John Masefield’s Great War: Collected Works

by Philip Errington

  They held on for the next five days and nights, till Lone Pine was ours past question. For those five days and nights the fight for Lone Pine was one long personal scrimmage in the midst of explosion. For those five days and nights the Australians lived and ate and slept in that gallery of the mine of death, in a half-darkness lit by great glares, in filth, heat, and corpses, among rotting and dying and mutilated men, with death blasting at the doors only a few feet away, and intense and bloody fighting, hand to hand, with bombs, bayonets, and knives, for hours together by night and day. When the Turks gave up the struggle, the dead were five to the yard in that line of works; they were heaped in a kind of double wall all along the sides of the trench. Most of them were bodies of Turks, but among them were one-quarter of the total force which ran out from the Pimple on the evening of the 6th.

  Like the fight for the vineyard near Krithia, this fight for Lone Pine kept large numbers of Turks from the vital part of the battlefield.

  When the sun set upon this battle at Lone Pine on that first evening of the 6th of August, many thousands of brave men fell in for the main battle, which was to strew their glorious bodies in the chasms of the Sari Bair, where none but the crows would ever find them. They fell in at the appointed places in four columns, two to guard the flanks, two to attack. One attacking column, guarded and helped by the column on its right, was to move up the Chailak and Sazli Beit Deres to the storm of Chunuk Bair; the other attacking column, guarded and helped by the column on its left, was to move up the Aghyl Dere to the storm of Sari’s peak of Koja Chemen Tepe. The outermost (left) guarding column (though it did not know it) was to link up with the force soon to land at Suvla.

  They were going upon a night attack in a country known to be a wilderness, with neither water nor way in it. They had neither light nor guide, nor any exact knowledge of where the darkness would burst into a blaze from the Turk fire. Many armies have gone out into the darkness of a night adventure, but what army has gone out like this, from the hiding-places on a beach to the heart of unknown hills, to wander up crags under fire, to storm a fortress in the dawn? Even in Manchuria there were roads and the traces and the comforts of man. In this savagery there was nothing but the certainty of desolation, where the wounded would lie until they died and the dead be never buried.

  Until this campaign the storm of Badajos was the most desperate duty ever given to British soldiers. The men in the forlorn hope of that storm marched to their position to the sound of fifes, “which filled the heart with a melting sweetness,” and tuned that rough company to a kind of sacred devotion. No music played away the brave men from Anzac. They answered to their names in the dark, and moved off to take position for what they had to do. Men of many races were banded together there. There were Australians, English, Indians, Maoris and New Zealanders, made one by devotion to a cause, and all willing to die that so their comrades might see the dawn make a steel streak of the Hellespont from the peaked hill now black against the stars. Soon they had turned their backs on friendly little Anzac and the lights in the gullies, and were stepping out with the sea upon their left and the hills of their destiny upon their right, and the shells, star-lights, and battle of Lone Pine far away behind them. Before 9 p.m. the right covering column (of New Zealanders) was in position, ready to open up the Sazli Beit and Chailak Deres to their brothers, who were to storm Chunuk. Half an hour later, cunningly backed by the guns of the destroyer Colne, they rushed the Turk position, routed the garrison and its supports, and took the fort known as Old No. 3 Post. It was an immensely strong position, protected by barbed wire, shielded by shell-proof head-cover, and mined in front “with twenty-eight mines electrically connected to a first-rate firing apparatus within.” Sed nisi Dominus.

  This success opened up the Sazli Dere for nearly half of its length.

  Inland from Old No. 3 Post, and some seven hundred yards from it, is a crag or precipice which looks like a round table, with a top projecting beyond its legs. This crag, known to our men as Table-Top, is a hill which few would climb for pleasure. Nearly all the last one hundred feet of the peak is precipice, such as no mountaineer would willingly climb without clear daylight and every possible precaution. It is a sort of skull of rock fallen down upon its body of rock, and the great rocky ribs heave out with gullies between them. The Table-Top, or plateau summit, was strongly entrenched and held by the Turks, whose communication trenches ran down the back of the hill to Rhododendron Spur.

  While their comrades were rushing Old No. 3 Post, a party of New Zealanders marched to storm this natural fortress. The muscular part of the feat may be likened to the climbing of the Welsh Glyddyrs, the Irish Lurig, or the craggier parts of the American Palisades, in a moonless midnight, under a load of not less than thirty pounds. But the muscular effort was made much greater by the roughness of the unknown approaches, which led over glidders of loose stones into the densest of short, thick, intensely thorny scrub. The New Zealanders advanced under fire through this scrub, went up the rocks in a spirit which no crag could daunt, reached the Table-Top, rushed the Turk trenches, killed some Turks of the garrison, and captured the rest with all their stores.

