The Landing at Gaba Tepe: Chapter 11 of The Story of The Anzacs

1st Australian Stationary Hospital at Lemnos

Each one of the soldiers knew that the time of test had now come, and that within a few hours was to be decided the question as to whether all the weary months in Egypt had gone for nothing, or whether they had turned the Australasian Army from raw recruits into fighters and men. Each man knew, too, that although he was fighting eight thousand miles away from his home, he was protecting the shores of Australia and -New Zealand as surely as if he were facing death on the Canterbury Plains or South Head. 

The troops arrived at their rendezvous at 1.00 a.m. on the 25th. The weather on this day, as during whole of the operation, favoured the attacking force. The sea. was calm, and the skies cloudless; only a light mist hung over the water, which was swept away before the rising sun.

The enemy up to this stage of affairs had made no movement. They knew perfectly well that an attack was contemplated, since, of course, it had been impossible to carry on such elaborate preparations in perfect secrecy. They did not know, however, the exact place, or places, at which it was to fall, and, owing to certain manoeuvres of our Fleet, they had been led to believe that it would probably be delivered in the Gulf of Saros, with the Bulair Lines for its objective. 

However, they had left nothing to chance, but had lined all vulnerable, and some apparently invulnerable, parts of the shore with batteries, and in the southern zone had protected the beaches with heavy barbed wire entanglements. The element of surprise in the Landing was consequently almost non-existent, and, in view both of the fortifications and of the immensely increased forces at the Turks' disposal, there was no chance of such a coup de main as would have been quite possible at an earlier stage of the war.

When the fifteen hundred troops forming the Covering Force had arrived at their rendezvous, they were at once transferred from the warships to cutters, to be towed ashore in fours by picket boats. The balance of the Brigade, amounting to 2,500 men, was transferred to six destroyers, which were to steam close in shore and supply the cutters with fresh troops when they had landed their first loads. The warships "Triumph," Majestic," and "Bacchante" now steamed up to within about five miles of the shore with their decks cleared for action. At 3.30 a.m. the picket boats were ordered to go a-head and land, and at 4.10 a.m. the destroyers followed.

Sir Ian Hamilton had especially chosen for this landing a difficult and rugged part of the coast, which, in his opinion, would be unlikely to be strongly defended by the enemy. As a matter of fact, there was a fairly strong Turkish force in occupation of this position, and it was also protected by wire entanglements on the cliffs, the beach, and in the water; but through a most fortunate error the tows proceeded to a place about a mile north of it. 

The coast was even steeper here than at the original position, but this seeming drawback had two advantages. The very steepness of the cliff proved a shelter both from rifle and shell fire; and the Turkish defending force was a relatively weak one, as it had never been seriously contemplated that we should choose so forbidding a position for attack. The whole position is best described in the graphic words of Sir Ian Hamilton :-

The beach on which the Landing was actually effected is a very narrow strip of sand about 1,000 yards in length, bounded on the north and the south by two small promontories. At its southern extremity a deep ravine with exceedingly steep, scrub-clad runs inland in a north-easterly direction. Near the northern end of the beach a small but steep gully runs up into the hills at right angles to the shore. Between the ravine and the gully the whole of the beach is backed by the seaward face of the spur, which forms the north-western side of the ravine. 

From the top of the spur the ground falls almost sheer except near the southern limit of the beach, where gentle slopes give access to the mouth of the ravine behind. Further inland lie in a tangled knot the under features of Sari Bair, separated by deep ravines, which take a most confusing diversity of direction. Sharp spurs covered with dense scrub and falling away in many places in precipitous sandy cliffs radiate from the principal mass of the mountain from which they run north-west, west, south-west and south to the coast.

The Brigade chosen for the first landing was the 3rd; the Covering Force consisted of the 9th Battalion (Queensland), the 10th (South Australia), the 11th (Western Australia), and the 12th, a composite Battalion of South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania, together with an ammunition party from the 16th Battalion, Western Australia.

It numbered in its ranks many miners from Broken Hill and the Western Australian goldfields. The Brigade was under the command of Colonel Sinclair Maclagan, D.S.O.

