It may be roughly estimated that there were 3,000 troops with each column. A divisional reserve was formed from the 6th Battalion South Lancashire Regiment and 8th Battalion Welsh Regiment (Pioneers), mustered at Chailak Dere, and the 39th Infantry Brigade and half 72nd Field Company at Aghyl Dere.

Old No. 3 Post was the first objective of that right covering force which General Birdwood had prepared, and No. 2 Post was its jumping-off place. You reached this outpost, either day or night, by travelling along the great sap that for two miles wound out from the heart of Anzac. All the troops that were to take part in this new attack had come from Anzac. That night they had marched out under the cloak of darkness across the broad open flats that reached from the foothills to the water's edge. At the post they found its garrison ready to move. Major-General Godley had his headquarters there already. Here, too, had been marshalled all available water-cans and ammunition supplies.

So the first dash into what was practically the unknown was to commence at 9.30 p.m. Just in front of No. 2 Post was Old No. 3 Post, a steep-sided position which the Turks had captured from us on 30th May. They had since strengthened it by massive woodworks, protecting the avenues of advance by great stretches of thick barbed-wire. Behind the post again was Table Top, very flat on the summit, and about 400 feet high. On either flank of these hills ran a gully. On the left Sazli Beit Dere, and on the right the Chailak Dere. Both entrances through the valleys so formed to the inner hills were dominated by Old No. 3 Post, a veritable fortress with its revetted earthworks and its naturally steep sides.

General Birdwood had planned a ruse to take this hill. Every night, just at the same time, the destroyer Colne bombarded the post. Earlier in the evening her rays had gone wandering round the hills, but always at 9 p.m. there was a steady streak of light fixed on Old No. 3 Post, and the 6-in. guns belted the position for ten minutes. There was then a pause, and the beams disappeared, only to reappear again with the shells at 9.20. The bombardment continued till 9.30 p.m. For weeks this operation had continued. The Turks, it was learned from deserters, had got into the habit of retiring to their tunnels and never worrying much about the bombardment. After it was all over the New Zealanders used to hear an old Turk (they saw him once and christened him "Achmet"), a wire-mender, who came along the front of the line to repair the damage. They would not shoot him, though an attempt was made to trap him one night.

On the evening of the 6th August the bombardment continued, as it had every night for weeks, but under the noise of it, the Auckland Mounted Rifles Regiment, under Lieut.-Colonel Mackesy, stole from the trenches down into the gully and up to the lip of the Turkish trenches on the outpost. As the bombardment ceased, they rushed into the trenches without firing a shot, and bayoneted or bombed the astonished enemy. Many of the Turks were found to have removed their boots and coats and were resting. Seventy were captured. It took several hours in the darkness to clear the hill and the trenches that ran down into the gullies; the Turks gathered in small parties, resisting.

Meanwhile the attack on the left had been launched under the gallant leadership of Lieut.-Colonel Bauchop against the hill that bore his name. It had fallen to the Otagos to clear this hill and the Chailak Dere. By one o'clock Bauchop's Hill had been stormed and won. The enemy, surprised, made a stout resistance, and it was some time before the machine guns, cunningly concealed in this hill, were located. Colonel Bauchop fell mortally wounded in this assault. The New Zealanders worked with the bayonet round and over the hill, never firing a shot until they found their further progress barred by a terrible wire entanglement and trench that the Turks had placed across the mouth of the gully, which effectively sealed it. It was a party of New Zealand Engineers, under Captain Shera, with Maories in support, who broke a way through and left the path clear for the assaulting columns, by this time following.

Simultaneously, to the east, on the right of this attacking party, a violent, almost silent struggle for the possession of Table Top was also in progress. The destroyers had been bombarding the hill, which had now to be carried at the point of the bayonet by the dismounted mounted brigades of General Russell. The Canterbury men led the attack with bayonet and bomb. Their magazines were empty, under orders. For the first hours of this hill-fight all was silence. In the gullies and amongst the wooded spurs of the hills, parties of Turkish patrols were bayoneted and gave no alarm. Then from the north echoed the cheers of the Maories as they took Bauchop's Hill. It was caught up by the Canterbury men, now on Table Top. It was flung up to the lower slopes of the Rhododendron ridge, where the Turks still were. It was the battle-cry for the assaulting columns, which were advancing now through these protecting screens to the attack on the main ridge and on 971.

The 4th Australian Brigade, under General Monash, formed the head of the assaulting column that went out from the left, followed by General Cox's Indian Brigade—the whole command under General Cox. Already the way here had been blazed by the left covering force, under Brigadier-General Travers, consisting of South Wales Borderers and Wiltshires, who had marched out swiftly to the Damakjelik Bair—a hill that guarded the entrance to the Aghyl Dere, up which the left assaulting column of General Cox had to turn. The Turks at eleven o'clock still kept up a flanking fire from the northern slopes of Bauchop's Hill, but gradually they were driven off, and when the new columns arrived at this point—late, it is true—it was only to find isolated and terrified parties of Turks sniping from different points as they were driven back and back. The full story of this advance may be briefly told.

