Part 8

The first thing to be done was to block up the communication trenches against the Turkish counter attack. Every man carried a couple of sandbags, and with these, breastworks and walls were built. Their work was done in a narrow dark sweltering tunnel, heaped with corpses and wounded and crowded with prisoners who might at any moment have risen. Already the Turks had begun their counter attacks. At every other moment a little rush of Turks came up the communication trenches, flung their bombs in the workers' faces, and were bayoneted as they threw. The trenches curved and zigzagged in the earth; the men in one section could neither see nor hear what the men in the nearest sections were doing. What went on under the ground there in the making good of those trenches will never be known. From half-past five till midnight every section of the line was searched by bombs and bullets, by stink pots, and sticks of dynamite, by gas-bombs and a falling tumult of shell and shrapnel, which only ceased to let some rush of Turks attack, with knives, grenades and bayonets, hand to hand and body to body in a blackness like the darkness of a mine. At midnight the wounded were lying all over the trenches, the enemy dead were so thick that our men had to walk on them, and bombs were falling in such numbers that every foot in those galleries was stuck with human flesh. No man slept that night. At half-past seven next morning (the 7th) a small quantity of bread and tea was rushed across the plateau to the fighters, who had more than earned their breakfast. Turk shell had by this time blown up some of the head-cover and some of the new communication trenches were still only a few feet deep. A Colonel passing along one of them told an officer that his section of the trench was too shallow. Half-an-hour later, in passing back, he found the officer and three men blown to pieces by a shell; in a few minutes more he was himself killed. At noon the bombing became so severe that some sections of the line were held only by one or two wounded men. At one o'clock the enemy attacked furiously with bomb and bayonet, in great force. They came on in a mass, in wave after wave, shoulder to shoulder, heads down, shouting the name of God. They rushed across the plateau, jumped into the trenches and were mixed up with our men in a hand-to-hand fight, which lasted for five hours. Not many of them could join in the fight at one time, and not many of them went back to the Turk lines; but they killed many of our men, and when their last assault failed our prize was very weakly held. At half-past seven the survivors received a cheering (and truthful) message from the Brigadier "that no fighters can surpass Australians," and almost with the message came another Turk assault begun by bomb and shell and rifle fire, and followed by savage rushes with the bayonet, one of which got in, and did much slaughter. No man slept that night; the fight hardly slackened all through the night; at dawn the dead were lying three deep in every part of the line. Bombs fell every minute in some section of the line, and where the wide Turk trenches had been blasted open they were very destructive. The men were "extremely tired but determined to hold on." They did hold on.

They held on for the next five days and nights, till Lone Pine was ours past question. For those five days and nights the fight for Lone Pine was one long personal scrimmage in the midst of explosion. For those five days and nights the Australians lived and ate and slept in that gallery of the mine of death, in a half darkness lit by great glares, in filth, heat and corpses, among rotting and dying and mutilated men, with death blasting at the doors only a few feet away, and intense and bloody fighting, hand to hand, with bombs, bayonets and knives, for hours together by night and day. When the Turks gave up the struggle the dead were five to the yard in that line or works; they were heaped in a kind of double wall all along the sides of the trench: most of them were bodies of Turks, but among them were one quarter of the total force which ran out from The Pimple on the evening of the 6th.

Like the fight for the vineyard near Krithia, this fight for Lone Pine kept large numbers of Turks from the vital part of the battlefield.

When the sun set upon this battle at Lone Pine on that first evening of the 6th of August, many thousands of brave men fell in for the main battle, which was to strew their glorious bodies in the chasms of the Sari Bair, where none but the crows would ever find them. They fell in at the appointed places in four columns, two to guard the flanks, two to attack. One attacking column, guarded and helped by the column on its right, was to move up the Chailak and Sazli Beit Deres, to the storm of Chunuk Bair, the other attacking column, guarded and helped by the column on its left, was to move up the Aghyl Dere to the storm of Sari's peak of Koja Chemen Tepe. The outermost, left, guarding column (though it did not know it) was to link up with the force soon to land at Suvla.

They were going upon a night attack in a country known to be a wilderness with neither water nor way in it. They had neither light nor guide, nor any exact knowledge of where the darkness would burst into a blaze from the Turk fire. Many armies have gone out into the darkness of a night adventure, but what army has gone out like this, from the hiding places on a beach to the heart of unknown hills, to wander up crags under fire, to storm a fortress in the dawn? Even in Manchuria, there were roads and the traces and the comforts of man. In this savagery, there was nothing, but the certainty of desolation, where the wounded would lie until they died and the dead be never buried.

