When five men were left, Tubb knelt on the parapet, in full view of the Turks, to fire his revolver. He was bleeding from his head and arm. When three men remained, a bomb exploded between them, killing Burton and blinding Dunstan. Tubb survived, to die in Belgium in 1917. It might be argued that all ten men should have received the highest honour. Corporal Webb received a Distinguished Conduct Medal. Corporal Wright received nothing.
William Dunstan was a reluctant hero. He was blind for almost twelve months afterwards. Pieces of shrapnel worked their way out of his body for years. His children had to tiptoe around the house because of his headaches. Sometimes their mother showed them the little bronze cross kept in the box underneath the stairs. When Dunstan died in 1957, aged sixty-two, he had never spoken a word to his children about 9 August 1915.
Lieutenant William Symons led a charge to retake a trench and fended off ferocious counter-attacks until the Turks gave up. Another Lone Pine VC winner, Private John Hamilton, was a nineteen-year-old butcher’s boy from New South Wales. It is believed that he went on to three years of front-line service without being wounded. The VC also went to Lance Corporal Leonard Keysor, who was twenty-nine years old. He was born in London and returned there after the war. He later said that war was the only adventure he ever had.
Oliver Cumberland won neither medals nor fame. He had enlisted to protect his younger brother Joe, and now Joe was dead. Oliver had recovered from his leg wound to return to Gallipoli a few weeks before the August offensive. He wrote to his sister Una on 26 July:
You can understand Una, that losing Joe has broken me up a bit, but Una it might be for the best – war is a terrible game, especially this war, and those who are killed quick are sometimes better off. I know it is useless to ask you not to worry about me, but remember that I am used to roughing it and wars can end as suddenly as they start, and apart from the loss of poor Joe I am keeping my spirits up fairly well.
Oliver charged from one of the Lone Pine tunnels and dropped out of sight. The odds are he died trying to hold the most southerly outpost. Oliver likely became just another body in the way. Bean wrote of the outpost: ‘The trench was literally floored with dead, in places several deep, and the fight, which was incessant, had to be carried on over their bodies.’
Back home, Una sewed children’s clothes each night and fretted. Oliver’s letters had stopped. She wrote to the Minister of Defence in October 1915, her tone deferential but desperate. Oliver’s whereabouts was unknown, the military responded, but ‘favourable progress may be assumed’. In December, Una received official word. Her brother was missing.
After the war, men masked in handkerchiefs poked the Gallipoli battlefields with rifle-cleaning rods. They stopped thrusting whenever the point plunged through disturbed soil. We can guess this was how Oliver’s body was found, buried in an old trench near the present-day Lone Pine Cemetery. His identity disc, with sandy soil clinging to it, arrived in the mail at Kelly Street, Scone, in October 1922. Una finally had something to hold on to.
Oliver got more than most who died at Lone Pine – a marked grave. Today, a lavender bush nestles alongside his headstone. Standing at the grave, you can see two pines bent and twisted by the breeze on the lonely swell of Baby 700. You can also see Chunuk Bair, which the Australians were supposed to take on 25 April. Perhaps Una chose the inscription:
A Brave Young Life That Promised Well At the Word Of God A Hero Fell
25 April 2000
Surely the battleground was bigger than this? You can stroll from Brown’s Dip, behind the Anzac lines, to the Cup, behind the Turkish line, in a few minutes. Dog-legged gutters, like old rabbit warrens, show where trenches were once dug in the prickly scrub.
Before Oliver’s grave stands a white obelisk, near what was the front-line of Turkish trenches. It is the largest Australian memorial on the peninsula. On a long grey wall are the names of 3268 Australians who died at Gallipoli and have no known grave. Australians peer at the list, their eyes widening as they scan the names of young lives lost, and sigh.
The Lone Pine cemetery is bright with spring flowers. The wind howls as thousands of Australians and New Zealanders trek up here after the dawn service. Bodies lie amongst the graves. They are backpackers catching up on the sleep they missed the night before, wrapped in Collingwood jumpers and Wallabies guernseys.
Someone has placed a red rose next to Oliver’s grave in the past twenty-four hours. John and Doreen Chick, from Martindale in the Hunter Valley, stand nearby. They are friends of the Cumberland family’s descendants. And they are on a pilgrimage. They placed the rose on Oliver’s grave. He hasn’t been forgotten, after all.
