BRIGADIER-GENERAL MONASH'S HEADQUARTERSBRIGADIER-GENERAL MONASH'S HEADQUARTERS, REST GULLY.
BRIGADIER-GENERAL MONASH'S HEADQUARTERS, REST GULLY.
BRIGADIER-GENERAL MONASH'S HEADQUARTERS, REST GULLY.
SPHINX ROCK AND THE ENTRANCE TO REST GULLYSPHINX ROCK AND THE ENTRANCE TO REST GULLY.To face p. 172.
SPHINX ROCK AND THE ENTRANCE TO REST GULLY.To face p. 172.
SPHINX ROCK AND THE ENTRANCE TO REST GULLY.
To face p. 172.
Hastily you turn into a sap, and all that wonderful broad expanse of beach and hills is lost. For by day the Ocean Beach is impracticable, and at night, only by taking a risk, which the Indian muleteers do, can the nearest portion of it be used, thus relieving the pressure of traffic in the great communication-way. What a task to dig this sap miles out into the enemy's territory, the only link with the strong, but isolated, posts (beyond Fishermen's Huts) held in turn by parties of New Zealanders, Maoris, and Light Horsemen, under Lieut.-Colonel Bauchop! It is deep, broad—7 feet broad—hot, dusty, but safe. You may leave it just as you reach the Ari Burnu Point, and, passing through a gap in the hills and down a gully, regain the Cove. Just round the Point you may look in at the Ordnance Stores, indicated by a dirty blue-and-white flag, ragged and torn with shot and shell. That flag was brought ashore by Colonel Austin, and was the only army flag ever flown at Anzac.
Surely there is a smithy? A clanging sound of blows on an anvil makes cheerful noise after the frenzied burst of shells. The workshops are protected with huge thicknesses of stores; guns of all descriptions are being made and remade here. Farther along are the medical stores, and you find a spacious dugout, lined with lints and ointments, bandages, splints, stretchers, and disinfectants.Hospital supplies were never short at Anzac. Gurkha, Maori, Englishman, Australian, New Zealander passes you on the beach. You may meet them all together, talking. You may see them only in their respective groups with their own kin. It all reminds you of an anthill. There are men—not hurrying, but going in all directions—stopping to talk every dozen paces, and then going on or turning back, apparently without motive, without reason. There are some that march alone and never halt. But the whole trend of traffic is from the hills and to the hills. Outward they go loaded, and return empty-handed for more.
There came a time, not infrequent, when placid twilights fell on Anzac, when even the intermittent crack of rifles or the occasional burst of a bomb passed almost unnoticed. The wicked "psing" of bullets passing overhead on their way to the water went unheeded. A solemn stillness filled the air. Yes, quiet as a mining camp on the seashore, far away from war's turmoil, the beach nearly always rested with the sinking of the sun behind the massed hills of Samothrace—the island refuge of ancient oracles; its departing rays lit the sky in golden shadows, that mingled with blue the orange and green tints in the sky. Deeper shades darkened the island of Imbros and cast into silhouette the warships, waiting and watching till the aeroplanes sailing overhead should transmit their observations, which meant targets, for the bombardment of new enemy positions. The warships lay, like inert monsters, on a shimmering sea. Sunsets on Gallipoli took away the sting of battle. The shore parties, their most arduous labours still to come, watched the twilight in a state of suspended animation. Five o'clock was the hour for the commencement of bathing. It usually was, too, the signal for a Turkish "hate" of ten minutes or more, to banish the bathers. Any who could be spared stripped off their remaining few clothes, clambered aboard barges, or dived from the end of the pier, and washed off the sweat of a sweltering day in the clear waters; for Anzac was for five months as warm a corner as any in the Ægean. Generals, orderlies, intelligence officers, men who had been toiling round the firing-line from dewy dawn, plunged in, spluttering an interchange of scraps of gossip of this position and that, and news from the outside world that seemed almostlost to those on this battlefield. You carefully placed your clothes, ready to dodge along the pier back to comparative safety, behind high stacks of stores, as the first shrieking shell came hurtling over from Olive Grove. "Old Beachy Bill snarling again," was the only comment, and once the little "hate" had ceased, back again for the last dive.
Then sometimes out of the stillness would sound a gong—a beaten shell-case—bidding the officers to an evening meal; or the high-pitched voice of Captain Chaytor, the naval officer in command on the beach—as brave a fellow as ever stepped. The Navy took no more notice of shells than they did of Army orders—they were under "the Admiral." Still the co-operation between the two services was never marred by serious obstructions.
"Last boat for Imbros," announced the naval officer. He might have said "Last boat for the shore." Gripping handbags or kitbags, there was usually a party waiting, and they dodged out now from behind shelters or from dugouts. They were off to one or other of the bases on duty, and the trawler or destroyer was waiting offshore for the pinnace to come alongside.
"Picket boat ahoy! Where are you from?" Again the naval officer is speaking.
The voice of a midshipman, suitably pitched and full-throated, replies, "London, sir."
"I did not ask where you were born. Where are you from?"
"London, sir."
Then the naval officer remembers his evening aboard the battleshipLondon, and orders the panting craft alongside. The shells begin to fall. He gives sharp orders through his megaphone, and pinnaces begin backing out from the shore, scattering in all directions till they are half a mile from the beach, and have become almost impossible targets for any gunners. The Turks desist. On the beach bathing is promptly resumed.
General Birdwood rarely ever missed his evening dip. He bathed amongst his men, shedding off rank with his uniform, which led more than once to amusing incidents. One day the canvas pipe of the water-barge fell from the pier into the sea, and an irate man on the barge, seeing some one near it, cursed him, and asked him if he would"—— well lend a fellow a —— hand to get the ---- thing up." General Birdwood—for it was he—delights to relate the story himself, and how he hastily commenced to pull the pipe into place, when a sergeant dashed up and offered to relieve him, in the midst of abusive directions from the bargee, who, unconscious of the signals from the sergeant and of the vacant staring of all around, urged on his General to more strenuous and more successful efforts. Did it endear the General less to the men? Rather not. A quiet, very firm, but very friendly man was this leader of the Australians, who understood their character admirably.
