Few things went right for the Anzacs. The evacuation of wounded held up the landing of soldiers. None arrived between 12.30 pm and 4 pm. An ‘absolute minimum’ of medical staff were on shore. There were so few stretchers that some stretcher-bearers had to piggy-back the wounded. Perhaps the shortage inspired John Simpson to use a donkey.
The landing of field guns was also delayed. Some mountain guns (the smallest artillery pieces used by the British army) were set up on 400 Plateau. Turks on Battleship Hill rained shrapnel on the guns. Blood flowed from the battery commander’s head as he ordered a retreat. The British naval gunners couldn’t fire because they didn’t know where the Anzacs were. At 6 pm on the first day, only one 18-pounder field gun was onshore.
The Turks held a psychological advantage. They dropped shells on the Anzac position from Scrubby Knoll, Gaba Tepe and a battery near Chunuk Bair. Yet the Australians had virtually no shells to fire back at them.
Signalling systems to British ships broke down. Messages from the front were lost or confused. A 3rd Battalion officer, desperate for a machine-gun, resorted to wrapping his message around a stone and throwing it to the rear. He was so short of ammunition that he stripped the bodies of his dead mates for cartridges.
Pleas for reinforcements came in from fronts on the left and right. Bridges sent a reserve battalion to the right front, on 400 Plateau, late in the afternoon. The left front would have to sort itself out. Bridges had no more men to send – they were still at sea. Bridges’ decision put Lieutenant Colonel G. F. Braund in a tight spot. Braund had given up the Nek when Turks rushed down the hill yelling ‘Allah’. Yet his men held on at Russell’s Top for the next three nights. Some historians say that their stand, alongside several New Zealand companies, saved the Anzac operation from buckling within hours.
The Anzac front-line gaped with holes – it was a series of shallow scrapes and rifle pits stretching from Walker’s Ridge in the north, to Bolton’s Ridge in the south. Plunging ravines were impossible to defend and Turks sneaked through the gaps on the first night. The entire front was about 2.5 kilometres long and about a kilometre from the Aegean Sea at Quinn’s Post, the innermost point. An Anzac commander called the position a ‘cheesebite out of the cliffs’.
The confusing terrain meant both armies missed chances to break through the enemy’s defences. The Anzacs held Lone Pine in the first few days but fell back when no reinforcements arrived. Concentrated Turkish attacks at Quinn’s Post or Russell’s Top would have overrun the Anzacs. Kemal attacked feverishly on the left of the Anzac front, but without a clear strategy. By the end of the first day, Turk casualties were said to be about 2000, or about one in three men.
At dusk on 25 April, Anzac looked like a cross between a shipwreck and a mining town. Troops scraped holes into the hillsides to fall into and sleep. Their dugouts looked like a cross between a grave and a cave. A few officers had biscuit boxes to sit on, and waterproof sheeting. The men on the front-line dug in the darkness. The Anzacs would live like rabbits for the next eight months. They would declare that the shovel was nearly as mighty as the rifle. The safest place was underground.
Dusk – Dawn, 25–26 April
Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett was a first-rate British journalist. He had stumbled into war zones since he was a teenager. He had built a fine career by reporting wars and cheating on his expenses. Ashmead-Bartlett’s logical mind and loud mouth offended some British officers. He got things right too often. As we will see later, he helped to ensure that the Gallipoli campaign was called off. Before that, he accidentally started the Anzac legend.
His first article on the landing was published in Australian newspapers on 8 May. He wrote what a fretful nation yearned to hear. The ‘raw colonial troops’ were worthy of fighting alongside Allied heroes on the Western Front. ‘Though many [Anzacs] were shot to bits, without hope of recovery, their cheers resounded through the night,’ he wrote. ‘They were happy because they knew they had been tried for the first time and not found wanting.’
People pasted the article in scrapbooks. Church ministers quoted it on Sundays. Between April and May, enlistments in Australia doubled, mainly because of exaggerated reports of glorious feats at Gallipoli. Reports from journalists in Athens suggested that the Allies were about to take the Dardanelles. No one at home knew that the Anzacs couldn’t even take the next hill.
