The Turks had maybe a more appropriate name for Lone Pine. They called it Kanlisirt, or ‘Bloody Ridge’. This hallowed ground came into prominence because the Anzacs were called on to assault the Turkish trenches here to provide a diversion to cover the landing of the British reinforcements at Suvla Bay under the tardy General Stopford. A simultaneous virtually suicidal attack against the entrenched Turkish machine guns by other Anzacs along another exposed ridge line at The Nek was the central assault in Peter Weir’s evocative movie Gallipoli.
During the battle at Lone Pine, the Turkish trenches were in several rows below where the main Australian memorial stands today. The Australian trenches were in six rows under where the gravestones now lie. It’s chilling to see that just a couple of cricket pitches separated the two front lines.
The mateship we have come to expect from Australians banding together, especially in times of crisis, was present while the Anzacs counted down the final minutes before the assault, as Charles Bean reported:
By 5 o’clock the 1st Brigade was in position, crowding below the openings in the underground line and on the firestep of the old, deep, open trenches fifty yards behind. ‘Can you find room for me beside Jim here?’ said an Australian who had been searching along the bays. ‘Him and me are mates an’ we’re going over together.’
Under a full moon, on 6 August at 5.30 pm, Australians from the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th NSW Battalions, 7th Victorian Battalion and 12th Battalion, South Aussies and Tasmanians, all original Anzacs, rose from their trenches and surged towards the Turkish trenches. They wore white armbands and white patches on their backs so they could recognise each other in the silvery moonlight.
At the end of the four-day battle, for the first and only time since the landings, the Turks withdrew. But they set up a new trench line just 39 metres behind their previous positions. So, for the sake of two tennis courts worth of land, 6000 souls perished.
Lieutenant Malcolm Cotton took part in the Lone Pine assault and later wrote to his family about it while recovering from wounds he received there:
We charged over to the Turks’ trench about 5.30pm on the 6th [of August] under deadly machine gun fire and rifle fire but I managed to get there alright although I don’t know how I did it …
The shelling they gave us and the bombs were pretty hot the whole time. About midday or a little after, they made a bomb counter attack. They threw over about 50 bombs [grenades] in as many seconds and I tell you things were pretty lively for a while …
About 10 bombs were picked up and thrown out of the trench before they exploded, grand work. I eventually got it and I am glad I can write the fact and more so pleased that I can say my wounds are only slight. Poor Rube Cradick was shot dead on the charge.
Lieutenant Roy Harrison was also there, as he wrote to his cousin Emily:
The signal for the assault was 3 short whistle blasts. The whole line moved as one man, but instantly the Turks opened a terrific fire, and almost at once, the dust thrown up by bullets and shells striking the ground, hid everything a few yards away, from view. The fight was terrific for a time, and one corporal from B Co is credited by several of the men with having killed 17 Turks with his rifle and bayonet before being killed himself.
The Colonel and I crossed with the 4th wave, and as their machine guns and artillery were waiting for us, we got some hurry up. Those of us who were lucky enough to miss the bullets, tumbled into the enemy trenches without loss of time. The place was choked with dead and wounded, and in many places, it was impossible to avoid walking over the dead.
When light came, the second morning after the assault, the trenches were 3 deep with dead and wounded and in one particular trench, were three and four deep. To pass along, it was necessary to crawl over the dead and the living …
The sights and sounds come up to anything I have yet read, and surpassing my wildest dreams as to what war really meant.
My old platoon was with the first wave, and not one man answered the roll call, when we were relieved by fresh troops on the 8th.
Of the 27 officers and 576 men who were with Roy Harrison at the start of the attack, 21 officers and 420 men perished. The Anzacs won nine Victoria Crosses in eight months at Gallipoli, seven of them in three days at Lone Pine: Lance Corporal Leonard Keysor, Lieutenant William Symons, Corporal Alexander Burton, Corporal William Dunstan, Private John Hamilton, Lieutenant Frederick Tubb and Captain Alfred Shout. Not surprisingly, the valour of the Anzacs impressed the Turks. Roy Harrison, as quoted in An Impression which will Never Fade, attested:
One Turkish sergeant who was captured, said: ‘We will go out to meet the French, we will wait for the British to come up to our trenches, but the Australians we will not face and no amount of driving will make us do so.’ That is a reputation to win, and the Turk himself has the name of being a very stubborn man when fighting on the defensive.
Roy Harrison, a hardened veteran now after three months of constant fighting, revealed the changes to the Anzacs since their baptism of fire at the Anzac landings. He compared the sense of anticipation before the landing to that before the Lone Pine attacks:
The night before the landings was similar in a sense, but there was unrestrained skylarking and fun generally, for we were all strangers to war. On the night preceding Lone Pine, however, everyone knew exactly what to expect, and there was no foolery.
