by Peter Hart
After the chamber had been cut out I then prepared all the explosive charges myself. The explosive was in square canisters, something like a gallon oil tin. I used to stack these in the form of a wall, sometimes a double wall and then I drew out two tins. Unscrewed them and into one I put in the ordinary detonator into which you push a piece of fuse and crimp the thing together. Well, then the thing was to start off putting a certain amount of instantaneous fuse hooked on to the detonator and that went into one of the tins and the place where it went into was carefully sealed and then as a safeguard we had electric detonators. They had two wires and the thing was to connect those wires and bring them through to an exploder. When I was satisfied that I had connected them up properly I asked the boys to pass me the sandbags. We had to build back at least 10 to 15 feet of bags then the leads were taken to a suitable place – in this case the Battalion headquarters.32
Lieutenant Henry Bachtold, 1st Field Company Engineers, 1st Division, AIF
The mine was now ready to explode. Soon both sides were at it, detonating mines and then engaging in vicious skirmishes to control the resulting craters.
The Turks occasionally could not resist testing out the Anzac defences. The Nek was a particular focus of their interest as by pushing forward a mere 300 yards they could burst through to Russell’s Top and crack open the whole ANZAC Corps position. The recent addition of the 18th Regiment to Kemal’s 19th Division gave him the chance to try his luck with another night attack on 29 June. A thunderstorm added to the febrile atmosphere and both sides were nervy. The Anzacs noticed the stealthy final preparations for the attack and were fully prepared when the Turks charged across The Nek under cover of darkness at 00.15 on 30 June. The result was a dreadful slaughter.
They attacked by getting out of their trenches and trying to charge us with the bayonet. You ought to hear the roar of rifles during an attack. It is something tremendous and you can hardly realise how anything can live through the hail of bullets, as for the machine guns it is something wonderful to hear them when a few get going properly. Our men sat right up on the parapets of our trenches and when not firing were all the time calling out for the Turks to come along and hooting and barracking them. In fact most of our chaps took the whole attack as a real good joke. As soon as they stopped the first rush they jumped out of the fire trench and sat up on the parapets and yelled and cursed at the top of their voices calling out to the Turks to come on they would finish them.33
Trooper Ernie Mack, 8th (Victoria) Light Horse, 3rd Light Horse Brigade, AIF
War had never seemed more pleasurable than it did to the men of the 8th Light Horse as they shot down the attacking Turks that night.
It was much more satisfactory than the infernal pot-shooting through loopholes, though this is fair sport now as we are only about 60 yards apart at the widest and in some places much less than that. To drop so many in that narrow space is not bad, is it, and speaks rather well for the alertness of everyone concerned as it was a night attack.34
Lieutenant Ted Henty, 8th (Victoria) Light Horse, 3rd Light Horse Brigade, AIF
When they had finished enjoying themselves there were some 260 Turkish corpses lying in the narrow strip of No Man’s Land. The Light Horse would be back at The Nek in early August.
One interesting minor tactical operation occurred at 22.16 on 31 July, when the 11th Battalion launched a carefully planned attack from Tasmania Post to push the Turks out of their line clinging precariously to the edge of Holly Ridge above the drop into the poignantly named Valley of Despair. The greater purpose was to keep Turkish attention focused on the southern end of the Anzac positions in preparation for the August Offensive. Four tunnels had been sapped forwards with a mine at the end of each ready for detonation. The attack was under the command of Captain Raymond Leane. Tempted by the rumoured possibility of a commission, Corporal Thomas Louch had tossed for the privilege of leading the party from his company. He had won. The attack was made in fairly strong moonlight.
