It is by no means easy to realise what the men felt during this ordeal. Perhaps the strongest emotion was not the sense of duty, the prompting of pride, or even the fear of imminent death, but blind, helpless rage. In a charge or an advance a soldier rarely feels anger. His whole soul is concentrated on reaching a definite objective, and though he is prepared to kill anyone who stands in his way, he does so without passion. The exultation born from rapid movement, the thrill produced by the sense of achievement, banish all personal feelings. But lying on the ridge under the pitiless bombing, watching the mangled bodies of the dead, men had time to think, and the fruit of their thoughts and of their impotence was black and bitter hatred of the enemy. They were ready to run any risk in order to do something to hurt him.

Some tried to catch the Turkish bombs as they were falling and throw them back into the enemy’s lines before they exploded. Five times Private Wilkin, of the 7th Dublins, performed this feat, but at the sixth attempt he was blown to pieces. Elsewhere men, sooner than lie impotent, took up stones and hurled them at the foe. Everywhere the few remaining officers moved about among their men, calming the overeager, encouraging the weary, giving an example of calmness and leadership, of which the land that bore them may well be proud. In doing this they made themselves a mark for the inevitable snipers, who by now had ensconced themselves in coigns of vantage on the crest of the ridge, and many died there. Thus fell Capt. Tobin, of the 7th Dublins, a man greatly beloved. Here, too, fell Lieut. Fitzgibbon and Lieut. Weatherill, of the same regiment. Fitzgibbon, a son of the Nationalist M.P. for South Mayo, who, in the black days of Ireland’s past had had many a dispute with the forces of the law, and had now sent his son to die gloriously in the King’s uniform; Weatherill, a boy who had made himself conspicuous in a very gallant battalion for courage. Here, too, many other heroic souls laid down their lives, but still the line held on.

The sun reached the west and began to sink; the ranks were thin, the men were weary, and many mangled bodies lay along the fatal ridge. The 6th Royal Irish Fusiliers, exposed both in front and in flank, had been practically annihilated. Their 5th Battalion came up to reinforce them and shared their fate. Three officers of this regiment, Captains Panton and Kidd, and 2nd-Lieut. Heuston, earned the Military Cross by the inspiring example they gave on this occasion. The last-named was reported as “wounded and missing,” and was probably killed in this fight. Nearly all the officers of the Irish Fusiliers had fallen, and the other regiments were in nearly as bad a case; but still the line held on. Tired and hungry and thirsty as they were, unable to strike a blow in their own defence, yet still the men of the 10th Division were resolved not to retire a step until the order to do so came. They were but young soldiers, who had had less than a year’s training, and had received their baptism of fire only a week earlier; but they were determined that however stern the ordeal they would not disgrace their regiments.

In old days, in the thick of a hard-contested struggle, men rallied round the colours—the visible symbol of the regimental honour. There were no colours to rally round on the slope of the Kiretch Tepe Sirt, but the regimental name was a talisman that held the battered ranks to their ground. Their regiments had in the past won great glory, but neither the men of the 87th who cleared the pine woods of Barrosa with the cry of “Faugh a Ballagh!” nor the Dublins and Munsters who leapt from the bows of the “River Clyde” into certain death, need blush to own comradeship with their newly-raised Service Battalions, who died on the Kiretch Tepe Sirt.

Darkness at last fell, and the sorely-tried men hoped for relief. This was indeed at hand, though it did not take the form of fresh troops. None were available, so the units of the division who had suffered heavily in the charge of the previous day, and who had had less than twenty-four hours’ rest, were called up again. The 6th Dublins, and with them the 5th Royal Irish (Pioneers), took over the line of the ridge from the battalions who had held it so stoutly. Nor were their sufferings less, for throughout the night the bombing continued, and our men were still unable to make any effective retaliation. Many officers and men fell, but the remainder set their teeth and held their ground, until at last they received the order to withdraw from the untenable position. Not a man moved until he received the order, and then slowly, deliberately, almost reluctantly, they retired. Bullets fell thickly among them, and took a heavy toll, one of those killed being 2nd-Lieut. W. Nesbitt, a young officer of the 6th Dublins, who, though junior in rank, had made a tremendous impression by his character, and had earned the name of “the Soul of the Battalion.” Before he was hit, the 6th Dublins had had Major Preston and their Adjutant, Capt. Richards, killed, and in the course of these operations three subalterns, 2nd-Lieut. Clery, 2nd-Lieut. Stanton, and 2nd-Lieut. McGarry, were reported missing. Probably they died in some unseen struggle, and their bones now lie in a nameless, but honoured grave on the field where their regiment won such fame.

Gradually the shattered units withdrew to their original line, but when the roll was called there were many names unanswered. The charge on the 15th had cost many lives, the holding of the captured position very many more, and yet all the effort and all the suffering seemed to have been futile. The 10th Division had been shattered, the work of a year had been destroyed in a week, and nothing material had been gained. Yet all was not in vain. It is no new thing for the sons of Ireland to perish in a forlorn hope and a fruitless struggle; they go forth to battle only to fall, yet there springs from their graves a glorious memory for the example of future generations. Kiretch Tepe Sirt was a little-known fight in an unlucky campaign, but if the young soldiers of the 10th Division who died there added a single leaf to Ireland’s crown of cypress and laurel, their death was not in vain.

CHAPTER VII
KABA KUYU AND HILL 60

“Oh, bad the march, the weary march, beneath these alien skies,

But good the night, the friendly night, that soothes our tired eyes;