Gallipoli (35 page)

Not mines.

Just their collective hearts.

Miraculously, however, they remain unspotted.

3 AM, 25 APRIL 1915, SECOND RIDGE, THE FIRST ROAR OF THE TEMPEST

‘
Silah başına! SILAH BAŞINA!
– To arms! TO ARMS!'

Captain Faik is roaring now, jolting his soldiers of the 4th Company from their slumbers.

Grunts in the night. The shouts go on.

‘
Silah başına! Silah başına!
'

Dazed, the young Turks of Captain Faik's reserve platoon now rouse themselves. Sitting up with their feet dangling out of their tents, they try to pull on their heavy boots in the pitch-black night, and the stark truth begins to dawn upon them:
perhaps this is it
, their actual baptism of fire. As nearly all of them are farmers drawn from the local area, just as their ancestors had been back to antiquity, they have taken talk of invasions to their shores with their mother's milk, just as they too have passed it on to their own small children. And yet, still it is shocking that it can all be happening
right here, right now
, as whistles blow, officers run, and the shouts continue that they all must find their guns and come, come quickly! Taking their standard-issue bolt-action Mauser rifles, they slip out of their tents and button up their khaki jackets as they assemble with their comrades, many of whom are childhood friends, to receive their orders. Their hour has come.

The 70-odd men of Captain Faik's second platoon, meanwhile, are positioned down in the trenches stretching along the First Ridge, above the shoreline at Ari Burnu. They are entrenched in places soon to be known to the Anzacs as Plugge's Plateau and Hell Spit. The Commander, Sub-Lieutenant Muharrem, has just told his men – all peering out like owls from their positions – to wait silently as the boats continue their approach.

Among the men, in a trench at the southern end of the line, is Private Âdil, recruited from a nearby village. He had been asleep when the Corporal on sentry duty had begun to yell, ‘There's something unusual! Get up!'
²⁹

Taking his rifle and creeping to a bluff that has a clear view of the cove below, the shepherd turned soldier had strained his eyes and, soon enough in the half-light, begun to see it all clearly: many,
many
ships approaching the shore,
filled
with armed soldiers.

Slowly, slowly now, their powerful engines just purring, the bristling battleships move in towards the shores of the Gallipoli Peninsula, and for the first time the men can see the barest silhouette of the Turkish hills, behind which the sun will soon be rising.

At 3.30 am, just two and a half miles from the shore, it is time. Aboard
Queen
, Rear-Admiral Cecil Thursby speaks into the wireless and gives the order to proceed.

To the steamboats now, officers loom and hiss down, ‘Get away and land!'
³⁰

Those in command of the steamboats now open their throttles to full steam ahead … the ropes to the boats behind jerk tight … and off they go at six knots.

Farewelling them on the decks above, lines of sailors at the railings give them a ‘silent cheer',
³¹
taking off their caps and waving them around in the traditional manner while also whispering barely audible imprecations to give the Turks what they bloody well have coming to them.

The steamboats continue chugging slowly for the shoreline. The tumbling throb of their engines booms out across the sea and, strangely, seems to soon deliver back a light echo-o-o. But there are not meant to be any cliffs close in front of them? Still, the sound, stark in the otherwise silent night, envelops the shivering soldiers in the boats, who take what comfort they can from the distraction.

And there is comfort behind, too, as all of the steamboats continue to be slowly followed by the battleships, anxious hens following up on their chicks. For the soldiers in the boats – mere corks on the ocean – it is somehow heartening in the now lightening darkness to see enormous silhouettes hovering near.

But it cannot last long …

For, as the seabed inevitably rises to meet the shore, the ships can hover no more, and for those on the decks of the battleships gazing forward, the most visible thing ahead is the few sparks flickering upwards from the funnels of the steamboats, together with just a dim phosphorescence coming from the bow waves of the boats, aquatic fireflies that give up the ghost in an instant.

It seems stunning to Ashmead-Bartlett that these men who ‘six months ago were living peaceful civilian lives begin to disembark on a strange and unknown shore, in a strange land, to attack an enemy of a different race'.
³²
To the eyes of the Englishman, the steamboats with their boats in tow look like ‘great snakes' as they sneak their way forward in the dimness.