At the right time the mine on our front went up, and we dashed forward while clods of earth were falling all round us. The Turks were demoralised and most of them fled; so we successfully accomplished our part of the show. The people on our right had more difficulty. Two of the mines were late in going up, and one did not explode at all; consequently the Turks were not shaken, and put up a stronger fight before the whole of what was later known as Leane’s Trench was in our hands. Our instructions were to set about improving the Turkish trench, but this had no traverses and gave no shelter from enfilade fire. With no Turks left on Holly Ridge I anticipated that we should be plastered with shells as soon as it became light. So instead of improving the Turkish trench I urged my party on to dig fire bays which would give shelter from the bombardment when it came. This meant more and harder work, but it was worth it. When the expected shelling came the fire bays gave the necessary cover and we suffered no casualties from it.35
Corporal Thomas Louch, 11th (Western Australia) Battalion, 3rd Brigade, 1st Australian Division, AIF
Corporal Louch had done well and he was commissioned on 4 August 1915. Private William Pheysey did not share Louch’s good fortune. He was on the extreme left of the attack and separated from the main body and could find only a dry watercourse in which to position himself. Here he was soon wounded.
I heard a rifle bang just below me in the darkness and the use went out of my legs. I sat down abruptly. I felt no pain at all and I knew I was hit. Then I could feel warm blood on my legs and feeling gingerly I found that the bullet had gone clean through the calf of my left leg and the fleshy part of my right leg above the knee on the top side. I began thinking – I am a great thinker these days! ‘If I stay here I should get hit again!’ So I crawled back to the gully and watercourse. I thought, ‘Has that bullet cut an artery, there seems to be plenty of blood about?’ So I cut up my pants and took off my putties, put a dressing on and lay down. It was impossible to get back to our own trenches, the Turks saw to that. The ground between us was just cut to pieces with machine gun bullets. The captain in charge decided to occupy the gully as well as the trench, to defend it in case the Turkish counter-attacked and then to build up parapets of sandbags. I felt very useless but found that I could hold the bags open for other men to fill and it occupied my mind and I was glad of it. I had to stay in the gully till it was connected to the trench which happened 3 a.m. Sunday morning. The sap through was not wide enough to allow them to carry me out as my legs had stiffened and I could not crawl at all. At 3 p.m. they got me out.36
Private William Pheysey, 11th (Western Australia) Battalion, 3rd Brigade, 1st Division, AIF
The operations had been a success, although at the cost of thirty-six killed and seventy-three wounded. The tactical position on Holly Ridge had been improved and at the same time a possible source of flanking fire into any future Australian attack on Lone Pine had been removed.
AS THE SUMMER WORE ON, Anzac became as safe as it would ever be. The interconnecting fields of fire threatened bloody destruction to any Turkish attack that would merely swell the number of corpses in No Man’s Land. The only problem was that the Turks had mirrored their industry, their deadly artistry. Any Anzac assault looked likely to reap only the same dreadful harvest in between the lines. The original aim on 25 April had been clear: to seize the Third Ridge, capture Mal Tepe and join in the attack on Kilid Bahr. All this was now impossible. So why were the Anzacs there? They were not engaged in operations designed to secure their objectives. Rather, they were standing fast, watched closely by an equivalent Turkish force. The fighting that went on was to defend themselves, or minor skirmishes that merely explored the practical limits of their domain. It had been a fantastic achievement to carve out this tiny enclave, but now the Anzacs were in a state of stasis. It seemed impossible to evacuate the area until the stalemate was broken. What else could the troops do but cling on? This was in stark contrast to the situation at Helles, where for three months the British and French tro
ops would fling themselves time and time again against the Turkish lines in an effort to gain Achi Baba and then push on to Kilid Bahr. Anzac had become a backwater; the real fight for Gallipoli was raging at Helles.