It was while the attention of the Turks was riveted on the fall of their trenches along the plateau at Anzac, that the Australian 4th Infantry Brigade had left Rest Gully, below the Sphinx Rock, just on the left of Anzac (where it had been for the past ten weeks), and in silence made for the seashore, actually traversing under a torrent of shell fire part of the same ground and foreshore where the troops had landed first on the peninsula. It was a start warranted to depress more seasoned troops than these browned Australians, for shrapnel fell over them, while shells skimmed above their heads on their way to the beach. But they pushed steadily on. Fortunately the casualties were light. In the far distance, from the hills on their right, came the sound of the clatter of rifles. That was the attack on No. 3 Post, for, as the troops watched the three beams of the destroyers' searchlights playing on the ridges, they saw one suddenly turned up into the sky and the noise of the ship's guns died away. The beam was the signal for attack.

There were evidences of considerable occupation at some time by the Turks, for a series of mia mias were found in the gully. But the enemy were hastily fleeing before the advancing Australian Brigade. At the junction of the gully with a branch that ran east towards the slopes of the main ridge, there came a serious halt. Already the leading battalion, the 13th, had deployed and was scouring a grassy plain out to the left—that is, the north. It was by this time eleven o'clock, and absence of any idea of the numbers of the enemy, now at bay, rendered the position critical. General Cox, with the Indian troops, had deployed to the right and was making as rapidly as possible for the slopes of the main ridge on the sector allotted to them. At this confluence of the two streams it was decided by General Monash that the 13th and 14th Battalions of the 4th Brigade, under Lieut.-Colonel Burnage and Major Rankine respectively, should be turned to the north to join up with the British force, who were holding the hills overlooking the Chocolate Hills and Anafarta Valley, the line being extended as the battalions advanced and covered a wider front. With the 15th Battalion, under Lieut.-Colonel Cannan, and the 16th, under Lieut.-Colonel Pope, General Monash pushed on. It was soon evident that the opposition here met was the screen the Turks had placed to enable them to get away two field guns (they were the "75's" which had given so much trouble), for the emplacements were soon discovered. The advance had been a series of rushes rather than a steady march forward.

I have seen no country that more resembled the Australian bush. The bushes grew very tall in the creek-bed. The whole battle was a running fight right up to the head of the dere, where, rather than lose touch with the British on his left, General Monash halted his troops. Dawn was just appearing in the sky, and as the men reached the fringe of the foothills there lay between them and the main ridge only a broad valley and a series of smaller knolls. On this ridge, above the Asma Dere, they therefore entrenched. Knowing that their lives depended on their speed, the men dug rapidly, and when I met the brigade, just after ten o'clock on the 7th, the reports came back that the fire-trenches were completed and, except for shrapnel and sniping, the enemy had shown no signs of a counter-attack.

It is now necessary to trace the events on the right, where the New Zealand Infantry, at midnight, had started on the second great phase of this night's venture—the storming of the Chunak Bair ridge. From the Table Top to the Rhododendron spur ran a thin razor-back ridge and a communication trench. The Turks had fled along this. The cheers of the army forging its way into the hills, had roused the Turks. Our infantry, in four columns, were advancing to the assault. General Monash's progress I have already described. The Indian troops of the 29th Brigade (Sikhs and Gurkhas) were on his right, having turned east where the Aghyl Dere forked, and now were approaching the foot of the main ridge, making for the hills called "Q." This point, in the Sari Bair ridge, was immediately to the south of the dominating peak—Koja Chemen Tepe. They held a ridge at dawn just west of "the Farm" that nestled in a shoulder of the main ridge immediately below Chunak Bair summit.

On the right the Otago and Canterbury Infantry Battalions were forcing their way up to the Rhododendron ridge. They had fought up the thickly wooded valley of the Sazli Beit, deploying men to the right and left to clear Turks from knolls, where they gathered to impede the progress of the army. Shrapnel now began to burst over the advancing companies as the enemy gained knowledge of the assault. The din of battle grew more awful as the morning came. From Anzac there resounded the fearful crashing of the bombardment of the Turkish trenches on Battleship Hill and the eastern slopes of the main ridge and the bomb battle at Lone Pine. The Light Horse at 4.30 had charged across the Nek and perished. Two battalions of New Zealanders met on the northern slopes of the Rhododendron ridge, and gathered in a depression quite well distinguishable from the No. 2 Post, and which was promptly termed the "Mustard Plaster." It was the one cramped position that the Turkish guns could not reach, where the troops were now digging in along the edge of the offshoot of the main ridge. Shrapnel, in white woolly balls, began to burst over the halted column. The 10th Gurkhas had advanced to within 300 yards of the crest of the ridge, about the vicinity of the Farm, while the 5th and 6th Gurkhas had fought their way on to the ridge farther to the north. There they had linked up with the 14th Sikhs on the right, who were in touch with the Australians, now brought to a standstill on the ridge above the Asma Dere.

Amongst the hills, the New Zealanders cleared the Turks from their bivouacs. Either they were bayoneted, or fled, or else surrendered. The Otagos had taken 250 prisoners before dawn. It was a curious incident, for the Turks piled their arms, cheered, and willingly left the fight. They were captured on Destroyer Hill, which was one of the knolls that had been passed in the first onward rush and left uncleared. The Canterbury Battalion, advancing up a southern gully, and the Otago Battalion, in the northern direction, swept the few remaining Turks before them, and met on the Rhododendron spur at seven o'clock. Above them lay the rugged line of Chunak Bair, 850 feet high, and just 200 feet higher than the position they held, and still some 400 yards away. This Rhododendron spur cut into the main ridge along a narrow neck. Turkish machine guns and enemy trenches, dug along the top of the crest of Sari Bair, commanded that spot. The New Zealanders were compelled to dig their trenches just below the edge of the Rhododendron spur. In support they had some light mountain batteries and machine guns, under Major Wallingford.

