Gallipoli (21 page)

From the Allies’ point of view it was one of the cruellest accidents of the campaign that this one junior Turkish commander of genius should have been at this particular spot at this
moment, for otherwise the Australians and New Zealanders might very well have taken Chunuk Bair that morning, and the battle might have been decided then and there.

After the war the Turkish General Staff noted in its history of the campaign: ‘Had the British been able to throw stronger forces ashore at Gaba Tepe either by reinforcing more rapidly
those first disembarked, or by landing on a broader front, the initial successful advance of 2,500 yards in depth might have been extended so as to include the ridges overlooking the straits, and a
serious, perhaps fatal, blow struck at the heart of the Turkish defences.’

Kemal realized at once that his single battalion was quite inadequate in this situation. He therefore ordered up the whole of his best regiment, the Turkish 57th, and then when heavy fighting
developed he committed one of his Arab regiments as well. As a divisional commander he had no authority whatever to do this—these were the only reserves Liman possessed, and their position
would have been hopeless if the Allies had planned yet another landing in another place. It was not until the end of the morning, however, that Kemal galloped back to Corps Headquarters and
informed Essad Pasha of what he had done. At the same time he asked for permission to throw in the third and last regiment of the 19th Division. The battle had now grown so furious and threatening
that Essad had no choice but to agree, and Kemal came back to assume command along the whole Anzac front. He never again left it until the campaign was virtually over.

There is an air of inspired desperation about Kemal’s actions this day, and he even seems to have gone a little berserk at times. Instinctively he must have realized thtat his great chance
had come, that he was either going to die here or make his name at last. He was constantly at the extreme front, helping to wheel guns into position, getting up on the skyline among the bullets,
sending his men into attacks in which they had very little hope of survival. One of his orders was worded: ‘I don’t order you to attack, I order you to die. In
the time which passes until we die other troops and commanders can take our places.’ The soldiers got up from the ground and ran into the rifle and machine-gun fire; and presently the 57th
Turkish Regiment was demolished.

It was the most confused of battles, for the Anzac troops were also determined to attack, despite the disorder of their first landing and the mixing up of their units, despite the fact that
nowhere could the guns of the Fleet bring them any help in this bewildering country. There was no front line. The men landing on the beach were as much exposed to the snipers’ bullets as
those a mile inland. Advancing up a gully the soldiers would suddenly find themselves in the midst of the Turks, and hand-to-hand fighting with the bayonet began. Ridges were stormed and lost, and
then abandoned by both sides. Units fighting side by side lost touch not only with their headquarters but with each other, and there were times when the bullets like cross-currents in the wind
seemed to be coming from several different directions at once.

And so all through the midday hours the wild scramble went on and no one could be sure of anything except that the Allies were ashore and building up their reinforcements with every hour that
went by.

Meanwhile a battle of a very different kind was being fought by the British at Cape Helles, some thirteen miles away to the south. It will be remembered that the 29th Division
(with some additional troops) under Hunter-Weston was to make five separate landings around the toe of the peninsula in the vicinity of the village Sedd-el-Bahr. This was regarded as the spearhead
of the whole Allied offensive. Sedd-el-Bahr had been scanned many times from the sea, and it presented a perfect target for the naval guns. To the right of the little cove there was a ruined
medieval fortress with a minuscule village behind it. Beside this fortress the land sloped quite gently down to a small gravelly beach no more than 300 yards long and 10 yards wide. Although it was
known
that this natural amphitheatre had been entrenched and sown with barbed wire it seemed likely that the whole area could be so savaged and cut about by the naval barrage
that very little fight would be left in the defenders by the time the first British troops got ashore.

Accordingly at 5 a.m. in the uncertain first light of the morning the battleship
Albion
opened up a tremendous bombardment on the village and the cove. There was no reply from the
shore. After an hour it was judged that the Turks there must either be demoralized or dead, and the
River Clyde
with her two thousand men on board was ordered to the shore. About twenty
small boats all filled with men went with her. There was some little delay in the programme, for the current setting down the Dardanelles was much stronger than anyone had guessed, and the launches
with the small boats in tow made slow headway against it. At one time the
River Clyde
got ahead of them and had to be brought back into position.

