THE STORY OF LONE PINE
The 1st Brigade of Australian Infantry, from the State of New South Wales, and led by General Smyth, had the honour of opening the ball. They were massed on the right of the Anzac line, in trenches that ran along a salient known as The Pimple. It was on the seaward edge of a heath-covered plateau, on the shoreward edge of which, almost among the formidable series of Turkish earthworks, stood one little solitary pine tree. Lone Pine plateau was a no-man's land, an open expanse swept by the fire from innumerable trenches.
From its south-western edge, held so strongly by the Turks on that afternoon of August 6, a dim view could be obtained of the forts at Chanak, across the Dardanelles. It not only commanded one of the main Turkish sources of water supply, but was, as Sir Ian Hamilton points out, "a distinct step on the way across to Maidos."
The preparation of the Turkish position had been elaborated for three months. Their trenches were protected by a network of that thick barbed wire that resists all but the very largest, sharpest and most powerful cutters. The trenches had been designed to enfilade one another, and artillery and machine-guns had been posted on heights in the background to cover the approach across the open plateau. Such was the position which the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Battalions of the 1st Brigade were asked to charge on the evening of August 6.
The affair opened with a heavy bombardment of the Turkish position from the warships and monitors, which lasted for an hour. Then, punctually at 5.30, the whistle for the charge was sounded, and the men sprang over the parapet, and rushed across the plateau.
As they left their trenches, the enemy rifle fire rang out, and the burden was rapidly taken up by machine-guns here and there. But the charging Australians ate up the distance, and were soon among the barbed wire and at the very loopholes of the parapet. Then the observers saw a strange thing. The men stopped as if puzzled; many of them ran hither and thither as though in search for something.
The reason soon became clear, for men stooped and tore up from the earth huge planks of timber. The trenches had been roofed over with heavy sleepers of timber, on which earth had been cast, thus constituting a shell-proof defence, and one which could only be entered from the rear save by such expedients as the men of the 1st Brigade now adopted. Some of them stopped and tore up the sleepers which roofed in the foremost trenches, others charged on over the roofs to the communication trenches which afforded an exit to the Turks. These took the Turks in the rear; while the others, making holes for themselves through the roofing, dropped down into the darkness where the Turks were waiting for them.
The enemy, taken in front and rear, put up such a fight as the Australasian forces had never before experienced on the peninsula of Gallipoli. In the dark and fetid trenches men fought hand to hand, with bayonets and clubbed rifles, with bombs or knives or anything that came to hand. The Turks had the advantage of knowing every turn and twist of the rabbit warren which they had constructed, and fought as desperate men in the 150 yards of darkness over which these underground trenches extended.
One man who fought in that dark inferno told me a moving experience of its mysterious horrors. He found himself alone, a man with whom he had been engaged in a fierce hand-to-hand fight having suddenly fled into the encompassing darkness. The Anzac straightened himself, and after taking breath advanced, dully noting that he was treading on the bodies of the dead. He was brought to a standstill by the sound of hurrying feet and had time to shrink behind the angle of a traverse when a body of six Turks came running by.
As they passed him crouching there, he made a lunge with his bayonet, and a yell told him he had found his mark. Freeing his weapon he discharged his magazine at the invisible backs of the retreating foe. It was a dangerous experiment, for in another second he realized that three of them had turned back and were attacking him with their bayonets. How long that struggle in the semi-darkness lasted he could not say; it seemed ages, though it could only have been of a few seconds' duration.
As he fought he shouted lustily, back to wall, and striving to anticipate each move of his adversaries. His shouts brought him timely help, and in another second he was stooping over the dead bodies of his recent assailants, who had been dispatched by quick shots from an officer's revolver.
From both sides more men came to mingle in the fight, and the passages became choked with dead and dying men. They fought there in the darkness with the corpses piled three deep under their feet. It had been said that the Turks would not resist the bayonet, but here in the darkness many Australians died of bayonet wounds, and were clubbed to death by the desperate men they had taken in front and rear. Finally, the Turks were driven out of the underground trenches and an attack was delivered upon the positions behind them.
