Distracting the Enemy
After sunset on June 4 three separate enterprises were carried out by the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. These were undertaken in compliance with an order which I had issued that the enemy's attention should be distracted during an attack I was about to deliver in the southern zone.
(1) A demonstration in the direction of Kaba Tepe, the Navy co-operating by bombarding the Turkish trenches.
(2) A sortie at 11 p.m. towards a trench 200 yards from Quinn's Post. This failed, but a second sortie by 100 men took place at 2.55 a.m. on June 5 and penetrated to the Turkish trench; demolished a machine-gun emplacement which enfiladed Quinn's Post, and withdrew in good order.
(3) At Quinn's Post an assault was delivered at 11 p.m. A party of sixty men, accompanied by a bomb-throwing party on either flank, stormed the enemy's trench. In the assault many Turks were bayoneted and twenty-eight captured. A working party followed up the attack and at once set to work. Meanwhile the Turkish trenches on the left of the post were heavily assailed with machine-gun fire and grenades, which drew from them a very heavy fire. After daybreak a strong bomb attack developed on the captured trench, the enemy using a heavier type of bomb than hitherto.
At 6.30 a.m. the trench had to be abandoned, and it was found necessary to retire to the original fire trench of the post and the bomb-proof in front of its left. Our casualties were eighty; those of the enemy considerably greater.