The Battles of Krithia, 6–8 May
Walter McNicoll, the Geelong teacher and father of five, finally rested on the night of 28 April. He had spent hours chasing up the troops who advanced without orders on 26 April. Some of them didn’t want to come back. Then the Turks counter-attacked the next morning. By the time McNicoll lay down on his greatcoat, more than 40 per cent of his 6th Battalion troops were listed as casualties. He woke to find himself lying in a puddle. He was too tired to care.
The 6th Battalion had been relieved by British marines. The marines were young and afraid. They huddled in small groups and fired aimlessly. McNicoll was called back to the front-line because the marines had ‘the jumps’. He chatted with the marine battalion’s commander, Lieutenant Colonel Bendyshe. A marine began to stare at him.
McNicoll was unshaven and dirty. His tunic was torn, his face tanned. The marine decided McNicoll was a Turkish spy. The marine straightened, raised his rifle and fired at McNicoll. The bullet missed the Australian and killed Bendyshe. Chaos broke out. Shots were fired and McNicoll cut his hand fending off a bayonet. He was tied up, searched, blindfolded and marched away under armed guard. One of McNicoll’s officers had to rescue him. Birdwood visited McNicoll the next morning to congratulate him on his lucky ‘escape’ from the British.
McNicoll was back fighting the real enemy a week later. The 6th Battalion, as part of the 2nd Brigade, was sent south to help the British break the siege at Helles. The British wanted to capture Achi Baba, a hill they mistakenly believed looked over the forts on the Dardanelles. Just below Achi Baba stood the Turkish village of Krithia.
The British commander at Helles, Lieutenant General Sir Aylmer Hunter-Weston, failed badly in the First Battle of Krithia, on 28 April. He didn’t know what was happening and neither did his troops. Hunter-Weston was a product of the British class system, which saw men of limited ability, but the ‘right’ social background, being promoted far beyond the reach of their talents. He may have been a career army commander but his planning was invariably sloppy. He had a bushy moustache and an off-handed manner. A few months into the Gallipoli campaign, someone asked him about casualties. ‘Casualties?’ Hunter-Weston snarled. ‘What do I care for casualties?’
Hamilton wanted what would become known as the Second Battle of Krithia to begin before dawn. Hunter-Weston preferred to attack during the day. Hamilton deferred to his subordinate.
The battle ran for three days, from 6 May. The Allies suffered more than 6000 casualties. They advanced about 550 metres. Hunter-Weston’s battle plans failed, but he stuck with them day after day.
Anzac troops, as well as British and French (the latter wore white helmets and blue tunics, and charged with drums and bugles), fought in this battle. Late in the afternoon of 8 May, McNicoll and the Australian 2nd Brigade rushed through Turkish fire to what was named the Tommies’ Trench, which ran across a low plain cracked with wide gullies.
McNicoll jumped up on the parapet to lead his men on. He suddenly slumped against a tree stump, as if breathless.
‘Are you hit?’ asked someone.
‘Oh yes, but I think it’s slight,’ McNicoll replied.
McNicoll had a shoulder wound but he ignored it. He blew his whistle and waved his arm for his men to follow. Turkish machine-guns peppered the troops from all sides. Bullets and shrapnel kicked up clouds of dust. The Anzacs couldn’t see ahead but they kept running anyway.
A British major described the Turkish fire as one great concentration of hell:
The machine guns bellowed and poured on them sheets of flame and of ragged death, buried them alive. They were disembowelled. Their clothing caught fire, and their flesh hissed and cooked before the burning rags could be torn off or beaten out . . . Not for one breath did the great line waver or break. On and up it went, up and on, as steady and proud as if on parade.
McNicoll was shot again about 230 metres out from the Tommies’ Trench. The bullet entered his abdomen and travelled downwards to lodge at the top of his right thigh bone. He was one of 1000 men to fall in his brigade in little more than an hour.
In 1915, wounds such as McNicoll’s were usually fatal. The cries of the wounded echoed as darkness fell. ‘Many men had been hit before reaching the Tommies’ Trench, and the calls of these, whenever they heard the voices or feet of passing men, naturally first attracted the bearers,’ Charles Bean wrote. ‘Meanwhile for 500 yards in front of that trench the wounded were lying far more thickly.’