Having reached so near to victory early on this first morning (the 7th), they were ordered to advance again, first at 9.30 a.m. and then again at eleven o'clock, when a general assault by all the forces along the ridge took place. It was in vain that efforts were made to advance up the slopes of those terrible hills. But the Auckland Battalion gallantly charged across the bridge of land that linked the spur with the main ridge below, and to the south of Chunak Bair. It was only a narrow neck of some 30 yards wide. It was raked by Turkish fire. Up the bushy slope scrambled the gallant New Zealanders. They were checked at noon 200 yards from the crest of the ridge by a fearful musketry fire. They dug in.

At dawn, from the hills, I watched the Suvla Bay Landing spread out in a magnificent panorama before me. I saw the sea, usually just specked with a few small trawlers and a monitor or destroyer, covered with warships and transports and craft of all descriptions. I discerned through the pale morning light the barges and boats, close inshore, discharging troops round the Suvla Bay and Nebrunesi Point. As the sun mounted over the crest of Hill 971, the rays caught the rigging and masts and brasswork of the ships, and they shone and reflected lights towards the fleeing Turks. I saw, too, the British troops pouring over the hills immediately surrounding the Salt Lake. The warships were firing steadily, and, when there was light enough, the observation balloon rose steadily, and stayed in the sky, until attacked by a hostile aeroplane. But, as if anticipating this event, our aeroplanes darted up, and the Taube fled precipitously, and descended in a terrific volplane down behind the high hills. The sea was alive with small pinnaces and boats from the ships. Hospital ships lay in a long line from Gaba Tepe to Suvla Bay. I counted six of them, and they were coming and going all day.

So during the rest of the day the two assaulting columns clung to what they had won—a great gain of 2 miles on the left of Anzac—and the new base at Suvla Bay was secured. But, while the first part of the British 9th Army Corps plans had been successful, and the Navy had achieved another magnificent feat in landing the troops, stores, water, and munitions round the shores of Suvla Bay, the newly landed army under Lieut.-General Stopford were held back all that long day on the very fringe of Salt Lake. I remember how anxiously from the various commanding positions we had gained we watched for the signs of the advance of that British column. Our line bent back sharply to the Damakjelik Hills, that had been captured early the previous night. I am not in a position to explain the delays that occurred on the beach round Nebrunesi Point. Turkish officers have stated how the first reports from their outposts at Suvla Bay, believed the landing to be only a feint. Also how two regiments of gendarmes had held back, with some few machine guns, the British Divisions advancing towards the Chocolate Hills (the first of the series of hills that ran right into Buyak Anafarta), the capture of which was so urgently needed by us to control the attack on the Abdel Rahman Bair ridge, and to protect and support the attack on the main peak, Hill 971.

The great offensive had been auspiciously launched; it had gone well till dawn, in spite of the terrible difficulties of the maze of hills that clustered beneath the Sari Bair ridge. The new expedition had been landed, and had been left an open door to pass through (if it had but had the "punch") into the heart of the Turkish main positions. It is not too much to say that the Turks were thoroughly alarmed, surprised, and bewildered; they knew not now at which spot the great attack was to come. They had massed all their main forces at Cape Helles for an offensive there. Their supports had been hurried up to Anzac. Their reserves were still only on their way up the peninsula, coming from Gallipoli to Suvla Bay. Ignorant of the impending landing, the enemy dashed battalion after battalion against the captured Lone Pine; they recoiled before the stubborn and gallant resistance of its garrison. But by the next dawn they had recovered from the shock, and their resistance had grown powerful. Even then it was not too late. General Hamilton anxiously hastened the final assault.

CHAPTER XXV
THE BATTLE OF SARI BAIR—THE CAPTURE OF THE RIDGE AND ITS LOSS

As night fell on the 7th August, death and destruction was spread around the hills by the guns of the warships. It began on the farther deep-tinted purple mountain ridges overlooking Suvla Bay; it continued in a series of white shell-bursts on to the Sari Bair ridge. Grass fires lit the sky and smudged the landscape in the valley of the Salt Lake. After midnight the assault of the highest peaks was to commence. New columns had been organized. The New Zealanders, supported by British troops, were to press home their advantage on Chunak Bair. The Gurkhas were to take "Q" Hill; the Australians and Sikhs were to attack the Abdel Rahman ridge, and advance due east along its crest and capture the crowning hill, Koja Chemen Tepe. Monitors, battleships, and destroyers covered the hills of these positions with high-explosive shell, the searchlights blazing white patches on the ridges from 3.30 a.m. till 4.15. Under this cover of screaming steel the attacks were commenced.

At a conference between the Brigadier of the 4th Brigade and General Russell it was decided to storm the slopes of Abdel Rahman Bair. Sufficient time had elapsed to enable an inspection to be made of the country immediately in front of the ridge, but not time to reconnoitre the best route through difficult, unknown country. At 3 a.m. the brigade moved from the trenches. It was perfectly dark, and the first country crossed was the narrow crest of the bush-covered hills they held. It was barely 30 yards. Then the men slid down into the gully below, for the reverse slope was an almost precipitous sandstone ridge. Once down into the dip the brigade moved in column quietly, and swung on toward Anafarta over the crest of a low hill and down into a cornfield. The troops, lest the rustling through the corn, not yet harvested, might warn the enemy, were kept to the gully until a hedge of furze and holly, that ran east in the direction required, was reached. Following this closely, so as to pass unseen, the Australians reached a stubble field. The 15th Battalion, under Lieut.-Colonel Cannan, had spread out as a screen in front, but before this again a platoon was deployed to pick off the scouts of the enemy. The distance covered must have been nearly half a mile, and, except for a stray shot or two on the right, where the outposts of the enemy were encountered, no opposition had been offered.

