1915: The Death of Innocence

by Lyn Macdonald

  I was put on as latrine orderly and we had to dig a trench for the latrine and you had to stand astride to do your business, and then you had to cover it with soil because the flies were, oh, dreadful! The latrine was like a hole in the ground. I had to cover it with a ground sheet pegged above the hole and at night if I struck a match to light a candle in the dark the ground sheet was just black with big flies, and when you were eating jam or biscuits you had to knock flies off to get them to your mouth. Most of us got dysentery. That was the biggest scourge we had on Gallipoli, dysentery and ill-health from lack of fresh water and lack of proper food. I got dysentery very badly. I hadn’t the strength to go up and down the cliff, across the ravine and up the hill to get to the Medical Officer (he was on the other side) and in the end I lost two or three stones. I was dreadful! I practically had to sleep alongside the latrines, my tummy had so much trouble.

  I used to go with an officer on observation post duty. We hadn’t trenches, we only had parapets built up with sandbags, and we were going up one day to the front line to do OP duty and he stopped to talk to somebody. We stopped about two minutes and that saved us from being blown to bits, because the Turks blew a mine just at the top of the ravine and when we got up there, there were infantrymen laying dead and badly wounded all over the place. A proper mess – and we should have been there if the officer hadn’t stopped. He was a ranker officer, and he seemed to sense that I was fed up with not being one of the gun crew and being sent on mucky jobs all the time, and he used to take me up to the OP when it was his turn to go. I loved it for all it was dangerous, because No Man’s Land was very short and you daren’t put your head above the sandbagged parapet, but to me it was what I joined up for – and that was to see action.

  With constant grappling between the lines there was plenty of action, but there was little progress and after the costly battles for Krithia the fighting had settled down to trench warfare. The troops were weak and debilitated, ammunition was scarce, and with no real prospect of advancing until more reinforcements arrived there was no alternative but to mark time, knowing that when the chance did come it would be harder than ever to break through. It was plain to see that the Turks were using the respite to dig more trenchsystems, to bring in more troops and to strengthen the defences. Since the guns were strictly forbidden to fire more than two rounds a day unless the Turks attacked, there was precious little that could be done to impede them.

  The French contingent, on the other hand, was well-off for ammunition and fresh stocks of high explosive shell were arriving regularly from France. The French had played a vital role. On 25 April their diversionary landing on the Asiatic shore had helped to confuse the Turks and appreciably assisted the landings on the peninsula. Now they had taken over the sector running north of Morto Bay where the toe of the peninsula turned into the Dardanelles and in a series of costly attacks between 21 and 25 June they had advanced their line and gained high ground which would give the allies a head start when the time came to push ahead towards the vital objectives of Krithia and Achi Baba. But there was still a huge stumbling block on the Aegean shore. It was Gully Ravine. And before there could be any thought of going further the situation there had to be resolved.

  Like all the soldiers of the 156th Infantry Brigade the Royal Scots were soft after weeks of inactivity on the journey. A few days after their arrival they were pushed into the reserve line to acclimatise, to become accustomed to shell-fire, to tone up flabby muscles and get back into shape. They dug communication trenches until they were sick of it and they were only too happy when the time came to march into action. They marched by a tortuous route over rough country to the high ground above Y beach.

  Behind the trenches steep cliffs led down to the beach. Inland, less than half a mile away, was Gully Ravine, a deep declivity two miles long, many metres wide and, in places, as much as a hundred feet deep. The British trenches bisected it half-way up its length and just above Y beach and to the north a network of enemy trenches formed a redoubt on the clifftops, spanned Gully Ravine and stretched away on the inland side as far as Krithia. Staring across at the bristling new defences it was difficult to believe that the landing at Y beach had been unopposed and that Colonel Matthews, commanding the Y beach force, had walked with his ADC to the outskirts of Krithia only a mile away. He had not been asked to capture it alone, though his troops might have easily done so. His orders had been to wait for the troops advancing from V beach and, when they reached him, to join in on the left of their advance and thus widen the front of the attack. Lacking any other orders, in the absence of any news, and with no message of any kind reaching him from higher authority, he dutifully went on waiting while his troops kicked their heels on the clifftops enjoying the pleasant spring sunshine and admiring the view. The Turks had ample time to muster and march to Y beach to oppose them. Much later Matthews was criticised for failing to act with initiative, but his orders had been explicit, and it had apparently occurred to no one to suggest how he should act if the troops at V beach failed to make headway.

