ANZAC COVE

ATTEMPT TO ADVANCE ANZAC LINES

To close that gap at the apex was obviously the first essential move, and on Sunday, May 2 (a week after the landing), a determined effort was made. The objective was a round knoll, known as Baby 700, on the slope of Sari Bair. It stood about three hundred yards beyond the lines on Pope’s Hill, and its possession would have blocked the entrance from which the enemy commanded large sections of Monash Gully and Shrapnel Gully. The attempt began at 7 p.m. with a rapid bombardment, and throughout the night the Australians of the 13th and 16th Battalions endeavoured to storm the terrible position. The Otago Battalion was sent in support; then part of the Nelson (R.N.D.), and after midnight the Portsmouth and Chatham (R.M.L.I.). The Australians gained some trenches near the Bloody Angle, but the plateau had by now been carefully fortified with wire and machine-guns. It was impossible for our destroyers, firing up the length of Shrapnel Gully, to distinguish friend from foe. Five shells, perhaps coming from them, temporarily checked and divided the Portsmouth Battalion in its advance. It was speedily rallied, but under the heavy machine-gun and rifle fire no support was able to establish the position at the Bloody Angle. Parties of the 13th, 16th, and Otago Battalions clung to the edges of the steep ascent till far into May 3. But in the end, all survivors returned to the original lines. The attempt failed, and it cost 800 men.[102] On the following day (May 4) an effort to seize Gaba Tepe and end the continuous loss inflicted by its shrapnel upon the beach and upon bathers in Anzac Cove also failed, owing to the mass and strength of wire along the edge of the sea. Meantime, the warships had been continuously assisting all troops on sea and land. On the 27th the Queen Elizabeth, hearing from a seaplane that the Goeben had ventured down the strait, apparently with the object of firing over the Peninsula, forestalled that intention by dropping one of her largest shells from near Gaba Tepe into the strait. Narrowly missed, the Goeben retired under shelter of the steep shore, but the Queen Elizabeth’s second shell sank a transport in the middle of the current.

By May 5 the phase of the landing was completed. A firm hold had been gained upon the end of the Peninsula and at Anzac. The world’s history had been enriched by hardly credible examples of courage, élan, and the fortitude of endurance which Napoleon accounted a more valuable quality in soldiers than courage and élan. But the objects specified in the scheme of attack had not been gained. The Turks were still at Krithia. They still held the lines drawn across the slopes of Achi Baba. Koja Dere and Boghali were still far from the eager youths clinging like flies to the Anzac cliffs. Maidos was farther beyond, nor was the fleet a cable’s length nearer to the Narrows than before. It was evident to all that the campaign, deprived of the incalculable advantage of surprise by the hesitation, delay, and disapproval or indifference at home, would now be long and costly in life. Already in ten days the losses were officially reckoned:

Killed. Wounded. Missing.
Officers 177 412 13
Men199078073580

These figures give a total casualty list of 13,979. The loss may be realised by another table. On April 30 the Fusilier Brigade (86th) of the 29th Division, out of a normal strength of 104 officers and about 4000 men, mustered as follows:

Officers. Men.
2nd Royal Fusiliers12481
1st Lancashire Fusiliers11399
1st Royal Munster Fusiliers12596
1st Royal Dublin Fusiliers 1374
36 1850[103]

THE WOUNDED UNDERESTIMATED

For no such numbers of casualties had estimate or preparation been made. The casualties, in fact, amounted to something like three times the estimate, and the treatment of the wounded became a serious, if not insoluble, difficulty. In his dispatch, Sir Ian notices that his “Administrative Staff had not reached Mudros by the time when the landings were finally arranged.” We have seen that they did not reach Alexandria from home till April 1; that they were left there to embark the remaining troops and complete the base hospital arrangements, and did not reach Mudros till April 18. The Administrative Staff included Brigadier-General E. M. Woodward, who, as Deputy Adjutant-General, was ultimately responsible for all questions of personnel and casualties. And it included Surgeon-General W. E. Birrell, who, as Director of Military Services, was immediately responsible for the treatment of the wounded. In the absence of these officers, Sir Ian says “all the highly elaborate work involved by these landings was put through by my General Staff working in collaboration with Commodore Roger Keyes,” who was Chief of the Staff to Admiral de Robeck. But Lieutenant-Colonel A. E. C. Keble, R.A.M.C., Assistant Director of Medical Services, reached Mudros before the chief officers of the Administrative Staff, and to him, as above noticed, the scheme for dealing with the wounded was due. Merely owing to a mistaken estimate of the enemy’s opposition, the means provided were inadequate for the actual numbers. As we have seen, only two hospital ships, each accommodating about 500 cases, had been allotted for the army. The navy lent two more, and supplied such transport as could now be spared, but these were not fitted with hospital necessities. Doctors, nurses, and orderlies, all were short. Army surgeons and stretcher-bearers displayed their fine devotion in bringing the wounded to the beaches both at Helles and Anzac; but in spite of the navy’s energy and fearlessness in control of the boats, many of the wounded remained waiting long for treatment; in one case a fleet-sweeper crowded with Australian wounded went wandering from ship to ship in vain, and at last tied up against the General Headquarters ship (at that time, May 9, the Arcadian, to which Sir Ian had transferred); and upon the transports taking them to Alexandria—a voyage of two to three days and nights—the wounded suffered much. Many were unable to move without help, and no help was there. Most had been treated only with first dressings. In some cases the wounds corrupted. Many died. Warships, like the Cornwallis, afforded as much room as they could, acting as clearing-stations for the wounded, and transmitting the dead to a trawler which daily went round the fleet to collect them.[104] The efforts of the fleet surgeons were untiring. But no scheme and no effort could avail against a false estimate of the enemy’s strength and defensive power. Rightly or wrongly, the campaign had from the first been regarded in London as of secondary importance, and secondary provision had been made for an estimate of secondary loss.

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