On another occasion, when returning to his dugout over the top of the hill where rested the bomb factory, he accidentally stood on the roof of a dugout, and stones and earth began to fall on the occupant beneath. "Quick, quick!" said General Birdwood, knowing his men; "let me get away from this! I would rather face half a dozen Turks than that Australian when he comes out!"
There is a "beach" story, too—all stories originated on the beach—far too characteristic to go unrecorded, of an Australian "pinching" extra water from the water barge one very still evening, when he was caught by the naval officer on duty, who, in the pure English of the Navy, demanded, "What are you doing thar, sir?" and up to the dugouts on the hillside floated the prompt reply, "Getting some —— wart-ar, sir."
But night has fallen and the beach wakens to its greatest degree of activity. Long since have efforts to load and land stores, to take ammunition to the firing-line, been abandoned by day. The Turkish observation at Gaba Tepe stopped that. All the hillside glows with twinkling lights; the sound of laughter or stern commands floats down from the higher steppes of the hills on to the beach. There is a fine dust rising from the strand as the traffic increases and becomes an endless stream of men, of mules, of wagons. Somewhere offshore—you know that it must be about 400 yards—there come voices across the waters as the barges are loaded and the steam pinnaces tug them to the shore. They are lashed to the narrow piers, where the waves lap their sides. Parties quickly board them to unload the food that is the life of the army, and the munitions which are its strength. There are heavier goods, too, to bring ashore, sometimes needinglarge parties to handle. There are rifles and machine guns, there are picks and shovels, iron plates for loopholes. Wood, too, forms not the least strain placed on the transport.
So it goes on night after night, this constant stream of material to keep the army efficient, ready for any attack, ready, too, for any offensive. The trawlers have sneaked close into the Cove. The Turkish gunners, as if seeing this, begin to shell the beach. The work in the Cove stops abruptly. Men come scrambling from the pier and the boats to seek the shelter of dugouts and the great piles of stores. The shells fall harmlessly in the water (unless they destroy a barge of flour). When the bombardment ceases the routine is resumed. From Gaba Tepe the Turks could not see into the heart of Anzac, but their guns easily reached the distance, measured exactly. Opposite the pier-heads the men congregate. You find it difficult to push your way amongst the Indian mule-carts, to reach the canvas water-sheet and the tanks from which the men are getting supplies. The traffic divides. One section goes north to the No. 2 and No. 3 outposts, 2 miles away, out through the long sap: the dust from the shore is almost choking as you reach the sap, for the strings of mules pass and repass almost endlessly. The other branch of the traffic goes south (along the beach too) in front of the hospitals round Hell Spit, and then, striking one of many paths, is diverted along the right flank of the firing-line. No long line of sap to protect you here, and always a chance of a dropping bullet.
Only when the moon rises above the horizon and the pine ridges and then above the battle front is it time for the beach to rest. Higher and higher it mounts, until at midnight it is slanting towards the entrance to the Dardanelles. One by one the lights have gone out and cooks' fires have ceased to flicker. On either flank two long arms of light, that broaden as they reach the hill, start from the sides of the destroyers. They were staring into the Turkish hills and gullies. Behind them the gunners watch all night for movements in the enemy's ranks, and the guns boom at the slightest stir. After the alarms of the night and the bursts of rapid fire, the dawn brings another lull over Anzac, when the constant rattle of muskets in the firing-line a mile away over the ridgesand the swish and t-tzing of the little messengers of death as they pass out to sea, are like to be forgotten or accepted as part of the curious life of Anzac. But the work never quite ceases, and morning finds tired officers giving the last directions before they turn into their dugouts and escape the morning "hate" that the Turks with the first flush of dawn begin to throw over the beach and amongst the lingering, dawdling trawlers and transports that have drifted inshore. The shells follow the ships till they regain the circle of safety, some 2 miles from land. "Keep your distance, and we won't worry you," say the Turks.
It is exciting to watch the steamers dodging the shells just as the sun first casts a glitter on the blue Ægean. But they have accomplished all they need, and till the arrival of the daily trawlers from Imbros, Mudros, and Cape Helles, there is no need for worry. So the workers take a morning dip and turn in, while the men on the pinnaces are rocked to sleep as they lie wallowing offshore, and the pump begins its monotonous clanking.
On rugged cliffs and amongst bristling bush the heart of Anzac began to palpitate with power and life. With roads and terraces was the hillside cut in May and stripped of its bush. The throb of the heart was the pulse of the army, its storehouse and its life; but the shore of the Cove was dyed to the murmuring waters' edge with the blood of the men that made it.
Anzac was divided into two parts by Shrapnel Gully, which ran from Hell Spit right up to the very apex of the position, at the junction of the ridge that the army held and the main ridge of Sari Bair. Thousands of men lost their lives in this great broad valley during the early days of the fighting, when the Turkish artillery burst shrapnel over it. That was how it got its name. It was there that General Bridges met his death, in this Valley of the Shadow of Death. In its upper course it merged into Monash Gully, called after the Brigadier of the 4th Brigade, that had held its steep sides at Pope's Hill—which was a knuckle—at Quinn's Post, and between the two the sharp depression on the edge of the ridge—"The Bloody Angle." A daring sniper might always reach the very head of the gully and shoot down the long Valley. Only, in time, the superiority and alertness of our sharpshooters overcame that menace. Few Turkish snipers that played that game returned alive.
I went without a guide round Anzac, because the paths were well worn when I trod them, though there were many twisted roads, but all leading upwards to the trenches winding round the edge of the ridge. One could not miss one's way very well by keeping on the path that led southward from the heart of Anzac round to the first point—Hell Spit (beyond, a machine gun played and chased any who approached, unless the Turks happened to be off duty, as they sometimes were), and there you found the broad, open mouth of the gully. Usually a party of men were coming up from bathing. They were sun-burned right down to their waists (for they never wore shirts if they could possibly avoid it, and looked more like Turks than the Turks themselves), and you found them squatting in a sap, the mouth ofwhich gaped on to the beach, secure behind the angle of a hill. By their side were large Egyptian water-tins. The "coves" up above in the trenches were drinking this ration of water for their evening meal, but there was always time to have a chat with a comrade or mate from the northern side of Anzac, or with men who lived in the heart of the position. For the troops knew only their own section of the line, and had seen nothing of famed posts and positions captured and held. In fact, it was a sort of mutual understanding that these fatigue parties always stopped for the purpose of swapping stories about adventures with Turks.