The ridge of Abdel Rahman Bair was now just at right angles to the course of the advancing column as set by the guides, some 150 yards away. It rose, a black obstacle in their path. Along the back of this they were to push their way up towards the main heights, or as far as was possible with the troops at the disposal of the commander. In this general assault it was the 4th Brigade that was this time to be the decoy, or covering brigade, for the advance which the Indians simultaneously were making direct on the main ridge of Sari Bair.

To screen the troops from observation in the advance across the cropped field (it was not yet four o'clock), the column kept close to the edge of the scrubby land. No sooner had the right of the protecting screen touched the slopes of the densely scrubby hills than, at short range, there came from every nook of the hill, rising in tier after tier, a murderous fire from machine guns and rifles. At once the troops were hurried to the right. They swept back the Turks there, who retreated, under the fire of their own guns, still higher up the ridge.

But it was essential that our left flank, that faced Anafarta, should be protected. Again the platoons had to advance amidst a terrible fire from machine guns. Meanwhile the 16th and 14th Battalions, under Lieut.-Colonel Pope and Major Rankine respectively, advanced in extended platoons, trying to force a passage up the ridge. The men attacked bravely, but it was one continuous roar of musketry and machine guns they faced. Our own machine gunners in the now coming dawn, managed to locate the Turkish guns. Two were soon put out of action, but still the hills seemed alive with these terrible weapons, and the bullets tore gaps in our ranks.

At five o'clock it was apparent, unless reinforcements were brought up, the ridge could not be taken. Soon the order for withdrawal was given. It was skilfully carried out under a covering fire from our machine guns, splendidly handled by Captain Rose, which undoubtedly saved many lives by momentarily silencing the enemy's fire, and enabling our troops to get back to the protection of our trenches. By 9 a.m. on the 8th, the withdrawal had been completed, and every man, including the wounded, was within the protection of the well-prepared trenches, left but a few hours before. It will be apparent that, great as this sacrifice was, it had necessitated a large force of the enemy being drawn away from the main objective, and gave the chance, which the New Zealanders so gallantly seized, of taking the crest of the hill; and it also enabled the Indian troops to work their way on to the uppermost slopes of the great ridge. The 15th Battalion suffered most severely, and came to closest grips with the enemy. Many hand-to-hand encounters took place, and ghastly bayonet wounds were received, but the Turks suffered quite as heavily as our lines. Looking across the valley I could see, days later, the hill covered with their dead. The brigade lost in the two days' fighting nearly 1,000 men.

In the half light of the early morning the attack began on the Sari Bair ridge. For the storming of Chunak Bair the Wellington Battalion and Auckland Mounted Rifles had been chosen, together with the Maoris—all that remained of that band—and Gloucester Battalion. The force was led by Lieut.-Colonel Malone, the gallant defender of Quinn's Post in the past months. At the head of the Wellingtons Lieut.-Colonel Malone led his men up through the long Turkish communication trench, which was perfectly visible from our outposts, to the summit of the hill. The Turks had retired during the night from this section of the ridge, leaving only a machine gun and a few men, who had come from Achi Baba, to defend the crest. The Gloucesters at the same time, in the face of heavy fire, gained a footing on an adjacent section of the ridge, and held on. It was a magnificent achievement, and only the grim determination of the troops engaged could have scaled that shell-swept slope—covered but thinly with bushes—and held it in poor shallow trenches, with short supplies, on the third day of a great battle.

Meanwhile the Gurkhas, supported by battalions of the 13th Division, pushed up the slopes of "Q" Hill, and reached a point within 150 yards of the top. But no sooner had these positions been won than the Turks directed a terrific fire on the ridge. The Wellingtons' ranks thinned rapidly, but the Auckland Mounted Rifles managed to reach the firing-line in time to reinforce it, before the enemy commenced to attack in force. The Turks poured up the reverse side of the ridge, where our Anzac guns decimated them. Colonel Malone, seeing that the Turkish plan had been carefully laid and the trenches marked for destruction, ordered the troops to dig a new trench 15 yards in the rear—a perilous operation under the shrapnel fire that was pouring on to the attackers. Yet that shallow trench was dug and held against the Turks. Bombs and water were running low. It was two and a half miles back down through the gullies to the beach. The heat of the sun was terrific, and under it the men had been fighting for nearly three days. They were bloodstained and parched. I never have seen such appalling sights as the men who came in wounded during those days. Nevertheless there, on the top of the ridge, fluttered the small yellow and red flags, marking a section, barely 300 yards long, which had been won and held, the first foot set on the desired ridge.

A shell-burst killed Colonel Malone during that afternoon in the trenches, which he and his men had so gallantly won. Colonel Moore, who succeeded him, was wounded before midnight. Shell fire destroyed the whole of a section of the front line of the trenches. The men rebuilt them and still fought on. The next morning the remaining section of the hill "Q" was to be charged by the Gurkhas and the South Lancashires.

