried. It was noticeable that such small jealousies as had existed between Australians and New Zealanders in Cairo vanished completely from this hour. Three days of genuine trial had established a friendship which centuries will not destroy.'
²²

For the pinned Anzacs in the frontlines, supplies are becoming ever more difficult to come by. So many of the tortuous supply routes – up gullies and across exposed ridges – are now under heavy fire.

At least, General Hamilton is thinking of them, sending a message on this day:

In fact, it is the sticking they are doing with their bayonets that is perhaps having the biggest effect, and on the afternoon of the 27th they need to do exactly that. In Archie Barwick's 1st Battalion at Quinn's Post, the Turks are now so close that the Lieutenant orders the men to prepare to charge.

‘Fix bayonets, men.'

They fix bayonets.

‘Charge!'
²⁴

They charge.

With a war whoop, they are up and out of their trench and charging straight at the Turkish trenches.

‘I don't remember much about it,' Archie would confide to his diary, ‘but I can recollect driving the bayonet into the body of one fellow quite clearly, & he fell right at my feet & when I drew the bayonet out, the blood spurted from his body.'
²⁵

The next thing Archie knows, somehow they are back in the trench they started from, with just half the men who had charged out. The rest are dead or wounded.

Such is the way of this war that Archie has the time neither to grieve for those who are gone nor to reflect on the fact that he has just
killed
a man – put his bayonet right through him and sent him from this earth. Of course, the Turks soon mass again and the Australians must continue to defend their position. If not for the artillery shells now landing on the Turkish positions, they would once again have been in great peril.

Still, the Turks mass once more.

‘The officer in charge collected all the spare men he could find, & we got ready again, at a given signal over the boys went, the Turks did not wait this time, but [ran] off for their lives, I had the great luck to get another unspeakable this time, I was hot foot after him, & he tripped & fell & before he could rise I had the bayonet right through him, & he died without a struggle, it seems an awful thing to say I know killing men like that, but I know there was no prouder man on the peninsula than my humble self that night …'
²⁶

Late that afternoon, when the Turks threaten to break through at a spot called Steele's Post, it again falls to Colonel Henry MacLaurin and his 1st Brigade to stem the breach. Since MacLaurin and the 1st had relieved Colonel MacLagan and his exhausted 3rd Brigade the day before, the fighting has been fierce. MacLaurin's right hand, Brigade-Major Francis Duncan Irvine, first heads up to Steele's Post to have a look at the position, and though snipers are firing bullets all around and he is warned he must take cover, Irvine stands on his dignity.

‘It's my business to be shot at …'
²⁷

Two minutes later, he is.

Dead.

Ten minutes later, MacLaurin comes to survey the position and is telling others to be careful of the snipers when a shot rings out and he, too, is ‘shot from the same point … shot dead'.
²⁸

Colonel MacLaurin is later buried near where he dropped, his men marking his grave with a simple wooden cross.

MORNING, 28 APRIL 1915, FIRST BATTLE OF KRITHIA

At Cape Helles, General Hunter-Weston has decided that it is time to break out and go once more after their objective of the first day – the small village of Krithia that lies on the southern slopes of the high hill of Achi Baba, and then the summit itself. Once they occupy that position, they will be able to lob shells with fearful accuracy on most of the other Turkish positions on the Peninsula, including the forts along the Narrows that they have come to neutralise in the first place. Once again General Hunter-Weston, himself a late riser, eschews anything so prosaic as a dawn attack, and so it is nearly three hours after dawn – at 8 am – that a rather desultory naval bombardment begins. The French and British soldiers sally forth a short time later.

That exhausted look among many of the soldiers? For many of them, the orders had come as late as 2 am, with officers and troops woken in the dead of night to be told that in six hours they would be fighting for their lives.

Alas, just as the Anzacs had found at ‘Anzac Cove' – Trooper Bluegum writes home, ‘Anzac Cove gets its name from Australian New Zealand Army Corps. Rather cute, isn't it? Sounds indigenous too.'
²⁹
– although the Turkish defenders' bullets and shells are bad enough, the most shattering enemy they face is the terrain.

What had looked so clear on the map proves to be three major gullies parallel to their line of advance, interspersed with a mass of ravines that soon split them all up, breaking their line and making them easy pickings for the dug-in Turks, who can now fire on them from all angles.

Can General Hunter-Weston – known as ‘Hunter-Bunter' to his jolly chums – do something to restore order?

No.

Secure on a hill just inland from Cape Helles, behind V Beach, Hunter-Weston is too far away to exert any control at all, and in this battle the Allied soldiers are essentially leaderless on a grand scale. Officers of individual units do their best, but there is no chess master moving his pieces against the skilled and organised Turkish resistance, and there's not even a secure means of communication between GHQ and the frontlines.

In the face of courageous Ottoman counter-attacks – all of them led by senior Turkish commanders who, following Ottoman military custom refined over 500 years of martial endeavour, are right in the thick of the battle and capable of instant direction – for the most part the invaders prove incapable of holding on even to the ground they have won. By 6 pm that evening, General Hunter-Weston has to acknowledge that his plan has failed, and the attack is called off.

No fewer than 13,500 Allied troops have attacked on the day. By nightfall, 3000 of them are dead or wounded. Ground gained? About 600 yards.

It is going to be a long way to Constantinople.

29 APRIL 1915, MELBOURNE'S FEDERAL PARLIAMENT, THE NEWS BREAKS

Order! Order! On this crisp and crowded afternoon, the Prime Minister would like to speak. And so Andrew Fisher does, keenly aware that the news he is about to impart will be warmly greeted.

‘Some days ago,' he begins, the first speaker of the day, ‘the Australian War Expeditionary Forces were transferred from Egypt to the Dardanelles. They have since landed, and have been in action on the Gallipoli Peninsula. News reaches us that the action is proceeding satisfactorily. I am pleased to be able to read the following cablegram received to-day from the Secretary of State for the Colonies: “His Majesty's Government desire me to offer you their warmest congratulations on the splendid gallantry and magnificent achievement of your contingent in the successful progress of the operations at the Dardanelles.”

‘To this the following reply has been despatched through His Excellency the Governor-General: “The Government and the people of Australia are deeply gratified to learn that their troops have won distinction in their first encounter with the enemy. We are confident they will carry the King's colours to further victory”.'

Hurrah! Hurrah!

But will the Prime Minister tell us more detail?
Who
, exactly, has landed? How did the battle go? Casualties?

If only the Prime Minister could.

Sadly, he has no choice but to tell the truth, trying to hide his extreme frustration the best he can.

‘We are not in possession of information relating to the actual force that has been transferred which would be of any value to relatives here,' he says sadly. ‘We cannot say what part of the Australian forces has been sent, and what has not. We have twice within the last forty-eight hours asked for this information, and we have asked, too, to be allowed to make public the whole of the information of which we are possessed …'
³⁰

And even the following day, though Fisher can report to the house that he has received a telegram from the King – ‘I heartily congratulate you upon the splendid conduct and bravery displayed by the Australian troops in the operations at the Dardanelles, who have indeed proved themselves worthy sons of the Empire'
³¹
– he has no further news.

‘Our information on the subject is not materially greater than that which has been made available to the public,' he admits. ‘We have invited the Imperial Government more than once to supply us with all details as soon as they can … whatever our feelings may be, we must, I take it, stand by what they consider the necessities of the war.'
³²