The following is the Order issued by General Birdwood before the Landing:-

Officers and Men,

In conjunction with the Navy, we are about to undertake one of the most difficult tasks any soldier can be called on to perform, and a problem which has puzzled many soldiers for years past. That we will succeed I have no doubt, simply because I know your full determination to do so. Lord Kitchener has told us that he lays special stress on the role the Army has to play in this particular operation, the success of which will be a very severe blow to the enemy, indeed, as severe as any she could receive in France. It will go down to history to the glory of the soldiers of Australia and New Zealand. Before we start, there are one or two points which I must impress on all, and I most earnestly beg every single man to listen attentively and take these to heart.

We are going to have a real hard and rough time of it until, at all events, we have turned the enemy out of our first objective. Hard rough times none of us mind, but to get through them successfully we must always keep before us the following facts:

Every possible endeavour will be made to bring up transport as often as possible; but the country whither we are bound is very difficult, and we may not be able to get our waggons anywhere near us for days, so men must not think their wants have been neglected if they do not get what they want. On landing, it will be necessary for every individual to carry with him all his requirements in food and clothing for three days, as we may not see our transport till then. 

Remember then, that it is essential for everyone to lake the very greatest care not only of his food, but of his ammunition, the replenishment of which will be very difficult. Men are liable to throw away their food the first day out and to finish their water bottles as soon as they start marching. If you do this now, we can hardly hope for success, as unfed men cannot fight, and you must make an effort to try and refrain from starting on your water bottles until quite late in the day. Once you begin drinking you cannot stop, and a water bottle is very soon emptied.

Also as regards ammunition-you must not waste it by firing away indiscriminately at no target. The time will come when we shall find the enemy in well entrenched positions from which we shall have to turn them out, when all our ammunition will be required; and remember,

• Concealment whenever possible, 
• Covering fire always, 
• Control of fire and control of your men, 
• Communications never to be neglected.
  
  W. R. BIRDWOOD.

The boats were manned by Blue Jackets, and commanded by naval lieutenants, and in many cases by midshipmen. These were little more than boys, but possessed the habit of command and indomitable courage. The boats approached the beach in silence and, at first, without drawing the enemy fire. At 4.50 a flashlight shot out from the shore, and the dim light of morning showed the khaki-laden cutters clearly to friend and foe. It also showed our men a battalion of Turks running along the beach to oppose the landing. Yet the enemy withheld their fire for a few minutes, till our keels touched bottom, and then delivered a heavy fusillade from rifles and machine guns. 

Men were falling right and left, but the blood of the survivors was up : they leapt into the water, which in many cases reached their armpits, and, firing no shot, struggled ashore, and made for the Turks with the cold steel. The first rush was over in a minute; every Turk who had opposed them was either bayoneted or dead. The Australians had drawn their first blood in the War; they had felt their strength, and were eager for victory. Throwing off their packs and charging their magazines, they swept across the beach like lightning, and began to scale the almost perpendicular cliff. They pressed on and up the crumbling sands, finding handhold in the thick scrub that covers the cliff-face.

Half-way up, the Turks were strongly entrenched, and poured a deadly fire on the climbers and the new boats making into the cove. There was also a strong enfilading fire, and snipers behind every bush were picking off men on the face of the cliff, on the beach, and in the boats. But the Australians were not to be denied : again they met the Turk with the steel, and again the Turk broke and fled. The Australians swept on.; most of their officers had fallen : there was no chance of keeping line, nor was there any semblance of concerted action. Each man fought for his own hand, and pressed onwards like one possessed. The training at Mena had encouraged individual initiative among the men and their subordinate leaders. 

It had also brought them into such condition that it may be doubted if any troops in the world could have withstood that onrush of steel. The advance was made, not in unbroken line, but in scattered batches. Their whirlwind assault carried three ridges in succession, and still they swept inland and onward through the clinging scrub. Many of these parties advanced for over three miles; some of them even came within sight of the goal of all the Army's hopes, Maidos. But, meanwhile, the Turks had brought up reinforcements, and these gallant adventurers were either checked or killed, or lost in the wild scrub-clad gullies which cover the Peninsula. 