"Had much fighting, Fred, down your way?" one would drawl.
"Bit of an attack, but the blighters would not face the —— bayonet."
"Was out doing a bit of scouting the other night from Russell Top," spoke another fine-featured man, "and only for a thunderstorm would have captured a bit of a ridge, but a blooming interpreter chap got the shivers, and we just got back without being nabbed."
It would make a book in itself to record all the conversations one dropped amongst, of scraps of fighting, of one section of the line and another. The men flattened themselves against the side of the sap to let a stretcher case pass, always asking, if the wounded man showed any signs of life, about the wound and his regiment. About July, in the saps one met men carrying large quantities of sheet-iron and beams of wood to form the terraces up along the sides of the hills. One sheet of iron could make a dugout magnificent, even luxurious; two was a home fit for a general. This sap wound backwards and forwards up the gully, just giving glimpses of the tops of the ridge, over which bullets came whizzing and embedding themselves against the hillside. That was the reason of the sap. The little graveyard you passed was full of these spent bullets: shells whined away over it to the beach.
SHRAPNEL GULLYSHRAPNEL GULLY, LOOKING NORTH INTO MONASH GULLY FROM NEAR THE JUNCTION OF WANLISS GULLY.The white cross in the centre of the hills represents the small section of Turkish trenches on the Nek that overlooked the Gully. On the left is Russell Top.
SHRAPNEL GULLY, LOOKING NORTH INTO MONASH GULLY FROM NEAR THE JUNCTION OF WANLISS GULLY.The white cross in the centre of the hills represents the small section of Turkish trenches on the Nek that overlooked the Gully. On the left is Russell Top.
SHRAPNEL GULLY, LOOKING NORTH INTO MONASH GULLY FROM NEAR THE JUNCTION OF WANLISS GULLY.
The white cross in the centre of the hills represents the small section of Turkish trenches on the Nek that overlooked the Gully. On the left is Russell Top.
MAP COMPILED FROM AERIAL RECONNAISSANCEA MAP COMPILED FROM AERIAL RECONNAISSANCE OF THE TURKISH AND OUR TRENCHES ON THE NEK, POPE'S HILL, QUINN'S POST, COURTNEY'S POST, AND GERMAN OFFICER'S TRENCH.On either flank of Pope's Hill are the heads of Monash Gully, the Bloody Angle between Pope's and Quinn's.To face p. 180.
A MAP COMPILED FROM AERIAL RECONNAISSANCE OF THE TURKISH AND OUR TRENCHES ON THE NEK, POPE'S HILL, QUINN'S POST, COURTNEY'S POST, AND GERMAN OFFICER'S TRENCH.On either flank of Pope's Hill are the heads of Monash Gully, the Bloody Angle between Pope's and Quinn's.To face p. 180.
A MAP COMPILED FROM AERIAL RECONNAISSANCE OF THE TURKISH AND OUR TRENCHES ON THE NEK, POPE'S HILL, QUINN'S POST, COURTNEY'S POST, AND GERMAN OFFICER'S TRENCH.
On either flank of Pope's Hill are the heads of Monash Gully, the Bloody Angle between Pope's and Quinn's.
To face p. 180.
You came out into the open again where the gully broadened out. Looking round, there were three or four wells visible, where the engineers were busily erecting pumps. Iron tanks, too, were being brought into use, part of the great reticulation scheme of Anzac, and round them were grouped the men who had come downfrom the hilltops. That water, blessed though it was, was thrice blessed by the men who once carried it on their shoulders, grown sore under the weight. Some men with 18-pounder shells tucked under their arms passed. "Heavy, lads?" "Too blooming heavy altogether; one's about enough up them hills!" Thus, by a stream of munition-carriers, was the artillery kept supplied with its ammunition. Shells were not too plentiful in those days, but the gunners were busy laying in supplies for the great artillery duel that all knew one day would be fought. Ammunition, it may be recorded, went by the beach at night, and so up to the very highest point of the gullies possible, on mules.
Just at this broadening of Shrapnel Gully on the right (south) was the Indian encampment. A mass of rags and tatters it looked, for it was exposed to the fierce sun, and when gay coloured blankets were not shielding the inmates of the dugouts, the newly washed turbans of the Sikhs and Mohamedans were always floating in the idle breeze. Their camp was always busy. They never ceased to cook. Though the wiry Indians could speak little English, they got on well with the Australians, who loved poking about amongst their camps hunting for curios, while the Indians collected what trophies they could from the Australians.
If you looked intently hereabouts, you might make out, smothered away in the shadow of a hill, the dark muzzle of a gun in a pit, with the gunners' camp beside it. He would have been a keen observer in an aeroplane who could have detected those guns and marked them on his maps. Sufficient proof of this might be found in the fact that nearly all these guns were brought away at the evacuation. One or two that I saw in the firing-line, or just behind it, had been battered.
Three ways lay open to you, now that you had crossed the broad bottom of the gully. You might turn to the right and continue on up the main gully till it joined with Monash Gully, and so go on a visit to the apex of the position. You might turn off slightly to the left and reach, by a rather tortuous track, the centre of the left flank (or by this route travel behind the firing-line along the western slopes of the hills to Lone Pine, and then reach the extreme left). A far shorter, and the third way, was to go round the Indian encampment,and either up White Gully or through a gap in another spur of the main ridge, and come out on to Shell Green. This patch of once cultivated land was a small plateau—the only cleared space on Anzac. The Turkish shells passed over it on their way to the beach from the olive-grove guns concealed 2 miles away. Sometimes, also, they dropped on it. You crossed at the northern end of it, and reached the artillery headquarters of Colonel Rosenthal's 3rd Brigade dug into the side of the hill. It was across the gully facing the southern edge of this green that the big 6-in. field gun, fired for the first time in August, was placed. I remember watching the huge pit that was dug for it, and the widening of the artillery roads that enabled it to be dragged into position. Directly above Shell Green—a very dirty patch of earth after very few weeks—was Artillery Lane, which was a track that had been cut in the side of the hill, and which also served as a terrace. Dugouts were easily accessible along this road, though it was subject to some shell fire, so lower down the hillside was preferable, even if the climb was steeper and the promenade more restricted. Brigadier-General Ryrie, commanding 2nd Light Horse Brigade, had his headquarters at this spot, and also the 3rd Infantry Brigade, under Brigadier-General Maclagan. Lieut.-Colonel Long too, with the Divisional Light Horsemen, also made his camp there. All of which troops were holding, in July, the section of the line that reached down to the sea on the extreme left.
