THE IMMORTAL STORY[ToC]
LANDING OF THE DUBLINS AND MUNSTERS AT THE DARDANELLES
The most terrific thing in the bombardment of the southern end of Gallipoli by the British Fleet, from the Ægean Sea, on Sunday morning, April 25th, 1915, was the roar of the Queen Elizabeth—the mammoth vessel of the Navy and armed with the mightiest guns—sending forth at each bellow and flash a ton of high explosives. It inspired awe and dread to the uttermost, that concentration of fire from all the ships of the Fleet. What living being, or work of nature or man, could survive it? Those on the ships who were searching the peninsula with the most powerful telescopes could see no sign of life. Houses and walls disappeared, and clouds of sand and earth and smoke arose where the Turks were supposed to be entrenched. There was no reply to the cannonade, not even the crack of a rifle.
The allied Fleets of England and France had failed to batter open the gates of the Dardanelles from the sea in March; and now there was to be an attempt to invade Gallipoli by making a number of separate but simultaneous landings of British troops on the southern and western sides of the peninsula. The object was to seize the Turkish positions defending the Straits, which was to be followed, if all went well, by an advance to Constantinople by both land and sea, and the dictation of terms to the paralysed Ottoman Empire at St. Sophia. English, Scottish, Australian, New Zealand, and Indian troops, as well as Irish, were engaged in this grand enterprise. They all acquitted themselves nobly, especially the Lancashire regiments, with their very large Irish element; and the Dominion forces, in which Ireland was also well represented; but to the Irish regiments was allotted what proved to be the most desperate part of the invasion, as will be found fully admitted in the official despatches of Sir Ian Hamilton in command of the Army and Admiral de Robeck of the Navy. The British troops consisted of the 29th Division under Major-General Hunter-Weston. In it were battalions of three Irish regiments, 1st Dublin Fusiliers, 1st Munster Fusiliers, and 1st Inniskilling Fusiliers. They had been brought from India and Burma to England at the outbreak of the war, and having rested for some months in the Midlands, around Coventry, left Avonmouth for the Near East on St. Patrick's Day, 1915.
Along this western side of Gallipoli, washed by the Ægean Sea, the yellow cliffs of sandstone and clay, clothed in scrub, seem to rise, in an undeviating line, clear out of the waters to a height of from two to three hundred feet. But there are points where the line is really shoved back, as it were, and here and there, at these places, flat semicircles of sand lie between the water and the base of the cliffs. It was on half a dozen of these small beaches that the troops were to be landed under the cover of the bombardment by the Fleet. The Dublins and the Munsters were to land at "Beach V" immediately below the castle and village of Sedd-el-Bahr, strongest of the Turkish positions.
In this particular landing very remarkable use was made of a steamer called the River Clyde, turned into a troopship. She had about 2,500 troops on board, all Munsters and Dublins, save two companies of the Hampshire Regiment, who formed part of the same brigade, the 86th. So closely packed were the men that they could scarcely move. The plan was to run her ashore, full steam ahead, and when she was beached the troops were to emerge through openings cut in her sides, on the lower deck, and passing down narrow gangways make a dash for the shore over a bridge to be formed of some lighters which accompanied her. The River Clyde was beached about 400 yards from the castle of Sedd-el-Bahr, which rose above the high ground to the right; and the bridge of lighters was also successfully run in towards the shore from the gangways jutting from the improvised doors in the port and starboard bow of the vessel.
While the preparations were in progress three companies of the Dublins were being brought ashore in open boats drawn by steam pinnaces, five or six boats in each tow, and over thirty men in every boat. No sign had yet been given that any of the enemy were about on the cliffs and hills, shrouded by the dust and smoke caused by the shells of the Fleet; and it looked almost as if the landing would be unopposed. But the enemy were there in their thousands, lying low with rifles and machine-guns. The Turks have shown on many a field of old their fine fighting qualities. They had been trained in all the newest tricks of warfare by German officers. They were animated also by two of the most powerful emotions—defence of their native land against unbelieving dogs of Christians; and the firm conviction that death in such a cause was but the opening of the gates to the sensuous delights of Paradise. So they were biding their time, and the hour for action struck when the boats crowded with the Dublins were about twenty yards from the shore. The furious reception they gave to the landing parties was astounding, having regard to the terrific preliminary bombardment by the Fleet which had lasted several hours. The Turks were as ready for the invaders as if the explosives of the Queen Elizabeth had gone wide of the mark, or else as if she had contented herself with pelting the entrenchments with boiled potatoes or roasted apples.
The scene of the landing was, in configuration, like an amphitheatre with the beach as a stage. The beach itself is a strip of powdery sand about three hundred yards long and ten or twelve yards wide. Behind it is a steep rising ground of sandstone and clay grown with prickly scrub. Sir Ian Hamilton calls it a "death trap." He could not have given it an uglier nor yet a truer name. Barbed wire entanglements were cunningly concealed in the shallows of the foreshore. The Turks were posted with artillery on the heights, and had sharpshooters and also machine-guns ensconced in holes made in the face of the cliff less than a dozen yards from the sea.
When the picket-boats, or steam pinnaces, got to within two hundred yards of the shore they cast off; and the cutters, with the Dublins, continued on their way towards a narrow strip of rock jutting out from the beach, which made a natural landing-place. Then it was that the Turks concentrated upon the boats a most destructive fire of rifles, and machine-guns from the amphitheatre, and shrapnel from the fort at Sedd-el-Bahr. The attacking party was practically wiped out. Only a few passed through this tornado of lead unscathed. Colonel Rooth, of the Dublins, the Adjutant, Captain Higginson, and the chaplain, Father Finn, were killed. Sergeant J. Colgan, who was in the boat with these officers, says:—"Only six of us got away alive out of a boat-load of thirty-two. One fellow's brains were shot into my mouth as I was shouting to them to jump for it. I dived into the sea. Then came the job to swim with my pack, and one leg useless. I managed to pull out the knife and cut the straps and swim ashore. All the time bullets were ripping around me." Here is another individual experience supplied by a private of the Dublins:—"I jumped into the sea with my gun, and made towards the shore. When I got up on the rocky place I had my first bullet in the side. I felt as if I was struck with an iron bar in the back. It knocked me down. I put up my right hand to my head with the pain, when I got a bullet through that also. I had thus two narrow escapes. The first bullet just missed my lung and spine; it made a big hole in my back. The second one just missed my head."
Extremely rare were such miraculous deliverances from death. Many of the Dublins who got safely out of the boats and attempted to swim or wade to the shore were entangled in the barbed wire and drowned. The few who reached the shore crawled on their stomachs, or ran, reeling and staggering, to the shelter of a narrow ridge of sand, about four feet high, which fortunately stretched across the beach not far from the cliff. Most of the boats were destroyed. Others, with their ghastly loads of dying and dead, drifted out to sea, where they were picked up by the Fleet. An officer of the Dublins who was in one of these boats says:—"Shrapnel burst above our heads and before I knew where I was I was covered with dead men. Not knowing they were dead, I was roaring at them to let me up, for I thought I was drowning. The guns still played on us till we got back to a mine-sweeper. I was simply saturated all over with blood, and I could feel the hot blood all over me all the way across. When they pulled these poor fellows off me they were all dead, and the poor fellows under me were dead also. The boat was awful to look at, full of blood and water."