HELLES: THE REAL FIGHT FOR
GALLIPOLI
You were never free from something while you were in the Peninsula, no matter where you were: on the earth or in it, on the sea or in it, or in the air. If it wasn’t bullets, it was shells. If it wasn’t shells, it was colic. If it wasn’t fever, it was chill; and often it was both. And the fleas we had always with us.1
Captain Albert Mure, 1/5th Royal Scots, 88th Brigade, 29th Division
THE AFTERMATH OF THE LANDINGS at Helles on 25 April 1915 was a pervading, almost tangible atmosphere of exhaustion among the men of the 29th Division. By their own account they had achieved miracles in getting ashore, yet the Turkish defence had not folded as expected. The capture of Hill 141 was not the spur to an advance on Achi Baba, but rather the precursor to a period of reorganisation and consolidation. The process of landing a whole division with all its goods and chattels across open beaches was also taking far more time than expected – apparently beaches were not ports after all. Major General Sir Aylmer Hunter-Weston was also keen to wait for the arrival of the French 1st Brigade (Métropolitaine) before attempting further progress but they did not even begin to land until the evening of 26 April. Among the troops landing at V Beach was Private Cornelius Jean de Bruin of the French Foreign Legion. As was traditional he was serving under an alias – his real name was Dick Cooper. His story illustrates the chaos that was enveloping the Allied forces.
Very soon the Turks started shelling from Fort Chanak. It was my first experience of shellfire and I did not like it very much. We started marching straight away. There was no camping; that night we rested on a hilltop. We had no idea where the enemy was. It was pitch dark and raining in torrents. The 1st Company was lost and Captain Rousseau detailed me, with four or five other men, to go out in different directions to find them and lead them back to the Battalion. I walked for about half an hour through the rain and darkness, stumbling over rocks and dead bodies, and, at last, scrambling up a hill, I saw a dim silhouette at the top. I was glad to see any living human being and went right up to him and spoke in French. With a yell the man dropped his rifle and fled, calling on Allah in Turkish. The best part of it that I was so startled that I did the same thing; that is, I dropped my rifle and ran.2
Private Cornelius Jean de Bruin, Légion Étrangère, 1st Régiment de Marche
d’Afrique, 1st (Métropolitaine) Brigade, 1st Division, CEO
Once ashore the French were assigned the position to the right, next to the Straits. This was a significant move which, while giving the French the traditional position of honour on the right of the line, also condemned them for the rest of the campaign to the very worst of the fire from the Asiatic batteries and the as-yet-unseen horrors of the Kereves Dere Ravine that lay across their path. Adjoining the French was the 29th Division, with the 88th Brigade in the centre, the 87th Brigade on the left and the remnants of the 86th Brigade as reserves. It was only at 16.00 on 27 April that the advance began. This was not the planned bold push towards Achi Baba, merely a general move forward over uncontested ground with the intention of forming a line from just above S Beach diametrically across to Gully Beach. There was some progress, although the left lagged behind and was still some 500 yards from Gully Beach. While the Allies fiddled about at Helles, the Turkish reserves marched purposefully towards the battlefield.
Hunter-Weston planned for greater things on 28 April. Achi Baba was now deemed out of reach, as he was very short of artillery, so instead he decided to perform an ambitious wheeling manoeuvre pivoting on the right flank, which was to firm at Hill 236 (near De Tott’s Battery) while everyone else moved forwards to take up a line stretching up through Krithia to Yazy Tepe a mile to the north. Here they would be facing Achi Baba ready to advance another day. Although his orders were issued at 22.00 on 27 April, the staff work was severely hampered by all the recent casualties. As a result many battalions did not get their orders in sufficient time for them to go through their own command processes before the hour of attack was upon them. The plans were also sketchy in the extreme, taking scant notice of factors such as the state of the assaulting troops, the nature of the terrain, distances to be travelled, length of the line to be occupied, or indeed the dispositions and numbers of the Turks facing them. This was unfortunate, for by now the Turks had not only been reinforced, they had begun to dig in, although at this stage they had dug few new trenches, merely augmented natural cover, using ditches, folds in the ground or old defence works in front of which they had placed a series of advance posts.
The First Battle of Krithia commenced at 08.00 on 28 April. On the right the French were keen to get involved. Although they were meant to be maintaining their position on Hill 236 on which the whole force pivoted, they decided to push forward next to the Straits, moving along the Kereves Spur towards the mouth of the deep Kereves Dere in order to deal with a Turkish defensive position that they rightly considered would enfilade the main advance of the 175th Regiment on their left. This attack failed, so when the main body of the 175th Regiment began moving forwards at 10 a.m. they were vulnerable to fire from the Turkish posts along the Kereves Spur. Nevertheless the French managed an advance of some 1,000 yards towards Kereves Dere.