It was a complicated position, for a series of small crests had had to be won before Chatham's Post was established and an uninterrupted view obtained of the Turkish huts along Pine Ridge and the plain where the olive-groves were. Down on the beach that led round from Gaba Tepe—the beach where the troops should have landed—were barbed-wire entanglements and a series of posts manned only at night. Along that beach a little way, the commander of the post, a Light Horseman, pointed out to me a broken boat. It was a snipers' nest, he explained, where the Turks sometimes lurked and waited. We now stood out in a cutting looking down on Gaba Tepe at the Turkish trenches that ran in parallel lines along the hills, till a bracket of bullets suggested the wisdom of drawing back to cover. Alonga very deep sap (so narrow that in some places one had to squeeze one's way through) and down a hill brought one up to Chatham's Post, called so after a Queenslander, who captured it, of that name. Right on the crown of this knoll and along its western slope were a series of machine gun positions, striking at the heart of the left of the Turkish lines.
I was asked, "Like to see an old Turk we have been laying for, for some time?—a sergeant he is. The beggar doesn't care a jot for our shooting." Several rifles cracked as the observer made way for me to put my eye to a telescope. Very clearly I saw a fine big Turk moving along one of the enemy's communication-ways; it was apparent he was supervising and directing. He bore a sort of charmed life, that man. Eventually (some days later) he was shot. His name? Why, Abdul, of course—they all were. Our telescope was withdrawn just in time, and the iron flap dropped over the loophole as bullets splashed against it and the sandbag parapets above.
"Damn them and their snipers!" said a young bush-man, and began again his observation from another point. Up and down and through a long tunnel and we came back again to the rear of the main hill. When I saw where I had walked, set out on a map, it seemed very short after the miles of winding trenches that disappeared in all directions over and through the hill. Yet the troopers were still digging. Their troubles!
Brigadier-General Maclagan had a birthday—or he said it was about time he had—one day when I came in, and he celebrated it by cutting a new cake which his Brigade-Major, Major Ross, had obtained through the post.
"Luxury," began the Brigadier, with his mouth full of currants, "is only a matter of comparison. Look at my couch and my pigeon-holes, my secret earthen safes, and—bring another pannikin of tea."
Yes, it was comparison. "Ross, you will show the trenches—fine fellow, Ross," and the Brigadier cut another piece of cake.
Other officers dropped in and the cake slowly vanished. I wondered what Ross thought. "No use," he said to me later. "Better eat it now. Might not be here to eat it to-night. What about these trenches, now? You have a periscope? Right." As we started I felt hisposition was like that of the officer who, having received a hamper with some fine old whisky, found himself suddenly grown popular and received a great many visitors in one night. News spread quickly at Anzac!
It was the middle section of the right of the line that I was visiting, adjacent to the Light Horse position, just described. The Turks started shelling before we had fairly started, and I watched the shells bursting on Shell Green—harmlessly enough, but very thick. The Brigade-Major left word at the telephone switchboard where he was going, and, choosing one of three ways, dived into a sap on the hillside that was reached by a flight of steps. One had not gone far to be struck by the scrupulous cleanliness of this underground line. No tins, papers, or broken earthworks: everything spick and span. I was being told how the wheatfield had been taken at the time just as we were passing across it—through a sap and working up under cover on to the outer ridge. That day I seemed to do nothing else but grip hard brown hands and meet new faces. That splendid Staff officer had a word for all his men.
"Wish the beggars would only attack. We have everything nicely prepared for them," he began to explain as we walked through a tunnel and halted on the side of a hill. We stood behind some bushes in a machine-gun pit. "Never been fired," said the officer, and then smiled in a curious way. "Got four more all along the top of the gully in two tiers. We expect—that is our hope—the Turks will come up here to try and cut off that hill which we have taken. Let 'em."
It was the first time I had seen a real trap. God help any foe that entered that valley!
Did I want to see all the position? I did. It took two hours—two of the shortest, most amazing hours I spent at Anzac.
"We are going now to see the gallery trenches. Always believe in making things roomy below ground," the Major explained, "so that the men do not get any suggestion of being cramped." So we entered a fine, high, and broad gallery, lit by the holes that were opened at intervals along it and used as firing-steps. My guide chuckled as he came to a point where it was rather dark. He stopped before more manholes filled with barbed wire. On the firing-step a soldier was carefullyhandling his tin of stew. This was a mantrap—a small hole and a thin crust of earth and wide pit—prepared against the rushing of the position, one of dozens that were all round the front as a protecting screen.
It was rather a difficult matter getting round the galleries as the afternoon wore on, for the men had commenced their meals. They gathered in small groups, some one always on guard for his comrades. Rifles were ready, standing by the wall. It was not exactly a solemn meal, for plenty of curses accompanied the passing of some "clumsy devil" that knocked down earth into a tin of tea. The trenches were remarkably sweet. The Major drew one's attention to the fact with justifiable pride.
Of the Turks that were entrenched on the other side of the ridge one saw nothing. Through a periscope you could make out their earthworks. One stumbles on adventure in the firing-line. I was without my guide, proceeding along a trench, when I was advised it was not worth while. Quite recently it cut a Turkish trench, and now only a sandbag parapet divided the two lines. It really was not worth occupying, except when there was a fight on. It was too deadly a position for either side to remain long in!
How the line twisted! Turning back along an angle, I found we had got back again into the gully—the Valley of Despair I have heard it called—only much higher up. There was an interesting little group of men round a shaft. Major Ross explained: "Trying to get their own water supply. Down about 80 feet. Yes, all old miners. The Tasmanians have done most of this tunnelling work: must have dug out thousands of tons of earth. Perfectly wonderful chaps they are. Dug themselves to a shadow, and still fought like hell. Me thin? Oh, it does me good walking about these hills; I can't sit in a dugout." A messenger came up from the signal office. "You must excuse me. I have to go back to B. 11" (a junction of a trench and sap), and he dived into the trenches again.
