The Spirit of the Digger

by Patrick Lindsay

  The 29th British Division and the First French Division joined the Anzacs in Alexandria, then General Hamilton took his force across the Mediterranean and through the Aegean Sea to the Greek islands of Lemnos, Skyros and Imbros. But when Hamilton inspected the troopships there, he found they’d been loaded for a relocation rather than an invasion: equipment, weapons and ammunition was split among different ships for efficient use of space rather than battle-ready access. Hamilton decided there was nothing he could do but withdraw to Alexandria for reorganisation. It was a major setback. The invasion force lost vital weeks while the Turks worked relentlessly on their defences. The Aussies of the 3rd Brigade spent the time training on the island of Lemnos, climbing high cliffs and getting used to their massive packs, which weighed more than 40 kilograms – with additional ammunition they reached up to 68 kilograms!

  By this stage, the Turks were well aware of the imminent invasion. Security had been laughable and reports of the intended campaign had been published in Egyptian newspapers; some even revealed that British agents had bought more than 40 barges and half-a-dozen tugs. Although they were still recovering from their crippling losses in the Balkan Wars, the Turks knew they were fighting for their families and their land. Under the overall command of the German General Otto Liman von Sanders, who had been seconded to beef up their military, they rushed to shore up their defences.

  General von Sanders was faced with a daunting task: he had about 80,000 men with which to defend around 200 kilometres of coast along the Aegean Sea and the Asian shore bordering the Dardanelles. Knowing he had to second-guess Hamilton’s choice of landing sites, he placed two strong divisions on the isthmus where he was sure the Allies would make their major landing. (In fact, many military experts now believe that had the Anzacs or the British 29th Division, or both of them together, with the support of the British Fleet, landed there as von Sanders feared, they could have cut the peninsula so the Turkish Army there had no supplies from the mainland and would have had two choices: surrender or fight to the death.) General Liman von Sanders also positioned two divisions near Troy on the Asian side and another about 8 kilometres inland from Brighton Beach at Bigali.

  Despite the large area that von Sanders had to cover, the odds still favoured him. The Allied invasion force had already surrendered its most valuable asset: surprise. In addition, the opposing forces were roughly equal in number. History has proven that to be assured of success, an attacking force should have substantial numerical superiority against an entrenched, determined defending force.

  In the pre-dawn of Sunday, 25 April 1915, around 4.30 am local time, the Anzacs began their journey towards immortality. Even as they started landing on the peninsula, as so often happens under combat conditions, the plan of attack began to unravel.

  Their planned landing spot, Brighton Beach, was a good choice. It was long and flat, with more flat ground just behind it leading into Wolf Valley. The Anzacs could land, move up Wolf Valley and then turn left and capture the main objective of the whole expedition, the high ground near Sari Bair and Chunuk Bair. This high ground held the key to the whole campaign. If the Anzacs took it they could position long-range guns there and dominate the peninsula, destroying the Turkish installations and cutting the peninsula off from the mainland. Then they could silence the big Turkish guns from close range, put in their own artillery, allow minesweeping, and open the way for the British Fleet to steam straight up to Constantinople.

  But the Anzacs were not landed at Brighton Beach. Instead, in the pre-dawn confusion, they were set down almost 2 kilometres north of their intended destination in totally different terrain. The Australian 3rd Brigade was dropped off around a small headland, which the Turks called Ari Burnu (or Bee Point). The South Australians and Tasmanians landed to the north of Ari Burnu and the Queenslanders and South Australians landed to the south, along the beach that would become known as Anzac Cove.

  Allied positions on the Gallipoli Peninsula, 25 April 1915.

  The Anzacs’ major objective was to capture the high ground. Ironically, when they began their landing there were virtually no Turkish defenders on the crucial high ground. Just behind Ari Burnu, on the first ridge, about 160 Turkish troops waited. Turkish High Command had neither expected nor even imagined any landing around Ari Burnu, because the terrain behind it was like a natural castle, with steep slopes up to sharp ridge lines and a maze of dead-end gullies. The closest substantial Turkish force was near the high ground, in a small village called Bigali, where there was a mobile Turkish division, the Turks’ only reserve division.

  Captain Ali explains how the Turkish defenders felt as they prepared to meet the invaders:

  We have two old sayings: One, it is the responsibility of any man, if he is a man, to sacrifice his own life to defend his own family members. And two, if a man is trying to defend his own wife, his own family, he’ll be two times stronger than normal.

  In addition, the Turkish soldiers’ religious beliefs sustained them:

  We are generally a secular country but we have some strong religious beliefs. One is that when a Turkish soldier is killed on the battleground, his spirit goes directly to paradise. So, Turkish soldiers were not scared to die in battle. In fact, they hated dying in a hospital.

  The Turks facing the Anzacs had the strongest human motivation for fighting to the death:

  The Turkish soldiers’ wives stayed at home on the farms, continuing production, harvesting and supplying yoghurt, milk, fruit, vegetables and repairing their men’s uniforms and shoes.