The problems were mounting for the 29th Division alongside the French. Not only had there been a breakdown in liaison with the French over the timing of the advance, but many of their own battalions had either not registered the requirement for a radical change in direction or mistimed the turn and found themselves advancing without support on either flank. This was further exacerbated by the disruptive effect of three gullies running through their line of approach: Gully Ravine, Krithia Nullah and Achi Baba Nullah. For the most part, once they encountered opposition, any wheeling was forgotten and the ground the Turks occupied became the objective. Affecting everything was the bone-numbing exhaustion of the troops. The advance soon ground to a halt.
The Turkish opposition was also feeling the strain of the last three days. The remnants of the 26th Regiment were in the line alongside the 25th Regiment, who had come up from Serafim Farm. Most were worn out and some elements seem to have fallen back without much resistance as the British approached. Indeed, at one point the Turks were considering a full-scale retreat.
The Regimental Commander gave an order that withdrawal should take place to Soganlidere, but upon this I replied that we should gain time and that the slopes of Achi Baba were important. So he said that we should go together and tell this to the 25th Regimental Commander – and this we did. Just then the 9th Company from the reserve companies arrived. The enemy was then confronted with the 9th and 12th Companies who took up a position to the left, and the remains of the 10th and 11th Companies to the right – and his superior forces were stopped. This situation went on for 3 or 4 hours. Thus, although the second in command of the 10th Company and many of our men were put out of action, the enemy were prevented from taking a commanding bit of ground like the slopes of Achi Baba. Four hours later our left was extended and our line of battle was reinforced by the 19th Regiment of the 7th Division.3
Major Mahmut, 3rd Battalion, 26th Regiment, 9th Division, Fifth Army
It should be remembered that a tactical retreat was a feasible option, as the ground that lay between Achi Baba and Kilid Bahr was probably even better suited to defence. Yet Major Mahmut was surely right: Achi Baba was a valuable position, overlooking as it did the whole of Cape Helles, and as such it should be surrendered only as a last – and certainly not the first – resort. In the end the Turks held on to it long enough to break the will of the physically shattered troops before them.
As the British and French advance stuttered to a halt, one of the fresh Turkish battalions counter-attacked the French. They began to fall back and as the 88th Brigade conformed – a w
ord that hides a multitude of sins – many of the gains made at such effort were cast away. At the end of the day the front line stretched from Hill 236 straight across to a point about a quarter of a mile short of Y Beach. Casualties were high, the British losing 2,000 and the French around 1,000. The Turkish reserves had arrived and the road to Achi Baba was now firmly closed off; taking Kilid Bahr had always been a fantasy.
By the end of April the Turks had amassed a force of some twenty-one battalions, or 17,000 men, at Helles. According to the Turkish plan this should have been the moment to launch the counter-offensive to peremptorily eject the invaders from the Helles sector. This was indeed ordered by Enver on 30 April, but Liman was well aware that any daytime troop movements would expose his men to potentially damaging fire from the Allied ships that surrounded the tip of Helles. This meant that attacks had to be at night. That same evening the orders were passed on to Colonel von Sodenstern, commanding the Helles sector, for the 9th and 7th Divisions to attack that night. The Turkish tactics were extremely straightforward; they simply charged out of the night at 22.00 on 1 May.
They crept right up to our trenches, they were in thousands, and they made the night hideous with yells and shouting, ‘Allah, Allah!’ We could not help mowing them down. Some of them broke through in a part of our line but they never again got back as they were caught between the two lines of trenches. Some of the best men in the Regiment were killed. When the Turks got to close quarters the devils used hand grenades and you could only recognise our dead by their identity discs. My God, what a sight met us when day broke this morning. The whole ground in front was littered with dead Turks. To my left where the attack was strongest, I think there are at least 500 and there is no chance of burying them as anybody who shows themselves outside is bound to be brought down by one of their snipers.4