Today, parts of Ashmead-Bartlett’s report on the landing sound absurd. He wrote a cooler account of events in his 1928 book, The Uncensored Dardanelles. In this, he wrote of landing at Anzac Cove at about 9.30 pm on 25 April.
[I] found myself in the semi-darkness amidst a scene of indescribable confusion. The beach was piled with ammunition and stores, hastily dumped from the lighters, among which lay the dead and wounded, and men so absolutely exhausted that they had fallen asleep in spite of the deafening noise of battle. In fact, it was impossible to distinguish between the living and the dead in the darkness. Through the gloom I saw the ghostlike silhouettes of groups of men wandering around in a continuous stream apparently going to, or returning from, the firing-line. On the hills above there raged an unceasing struggle lit up by the bursting shells, and the night air was humming with bullets like the droning of countless bees on a hot summer’s day.
When Ashmead-Bartlett landed, he was accused of being a spy, mainly because he was wearing a peculiar green hat. Jumpy officers considered shooting him.
Ashmead-Bartlett met Sir William Birdwood, the British cavalryman who commanded the Anzac corps. The general asked him to deliver an important message to Hamilton, who was at sea.
Birdwood’s note relayed reports from senior officers that men were dribbling back from the front-line. If Turkish shelling continued, 26 April could be a ‘fiasco’. ‘I know my representation is most serious but if we are to re-embark it must be done at once,’ Birdwood wrote.
Birdwood asked Hamilton whether Anzac forces should be evacuated. He himself was shocked by the thought. But his subordinates, Bridges and Major General Alexander John Godley, the Englishman commanding the second Division, told him that front-line outposts needed more men and more artillery. Without these, was there much point in trying to hang on?
Horses, Mules and Donkeys
Nearly 8000 horses sailed from Australia with the first convoy in November 1914. Despite a six-week voyage in confined conditions, only 3 per cent died on the journey, not the expected 15–20 per cent. Some of the horses accompanied the troops to Anzac in April. But when the Australians did not advance as expected, very few horses were landed – they were unsuited to Gallipoli’s harsh terrain. Most horses were returned to Egypt in early May.
Mules and donkeys were bought in Middle Eastern ports before the landing at Anzac. They were used to move supplies and ammunition and, occasionally, to ferry the wounded to the beach. They were in constant danger of death and injury from shellfire. In early May, one heavy bombardment on the beach killed thirty-four mules and fourteen horses. General Birdwood then ordered that supplies from the beach were only to be carried during the night.
The Anzacs were exhausted after their first day of war. Many were brave, but many more were just confused. They still had much to learn. Some left the front-line to bring down their wounded mates. Others stayed at the front and endured a long night shooting at shadows.
Hamilton was asleep when Birdwood’s note was delivered to him on the Queen Elizabeth. He wore pyjamas as he consulted his staff. They told him an evacuation might take three days. Hamilton didn’t want to think too much about failure at Anzac. There was enough trouble with the British landings down south, at Cape Helles.
Hamilton suspected that he lacked the men or artillery to force the peninsula. But he was also a hopeless optimist. He sent Birdwood a cheery response. ‘You have got through the difficult business, now you only have to dig, dig, dig, until you are safe,’ he wrote.
26–28 April
Oliver and Joe Cumberland were in the 2nd Battalion, led by Lieutenant Colonel Bra
und. They charged up Walker’s Ridge on 25 April and lay low in the cover of prickly dwarf oak. Oliver was shot. He told his sister he was charging a hill with his bayonet when a bullet ripped into his hip and grazed the bone.
On 8 May, recovering in a Cairo hospital, Oliver wrote: ‘Una I don’t know how Joe is at present, but he was not hurt when I left the field . . . Well dear Una don’t worry . . . everything will come right in the end. The Turks are going to be smashed this time and it won’t take long either.’
Oliver didn’t know that Joe was already dead. We can only guess at Joe’s whereabouts when he was wounded. All we know for sure is that the 21-year-old train driver was shot before 1 May.
Still in Egypt, Oliver found out about Joe’s death, in late May: ‘poor Joe is gone – he died of wounds in Alexandria hospital on fifth of May,’ he wrote to his sister.
I did not know until yesterday, I went to headquarters offices in Cairo and saw the list of killed and wounded. I had been very anxious wondering where he was, and when I saw the list I did not know what to do. I wandered about the streets nearly mad, I felt so lonely.
