Source.—Dispatch from a special Correspondent at the Dardanelles printed in The Times, 7 May 1915
Soon after the commencement of the war Turkey joined the Central Powers, and consequently the Australian Imperial Forces, having experienced a rigorous training in Egypt, were used to assist the Navy and other Allied troops in an attempt to force the Dardanelles.
Viewed From A Battleship
Slowly through the night of April 24th our squadron, which was to land the covering forces of the Australian contingent just north of Gaba Tepe, steamed towards its destination....
At 1 a.m. the ships arrived off their appointed rendezvous, five miles from the landing-place, and stopped. The soldiers were aroused from their slumbers, and were served with a last hot meal. A visit to the mess decks showed these Australians, the majority of whom were about to go into action for the first time under the most trying circumstances, possessed at 1 o'clock in the morning courage to be cheerful, quiet, and confident....
At 1.20 a.m. the signal was given from the flagship to lower the boats, which had been left swinging from the davits throughout the night. Our steam pinnaces were also lowered to take them in tow....
On the quarter-deck, backed by the great 12 in. guns, this splendid body of colonial troops were drawn up in serried ranks, fully equipped, and receiving their last instructions from their officers, who, six months ago, like their men, were leading a peaceful civilian life in Australia and New Zealand, 5,000 miles away....
At 2.5 a.m. the signal was given for the troops to embark in the boats which were lying alongside, and this was carried out with great rapidity, in absolute silence, and without a hitch or an accident of any kind....
The whole operation had been timed to allow the pinnaces and boats to reach the beach just before daylight, so that the Turks, if they had been forewarned, would not be able to see to fire before the Australians had obtained a firm footing and, it was hoped, good cover on the foreshore....
At 4.53 a.m. there suddenly came a very sharp burst of rifle fire from the beach, and we knew our men were at last at grips with the enemy. This fire lasted only for a few minutes, and then was drowned by a faint British cheer wafted to us over the waters....
The first authentic news we received came with the return of our boats. A steam pinnace came alongside with two recumbent forms on her deck and a small figure, pale, but cheerful, and waving his hand astern. They were one of our midshipmen, just sixteen years of age, shot through the stomach, but regarding his injury more as a fitting consummation to a glorious holiday ashore than a wound; and a chief stoker, and petty officer, all three wounded by that first burst of
musketry, which caused many casualties in the boats just as they reached the beach.
From them we learned what had happened in those first wild moments. All the tows had almost reached the beach, when a party of Turks, entrenched almost on the shore, opened up a terrible fusillade from rifles and also from a Maxim. Fortunately most of the bullets went high, but, nevertheless, many men were hit as they sat huddled together forty or fifty in a boat.
It was a trying moment, but the Australian volunteers rose as a man to the occasion. They waited neither for orders, nor for the boats to reach the beach, but, springing out into the sea, they waded ashore, and, forming some sort of a rough line, rushed straight on the flashes of the enemy's rifles. Their magazines were not charged, so they just went in with cold steel, and I believe I am right in saying that the first Ottoman Turk since the last Crusade received an
Anglo-Saxon bayonet in him at 5 minutes after 5 a.m. on April 25th. It was over in a minute. The Turks in this first trench were bayoneted or ran away, and a Maxim gun was captured.
Then the Australians found themselves facing an almost perpendicular cliff of loose sandstone, covered with thick shrubbery, and somewhere half-way up the enemy had a second trench strongly held, from which they poured a terrible fire on the troops below, and the boats pulling back to the destroyers for the second landing party.
Here was a tough proposition to tackle in the darkness, but these Colonials are practical above all else, and they went about it in a practical way. They stopped a few moments to pull themselves together, and to get rid of their packs which no troops could carry in an attack, and then charged their magazines. Then this race of athletes proceeded to scale the cliffs without responding to the enemy's fire. They lost some men but did not worry, and in less than a quarter of an
hour the Turks were out of their second position, either bayoneted or in full flight.
This ridge under which the landing was made, stretches due north from Gaba Tepe, and culminates in the height of Coja Chemen, which rises 950 feet above the sea level. The whole forms part of a confused triangle of hills, valleys, ridges, and bluffs which stretches right across the Gallipoli Peninsula to the Bay of Bassi Liman, above the Narrows. The triangle is cut in two by the valley through which flows the stream known as Bokali Deresi....
In the early part of the day very heavy casualties were suffered in the boats which conveyed the troops from the destroyers, tugs, and transports to the beach. As soon as it became light, the enemy's sharpshooters, hidden everywhere, simply concentrated their fire on the boats....
