CHAPTER XXI
NO. 3, TABLE TOP AND SUVLA BAY
The Regiment, stretched in close lines on the terraces, slept soundly. For many days ahead there would be little opportunity of resting, and for many there would be but one more sleep. They did not rouse till well after dawn, for there was nothing to do that day but fill in time. Mac again overhauled all his equipment, paying particular attention to his rifle, bayonet and ammunition, seeing that everything was accessible and that all ran smoothly. Then the section rigged a blanket between piled arms, and sat down in its shade for a game of cards. That palled after a time, and Mac drew from his knapsack a book, The Cloister and the Hearth, and was soon deep in its pages. Then came lunch, and in the afternoon orders were read, with inspiring messages from the Generals, and a few words from the C.O.
A few aeroplanes burred overhead, the exchange of firing followed its normal daily course, quieting rather in the heat of midday; but to the waiting troops the long hours dragged. That wonder of what the future held, that ominous quiet before the storm, the preparations for battle—all made the day long.
At last the sun sank behind the rugged islands in a glorious riot of colour, the high eastern hill-tops which should be British by dawn gradually grew black against the appearing stars. The Regiment, water-bottles filled and in final trim, stood leaning on their rifles. Occasionally some one gave a hitch to his gear, others talked in subdued tones, or gazed solemnly out to sea where the black outlines of Imbros and Samothrace stood against the last glow of departing day. At this glorious hour there drifted up from the darkness in the ravine below such a sound as went deep to Mac's heart. Rich in tone, perfect in key, unmarred by a single jarring note, and to the accompaniment of battle sounds above, came the music of the soul, and Mac was awed. It was the chanting of five hundred Maoris and their prayer before this, their first great trial in modern warfare. Upon the next few hours depended the reputation of their race. Would they be worthy of the glorious traditions of their old chiefs?
Then came the word to move, and the Regiment, in single line, filed down the slope and into the main sap to the north. It was already full of troops filing to the attack, but, after many halts and side-trackings, they reached the exit which led to the ravine. Here, at the parting of the ways, stood the fine old padre, and, with a "God bless you, my boy," he shook each by the hand as they passed out to battle.
The several troops of Mac's squadron divided for their various objectives. To his section fell the duty of going up the ravine to cut enemy communication trenches, leading across it to their strong outpost on the ridge above on the left. Magazines were empty, and the orders were that the night's work must be done with the bayonet. The forty silent figures crept up the sharp stony bottom for a short distance, and then halted to await the critical moment of the attack. Then, while they waited, the long white beam from a man-o'-war at sea settled along the ridge on the left and showed the strong wired entrenchments of the outpost. Whir-r-r went a shell overhead, and the first shot of the battle burst in an eruption of black smoke among the Turkish wire.
More followed in rapid succession; but the first shot had been the signal for the troop in the defile below to set off at a jog-trot up its murky, twisty depths. They trotted along for five minutes, machine-gun bullets from high above sometimes hitting up small spurts of sand as they doubled round corners. Then, as they suddenly rounded a sharp ridge, a dozen or so rifles burst on them from fifteen paces distant. Some men went down in front of Mac, a cloud of dust sprang up and he stumbled over one of the prone forms. Instantly they were in among them, the terrified Turks shrieked, a few odd shots rang out, Mac killed two with his revolver, and then, with bloody bayonets, shadowy figures emerged from the murky depths of the trench, and passed on to explore the ground beyond. They pushed up through the thick scrub to beneath the outpost where a battle now raged, for the purpose of catching fugitives and preventing reinforcements. But none came, and the troop sat quietly in the scrub awaiting developments. The sound of musketry echoed beautifully across the ravines in the clear stillness of the night.
The Turks were lighting fires in the stunted pine growth a short distance ahead, which lit with a red flickering light the overhanging clay cliffs of Table Top rising sharply at the farther side of the defile. Then the cold white glare of a searchlight settled on its flat top, and in a few minutes heavy howitzer, 18-pounder and naval shells, shrieked overhead and burst, flashing and roaring, on the crest. The overhanging crag, her summit rent by an inferno of shell fire, her inaccessible escarpment lit by the lurid glow of scrub fires, and the fantastic smoke clouds eerily revealed by the searchlight, made altogether a wild night battle scene of weird glory.
The bombardment ceased suddenly, the searchlight switched off, and part of the regiment, who had crawled through the scrub on the more accessible flank during the shelling, successfully rushed the Top. Mac and his mates returned to their first scene of action and continued to guard the communication sap. One or two Turks, who had hidden in the scrub during the mêlée, gave their presence away, yelled with terror and fell dead at the first shot. Poor old Joe, who had been severely wounded by the first fusillade, lay dying, and soon his moans ceased altogether. Others were dead, and some wounded.