  This success opened up the remainder of the Sazli Beit Dere.

  While these attacks were progressing, the remainder of the right covering column marched north to the Chailak Dere. A large body crossed this Dere and marched on, but the rest turned up the Dere, and soon came to a barbed wire entanglement which blocked the ravine. They had met the Turks’ barbed wire before, on Anzac Day, and had won through it; but this wire in the Dere was new to their experience: it was meant rather as a permanent work than as an obstruction. It was secured to great balks or blinders of pine, six or eight feet high, which stood in a rank twenty or thirty deep right across the ravine. The wire, which crossed and criss-crossed between these balks, was as thick as a man’s thumb and profusely barbed. Beyond it lay a flanking trench, held by a strong outpost of Turks, who at once opened fire. This, though not unexpected, was a difficult barrier to come upon in the darkness of a summer night, and here, as before, at the landing of the Worcester Regiment at W beach, men went forward quietly, without weapons, to cut the wire for the others. They were shot down, but others took their places, though the Turks, thirty steps away on the other side of the gully, had only to hold their rifles steady and pull their triggers to destroy them. This holding up in the darkness by an unseen hidden enemy and an obstacle which needed high-explosive shell in quantity caused heavy loss and great delay. For a time there was no getting through; but then, with the most desperate courage and devotion, a party of Engineers cleared the obstacle, the Turks were routed, and a path made for the attackers.

  This success opened up the mouth of the Chailak Dere.

  Meanwhile those who had marched across this Dere and gone on towards Suvla swung round to the right to clear the Turks from Bauchop’s Hill, which overlooks the Chailak Dere from the north. Bauchop’s Hill (a rough country even for Gallipoli) is cleft by not less than twenty great gullies, most of them forked, precipitous, overgrown, and heaped with rocks. The New Zealanders scrambled up it from the north, got into a maze of trenches, not strongly held, beat the Turks out of them, wandered south across the neck or ridge of the hill, discovering Turk trenches by their fire, and at last secured the whole hill.

  This success, besides securing the Chailak Dere from any assault from the north, secured the south flank of the Aghyl Dere beyond it.

  Meanwhile the left covering column (mainly Welshmen), which for some time had halted at Old No. 3 Post, waiting for the sound of battle to tell them that the Turks on Bauchop’s Hill were engaged, marched boldly on the Aghyl Dere, crossed it in a rush, taking every Turk trench in the way, then stormed the Turk outpost on Damakjelik Bair, going on from trench to trench in the dark, guided by the flashes of the rifles, till the whole hill was theirs. This success opened up the Aghyl Dere to the attacking column.

  As the troops drew their breath in the still night on the
little hill which they had won, they heard about three miles away a noise of battle on the sea coast to their left. This noise was not the nightly “hate” of the monitors and destroyers, but an irregular and growing rifle fire. This, though they did not know it, was the beginning of the landing of the new divisions, with their 30,000 men, at Suvla Bay.

  For the moment, Suvla was not the important point in the battle. The three Deres were the important points, for up the three Deres, now cleared of Turks, our attacking columns were advancing to the assault.

  By this time, however, the Turks were roused throughout their line. All the Anzac position from Tasmania Post to Table-Top was a blaze of battle to contain them before our trenches; but they knew now that their right was threatened, and their reserves were hurrying out to meet us before we had gained the crests. Our right attacking column (of English and New Zealand troops) went up the Sazli Beit and Chailak Deres, deployed beyond Table-Top, and stormed Rhododendron Spur, fighting for their lives every inch of the way. The left column (mainly Indians and Australians) pressed up the Aghyl, into the stony clefts of its upper forks, and so, by rock, jungle, heart-breaking cliff and fissure, to the attack of Hill Q and the lower slopes of Sari. They, too, were fighting for their lives. Their advance was across a scrub peopled now by little clumps of marksmen firing from hiding. When they deployed out of the Deres, to take up their line of battle, they linked up with the right assaulting column, and formed with them a front of about a mile, stretching from the old Anzac position to within a mile of the crests which were the prize. By this time the night was over, day was breaking, the Turks were in force, and our attacking columns much exhausted, but there was still breath for a last effort. Now, with the breath, came a quick encouragement, for looking down from their hillsides, they could see Suvla Bay full of ships, the moving marks of boats, dotted specks of men on the sand-hills, and more ships on the sea marching like chariots to the cannon. In a flash, as happens when many minds are tense together, they realized the truth. A new landing was being made. All along the coast by the Bay the crackle and the flash of firing was moving from the sea, to show them that the landing was made good, and that the Turks were falling back. Hardening their hearts at this sight of help coming from the sea, the Australians and Sikhs, with the last of their strength, went at Koja Chemen Tepe, and the New Zealanders upon their right rose to the storm of Chunuk.

