Gallipoli (52 page)

After a very weak barrage on where the Turkish positions are thought most likely to be – weak because the British do not have enough shells – the British and French forces advance in skirmish order across much more broken terrain than they had been expecting, whereupon the well dug-in Turks simply lob artillery shells on them. As to the Turkish soldiers in the forward trenches, they appear soon enough, using state-of-the-art German machine-guns to send such a hail of lead into the attackers that a sparrow could not survive in it, let alone one man, let alone 10,000 men.

The results on this day are so disastrous, with over 1100 casualties – for 400 yards gained – that after less than an hour the attack is called off.

Back at GHQ on HMT
Arcadian
, General Hamilton is still absorbing the disastrous news when a cable arrives from London in response to his request on 4 May that he and his forces urgently need more artillery shells to be sent out.

What to do?

General Hunter-Weston has not graduated from the Royal Military Academy for nothing. Why, they will do the same thing the next day – albeit with even
less
artillery support, as by now artillery shells are close to catastrophically low.

This time, the battle goes for three hours before it is called off, and there are a further 1250 casualties.

What to do?

Order
another
attack.

And this time send in the Anzacs.

8 MAY 1915, ACROSS AUSTRALIA, THE NEWS BREAKS

Have you seen it?

There is a story in
The Sydney Morning Herald
by an English chap, Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, and he says our chaps have performed
magnificently
in the Dardanelles:

The account is read in many papers around Australia and creates a sensation. Our boys! We
Australians
. We've shown the lot of them. And all this praise, coming from an
Englishman
.

In a country whose formal foundation just a decade and a half earlier had been a matter of rather dull speeches and resolutions, where there have been no revolutions, where blood had yet to be shed in the name of the nation … the news is devoured with joy.

The article is cut out and pressed in heavy books for preservation, and thereafter stuck gingerly into scrapbooks. Schoolchildren must sit up straight as it is read to them, while congregations give glory to God, as pastors and priests use it as the basis for sermons. It is revered as confirmation that Australia is not only a real country but, as
The Sydney Morning Herald
puts it in an editorial entitled ‘THE GLORY OF IT', also ‘a changed people'.
³

In Ballarat, they add a new verse to ‘God Save the King':

Not to be outdone, Banjo Paterson, Australia's greatest poet, writes a poem to celebrate the occasion:

No doubt about it. Almost as one, Australians revel in what is happening in Gallipoli – talk about it, sing about it, rhapsodise about it – and many grown men are sick with envy at those who know the glory of being there.

Overall, few are more impressed than Keith Murdoch, with the magnificence of both the Australian effort and the writing – though it does make him wonder if he shouldn't go there himself, if not as a journalist, then as a soldier, just as his younger brother Ivon is about to do.

When Prime Minister Fisher reads the article, he is proud, though more troubled than ever. For, despite repeated requests to His Majesty's Government,
he
has found out only a few hours before everyone else much of the detail of what has happened. It is not right – and he is deeply aggrieved by it, not to mention embarrassed.

Meanwhile, the Anzacs on the Peninsula are oblivious of the accolades being thrust upon their deeds. Should they have heard some of the things being said of them back home, elevating them up to the glory of gods, many would have laughed. Surely there is nothing noble about wearing the same pair of underpants for over two weeks? Or sleeping in a hole in the ground, using your dirt-encrusted hands as a pillow? Or spending your ‘relief' time – hours spent away from the death of the firing line – continually digging latrines, ‘trench digging and sapping or carrying water and provisions up the hill'.
⁶
And, of course, then traipsing the waste of thousands of men back down again on your return journey?

No, far from feeling heroic, many of the men are simply trying to cope, fighting for their lives, barely surviving this brutal environment. They're teaching themselves to adapt, to block the constant and infernal noise, to accept that every single day
in this place of wrath and tears
they will lose a mate. The heart is a stubborn thing, though, and as mates continue to be lost, the men turn to each other more and more, to shoulder the burden that such loss leaves behind. And with each man buried, the bond between the survivors thickens and grows more precious.

In a hell so dark, even the faintest rays of light can be seen. Simple, singular rays of delight. One being that a semblance of a routine is emerging for the men. Now that supplies are arriving, and quarter-masters' stores and kitchens are set up, they begin to have
things
! Stuff they'd never known they held so dear. A fork! A toothbrush! TOBACCO!

Tobacco day is set for Tuesday, and it lifts the men to think of it: ‘we each got half a tin of light capstan and 2 packets of cigarettes and a box of matches'.
⁷

They also get a daily issue of rum. It's a modest issue, yes, but it's better than a poke in the eye with a burned stick. As one Digger later confides to his loved ones, ‘This rum is a Godsend, because the throb of a man's life runs so low here just now, it is essential to give him some artificial stimulant to keep his heart out of his boots and somewhere above his stomach.'
⁸

MORNING, 8 MAY 1915, GALLIPOLI PENINSULA, AN IMPOSSIBLE TASK

At 10.30 am, the first of the forces at Cape Helles – including the soldiers of the New Zealand Brigade – move off. The Aucklanders are in the centre, flanked by Colonel William Malone's Wellington Infantry Battalion on the left and the Canterburys on the right. They are among ANZAC's finest, and …

And they are simply cut to pieces. For what does any of their training count when they are sent into a trap of scything shrapnel and withering machine-gun fire in which a bee would struggle to survive, let alone a soldier? Even those not killed on the instant must go to ground and then try to scrape shelter beneath it. Colonel Malone survives but is devastated at what is happening to his men, of whom, as ever, he is fiercely protective.
Damn
Hunter-Weston.