Until this campaign, the storm of Badajos was the most desperate duty ever given to British soldiers. The men in the forlorn hope of that storm marched to their position to the sound of fifes "which filled the heart with a melting sweetness" and tuned that rough company to a kind of sacred devotion. No music played away the brave men from Anzac. They answered to their names in the dark, and moved off to take position for what they had to do. Men of many races were banded together there. There were Australians, English, Indians, Maoris and New Zealanders, made one by devotion to a cause, and all willing to die that so their comrades might see the dawn make a steel streak of the Hellespont from the peaked hill now black against the stars. Soon they had turned their back on friendly little Anzac and the lights in the gullies and were stepping out with the sea upon their left and the hills of their destiny upon their right, and the shells, starlights and battle of Lone Pine far away behind them. Before 9 A.M. the Right Covering Column (of New Zealanders) was in position ready to open up the Sazli Beit and Chailak Deres, to their brothers who were to storm Chunuk. Half an hour later, cunningly backed by the guns of the destroyer _Colne_, they rushed the Turk position, routed the garrison and its supports, and took the fort known as Old No. 3 Post. It was an immensely strong position, protected by barbed wire, shielded by shell-proof head cover, and mined in front "with 28 mines electrically connected to a first-rate firing apparatus within." Sed nisi Dominus.

This success opened up the Sazli Dere for nearly half of its length.

Inland from Old No. 3 Post, and some 700 yards from it is a crag or precipice which looks like a round table, with a top projecting beyond its legs. This crag, known to our men as Table Top, is a hill which few would climb for pleasure. Nearly all the last 100 feet of the peak is precipice, such as no mountaineer would willingly climb without clear daylight and every possible precaution. It is a sort of skull of rock fallen down upon its body of rock, and the great rocky ribs heave out with gullies between them. The table-top, or plateau-summit, was strongly entrenched and held by the Turks, whose communication trenches ran down the back of the hill to Rhododendron Spur.

While their comrades were rushing Old No. 3 Post, a party of New Zealanders marched to storm this natural fortress. The muscular part of the feat may be likened to the climbing of the Welsh Glyddyrs, the Irish Lurig, or the craggier parts of the American Palisades, in a moonless midnight, under a load of not less than thirty pounds. But the muscular effort was made much greater by the roughness of the unknown approaches, which led over glidders of loose stones into the densest of short, thick, intensely thorny scrub. The New Zealanders advanced under fire through this scrub, went up the rocks in a spirit which no crag could daunt, reached the Table-top, rushed the Turk trenches, killed some Turks of the garrison and captured the rest with all their stores.

This success opened up the remainder of the Sazli Beit Dere.

While these attacks were progressing, the remainder of the Right Covering Column marched north to the Chailak Dere. A large body crossed this Dere and marched on, but the rest turned up the Dere and soon came to a barbed wire entanglement which blocked the ravine. They had met the Turks' barbed wire before, on Anzac Day, and had won through it, but this wire in the Dere was new to their experience; it was meant rather as a permanent work than as an obstruction. It was secured to great balks or blinders of pine, six or eight feet high, which stood in a rank twenty or thirty deep right across the ravine. The wire which crossed and criss-crossed between these balks was as thick as a man's thumb and profusely barbed. Beyond it lay a flanking trench, held by a strong outpost of Turks, who at once opened fire. This, though not unexpected, was a difficult barrier to come upon in the darkness of a summer night, and here, as before, at the landing of the Worcester Regiment at W beach, men went forward quietly, without weapons, to cut the wire for the others. They were shot down, but others took their places, though the Turks, thirty steps away on the other side of the gulley, had only to hold their rifles steady and pull their triggers to destroy them. This holding up in the darkness by an unseen hidden enemy and an obstacle which needed high explosive shell in quantity caused heavy loss and great delay. For a time there was no getting through; but then with the most desperate courage and devotion, a party of engineers cleared the obstacle, the Turks were routed, and a path made for the attackers.

This success opened up the mouth of the Chailak Dere.

Meanwhile those who had marched across this Dere and gone on towards Suvla, swung round to the right to clear the Turks from Bauchop's Hill, which overlooks the Chailak Dere from the north. Bauchop's Hill (a rough country even for Gallipoli) is cleft by not less than twenty great gullies, most of them forked, precipitous, overgrown and heaped with rocks. The New Zealanders scrambled up it from the north, got into a maze of trenches, not strongly held, beat the Turks out of them, wandered south across the neck or ridge of the hill, discovering Turk trenches by their fire, and at last secured the whole hill.

This success, besides securing the Chailak Dere from any assault from the north, secured the south flank of the Aghyl Dere beyond it.

Meanwhile the Left Covering Column (mainly Welshmen) which for some time had halted at Old No. 3 Post, waiting for the sound of battle to tell them that the Turks on Bauchop's Hill were engaged, marched boldly on the Aghyl Dere, crossed it in a rush, taking every Turk trench in the way, then stormed the Turk outpost on Damakjelik Bair, going on from trench to trench in the dark guided by the flashes of the rifles, till the whole hill was theirs. This success opened up the Aghyl Dere to the attacking column.