Here again the Turks stood up to their enemies, and fought with the bayonet. They had little option, for those who tried to flee through the open were caught by fire from well-posted machine-guns, and mown down in scores. Some hundreds of them were driven into incompleted saps of their own digging, and forced to surrender.
The trenches were so cumbered with the dead that they were piled up shoulder high, and held in place by ropes, so that a passage might be kept clear on the other side of the trench. All the horrors of modern explosives helped to make that fight more hideous; the rending of deadly bombs in confined places, the rattle of machine-guns that cut off from desperate men the last hopes of retreat. Men who lived through that fight will preserve to their dying day a new estimate of the horror of war under such conditions. It was possibly the fiercest hand-to-hand fight even in the history of the Great War.
Eventually every Turk was cleared out of the Lone Pine trenches, but the position was still a most precarious one. The approach to the position was swept by heavy artillery and machine-gun fire from the enemy, so that the supporting battalions lost heavily in charging to the help of the first bold stormers of the position. From the gloom of the underground trenches over 1,000 dead bodies of friend and foe were dragged, and as a counter-attack was developing these were hastily piled in a parapet to help the defence of the position.
The 1st Battalion (N. S. Wales), and the 7th (Victoria), which had been in reserve, were now brought forward. It was time, for by seven in the evening the Turkish attack was at its height. They came in dense masses armed with an abundance of bombs, and fought as no Turk had ever fought before in the experience of the Anzacs. All night the attack was maintained, but the Anzacs meant to hold what they had got. A section of a trench was lost here and there, owing to the showers of bombs which the Turks lavished on their former position. But always the men of Anzac recovered what they had lost.
At midday on August 7 the Turks once more advanced to the attack, and for hours fought like demons. Every man that could be mustered was thrown forward in the Anzac defence. The 4th Battalion lost an important section of trench owing to persistent showers of bombs, but Colonel McNaghten led them back to it, and they killed every Turk in occupation of it. At five the attack ceased, only to be resumed at midnight, and maintained until dawn broke over Lone Pine Ridge.
The 1st Brigade of Light Horse was brought up later to help in the defence of this position, which continued to be assaulted through the succeeding days. The ramparts of corpses festered under the sun, and bred corruption, so that the trenches crawled. The fire of the hill batteries was concentrated on the spot, and there was no respite, night nor day. But the men of Anzac held on.
Six Victoria crosses were awarded for acts of individual bravery in the course of that week. The men who received them were abashed at being singled out among so many who had fought as deathless heroes. It was a long-sustained and bloody fight, but in the end the Turks had to relinquish possession of this important position.
"Thus," writes Sir Ian Hamilton, "was Lone Pine taken and held. The Turks were in great force and very full of fight, yet one weak Australian brigade, numbering at the outset but 2,000 rifles, and supported only by two weak battalions, carried the work under the eyes of a whole enemy division, and maintained their grip upon it like a vice during six days' successive counter-attacks. High praise is due to Brigadier-General N. M. Smyth and to his battalion commanders. The irresistible dash and daring of officers and men in the initial charge were a glory to Australia. The stout-heartedness with which they clung to the captured ground in spite of fatigue, severe losses, and the continual strain of shell fire and bomb attacks may seem less striking to the civilian; it is even more admirable to the soldier.
"From start to finish, the artillery support was untiring and vigilant. Owing to the rapid, accurate fire of the 2nd New Zealand Battery, under Major Sykes, several of the Turkish onslaughts were altogether defeated in their attempts to get to grips with the Australians. Not a chance was lost by these gunners, although time and again the enemy's artillery made direct hits on their shields.
"For the severity of our own casualties some partial consolation may be found in the facts, first, that those of the enemy were much heavier, our guns and machine-guns having taken toll of them as they advanced in mass formation along the reverse slopes; secondly, that the Lone Pine attack drew all the local enemy reserves towards it, and may be held, more than any other cause, to have been the reason that the Suvla Bay landing was so lightly opposed, and that comparatively few of the enemy were available at first to reinforce against our attack on Sari Bair. Our captures in this feat of arms amounted to 134 prisoners, seven machine-guns, and a large quantity of ammunition and equipment."