Imagine, now, you have begun walking back along the firing-line, going from the extreme right to the left. Already two sections have been passed. Had you continued along from the last gallery trenches, you would have come out into the section opposite the Lone Pine trenches of the Turks. The enemy here was a morediscreet distance of 80 to 200 yards away across a broad plateau. The ridge was higher at this point, and one might look back through a periscope (with great care) from certain sharp-angled look-out posts, raised slightly, according to the conformation of the ground, above the level of the ordinary trenches, down the back of the ridge, and on to the positions one had just left. They call this spot "The Pimple." Some of the posts were the observation posts for artillery, others for special sentry posts. As Lone Pine will form the subject of a separate chapter, the trenches will not be elaborated here. Sufficient to say that here, too, were gallery trenches, but lower and darker and less roomy; but, nevertheless, absolutely effective either for defensive or offensive purposes. You reached them by climbing to the end of Artillery Lane up through Browne's Dip.
It was on the second day that along this roadway the guns were dragged into the firing-line, when Major Bessell-Browne had a battery right on the crest of the ridge almost in the firing-line (the guns were actually in the infantry trenches for a time), until the Turks made it too warm for them. Now, this hilltop, which lay just behind the position held by the 1st Infantry Brigade and to the south-east of White Gully, was bare of any infantry trenches. It was, moreover, covered with furze and holly bushes. The trenches had been advanced to the edge of the plateau, on the other side of which the Turkish lines ran. With Colonel Johnston, Brigadier of the Victorian Artillery Brigade, I had climbed up here one morning to see the gun positions. One passed from Artillery Lane into an extremely narrow trench right amongst some bushes, and found oneself in a snug little position, completely concealed from observation. Out of the midst of these earthworks a gun pointed to the Turkish positions on Pine Ridge, Battleship Hill, and Scrubby Knoll. There was a telescope carefully laid through a loophole, the iron flap of which was discreetly dropped. It swept the Turkish ridges closely. A sergeant was in a "possy" (the soldier's term for his position in the firing-line and dugout) watching a party of Turks digging. He could just see their spades come up in the air. It was believed that they were making emplacements for new guns. Colonel Johnston let the enemy nearly finish and thenblew them and their earthworks to pieces. It was what he called "stirring up a stunt," for not long after, sure enough, as he anticipated, the Turks commenced to reply, and shells began dropping in front of and over this post as the Turks searched for our guns. These little artillery duels lasted about half an hour, and when ammunition was plentiful (the daily limit was fixed for many weeks at two shells a day unless anything special occurred) two or three "stunts" might occur during a day. Sometimes word would come down from the infantry trenches that Turks were passing in certain gullies or could be seen working up on to Battleship Hill or up the side of Baby 700, and the guns would be laid accordingly. It would be difficult to estimate the number of targets that had been registered by the active artillerymen. They had them all tabulated, and could train their guns on to any spot during a night alarm in a moment. For from some point or other good views could be obtained of the Turkish positions: not in detail, of course, but sufficient, with the knowledge that aeroplane sketches and reconnaissance provided (Major Myles was one of the most successful of the artillery officers who went observing from the hangars at Tenedos), to cause great havoc amongst the Turkish supports and reserves.
But such shelling, whatever damage was done, never prevented the Turks from digging new firing-lines and communication and reserve trenches. Their industry in this respect was even greater than the Australians', who moved whole hills or honeycombed them with galleries until you might expect that a real heavy burst of shells or a downpour of rain would cause them to collapse. The Turks had mobilized digging battalions, units in which men who had conscientious objections to bear arms (many of them farmers) used to work. This was how Pine Ridge became such a huge mass of enemy trenches. Why, there were secret saps and ways all along from Kojadere right to Gaba Tepe Point. But sometimes the Turks were caught napping, as when the Australians captured an advanced spur or knoll on the plateau that gave a glimpse down a gully (for the other side of the plateau that sloped away down to Kojadere was just as cut by ravines as was the Anzac side), and after a few days' quiet preparations—the Turks being ignorant of our new advantage—our machine guns swept backwards and forwardsalong it, while the artillery drove the Turks into this hail of lead with shrapnel and high explosives.
With Colonel Johnston I went farther back towards the seashore along the back of one of the spurs, and round Majors Phillips', Caddy's, Burgess's guns, well dug into deep pits protected by solid banks of earth, covered with natural growth of bushes. It seemed to me unless a direct hit was obtained there was little chance of their being destroyed. Space was conserved in every way so as to leave as little opening as possible; magazines were dug into the cliff and dugouts as well. Yet several guns were knocked out. There was one gun crew amongst whom a shell had burst. Two men had been killed outright, and others badly wounded. When the stretcher-bearers rushed into the gun-pit they found a dying man trying to open the breech of the gun to load. His strength failed, and he fell back dead in a comrade's arms. Those men thought only of the gun and their mates after that explosion.
Little gaps occurred in the Anzac front where two gullies met on the razor-back crest of the hill. One was at the head of Wanliss Gully, between the 4th Battalion of the 1st Brigade and the 5th Battalion, holding the section opposite the German Officers' Trench. Here the crest of the hill had been so worn away, and the head of the gully was so steep, that no trenches could be connected. As a result, all the protection that could be given was to bend back the trenches on either side down the hill, and establish strong posts and make entanglements from side to side of the gully. It was a source of intense anxiety to Colonel Wanliss (commanding 5th Battalion), who was early responsible for its protection.
The 2nd Infantry Brigade held the section of trenches going to Quinn's Post during the greater part of four months: held them sometimes lightly, sometimes in great strength. Opposite were the Turks' most elaborate works, designated "German Officers' Trench" and "Johnston's Jolly." These series of Turkish trenches varied from 20 to 80 yards from the Australian lines. The origin of their names is interesting. German officers had been seen in the trench that bears their name, which offered sufficient reason, as there were not a great number of Hun officers on the peninsula. The other series of trenches had presented to Colonel Johnston'smind a good target, on which he always said he would have a "jolly good time" if his guns had only been howitzers and able to reach them, which, with his 18-pounders, he could not. The Turks had used huge beams many feet in thickness to fortify these trenches along this sector of the line. Probably it was because it led directly to the heart of the enemy's position (Mule Gully was beyond and Kojadere) that such measures were taken. No artillery bombardment had had much effect on these trenches. One day—it illustrates the spirit of the Turkish army—a Turkish officer was seen directing the erection of some overhead cover down a communication trench behind this position. A burst of shell had warned him that he was observed, and bullets from machine guns played round him. He paid little attention, and went on with the directing of his job. When complete it was blown down, and continued to be blown down as fast as it was constructed, until the Turks had to give it up in despair. That brave officer directing the operations, was killed.