  Directly across the peninsula at the northern tip of Morto Bay it had been the same story. The South Wales Borderers landed unmolested at S beach and they were waiting too. There were no Turkish troops within miles, and on 25 April the British troops at S beach and Y beach outnumbered by several times the entire Turkish force – only five battalions – in the sector south of Achi Baba. The two British contingents were just five miles apart on either side of the peninsula. They might easily have advanced and spread out to join hands across it, walked into Krithia and pushed on to Achi Baba. By cutting off the few Turkish troops who were so gallantly resisting at the beaches at Cape Helles they might very well have altered the course of the campaign.

  The day after the landing, when V beach was finally secured and the village of Sedd-el-Bahr was stormed and captured, a copy of a desperate message fell into British hands. It had been hastily scribbled by a junior Turkish officer and it reeked of panic:

  My Captain, either you must send up reinforcements and drive the enemy into the sea or let us evacuate this place because it is absolutely certain that they will land more troops tonight. Send doctors to carry off my wounded. Alas, alas my Captain, for God’s sake send me reinforcements because hundreds of soldiers are landing. Hurry up. What on earth will happen my Captain.

  But there were no reinforcements within reach to be sent. The following day, dazed and weakened by casualties, the remnants of the eight Turkish companies at V beach streamed away up the hill. There was no pursuit, for the landing force was too exhausted to do much more than consolidate hard-won positions and steel themselves to meet the counter-attacks they believed would surely be launched. But there were no counter-attacks at V beach or anywhere else, for the south of the peninsula was being evacuated. The night after the landings, under cover of darkness, the weary Turkish soldiers who had fought so hard to thwart the landing pulled back several miles to meet reinforcements from the north and, with Achi Baba behind them, they started digging a line of strong defences in front of Krithia.

  Recently they had been considerably strengthened and, by late June, a succession of strongly defended redoubts and trenches ran across the spur of land that dominated the beaches on the seaward side of Gully Ravine and across the ground on its inland side barring the road to Krithia. Unless they could be pushed off the cliffs, unless Gully Ravine could be captured, there was little hope of making progress towards Achi Baba, and no hope at all of linking up with the Anzacs, still battling it out on the heights above Anzac Cove. No one was under any illusion that the task would be easy.

  A less formidable series of unconnected trench-lines on the Krithia side of Gully Ravine might have presented a lesser problem had it not been for two difficulties. After the battles for Krithia men were scarce and guns and ammunition were scarcer still, and it was evident that the highest proportion of such resources as they had must be concentrated in the vital sector on Gully Spur where the 29th Division
were detailed to make the assault. No other troops could easily be spared to attack inland on their right, and if the assault of the 29th Division was widened, if they were thinned out to attack across both sectors on either side of the ravine, it was doubtful if they could possibly succeed.

  Sir Ian Hamilton was not anxious to commit the raw Territorials of 156th Brigade, but there was no one else and he was reluctantly forced to attach them to the 29th Division at the urgent request of its Commander. They would attack on the right of Gully Ravine. ‘If necessary’, a brigade of the 29th Division would support them. But, looking over General de Lisle’s dispositions for the battle, the Corps commander was worried. He was particularly unhappy with the arrangements for artillery support, for almost all the guns and ammunition were to be directed on the 29th Division sector. Only four batteries could be spared to assist the Royal Scots and their comrades in their first experience of battle. They could only hope for the best – but the Corps Commander was not alone in fearing the worst.