Joe might have been shot in Kemal’s counter-attack of 27 April. The Australians had been expecting a rush since the grey morning of 26 April. Both sides were still making basic mistakes. On the second morning, the Anzacs advanced once again to the right, even though no advance had been ordered. Kemal had new troops to throw at the Anzacs. The Turkish commander issued a statement to his troops: all those not prepared to die would be shot.
Six lines of Turks rushed down Battleship Hill, like ‘ants on a disturbed nest’. The navy guns opened up and the attack was stalled. The Turks charged with bugles and bombs after dark, from Russell’s Top to 400 Plateau. Machine-guns mowed them down. Eight Anzacs in a forward trench near Quinn’s Post fired until their rifles were almost too hot to handle. They stopped a Turkish charge of 300 men. Ivor Margetts was under attack at Wire Gully. Near dawn, he fell asleep standing up. He still had his revolver in his hand.
Braund cried at the 2nd Battalion’s roll-call after his men were relieved for the first time, on 28 April. Of the 968 who landed on 25 April, 450 of his men were now dead, wounded or missing. The 1st Australian Division had suffered one-in-three casualties. Of 5000 lost, only one soldier was taken prisoner. In the first days, both Anzacs and Turks killed many who surrendered.
Shell-shocked Anzac troops trudged back to the beach. Bean described them as ‘tired children’. They fell asleep with food uneaten in their hands. Bean wrote: ‘Bearded, ragged at knees and elbows, their puttees often left in the scrub, dull-eyed, many with blood on cheeks and clothes, and with a dirty field dressing round arm or wrist, they were far fiercer than Turks to look upon.’
In Margetts’ battalion, only six of the thirty officers who landed remained.
For my own part I had no overcoat, my trousers were torn in ribbons, and my boots were laden with mud, but, nevertheless, dirty, weary and cold though we were, we had the satisfaction of knowing we had done what was asked of us. It was almost pathetic to see how one man would greet a pal who had been separated from him in the fight and whom he thought was either wounded or killed.
Braund liked to take short cuts through the scrub. An Anzac sentry shouted for Braund to identify himself six nights later. Braund was slightly deaf and did not hear him. The sentry shot him dead.
CHAPTER SIX
Life at Anzac
Sir Ian Hamilton marvelled at the spectacle when he landed at Anzac Cove for the first time, on 29 April. The cliffs looked too steep to climb, except that the cliff faces were ‘pock-marked with caves like large sand-martin holes’. Swarms of bullets sang through the air and plopped into the sea. About 500 naked Anzacs swam and shouted and splashed. They did not seem to notice the bullets at all.
The behaviour of the Anzacs was considered peculiar from the first day. They fought well, but they were casual about protocol behind the front-line. The Australians delighted in embarrassing senior officers. Visiting British officers frowned when Anzacs failed to salute them. Even the New Zealanders thought the Australians slovenly. Colonel William Malone, of the Wellington Battalion, couldn’t wait to be moved away from them. ‘They are like masterless men going their own ways,’ he said.
The Anzacs used swear words as verbs, nouns and adjectives. Colloquialisms sprung up, such as ‘dead-meat ticket’ for an identity disc. Commander Charles Dix, who was in charge of landing the boats on 25 April, was widely known by Australians as that ‘f–ing old bastard Neptune’. The Turks heard the word ‘bastard’ yelled so often, they assumed ‘bastard’ must be an Australian god.
Anzacs continued to lug water and ammunition as shrapnel pinged into piles of kerosene tins on the beach. Stretcher-bearers didn’t slow for shrapnel storms. They rinsed their stretchers in the sea, then rushed off for the next bloodied soldier. No one took much notice of a cheery bloke with a cigarette hanging from the side of his mouth. Years later, at least a few Anzacs told fibs about their fine ‘friend’, Simpson.
A British officer described the Anzac attitude as ‘absolute madness’. The Anzacs noted gory deaths in their diaries as everyday events. Sergeant Cyril Lawrence, an Australian engineer, was horrified when he saw a man’s stomach blown out. Later, he saw worse and felt less. ‘We received the same old shells today,’ he wrote on 25 June. ‘Russ and I went down to have a swim, and they opened up. It is marvellous how accurately they can place their shells. The first one got eighteen men. I must go down after dark.’