Throughout the whole of April 25th the landing of troops, stores, and munitions had to be carried out under these conditions, but the gallant sailors never failed their equally gallant comrades ashore. Every one, from the youngest midshipman straight from Dartmouth and under fire for the first time, to the senior officers in charge, did their duty nobly....
When the sun was fully risen and the haze had disappeared, we could see that the Australians had actually established themselves on the top of the ridge, and were evidently trying to work their way northwards along it....
The fighting was so confused, and took place amongst such broken ground that it is extremely difficult to follow exactly what did happen throughout the morning and afternoon of April the 25th. The role assigned to the covering force was splendidly carried out up to a certain point, and a firm footing was obtained on the crest of the ridge which allowed the disembarkation of the remainder of the force to go on uninterruptedly except for the never-ceasing sniping.
But then the Australians, whose blood was up, instead of entrenching themselves and waiting developments, pushed northward and eastward inland, in search of fresh enemies to tackle with the bayonet. The ground is so broken and ill-defined that it was very difficult to select a position to entrench, especially as after the troops imagined they had cleared a section, they were continually being sniped from all sides. Therefore they preferred to continue the advance.... The
Turks only had a comparatively weak force actually holding the beach, and they seemed to have relied on the difficult nature of the ground, and their scattered snipers, to delay the advance until they could bring up reinforcements from the interior.
Some of the Australians who had pushed inland were counter-attacked and almost outflanked by these oncoming reserves, and had to fall back after suffering very heavy casualties.
It was then the turn of the Turks to counter-attack, and this they continued to do throughout the afternoon, but the Australians never yielded a foot of ground on the main ridge, and reinforcements were continually poured up from the beach as fresh troops were disembarked from the transports. The enemy's artillery fire, however, presented a very difficult problem. As soon as the light became good, the Turks enfiladed the beach with two field guns from Gaba Tepe, and with two
others from the north.... In vain did the warships endeavor to put them out of action with their secondary armament. For some hours they could not be accurately located, or else were so well protected that our shells failed to do them any harm....
Later in the day the two guns to the north were silenced ... and a cruiser moving in close to the shore, so plastered Gaba Tepe with a hail of shell that the guns there were also silenced and have not attempted to reply since.
As the enemy brought up reinforcements, towards dusk his attacks became more and more vigorous, and he was supported by a powerful artillery inland, which the ships' guns were powerless to deal with. The pressure on the Australians and New Zealanders became heavier, and the line they were occupying had to be contracted for the night. General Birdwood and his staff went ashore in the afternoon, and devoted all their energies to securing the position, so as to hold firmly to it
until the following morning, when it was hoped to get some field guns in position to deal with the enemy's artillery.
Some idea of the difficulty to be faced may be gathered when it is remembered that every round of ammunition, all water, and all supplies had to be landed on a narrow beach and then carried up pathless hills, valleys, and bluffs, several hundred feet high, to the firing line. The whole of this mass of troops, concentrated on a very small area, and unable to reply, were exposed to a relentless and incessant shrapnel fire, which swept every yard of the ground, although,
fortunately, a great deal of it was badly aimed or burst too high. The reserves were engaged in road-making and carrying supplies to the crest, and in answering the calls for more ammunition.
A serious problem was getting away the wounded from the shore, where it was impossible to keep them. All those who were unable to hobble to the beach had to be carried down to the hills on stretchers, then hastily dressed and carried to the boats. The boat and beach parties never stopped working throughout the entire day and night.
The courage displayed by these wounded Australians will never be forgotten. Hastily dressed and placed in trawlers, lighters, and ships' boats they were towed to the ships.... I have, in fact, never seen the like of those wounded Australians in war before, for as they were towed amongst the ships, whilst accommodation was being found for them, although many were shot to bits, and without hope of recovery, their cheers resounded through the night, and you could just see,
amidst a mass of suffering humanity, arms being waved in greeting to the crews of the warships. They were happy because they had been tried for the first time in the war and had not been found wanting. They had been told to occupy the heights and hold on, and this they had done for fifteen mortal hours, under an incessant shell fire, without the moral and material support of a single gun ashore, and subjected the whole time to the violent counter-attacks of a brave enemy, led
by skilled leaders, whilst his snipers, hidden in caves and thickets and amongst the dense scrub, made a deliberate practice of picking off every officer who endeavoured to give a word of command or lead his men forward.
No finer feat of arms has been performed during the war than this sudden landing in the dark, the storming of the heights, and above all, the holding on to the position thus won whilst reinforcements were being poured from the transports. These raw Colonial troops in those desperate hours proved themselves worthy to fight side by side with the heroes of Mons and the Aisne, Ypres, and Neuve Chapelle.
A Source Book of Australian History, 1919 |