  They stayed very close to the battlegrounds and indirectly encouraged their men to fight to the death to protect them. The soldiers were defending their own homes, their own families, not just their country in general.

  The quality of the Turkish soldiers also ensured a bitter and determined resistance:

  The defenders had been selected one by one from thousands off the farms and out of the local villages, mainly from country areas, often from the mountains. They were not pampered city people. They knew the land intimately, were hardened and accustomed to living rough.

  One of the Turkish officers silently waiting for the invasion was Major Mahmut Bey, who was quoted in Bloody Ridge Diary by Hasan Basri Danisman:

  On 25th April, 1915, at 0430hrs, when intensive enemy fire raked our shore, we blew our whistles, reserve companies were called to arms and took positions at the double.

  With naval gunfire concentrating mostly on our advanced skirmishing line the shoreline was covered with heavy black smoke … visibility was zero.

  … the enemy approached the shore in lifeboats. When they came into range, our men opened fire. Here, for years, the colour of the sea had always been the same, but now it turned red with the blood of our enemies.

  These were the implacable foes facing the Australians as they struggled up the rocky gullies above Anzac Cove. Albert Facey, a 20-year-old private, was in the second wave of the landings. He later recalled his feelings in his autobiography, A Fortunate Life:

  This was it. We were scared stiff – I know I was – but keyed up and eager to be on our way. We thought we would tear through the Turks and keep going to Constantinople. Troops were taken off both sides of the ship on to destroyers … all went well until we were making the change to rowing boats …

  Suddenly all hell broke loose; heavy shelling and shrapnel fire commenced. The ships that were protecting our troops returned the fire. Bullets were thumping into the rowing boats. Men were being hit and killed all around me. When we were cut loose to make our way to the shore was the worst period. I was terribly frightened. The boat touched bottom some thirty yards from shore so we had to jump out and wade to the beach. The Turks had machine guns sweeping the strip of beach where we landed … there were many dead already when we got there. Bodies of men who had reached the beach ahead of us were lying all along the beach and wounded men were screaming for help … we used our trenching tools to dig mounds of earth and sheltered from the firing un
til daylight … the Turks never let up … the slaughter was terrible.

  The small initial Turkish defensive force fought to the last but took a heavy toll on the attackers, as one of the original Anzacs, Private Gordon Craig, later explained in a letter to his brother Ken as he lay recuperating from wounds in Egypt:

  A tug took us within 100 yards of the beach and we had to row the rest of the way. The shrapnel was bursting all round us, also machine guns, rifle shot. We lost a lot of men before we landed but our boat got safely ashore.

  Well we landed. We marched about 100 yards and then took a rest and then word came up to go up into the firing line at once. We threw our packs away and then got on with the game. The country was so rough and scrubby that you couldn’t see where you were going and the shrapnel was bursting all round us and the bullets were so thick that we thought they were bees buzzing about us.

  Private Craig typified the Anzacs as they experienced their baptism of fire. His letter also reveals traits common to many of his mates – individual initiative, and a healthy cynicism for officers who refuse to take command:

  By this time we were all mixed up with different companies and I heard one of our officers call out ‘Are there any men about here?’ So I called out that I was there. So we advanced together. We came to a gully and we laid there for a rest. The shrapnel was worse than hell, was getting nearer to us every minute, so I said to the officer that we ought to get into the firing line and try and pot a few Turks before we throw a seven. The rotten beggar wasn’t having any so I left him.

  Private Craig finally made it to the front line and made his presence felt before he became another casualty in the firestorm:

  Then I got up to the firing line. I was lying next to a major who was shot in both legs. He asked me what sort of shot I was so I told him not bad, so he told me to try the range at 500 yards, but my shot went over their heads so tried 450 and got right on to them. It was awful hearing the wounded crying out and seeing the dead lying round you.

  Well, after a while a bullet hit me, and just grazed my wrist enough to burn the skin. I didn’t take any notice of that, but about five minutes after one got me clean through the arm. I tried to go on but was settled. Just as I got hit the chap next to me got one also.

  I then made my way back to the beach. I reckon I have more luck than Jessie the elephant not getting hit on the way back. When I got back the doctor dressed my wounds. I went into the hospital boat. We lost 15 men on the boat. There were about 5000 to 6000 wounded and killed the first day.