So dawned the third morning of this fearful fight to dislodge the Turks from the ridge. The support that was expected from the British armies landed at Suvla Bay had failed, as now the Turks had brought up reinforcements, and all idea of a swift advance from this quarter was impossible. But General Hamilton realized that even yet there was time to snatch a victory. The chance lay in smashing a way through at the highest and most distant points gained on the crest of the ridge. So for this undertaking he flung forward a complete new column under Brigadier-General Baldwin, two battalions each from the 38th Infantry and 29th Brigades, and one from the 40th Brigade.

There began at 4.30 p.m. on the 9th, as a prelude to this supreme effort, the shelling of the whole of the Sari Bair ridge—north of the position held by the New Zealanders. The destroyers' fire was terribly accurate. From Anzac the howitzers and field guns tore up the ridge from the east where the Turkish reserves had been massing. It was as if the hill was in eruption; smoke and flame rolled from its sides. At the "Mustard Plaster" it was intended that the assaulting column of General Baldwin should wait, and from there debouch up the hillside, prolonging to the north the crest-line held by the New Zealanders. But in the darkness the valleys and gullies of those chaotic hills, baffled even the guides. The column, advancing up the Chailak Dere to the support of the men on the hill, lost its way. The tragic result will be apparent when it is stated that already the 6th Gurkhas, led by Major C. G. L. Allanson, crept as rapidly as the steepness of the hill and the density of the undergrowth would permit to the very summit of the great ridge—and gained it—at a point midway between "Q" Hill and the Chunak Bair summit. It was, after all, only a handful of sturdy men who had to face whole battalions of the Turkish army. Still, the advantage gained was enough to stiffen the sinews of any leader and his army. There before them, at their feet one might write, lay the whole of the enemy's main position, and the road leading down the peninsula into Bogali. Beyond, glittering in tantalizing fashion, were the placid waters of the Dardanelles, on which the first light of the rising sun began to pour, outlining the score of ships bringing supplies to the armies.

Into the ranks of the astonished and panic-stricken lines of Turks, the Gurkhas and the South Lancashire Regiment began to pour a torrent of lead, sweeping down the reverse slopes of the ridge. But in the very hour of their wonderful success came the first horrible check. Mistaking the target, the destroyers dropped 6-in. high-explosive shells amongst the Indian troops. The havoc was appalling. No course was open but to retire to a point of safety down the side of the ridge. The Turks were not slow to grasp the situation, and by the time that the mistake had been rectified, the Turks charged again and reoccupied the trenches they had so hastily evacuated. In spite of which disaster, even yet victory was imminent, had but General Baldwin's troops been at the moment (according to prearranged plans) swarming over the very crowning summit of the Chunak Bair position. Instead, they were still only on the sides of the ridge just above the Farm, advancing steadily, pressing up in line. But the Turks had launched their blow. They came pouring over the crest of the hill, and fired down from the commanding position into the ranks of the storming columns. A small battery placed on the very top of the summit of Chunak Bair compelled General Baldwin to withdraw his troops to below the Farm, while the enemy turned the full force of their blow on to the New Zealanders and British troops, who still stood their ground. Till night fell the Turks attacked. Our regiments clung on exhausted, desperate. They were then relieved by the 6th Loyal North Lancashire Regiment, and the 5th Wiltshire Regiment. Worn with the three days' fight, almost famished, but in good heart, buoyed by the feat of arms they had achieved, never have men deserved more the honours that have been paid them, than those New Zealanders.

Through no fault of theirs, they left to the new garrison trenches that were not deep—they were not even well placed. The Turkish fire had left little chance of that. The crest remained dead ground. Even while the line was being reformed by Lieut.-Colonel Levinge, the fiercest of the Turkish counter-attacks began. To the enemy the possession of the ridge by the foe was like a pistol pointed at the very heart of their army. Unfortunately, only half our new troops were dug in when that counter-attack came (the Wiltshires finding constant checks in the gullies and hills through and up which they had marched to reach the firing-line).

It is estimated that the attacking force which the Turks launched against that garrison of 1,000 men, was a division and a regiment and three battalions. Probably 30,000 men swarmed over the crest of the hill on the 10th. In one huge effort the Turks were staking all. The German leaders found no obstacle in the loss of life. As these masses of enemy, line after line of closely formed men, came up on to the crests, the warships opened fire from Ocean Beach, while on the reverse slope the Anzac guns caught the Turks as they advanced along the communication trenches and on to the hill. From the beach our newly placed guns, near No. 2 Post, drenched the hillside with shells. The British were overwhelmed certainly. At a fearful cost did the enemy accomplish it.

Watching the commencement of the bombardment from a distance of 2,000 yards, I was more than ever convinced the Turk was a brave soldier. For thirty hours now he had been working under an intermittent fire to gain a footing on Rhododendron spur. From a range of 1,700 yards he was attacked by a group of machine guns from our position on Snipers' Nest west of the Nek, and driven from his hasty trenches by the lyddite shells that sent tons of earth and stones into the air at each explosion and cast for a moment a haze over the hill. The Turk, as he crawled away or went at a shuffle back over the ridge, was caught by the machine-gun fire. His plight was desperate. The shells fell at the rate of about ten a minute for an hour and a half, and recommenced for two hours more in the afternoon. Those shells dropped from one end of the ridge to the other, only a matter of 300 yards, and then, lowering the range, the gunners hurled shells into the hollow, drove out the Turks, and followed them as they fled back up the side of the hill. Turk after Turk came from those broken trenches, some wounded and without equipment, some still with rifles and packs. Some were moving slowly and painfully, while others were running low and quickly across the sky-lines. I watched them struggling from newly made trenches down the slope of the hill, which the gunners on the ships could see equally well with the artillery observing officers directing the field guns on the beach. I have never seen such accurate or persistent fire.

