From the evening of August 8 to the evening of the 9th.
Unfortunately, Sir Ian’s assumption was groundless. The 32nd Brigade was far from being concentrated as was supposed by the Divisional General. One battalion, as we have just seen, was actually on Scimitar Hill. The 9th West Yorks were half-way up the Anafarta Ridge, and they tried to advance before dawn, but were overwhelmed by the enemy’s reinforcements, thus proving that the intended morning attack would have been dangerously late in any case.[192] The remainder were among the trees near the farm Sulajik, where there was water. Verbal orders reached them at 7.30 p.m., but no definite written orders arrived till nearly 3 a.m. The mistakes were chiefly due to ignorance of location. Instead of beginning at eight on Sunday evening, as Sir Ian intended, the movement did not start till 4 a.m. on Monday. Then the brigade attacked the steep slope leading up to Anafarta. It is covered with thick and high bush, up which men can advance only in single file along the cattle-tracks. On their right, Scimitar Hill had been abandoned, its reverse slope being now occupied by swarms of Turkish snipers and troops in formation, which were coming up in strong reinforcement. On their left, one company of the 6th East Yorks (the selfsame battalion which had occupied Scimitar Hill) succeeded in reaching that isolated offshoot from Tekke Tepe above mentioned. But the brigade retired to the line of Sulajik. The losses were heavy, chiefly among the Royal Engineers, one company of whom (the 67th) accompanied the brigade. Colonel Moore of the 6th East Yorks (Pioneers), who had shown such grasp of the situation, was killed.
THE TURKS RETURN REINFORCED
As day advanced, the position only grew worse. It was the morning when the party of Lancastrians and Gurkhas reached the summit near Hill Q and stared upon the Dardanelles below. As at Chunuk Bair, so at Suvla, the Turks were rushing up reinforcements. Three Divisions, starting from Bulair, were beginning to debouch along the valley between the two Anafartas, and to crowd the heights. Perceiving our inactivity or hesitation throughout the previous day (Sunday), they now brought back the guns they had removed on Saturday night, and increased the number. Hill’s 31st Brigade, and that General himself, were still on Chocolate Hill, but three battalions of Maxwell’s Brigade had now arrived there, and the orders for the attack devolved upon him. On the right he pushed forward those battalions of his own 33rd Brigade, which made fair progress. Some of the leading troops were reported as even reaching W Hill, but that appeared to me very doubtful, as I watched the movements all day from a machine-gun emplacement near the top of Chocolate Hill. In the centre Brigadier-General Maxwell ordered part of the 32nd Brigade to advance again, reinforced by two of the 10th Division battalions under Hill (6th Royal Irish Fusiliers and 6th Royal Dublin Fusiliers). Their objective was Scimitar Hill—that hill which had been quietly occupied and quietly abandoned only the day before! On the left the line was extended by the 6th Lincolns (33rd Brigade) and the whole of the 34th Brigade, which had moved from the sand dunes near Hill 10 at last, and arrived in two detachments. Beyond them were two battalions from the 53rd (Welsh) Division, which had been held by Sir Ian as part of his special reserve, and was being thrown into Suvla early that morning.
OUR ADVANCE CHECKED
Partly owing to the mixture of brigades, the attack went to pieces. There was little combination, and no cohesion. Battalions advanced separately here and there, and separately came back. Two or three times one or other of them (especially the two battalions of Hill’s brigade) came close to the summit of Scimitar Hill. A fraction of the 7th South Staffords in the centre actually reached it. But every hour the enemy’s fire increased. Shrapnel burst low over us. The men of the 32nd Brigade were much shaken by their experience and heavy losses in the early morning. All were much exhausted. Fire broke out on the left side of the hill itself, and swept over the front and summit, consuming the dry scrub in sheets of flame. The wounded, both British and Turk, came creeping out on hands and knees to seek safety upon that yellow open space or “blaze” which, as I mentioned, gave the name of “Scimitar” to the hill. But many perished from suffocation and the extreme heat. Many also were burnt alive, being unable to move. Except a few isolated parties, which bravely endeavoured to hold their ground, the firing lines and supports came swarming back. It was no wonder. The situation was intolerable. The most hardened Regulars could not have endured it, and hardly any of these officers and men of the New Army had known fighting before. At length they were formed up into a confused line along the ditches and shallow trenches between the Sulajik and Green Hill. It was about noon.
From Chocolate Hill General Maxwell ordered the battalions to be reorganised at once for another attack, but reorganisation was impossible. One of the wells, which in the early morning I had found safe, was now exposed to almost continuous rifle-fire. The usual scenes of a battlefield added to the distress and alarm. The dead were lying about; the wounded crying for help; the hands and faces of hastily buried men protruded from the ground. The 6th Lincolns and 6th Borders, posted on either flank, were mentioned for “steady and gallant behaviour” during this ordeal. The 9th Sherwood Foresters (same Brigade) and the Herefords of the 159th were also mentioned. No further movement was attempted. Walking back to Lala Baba towards evening, I was asked to report to General Hammersley in his headquarters there, but could report little good. I found, however, that he had now three R.F.A. batteries in position behind the seaward slope of Lala Baba, and three batteries of mountain-guns ashore, some of the guns being close behind the summit of the hill. The warships were also firing at intervals upon W Hill and the farthest points of Kiretch Tepe Sirt.
Along that razor-edge or whale-back ridge, Sir Bryan Mahon had now firmly established himself with the few battalions left to his command out of the 10th Division. Near the sea-end of the ridge, about three-quarters of a mile from Suvla Point, General Stopford was engaged upon the construction of a permanent Corps Headquarters in a partially sheltered depression among the rocks. Having visited him there in the morning, Sir Ian climbed along the ridge to Mahon’s headquarters among the stones close behind his firing line. He found that General confident of carrying the whole summit of Kiretch Tepe, and it was probably whilst on that point of widely commanding view over the whole plain to Koja Chemen Tepe and the Anzac heights that Sir Ian resolved to press forward the attack upon the left, since the advance upon W Hill and Anafarta Sagir was obviously now impeded. If Mahon’s Division could fight its way along the ridge to Ejelmer Bay, and fresh troops could win the line from Ejelmer Bay over Kavak and Tekke Tepes to Anafarta Sagir, not only would Suvla remain safe from interference on that side, but the Turkish reinforcements on W Hill and Scimitar Hill would be paralysed by the threat from their right, and rendered incapable of advancing farther towards the sea.
In the afternoon Sir Ian went to Anzac with Commodore Keyes, and, after consultation with Generals Birdwood and Godley, telephoned to General Stopford, urging upon him the importance of immediately seizing Kavak Tepe and the rest of the Ejelmer-Anafarta line, which an aeroplane reported as still unoccupied and unentrenched. At the same time he determined to devote to this purpose the last of his own reserve—the 54th (East Anglian) Division, which, however, like the 53rd, consisted of infantry only, and those little over half strength. The battle to hold the summit just south of Chunuk Bair was raging at the time. It is possible that reinforcement by a new Division might have made all the difference there. But to supply water up those heights was difficult, as we noticed in the last chapter, and the Generals on the spot considered there was scarcely room for more troops in the ravines and up the ridges. So to Suvla the 54th Division was ordered to follow the 53rd, and Sir Ian was left without reserve. The new Division was to arrive on the next day but one, the 11th.