Over two hundred men were lost in the futile attempt to hold that trench alone. For many weeks Pope's Hill remained neutral territory, a menace to the safety of the whole Australasian position at Gaba Tepe. In the end the Australasians, after capturing and losing it many times, made good their title to the position. Its importance was at once demonstrated by the control it gave them of the high ridge beyond, which they christened Dead Man's Ridge. Before the capture of Pope's Hill the enemy continually shot down Monash Valley, and caused serious casualties every day. Afterwards they were soon cleared from this commanding ridge, and the whole Australasian position was rendered comparatively safe. But this development was deferred for nearly three months after the attack of the second of May.
Another point of vantage is the hill of Gaba Tepe, which is situated on the very seaboard, at the extreme right of the Australasian line. This knoll is only 120 feet high, but the batteries upon it, until they were silenced by the guns of the warships, did an immense amount of damage to landing parties coming and going in the bay. On May 4 an attack was made upon this knoll, but proved unsuccessful, because, to quote the official dispatch of Sir Ian Hamilton, "the barbed wire was something beyond belief." Three months later Gaba Tepe still remained in the hands of the Turks.
The actual losses in these first days of fighting were excessively heavy, and the little force of Australasians, now facing a ring of 25,000 Turks, counted the missing ones ruefully, not only in grief for their dead and wounded comrades, but because the strain placed upon the survivors was by so much the heavier.
General James McCay, commanding 2nd Brigade, Australian Infantry.
The Second Brigade, composed of Victorians led by General McCay, had landed with 4,300 men. After the unsuccessful attack on Gaba Tepe, nine days later, the roll-call showed 2,600 remaining. A week later the same brigade was engaged in a glorious charge at Krithia, and returned with only 1,600 men. In a little over a fortnight that Brigade had lost over 60 per cent. of its effectives, a heavy toll indeed.
The experience of those early days had already taught the adaptable Australasians many new things about bush fighting. They had learned, for instance, how to deal with the snipers who had infested the hillsides; and in a very short time put an end to them. This was highly necessary, for in the first two or three days' fighting the toll in officers had been intolerable, owing to the efforts of these sharpshooters, whose mission was to pick off the leaders of the men.
The Australian method of stalking them called for a considerable amount of hardihood on the part of those practising it. Two of them would go out after one sniper, having roughly marked down the spot where he lay by the sound of his rifle. They separated as they crawled near him, so that one could approach him from either side. Stealthily they crawled through the olive bush, waiting sometimes for long half hours for the crack of his rifle to assist in locating him. At last the exact thicket that sheltered him would be located; then, at a given signal, both would rush on him with fixed bayonets. Usually he was alert enough to account for one of them, but the other invariably got him. Those snipers were ready to surrender when caught and held at bay, and the self-control of an Australasian who could spare the enemy who had just shot down his comrade is hard to estimate.
Another new employment was the throwing of bombs, home-made for the greater part. An empty jam tin, with some fuse and explosive, were materials from which the handy bushmen constructed very serviceable bombs, which were employed at that part of the line between Quinn's Post and Courtney's Post, where the trenches approached very closely together.
One team of bomb throwers achieved fame as the Test team, because the sergeant always distributed the ammunition in his own way. He made the distribution a "catching" practice, the bomb forming the cricket ball. The record of no catches missed was well sustained; exactly what might have happened had one been dropped had better be left to the imagination.