Inspired by a courage which baffles reason with amazement (for what reasonable motive had these men—these Irishmen—to spring into the face of instant death?), the second company of Munster Fusiliers crowded upon the gangway, and rushed along the lighters over the dead bodies of their friends. As they ran, the end of the pontoon nearest the shore was torn loose by the rip of the current, and drifted off into deep water. The men fell in masses, and many, either to escape the torrent of bullets or in passionate eagerness to reach the shore, attempted to swim to land, but were dragged down by the weight of their equipment, and lay visible upon the sand below. With unwavering decision, the sailors laboured to restore the pontoon. Commander Unwin ran down the gangway and, plunging into the sea, worked beside the men. Midshipman Malleson and Midshipman Drewry (in honour of whom the French afterwards named the jetty which they built on the spot) swam out, carrying ropes to and from the drifting lighters under the ceaseless splash of bullets and shells. The names of all these have become celebrated, and they won the most envied of all our country’s distinctions, but it is almost invidious to select even such names as theirs among the men and boys of every rank, and of both services, whose self-devotion made that day and place so memorable.[86]
By such devoted efforts, a reserve lighter was brought into position, and the pontoon again completed. A third company of the Munster Fusiliers dashed along it, with similar heroism, towards the shore, suffering terrible loss from accurate and low-firing shrapnel, now added to the other missiles of death. The survivors joined the survivors under shelter of the low bank of sand. There was a brief pause in the attempt to land, but when it began again, the pontoon was again carried adrift by the current, bearing upon it a number of Hampshire men, together with Brigadier-General Napier, commanding the 88th Brigade, and his Brigade-Major, Captain Costeker. They lay down flat upon the lighters, but nearly all were killed as they lay, including these two officers of distinguished military name. Connection with the shore was thus severed. Nearly all the boats in the tows had been destroyed, and some were idly drifting, manned only by the dead. The dead lay upon the lighters, and below the water, and awash upon the edge of the beach. The ripple of the tormented sea broke red against the sand.
One of the tows had taken half a company of the Dublin Fusiliers to a point called the “Camber Beach,” just north-east of the Seddel Bahr castle. Perhaps they were intended to threaten the enemy’s position from his left flank by creeping round the castle and attacking the village streets. This they proceeded to do, and, as the Turks had not entrenched this position, the Irishmen with great skill crawled from cover to cover till they reached the village windmills and the entrance to the houses. There they were overwhelmed by the crowd of snipers. Many were killed, some cut off, only twenty-five returned. The wounded had to be left. One who afterwards saw the dead in a room said the bodies were charred, and the base of a 6-in. shell lay there. Probably hence arose reports of mutilation.[87]
THE NIGHT ON V BEACH
Before noon, any further attempt to effect a landing was abandoned, and the main body of troops which was to have followed close upon the covering party was diverted to W Beach. The mixed survivors of Dublin and Munster Fusiliers, and of the Hampshire companies, remained crouching behind the low parapet of the bank, with no food or water beyond such small quantities as they had brought with them. There they lay, exposed to the full blaze of sun, and only just sheltered from the incessant rain of bullets and shells. But for some machine-guns mounted on the bows of the River Clyde and protected by sandbags, the Turks would have found little difficulty in exterminating their whole number. With them were two officers of the General Staff—Colonel Doughty-Wylie, our humane and gallant military consul at Konia during the Adana massacres in 1909, and Colonel W. de L. Williams (Hampshire Regiment), who did their utmost to hearten the men during the remaining hours of that terrible day and through the night. As the Turks had no big guns on the spot, and the fire of the Asiatic guns was to some extent checked by the fleet, the remainder of the party on board the River Clyde were comparatively secure. The heavy loss in officers included the General of the 88th Brigade, as we have seen, and Colonel Carrington Smith, commanding that brigade’s Hampshire Regiment, both killed. During the afternoon and evening the naval boats were constantly engaged in removing the wounded from the River Clyde and other points where they could be reached. In this duty Commander Unwin again distinguished himself, going along the shore in a lifeboat and rescuing the wounded lying in shallow water, under persistent fire from the semicircular heights. Throughout the day and far into the moonlit night the Queen Elizabeth, Cornwallis, and Albion and other ships maintained a heavy bombardment, which restrained the furious Turkish attempts at counter-attack, and assisted the remainder of the covering party in landing from the River Clyde under the comparative darkness. But later in the night the noise of battle was renewed. Outbursts of rifle and machine-gun fire, varied by shells thrown over from W Beach by two of our own field guns, allowed the wearied men no rest; and at dawn the Albion turned on her 12-in. shells, like trains rushing headlong down a tunnel to the crash of collision.
W BEACH LANDING
At V Beach, in spite of the incalculable courage and skill of the Irish Regulars and the sailors combined, the landing on the 25th had failed. At W Beach, not much more than half a mile north-west, over the cliff of Cape Helles where the lighthouse and Fort I had stood, the English covering party displayed equal heroism and gained greater success. W Beach is a shallower but longer arc of sandy shore, curving between Cape Helles and Cape Tekke, the two extreme points of the Peninsula. Between the two inaccessible cliffs and the fallen rocks which the sea washes, a gully has been cut by a short watercourse, draining the extremity of the high and slightly undulating plateau in which the Peninsula ends. Except after heavy rains, the gully is dry, but its occasional stream, working upon the sandstone formation, and aided by the north-east wind blowing dust over the plateau’s surface, has piled up low heaps of sand dune, at that time covered with bent-grass, spring flowers, and the aromatic herbs which flourish upon the dry seacoasts of the Near East. Along its gentle curve the actual beach is rather more than a quarter of a mile in length, and its broadest part, where the gully runs out, is some 40 yards across. Hidden in the shallows a strong wire entanglement had been laid, and another protected the whole length of the beach from end to end at the water’s edge. To check communication with V Beach, two redoubts had been constructed upon the plateau south-east, and from them thick entanglements ran down to the cliffs edge at Cape Helles. Other entanglements on the north-west cut off communication with the more distant X Beach. The top rows, as it were, of the theatre, broken near the centre of the gully, were strongly entrenched; machine-guns, commanding the beach by converging fire, were lodged in caves upon the cliffs on both sides; and the land and sea were planted with mines. In his dispatch, Sir Ian Hamilton justly says:
“So strong, in fact, were the defences of W Beach that the Turks may well have considered them impregnable, and it is my firm conviction that no finer feat of arms has ever been achieved by the British soldier—or any other soldier—than the storming of these trenches from open boats.”[88]
These unsurpassed soldiers were men of the 1st Lancashire Fusiliers (86th Brigade), and, in their honour, W Beach was afterwards generally known as “Lancashire Landing.” The Euryalus was the guardian ship of this covering party, and after half an hour’s naval bombardment, to which no answer came, eight picket boats in line abreast, towing four cutters apiece, steamed toward the shore till they reached the shallows, and the tows were cast off to row to land. As at V Beach, the Turks maintained their silence till the boats grated. Then, in an instant, a storm of lead and iron swept down upon the Lancashire men. Some leapt into the water, and were caught by the hidden entanglement there. The foremost hurled themselves ashore, and struggled with the terrible wire, compared with which our British barbed wire is as cotton to rope. In vain the first line hacked and tore. Machines and rifles mowed them flat as with a scythe. Witnesses eagerly watching from the distant ships asked each other, “What are they resting for?” But they were dead.
THE LANDING EFFECTED