Thus it was in broad daylight and on the calmest of seas that the soldiers approached the shore. An unnatural stillness had succeeded the barrage. Neither on the beach nor in the fortress nor on
the slopes above was there movement of any kind. At 6.22 a.m. the
River Clyde
grounded her bows without a tremor just below the fortress, and the first of the boats was within a few yards
of the shore.

In that instant the Turkish rifle fire burst out. It was a frightful fire, and it was made more shocking by the silence that had preceded it. Far from being demoralized, the Turks had crept back
to their trenches as soon as the bombardment was over, and they were now firing from a few yards away into the packed mass of screaming, struggling men in the boats. Some few among the British
jumped into the water and got to the shelter of a little bank on the far side of the beach, and there they huddled while the storm of bullets passed over their heads. The others died in the boats
just as they stood, crowded shoulder to shoulder, without even the grace of an instant of time to raise their rifles. When all were dead or wounded—the midshipmen and sailors as well
as the soldiers—the boats drifted helplessly away. This was the beach on which the Marines had walked in perfect safety two months before.

Many strange scenes occurred because the men persisted in trying to do the things they had been told to do. A sailor from the
Lord Nelson
, for example, managed to pole his cutter up to
the beach, but when he turned to beckon his passengers to the shore he found that they were no longer alive. The boy was observed to be standing there in wonder when he too was struck and his boat
slid back into the sea.

Meanwhile Commander Unwin was having difficulty aboard the
River Clyde.
Her bows were still divided by an expanse of deep water from the shore, and when they tried to bring the steam
hopper round to fill the gap it was swept away to port by the current and lay broadside to the beach, where it was useless. It was vital now that the two lighters should be brought round from the
stern to make the causeway between the ship and the shore. Unwin left the bridge and dived overboard with a tow rope in his hand. He was at once followed into the water by an able seaman named
Williams. Together the two men swam to the shore, and while still standing waistdeep in water and under heavy fire they managed to get the lighters lashed together and placed before the bows.
Bracing himself against the current, Unwin held the more landward of the two lighters in position and shouted to the soldiers in the
River Clyde
to come ashore.

The men at once came running down the gangways along the ship’s sides, and as they ran they presented a target which was not unlike the line of moving objects one sees sometimes in a
shooting gallery at a village fair. Having beaten off the smaller boats the Turks were now able to give all their attention to this new assault. They opened up their fire from both sides of the
ship, and soon the gangways became jammed with dead and dying. Those of the British who succeeded in reaching the lighters found themselves exposed to an even closer fire, and presently Williams
was hit. Not knowing that he was dead, Unwin propped him up in the water and in doing so let go his grip on the lighter. Immediately
it was swept away in the current,
spilling its cargo of wounded into the sea.

Air Commodore Samson came flying over Sedd-el-Bahr at this moment, and looking down saw that the calm blue sea was ‘absolutely red with blood’ for a distance of fifty yards from the
shore, ‘a horrible sight to see.’ Red ripples washed up on the beach, and everywhere the calm surface of the water was whipped up into a ghastly discoloured foam by thousands of falling
bullets. The sun was shining brightly.

The British had now reached that point in a battle which is the most terrible of all—the point where the leaders feel they must persist in attacking although all hope has gone. Just for a
short time they live in this meaningless and heroic limbo which is at the edge of panic, and which makes a kind of welcome to death. It is a feeling which perhaps the parachutist knows when for the
first time he jumps from the aircraft into the sky. The senseless attack had to continue for a little longer until it was sufficiently demonstrated that the thing was impossible, until enough of
the general pool of courage had vanished with the dead, and shock and exhaustion had overcome them all. And so they kept pulling the lighters back into position, and the men kept running out of the
ship and the Turks kept killing them.