The Lone Pine
Originally a single pine tree grew on the Lone Pine site, but it was whittled away by shellfire in the early battles. Australian soldiers called it ‘Lonesome Pine’, after a popular song of the time. They brought back cones from the tree to Australia. Thousands of pine trees now flourish in Australia, propagated from the Gallipoli cones. One tree raised from seed in Australia stands in the Lone Pine Cemetery at Gallipoli.
A ‘lone pine’ in the grounds of the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, was planted in 1934. It was given to the memorial, as a small tree, by the mother of a soldier killed in the battle of Lone Pine. His brother, who took part in the same attack, found a pine cone among the branches covering the Turkish trenches. From the seed, his mother raised the tree.
Sergeant Keith McDowell of the 24th Battalion carried home a pine cone and gave it to his aunt. Years later she raised four small trees, one of which was planted at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne. Since 1965, Legacy has overseen the collection of seed and the propagation of ‘lone pines’.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Left Hook
Mustafa Kemal, the Turkish divisional commander, had been writing note after note to his superiors. The British would try to break out of Anzac, he told them. They would climb the hills to the north of Anzac. In July, Kemal’s corps commander, Essad Pasha, finally granted him a hearing. The pair stood on Battleship Hill and stared at the mad country between Anzac and Suvla. Where would the enemy try to break out? Essad asked. Kemal waved his hand in a semi-circle, describing a big left hook. Essad looked at the cliffs and ravines. He smiled and patted Kemal on the shoulder. ‘Don’t worry,’ Pasha said. ‘He can’t do it.’
ROUTES PLANNED AND ROUTES TAKEN IN THE AUGUST OFFENSIVE
The Battle for Hill 971
The Australian 4th Brigade, under General Monash, was selected to help take Hill 971. The brigade had been cut up by illness and casualties. Nearly one hundred of the brigade’s 137 original officers were out of action. At fifty years of age, overweight and worn down, Monash was unfit for such a difficult slog. He asked his four battalion doctors whether his men were fit for battle. Three said no. Apart from dysentery, many troops were suffering chest infections, rapid pulses and weight loss. But Monash felt that the excitement of battle might improve his men’s condition.
Monash was a methodical planner. He had an open and curious mind. He liked new ideas. In France in 1918, he led the Australian corps to a series of victories and is rightly recognised as the finest general Australia has produced. But Gallipoli wasn’t Monash’s finest moment. On the night of 6 August 1915, he led his men into battle and ended up lost. He wasn’t the only commander to falter. And it wasn’t his fault. Anyone who has walked the bandit country north of Anzac knows it can befuddle the best-prepared visitor.
Monash’s timetable was blown before his brigade started out that night. His troops were amongst a column of 5000 men delayed in the cramped chaos of Anzac Cove. Some of the inexperienced British troops were jumpy. They had been landed at night and hidden so the Turks would not detect troop build-ups. A few panicked soon after the column began trudging north along the beach. Bayonets were drawn to quell them.
Led by Major General Vaughan Cox, of the 29th Indian Brigade, the column turned right into the scrub towards Aghyl Dere, one of the
mean little valleys twisting down from Hill 971. The rugged terrain meant that the route to Hill 971 was roughly the equivalent of 40 kilometres of flat country. A Greek guide suggested a short cut through a narrow pass. This was the first of many mistakes. Turkish snipers fired into the gorge. A shortcut to save thirty minutes cost several hours. And lives.
The moon rose and Turkish snipers began picking off Anzac troops as Monash led them into a field of olive trees, later to be named Australia Valley. Monash sent the 13th and 14th Battalions through the valley, and the 15th and 16th Battalions forward along Aghyl Dere. It appears that Monash had lost his bearings. It seems likely he was around 640 metres short of where he thought he was. Further up Aghyl Dere, the 15th and 16th came under Turkish fire and dug in. They, too, were not where they thought they were.
Dawn, 7 August
Cox arrived to speak with Monash. Monash argued against Cox’s order to advance on Hill 971 at 11 am. Cox relented and allowed Monash to dig in. The Australians spent 7 August lying in holes scraped out of the ground, thirsty, wishing they were somewhere else. Gurkha and Indian troops wandered in the wilderness below Hill 971. They were not sure where they were meant to be. The column was scattered – like lost tribes, as one historian later put it – and unable to launch a meaningful assault.