In those boats, there is still no talking, no smoking, no nothing. Just waiting, each man nursing his unloaded rifle. Colonel MacLagan does not really want them wasting bullets until it is full light, and nor does he want them to make a lot of noise, insisting that they must do the business with the bayonet. Many of them are now continuing to sharpen those bayonets, while others sit quietly and shiver, most from the cold, others from nervous excitement or outright fear as to what they are about to face. To their ears, the noise of the engines of the steamboats ahead sounds as if it would wake the dead, but still there is no sign of anything from the shore – neither light nor fight.

Aboard
London
, Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett raises his eyes from the boats to the hills of Turkey ahead. All seems in darkness, though in the nervy state of those on the ships, ‘the stars above the silhouette of the hills are frequently mistaken for lights'.
³³

Aboard the destroyer HMS
Ribble
, which is soon to tow in the second instalment of the 3rd Brigade, similar scenes have been taking place. As the last tepid gleam of the moon disappears, Lieutenant-Commander Ralph W. Wilkinson in
Ribble
leans over the bridge and passes the word to his charges. ‘Lights out, men, and stop talking. We're going in now.'
³⁴

Soon enough, the destroyers move forward, pulling the tows with them.

‘And thus in the darkness and in silence,' as Captain Ivor Margetts of the 12th Battalion would later recount, ‘we were carried towards the land which was to either make or mar the name of Australia.'
³⁵

As Charles Bean, aboard
Minnewaska
, continues to watch closely, staring to the east where the boats have disappeared, the first sign of the coming dawn is the growing distinction of the hills the Australian soldiers are approaching. Suddenly, from that lumpy and grumpy dark horizon out to the right shoots skyward a single, hazy finger of light … which no sooner lazily tickles the heavens above …
as a thousand Australian hearts miss a beat …
than the searchlight disappears again.

Bean looks at his watch by the light of a struck match. It is 3.45 am.

For
AE2
, it could never last.

On the bridge of his 180-foot submarine, just after 4 am, Lieutenant-Commander Dacre Stoker first sees a flash of fire to the west, then an instant later hears the whistle of an approaching shell, just before he hears ‘the broken swish of the shell as it hurtled past'.
³⁶

Time to go.

‘Prepare to dive,' Stoker orders crisply into the brass voice tubes that lead from the conning tower to the sub proper below.

So well trained are they, his submariners never have to be told twice, but under this circumstance they positively leap into action. Executive Officer Geoffrey Haggard presses the button on the console three times, causing the hooter to emit three shrill blasts throughout
AE2
, while in the roaring engine room, aft, where twin 12-cylinder diesel engines drown out all other noise, a red light flashes for extra warning. And now the engines cough and then stop, just as the two large electric motors, powered by battery banks of 224 cells, burst into quiet life to take over the sub's propulsion. Stoker and his officers clear the bridge, and the upper and lower lids of the conning tower are firmly shut, as are the exhaust pipes of the engines.

All secure, Stoker, now in the centre of the control room, gives the order: ‘Dive the submarine. Open 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 main vents. Ten down, 40 feet and back to 22 feet.'
³⁷

Four sailors reach overhead and open spigots on the main ballast tanks. Air can be heard escaping as the tanks fill with cold seawater, making the bow quickly sink, while the propellers powered by the two electric motors start to drive the sub lower. All else being equal, the batteries will be able to keep the sub moving at ten knots for an hour, or five knots for five hours, before she will have to resurface to charge them again with the diesel motors. For the moment,
AE2
stays at a depth of 18 feet, meaning the periscope can still keep an eye on what is happening on the surface.

Among the senior Australian officers on the boats still being towed to the shore by the steamboats, there is confusion just after 4 am. In their briefings, they had been told to expect to see ahead of them a flat, sandy beach, giving way to 150–200 yards of flats. But from what they can see in the dimness of the now near shore, there is nothing like that. Instead, the lightly gurgling white water just ahead looks to be practically at the foot of massive hills, one jutting knoll of which looks all of 200 feet high.

‘Tell the Colonel,' Flotilla Commander Charles Dix hisses, ‘that the damn fools have taken us a mile too far north!'
³⁸

True or not, it is too late now to alter course. Some 75 yards from the shore, the boats are let loose from the steamboats, and the four seamen allotted to each boat take up the four oars and begin hauling – no easy task in such heavy vessels.

And
stroke
. And
stroke
. And
stroke
. Floating phantoms on the water, gliding to their goal …