Gallipoli (72 page)

As the beachhead at Suvla fills with more and more men, the Commander of the Bursa Gendarme Battalion rides up to Hill 10, from where, by field telephone, he begins to furnish Lieutenant-Colonel Wilmer, who commands all Turkish forces in the Suvla Bay area, with blow by blow descriptions of events as they unfold. Immediately Wilmer deploys two companies and a battalion to consolidate their position on the hill. He soon has about 3000 men to hold what looks like tens of thousands of men crowding onto the beach.
²⁰

Among the Turkish command elsewhere, things are frantic. Obviously what is needed are reinforcements to get to both Suvla Bay and Sari Bair. And quickly.

Meanwhile, the Wellington Mounteds of the Right Covering Force are winding their way carefully up Sazli Gully towards the Table Top. Their progress is steady but slow – certainly slower than headquarters' ludicrously optimistic timetable has allowed for. As surprise is of the essence, they are forbidden to fire their weapons. Slashing bayonets are the order of this murderous night against the Turks they come across, many of whom they find asleep before being sent to their eternal rest.

The close darkness, for all the problems it poses, is still welcome to the soldiers – especially now, as they find themselves climbing up a particularly hairy cliff. With any moonlight upon them at all, they would be easy pickings, clinging to the side of this razor-edged precipice with God knows how many Turks above ready to destroy them if only they spot them. Yes, the darkness brings solace, until suddenly … a flash! From above, a Turkish flare soars high across the sky in a graceful arc, briefly illuminating the soldiers' grim faces to each other as they hug the mountain, before it lands on the left of the ridge above them and sets fire to a knot of scrub, dried by the long summer days, and casts a dangerous glow that exposes their advance. Have they been spotted?

The men stiffen and hug the cliff even closer, their limbs frozen in awkward positions, waiting for a hail of fire. But still there is none.

As the fire dims, they start to climb once more, reaching the Table Top to find ‘a small scrub-covered plateau about an acre in extent' virtually undefended.
²¹
The few Turkish soldiers who are found are quickly bayoneted.

As midnight approaches, the men have secured all the trenches on Table Top – ‘the steepest of all the enemy's outposts'
²²
– and now begin the long process of establishing small posts of soldiers along the ridgeline to secure it, all the way up to the head of the gully that leads to Rhododendron Ridge. So far, they have lost only four men, with nine wounded.

Their comrades in the main Right Assault Column, still below them, moving up along the Sazli Gully, are making slower progress … In the mess of ravines and clefts, not only do they encounter wire entanglements and small parties of Turks who have escaped the sweep done by the covering forces, but the long snake of troops also keeps breaking up at various points. Sections of men advance, before halting while men are sent back to get word from the main party. As one private recalls in a letter a month later, ‘It was what we, in a joke, called a concertina march – moving and stopping – moving and stopping; oh, it was deadly.'
²³

Lieutenant-Colonel Malone, who had his doubts from the outset – ‘I do feel the preparation as regards our Brigade anyway is not thorough'
²⁴
– continues to coax his men forward.

On the cliff by Walker's Ridge, just near the Nek, sit two sets of brothers – Hugo and Ric Throssell – with their close friends, the Chipper brothers, Ross and Lindsay. All four had been at Prince Alfred College together, been farmers together, joined the 10th Light Horse together, and in just a few hours, they know, they will be jumping the bags together. Time for a slug or two of whisky, and a chat. Hugo, as is his way, has ‘stole a bottle from Major Todd', and as the four settle down for what Hugo records as ‘our 1st taste of whisky',
²⁵
they watch the shadow of the warships down at Anzac Cove firing their guns onto the Turks … while talking about school days, the cricket and football matches … common friends … and the charge at dawn.

The mood is tense, but … companionable. If they are to go over the top, there is no one they would rather be going with. Finally, though, it is time. Just maybe, they can get some shut-eye before the charge. Together, they stand up, shake hands and wish each other all the best. See you tomorrow morning. Hopefully. Brothers-in-arms, they take their leave.

At 1.45 am, as more and more reports stream in from Suvla and Anzac's northern sector, Liman von Sanders orders Colonel Fevzi of the Saros Group, who was warned some hours ago to ready his men, to force-march one of his regiments to Suvla Bay.
Çabuk!
Quickly!

If ever the British forces break through here, the results will be dire for the Turks.

In the Left Assault Column trying to get to Hill 971, Brigadier-General John Monash had known this would be a difficult exercise for his 4th Brigade, but not
this
difficult. In bright sunshine, with well-surveyed maps, it might – just might – be possible for healthy soldiers to traverse these endless gullies, the scrub, the hills, the cliffs, the slippery slopes upon which an acrobat would find it hard to stand. In the darkness, however, by the pale light of a partisan Turkish crescent moon that has now risen against them, with confused guides and officers, hopeless maps, and mostly sick soldiers carrying heavy packs and rifles, heading to a destination where, if they get there in time, their reward will probably be a fusillade of fire from on high, it is nigh on impossible. When the moon disappears behind the clouds, however, it gets even worse, and the men strike a pace slower than people shuffling towards a widow, outside a church, at a funeral.