CHAPLAIN DEXTERCHAPLAIN DEXTER (5TH INFANTRY BATTALION) LEARNING THE WORKING OF A TRENCH MORTAR.Turkish firing-line thirty yards beyond the parapet.
CHAPLAIN DEXTER (5TH INFANTRY BATTALION) LEARNING THE WORKING OF A TRENCH MORTAR.Turkish firing-line thirty yards beyond the parapet.
CHAPLAIN DEXTER (5TH INFANTRY BATTALION) LEARNING THE WORKING OF A TRENCH MORTAR.
Turkish firing-line thirty yards beyond the parapet.
SHELL GREENSHELL GREEN, THE ONLY LEVEL AND CULTIVATED SPOT ON ANZAC: GUN EMPLACEMENT AND LIMBERS IN THE FOREGROUND.This position was subsequently used as an aeroplane signalling station.
SHELL GREEN, THE ONLY LEVEL AND CULTIVATED SPOT ON ANZAC: GUN EMPLACEMENT AND LIMBERS IN THE FOREGROUND.This position was subsequently used as an aeroplane signalling station.
SHELL GREEN, THE ONLY LEVEL AND CULTIVATED SPOT ON ANZAC: GUN EMPLACEMENT AND LIMBERS IN THE FOREGROUND.
This position was subsequently used as an aeroplane signalling station.
Opposite the left front of "German Officers' Trench" came Steel's Post, and next to Steel's, Courtney's Post, both called after officers of the 4th Infantry Brigade, whose regiments had held the positions in the first awful fortnight's fighting. Really they might be more aptly termed by the number of the regiment—14th Battalion—and the fine men who composed it. The Turks' line drew very close at this point. A gully cut into the plateau from the Anzac side and formed the "Bloody Angle." On the north of it was Pope's Hill, and on the south was Quinn's—the famous post cleft in the hillside—a concave position, at the heart of which the Turkish rifles pointed from the north and south, for it was from the night of the landing a savage thorn pressed in their side. But the history of these posts needs a special chapter. By them Anzac held or fell.
Early I said Anzac was divided into two halves by Shrapnel Gully—the southern has just been travelled over. There remains to describe only those trenches that lay north of Shrapnel and Monash Gully, on the Nek, and back along Russell Top, the northern section of the famous position. It was mostly a New Zealand position; for New Zealanders and Maoris were largely responsible for its defence till the 3rd Light Horse Brigade, underGeneral Hughes, took it over. Approached from the beach, the cliffs of Russell Top rise almost precipitously. The New Zealanders, mounted and dismounted troops, had had to set to work to cut a road up the face of this cliff to the top of the ridge. It was the isolated nature of the position—until a way was cut down the slopes into Monash Gully to the very foot of the hill—that caused so much difficulty in moving troops, and was responsible for more than one delay in getting men to required posts at given times. Russell's Top might be best described as the end of the main Sari Bair ridge. Southward from the ridge, and almost at right angles to it, ran the spur commencing with Plugge's Plateau, that formed the first ridge (Maclagan's ridge) stormed by the Australians. It overhung Anzac Cove. Incidentally it was the second line of our defence, the triangle within the triangle, and on it were the hastily formed trenches that the Australians had dug during the 25th, 26th, and 27th April, lest the Turkish attempts to "drive them into the sea" proved successful. Guns were hauled up these ridges by hundreds of men, just as the Italians were doing on the Gorizia front. Had this last position been carried the guns could never have been got away. They might certainly have been tumbled down into the gullies below and spiked.
Russell Top itself was a short section or series of trenches grouped on either side of the ridge, and ending at the Nek. They faced roughly north and south. They commanded Anzac position to the south, and all the series of our works described in the early part of the chapter. On the north they dominated (the impossibility of getting very heavy artillery right along the ridge, owing to its precipitous and exposed nature, limited severely that command) all the series of foothills that led up to Chunak Bair and Koja Chemin Tepe. In this direction short, sharp spurs, covered with dense bushes and undergrowth, branched out from the Sari Bair ridge. To name them, starting from the beach: The first in our possession was Walker's Ridge, and then Happy Valley, then Turks' Point, then Snipers' Nest, where the Turks had command of the beach to good effect, and from which it was found impossible, though many stealthy attacks were made and the destroyers plastered the spur with shell, to dislodge them. Beyond, stern above all these crooked steep hilltops,was Rhododendron Ridge. Now, just after Turks' Point the ridge narrowed and formed the Nek. I do not think it was more than 160 yards wide at the utmost, just a thin strip of land, with sheer gullies protecting it on either flank. From here, too, the Sari Bair ridge began to slope up, rising rapidly to Baby 700, Battleship Hill, Chunak Bair. Immediately in front of the Nek, adjacent to the head of Monash Gully, were the terrible Chessboard Trenches, so named because the newly dug exposed earth where the trenches ran, lay in almost exact squares across the ridge from one side to the other, like a chessboard.
The New Zealand trenches (afterwards manned by Australian Light Horse) were about 80 yards from the enemy's lines, though the Turks occupied somewhat higher ground, and consequently looked down on to our trenches. But such was the superiority of fire that our troops had obtained, that the enemy were never able to take full advantage of this position. To hold these few acres of ground against fearful attacks cost hundreds of lives. The trenches were mostly sandbagged, the earth being too crumbling to hold against the searching fire of "75's" which the Turks (they had captured them in the Balkan War from the Serbians) had, together with Krupp artillery. Our machine guns commanded Snipers' Nest and the angle of Rhododendron Ridge where it joined the main ridge. Traverses, therefore, became nothing but huge pillars of sand. The work entailed in keeping them clear and intact was very heavy indeed. A number of trench mortars concealed round the crown of Russell Top strengthened our position; while on the north flank many trenches existed amongst the undergrowth which the Turks were ignorant of. Still, through the possession of this ridge we had been able to fling out outpost stations along the beach towards Suvla Bay, and dig the sap which eventually was the connecting link with Anzac in the great operations at Suvla Bay on 7th August. But the Nek itself the Turks had mined and we had countermined, till beneath the narrow space between the trenches, was a series of mine tunnels with gaping craters above.