As the troops drew their breath in the still night on the little hill which they had won, they heard about three miles away a noise of battle on the seacoast to their left. This noise was not the nightly "hate" of the monitors and destroyers but an irregular and growing rifle fire. This, though they did not know it, was the beginning of the landing of the new Divisions, with their 30,000 men, at Suvla Bay.

For the moment, Suvla was not the important point in the battle. The three Deres were the important points, for up the three Deres, now cleared of Turks, our Attacking Columns were advancing to the assault.

By this time however, the Turks were roused throughout their line. All the Anzac position from Tasmania Post to Table Top was a blaze of battle to contain them before our trenches, but they knew now that their right was threatened and their reserves were hurrying out to meet us before we had gained the crests. Our Right Attacking Column (of English and New Zealand troops) went up the Sazli Beit and Chailak Deres, deployed beyond Table Top and stormed Rhododendron Spur, fighting for their lives every inch of the way. The Left Column (mainly Indians and Australians) pressed up the Aghyl, into the stony clefts of its upper forks, and so, by rock, jungle, heartbreaking cliff and fissure to the attack of Hill Q, and the lower slopes of Sari. They, too, were fighting for their lives. Their advance was across a scrub peopled now by little clumps of marksmen firing from hiding. When they deployed out of the Deres, to take up their line of battle, they linked up with the Right Assaulting Column, and formed with them a front of about a mile, stretching from the old Anzac position to within a mile of the crests which were the prize. By this time the night was over, day was breaking, the Turks were in force, and our attacking columns much exhausted, but there was still breath for a last effort. Now, with the breath, came a quick encouragement, for looking down from their hillsides they could see Suvla Bay full of ships, the moving marks of boats, dotted specks of men on the sandhills, and more ships on the sea marching like chariots to the cannon. In a flash, as happens when many minds are tense together, they realised the truth. A new landing was being made. All along the coast by the Bay the crackle and the flash of firing was moving from the sea, to shew them that the landing was made good, and that the Turks were falling back. Hardening their hearts at this sight of help coming from the sea the Australians and Sikhs with the last of their strength went at Koja Chemen Tepe, and the New Zealanders upon their right rose to the storm of Chunuk.

It was not to be. The guns behind them backed them. They did what mortal men could do, but they were worn out by the night's advance, they could not carry the two summits. They tried a second time to carry Chunuk; but they were too weary and the Turks in too great strength; they could not get to the top. But they held to what they had won; they entrenched themselves on the new line, and there they stayed, making ready for the next attack.

Two or three have said to me: "They ought not to have been exhausted; none of them had marched five miles." It is difficult to answer such critics patiently, doubly difficult to persuade them, without showing them the five miles. There comes into my mind, as I write, the image of some hills in the west of Ireland, a graceful and austere range, not difficult to climb, seemingly, and not unlike these Gallipoli hills, in their look of lying down at rest. The way to those hills is over some miles of scattered limestone blocks, with gaps between them full of scrub, gorse, heather, dwarf-ash and little hill-thorn, and the traveller proceeds, as the Devil went through Athlone, "in standing lepps." This journey to the hills is the likest journey (known to me) to that of the assaulting columns. Like the Devil in Athlone the assaulting columns had often to advance "in standing lepps," but to them the standing lepp came as a solace, a rare, strange and blessed respite, from forcing through scrub by main strength, or scaling a crag of rotten sandstone, in pitch darkness, in the presence of an enemy. For an armed force to advance a mile an hour by day over such a country is not only good going, but a great achievement; to advance four miles in a night over such a country, fighting literally all the way, often hand to hand, and to feel the enemy's resistance stiffening and his reserves arriving, as the strength fails and the ascent steepens, and yet to make an effort at the end, is a thing unknown in the history of war. And this first fourteen hours of exhausting physical labour was but the beginning. The troops, as they very well knew, were to have two or three days more of the same toil before the battle could be ended, one way or the other. So after struggling for fourteen hours with every muscle in their bodies, over crags and down gullies in the never-ceasing peril of death, they halted in the blaze of noon and drew their breath. In the evening, as they hoped, the men from Suvla would join hands and go on to victory with them; they had fought the first stage of the battle, the next stage was to be decisive.

The heat of this noon of August 7th on those sandy hills was a scarcely bearable torment.