As the 8-in. or 10-in. shells from the warships struck the hillside, above the dust and dirt, one could see, almost with every shot, men blown into the air. Once three Turks went skywards, and four men, whom a minute before I had seen crawling amongst the scattered bushes, disappeared. The striking of the shells on the hill was seen before the double thunder of the guns was heard. Sometimes shrapnel, bursting just over the crest, laid low men who had escaped the larger shells. The guns of the 1st Australian Division were playing on that side as well. The Turk was caught between two fires. For hours I watched the enemy crawling out of that gully over the hill. It was appalling. The slopes were thick with their dead. Never had a hill been so dearly lost, so dearly won, and now lost again, to become, as it was for days, no man's ground; for with the continued bombardment that night and the machine gun battery playing along the ridges next morning (11th), the Turks were content to hold the trenches behind the crest on the eastern side.

But for the rat-a-tat-tat of our machine guns on this morning—the sixth day of the battle—all was perfectly still along the now extended battle front.

And all through those appalling five days of the fiercest fighting that had ever been fought on the peninsula, never for a moment did the Turks relinquish their idea of recapturing the cherished Lone Pine trenches. In the first day's fighting the Australian casualties had been nearly 1,000. By the end of the fourth day they had doubled. It was one huge bomb battle, with short respites. As the fight continued, overhead cover was erected by the sappers to prevent the Turks firing down the length of trenches. I saw men tired—so tired that they could not even stand. Yet they clung on. Colonel Macnaghten handed over his gallant 4th to Colonel Cass, only because he could not stay awake to once again refuse to relinquish his post. Relief was given to his battalion for a few hours by Light Horse regiments and infantry battalions drawn from other sections of the line. Thus the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 12th Battalions and squadrons of the 2nd Light Horse Brigade all played their share in repelling the Turks in that unforgettable four-day bomb battle. But so terrible was the position that men were only kept for short periods in the trenches. Through these rapid changes was the sting gradually drawn from the Turkish attacks. But it took five days to extract, and in that time many deeds of priceless heroism, devotion, and sacrifice were performed by men whose names will ever be associated with that fighting. I can name but a few of them.

There was Captain Shout, 1st Battalion, who could throw two bombs, and even three, in quick succession. Having charged down one of the innumerable Turkish trenches, he endeavoured to dislodge the enemy from the other end of a sap. Reckless of his life, he hurled the missiles as if they had been so many cricket balls. He killed eight Turks before he was himself killed by a bomb.

Lieutenant Symons led a charge and retook a portion of an isolated sap that the Turks had occupied. It happened at 5 a.m. on the morning of the 9th. Six officers of ours had been killed or wounded in that trench. With an extraordinary courage, Lieutenant Symons led a small party down the sap and dislodged the Turks, himself killing many. He then built a sandbag barricade under the very nose of the enemy. A somewhat similar charge was made by Lieutenant Tubb, of the 7th, backed by Corporal Burton and Corporal Dunstan, two of his men. All of these men received the Victoria Cross for their bravery.

Never before in any hundred square yards of ground have so many honours been won and such wonderful gallantry shown. Men and officers fighting in that inferno seemed to be inspired with unparalleled courage. Private Keysor (1st Battalion) threw back enemy bombs into their own trenches, and, though twice wounded, continued till the end of the engagement to act as bomb-thrower wherever there was need. Private Hamilton (1st Battalion) on the 9th sat calmly on the parados, thereby getting fire to bear on the enemy. He rallied his comrades, and they drove back the enemy.

Major Sasse (1st Battalion) won distinction by charging at the head of a small body of men down a Turkish sap, and then directing a bomb attack from the parados of the captured trenches. One has only to turn to the stories of the Military Crosses gained, to find how attack was met by counter-attack; how trenches were taken at the bayonet's point during the four days that battle lasted.

The men who sold their lives in these herculean efforts to shake off the Turks, numbered nearly 800. Officers made noble examples for their troops. Colonel Scobie, 2nd Battalion, was leading back a small section of his command from an ugly sap from which they were being bombed, when he was killed by a bomb. Colonel Brown, passing the head of one of the many dangerous saps that led to the Turkish position on the other side of the plateau, was shot through the breast and fell dead at the feet of his men.

Lone Pine on that second day, when I was through it, presented a spectacle of horror. The dead Australians and Turks lay deep in the trenches. Parapets had partly buried them.

It was at the entrance to a tunnel that I saw our lads sitting with fixed bayonets and chatting calmly to one another. There was a horrible odour in the trenches that compelled one to use the smoke helmet for some little relief. At the end of this tunnel, 40 yards away, so one of the men told me, were 30 dead Turks. In through a shell hole that had broken open a Turkish tunnel, and over these dead bodies, a wounded sapper had crawled on the day after the battle from the battlefield above, thereby saving himself from exposure and probable death. How these men had died none exactly knew. A shell may have broken through the tunnel—probably had—and those who had not been killed outright had died of suffocation from the shell fumes. It became necessary now to fill in the end of the tunnel, to prevent any entry by the enemy as much as to safeguard the health of our men. The thousands of rifles, broken belts, scattered cartridges, clothing of all descriptions that were to be seen belonging to either side were being collected in order to make the way clear. One realized that there must be days before the trenches could become normal again. For all the time, simultaneously with the relief of the wounded, existed the need for the protection of the fighting troops, the changing over of the parapets, the filling of sandbags to pile up the traverses, the erection of the overhead cover. All that involved a horrible waste of men—the ruin of scores of lives—in the accomplishment. Yet never must it be forgotten that the enemy was driven from what might well have been considered an impregnable position, had been shaken, had lost five to every one of our troops.

