The Turks thus seen were indeed massing for a counter-attack. At 6.30 the signal, “Everything O.K.,” had been passed to the Brigade Headquarters, but about half an hour later the enemy came swarming up the slope through communication trenches, bent upon recovering the position with bombs and bayonets. The desperate hand-to-hand conflict was renewed in the gathering darkness; but, impeded though they were by prisoners, wounded, and the numbers of dead bodies (which they attempted to arrange in rows along the sides of the trenches so as to leave a gangway clear), the Australians held the ground already won. Again, at 1.30, in the blackness of night, the Turks in great masses attempted to bomb them out with showers of hand missiles, and for seven hours the counter-attacks continued. So heavy were the losses that the 12th Battalion (South Australian, West Australian, and Tasmanian), which had been held as reserve for the 3rd Brigade, was thrown in to reinforce. At 1.30 p.m. of Saturday the 7th, the attacks were renewed, and the struggle lasted till about 5 p.m. (twenty-four hours after our first assault), broke out again at midnight, and was continued till dawn on Sunday the 8th.
Meantime, the peril of crossing the open ground had been to some extent averted by parties of sappers under Colonel Elliott and Major Martyn. In the early afternoon of the 6th, before the attack began, three mines had been exploded from tunnels thrown forward from the subterranean trench or gallery above mentioned. Taking advantage of the craters thus made, the sappers hurriedly bored tunnels through into the Turkish trenches, so connecting the gallery with the Lone Pine position. Down these new tunnels the wounded and prisoners could be safely conveyed on the 7th, past the craters into the gallery, and from the gallery down the old tunnels into our original trenches on the Pimple. It was a noble piece of engineering, saving many lives, and for the rest of the campaign all communication with the Lone Pine outpost passed through tunnels.
Sunday was chiefly spent in barricading the entrances of the enemy’s communication trenches with hundreds of sandbags, and in fortifying the position at other points. As it was impossible to bring away all the dead for burial, some of the bodies, both Turk and Australian, were buried by being built in among the sandbags and other barricades, so that for many weeks afterwards the position was haunted by the smell of corruption. During this fortification, the men were continually exposed to bombing and assaults. So heavy had been the 2nd Battalion’s loss that on Sunday it was relieved by the 7th Battalion (Victoria), which had been held in reserve for the 2nd Brigade. The reinforcement was fortunate, for at dawn on Monday the 9th the new battalion was called upon to resist the last of the violent counter-attacks, when for nearly three hours the Turks attempted to recover the position by repeated assaults up the southern and eastern slopes. After this repulse, the enemy continued to attack with bombs and guns till Thursday the 12th, but with less determination. Thus the conflict lasted for six days and nights in all. The position was finally won and held, but Lone Pine remained a dangerous or “unhealthy” point to the end. Our losses were very heavy. After the first counter-attacks, 1000 dead—Anzac and Turk—were roughly reckoned in the trenches. But the service in gaining the fortress, and in holding a large Turkish force in position, was incalculable. Praising the resolute tenacity of the Australian men and officers, Sir Ian wrote in his dispatch:
“The stout-heartedness with which they clung to the captured ground in spite of fatigue, severe losses, and the continual strain of shell-fire and bomb attacks may seem less striking to the civilian; it is even more admirable to the soldier.”