Bean couldn’t leave the wounded to die. The journalist dragged in a soldier unable to crawl. He was then asked to take a message ahead. He’d crept about 200 metres when a cheerful voice called: ‘Hullo, old man; you up here?’ It was McNicoll. Bean coaxed two stretcher-bearers to help him carry McNicoll to safety. The bullet was later removed in a London hospital. When McNicoll awoke from surgery, the first thing he saw was the bullet wrapped in ribbon and hanging from the bedpost.
Bean journeyed back and forth among the wounded. He placed packs to shield them. They begged him for a sip of water. He gave a morphia lozenge to an Anzac shot through the intestines. For his seventh trip, he filled a petrol tin with water and offered sips around.
No dressing stations had been set up. Stretcher-bearers had to carry the wounded all the way to the beach. Those who survived the night on the battlefield mostly died soon after dawn. Bean was furious with the ‘dull, stupid, cruel, bungling that was mismanaging the medical arrangements’.
The battle at Krithia was pointless. The Australian 2nd Brigade suffered more than one-in-three casualties. In the 6th Battalion, Major Bennett was the only combat officer who could still walk. Bean was recommended for a Military Cross. But his honorary rank of captain meant he could not receive bravery awards. Bean later wrote that he hadn’t been brave. He simply could not stand by and do nothing.
Music for their Ears
General Godley, Commander of the NZ & Australian Division, enjoyed music, and insisted that army bands be brought over to Gallipoli. He felt that music would lift the spirits of the troops. A band would sit on a sheltered ledge of Chailak Dere and play for the pleasure of anyone passing by. At first the music was greeted with an outburst of fire from the enemy trenches, but the fire soon stopped. It seems it was a relief to the war-torn Turks too.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A Private and a General
Australian troops tensed up when the Australian 1st Division commander, General William Bridges, visited the front-line. He bullied soldiers with gruff orders, but that’s not why troops became scared. Bridges acted as though bullets bounced off him. He stood where Turkish snipers could see him. He mocked those who hid when shells blew craters in the ground. On 26 April, Bridges stood on the skyline and snarled at McNicoll about the state of the trenches at Bolton’s Ridge – they weren’t deep enough.
‘For goodness sake come down here sir,’ a voice said. ‘You’ll be hit for certain.’
‘Be damned,’ Bridges barked back.
Bridges’ staff officers warned him again and again. The inevitable happened. Bridges was shot on 15 May while walking through Monash Valley.
Sandbags were piled thickly at several spots in the valley. Screens of brushwood were set up. But Turkish snipers still found ways to fell up to twenty Anzacs a morning. Bridges lit a cigarette below Steele’s Post and dashed from a wall of sandbags. The bullet struck two main blood vessels in his thigh. A nearby doctor clamped the artery and vein seconds before Bridges would have bled to death.
There were no blood transfusions in 1915 and no penicillin to treat infection. Wounds relatively easy to treat today were deadly then. Bridges’ leg needed to be amputated but doctors thought the operation would kill him. Gangrene set in, turning the wound black and stinking. Bridges died of infection on 18 May. His body was shipped home to Australia. So too was Sandy, the horse he’d left behind in Egypt. Bridges’ was the only Anzac body brought home. Of 121000 horses sent overseas, Sandy is thought to be the only one to come home.
Newspapers devoted thousands of words to Bridges’ death. A British officer was telling three Anzac troops that Bridges had been given a knighthood when one of the Australians chimed in: ‘Have they? Well, that won’t do him much good where he is now, will it, mate?’
The day after Bridges died, a short Englishman with blue eyes and stick-out ears led a donkey up Shrapnel Gully. John Simpson Kirkpatrick, of the 3rd Field Ambulance, had missed out on breakfast that morning, but he wasn’t too fussed. ‘Never mind,’ he said in a thick brogue. ‘Get me a good dinner when I come back.’
Simpson never came back. He was hit in the heart, either by a bullet or shrapnel, and died close to the spot where Bridges was shot. In twenty-four days, Simpson had brought in about 300 soldiers, most of them with leg wounds. He was a lively soul and he was brave, although many Anzacs matched that description in those first weeks. He whistled and sang. No one told him to use a donkey. He just went and did it.
