It was dark before the Aghyl Dere was reached, and the Rangers were glad to find that the two remaining companies of their battalion had been employed in entrenching a line on each side of the gully and making sandbag traverses on each side of it. All the wounded who had fallen in the earlier fighting had been dressed and removed. This was a feat requiring extraordinary courage and endurance on the part of the battalion stretcher-bearers. They had been obliged to go into the exposed section of the Agyhl Dere under a storm of bullets, in order to bring out the wounded, and yet they not only did so, but often dressed the man’s wounds under fire before they removed him. Then after the Medical Officer had treated him they had to bear their heavy burden all the way to the beach, returning only to plunge into the fire-swept zone again and rescue another comrade.
There were no men in the force who did their duty more strenuously and fearlessly than the stretcher-bearers of the 5th Connaught Rangers on the 10th of August, 1915, and officers who had grumbled at having to allot some of their best and strongest men for non-combatant duties realized how well it was that they had done so. Nor must the part played by the medical officer be forgotten. Lieutenant J. I. O’Sullivan, Royal Army Medical Corps, found himself confronted by the débris of two brigades, but he rose to the occasion magnificently. Unpacking his paniers under a bush just behind the line, he not only worked on till long after dark without a rest, but remained cheerful and encouraging through it all. Only those who passed through his hands know what they owe to him.
So at sunset on August 10th ended the Battle of Sari Bair, which had begun on the night of the 6th. It had been hard fighting, and Mr. Ashmead Bartlett, the newspaper correspondent, has described it as the hardest battle in which British soldiers have been engaged since Inkerman. Those who took part in it, however, prefer to think of General Godley’s restrained but deeply significant testimony:—
“I do not believe that any troops in the world could have accomplished more. All ranks vied with one another in the performance of gallant deeds, and more than worthily upheld the best traditions of the British Army.”
Note.—Since this chapter was written, Brigadier-General Cooper has been awarded a C.B., and Colonel Bewsher of the Hampshires, and Major Wilford, Indian Army (attached Royal Irish Rifles) have received the D.S.O. for their services in this action.
CHAPTER V
SUVLA BAY AND CHOCOLATE HILL
“Death is nothing; but to live vanquished and without
glory is to die every day.”—Napoleon.
If you sail up the western coast of the Gallipoli Peninsula, soon after passing Anzac Cove, you will notice that the hills which have fringed the shore all the way from Cape Helles begin to run further inland, and that a gradually widening strip of level ground becomes visible between the cliffs and the sea. The coast line, too, which has hitherto pointed north and south, turns in a north-westerly direction, and thus increases the extent of plain until it culminates at the end of four miles in a cape known as Nibrunesi Point. Two miles north of Nibrunesi is another promontory called Suvla Point, and these are the two extremities of a semi-circular bay, which had no name on the original maps issued to the army, but which was soon to be well known as Suvla Bay. It is a name which has brought sorrow to many homes, and which will be perpetually associated with failure, but there are many glorious memories associated with it.