About three in the morning they went on again to join the rest of the regiment on Table Top. Struggling up the trench-like bottom of the ravine, through the inky blackness of the thick scrub, they found themselves at length in a cul-de-sac, with clay cliffs on either side. The officer went on to reconnoitre, and then, to the great discomfiture of the forty fellows huddled together in the clay watercourse, a hundred or so Turks put in an appearance on the brink of the steep cliff on the left. Babbling excitedly they looked curiously down on the silent crouching troopers. Trapped, and entirely at the Turks' mercy, Mac momentarily expected annihilation, and wondered vaguely why it did not come. Retreat was hopeless, and he counselled scrambling up the steep bank and attacking them. A tense half hour passed. Then came a guarded whistle from high up on the right, and he heard the faint command from his officer, "Climb up to the right." Quitting the troop, he scrambled up the soft yielding cliff, slid back to the starting point several times, still puzzled why the Turks on the opposite brink did not shoot, and at last found his officer near the top, quite bewildered as to the whereabouts of his men. Mac, exhausted with his exertions, was sent to report the night's events to the Colonel, while his officer returned to guide the others up.
Table Top was a level, scrub-covered plateau, about four chains across, flanked on the north, west and south by steep cliffs, and on the east gently sloping up towards the higher hills. Mac found the Colonel on the far side, answered his questions, heard from him that progress everywhere had been splendid and that the brigade had disposed of all its objectives, and then found a few spare moments to view the country from this high point.
Dawn was breaking—just the same old beautiful dawn they had so often watched silhouetting the trenches opposite and the hills beyond, but now, with the exhilaration of victory thrilling through his body, Mac stood there with the most glorious dawn of all his days, or of anyone else's he thought, lighting the eastern sky.
From the heights of the Table Top, Mac surveyed the scene below him. To his right as he faced the north, the Table Top was connected by a series of ridges with the hill summits about a mile away, which the sun was just topping. To his front the ground fell abruptly in a deep ravine, beyond which lay ridge after ridge, and beyond again the high range behind Anafarta, three miles away, all standing out clearly in sun-topped ridges and shadow, in the refreshing air of early morning. Out to sea were the two islands, rugged and beautiful as ever, which, together with the whole glory of the morning, the hills and the sea, were unconscious and unaffected by the battle of men developing on those beaches and hills to decide the fate of nations.
The Anzac shore swept away to the north-west in a splendid curve to Lala Baba, the point of Suvla Bay; and there, where no vessel floated at sundown, lay now the strategy of the battle, a great fleet of transports, warships, lighters, pinnaces and destroyers, encircled already by a great torpedo-net. Farther out, every detail reflected in the clear blue water, lay a dozen clean, sweet hospital ships. Already round the little mound of Lala Baba were gathered small bodies of men, horses and artillery, and occasionally Turkish shrapnel burst above them. The warships were sending shells up the Anafarta valley and on to the Turkish positions behind the great white patch of the Salt Lake.
Having thoroughly taken in the situation, Mac turned again to business. Some of the fellows were digging trenches on the enemy side of the plateau, the medicals were bandaging the wounded, Turkish and New Zealand, in a sheltered spot in the scrub, and Mac was told off to disarm and guard several hundred prisoners who were trooping up the steep slope from the rear. This was the garrison of the old No. 3 Outpost who had found their retreat cut off by the capture of Table Top, and were the same Turks who had, earlier in the morning, gazed down on Mac as he had crouched in the ravine bottom fifteen feet below them. He decided that they must have been demoralized then, or else he and his comrades had been no more.
The prisoners threw down their arms and bandoliers in a pile, and seemed to feel no regret. They beamed with happiness, offered cigarettes, biscuits, money and mementoes to their guards, and embarrassed them by crowding round in an effort to shake their hands. Eventually they were despatched under escort to the beach, and Mac seized a few spare moments to watch an attack, half a mile to the south, which was being made by Light Horsemen from the main position on Russell's Top.
Destroyers close in below sent high explosive shell whirring upwards to burst in a pall of black smoke and dust on the narrow neck between the Turkish and Australian lines. There was a tornado of machine-gun fire which reached Mac's ears only as a high-pitched continuous note. The shelling lasted about ten minutes only, a hopelessly inadequate preparation, he knew, on such positions. The storm of machine-guns rose to terrific violence, ripping and roaring. A grey fog of smoke and dust partially screened the scarred hill-tops, and shielded the mêlée from his vision, but, knowing those tiers of Turkish trenches as he did, he was awed with the thought of what must be passing. For fifteen minutes it lasted in all its fury, then lulled slightly, to burst forth again for a few minutes only to diminish once more to a steady burr, which left nothing decided in his mind. What had happened he did not know, but when he turned his attention there later in the morning he gathered, from the fact that the machine-guns still rattled in the same locality as before, that ground had not been gained.
