Gallipoli (82 page)

An explosion and some screams from the other side of the sandbag wall give fair indication that it has been on the mark, but still it does not stop more bombs from falling.

Quick!

Almost as if it is a sport, the men of the 10th Light Horse scoop the bombs up and endeavour to hurl them back before they explode. Sometimes they are quick enough to catch them midair and, returning service, have the satisfaction of seeing the flash of light and hearing the
whump
and screams from the other side. Sometimes the fuse is too short and those men who have not had time to throw themselves to the ground and trust to luck are killed or wounded.

‘Well, it was a great game,' one of the soldiers would later recount, ‘a kind of tennis over the traverse and sandbags but the prize every time was men's lives. But the boys played it as calmly as if we'd been playing with rubber balls over a net in a rose garden, with the girls looking on, and afternoon tea at the finish.'
²⁹

On both sides of the wall, all is madness and mayhem,
bloody
madness and mayhem. The Australians also throw their own bombs, which they have in plentiful supply, though they are ‘careful to do [it] with a much shorter fuse',
³⁰
only throwing after lighting and counting to three, so they cannot be sent back marked
return to sender
.

In the frenzy of the battle, Throssell is concerned that the whole trench is defended, not just his end, and shouts out to Sergeant Macmillan that he needs to speak to him.

Macmillan, known as Big Mac because, as Throssell says, ‘The very sight of him puts courage into us,'
³¹
makes his way to his Commanding Officer, climbing over the dead and wounded to get there. As he approaches, Throssell shouts, ‘Are they all right down your way?'
³²

Sergeant Macmillan affirms it, Throssell gives him some instructions – all without pausing in his own battles – and Big Mac makes his way back.

The key for Fry and Throssell is to keep the floor of the trench clear so that those bombs not caught can be quickly picked up. So if you're wounded, men, you can leave your equipment, rifles, ammunition, water bottles and tucker on top of the parapet for us on your way out.

They must also throw dead bodies out over the trenches, and that includes, as it turns out, some of the Australians of the 9th Battalion who had disappeared the night before. Most active is Captain Fry, who seems to be everywhere at once getting the men organised. He's so heedless of his own safety that his men practically have to force him to come down into shelter.
³³

For his part, Throssell keeps gathering and throwing, gathering and throwing, but he soon realises that more bombs are coming than he can cope with. He calls for another bomb thrower to replace the fallen.

And who is this?

Why, it is young Private Frank McMahon from Western Australia, only 19 years old, a nice kid, ‘a fine type of young Australian'
³⁴
but very wet behind the ears.

‘What are you doing here, Mac?' Throssell asks.

‘I heard you yelling for the bonny boys to come on,' McMahon replies, ‘and I wanted to be in the show.'

‘Well, have you ever thrown bombs?' Throssell asks.

‘No,' he says, stepping up to the mark just when he is needed most, ‘but I'll bloody soon learn.'
³⁵

As good as his word, young McMahon is soon hurling back bombs with the best of them, to the point that once he notices his jacket is getting in the way, so he quickly peels it off and gets on with the job. He joins the other men, including Sid Ferrier, Tommy Renton and Henry Macnee.

Setting to with a will, the men work feverishly in the confined space – just five yards long, four foot six inches deep, four feet wide, with a foot of earth as a parapet. It does not stop even when McNee is wounded twice in the head and in the hand, for he stays on. When Renton loses a leg, he reluctantly has to withdraw and be carried back, but still the others keep going in the now sticky trench. The leg is simply heaved over the side without ceremony. For every man who falls, another quickly comes forward. For all the gravity of the situation, still there is extraordinary levity on the Australian side – ‘It was the best bit of sport I ever had in my life,' one soldier would recall
³⁶
– with those surviving having many narrow escapes that cause high hilarity.