The Lone Pine Memorial, the main Australian memorial here, marks the maximum Australian advance into the peninsula during the entire eight-month campaign and is a paltry 1.2 kilometres from the beachhead at Anzac Cove. At the end of the Lone Pine battle, the dead were piled like bags of grain in the Turkish trenches. It was in the full heat of the Turkish summer and the bodies began decaying quickly. The Turks stopped firing from their new trench line and the Anzacs realised it was a message: bury the dead. The Australians buried all the dead in the first, second and third Turkish trenches, the deepest of the trenches, and turned it into the largest mass grave on the peninsula.
One of the Turks buried in that mass grave is Captain Ali Efe’s grandfather, Hussein. Captain Ali:
The Turks and the Australians lie in the same graves here – not just side by side but embracing each other. That is why the Lone Pine memorial is sacred to both sides.
As he speaks, Ali’s keen eye has spotted something in the earthen mound below where we have been sitting, contemplating the enormity of the losses. Every time it rains heavily here, more relics are exposed. In the midst of the weather-worn pebbles leached from the ancient ground, a mottled pink-white shape stands out. Ali picks it up and brushes it. Now it is clear. It is a spent .303 Anzac bullet, one of thousands that sought out Turkish targets. It calls to mind a graphic demonstration of the intensity of the fire here. In the museum at Gabatepe, a couple of kilometres south of Lone Pine, a glass cabinet displays a dozen or so fused bullets – bullets that have not only struck each other in flight but have become embedded in each other. Can you imagine the odds of that happening, even once? How much of a hailstorm of lead must have flown here for so many to have been found?
A few metres away, at the edge of the road, Ali stops again. This time the rains have unearthed an even more poignant reminder of the cost of these battles. These are clearly shards of human bone – leached and pitted and brittle but, without doubt, human and sacred. Ali carefully retrieves them and moves them out of harm’s way for later interment. Turkish or Australian, it matters little: these bones were once vital and full of promise.
The High Command ordered the Anzacs to mount another heroic and ultimately pointless assault around the same time as Lone Pine. The charge at The Nek was aimed at holding the Turks’ attention away from the British landings at Suvla Bay. Once again the High Command wanted to tie up potential Turkish reinforcements against the landings. It chose the famous Australian Light Horse troops (without their mounts, which were languishing back in Egypt).
The Nek is a narrow saddle which runs east–west along the ridge line between
two hills, Russell’s Top and Baby 700. It drops away sharply on both sides into a valley 150 metres below. The Turkish positions were perfectly sited, eight lines of trenches rising with the hill line to the top of Baby 700. Implanted in these fortifications were five nests of machine guns, positioned so they could bring deadly fire from the high ground on any movement below.
By the time the dismounted 3rd Australian Light Horse Brigade was in position for the attack, the supporting actions which should have given them some glimmer of success – a Kiwi attack on the Turkish rear and seizures of key Turkish posts next to The Nek – had either failed or were running late. The only real hope for the Light Horsemen was the planned artillery barrage, which should have battered the Turkish defenders. The bombardment was planned to run for half an hour from 4 am, with a final three minutes of intense shelling. The Australians were set to charge in four lines, each of 150 men (there was no room for more on the ridge), at exactly 4.30 am. Bean reports what happened:
The first line stood with its feet on the pegs in the trench walls, ready to leap out. But for some reason that may now never be discovered – probably an error in timing watches – this shelling suddenly ceased when the watches of the Light Horse Officers showed on 4.23 – that is, seven minutes before the time of the attack; and when, at 4.30, Lt-Colonel A.H. White of the 8th Light Horse gave the word ‘Go’, and, followed eagerly by the 150 men of the first line, scrambled from the deep trenches, there burst out within three or four seconds from the Turkish trenches, packed with men, such a torrent of rifle fire, growing quickly to a continuous roar, as soldiers can have seldom have faced.
The Australian line, now charging, was seen suddenly to go limp, and then sink to the earth, as though [said an eyewitness] ‘the men’s limbs had become string’. Except those wounded whom bullets had knocked back into the trench, or who managed to crawl a few yards and drop into it. Almost the whole line fell dead or dying within the first ten yards. White and every other officer was killed. Three or four men reached the Turkish parapet and the burst of their bombs was heard above the uproar.
Now, put yourself in the minds of the men of the second line, waiting in the trench for the signal to charge. They have heard the hellish firestorm and the cries of the wounded and dying. As they tend the wounded thrown back at them, they know what lies ahead for them. (There were reports of men farewelling each other, knowing full well their fate was sealed.) Nevertheless, when the whistle is blown, they leap up without hesitation. Charles Bean:
The fusillade, which had slightly abated, instantly rose again to a roar as if some player had opened the swellbox of an organ. The second line, running hard, got a little beyond the first before being mown down.
The commander of the men who formed the third line questioned the wisdom of continuing the slaughter. But there were reports that some men from the earlier charges had made it to the Turkish positions – red and yellow flags carried by the Anzacs were believed to have been seen on the enemy parapet. The brigade major decided these men must be supported. So the third line answered the whistle and was cut down. The fourth line was held back for what must have been an agonising half hour while their leaders sought further confirmation that the attack should press ahead despite the evident slaughter. Finally, a tragic misunderstanding saw an officer, who was unaware of the reasons for the delay, calling for the final charge. The right side of the last line, believing the order had been confirmed, leapt into action:
The tempest broke out again. With a call ‘By God! The right has gone!’ other leaders leapt out with their men, and the fourth line went, and most of it was swept away like the others.