  The courage under fire shown by the Anzacs during the first day of the landings impressed all observers, including the Turks. There were countless stories of individual acts of bravery in the most extreme circumstances. Most went unrecorded. Charles Bean reports on the actions of Lance Corporal Noel Ross, who, on the afternoon of the second day, noticed some movement among what had been presumed dead bodies, which lay where they’d fallen during the dawn landing in the deserted landing boats along the shoreline at Anzac Cove. While he watched, a figure scrambled out of a boat and hobbled along the beach. He immediately drew Turkish sniper fire and collapsed:

  Ross went out with four men along the beach to bring him in. When they had gone a few hundred yards, the sand and the stones about them began to be whipped by Turkish bullets. They dropped behind the bank of the beach, and, dodging from shelter to shelter, reached a point within hail of the wounded man. He was lying out in the open, but, little by little, crawled to cover. He had been shot through both knees and nearly collapsed, but his spirit was high, and they brought him back. There were four others in the heap, he said, still alive. There had been eight but four died before the dawn.

  Sergeant Baker later wrote to his friend Vera Johns back home of his feelings at the landing:

  Their fire was getting absolutely murderous, but our chaps advanced again and again and were dropping in all directions, but would not be stopped.

  That Sunday [25 April] should live in history, for the Australians proved what stuff they were made of and many a one made a hero of himself. And many a poor fellow died urging his mates onward with his last breath.

  … Many of our officers were shot down and most of the time we had no orders at all, but had to rely on ourselves to do the best we could. Whenever we did happen to see an officer the order was always the same: ‘get ahead lads and stick it into them’.

  Sergeant Baker spoke of the growing pride with which the Anzacs were beginning to view themselves:

  Our lads all the time were behaving splendidly. We had often been told that a soldier dies of fright the first few minutes when he first goes under fire, but dear Vera that is rot. It makes you feel a bit uncomfortable but it also makes you want to get at the enemy and give him a bit of his own back – with interest. One bad point about our fellows was that they were too eager and rushed ahead in any sort of order, often exposing themselves unnecessarily.

  The raw horror of war was revealed in every form:

  Here is a tragic happening, Vera – a chap that had half his face blown off was seen to coolly finish himself off with his own rifle. One of his mates was with him at the time.

  This selfless approach was typical of the response of the Anzacs, who seemed to instinctively band together right from the start of the campaign. The mateship that developed amid this tragic loss of the flower of Australian and New Zealand manhood somehow ennobled their terrible ordeal. It grew to represent something more than friendship, or camaraderie, or comradeship. It was greater than the shared experiences of brothers-in-arms, although all these things are elements of mateship at its purest level. Mateship has a spiritual element that sets it apart from the esprit de corps experienced by many other soldiers. Many nations’ soldiers have a powerful esprit de corps that sustains them in crisis. But most centre on their regiment or colours or corps and extend to include the soldiers serving in or under them. For the Anzacs – and for the Diggers who followed them – mateship centres on the soldiers themselves and it extends outwards from there. At Gallipoli, mateship formed a cocoon that enveloped the Anzacs and made their existence there bearable. It gave them greater confidence because of the unconditional communal support that surrounded them, and it created a teamwork that produced a force far in excess of its individual components. At its centre was selflessness. This was wrapped in mutual respect and sealed with an unbreakable determination not to let each other down. As it has in subsequent conflicts, mateship often meant the difference between life and death at Gallipoli as the Anzacs alternatively fought and began to dig themselves into whatever defensive positions the terrain allowed.

  During the chaos of that first day, one small piece of Australian history almost went unnoticed. Captain Joseph Peter Lalor of the 12th Battalion was ordered to bring reinforcements across Malone’s Gully to the beleaguered 2nd Battalion under the command of Captain (later Sir) Leslie Morshead. Lalor was the grandson of the Eureka Stockade’s Peter Lalor, who led the ‘Diggers’ of the Victorian goldfields in their rebellion at Ballarat in 1854. At Malone’s Gully Lalor was supposedly carrying the same sword his grandfather had wielded at the Eureka Stockade as he prepared to order his men to charge the Turkish positions. According to Bean’s report:

  Lalor stood up to see and resolved to charge forward. ‘Now then 12th Battalion’, he cried; and as he said those words a Turkish bullet killed him.

  A grudging respect for the enemy also began to emerge among the Anzacs as the days wore on, as Lieutenant Richard Thomas Tarrant of the 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry Brigade, later wrote to his mother:

  On Tuesday morning the 27th (Harry’s birthday) at 6am, I was sent out on a patrol to look for ‘snipers’. Those are men who must be looked upon as having grit, even though they are Turks. They creep up by themselves, as close as they can, and ‘pot’ anybody off that comes within sight. They nearly always lose their lives as they are sure to get caught.

  Lieutenant Tarrant and his men continued advancing through the rugged co
untry, finding shelter from the constant Turkish fire in every dip in the ground:

  I got under cover as well as I could and tried to push forward. But it was slow work. We had to wait for a few minutes here as we were under heavy machine-gun fire. My next move was about five yards, as every time one exposed himself he was a ‘goner’. The Turks at this time were only about three or four hundred yards away, to our front and well entrenched, whereas we were only lying on the ground. We could not get a good view as we had scrub all round us, and we were at a disadvantage. Altogether, we were only in the firing line at this point a while when my little turn came.