The majority fell back upon a position ahead of the main ridge, and continued to hold this against the Turks, who now began to counter attack desperately. During the whole of this period, fresh forces were being landed on the beach, and sent immediately forward into the firing line. By 2 p.m. the 1st and 2nd Brigades had disembarked, together with two batteries of Indian Mountain Artillery. By this time 12,000 Australasians had landed.

The Indians at once got their guns into position behind a weak part of our line, and opened fire, with capital results. It was impossible for the time being to disembark fresh artillery, as the enemy had now brought their heavy guns to play upon the transports, and forced them to seek deeper water. They had already been heavily punished by the Turkish field guns. In the course of the afternoon, the Australians had their first experience of shrapnel, for the Turks were enfilading the beach with two
guns from Gaba Tepe and from the north. Men were falling right and left beneath their accurate and incessant fire. The warships endeavoured to locate and destroy the batteries, but at first were unable to do so. 

And all the while shells were dropping on the beach, fired over the hills by the Turkish warships in the Narrows. But if the Turkish gunners thought they could reckon on continued impunity from the British squadron, they were greatly mistaken. As the day wore on, the warships found the shore batteries to the north, and either silenced them completely, or made them shift to positions whence they could no longer enfilade the beach. Yet the carnage had been terrific.

Out of one boat load of Australians, only two men were landed alive. The New Zealanders, who were landed after the Australian Division, also suffered terribly. The 3rd and 15th Auckland Regiments, and the 6th Huarakis, were particularly badly cut up. The Waikato Regiment also suffered grievous
losses, all its commissioned officers being killed or wounded; but under its surviving N.C.0's it charged the enemy with magnificent dash and valor, and drove them before it.

Great difficulty was experienced at this period in getting the wounded on to the boats; but heroic work was done by the stretcher-bearers, who never stopped their labours day and night; and the task was rendered easier by the brave endurance of the wounded, who took their terrible sufferings with true Australian gaiety, and cheered the incoming boatloads as their own boats passed them.

All this while a tremendous struggle was still raging at the position finally taken up by the Australians. It had now "solidified into a semi-circular position with its right about a mile north of Gaba Tepe, and its left on the high ground over Fisherman's Hut." The position was about a square mile in area. General Birdwood had come ashore in the afternoon, and he and his staff devoted their whole energies to securing this line permanently. During the whole of this day, the Turks delivered repeated assaults upon our position; but the Australasians hung on like grim death. 

They knew well that if they were driven back over the cliff top, the whole of their force was doomed to destruction on the beach beneath the withering fire of the Turks; and they determined to resist to the last man rather than to give ground. The enemy was now reinforced by troops from Maidos to a strength of over 20,000 men, and twice throughout the afternoon great masses of men were hurled against the right and left of the 3rd Brigade, and the left of the 2nd Brigade. Later in the afternoon there were three determined attacks against the 2nd Brigade, who held their ground stubbornly.

These were the most determined assaults of the dav, but the were vigorously repulsed by our men with heavy loss to the Turks.

The Australians not only held their own, but counter-attacked vigorously. taking full advantage of the Turkish reluctance to face the bayonet. All the night of the 25th the Turkish attacks continued, and on the morning of the 26th a grand assault was delivered on our lines from the North East. The enemy had brought up fresh guns during the night, and the shrapnel was falling thickly. Strong forces of the enemy were seen creeping over the hill-tops. The attacking party came on in close formation, but the Australian machine guns played havoc in their ranks, and they could make no headway against us.

Seven British warships now crept close inland, the "Queen Elizabeth" standing further out and acting, as Mr. Ashmead Bartlett puts it, "as a kind of chaperone." She had been provided with a monstrous shrapnel shell sent out specially for the purpose. Each shell contained 13,000 bullets, and burst like a miniature thunder cloud. The warships kept up a terrific bombardment during the whole of the Turkish attack, which lasted two hours. During this operation, the 8th Battalion (Victorian) repelled four Turkish charges, and the 4th Infantry Battalion (New South Wales) made a gallant attack with the bayonet, driving the Turks backward through the scrub till they came upon the Turkish camp.