GERMAN OFFICERS’ TRENCHES ATTACKED
In this manner Lone Pine was taken and held. But before the sun rose on August 7, the remainder of the Australian Division’s line from the Pimple running left or north to the apex of the triangle at the Nek was the scene of contests no less heroic though less successful. The whole line was engaged, but the points from which our attacks issued were four—Steel’s Post, Quinn’s Post, Pope’s Hill, and Russell’s Top—from right to left. The 2nd Infantry Brigade (Victoria) was holding the line at Steel’s Post, and the 6th Battalion (Colonel Bennett) was chosen for an assault upon the opposite Turkish stronghold, known as German Officers’ Trenches, because at the armistice some German officers came out of them. It was a position of strength almost equal to Lone Pine, and here also tunnels had been dug forward from our lines and connected by a gallery at the end. Three mines were exploded between eleven and twelve on the night of the 6th, and a heavy bombardment was concentrated on the Turkish position, but without much effect beyond warning the enemy to expect attack. On the stroke of midnight, the first line struggled out of the gallery through holes in the surface, but were at once mowed down by concentrated machine-gun fire. Few advanced more than 2 yards. Most fell back dying or wounded into the gallery. A second attempt was made just before 4 a.m. on the 7th, but failed in like manner. It seems that a third attempt was contemplated by General Walker, but Brigadier-General Forsyth perceived the uselessness of further sacrifice, believing that the object of holding the Turks in position had been gained now that the main attacks on Sari Bair and at Suvla were in full progress.[157]
Farther to the left, the line was held by the 1st Light Horse Brigade (Brigadier-General H. G. Chauvel), and from Quinn’s Post the 2nd Regiment (Queensland) was ordered to attack in four lines of fifty each, apparently about dawn. The Turkish trenches were barely more than 15 yards away, but not one of our first line reached them, unless it was Major Logan, who led one of the two parties into which the line was divided, and is believed to have fallen dead over the Turkish parapet. Lieutenant Bourne, who led the other party, was killed in the first 10 yards. All in the line were killed or wounded, except one man, who said he observed where the machine-gun bullets were striking our parapet most thickly, and leapt clean above them and over the top. So terrible was the loss that the order for the other three lines to attack was cancelled.[158]
During this brief and deadly attempt, the 1st Regiment (New South Wales) of the same Light Horse Brigade made a sortie from Pope’s Hill, lying to the left of Quinn’s but slightly in rear. The object was to recover some trenches dug by the 4th Infantry Brigade on May 2 upon the farther side of a steep cleft in which one of the ravines contributing to Monash Gully ends. From these trenches, one above the other, the Turks harassed, not only Pope’s Hill and Monash Gully, but exposed parts of the main Shrapnel Gully itself. Soon after dawn Major T. W. Glasgow led the attack with two squadrons, and succeeded in storming the first three trenches, though at one moment the men in the second trench were bombing their own comrades in the third, in ignorance of their rapid advance. It was a fight with bombs, and our supply had to be brought from Pope’s across the open. The Turks, flinging bombs from the top edge of the steep gully, which is only 40 or 50 yards across at this point, had every advantage, and after two hours’ conflict the survivors of the squadrons were withdrawn, but carried in the wounded. Major Glasgow, though in the thick of the fighting throughout, was almost the only man untouched.
THE NEK
Even more terrible than these lesser contests along the right side of the Anzac triangle was the attempt to capture the open Nek, still farther to the left, just at the apex of the whole Anzac position, as has been before explained. The Nek itself is an isthmus of high cliff, flat and open at the top, connecting the main range of Sari Bair with the elevated Anzac position known as Russell’s Top. It is about 80 yards long and little over 100 yards in breadth across. On the right or south-east side it falls steeply down into Monash Gully, and looks across to Pope’s Hill and Quinn’s. On the left or north-west side it falls as a precipitous and almost inaccessible cliff, looking over the deep ravines that run to Ocean Beach. Since the furious counter-attacks in the days following the landing, the Nek had been a vital point for both sides, and at their end, to guard against a sortie across the isthmus, the Turks had constructed a powerful redoubt, known as “The Chessboard” from its complicated chequer of trenches. Behind this redoubt the ground slopes gradually up to the smooth, round knoll, called Baby 700, whence the main ridge could be easily ascended to the height of Chunuk Bair. But Koja Chemen Tepe (Hill 971), the loftiest point of the Sari Bair range, is divided from Chunuk Bair by a precipitous ravine visible only from the Suvla district.