Gallipoli (70 page)

The charge at Lone Pine that Cecil is waiting to take part in is intended to be overwhelming, each of the three battalions launching three waves of soldiers, 200 strong, from the bulge in the trenches right opposite Lone Pine that is the Pimple, almost simultaneously. The first wave will be coming at the Turks from shocking proximity, courtesy of the engineers having dug a secret tunnel that starts from the Pimple and then branches left and right, to form a frontline trench just 40 yards from the Turks. Once the soldiers in there pull away the sandbags and thin layer of earth above them, they will form the first attacking wave. Following fast on the heels of their subterranean mates, the second and third wave, equipped with picks and shovels (as well as rifles), will launch overland at the enemy, about 100 yards opposite, from the Pimple's main fire-trenches.

The tall, red-headed figure you can see there, now approaching? It is Charles Bean, arriving just in time to see the officers walking along the main fire-trench, giving the men their last-minute orders and tips. ‘Look out for enemy wire …'

‘They were chaffing one another,' Bean would recount, ‘seemed quite eager to go out and do something … I saw not the slightest trace of nervousness. Men all had packs with some sort of tucker or nicknacks in.'
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They appear like spectators waiting to see a football match.

‘Au revoir
,' says one soldier to his mate, ‘meet you over there.'

‘So long, Tom,' comes the reply, ‘see you again in half-an-hour.'
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‘Jim here?' asks another soldier, who has been searching from bay to bay of the trenches.

‘Right,' a voice calls back.

‘Bill, here.' Then Bill says to one of the adjacent soldiers, ‘Can you find room for me beside Jim here? Him and me are mates an' we're going over together.'
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One soldier from the later lines suddenly comes forward, thrusts a sovereign into the hand of a man about to go and says, ‘You go back there and take my place. My mate is here, and I've got to go with him!'
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Among them is Fighting Mac, the Salvation Army chaplain with the 4th Battalion – who had previously pulled so many of them out of the brothels and given such thunderingly inspiring sermons – the Reverend William McKenzie. ‘Boys,' he says, ‘I've preached to you, and I've prayed with you, do you think I'm afraid to die with you? I'd be ashamed to funk it when you're up against it right here.'
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A young officer crouching in the corner of the fire-step checks his wristwatch: ‘5.27. Prepare to go over the parapet.'
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Immediately the men in the frontline pull down the top bag of the parapet, to make it easier for them to climb up and over.

Now the officer takes his whistle in his hand. ‘Prepare to jump out.'
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Now the men jostle a little, as they put their front foot on the fire-step, ready to launch:

– before the ‘Starter's three short whistle blasts'.
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‘!'

‘!'

‘!'

And now, in selected spots ahead of them, the ground erupts before the Turkish trenches and the men in the forward tunnels burst forth like escapees from a graveyard, closely followed by the next two overland lines.

With a roar, they are all up and over, charging forward, across a front some 200 yards wide, the sun immediately ‘pouring golden rays over the ridges and parapets, and gilding the white armbands and the calico square on each man's back …'
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Behind the men as they charge, Fighting Mac walks, carrying a spade with him. He will not kill, but maybe he can help.

Immediately, many of the charging men fall to the blizzard of Turkish bullets, but still the majority make it to their destination, only to scale the enemy parapets and look down to find they can't get into the front trenches, as the log roofs have fallen in. They have become a veritable bunker, with only the loopholes allowing air in and out. This brings a ‘check' to the Anzacs' advance.

General ‘Hooky' Walker cries out, ‘My God, the boys have failed!'
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But then the Australians fire into the loopholes, while others try to lift the logs off and jump into the various gaps. Still others jump over the first trench and then down into the second Turkish trench and some of the open communication trenches behind, which will give them access to the first trench.

‘No, no they haven't,' General Walker cries, ‘I told you so!'
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Those first to drop into the openings face almost certain death, because the surviving Turks are waiting for them, but – as is the pattern – there are enough men following up, dodging a few bloodied figures crawling back to the Australian trenches, that those first defenders are in turn swamped. Within a minute, the trenches at Lone Pine are filled with rolling balls of battle, bouncing back and forth and off into blind saps before bursting back again, a bloody trail marking their course.

