It was barely daylight when our men won the hilltop. The story is that our men moving on the crest were mistaken for Turks, or (as some think) that there was some difference in officers' watches, some few minutes' delay in beginning the fire of the guns, and therefore some few minutes' delay in stopping the bombardment, which had been ordered to continue upon the crest for three-quarters of an hour from 4.30 A.M. Whatever the cause, whether accident, fate, mistake, or the daily waste and confusion of battle, our own guns searched the hilltop for some minutes too long, and thinned out our brave handful with a terrible fire. They were caught in the open and destroyed there; the Turks charged back upon the remnant and beat them off the greater part of the crest. Only a few minutes after this the Third Column came into action in support: too late.
The Turks beat them down the hill to The Farm, but could not drive the men of the First Column from the southwestern half of the top of the Chunuk. All through the hard and bloody day of the 9th of August the Turks tried to carry this peak, but never quite could, though the day was one long succession of Turk attacks, the Turks fresh and in great strength, our men weary from three terrible days and nights and only a battalion strong, since the peak would not hold more. The New Zealanders and some of the 13th Division held that end of Chunuk. They were in trenches which had been dug under fire, partly by themselves, partly by the Turks. In most places these trenches were only scratchings in the ground, since neither side on that blazing and stricken hill could stand to dig. Here and there, in sheltered patches, the trenches were three feet deep, but whether three feet deep or three inches, all were badly sited, and in some parts had only ten yards field of fire. In these pans or scratchings our men fought all day, often hand to hand, usually under a pelt of every kind of fire, often amid a shower of bombs since the Turks could creep up under cover to within so few yards. Our men lost very heavily during the day but at nightfall we still held the peak. After dark the 6th Loyal North Lancashires relieved the garrison, took over the trenches, did what they could to strengthen them, and advanced them by some yards here and there. At four o'clock on the morning of the 10th, the 5th Wiltshires came up to support them and lay down behind the trenches in the ashes, sand and scattered rubble of the hilltop. Both battalions were exhausted from four days and nights of continual fighting, but in very good heart. At this time, these two battalions marked the extreme right of our new line; on their left, stretching down to The Farm, were the 10th Hampshires, and near The Farm the remains of the Third Column under General Baldwin. There may have been in all some five thousand men on Chunuk and within a quarter of a mile of it round The Farm.
In the darkness before dawn when our men on the hill were busy digging themselves better cover for the day's battle, the Turks, now strongly reinforced from Bulair and Asia, assaulted Chunuk with not less than 15,000 men. They came on in a monstrous mass, packed shoulder to shoulder, in some places eight deep, in others three or four deep. Practically all their first line were shot by our men, practically all the second line were bayoneted, but the third line got into our trenches and overwhelmed the garrison. Our men fell back to the second line of trenches and rallied and fired, but the Turks overwhelmed that line too and then with their packed multitude they paused and gathered like a wave, burst down on the Wiltshire Regiment, and destroyed it almost to a man. Even so, the survivors, outnumbered 40 to 1, formed and charged with the bayonet, and formed and charged a second time, with a courage which makes the charge of the Light Brigade seem like a dream. But it was a hopeless position, the Turks came on like the sea, beat back all before them, paused for a moment, set rolling down the hill upon our men a number of enormous round bombs, which bounded into our lines and burst, and then following up this artillery they fell on the men round The Farm in the most bloody and desperate fight of the campaign.
Even as they topped Chunuk and swarmed down to engulf our right, our guns opened upon them in a fire truly awful, but thousands came alive over the crest and went down to the battle below. Stragglers running from the first rush put a panic in the Aghyl Dere, where bearers, doctors, mules and a multitude of wounded were jammed up with soldiers trying to get up to the fight. Some of our men held up against this thrust of the Turks, and in that first brave stand, General Baldwin was killed. Then our line broke, the Turks got fairly in among our men with a weight which bore all before it, and what followed was a long succession of British rallies to a tussle body to body, with knives and stones and teeth, a fight of wild beasts in the ruined cornfields of The Farm. Nothing can be said of that fight, no words can describe nor any mind imagine it, except as a roaring and blazing hour of killing. Our last reserves came up to it, and the Turks were beaten back; very few of their men reached their lines alive. The Turk dead lay in thousands all down the slopes of the hill; but the crest of the hill, the prize, remained in Turk hands, not in ours.
That ended the battle of the 6th-10th of August. We had beaten off the Turks, but our men were too much exhausted to do more. They could not go up the hill again. Our thrust at Sari Bair had failed. It had just failed, by a few minutes, though unsupported from the left. Even then, at the eleventh hour, two fresh battalions and a ton of water would have made Chunuk ours, but we had neither the men nor the water; Sari was not to be our hill. Our men fought for four days and nights in a wilderness of gorse and precipice to make her ours. They fought in a blazing sun, without rest, with little food and with almost no water, on hills on fire and on crags rotting to the tread. They went, like all their brothers in that Peninsula, on a forlorn hope, and by bloody pain they won the image and the taste of victory, and then, when their reeling bodies had burst the bars, so that our race might pass through, there were none to pass, the door was open, but there were none to go through it to triumph, and then, slowly, as strength failed, the door was shut again, the bars were forged again, victory was hidden again, all was to do again, and our brave men were but the fewer and the bitterer for all their bloody sacrifice for the land they served. All was to do again after the 10th of August, the great battle of the campaign was over. We had made our fight, we had seen our enemy beaten and the prize displayed, and then (as before at Helles) we had to stop for want of men, till the enemy had remade his army and rebuilt his fort.
VI
The day passed, the night came, the King lay down in his vaulted room. St. Gabriel came from God to call him. "Charles, summon the army of your empire and go by forced marches into the land of Bire, to the city that the pagans have besieged. The Christians call and cry for you." The Emperor wished not to go. "God," he said, "how painful is my life." He wept from his eyes, he tore his white beard.
The end of the Song of Roland.
That, in a way, was the end of the campaign, for no other attempt to win through was made. The Turks were shaken to the heart. Another battle following at once might well have broken them. But we had not the men nor the shells for another battle. In the five days' battle on the front of twelve miles we had lost very little less than a quarter of our entire army, and we had shot away most of our always scanty supply of ammunition. We could not attack again till fifty thousand more men were landed and the store of shells replenished. Those men and shells were not near Gallipoli, but in England, where the war as a whole had to be considered. The question to be decided, by those directing the war as a whole, was, "should those men and shells be sent?" It was decided by the High Direction, that they should not be sent: the effort therefore could not be made.