Meanwhile, at Suvla, the left of the battle, the 11th Division, had landed in the pitch-darkness, by wading ashore, in five feet of water, under rifle fire, on to beaches prepared with land mines. The first boat-loads lost many men from the mines and from the fire of snipers, who came right down to the beach in the darkness and fired from the midst of our men. These snipers were soon bayoneted, our men formed for the assault in the dark and stormed the Turk outpost on Lala Baba there and then. While Lala Baba was being cleared other battalions moved north to clear the Turk from the neighbourhood of the beach on that side. The ground over which they had to move is a sand-dune-land, covered with gorse and other scrub, most difficult to advance across in a wide extension. About half a mile from the beach the ground rises in a roll of whale-back, known on the battle plans as Hill 10. This hill is about three hundred yards long and thirty feet high. At this whale-back (which was entrenched) the Turks rallied on their supports; they had, perhaps, a couple of thousand men and (some say) a gun or two, and the dawn broke before they could be rushed. Their first shells upon our men set fire to the gorse, so that our advance against them was through a blazing common in which many men who fell wounded were burnt to death or suffocated. The Turks, seeing the difficulties of the men in the fire, charged with the bayonet, but were themselves charged and driven back in great disorder; the fire spread to their hill and burned them out of it. Our men then began to drive the Turks away from the high ridges to the north of Suvla. The 10th Division began to land while this fight was still in progress.

This early fighting had won for us a landing-place at Suvla and had cleared the ground to the north of the bay for the deployment for the next attack. This was to be a swinging round of two Brigades to the storm of the hills directly to the east of the Salt Lake. These hills are the island-like double-peaked Chocolate Hill (close to the lake) and the much higher and more important hills of Scimitar Hill (or Hill 70) and Ismail Oglu Tepe (Hill 100) behind it. The Brigade chosen for this attack were the 31st (consisting of Irish Regiments) belonging to the 10th Division, and the 32nd (consisting of Yorkshire and North of England Regiments) belonging to the 11th Division. The 32nd had been hotly engaged since the very early morning, the 31st were only just on shore. The storm was to be pushed from the north, and would, if successful, clear the way for the final thrust, the storm of Koja-Chemen Tepe from the northwest.

This thrust from Suvla against Koja Chemen was designed to complete and make decisive the thrust already begun by the Right and Left Attacking Columns. The attack on Chocolate Hill, Scimitar Hill and Ismail Oglu was to make that thrust possible by destroying forever the power of the Turk to parry it. The Turk could only parry it by firing from those hills on the men making it. It was therefore necessary to seize those hills before the Turk could stop us. If the Turks seized those hills before us, or stopped us from seizing them, our troops could not march from Suvla to take part in the storm of Koja Chemen. If we seized them before the Turks, then the Turks could not stop us from crossing the valley to that storm. The first problem at Suvla therefore was not so much to win a battle as to win a race with the Turks for the possession of those hills; the winning of the battle could be arranged later. Our failure to win that race brought with it our loss of the battle. The next chapter in the story of the battle is simply a description of the losing of a race by loss of time.

Now the giving of praise or blame is always easy, but the understanding of anything is difficult. The understanding of anything so vast, so confused, so full of contradiction, so dependent on little things (themselves changing from minute to minute, the coward of a moment ago blazing out into a hero at the next turn) as a modern battle is more than difficult. But some attempt must be made to understand how it came about that time was lost at Suvla, between the landing, at midnight on the 6th-7th August, and the arrival of the Turks upon the hills, at midnight on the 8th-9th.

In the first place it should be said that the beaches of Suvla are not the beaches of seaside resorts, all pleasant smooth sand and shingle. They are called beaches because they cannot well be called cliffs. They slope into the sea with some abruptness, in pentes of rock and tumbles of sand-dune difficult to land upon from boats. From them, one climbs onto sand-dune, into a sand-dune land, which is like nothing so much as a sea-marsh from which the water has receded. Walking on this soft sand is difficult, it is like walking in feathers; working, hauling and carrying upon it is very difficult. Upon this coast and country, roadless, wharfless, beachless and unimproved, nearly 30,000 men landed in the first ten hours of August 7th. At 10 A.M., on that day, when the sun was in his stride, the difficulty of those beaches began to tell on those upon them. There had been sharp fighting on and near the beaches, and shells were still falling here and there in all the ground which we had won. On and near the beaches there was a congestion of a very hindering kind. With men coming ashore, shells bursting among them, mules landing, biting, kicking, shying and stampeding, guns limbering up and trying to get out into position, more men coming ashore or seeking for the rest of their battalion in a crowd where all battalions looked alike, shouts, orders and counter-orders, ammunition boxes being passed along, water carts and transport being started for the firing line, wounded coming down or being helped down, or being loaded into lighters, doctors trying to clear the way for field dressing stations, with every now and then a shell from Ismail sending the sand in clouds over corpses, wounded men and fatigue parties, and a blinding August sun over all to exhaust and to madden, it was not possible to avoid congestion. This congestion was the first, but not the most fatal cause of the loss of time.