  A third of all the ammunition on the peninsula was allotted to the seventy-seven guns available for the bombardment and the guns of the big ships were to join in. It started at nine o’clock in the morning of 28 June and although most of it was concentrated on the far side of Gully Ravine the noise was thunderous. Huddled at the foot of the Royal Scots’ trench young Willie Begbie had never heard anything like it. When it lifted at eleven o’clock the infantry would go over the top, and he was not looking forward to it. They were all nervous.

  2nd Lt. D. Lyell, 7th Bn., Royal Scots (TF), 156 Brig.

  I was standing with my eye on my watch, and just on eleven o’clock I was about to give the word to advance when from the right I saw a movement, so I shouted ‘Come on,’ and over the parapet the whole company went like one man. We had about a hundred yards to go to the first trench to take that, and then about two hundred and fifty yards to the next one. As soon as we started the Turkish artillery opened on us – a perfect rain of shrapnel, and some machine-guns turned on us from somewhere. The chief thing I remember about the charge was the awful noise. The first trench took some taking. I know I loosed off all six chambers of my revolver! Then the Turks bolted and then we went to the second trench, still under this awful fire. The Turks didn’t wait for us there at all. They all flew!

  Pte. W. Begbie.

  On the signal to charge I caught hold of a root and started to pull myself up, but near the top the root came away in my hand and I fell back into the trench. Before the charge order came when I was lying in the bottom of the trench with the noise of the shells bursting and the machine-guns and rifles firing, the only place I did not want to go was over the parapet, but when I fell back the only place I didn’t want to be in was the trench when the rest of the company were shouting and charging over the top. I ran up the trench till I came to a firing step about two feet from the bottom of the trench so it was easier to climb over the parapet. When I got to my feet I remembered our instructions, so I kept yelling, rifle at the ready, and ran like hell into the enemy trench. Before I reached it I could see some Turks retreating to their next lines.

  In later years I have to smile when I think of that, a boy of sixteen, making a three-hundred-yard charge, all on his own! A little way to the west, on the seaward side of Gully Ravine where the 87th Brigade of the 29th Division dashed across at zero, there were five lines of well-fortified trenches to capture. Here where the bombardment was heaviest the results were everything they had hoped for. The trenches in places were devastated, there had been many casualties, and when the guns lifted and the 87th Brigade went ahead, the unfortunate Turks were too stupefied to make much of a stand. But the Turkish guns were firing back furiously now, and waiting in the reserve trenches with the Royal Munsters, although Captain Robert Laidlaw had been careful to warn his platoon to keep their heads well down, he set them a bad example. It was impossible to resist the foolhardy temptation to stand up to watch the show as the 87th Brigade dashed across to the first trench. He was still gazing fascinated when they reached the second and then, sweeping all before them, raced on to the third. He could hardly blame his men for doing the same thing. They were cheering like supporters at a football match. It was quite a sight.

  Capt. R. F. E. Laidlaw, 1st Bn., Royal Munster Fusiliers, 86th Brig., 29th Div.

  At 11.30 a.m. our passive role of reserves was finished and we were ordered forward to the lines of trenches already taken by the 87th Brigade. Our whole brigade went across the open in long lines of companies, each battalion in depth, one company following the one ahead as soon as it had gained the enemy trench. By this time the Turkish guns had our range to an inch and men were falling all round as we dashed across to the trenches. As we got into the third trench I lost my platoon and, unthinkingly, ran along the parapet amongst bullets and shells, looking for it. The men in the trench, who were mostly of the 87th Brigade, shouted at me ‘Get down you fool’ and, realising my stupidity, I jumped down and continued my search in the trench itself. What with Turkish dead and British dead and wounded, as well as the men on the firestep, it was pretty full, but I soon found my platoon, which had only had a few casualties.

  On the opposite side of Gully Ravine the Territorials were having a more difficult time. Their own sparse bombardment had had little effect on the enemy’s trenches for the few guns had not been allocated a single round of high explosive shell and shrapnel shells were a poor substitute. Although the Turks had abandoned their front line in the first rush, they were fighting back hard and their own guns were pouring fire on the ground between their trenches as the infantry tried to get across. It was their first experience of intense shell-fire and, in their first taste of battle, it was a gruelling ordeal. Only three subalterns and some eighty men of the 7th Royal Scots reached the second trench unwounded. On their right, the 8th Scottish Rifles had fared even worse, for they had been caught in a deadly rain of machine-gun fire. In a matter of minutes twenty-five of their twenty-six officers and four hundred of their men had been knocked out.