Nine-tenths of the attacking party charged clean through this, and kept on till they were held up by three machine guns and the fire of a battery, and forced back to their original position.

A very fierce attack was delivered by the Turks against the right and left of the 3rd Brigade. Here, the enemy's fire had been too hot to admit of the digging of trenches. The Battalion holding this particularly awkward position had been there ever since the first charge, and the strain had been tremendous. For a while it gave ground, as the Turks crept up the edge of the ridge, and advanced from a position almost in the rear of the battered Brigade, who had now been in the trenches fighting continuously and with practically no food, for over 24 hours. Part of the 9th (Queensland) and the 10th (South Australia) Battalions, who had been in the valley below, were ordered to advance and retake the ridge.

During this advance occurred a graphic incident, narrated by Captain Bean :-"A gallant officer of the retreating regiment came through the scrub, collecting odds and ends of his battalion, he standing up all the time. He succeeded in rallying a few men, and led them forward several hundred yards. There the effort rested, but this officer ran up and down the firing line amidst deadly fire when every other living thing upon that Plateau was flat upon its face."

The 9th and 10th advanced in good order by a series of rapid rushes, bursting through the scrub and being constantly exposed to heavy machine gun and rifle fire. Twice they were driven off the ridge, and twice they returned to the attack. The third time they remained on the top. Throughout the whole of this operation, the difficulties of the troops were complicated by the bogus orders issued by Turkish and German spies, who established themselves near our line dressed in khaki. More than once the word was given to retire, and the Australian officers suspecting the fraud, passed the order back for information. 

On one occasion, as Captain Bean notices, instructions were given to cease firing, as the French and Indian troops had come behind the Turks, and there was a danger of hitting them; but this order deceived nobody, as it was known that these troops were fully ten miles away. During the whole of the day the fighting was intense, but the Australians maintained their position, and even added to it. They also dug themselves in, improving their trenches, and constructing dug-outs on the scrub-covered slopes.

Special mention must be made here of the splendid work performed by the 13th Battalion, N.S.W., which formed part of the 4th Infantry Brigade under Colonel Monash. The Battalion, which was commanded by Lieut.Colonel Burnage, had watched the first stages of the landing from the deck of a transport till their own turn came, at about 2 o'clock on the afternoon of the great day. During the rest of the day and the night they remained on the foreshore, and on the next morning occupied the lower part of the ravine henceforth known as Monash Valley. 

Here they were hotly opposed by the Turks. The 4th Company was only 30 yards from the Turkish firing line, where it remained for three consecutive days and nights, with little food and no sleep; the Battalion succeeded in driving back a formidable body of Turks, who had threatened to penetrate between the New Zealand and Australian positions.

It also temporarily cleared that terrible position, Dead Man's Hill, of the snipers who were making it impossible to hold Walker's Ridge. Capt. Simpson, a schoolmaster of New South Wales, showed conspicuous gallantry here, leading his men forward under heavy fire to a position which was seized and held. In this operation, the 13th Battalion acted as pioneers for the rest of the 4th Brigade, which made good the position, and held it unassisted under the severest hardship and pressure for 17 days.

Early after the landing, the 13th Battalion was ordered to advance and seize Snipers' Cliffs, from which the Turks were enfilading Monash Valley. A brilliant advance was made, under the leadership of Colonel Burnage, through a marshy defile, and a furious struggle took place on the cliff side for the coveted position.

Every Australian who was hit fell down the precipice into the valley beneath. The summit was gained; but as the supports had fallen back, both on the right and left, Colonel Burnage, whose bravery had been conspicuous throughout the operation, was unfortunately forced to retire. Fighting continued fiercely through the night, and early on the morning of the 27th another determined attack was launched against our trenches; but after this the Turkish charges slackened : the enemy had no stomach for the fare of the previous night, and it became obvious, both to friend and foe, that we had come to stay. 

