Hardly had they settled down when every available Turkish gun was turned upon the two weak and harassed battalions. The bombardment was endured for about an hour, and then, at 5.30 a.m., the Turks under German leaders directed an overwhelming counter-attack upon the devoted New Army men. For this attack they were able to employ a full Division and three extra battalions, certainly not less than 12,000 men, probably more. Crouching in their unfortunate positions, our two battalions were engulfed or swept away, as by an irresistible tide. They were driven from their shallow and hurriedly constructed trenches. Both their Colonels were killed. The Wiltshires were “literally almost annihilated.”[171]
Recognising the significance of the summit’s reoccupation, and triumphant as never before, the Turks swarmed over the edge down into the deep gullies on the right or south of Rhododendron Ridge, probably with the design of cutting our assaulting columns off from the base at Anzac and encircling them to destruction. This threatening movement was checked partly by the battalions in support upon the Ridge itself, but mainly by the naval guns (now secure of a visible target), the New Zealand, Australian, and Indian guns, and the 69th Brigade R.F.A. The service of a ten machine-gun battery, part of the New Zealand Machine-gun Section organised and commanded by Major J. Wallingford (Auckland Battalion),[172] was the subject of great eulogy at the time. This battery “played upon their serried ranks at close range until the barrels were red-hot. Enormous losses were inflicted, especially by these ten machine-guns.”[173] Reinforcements hurrying along the sky-line from Battleship Hill were similarly exposed to the larger guns. Brave as the Turks showed themselves in this their hour of apparent triumph, they could make no progress against so violent a storm of destruction. The attack melted away. Few struggled back into safety over the summit, and the right flank of our columns was secured.
THE FIGHTING AT THE FARM
Simultaneously with the onset which overwhelmed our two battalions on the summit, the Turks appearing in similar massed lines along the sky-line of Chunuk Bair itself and the saddle between that and “Hill Q,” began to pour down the face of the range. They must have swept over the thin defences which had sheltered the 6th Gurkhas. They broke through the outposts of General Baldwin’s central column. They broke through our line at various points. They reached the Farm. Some of our companies were driven in confusion down the tangled spurs and ravines. Near the foot of the mountain they were finely rallied by Staff-Captain Street, who was looking after the supply of food and water. By sheer force of personality, he led them unhesitatingly back into the thick of the intense conflict upon that conspicuous stubble-field. In Sir Ian’s words:
“It was a series of struggles in which Generals fought in the ranks and men dropped their scientific weapons and caught one another by the throat. So desperate a battle cannot be described. The Turks came on again and again, fighting magnificently, calling upon the name of God. Our men stood to it, and maintained, by many a deed of daring, the old traditions of their race. There was no flinching. They died in the ranks where they stood.”
Here fell General Baldwin, whom I had known first as a Captain in the 1st Manchesters on Cæsar’s Hill in Ladysmith, and later in the lines at Helles. As in some medieval battle, all his Staff fell with him. Lieut.-Colonel M. H. Nunn, 9th Worcesters, was killed. The Worcesters were left that day without a single officer. So were the Warwicks. So, as we have seen, were the Gloucesters. At the Farm also Brigadier-General Cooper (29th Brigade) was severely wounded. Brigadier-General Cayley (39th Brigade) was mentioned for distinguished courage. The Farm, though recovered that day, was ultimately abandoned to the Turks, who drove an enormous trench across the stubble-field, and entangled the whole front with wire. But to the end the shrunken relics of the dead who fell that morning remained in lines and heaps upon the ground.
Hearing of the violent and almost successful counter-attack, General Birdwood hurried up the last two battalions of his Corps Reserve—the 5th Connaught Rangers (29th Brigade) being one.[174] But by 10 a.m. the immediate danger was over. The force of the attack was spent. The few surviving Turks began to scramble back over the summit. As Captain Bean wrote at the time:
“A few Turks could still be seen at about two o’clock, hopping desperately into any cover that suggested itself. Out of at least three or four thousand who came over the ridge only twos and threes got back—probably not five hundred in all. But the attack had one result. It had driven the garrison down from the trenches which Wellington and the Gloucesters had won on the summit of Chunuk Bair, and back on to the high spur 500 yards distant which New Zealand had won the first night. The lines were now beginning to coagulate into the two settled rows of opposing trenches in which every modern battle seems to end.”
The Turks cleared the dead from the summit by dropping them over the edge at the highest point of Chunuk Bair, and letting them slide down that precipitous ravine or “chimney” which was mentioned above. To the end of the campaign that chimney was black with corpses and uniforms, weathered and wasting between the rocky sides.
Far away to the left, on the low but deeply intersected hills and ridges overlooking the Asma Dere, General Monash’s 4th Australian Brigade and the 4th South Wales Borderers were also compelled on the morning and afternoon of the same day (August 10) to resist violent counter-attacks coming across from the Abdel Rahman spur. They held their position, but the South Wales Borderers lost their commandant, the excellent soldier, Lieut.-Colonel Gillespie, who left his name on part of the district he had helped to win.