Only once had the Turks attempted an attack across this Nek, as I have described, but they so strengthenedtheir position (and it was comparatively easy, owing to the configuration of the ground) that they were here probably more, what the Australians called "uppish and cheeky" than in any other part of the line. One day, while I was standing talking with General Hughes, a message weighted with a stone was flung at our feet from the enemy's line. It looked like a pamphlet. It was written in Turkish, and when taken to the interpreter's quarters and transcribed, proved to be Turkish boasts published in Constantinople.
Round the flank of our trenches was a favourite way for deserters to come in, which they did on many occasions. Once on a dark night the sentries were startled to hear a voice speaking even more perfect English, and certainly more correct, than one was accustomed to hear in the trenches, saying: "Will you please tell your men to cease firing, as I want to surrender?" Of course, the situation was rather difficult, as the Turks were fond of ruses, but eventually an Armenian officer jumped over the parapet and gave himself up. And very useful he proved, with the information he brought and gave during subsequent operations. But most difficult problem of all on this high plateau-top was the maintenance of supplies; not only of food and water, but of munitions. It was forty minutes' terrible climb to the top from the beach—a climb that needed every muscle strong to accomplish, even lightly laden. To fortify the position as it had been, was a magnificent achievement, and could only have been done by troops with the hearts of lions and the spirit of the Norsemen of old.
It might have been thought in the face of such difficulties, with the fevers of the Mediterranean eating into their bodies, that the spirit of the army would have failed. On the contrary, the Australasians accepted the position just as it was, bad as it was: the sweltering heat and the short rations of water; the terrible fatigues, absent from campaigns in other theatres of the war zone; and, above all, the constant exposure to shell fire and rifle fire week after week and month after month. But the spirit of the trenches was buoyant and reflective without becoming pessimistic. The men were heartily sick of inaction. They rejoiced in the prospects of a battle. It was the inertia that killed.
It is doubtful if the true history of Quinn's and Pope's positions will ever be collated. But any soldier will tell you that these two posts made Anzac, for it was on the holding of these precarious and well-nigh impossible positions in the early days of occupation that the whole Australian line depended. The names will be for ever bound up with the gallant officers who defended them, though it will be only meet that their subsequent commanders should have their names inscribed on the roll of the bravest of brave men that clung to the edges of the hillsides at the head of Monash Gully. There was, till the last days, always some fighting going on round Quinn's and Pope's, where the Turkish trenches approached to within a few yards of ours. Sorties by one side or the other were frequently made there; always bombing, alarms, mines, and countermines. I would never have been surprised if at any time the whole of Pope's and Quinn's had collapsed, blown to atoms by some vast network of mines, or wrecked by shell fire. The two places were a mass of trenches, burrows, secret tunnels, and deep shafts. They bristled with machine guns. My greatest difficulty is to adequately convey some detailed idea of the positions as I saw them—a few of the desperate conflicts have been already recorded, and I hope that what will follow will enable the nature of the fighting to be better realized.
Quinn's! The famous post was soon after the landing known throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, and its history, or a portion of it, reached England and Australia early in the accounts of Anzac. That it "held," the Turk found to his cost. He tried to overwhelm it; hewas driven back into his trenches, not once, but scores and scores of times.
In the first weeks of the fighting, the Turk came on against Quinn's with cries of "Allah! Allah!" and retired amidst weepings and moanings, leaving men dead and dying before the Post. From that day it became a desperate position, but when I examined it the men (they were Canterbury men from New Zealand and some of our own lads) under Lieut.-Colonel Malone, a magnificent stamp of leader, were quite cheery, and the whole tone of the Post was one of confidence, notwithstanding any attack the enemy might make. "We are waiting for him, and wish he would come," were the words of the commanding officer. "Brother Turk has learnt his lesson; so he sits still and flings bombs—he gets two back for every one he throws." That was the spirit which enabled Quinn's to be successfully held.
Once, in the early days, the way to Quinn's was through a hail of bullets up Shrapnel Gully, dodging from traverse to traverse, till you came to the foot of a ridge that ran almost perpendicularly up 200 feet. On the top and sides clung Quinn's. The ridge was bent here, where one of the heads of the great gully had eaten into the plateau. That was what made the hillside so steep. Quinn's helped to form one side of the ravine called the "Bloody Angle." Yes, in the early history of Quinn's and Pope's, just across the gully, not 100 yards away, had flowed down those hillsides the best blood of the Australian army. For the enemy peered down into the hollow—then not afraid, as he was later, to expose his head and shoulders to take deliberate aim. The moral ascendancy of our sharpshooters was the first step in the victory of Quinn's.
After June it was no longer a matter of the same extreme peril coming up the broad valley, for there was a secret sap most of the way along Shrapnel Gully. Once you turned north, half way up the gully, you lost the view of the sea behind the hills, and you found yourself among a variety of Army Service Corps units—among water-tanks and water-carriers. You heard the clatter of pumps and the rattle of mess-tins as the men stood out in long lines from the cooks' fires that gleamed at half a dozen points. There was only a space ofa few feet on either side of the path that contained the dugouts; the rest of the hillside was still covered with prickly undergrowth and shooting grasses. The sound of a mouth-organ resounded up the valley; bullets sped past very high overhead, and shells dropped very occasionally at this point among the inner hills behind the ridge. From the gully I turned on my left into a sap that wound about and shut off all views except that of Quinn's and Pope's. I came out of the sap again into the gully to a place where sandbags were piled thick and high to stop the bullets, for here it was not so comfortable, as far as the enemy's rifles were concerned. You went into a perfect fortress of low-lying squat huts, to which you found an entrance after some difficulty. I had to squeeze through a narrow, deep trench to reach it.
That was the headquarters of Brigadier-General Chauvel, who commanded the central section of the line that I could see all along the edge of the ridge about 150 yards away—almost on top of us—Pope's on the left, the isolated hilltop; then Quinn's, Courtney's, and Steel's. They were a group of danger points—a constant source of anxiety and despair to the General who commanded them. It was delightfully cool inside those caves in the gully after the heat of the sap. I was told by Major Farr and Major Williams, who were talking to the commanders of the posts by telephone, that I could not lose my way. "Keep on following the narrow path, and if you are lucky you will be in time for a battle." Each hung up the receiver and gave a curt order for some further boxes of bombs to be dispatched.