Pre-dawn, 8 August
Three of Monash’s battalions were ordered to advance on a spur known as Abdel Rahman – a ridge that led up to Hill 971 – before dawn. The Australians attacked lower outcrops, known as Hill 90 and Hill 100, thinking these were Abdel Rahman. Monash stayed behind and forfeited any chance of directing his men through the confusing terrain. As dawn broke, the Turks rained shells on Australians stranded in an oatfield. Four Turkish machine-guns helped cut down the Australian advance in under an hour. Some Australian wounded were left to die in the field. The stretcher-bearers had already left.
Private John ‘Dad’ Brotchie, of Melbourne, charged 275 metres through machine-gun fire. He was forty-four, and a father of nine. Brotchie bunkered down with a nervous soldier as shells burst overhead. ‘He made me a nice cover and secured himself from harm by cuddling into me,’ Brotchie wrote home. ‘No room for arguments here but the bother was the shivers as each shell came over. I think I was right myself, but I could feel him shake and could pity him.’
The wounded of the 14th Battalion were carried back on stretchers made from rifles, coats and wood. Some hobbled. ‘Poor helpless heart rending sights these,’ Brotchie wrote.
As we got round, the shells got us once more, hard and often, the men with wounded struggling up the hills and through the narrow gullies, gullies where a lean man could hardly squeeze through, and many a wounded man on a man’s back got a nasty jar through these narrow sections.
The operation was a shambles. Even the retreat was bungled. Some troops never received the order to fall back. Thirteen Victorians, eleven of them wounded, were taken prisoner by Turks in tattered uniforms. Some of the men were bashed and stripped of their boots. The Turks looked set to throw the group over a cliff until German and Turkish officers intervened. Corporal George Kerr, twenty-three, had been shot in the arm and leg. An old Turk inspected his wounds and pulled out a big knife. The Turk walked to a tree, ripped off a branch and fashioned a walking stick for Kerr. Kerr survived the next three years as a prisoner-of-war on the Berlin–Baghdad railway.
The Australians were back where they started within a few hours. The 4th Brigade had suffered 765 casualties. In 1919, Bean trekked the slopes near Hill 100 and found skeletons in 14th Battalion colours. Explorers today can still turn up rusted ammunition clips and slivers of bone. The ragged landscape is mostly unchanged and unvisited.
Monash wrote a great deal after the war. He never clearly explained what went wrong in the attack on Hill 971.
The Battle for Chunuk Bair, 6–10 August
The New Zealanders sent to capture Chunuk Bair fared better. A New Zealand covering force cleared the foothills, including a small Turkish stronghold known as Old Number Three. For three weeks, a British destroyer had shined a spotlight on the position at 9 pm every night and shelled it for thirty minutes, sending the Turks underground. On the night of 6 August, the routine was replayed. This time, the covering force charged the Turkish trenches straight after the shelling. More than 100 Turks were killed.
Brigadier General Francis Johnston, commander of the New Zealand Infantry Brigade, led the right assaulting column that left Anzac at 11.30 pm, forty-five minutes late. Turkish troops on Table Top slowed his men when they clapped, cheered and surrendered. The column continued to Rhododendron Ridge, where they were to reunite with the Canterbury Battalion. But the Canterburys had lost themselves in a confusing valley. Many of them wound up back where they had started.
It was now 5.30 am, 7 August. The New Zealanders – three in four of whom were said to be suffering dysentery – had shown great pluck. Colonel William Malone, the housekeeper of Quinn’s Post, was at the Apex with his beloved Wellington Battalion. He was little more than 460 metres from the Chunuk Bair summit. About twenty Turks protected the peak. The Turkish commanders were caught out by the New Zealanders’ advance, which had come at just the spot Kemal had predicted.
The Turks rushed reinforcements to Chunuk Bair. A German, Colonel Hans Kannengiesser, arrived at the peak ahead of his two Turkish regiments, at about 7 am. He spotted New Zealanders walking in single file below. He threw himself down and fired at them. On Johnston’s orders, the New Zealanders took cover and ate a breakfast of bully beef and biscuits.