For the Turkish soldiers of the 47th Regiment who are actually in the trenches facing the attack, the situation is horrifying.

‘It was an extraordinary fire,' one officer would recall. ‘They began to attack in waves … one wave would collapse on us like a wooden fence, and then a new wave would immediately appear … can you imagine our Mehmets letting them pass, a new calamity … would incessantly appear, and it would be felled.'
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So heavily are the Turks firing that many of their rifles are soon overheating, with the grease between the wooden and metal parts sizzling, and the mechanisms seizing up, momentarily allowing the Australians to charge forward with little fire on them. The battle soon becomes ‘hand to hand',
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bayonet to bayonet.

The Turkish 47th Regiment's 1st Battalion, which had started the battle with some 500 men, is down to 33, with ‘no officers left', and no contact with regimental command. It's ‘truly an apocalypse, an apocalypse indeed'.
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Watching events unfold from the east at Kemalyeri – the Turks' dire predicament discernible even behind the huge dust cloud that is the battlefield – Brigadier-General Esat orders Colonel Mustafa Kemal at Battleship Hill to have Major Zeki and his 1st Battalion of the 57th Regiment, which has stood in reserve, ‘move at once to Lone Pine'.
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The tide of battle at Lone Pine continues to ebb and flow, crash and career, from trench to trench, leaving great gouts of blood in the now red clay as it goes.
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In the murderous maze of trenches, one cannot be sure who is enemy and who countryman. At first, the Australians know not to attack anyone displaying a flash of white. But then the canny Turks start to strip the white off dead Australians and put it on themselves. And so the Diggers are ordered to remove their own. Screams, curses in different languages and universal death rattles fill the night.

Archie Barwick is right in the thick of it and will never forget how some of his comrades willingly go
to certain death
. As they chase one group of Turks round a little sap, the Turks disappear around a bend. All of the Australians know that the first man around the corner will die. But, as Archie would record, one of their number
threw himself fair at them & the six fired together & fairly riddled him with bullets. That was our chance & we [got] into them & it was all over in a few minutes
.
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Another group of Australian soldiers are feeling their way forward along a trench when they hear unidentifiable voices far ahead. Perhaps their own? Or Turks? One Australian soldier volunteers to go ahead.

A very short time later, he is back, and makes his report. ‘They are Turks all right,' he says softly, ‘and they got me in the stomach.'
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With which, he continues to talk quietly for a few minutes before sitting down … and then lying down. And then he stops talking, and starts shaking … off this mortal coil … before suffering spasms of great agony. And now this mother's son is still.

From the Turkish side, Major Zeki and his battalion are the nearest available reserve and have been quickly called on. They march silently into Owen's Gully, just below the battle, and which in the last two months has been a safe zone for them, but … no more. As soon as his troops turn into the gully, they come under heavy fire from the enemy up ahead.

Scrambling on, leading his soldiers, Major Zeki meets a Battalion Commander of the 47th, who looks a frightened shadow of a man. Fresh from battle, he has fled down from the destruction above, shattered, scattered and scared.

‘What has happened?' Major Zeki implores.

‘We're lost, we're lost, we're lost,' the man mutters repeatedly, his tormented eyes darting all around, as he constantly looks over his shoulder to see if he is pursued, if the enemy have broken through yet.

‘I want you to tell me what the situation is and what you wish me to do,' Zeki says firmly.

The Commander gathers himself just enough to say, ‘The situation is critical. My whole battalion remained in shelter of the trenches after the bombardment. I'm waiting here for the remnants of it – I have no-one now under my command. If any survive, I'm here to stop them and take them under my command.'
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Looking around, Zeki appreciates the scale of damage that's already been done on Lone Pine. Looking at this shell-shocked commander, waiting here for troops that can surely never come, he resolves to seek out the 47th Regiment Commander, Major Tevfik.

‘Where is the Commander of your regiment?'

‘He has withdrawn into the zone of the 125th Regiment. He is at the rear shoulder of that hill, where he can see well what is happening.'
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Swiftly Major Zeki's troops move on.