THE LIGHT HORSE CHARGE
The assault from Russell’s Top across this terrific position was entrusted to the 8th (Victorian) and the 10th (West Australian) Regiments of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade (Brigadier-General F. G. Hughes). Two parties of 150 men apiece were selected for the charge from each of the two regiments—600 men in all. Just before dawn on Saturday, the 7th, they filed into the Russell’s Top trenches, all in their shirts and “shorts,” with sleeves rolled up, but carrying water-bottles and their packs containing food, photographs, letters, and “souvenirs,” such as soldiers like, though hardly one of them wanted food or looked at mementoes again. Each man had 200 rounds also, but was ordered to trust to the fixed bayonet alone. The first line took two scaling-ladders, and the fourth was provided with picks and shovels.
MONASH GULLY, LOOKING TOWARDS THE NEK
At 4 a.m. a heavy bombardment from all available guns was poured upon the carefully registered Chessboard, and it lasted twenty-five minutes. Lieut.-Colonel A. H. White, commanding the 8th Regiment, said to the Brigade-Major, “Good-bye, Antill!” and with two other officers stood by the parapet watching the minute hand move. “Three minutes to go,” he said, and then simply “Go!”[159] Springing from pegs placed in the parapet as foot-rests, the 150 leapt into the open. They leapt into a blinding storm of bullets. Turks, raised tier above tier in the Chessboard, poured bullets upon them at 80 yards’ distance. Machine-guns in the Chessboard and in the trenches opposite Quinn’s pumped bullets upon them as from fire-hoses in convergent streams. A French “75,” captured by the Turks from the Serbians in the first Balkan War, burst shrapnel low above their heads every ten seconds. Many rolled back from the parapet to die in their own trenches. Colonel White was killed within the first 10 yards. Not one of the 150 got more than half-way across the brief space of the Nek.
Two minutes later, the second line sprang over the parapet in like manner, and followed to the same destruction. But by some means unknown a few of them—probably not more than five or six—actually reached an enemy’s trench opposite our extreme right; for a small red and yellow flag was seen for about two minutes waving over the enemy’s parapet, and this was the agreed signal for another stage in the attack. It disappeared, but none the less a party of the 8th Royal Welsh Fusiliers (40th Brigade, 13th Division) answered the signal by attempting to force their way up the end of Monash Gully on to the Nek, and their first two groups shared the fate of the Australians on the open top. Almost at the same moment (ten minutes after the second line had gone) the third line (Western Australians) followed them. But while about forty were still under cover of a depression on our left, General Hughes, no doubt appalled at the useless slaughter, ordered the attack to cease, and a few crawled back into safety. The next night a private who had shammed death all day at the foot of the Turkish parapet also came in. The assault lasted just a quarter of an hour, and so far as holding a large force of the enemy went, it was successful. But in that quarter of an hour the loss was 435, including 20 officers and 232 men killed or missing—the words were identical.
If we seek a parallel to the 600 at Balaclava, it was there. But a Turkish schoolmaster, who fought in the first trench of the Chessboard that morning and was afterwards taken prisoner, said that the Turks did not lose a single man.[160] Our two scaling-ladders remained abandoned in the open.
CHAPTER XI
SARI BAIR
From the Nek, the Chessboard, and Baby 700, the main ridge or mountain of Sari Bair rises steadily, like a great rounded shoulder, to Battleship Hill (so called from an early naval bombardment), and thence, after a long but slight depression, which from the sea looks like a continuous ridge, rises again to the broad and massive front of Chunuk Bair, about 850 feet in height. Towards the sea, the mountain Chunuk shows an apparently precipitous face, split in the centre by a cleft too steep to be called a watercourse. It is rather what mountaineers mean by a “chimney.” But except on this actual face, the mountain range is not so steep as it appears, nor so inaccessible, being of softish sandstone mixed with marl, like the whole of the district. Hard limestones, or the only formations which are called “rock” by every one but geologists, are not found till one reaches the genuinely rocky hill on the south side of Suvla Bay, and the still more rocky edge on the north.
From Chunuk Bair the range continues its north-easterly trend, the sky-line again showing a slight depression or dip till it rises to a similar but lesser height, which we at first called “Nameless Hill,” but more generally “Hill Q.” Beyond “Hill Q” the ridge is again slightly lower and flattish along the summit till it is split across unexpectedly by a precipitous ravine, which appears to cut sheer down to a level of less than half the mountain’s height. Both sides of the ravine are unusually steep and jagged, so that it would be impossible for troops by continuing an advance along the sky-line of the ridge to gain the highest summit, which rises steeply from the farther side of the ravine. This summit, the crowning-point of the range gradually rising, as we have seen, from the beach at Chatham Post, is Koja Chemen Tepe, generally known as Hill 971 (its height in feet). The top, being thrown back to the north-east, is invisible from Anzac, but plainly seen from Imbros, the sea, and Suvla, dominating the region. The ravine is not revealed till Suvla is reached.