As Monash will record in his diary, ‘It was a black gloomy night and one could not see 10 yards ahead.'
²⁶
They stumble, they stagger, they fall, they plummet, they curse and cry as at one point their native ‘guides' – ‘two Greek farmers who were supposed to know the country'
²⁷
– even steer them into what one says is a short cut. And though it is a shorter route, it is also a blind, narrow ravine, where Turkish snipers fire at them from on high. Strong fire, too, which suggests their covering force has not done a thorough sweep of the area before them.

Some push on, but for many there is no way out but to go back the way they came and look for another way around. Whichever way they go, however, it seems there are pockets of Turks firing down on them. As one of Monash's Battalion Commanders would later recall, the men were clambering over ‘rough broken stony ridges, densely covered with low prickly undergrowth, in which the Turks had taken cover and were obstinately disputing every yard of our advance'.
²⁸

Many of the 29th Indian Brigade too have lost their way. They are scattered in the deep gullies at the foot of Chunuk Bair and Hill Q, some far south of their intended route.

Those in the Right Assault Column are doing a little better, even as they continue to march like a rigid old concertina. They
must
get to the top of Chunuk Bair in time to attack the Turks on Baby 700 from behind, before the Light Horse hurl themselves at the Turks at dawn. All they can do is push on, hoping against hope that they can do it.

By 4 am, the most forward of the New Zealand infantry, the Otago men, emerge onto Rhododendron Ridge, which they know leads up to Chunuk Bair. Yes, those at the front are only half a mile away from the summit, which lies some 600 feet higher, but they needed to have been there an hour ago. Malone and his men, further back in the column, continue their own trudge upwards, hoping to reach the head of the gully before daybreak. Malone is beyond frustrated that they have not been able to move faster. Hopefully, there is still time to call off the Nek attack.

For their part, General Birdwood and Lieutenant-Colonel Andrew Skeen – the key architect of the whole plan – are worried. All night, they have been in touch with General Godley in Number Two Outpost by field telephone, and it is now obvious that Monash and the Indians remain far away from their objectives and will be unable to play a part in the dawn battles to come.

The New Zealanders, meanwhile, have ‘by a heroic effort seized the lower part of Rhododendron'
²⁹
but are still well away from taking Chunuk Bair. This means that the key precondition for launching the attacks due at the Nek, Quinn's and Pope's has not been fulfilled, but Birdwood and Skeen – with General Godley at Divisional HQ pushing hard to
attack
, whatever the circumstances – decide to go ahead anyway. This despite the previous estimation of Birdwood and Skeen that ‘an unaided attack' across the Nek would be ‘almost hopeless'.
³⁰

It is now clear to those Anzacs who have survived the night at Lone Pine that the Turkish reinforcements are arriving en masse, as they can
see
the brutes streaming forward in Legge Valley, just as they will soon be apparently arriving in the trenches on Baby 700.

With no word that the attack on the Nek is to be called off, the senior officers of the 3rd Brigade review the plans once more. It is much like the attack made the day before at Lone Pine. From precisely 4 am, a thick naval bombardment will smash their machine-guns and force Johnny Turk to keep his head down. The instant the bombardment stops, at precisely 4.30 am, four successive waves of the Australian Light Horse – with 150 men in each wave – will charge from their own trenches to the defending Turks', just 30 yards away across no-man's-land. The Australians will have no bullets in the chambers, only bayonets and bombs, as the key is not to waste time firing but to get across the ground and
into 'em
.

There will be a gap of two minutes between each wave, and whenever Australian soldiers make it into the Turkish trenches, they are to put up marker flags to indicate which segments have been taken and how far the advance has got.

A simultaneous attack by the New Zealanders towards the rear of Baby 700, while other Australian forces attack from Pope's Hill, will ensure the fracturing of the focus of the Turkish defences – or it is
supposed
to, but it seems the New Zealanders are going to miss the party. True, there are other difficulties with the plan, and, as a matter of fact, Charles Bean would later say that sending men charging along that 40-yard-wide ridge, the Nek, and its sloping sides at trenches situated above them, ‘was like attacking an inverted frying pan from its handle'.
³¹

Unfortunately for the Light Horse, there is yet another obstacle. The Ottoman soldiers manning the Nek are the well-trained and disciplined men of Colonel Mustafa Kemal's 19th Division. Many of these men have been on the Peninsula since the beginning and, though battle weary, have formidable knowledge of the terrain – and a great eagerness to expel the invaders from their shores.