For the other troops, it is even worse, and though the ‘Pig Islanders', as they are also sometimes called, have claimed another few hundred yards, this is practically the only advance shown for the morning.

For General Hunter-Weston, there is only one thing to do, and he gives the order at 3 pm.

The survivors of the New Zealanders – who, as recorded by Malone, ‘got forward about 1,200 yards and within 200 to 400 yards of the Turk trenches'
⁹
– must attack once more at 5.30 pm. There is to be nothing different to the way it had been done in the morning. Simply up and charge at the enemy trenches. Colonel Francis Johnston, Commanding Officer of the New Zealand Infantry, vigorously protests that such an order can ‘only lead to the destruction of my force', but he receives no satisfaction.
¹⁰
Orders are orders.

Far from intervening to put a stop to it, General Hamilton, who has established headquarters above W Beach, gives an order of his own, commanding that the
whole
line, reinforced by the Australians, should on the stroke of 5.30 fix bayonets and storm Krithia and Achi Baba.
¹¹

The 2568 soldiers of the 2nd Brigade
¹²
who had been transported down to the Cape by sea and held in reserve must move up on the right flank of the depleted New Zealanders, and together they will push through the British frontline and attack Johnny Turk in his trench.

The first that the Australian command in Brigade Headquarters knows of it is at 4.55 pm, when, just before they are about to have a refreshing chai, a message is handed to Major Walter Cass from Albury ordering the 2nd Brigade to attack at 5.30 pm. The message is staggering.

Charles Bean, recently having received his formal accreditation as a war correspondent, has scrambled to be given permission ‘to come off with the 2nd Brigade'
¹³
and would report, ‘This message, received at such short notice that it was doubtful whether it was humanly possible to comply with it, flung an infantry brigade of the A.I.F. for the first and only time in the earlier years of the war into an ordered attack across open country.'
¹⁴

Major Cass immediately sends out runners to the battalions, advising that they must be ready to move on just
one minute's notice
, before going, message in hand, to find Colonel McCay. An hour later, McCay, Cass and a handful of officers are sitting in their dusty trench, about to write the order for their brigade, when the field telephone rings. McCay takes the phone in hand.

Composite Division Commander General Paris has another request from General Hamilton. ‘Have you any bands with you?' enquires Paris, hopefully. (General Hamilton likes bands to help make a bit of a display as they attack, so as to encourage their French Senegalese brethren.)

‘None …'

‘Well, have you any colours?'

‘No …'

‘You have bayonets, at any rate,' Paris asserts, noting again that Sir Ian Hamilton – after the soldiers have finished charging two miles across open country in the face of entrenched enemy armed with machine-guns and artillery – would like them to use this weapon as much as they can.

‘I do not even know,' McCay replies, ‘if it will be possible to carry out the order in time.'

‘It has got to be done,' Paris says flatly, before hanging up.
¹⁵

Colonel William Malone of the Wellingtons attempts to debate the sanity of the orders with his own Commander.

‘You must push on,' Colonel Francis Johnston responds,
¹⁶
in the curiously clipped tones of one who, though born in New Zealand, had been educated in Britain, including at Sandhurst.

Typical. Malone has no respect for Johnston and it is not simply that Johnston is an alcoholic. It is that he is too cavalier with the lives of Malone's men. ‘He seems to resent my asking for information,' Malone records in his diary, ‘and for [my] not too readily allowing my men to be plunged ahead without reconnaissance and information … He says I am more bother to him than all three other Commanding Officers together. They say yes to everything and seem to blunder along but I am not seeking popularity, only efficiency.'
¹⁷

For now, Malone has no choice but to obey his superior's orders. Within minutes, the New Zealanders are forming up at the frontline. The Australians are also forming up in a natural undulation in the field, 1000 yards behind the frontline. The Anzacs know they will soon be down to tin tacks as the bullets and shrapnel fly. (See the map ‘Second Battle of Kritha' in the previous chapter, page 359.)

Up ahead, across flowery fields full of daisies and poppies, is open country with a sprinkling of trees and olive groves, which leads to a pleasant slope that terminates in the peak of Achi Baba. At the base of this hill, at left, lies the small village of Krithia, surrounded by what appear to be windmills.

Just as the ferocity of the sun is beginning to ebb for the first time, the big guns of the Allied ships offshore begin pounding Turkish positions, and, as described by General Hamilton, ‘fifteen minutes later the hour glass of eternity dropped a tiny grain labelled 5.30 pm 8.5.1915 into the lap of time'.
¹⁸

The instant the barrage stops, amid the clarion call of bugles and the beat of martial drums, a whole crop of glittering bayonets suddenly sprouts from the ground, followed by wave after wave of men bursting forth in an upwards and onwards charge, through the palls of yellow, green and white smoke that cover the lower slopes of Achi Baba.

Down the line, Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Gartside leads his own Australian soldiers of the 7th Battalion forward, calling, ‘Come on boys, I know it's deadly, but we must get on,'
¹⁹
only to be all but instantly riddled across his abdomen with machine-gun bullets.

Onwards, Christian soldiers, marching as to war, and a real war it is.

As Bean would describe it, ‘It was as if the universe was a tin-lined packing case, and squads of giants with sledgehammers were banging both ends of it, and we tiny beings were somewhere in between. The echoes were reverberating away to Achi Baba, and back again.'
²⁰