As I walked down the trenches it was impossible to avoid the fallen men lying all around. They lay on the parapets and their blackened hands hung down over our path. While this bombing continued it was no use trying to clear the way. Amidst the horribleness of the dead, the men fought and lived. They fought, too, knowing that behind the ramparts that protected them, must lie their comrades.

It was the most touching sight in the world to see units that had won the fight being withdrawn on the second day. Perhaps only a few hundred came back. They were covered with blood; they were unrecognizable in the dirt that had been scattered over them; they were lean and haggard from want of sleep. But they bore themselves without the least touch of fatigue as they passed by British troops working behind the lines. They had in their demeanour that which showed a confidence in something accomplished and a pride in a victory won. They acknowledged modestly the tribute of those who had known the fury of battle—who had seen the charge. As they came out of the tunnel which led from the firing-line there were comrades who waited to grip their hands. For news travels in a curious manner from trench to trench of a comrade hit, wounded, or one whose life has gone. You hear it soon even down on the beach.

And amidst these brave men and those waiting to take their turn at defending, the dead bodies of the enemy were drawn, to be buried in a great pile on a hill slope. The tracks of the canvas shroud showed in the loose earth, the air polluted by the stench of the passing corpse. Not far away was a heap of Turkish equipment, 30 feet high, piled up, waiting sorting, which had been taken from the trenches. Of Turkish rifles we had enough for a battalion. Already I had seen a party of our men in the trenches handling with a certain satisfaction, and no little rapidity, the captured machine guns, which, with the ammunition also captured, gave us a splendid opportunity of turning the enemy's weapons on himself. The spoils of victory were very sweet to these men.

I have referred more than once to the bravery of the Turkish soldier. The fight he put up on these Lone Pine trenches would be enough to establish that reputation for him were there not other deeds to his credit. Not that that diminishes one degree the glory of the achievement of our arms. The fury of the fire of shot and shell was enough to have dismayed any troops. The Australians went through that with heads bent, like men going through a fierce pelting rain.

Taken all round, the Turks are by no means an army of poor physique. They may not be as well clad as our troops, but they looked healthy and well fed. A sergeant, a fine-built man, standing nearly 6 feet, who had served in the Balkan War and also the gendarmerie, when captured, accepted his fate, but showed no signs of relief that he was to be led away captive. If anything, his tone suggested that he would have liked to have gone on fighting. In this attitude he was different from the large majority of the prisoners. He never expected an attack, and the first thing that was known in the enemy trenches was a shout from the look-out. He had at once rushed to get his men out of the tunnel to line the fire-trenches, but before he could reach a position the "English," as the sergeant persisted in calling our troops, had arrived, and were jumping down on top of them. He believed that all his officers had been killed. It was Kismet, the will of Allah, that he should be taken.

After the constant boom of the guns, the tearing whistle of the shells overhead day and night, distant and near, the cracking of rifles for five days and nights, the morning of the sixth day broke so calm that the bursting of a shell on the beach broke a kind of peaceful meditation. The troops began to ask one another what had happened or was happening. If you listened very carefully the soft patter of a machine gun came from the distant hills across at Suvla Bay. The battle was evidently not ended there.

That evening (12th August) the quiet of the lines was broken by the appearance, in close proximity to our observation balloon over the shipping in Suvla Bay, of a German aeroplane. As it sailed overhead I could just hear the throbbing of the engine. It was heading south, when from the direction of the Narrows came one of our airmen. He was flying a little lower than the enemy. At first he apparently did not see the hostile machine. There was no mistaking the two types—the enemy, dark in colour, grey, with black crosses painted on the wings, and ours yellow, with red eyes on the wings. Suddenly the British turned directly towards the enemy, which promptly veered and fled towards the Turkish lines at Bogali, dropping behind the ridges. The Turkish aviator thus robbed us of the chance of witnessing a battle in the air.

What days of quiet followed the digging of new trenches on the Chunak Bair slopes, after the crest had been won and lost!

To complete this battle scene, there remains but to be told the position gained by the 4th Australian Brigade. Its line was spread along the crest of the range of hills practically where I first described them. Along the Asma Dere by hard digging they had secured a position, and from it I had an excellent view of Buyik Anafarta in flames. The warship shells had set it alight. From the extreme right on the plains round Suvla Bay grass fires were burning harmlessly. I watched, too, ambulances drawn by six-horse teams bringing in the British wounded across the dried Salt Lake. The headquarters of the Australian Brigade was on the side of a long, broad gully, which recently had been under cultivation. On my way there I had to pass up the bed of a creek filled with dead mules, which the Turkish shrapnel had slaughtered. I passed New Zealand engineers successfully sinking wells, and line after line of water-carriers. Ahead was a string of ten mules bringing ammunition and supplies. On my left, at the edge of a few acres of cropped land, was a German officers' camp. A well-built hut of branches and mud was concealed from the view of aircraft under the shady branches of a grove of olive-trees. There were several huts like this, with a slit for a window that faced out to the sea. Immediately behind was a hill, on the slope of which were tents and a number of well-made dugouts and tracks, the remains of a considerable Turkish encampment.

