General Chauvel's First Brigade had suffered much more heavily. They had well performed their share of the trench fighting since May. In the big battle the First Regiment had to advance under a murderous fire from Pope's Hill, and take the Turkish trenches opposite the Bloody Angle. Captain Laurie, with A Squadron, scaled the parapets and charged across the bullet-swept interval, while Captain Cox, with B Squadron, crawled up a gully; and then both squadrons rushed to the attack.
Without firing a shot, they captured three successive trenches, bayoneting the defenders, and then swept on. Twelve officers and 200 troopers made that dashing charge, and without reinforcements they withstood all the Turkish counter-attacks from four o'clock in the afternoon till half-past six. But the slaughter was cruel. Fewer and fewer were left to defend the hard-won trenches. From all sides the enemy threw bombs and grenades. Our bombs were all gone. At last the remnant had to retire. Major Reid was killed; Captain Cox so badly wounded that he died a few days later; only fifty unwounded men regained our trenches. Of all the officers, Major Glasgow alone was unwounded.
A worse fate befel the 3rd Brigade, under General Hughes. In their attack on Walker's Ridge they lost thirty-two officers and 400 men in ten minutes. They swarmed out of our trenches and sprang forward; and then so terrific was the hail of bullets that they fell in heaps. It almost looked as if they had thrown themselves prone to get cover. Machine-guns swept the area from end to end. The 8th (Victorian) and 10th (Western Australian) Light Horse Regiments just thinned out and wilted away. About a hundred unwounded men came back from that hell.
Later on the 3rd Brigade had their revenge. When the New Zealand and Australian Division swept forward, driving the enemy before them, and capturing trench after trench, there remained one spot on the line of ridges that baffled the attack. Both sides dug in, and had a few days' respite. Then the 10th Light Horse hurled themselves on the stubborn Turks, cleaned out their trenches, and with bloody bayonets stood masters of the hill. It was only a remnant of the regiment that remained, but they baffled every effort of the Turks to dislodge them.
One spot further along the line had at length given way to the pressure of the enemy's attacks. The New Zealanders, after some magnificent fighting for several days, had been driven back from one point on the line. It was essential that the position should be retaken and our advanced line linked up. So the 9th Light Horse Regiment was sent forward to do the job, and they did it brilliantly....
The pen seems so futile a thing to depict the scene. It was the same thing day after day. A stealthy advance through the scrub, a rattle of snipers' rifles, then wild cheers, as the Australians scrambled up the hill; a terrific fusillade as they neared their objective; a glint of gleaming bayonets as they charged the trenches; then the wild mêlée of hand-to-hand fighting, when one Australian always reckons himself a match for three Turks; and finally the shout of victory.
And through it all the stretcher-bearers were real true-blue. Under the heaviest fire they went right up to the firing-line, tended the wounded, and carried them back to the field hospitals. Oh, you, who think the Army Medical Corps is always comfortably and safely situated at the base, pray be undeceived! Their part is just as hazardous as that of the soldier of the line.
Soon the cheers of the victors and the cries of the Turks died down. Above the groans of the wounded could be heard the staccato tones of the officers ordering platoons and sections this way and that to defend the position against counter-attacks.
Scores of prisoners were led away. Hundreds of captured rifles were stacked. German machine-guns were faced about and manned. Bomb-throwers were placed in position. Hot tea was served out to the men. Night fell. Lone Pine was ours. The successive ridges on our left towards Hill 971 had all been captured by the New Zealanders, and our 4th Infantry Brigade under General Monash and the 3rd Light Horse Brigade under General Hughes. The big battle of Suvla Bay was over. But it was only a partial victory. Despite our gains and our losses the Turks still blocked the way to Constantinople.