  Pte. W. Begbie.

  From the time we left our trench the enemy bombarded us with everything they had. After a short halt while the supporting waves closed up, we began to advance on the final objective. By this time the Turks had recovered from their panic and they delivered such terrific fire that our company fell in bundles. Halfway across Major Sandeman dropped and Captain Dawson and Lieutenant Thomson were killed as they neared their goal. By now men were falling on my left and right. I then felt as if a horse had kicked my right thigh. I fell and when I got up I had no feeling in my leg, so I fell again. When I felt where the pain was, I saw my hand was covered with blood. When I started to move I heard bullets striking the ground. I lay still. I didn’t feel very much pain, but the sun high in the sky threw down intense heat on the sand which was crawling with insects of every shape and size. The worst thing was the craving for water – mouths were so parched by heat and sand that tongues swelled.

  There was not a breath of wind. The heat was fierce and now, in the middle of the day, as the sun burned relentlessly in a cloudless sky and the troops sweated and panted with the heat of the action, it was almost insupportable. In some parts of the battlefield the ground itself took fire. The brittle bushes caught light, flames travelling from one to another crept across the earth, and men, too badly wounded to drag themselves away, panicked and screamed and died.

  By mid-afternoon the 29th Division had captured all the Turkish trenches to the west of Gully Ravine, and they were holding on – but only just. The first waves had lost so many, they were so thinly spread that, although they were toiling to consolidate as fast as weary men could in the terrible heat, the most critical hours of the battle were yet to come. The unremitting bombardment gave notice that the Turks had by no means given up. Even now they must be regrouping and, even now, reinforcements must be hurrying to their support. In a matter of hours they would counter-attack, and the attack would inevitably fall at the furthest point the Br
itish had reached. The trenches of the final objective were code-named J13 and there the tiny garrison of survivors was too meagre to withstand a determined onslaught. The J13 trenches ran across the cliff-top less than three-quarters of a mile from the starting point, but four rows of captured trenches lay across the rough ground between, and the Turkish guns were assiduously shelling. It would take hours for reinforcements to travel that short distance, and speed was of the essence. They were obliged to look for a short-cut.

  Lt. R. F. E. Laidlaw.

  We were to get out of the trench, cross Gully Ravine just ahead of us at a run, and then make our way by a path on to the cliffs where we were to turn right along a cliff path and then go on until we received further directions from Colonel Geddes the Commanding Officer. We rushed over the open, down into, then out of a very shallow gully ravine, and found ourselves on a narrow path half-way up the cliff, running along the coast above the beach. Reed’s platoon was winding its way ahead in single file and another platoon followed us close behind. The path was only wide enough to pass one man at a time. It wound its way along the cliffs, going down into ravines and up over humps, I could see the long line of men ahead and behind me and, out at sea and apparently only half a mile from the shore, a large warship moving slowly along the coast firing as she went. Round and round her chased four destroyers, each one firing as her guns were brought to bear on a target a mile or two ahead of us.

  Suddenly, as Reed’s platoon was negotiating a ravine just in front of me, a salvo of shells burst in the ravine. I saw Reed, tumbling over and over, go down the face of the bluff and then get caught in some bushes and lie still, while most of his men appeared to be hit. The call for stretcher-bearers went up and just then, another salvo of shells came over and exploded, so I halted my platoon on the edge of the ravine and told the men to lie down. The stretcher-bearers, who had miraculously appeared from nowhere, went by carrying Reed and the other casualties of his platoon, and Reed mustered a smile for me as he passed, though one of the bearers told me that his leg had been blown off at the knee. (I never saw him again, but heard later that he had survived.) The other casualties looked pretty bad.