I followed the telephone line, hung from bush to bush, and then came to some tall scrub, in which the brigade was camped, like a party of railway surveyors in the bush, protected from the sun by bush huts and from bullets by timber taken from the enemy's shelters. As I talked to General Monash bullets pattered against the earth walls, and he opened his case and showed me the collection he was making of the "visitors" that dropped round him as he wrote and directed the working of his command. He was justly proud of the way his men had fought; of the running fight they had won; of their march of miles through unknown country, and the way they had established themselves in the heart of the enemy's stronghold.

In the trenches the men showed no sign of fatigue now, having rested for a few days. A much reduced brigade it was, but the men were watching the Turks digging on the hills and waiting their opportunity. Every few minutes would come the clatter of the machine gun from somewhere along the front. The firing-line was only a few hundred yards away, so the Staff was in the midst of the attacks. The firing of our artillery from the hills behind and the presence of our aeroplanes overhead made the men keen and zealous. They were then still ripe for any advance.

In the face of such achievements, was it to be wondered that General Hamilton, Lieut.-General Birdwood, Major-General Godley, all wrote of the men who fought these battles in terms of the highest admiration? "Whatever happens," were General Hamilton's words to General Birdwood, "you and your brave army corps have covered yourselves with glory. Make good the crest, and the achievement will rank with Quebec." Yes, it ranked alongside any of the fighting in history. It had been in turn trench fighting, bayonet charges, and fighting in the open, and everywhere the overseas troops had won. But at what cost! At Lone Pine the casualties were 2,300 killed and wounded men. From the captured trenches there were dragged 1,000 killed, Australians and Turks. They were buried in the cemetery on the side of the hill in Brown's Dip. The Army Corps in four days had lost 12,000 men killed and wounded. The British casualties on the Anzac section were 6,000 out of 10,000 troops engaged. In all 18,000 casualties for a gain of 2 miles and a position on, but not the crest of, the ridge. I have omitted the casualties of the fighting at Suvla Bay.

And the Turks! Their losses? It must be one of the satisfactions of the splendid failure that they lost nearly three to our one. Over 1,000 of the enemy perished at Lone Pine. On the 10th I saw them lying in heaps of hundreds on the bloody slopes of Chunak Bair. We had captured in all about 700 prisoners, and much material and equipment. Thousands of Turkish rifles were removed from Lone Pine, and hundreds of thousands rounds of ammunition. We took seven of their machine guns and belts of ammunition, and turned them against their own army. One hundred and thirty prisoners were taken in that section. General Monash captured over a hundred prisoners, including officers, great quantities of big gun ammunition (including fifty cases of "75" ammunition, near where the Turks had their French gun), thousands of rounds of rifle ammunition, quantities of stores. The New Zealanders took in the first attack on Old No. 3 Post 125 prisoners and some machine guns, and also a nordenfeldt. As the fighting extended to the left, further plants of ammunition were discovered in the valley.

Anzac was enlarged from barely 300 acres to about 8 square miles. A base for twenty operations was gained at Suvla Bay, and though the passage along the beach to Anzac was still a hazardous one, to the joy of many Australian dispatch riders, it provided a race through a hail of bullets along that zone. If devotion and heroism could make success, then the Army Corps had indeed covered itself with glory. But it had very substantial deeds to its credit as well. It had fought, adding fresh laurels to those won in its first fight at the landing. Weakened, worn, but by no means disheartened, it was strengthened after 20th August by the arrival of the 2nd Australian Division from Egypt, under Major-General Legge, which enabled respite from trench warfare to be enjoyed by the veteran brigades. Except for the fighting on the extreme left of our Army Corps line, where the Australians linked with the Suvla Bay forces across the Chocolate Hills, the weeks after the great battles at Anzac were calm. It was only a calm that precedes a storm.

CHAPTER XXVI
HILL 60, GALLIPOLI

In the days immediately following the halting of the 4th Infantry Brigade in the Asma Dere, it would have been possible to have walked on to the top of the steep knoll marked "Hill 60" on the maps. From the ridge that the Australians then occupied there was only a small ridge in between, and a cornfield joining a valley not many yards across. Then came the hill—not, perhaps, as famous as Hill 60 in France, nor even as bloodstained, but one that cost over 1,000 men to take—that commanded the broad plain spread inland to the town of Bujik Anafarta. A mile and a half to the north across the plain were the "W." hills, the end spur of which, nearest the sea, Chocolate Hills, the British by this time held. Hill 60 was necessary to our plans in order to link up securely the position and give us command of the plain, on which were a number of fine wells. On the 21st August, when the first attack was made, the hill and the ridge which joined it, were strongly held by the enemy. A day attack had been determined on, following a fierce bombardment. Owing to a sudden change of plans to a general attack, the bombardment failed; it was not as intense as was intended, and in consequence the preparation for the attacking lines was inadequate. At two o'clock the guns commenced, not only to shell Hill 60, but all along the Turkish front on the plain. For an hour scores of guns shook the earth with the concussion of the shells. Then the British advance began—yeomanry and the imperishable 29th Division.