As the battle goes on, however, it becomes progressively more difficult to keep the trench floor clear of debris so they can move quickly, and so too do the Turks get better – or at least the smart ones have survived – at delaying the throw of their bombs until the fuse is near the end. And they're also trying a different kind of bomb.

The consequences are tragically inevitable.

Down, lads!

Out of the night comes a light that doesn't wobble. This one is not the size of a cricket ball but more like a big biscuit tin. It is so heavy that it doesn't go far, barely clearing the sandbags, but it explodes instantly.

It takes out the top half of the wall, and the Australians quickly retreat a little and build another one a few yards back. The expected counter-attack is not long in coming, culminating in another huge biscuit-tin bomb exploding, demolishing the wall.

Amid the carnage, Throssell picks himself up, dusts himself off and sees Big Mac slumped against the bottom bags with a bad wound in his leg, while Captain Phil Fry is lying on his back.
³⁷

‘All right, Phil?' Throssell shouts.

When Phil doesn't answer, Throssell bends down and puts his hand under his friend's head to raise it a little, only to realise that the back of that head is not really there anymore.

With Phil dead, Lieutenant Hugo Throssell is left in charge, and he immediately orders two of his men – because just one could never do it – to drag Big Mac down the narrow sap and into the trenches proper till they can get him all the way to the main clearing station at the beach. (The only way they can move Mac is for the wounded soldier to propel himself with his one good leg. ‘He talked calmly and encouraged bearers. Other men shot in hands, legs, head and injured by bombs remained and fought on.')
³⁸

Meanwhile, Throssell, who seems to have a charmed life as bombs burst all around without bringing him down, sends back orders for timber and iron to be sent forward so they can build some rough cover against the shrapnel. In short order, between gathering and throwing bombs, Throssell and his men are taking it in turns with the pick and shovel to get one piece of timber and latticework iron – the only things that have come – in place. To make up for what they lack, they stretch their great-coats over the lattice and hope that might do the trick.

The most amazing thing?

In the frenzy of it all, and despite the lack of any contact with the enemy that does not have a fuse attached to it, the two enemies seem to come to a tacit agreement whereby every now and then a mutual ‘smoko' of five to ten minutes is unofficially declared. In that time, the Turks might throw only a bomb or two, and the Australians hurl it back without adding one of their own.

Now, if the darkest hour is just before the dawn, then surely dawn cannot be far away. So heavy are the Turkish attacks that twice Throssell and his men have to fall back by five yards at a time, getting the Australians in the next section to dismantle half the sandbag wall that separates them so they can quickly climb over before rebuilding it.

Both times, the inevitable cries of ‘
Allah! Allah! Allah!
' rise to a climax before the Turks attack again, coming from the scrub to the north-east and shooting and throwing a mass of bombs from afar.

A sudden stab of red-hot pain in the back of Throssell's neck tells him he has been hit. And yes, there is blood, but not bloody enough to bloody worry about. Clearly, just a flesh wound. Same with the piece of shrapnel that shortly afterwards goes through his shoulder, just as his torso becomes wet with blood. Still he keeps going, getting his men ready for what he knows is to come.

There, men, you can see the forest of bayonets rising from yonder Turkish trench. That is where they will charge from. We must hold our fire until I give the word. And, sure enough, some Turks emerge from their trench – and then more do. There are two waves of them racing up the slope from the north! To Throssell's eyes, they look fresh and unblooded, as if they have just arrived as reinforcements.

Right by Throssell in the trenches, Frank McMahon, the 19-year-old West Australian who has been such a warrior since coming forward, sights a German officer at a good distance behind a mass of Turks. The officer is throwing clods of earth at his men, trying to urge them forward. It is too good an opportunity to miss.

McMahon takes careful aim, as does Ferrier, and they fire simultaneously. The German officer drops on the instant, and of course both men claim the kill.

‘It's been my ambition ever since I enlisted to get a German Officer,' McMahon announces, ‘and now I am satisfied.'
³⁹

So enthused is he that he half-stands up to get another shot at any officer he can see … when his head suddenly snaps back and half-explodes. As he falls back, a Turkish bomb lands right on his torso, blowing him to pieces.