The men called him Simmo, Simmie, Murphy and Scotty, but few knew him well. His donkey had more than one name, too – including Duffy, Murphy and Abdul – though he may have used more than one. It’s said that Simpson spoke to his donkey in a mixture of Arabic swear words and Australian slang.
Few Anzacs mentioned Simpson’s death at the time, although Colonel Monash wrote that Simpson’s rescues earned the admiration of everyone at the upper end of Monash Valley. In life, Simpson was a nobody. It was two months after his death before Australia heard about him. Soon Simpson would be better remembered than Bridges, even though Simpson was a private and Bridges a general.
Simpson’s tale took off with the public back home. It was an affecting story. Simpson was a Christ-like figure. He didn’t kill anyone. He helped the weak. Recruiters used Simpson’s story to encourage men to enlist. A film was made about him. Statues were built. There were poems and postage stamps. A few Anzacs rewrote their diaries to say they had met him. If Simpson’s name became famous at Gallipoli, it was likely men heard about him in letters from home.
Now, every Australian schoolchild learns Simpson’s story. Virtually all visitors to Gallipoli see his headstone at Beach Cemetery. It lies near the entrance and is often covered with flowers. There is always dirt rubbed into the inscription – so the words can be clearly read. In 2000, a group of twelve girls was seen gathering around the headstone. One began to weep. Soon they were all weeping.
We remember Simpson’s feats at Gallipoli even though there were sadder deaths and bigger tragedies. Some still lobby for Simpson to be given the Victoria Cross. Yet Simpson the legend and Simpson the man are not the same thing.
The folklore is simple and straightforward. For forty years, until his letters were published, most assumed Simpson was a ‘six-foot Australian’. Even his first biographer cheated with the facts. The truth about Simpson’s life is more interesting than the myth.
Simpson’s mother, Sarah, and sister Annie called him Jack. He had a tough life growing up near the docks in South Shields, in northern England. He left school at the age of twelve, to drive a milk cart. At seventeen, two days after his father was buried, and against his mother’s wishes, Jack sailed to Australia.
Jack carried a swag and worked in canefields and coal mines, and as a ship’s stoker. He tried riding horses on a cattle station but hated it. He lived in boarding houses and spent his meagre earnings on Woodbine cigarettes and lottery tickets. He sent as much pay home as he could spare, a pound here, 15 shillings there. Jack considered himself the head of the family, even after he had been away for more than five years.
In his letters, Jack’s tone was sometimes playful and caring. He teased Annie about boyfriends. But Jack could be bossy too. He had a short fuse and forceful opinions. When his mother evicted a lodger, he wrote: ‘I would have made that Russian Jew bugger dance a hornpipe on his ars [sic]’.
Jack wrote about brawling on a ship he was working on. At a Christmas Day lunch at sea off Western Australia, his drinking mate suggested they fight the sailors. ‘You couldn’t see anything for blood and snots [sic] flying about until the mates and engineers came forward,’ Jack wrote. Another time, a drunk man hit him over the head with a poker. Jack broke a chair over the man’s head.
Although his wanderings in Australia made for ‘about the best life a fellow could hope for’, Jack’s heart belonged to the grime of northern England. He jumped ship and enlisted under his mother’s maiden name, in Fremantle, Western Australia, three weeks after war was declared. Jack was patriotic but he also wanted a free voyage home. He organised for 14 shillings a week – one third of his army pay – to go into a London bank account for his mother.
Jack was frustrated when the troops landed in Cairo – ‘this Godforsaken place’ – but hoped he was headed for France or England when they left on 28 February. On 10 May 1915, Annie and Sarah received their last correspondence from Jack. The field postcard was similar to a multiple-choice test. Jack crossed out the alternatives to leave a single line: ‘I am quite well.’
Jack’s mother waited anxiously for a letter from her son. She had lost three sons to scarlet fever. She could not bear to lose another. Annie wore a brooch fashioned from a medical corps badge. On 15 June 1915, she sent Jack a box of cigarettes. ‘We would like a few lines in your handwriting if you could spend the time dear Jack,’ she wrote. ‘Goodnight lad & God protect you for your poor old Mother’s sake for Oh Jack! how we do love you.’