When Commander Unwin collapsed in the water through cold and exhaustion a naval lieutenant and two midshipmen jumped in to take his place. After an hour’s rest aboard the
River
Clyde
Unwin was back in the water again, dressed in a white shirt and flannel trousers (his uniform had been ripped off his back), and there he remained, struggling with the lighters, bringing
the wounded off the beach, until again he collapsed and was carried away.

By 9.30 a.m., when the casualties were being numbered in many hundreds, it was becoming apparent to the soldiers at last that they could do no more. Barely two hundred had reached the shelter of
the little bank on the beach, and the barbed wire before them was hung with the corpses of the men who had tried to cut a way through to the Turkish trenches. A thousand others
remained inside the
River Clyde
, and they were safe enough there with the bullets hammering on the armoured plates of the ship, but directly they showed themselves at the
sallyports the killing began again. Only the machine-guns mounted behind sandbags in the bows of the ship were able to keep firing.

General Hunter-Weston was at sea aboard the cruiser
Euryalus
all this time, and he knew little or nothing of what was going on. Accordingly he put the next part of the plan into action:
Brigadier-General Napier was ordered to the shore with the main body of the troops. The transports steamed slowly forward to the point where they had a rendezvous with the boats which had taken the
first assault troops to the shore. Had this meeting ever taken place a massacre of far greater proportions would certainly have occurred. But of the original assault force there remained barely
half a dozen boats with living crews. These now came up to the transports and having emptied out their dead and wounded, the sailors stood by to return to the shore. There was room only for Napier,
his staff and a few of his soldiers. As they approached the beach, the General was hailed by the men on the
River Clyde
who wanted to warn him that it was useless to continue. Napier,
however, did not understand the situation. He came alongside the lighters, and seeing them filled with men sprang on board to lead them to the shore. But they made no response to his orders and he
realized then that they were all dead. From the decks of the
River Clyde
they called to the General again, ‘You can’t possibly land.’ Napier shouted back,
‘I’ll have a damned good try.’ He tried, but he was dead before he reached the beach.

With this the assault landing at Sedd-el-Bahr came to an end.

Meanwhile the other four landings at Cape Helles had been going forward and with much better success. After heavy fighting near Tekke Burnu, about a mile away to the west, considerable numbers
of soldiers were ashore on two beaches there, and towards midday Hunter-Weston began to divert his reinforcements to this point. To the east, in Morto Bay, another force had scrambled up the cliffs
with trifling loss at Eski Hissarlik Point, and was securely ensconced. But the commander at Eski Hissarlik had no
orders to go to the relief of Sedd-el-Bahr—indeed, he
had no knowledge of what was going on there—so he stayed where he was and entrenched.

An even stranger situation had developed at the fifth landing place, a point which had been called ‘Y’ beach, about four miles up the coast on the western side of the peninsula. This
landing was Hamilton’s own idea; he had planned to spring a trap on the Turks by getting 2,000 men ashore in this isolated spot. Their mission was to take the Turks in the rear and perhaps
even cut them off entirely by marching across the tip of the peninsula and joining up with the other landings in the south. There was no actual beach at this point, but a cleft in the cliffs seemed
to offer a fairly easy way up to the heights 200 feet above, and reconnaissance from the sea had revealed that the Turks had established no defences on the shore.
¹³

This enterprise opened with astonishing success. The 2,000 men landed and climbed up the cliffs without a single shot being fired at them. At the top there was no sign of the enemy at all. While
their senior officers strolled about through the scrub inspecting the position the men sat down to smoke and brew themselves a cup of morning tea. And so the morning was whiled away. Less than an
hour’s march to the south their comrades at Sedd-el-Bahr and Tekke Burnu were being destroyed but they knew nothing of this. They heard the distant sounds of firing through the clear sunlit
air, but they made no move in that direction. Had they but known it these troops at Y beach were equal in numbers to the whole of the Turkish forces in the tip of the peninsula that morning; they
could have marched forward at will and encircled the entire enemy position. By midday they might have cleared
the way to Achi Baba and turned a massacre into a brilliant
victory.