His Squadron were instructed to make perches in the seaward cliff of the crag where they would be safe from shrapnel which was now bursting occasionally in the vicinity. Mac endeavoured to do so, but so steep was the cliff that he only managed to make a ledge sufficiently wide to sit on, while his legs dangled over the abyss below, and the sun blazed on him in undiluted fury. But the greatest discomfort was the steady fall of a stream of powdered clay from the constructors of perches and paths higher up. A veranda of Turkish bayonets with Turkish rifles roofed crossways on them, failed to improve the situation greatly, so he gave it up as a bad job, and moved to the shade of a fine arbutus bush on the less steep enemy side of the Top. He preferred shade, comfort, and clean arms and ammunition, with the risk of Turkish shrapnel, of which he had no great fear, to the drawbacks of the cliff face without the risk.
The Squadron lay in reserve all day, and Mac, from his shady altitude, revelled in being just so situated with a great battle in progress, with almost the whole battlefield in view, and him with nothing more to do than sit there in comfort watching it. He surveyed it all through his glasses, tracing the present limits of the advance. The high hills seemed still to be Turkish, for different bodies of white-patched troops made a rough line some distance below the summit, running down laterally towards Suvla Bay. Distant ridges lined by the same white-patched men showed that all the foothills had been taken; but Mac watched eagerly, though in vain, for the appearance of British troops on the higher ridges. Chocolate Hill and Osman Oblu Tepe at the inner end of the Salt Lake, which were the main obstruction to the success of what seemed to be the plan of attack. He saw only a few Turks on these hills, and odd ones scurrying about near Anafarta, but never a body of them, large or small.
There was a great mass of troops gathered round the small mound of Lala Baba, on whose top was now a wireless station and a signal mast. There were horses, artillery, limbers, mobs of men and increasing piles of stores. From huge four-masted transatlantic liners came lines of seven or eight crowded boats in tow of a pinnace, and already the same lines were threading their way back to the hospital ships farther out. But the troops on shore were scarcely moving. During the whole day only a few small bodies advanced a short distance, with little opposition it seemed, at any time. Why did they not make a general advance? Shells fell occasionally on different sections of the general line, the diminishing music of the machine-guns floated, almost unnoticed, across the hot stillness of the midday hours, the freshness of the morning had given way to the summer glare, softened rather by the blue haze from fires which here and there crept through the scrub. Men-o'-war, close inshore, were shrouded in a murky pall from their flashing broadsides, while their shells tore holes in the village of Anafarta, or sent scrub and earth flying as they searched enemy ridges or passed to unseen billets beyond the summits.
Hospital ships weighed anchor and passed into distance, and destroyers patrolled unceasingly to guard against submarine attack.
Up the narrow, twisting sultry bottoms of ravines swarmed confused trails of sweating men and animals, mules laden with ammunition and water, with their Punjab muleteers, Sikhs with their mountain pieces, and fresh troops, British and Purkha, New Zealand, Australian, passing up to the line. Trickling rearwards, moving when opportunities offered, went limping the bandaged wounded, the stretcher-cases, blood-stained and grey, but patient, splendidly patient, the unladen mules, often waiting long periods for a clear passage, and all the odd men, messengers, prisoner escorts and others who move up and down the communications during a battle.
A few fellows of the Regiment were caught by snipers hidden still in the scrub behind the advancing line. Otherwise the Table Top was undisturbed, and the trenches grew deeper. Some went back to bury those who had fallen in the night encounters. Mac, Bill and Charley stuck to their shady spot most of the day. In a hollow at their feet half a dozen dead Turks turned black in the sun. Midday came, and they consumed the last of the Mudros luxuries; then they cleaned their gear, slept awhile and awoke at five, expectant of great activity after the lethargy of the day.
The Suvla Bay force had at last roused itself, and now steady extended lines of men were advancing across the dazzling whiteness of the Salt Lake towards Chocolate Hill and Osman. White puffs of bursting shrapnel broke here and there above them; but only occasional men fell. Naval artillery raked the hills in front of them, where no Turk could be seen. The lines went forward slowly, too slowly, for there seemed to be little opposition to the advance and no hand-to-hand fighting. They did not even appear to have reached the base of Chocolate Hill when deepening shadows made it no longer possible to follow their progress.