Annie wrote three letters that were never answered. They were returned to her. Scribbled across one envelope was a single word: ‘Killed’.
Jack was dead at twenty-two. But Simpson would live forever.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Play Ya Again Next Saturday
3.20 am, 19 May
The Australians knew they were coming. Something was up when the Turkish fire slowed the day before. Naval planes confirmed that long columns of Turks were marching towards Anzac. Now soldiers could see Turkish bayonets gleaming in the trenches opposite. Between 30000 and 40000 Turks would try to drive 12500 Anzacs into the sea.
The Australians stood waiting shoulder-to-shoulder, wrapped in greatcoats. Lieutenant General Birdwood admired his Anzac troops in attack, but wondered whether they might be too casual in defence. He shouldn’t have worried.
The Turks charged all along the front-line with bayonets and bombs. A Turkish band played military tunes. There were only 4.5 metres between the Anzac trenches and the Turks’ at Quinn’s Post and Steele’s Post. Over to the right, the gap was around 180 metres, over flat ground and through low scrub whittled down by rifle fire.
The Turks did not target weak points. They would have broken through if thousands had charged at Quinn’s or Pope’s Hill. The Anzacs sat and stood on top of the parapets, firing until their rifles burned hot. They reloaded magazines as fast as they could. It was estimated that they fired 950 000 rounds.
Hollering Turks made at least five charges at Quinn’s Post and at least two on 400 Plateau. Anzac machine-guns blew gaps in the rushing wall of bodies ahead. They couldn’t miss. Some Anzacs waved their hats. ‘Play ya again next Saturday,’ a 3rd Battalion soldier shouted. An Anzac officer, Lieutenant Jack Merivale, later wrote to his mother that defending the Anzac position was more fun than shooting wallabies.
Private Murray Aitken’s platoon was supposed to play a supporting role only. The young accountant ignored orders and clambered forward. ‘We got up to all sorts of dodges to get in and into all sorts of positions to have a shot,’ he wrote. ‘I forgot to take cover and did not notice the shrapnel while the bloodlust was on me . . . I’ll admit to a certain savage pleasure in firing to kill.’
Turks threw ‘football’ bombs and a group of them took part of Courtney’s Post. But they were trapped. While three Australians distracted Turkish soldiers, Private Albert Jacka, a 22-year-old forestry worker from Victoria, climbed into no-man’s-land and jumped the Turks from behind.
Jacka was lucky to be alive. A few weeks earlier a shell had exploded n
ear his dugout. The officer lying next to him was killed but Jacka was untouched. Now he dived into the trench, shot five Turks and bayoneted two. The other Turks ran away. Lieutenant K. G. W. Crabbe found Jacka moments later. Turkish and Australian bodies lay around him. There were said to be twenty-six Turkish rifles in the trench. An unlit cigarette hung from Jacka’s mouth. ‘I managed to get the beggars, sir,’ he said.
Jacka was soon evacuated with diarrhoea brought on by bad food and woeful sanitation. While he was recovering on Imbros, Jacka learnt that he was the first Australian to win a Victoria Cross at Gallipoli. VC winners received town parades and lavish newspaper profiles. Jacka became a national hero. Melbourne bookmaker John Wren honoured a promise to pay the first VC winner 500 pounds – enough money to buy a house. Jacka was later twice awarded the Military Cross in France.
The Turkish charge was doomed before sunrise. About 3000 lay dead all along the Anzac line. Another 7000 were wounded. The Anzacs suffered less than 800 casualties, including 160 dead. The failed charge confirmed what both sides already suspected. The Turks couldn’t drive the Anzacs into the sea. But the Anzacs couldn’t break out of their fortress. The defender would always hold off the attackers. The crazy landscape would always win.
The Pet Sniper
William Edward ‘Billy’ Sing, of the 5th Light Horse Regiment, was the crack sniper at Anzac. Sing was officially credited with shooting 150 Turks, although the true figure was probably more than two hundred. General Birdwood called Sing his ‘pet sniper’.
Born of an English mother and a Chinese father, Sing grew up in Queensland. One of his ‘spotters’, Ion Idriess, described him as a small, dark man with a black moustache and a goatee beard. Idriess said Sing worked like a cat staking out a wall of many mouseholes.
The Gallipoli Story Page 5