Johnston had just squandered the Allies’ best chance of breaking out of the Gallipoli stalemate. He had disobeyed Birdwood’s clear order to push on whatever the circumstances. The twenty Turks on Chunuk Bair would multiply into hundreds while Johnston waited below. Kannengiesser had time to gaze out over the salt lake to Suvla Bay. About 20000 British troops were landing there, unopposed.
The Suvla landing went well, except for one hitch. The corps commander, Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Stopford, didn’t order his men to advance strongly from the beach. Stopford’s appointment showed up the absurdities of the British class system. He had been plucked from retirement in England. He got the job only because of his seniority. He was sixty-one years old and elderly before his time. He had never commanded troops in battle before.
Stopford was probably the first commander to doze while his troops invaded a foreign shore. He didn’t bother to send Hamilton a message until more than twelve hours after the first landings. His troops became intermixed on the beach. Many had been awake for seventeen hours before the landing. Orders were altered, cancelled, then reinstated. No one knew what they were supposed to be doing. Stopford slept on his ship and showed little interest.
When he awoke, Stopford told Hamilton that his men couldn’t advance further than the beach. How he judged this is a mystery. Stopford didn’t get to shore himself until forty hours after the first landings. The Turkish defences were light and scattered. Ever the kindly chap, Hamilton put up with Stopford’s dilly-dallying. This was a bad misjudgment, but not Hamilton’s worst. Suvla was always a sideshow to the struggles in the hills.
Brigadier General Johnston finally ordered his New Zealanders to attack Chunuk Bair at 10.30 am on 7 August. The near deserted peak of five hours earlier now bristled with Turkish machine gunners and riflemen. The Turks mowed down 300 Aucklanders as soon as they left the Apex. Johnston ordered Colonel William Malone’s battalion to follow the Aucklanders. Malone refused. ‘My men are not going to commit suicide,’ he yelled at his superior. Johnston postponed the attack until the next morning.
Malone was prepared for death. In a loving letter to his wife, he apologised if he had neglected her for his business affairs. A lawyer, farmer and land agent, he suspected he had. His Wellingtons stood in lines of sixteen before dawn on 8 August. The crest was lit by the flames of an Anzac artillery barrage. The New Zealanders charged through the haze. British troops followed behind.
Gi
ven the New Zealand losses of the previous morning, Malone took Chunuk Bair with absurd ease. Only a few Turks had stayed through the artillery barrage. Malone’s men took twenty as prisoners. The sun rose and Malone glimpsed what no Anzac had seen since 25 April – the Dardanelles. Capturing the peak had been easy. Holding on would be the awful part.
The New Zealanders were exposed to Turkish fire from nearby peaks. Snipers began picking them off after dawn. The hard, rocky ground held up the digging of trenches. The Turks could sneak to within 20 metres or so before they were spotted. They leapt into the shallow trenches with bayonets and bombs. The New Zealanders, like the Australians at Lone Pine, threw the bombs back.
Clouds of dust swirled in the stifling heat. Turks rushed forward. New Zealanders rushed forward. A front trench became so clogged with bodies that the New Zealanders stood on top of them. ‘It’s only when your tongue actually rattles round in your mouth that you can say you are thirsty,’ a New Zealand private later said. ‘That’s no fable. Actually rattling around in your mouth. We stripped off to our tunics and we were fighting in singlets and in the buff’.
A bullet bent Malone’s bayonet but he took this as a lucky omen. He went about urging his men on. A misguided Allied shell hit him late in the afternoon. Malone collapsed into an officer’s arms and died. Sixty years later, a New Zealander who survived the battle still spoke fondly of ‘Molly’ Malone. He received no military decorations for his epic efforts on Chunuk Bair. Some say Malone should have won a Victoria Cross.
After dark, New Zealand reinforcements replaced the Wellingtons. Of the 760 Wellingtons who had advanced at first light, only forty-nine were unwounded. They staggered back, their torn uniforms drenched in blood. They had barely slept for two days. They had been thirsty since dawn. They trembled, whispered and cried. Casualties among the British assisting the Wellingtons had been nearly as heavy. Bolstered by reinforcements, the Turks had won back much of their side of the crest. Yet the Allies clung on.
The Gallipoli Story Page 8