The Turks, however, adopted new tactics, bringing out more field guns, and subjecting our trenches and the foreshore to an intense bombardment. They also tried to put a curtain of shrapnel between the warships and transports and the shore; but our men paid not the smallest attention to this, and continued their embarkation and disembarkation as usual. The enemy attempted once more to bring guns into position for enfilading the beaches, but the warships swiftly found and silenced the batteries.

A heroic incident is connected with the name of Major Dawson, a New Zealander, who, with a small body of Australian and New Zealand troops, held a corner of the Second Ridge tenaciously for two days, though greatly outnumbered by the Turks. The odds against him were tremendous, and
at one period it seemed as if the force must be driven to the beach, where nothing would have saved them. The incident is vividly described in the letter of a soldier, who says that 

"As for Major Dawson, after the way he handled the situation on April 25th there was not one of his men who would not have followed him through Hell. During the fight we advanced over the crest and poured volleys into the advancing Turks until they rushed our unprotected flanks : we then strongly entrenched beneath the crest and poured volley after volley into the Turkish position, with our nerves strained to breaking point. 

We wanted to get at them with bayonets, and end it one way or the other; but Major Dawson's leadership here saved us. He knew the Turks had not the courage to charge, but that our charging would mean annihilation, and he kept us in hand. We were cramped up, wet and cold, and the promised reinforcements failed us; but we clung savagely to our position. After the grey dawn, we repulsed their attacks time after time. Their machine-guns got to work on our flanks, but the arrival of reinforcements saved the situation, and we overwrought soldiers were free to sleep. It was a desperate defence against overwhelming odds by a handful of men unprotected on their flanks. The courage of the men was magnificent; they clung like bull dogs to their position : though they never expected to survive the dawn, they never dreamt of giving in." (NZ Herald, July 1915)

All this while, a continuous supply of food and munitions was being brought ashore and carried up the cliffs to the firing line; and a stream of wounded were passing downwards through the shrapnel to the boats. On the 28th and 29th, it was possible to relieve some of the well-nigh exhausted soldiers, who had borne the whole impact of the Turkish forces for three unbroken days and nights. Many of the men threw off their stained and dusty clothes, and flung themselves into shrapnel-spattered
waters, as if they had been bathing at Manly or St. Kilda beaches.

The Army Corps were now reinforced by four battalions of the Royal Naval Division. The next few days saw little change in the struggle. It had become obvious to the Turks that we were not to be dislodged by gun-fire, rifle-fire, or frontal attacks. On the other hand, we we7e not at this period able to increase our area of occupation; and an attempt to do this on the night of the 2nd of May, involving an attack on a commanding knoll in front of the line, resulted in a loss of 800 men from the enemy's enfilading machine guns.

On the 4th of May a most gallant attempt was made to seize the fort at Gaba Tepe, which the Turks had been using as an observation post, and as a position from which they could enfilade the beach at Anzac. The main attack was made by 100 volunteers from the 11th Battalion, which were taken ashore by a destroyer at dawn and landed in five open boats.

Meanwhile, a party of wire-cutters made along the beach to clear the way for the landing party. Unfortunately, however, the latter force was held up by the heaviest barbed wire entanglements which had so far been encountered on the Peninsula. Sir Ian Hamilton describes the wire here as being "something beyond belief." It was impossible to cut through this obstacle owing to the enemy's heavy machine-gun fire. After repeated attempts of both attacking parties to get through, the attempt had to be given up, and it is noteworthy that while our wounded men were being removed by
the destroyer's pinnaces, the Turks chivalrously withheld their fire.

All praise is due to the Naval officers and men who throughout the ordeal of the Landing passed backwards and forwards from ship to shore landing men, ammunition, and supplies. This was done tinder incessant fire from the Turkish rifles, machine-guns, and artillery. The boats were
landed on the beach almost at point blank range, and the gallant seamen had to pull out from the shore beneath a hail of shells and bullets. Throughout the whole of the 25th April this work was carried on under conditions that would have quelled the hearts of any but the most intrepid. The sailors realised the peril of their comrades ashore, and from daylight to dark on this memorable occasion, and throughout succeeding days, they never failed in their duty. Our men were deeply impressed by their steadfast gallantry, and, above all things, by the wonderful pluck of the midshipmen.