Colonel John Monash arrived with the Australian 4th Brigade early on 26 April to command at the hottest area of fighting, the rim of Monash Valley. He was struck by shrapnel as he collected his men but was unhurt. Monash was forty-nine and overweight, a society figure in Melbourne and a student of Napoleon’s battles. He was an engineer who labored over details. He also had university degrees in arts and law. During lulls at Gallipoli, he played chess.
Monash saw order where others saw chaos. Latrines were yet to be set up. The unburied dead stank in front of the Anzac trenches. Ammunition-carriers, telephonists, digging parties, grave parties and periscope-hands ran about the place. ‘Yet everything works as smoothly as on a peace parade, although the air is thick with clamour and bullets and bursting shells and bombs and flares,’ Monash wrote.
The noises never stopped. Bangs, pops, fizzes and rattles. After a few weeks at Gallipoli, Monash and his men argued over the longest period of silence. Most felt ten seconds was the longest period. One man swore he’d counted fourteen seconds, but no one believed him. ‘We are all of us certain that we shall no longer be able to sleep amid perfect quiet, and the only way to induce sleep will be to get someone to rattle an empty tin outside one’s bedroom door,’ Monash wrote.
Nurses
Hundreds of Australian nurses served overseas during the Gallipoli campaign, working in hospitals and on the hospital ships. Twenty-five of these nurses sailed with the first convoy in November 1914.
The women worked in horrific conditions. Hospitals were overcrowded. Men arrived with wounds that had been left untreated for days. One nurse on a hospital ship recorded, ‘On some trips . . . we did at least 20 hours a day. I have found patients dead, perhaps for quite a time undiscovered.’
On the island of Lemnos, nurses ran short of water and tore up their clothes for bandages. In a diary entry dated 11 August 1915, Miss Grace Wilson, matron of the Lemnos hospital, describes the arrival of 400 soldiers to the island: ‘Just lay the men on the ground and gave them a drink. Very many badly shattered . . . All we can do is feed them and dress their wounds . . . A good many died . . . could only wish all I know to be killed outright.’ Ten days before, Wilson had learned of the death of one of her brothers, at Quinn’s Post.
Night, 2 May
Hamilton’s invasions at Anzac and Helles had stalled. The Anzacs were locked up in a fortress of gullies and cliffs. They dug trenches less than 1.5 kilometres from where they’d landed. Constantinople may as well hav
e been on Mars. No longer did Anzacs lay bets on a likely arrival date. Even the first-day objectives looked impossible to take.
Lieutenant General Birdwood wanted to break the Anzac siege by recapturing Baby 700. Monash protested that the orders were half-baked but Major General Godley over-ruled him. Godley was from the English world of hunt-clubs and polo – the world of privilege. In 1915, such pursuits counted as credentials. Monash was only a civilian soldier.
Godley launched frontal charges from Russell’s Top, Pope’s Hill and Quinn’s Post on 2 May. The attacks were supposed to be co-ordinated across the line but Godley’s planning was shoddy. Troops charged in small groups after they had bunched up in Monash Valley and Shrapnel Gully.
A bombardment before the charges warned the Turks that the Anzacs were about to charge. Machine-gun fire ripped into the Anzacs as star shells burst overhead. Waiting Anzacs sang ‘Tipperary’ and ‘Australia Will Be There’. Their cheers died out after about half an hour. New Zealanders who followed them fell dead two or three steps from the parapet.
Some troops scrambled about 100 metres and started digging in at a maze of Turk trenches known as the Chessboard. By dawn they had been killed or forced back. British marines captured a ridge but were shot down when they reached its crest. Their bodies lay for days like ‘ants shrivelled by a fire’, until a marine climbed up after dark to kick them into the valley. The ridge became known as Dead Man’s Ridge.
Monash had about 4000 soldiers under him when he landed on 26 April. Eight days later he had 1770. In his official report, Godley dressed up the assault as something grand. No ground had been gained. About 1000 Allied troops were killed or wounded. But Godley said the operation was ‘very valuable in demonstrating to [the Turks] that our force was capable of determined offensive effort’.
The Gallipoli Story Page 4