  It was not to be. The guns behind them backed them. They did what mortal men could do, but they were worn out by the night’s advance; they could not carry the two summits. They tried a second time to carry Chunuk; but they were too weary and the Turks in too great strength: they could not get to the top. But they held to what they had won; they entrenched themselves on the new line, and there they stayed, making ready for the next attack.

  Two or three have said to me: “They ought not to have been exhausted; none of them had marched five miles.” It is difficult to answer such critics patiently, doubly difficult to persuade them, without showing them the five miles. There comes into my mind, as I write, the image of some hills in the West of Ireland, a graceful and austere range, not difficult to climb, seemingly, and not unlike these Gallipoli hills, in their look of lying down at rest. The way to those hills is over some miles of scattered limestone blocks, with gaps between them full of scrub, gorse, heather, dwarf-ash, and little hill-thorn, and the traveller proceeds, as the devil went through Athlone, “in standing lepps.” This journey to the hills is the likest journey (known to me) to that of the assaulting columns. Like the devil in Athlone, the assaulting columns had often to advance “in standing lepps,” but to them the standing lepp came as a solace, a rare, strange, and blessed respite, from forcing through scrub by main strength, or scaling a crag of rotten sandstone, in pitch-darkness, in the presence of an enemy. For an armed force to advance a mile an hour by day over such a country is not only good going, but a great achievement; to advance four miles in a night over such a country, fighting literally all the way, often hand to hand, and to feel the enemy’s resistance stiffening and his reserves arriving as the strength fails and the ascent steepens, and yet to make an effort at the end, is a thing unknown in the history of war. And this first fourteen hours of exhausting physical labour was but the beginning. The troops, as they very well-knew, were to have two or three days more of the same toil before the battle could be ended, one way or the other. So after struggling for fourteen hours with every muscle in their bodies, over crags and down gullies in the never-ceasing peril of death, they halted in the blaze of noon and drew their breath. In the evening, as they hoped, the men from Suvla would join hands and go on to victory with them; they had fought the first stage of the battle, the next stage was to be decisive.

  The heat of this noon of the 7th of August on those sandy hills was a scarcely bearable torment.

  Meanwhile at Suvla, the left of the battle, the 11th Division had landed in the pitch-darkness, by wading ashore, in five feet of water, under rifle fire, onto beaches prepared with land mines. The first boat-loads lost many men from the mines and from the fire of snipers, who came right down to the beach in the darkness, and fired from the midst of our men. These snipers were soon bayoneted; our men formed for the assault in the dark, and stormed the Turk outpost on Lala Baba there and then. While Lala Baba was being cleared, other battalions moved north to clear the Turks from the neighbourhood of the beach on that side. The ground over which they had to move is a sand-dune land, covered with gorse and other scrub, most difficult to advance across in a wide extension. About half a mile from the beach the ground rises in a roll or whale-back, known on the battle plans as Hill 10. This hill is about three hundred yards long and thirty feet high. At this whale-back (which was entrenched) the Turks rallied on their supports; they had, perhaps, a couple of thousand men and (some say) a gun or two, and the dawn broke before they could be rushed. Their first shells upon our men set fire to the gorse, so that our advance against them was through a blazing common, in which many men who fell wounded were burnt to death or suffocated. The Turks, seeing the difficulties of the men in the fire, charged with the bayonet, but were themselves charged and driven back in great disorder; the fire spread to their hill, and burned them out of it. Our men then began to drive the Turks away from the high ridges to the north of Suvla. The 10th Division began to land while this fight was still in progress.

  This early fighting had won for us a landing-place at Suvla, and had cleared the ground to the north of the Bay for the deployment for the next attack. This was to be a swinging round of two brigades to the storm of the hills directly to the east of the Salt Lake. These hills are the islandlike, double-peaked Chocolate Hill (close to the Lake), and the much higher and more important hills of Scimitar Hill (or Hill 70) and Ismail Oglu Tepe (Hill 100) behind it. The brigade chosen for this attack were the 31st (consisting of Irish Regiments) belonging to the 10th Division, and the 32nd (consisting of Yorkshire and North of England Regiments) belonging to the 11th Division. The 32nd had been hotly engaged since the very early morning, the 31st were only just on shore. The storm was to be pushed from the north, and would, if successful, clear the way for the final thrust, the storm of Koja Chemen Tepe from the north-west.