There is no time to grieve. With another collective cry of ‘
Allah! Allah! Allah!
', the Turks are clearly preparing for a mass rush forward.

But Throssell has his own ideas. In his view, it is important that the Turks know that the
Australians
are now here, the ones he fancies the Turks fear most.

‘Shout and yell, boys,' he calls to his men, ‘and coo-ee like the devil.'
⁴⁰
And so they do.

On Throssell's further orders, the surviving Australians of the 10th Light Horse wait until the Turks are just ten yards away before they stand, some on the parapet, and shout and cheer enough to make it sound like they are 300 strong in the dimness of it all.

As the Turks cry ‘
Allah! Allah! Allah!
', they are met with equally passionate cries of ‘Coo-ee! Coo-ee! COO-EEEEEEEE!'.

The competing cries fill the night.

‘
Allah!
'

‘
Coo-ee!
'

‘
ALLAH!
'

‘
COO-EEEEEEE!
'

And so it goes.

‘We coo-eed until you'd have thought we were a mob of drunken bushmen riding home from town on a Saturday night,' one of the soldiers would recall.

And it works, too! Suddenly the Turkish charge falters about ten yards away from the Australians, and some even ‘bolted back amongst the bushes'.
⁴¹

Too late for the rest. The Australians now open fire at point-blank range until the carnage is catastrophic.

‘We just blazed away until our rifles got red hot and the bolts jammed,' Throssell would recount, ‘then we picked up the rifles left by the wounded and those killed. Twenty yards was about our longest range, and … I think I must have fired a couple of hundred, and when we were wondering how we could stand against such numbers, the Turks turned and fled.'
⁴²

Coo-EEE!

Ah, but there are plenty more where they came from, and within a few minutes another wave of Turks is coming at them, for much the same result, with the Australians again standing and firing in the last seconds when every bullet is guaranteed to take out a Turk – if not two. Again the charge is beaten back.

For the next mass attack, the Turks come at them from the rear and flank as well, and all the Australians can do this time is stand back to back in a rough circle and keep firing. For a third time, the attack is beaten off,
in extremis
, at which point one soldier is heard to mutter something about the advisability of ‘retiring'.

The cry immediately goes up: ‘Who said retire?'
⁴³

Which one of you BASTARDS was it?

No one will admit to it, which is likely a good thing under the circumstances, as there is genuine outrage at the very suggestion.

The loud row is perhaps even fortunate, as it may confuse the Turks as to just how many men they have left to face. It holds them up just long enough that, likely in the nick, a machine-gun arrives from the nearest New Zealand trench, borne by five of their brave soldiers and two Dinkums from the 18th Battalion. There is just enough time for them to set it up as the daylight starts to broaden.

Down at the beach at Anzac Cove, Sergeant Macmillan arrives on his stretcher in the grey dawn, whereupon General Birdwood catches sight of him and orders the stretcher-bearers to stop.

‘How are they going on up there?' he asks.

‘It's all right, sir,' Macmillan answers. ‘Throssell's still on top.'
⁴⁴

Birdwood is seen to instantly straighten with the news, and even give a half-smile.

Up on Hill 60, when the Turks charge again, there is no need to wait until they are ten yards off. Instantly, the Australians bring their rifles and bomb-throwing arms to bear – between the Turks and the Australians, around 3500 bombs have been thrown on the night – and with the chattering New Zealand machine-gun doing its worst, the attack is beaten off once more.

‘The trench,' Throssell would record, ‘was ours.'

Still, they must keep busy. Throssell's immediate concern is to get material to fix more shrapnel shelters. He has just returned from doing exactly that, bearing wood and iron, when young Ferrier appears, normal except for the bloody stump from which his right arm had once hung. A bomb blew up just as he was about to throw it.