Battles on Quinn's were no mild engagements, for usually the hillside was covered with bursting shells and bombs that the Turks hurled over in amazing numbers. Fortunately, these "stab" attacks were brief. As I pushed on towards the narrow sap that ran into the side of the hill, I could see by the excavated earth how it zigzagged up the side of the ridge.
I passed great quantities of stores, and, under the lee of a small knoll, cooks' lines for the men holding the Post above, which was still obscured from view. All one could see was a section of the Turkish trench just where it ended 20 yards from our lines, and thebarbed-wire entanglements that had been thrown out as a screen. The air was filled with the appetizing odour of sizzling bacon, onions, and potatoes, while shells whizzed across the valley. I was glad to be safely walking between high sandbag parapets.
Soon the path became so steep that steps had been made in the hill—steps made by branches interlaced and pegged to the ground. It was a climb, one ascending several feet in every stride. Sandbags were propped up here and there in pillars to protect us from the sight of the enemy on our left. One's view was confined to the wire entanglements on the skyline and the steep, exposed slope of the hill on the right. Behind lay the valley, full of shadows and points of light from dugouts and fires. They were quite safe down there, but you were almost on the edge of a volcano that might break out above you at any moment. You passed various sandbagged huts, until quite near the crest of the hill trenches began to run in various directions, and you saw the rounded top of the hill chipped away and bared under the constant rifle and bomb attacks. What had appeared ledges in the distance resolved themselves into a series of terraces, where the men found protection and, as busy as bees, were preparing for tea.
Lieut.-Colonel Malone was my guide. He was an Irishman, and keen about the Post and just the man to hold it. His great motto was "that war in the first place meant the cultivation of domestic virtues," and he practised it. He brought me up a gently inclined track towards a point at which barbed wire could be seen across a gully which ended in a sharp fork. That was the "Bloody Angle." Then we turned around and looked back down the gully. In the distance, 100 yards away on the right, along the top of the ridge, were two distinct lines of trenches, with ground between which you at once knew was "dead" ground. The hill doubled back, which almost left Quinn's open to fire from the rear. "That is our position—Courtney's Post and Steel's to the east," said my guide, "and those opposite are the Turkish trenches. We call them the 'German Officers' Trenches,' because we suspect that German officers were there at one time. Now we have given them a sporting chance to snipe us; let us retire. I always give a visitor that thrill." It was only the firstof several such episodes which vividly brought home to one's mind the desperate encounters that had been waged around this famous station. The men who held on here had a disregard of death. They were faced with it constantly, continuously.
There were four rows of terraces up the side of the hill. Once the men had just lived in holes, dug as best they could, with a maze of irregular paths. That was in the period when the fighting was so fierce that no time could be spared to elaborate the trenches not actually in the firing-line. Afterwards, when the garrison was increased to 800 and material came ashore—wooden beams and sheet-iron—conditions underwent a change. Four or five terraces were built and long sheds constructed along the ledges and into the side of the hill. These had sandbag cover which bullets and bombs could not penetrate. Just over the edge of the hill, not 30 yards away, were our own lines, and the Turkish trenches 4 to 25 yards beyond again. When the shells came tearing overhead from our guns down in the gully the whole hillside shook with the concussion of the burst. No wonder the terraces collapsed one day! I was standing talking to Lieut.-Colonel Malone and saw about 100 of the men who were in reserve leaning against the back of the shed that belonged to a terrace lower down. They were all looking up at an aeroplane, a German Taube, skimming overhead. A huge bomb burst in the trenches on the top of the hill, and the men, involuntarily, swayed back. That extra weight broke away the terrace, and it collapsed with a roar. Fortunately, the damage done was small, though about eight men were injured.
To go through Quinn's was like visiting a miniature fortress. The whole extent of the front was not more than 200 yards. One dived down innumerable tunnels that ran 10 or 20 feet in the clay under the enemy trenches, and contained mines, ready set, to be blown up at the first sign of an enemy attack in mass. A certain amount of protection had been gained at Quinn's from the deluge of bombs that the enemy accurately threw, by a screen of wire-netting that caught the bombs so they burst on the parapets. But such protection was no use against the heavy football bomb. Loopholes were all of iron plating, and in most cases ofdouble thickness, and even thus they were almost pierced by the hail of bullets from the Turkish machine guns. The Turks did not occupy their forward trenches by day. Only at night they crept up into them in large numbers. Several craters formed a sort of danger-point between the lines where mines had been exploded, and into these it was the endeavour of some Turks to steal at night on their way to an attack.
Now, one of the stories about Quinn's—alas! how many tales of gallantry must go unrecorded—is that the enemy's troops became so demoralized by the nearness of the trenches and the constant vigilance of our men that, in order to properly man their trenches in this sector, the Turks had to give non-commissioned rank to all the men there posted. Our own garrison in June and July were changed every eight days. Lieut.-Colonel Malone, however, remained in charge, having under him mixed forces of New Zealanders and Australians. One day I went with him into one series of tunnel trenches that wound back and forth and that opened up unexpectedly into a strongly fortified emplacement either for a machine gun or an observation post. Lying all along the tunnels, either on the ground, pressed close to the walls, or in a niche, or ledge, were the garrison. It was difficult not to tread on them. We came to a point where, pegged to the earthen walls, were any number of pictures—of Sydney beach, of St. Kilda foreshore, of bush homes and haunts, of the latest beauty actresses, and—most treasured possession—some of Kirchner's drawings and coloured work from French papers.
They were a happy family at Quinn's. Once orders had been given that conversations could be carried on only in whispers, so close was the enemy. For the most part, however, that was not necessary, but there were certain places where we had machine-gun emplacements—traps they were really, and the guns had never been fired. They were to be surprises for "Johnny Turk" when he should attack again in force. Here certainly it would not have been wise to discuss the position, for the enemy, some few yards distant, might have heard and understood. One had only to show a periscope above the trenches at Quinn's to bring down a hail of bullets, and three periscopes was the signal for the turningof a machine gun on the sandbag parapets, with a broken glass in the periscope the only result.