Yet the attack was made only in the centre, chiefly by two brigades of the 42nd Division (the 125th and 127th—Lancashire Fusiliers and Manchesters). A few yards of ground were won, but lost again. Only exactly in the centre of our lines the fighting continued all that day, and indeed, with short intervals, for six days longer. Here there was an oblong vineyard, running for about 200 yards beside the left of the straight Krithia road, about 250 yards from the junction of the East Krithia nullah with the West Krithia nullah still farther to the left. The vineyard had hitherto lain just outside our firing line, but now the East Lancashire Brigades seized and clung to it. All that day and through the night they clung to it, in spite of a massed counter-attack at night, the 6th and 7th Battalions, Lancashire Fusiliers, showing the finest endurance. The next day (Sunday, 8th), when the chances of our main strategy were just hanging in the balance, two more counter-attacks were delivered, before dawn and after sunset, but still the Lancastrians held, the 4th East Lancashire Battalion now coming into action.[151] On the Monday the position seemed comparatively secure, and these battalions were relieved, though fighting continued. But three days later the enemy attacked in mass again at night, and captured the vineyard. Next day (the 13th) they were bombed out of it, and a line across the oblong, nearly up to the farther end, was finally wired, loopholed, and consolidated. The actual territory gained was not much—barely 200 yards—but “The Vineyard” will always remain a memory in Lancastrian annals. The 42nd Division’s own C.O., Major-General Douglas, who had taken over the command of the VIIIth Army Corps at Helles after Hunter-Weston’s departure, shared the almost ruinous honour. For on August 8, Lieut.-General Davies had assumed command of the Army Corps himself, and Major-General Douglas had returned to his Division.
Though the feint at Helles did not gain much local advantage, its service to the general strategic plan must not be overlooked; for the violence and partial success of the attack retained the new Turkish divisions, which otherwise would have reinforced the enemy on Sari Bair and at Suvla. The second great feint, from our right at Anzac, was even more violent and more successful. It began about an hour and a half later on the same afternoon (August 6), and its scene was the section of Turkish trenches known as Lone Pine.
LEANE’S TRENCHES AT ANZAC
Just a week before the action (on the night of July 31), the extreme right of the Anzac position, close to Chatham’s Post where that side of the triangle ended at the centre of “Brighton Beach,” was further strengthened by a dashing sortie to destroy a hundred yards of trench which the Turks, working through a tunnel, had constructed within bombing distance of the so-called Tasmania Post. After two rapidly excavated mines had been exploded at the ends of the trench, four parties of fifty men each (11th West Australian Battalion, 3rd Australian Brigade) crossed our wire entanglements on planks placed in position by the sappers, and plunged straight into the midst of the confused and chattering Turks, almost before the explosions were over. After severe fighting, in which the Australians were heavily bombed from the Turkish communication trenches, they succeeded in barricading the entrances, transferring the Turkish parapets to the other sides of the trenches, and including the position within the Anzac lines. The Anzac loss was comparatively small—11 killed and 74 wounded, against 100 Turks killed; but Major Leane, who commanded the storming party, was mortally wounded, and the trenches afterwards bore his name.[152]
This enterprise had strengthened the Anzac right at the extreme end, securing that flank from attack across the comparatively flat and low-lying ground between our lines and Gaba Tepe. The “containing attack” or feint from Anzac was now to be delivered about half a mile farther up the same right flank or side of the Anzac triangle.
PREPARATIONS FOR LONE PINE
From the beach past Chatham’s Post and along the Tasmanian trenches, the Anzac lines rose steeply to a height of some 400 feet until they crossed a small plateau, known as Lone Pine. The name was due to a solitary tree which the Turks had left standing alone out of a small wood or fringe of firs lining their side of the ground. They had cut down the rest for their dug-outs or head-cover, and in fact the solitary pine itself was felled just before the attack, or even on the very morning; but the place kept its name, to be remembered in all records of the war. Upon the plateau, which measured little over 300 yards across and was covered with heath and low bushes, our lines bulged slightly into a salient, called the Pimple, separated from the Turkish lines by an open space, in some points a little over 100 yards broad, in others only 60 yards. Opposite this slight salient, over the southern portion of the plateau, the Turks had been long and busily engaged in constructing complicated lines and trenches to the strength of an underground fortress. Always apprehensive of attack at this point, as commanding a deep gully (known to Anzac as “Surprise Gully”), up which they brought their water and supplies for the front in this section, they had further covered the position and the open ground between the lines by strongly fortifying another small plateau across a shallow gully on their right, to the north. This fortress was known in Anzac as “Johnston’s Jolly,” and the two fortresses combined to subject any attack to a cross-fire of field-guns, machine-guns, and rifles.[153]
The chief feint from Anzac was directed against the Lone Pine fortress; and it was not merely a feint, for the position itself was of value in covering the approach of the main army to Maidos. For the attack, the 1st New South Wales Brigade (Brigadier-General N. M. Smyth) of the Australian Division, commanded now by that resolute British officer, Major-General H. B. Walker, was selected, and it was soon to rival the exploits of the 3rd Brigade at the landing, and of the 2nd Brigade on May 7 at Helles. It numbered barely 2000 strong as it came up White Gully and mustered round Brown’s Dip, a depression behind the firing lines of the Pimple. The men wore white armlets and a square white patch on the back, to distinguish them from the enemy in the dust and confusion of such fighting. They carried their packs and full equipment. The 2nd (Colonel Scobie, killed), the 3rd (Colonel Brown, killed), and the 4th (Colonel Macnaghton) Battalions were to lead the attack, the 1st Battalion (Colonel Dobbin) being held in reserve. The three battalions took up their positions, crouching below the parapets, from which the barbed wire had been cautiously removed. A small party was stationed along an advanced subterranean trench or corridor, connected with the main firing trench by tunnels, which the miners had elaborately constructed. Thence it was to burst out through the thin coating of earth overhead, and join in the charge.[154]
The attack was timed for 5.30 in the afternoon. A casual bombardment of the Turkish guns in the olive grove behind Gaba Tepe had been carried on all day by the monitor Humber, but at 4 o’clock the cruiser Bacchante appeared, and began shelling the Turkish lines in earnest. At 4.30 the land batteries joined in, but the bombardment was not more severe than usual, so that the Turks continued uncertain of the approaching event. Slowly the minutes passed, the officers standing watch in hand, as time ticked out for so many the remaining seconds of life. Only fifty from each of the three battalions were to spring over the parapet first, but so thickly did the men press up against the fire-step to get a good start that there was hardly room along the 200 yards of front.[155]
ASSAULT AT LONE PINE