Dawn revealed a chilling sight. Strewn in a reddening heap, like cast-off rag dolls, the pride of the Light Horse lay in an area no bigger than a tennis court in front of the Australian trenches. According to the official history:
At first here and there a man raised his arm to the sky, or tried to drink from his waterbottle. But as the sun of that burning day climbed higher, such movement ceased. Over the whole summit the figures lay still in the quivering heat.
Of the 600 Light Horsemen who charged at The Nek, more than half became casualties and 234 of them were killed. The Turks had another name for The Nek. They called it Cesarit Tepe (or ‘Hill of Valour’).
The mistakes of the early stages of the campaign were still being repeated in late August. In an attempt to link the Anzac and Suvla lines, the commanders sent in a raw AIF battalion, without the benefit of reconnaissance, to assault the Turkish stronghold on Hill 60. As Charles Bean repeatedly points out, bravery alone could not overcome lack of battle experience or proper preparation. The 18th Battalion AIF, newly arrived on the peninsula, was thrown at the Turkish defences to try to consolidate a tenuous foothold which British and other Anzac forces had secured. The Anzacs of the 18th fixed their bayonets and charged in two lines. They were immediately caught in a murderous hail of machine guns and grenades. Somehow they managed to grab a section of the Turkish trenches but in doing so they lost 11 officers and 372 men out of their original strength of 750; half of these casualties were killed.
One of the wounded officers was a 25-year-old chemist from Armidale in northern New South Wales. Lieutenant Arthur Rafferty had been at Gallipoli for less than a month when he led his platoon at Hill 60. After mounting a machine-gun position during the firestorm, his left arm was shattered by a burst of Turkish fire. He was evacuated to London where doctors reset his arm and tried to save it. But his health was gravely impaired by the injury and the long journey to London. His arm turned gangrenous, and in early November it was amputated above the elbow.
Arthur Rafferty was one of many Anzacs who endured suffering even after they’d survived battle injuries and been safely delivered to hospital. Imagine the pain and anguish he endured as he fought to regain his health and retain his arm. A photo taken in a London park while he was recuperating before the amputation shows a disconsolate man in full uniform propped with his back to a tree as he examines his bandaged arm. Yet after the amputation he showed the remarkable resilience of so many of the Anzacs. He was playing tennis and riding within weeks. He returned to administrative duties in England and France and, on his return home, took up a soldiers’ settlement property where he raised cattle. He broke in stockhorses, shod them and rode them over the roughest terrain, and dealt with the bushfires and floods. His daughter, Joan Murray, fondly recalls seeing her friends imitating her father by tying their left arms behind their backs and trying to draft cattle. The only thing Arthur needed help with was trimming his nails.
Eighty-six years later, an Australian army officer walked through the poppy fields on the flat ground in front on Hill 60. Colonel Don Murray came to Gallipoli with the Australian cricket team in his role as Australia’s Military Attaché to the Australian High Commission in London. He devised and organised the plan for Steve Waugh’s team to re-create a legendary sporting moment by emulating the famous Anzac cricket match at Shell Green at Gallipoli on 17 December 1915. That match formed part of the deception of normality designed to cover preparations for the evacuation, and was played despite the constant menace of artillery shells passing overhead. The re-creation was a very moving experience for the Aussie Test cricketers, and provided inspiration as they prepared for the forthcoming Ashes series.
While the cricketers enjoyed some quiet time walking among the hallowed land near Lone Pine, Don Murray went alone to Hill 60. Here, his grandfather, Lieutenant Arthur Rafferty, fought and was wounded. Don Murray:
I was quite taken. It’s a beautiful place. The cemetery is down on the flat, surrounded by poppies. It was a beautiful day when I went there and I was quite affected by it. To me it was just marvellous and it closed off many of the things which I knew of my grandfather when I was a boy.
My recollections of him were that he was basically fairly irreverent about most things. He used to make me laugh although he was a straightforward man.
I had known him as a young boy w
hen we always used to take holidays up there. I was always amazed at the things he could do with one arm, whether it was to play tennis, ride a horse or shoot, or even open a bottle of rum. And I was always drawn to him.
I think I was about 13 when he died and it was the first time there had been any tragedy in our family. And I also admired his sense of humour. I always admired my grandfather as a man from the bush, a man who could do anything – an indestructible Anzac was my impression of him.
After Lone Pine and The Nek, things gradually changed on the peninsula. The trench stalemate gradually brought a mutual respect. As Captain Ali points out:
There is the same tradition in any army that says if you cannot defeat your enemy you should respect him: he is at least as strong as you are.
The Spirit of the Digger Page 10
