Thousands of men were removed from Anzac during the night of the 18th. They came down rapidly through the gullies, silently, and with empty magazines. They embarked swiftly, according to a carefully adjusted timetable. By morning the sea was calm and passive. A sudden storm was the one thing now which might yet cause havoc to the plans. It was during this last day that the situation was so tense. Turkish observers might, one thought, have easily detected the thinly held lines and the diminished stores on shore. The enemy remained in utter ignorance. They would have seen—as the gunners surely saw from their observation positions on Gaba Tepe and Kelid Bahr—parties of Australians ("smoking parties," as they were called) idling about in saps and on exposed hills, meant to attract the fire of the Turkish guns; for "Beachy Bill" could never resist what the troops called "a smile" at parties on the beach. The destruction of stores continued. To the enemy, Anzac firing-line was normal that day.
At dusk on the 19th began the final phase of this delicate and extraordinary operation. A force of 6,000 men were holding back 50,000 Turkish troops. The communications at Anzac were like a fan: they all led out from the little Cove in the very centre of the position. They went as far as 3 miles on the left (the north), and half that distance to Chatham's Post on the right (the south), almost to Gaba Tepe. In the centre they were short and very steep. They led up to the Nek and to Russell's Top and to Quinn's Post. From these points the Turks could have looked down into the heart of our position. If that heart were to pulse on steadily until suddenly it stopped altogether, it must be protected till the last. Therefore the flanks of the position were evacuated first.
From the Nek to the beach it was a descent of some 500 yards—a descent that might be accomplished in ten minutes. It was the head of our second line of defence that had been so hastily drawn up in the early days. There was now the last stand to be made.
Three columns, A, B, and C, held the Anzac line; 2,000 picked men in each, and the whole unit chosen men from infantry battalions and regiments of Light Horse. The last were the "die hards." Darkness spread rapidly after five o'clock over the front hills, wrapping them in gloom. The sea was still calm. Clouds drifted across the face of the moon, half-hidden in mist. Already men were leaving the outskirts of our line. They would take hours to reach the beach, there joining up with other units come from the centre, and closer positions to the shore. They marched with magazines empty: they had not even bayonets fixed. They might not smoke or speak. They filed away, Indian fashion, through the hills into the big sap, on to the northern piers on Ocean Beach. Their moving forms were clearly distinguishable in the glimmer from the crescent moon. The hills looked sullen and black. No beacon lights from dugouts burned. That first column began to leave Anzac shore at eight o'clock on the transports that were swiftly gliding from the shore. Another two hours and some thousands of men had gone. Parties of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade had left Destroyer Hill; most of the 1st Light Horse had evacuated No. 1 Post, the 4th Australian Brigade the line on Cheshire Ridge, the New Zealand Mounted Rifles, Yeomanry, and Maoris the famous Hill 60, position.
But still small detachments, 150 to 170 in each, belonging to these seasoned regiments and brigades remained at their post, holding quietly the Anzac line.
Midnight. The head of the second column reached the Cove and the piers so often shelled. Those on the beach knew that only 2,000 lone men were holding back the enemy along the front. They were in isolated groups: the New Zealand Infantry on the Sari Bair ridge, the 20th Infantry at the Nek, the 17th Infantry at Quinn's, the 23rd and 24th Infantry at Lone Pine, the 6th Light Horse Regiment at Chatham's Post, on the extreme right, down by the shore. On the beach there was no confusion. Units concentrated at fixed points in the gullies. They left at a certain time. They arrived just to the moment, marching hard. They found the Navy ready to clear them to the transports. There must be no hitch: there was none. On either flank could be heard a feeble rifle fire. Overhead came the answering "psing-psing" of the Turkish bullets.
At 1.30 began the withdrawal of the "die hards" from the points they were holding with such a terrible peril hanging over them. A bomb burst at "the Apex," on the slopes of Chunak Bair, with a resonant thud, with the rapid answer following from the Turkish rifles. But nothing else happened. What could happen? The New Zealand garrison had gone from this dearly-won ridge, with a parting message left under a stone for the Turks. By two o'clock the small parties of the 19th Infantry at Pope's, the 18th Infantry at Courtney's Post, and the 17th Infantry at Quinn's Post, were still further reduced. A few hundred desperate fighters were hurrying in from the outposts of the line on the left and the right, each firing a shot as they left. The right stole away at 2.30 from Chatham's Post, men of the 6th Light Horse. Still there were "die hards" of the 1st Brigade, and the 7th Battalion next them, in Leane's Trench up to Lone Pine, held by the 23rd and 24th Infantry of the 2nd Division. Here the Turks in their trenches were within 15 feet of them. There were a few score of determined men left at Quinn's Post, a strong party on the Nek, but yet not 800 men in all holding the whole front. Yet our line from end to end was spluttering. Ah! that was through a device whereby the running sand from an emptying bucket, fired an Australian rifle.
Swiftly the fate of Anzac was being decided now. All the trenches at Lone Pine were deserted by 3.15 a.m. The garrisons at Quinn's and Pope's Hill—the ever-impregnable post of our centre—were silently, swiftly moving down Monash Gully into Shrapnel Gully, through the sap, and towards the longed-for beach. The Anzac line was contracting rapidly. The moon slid behind some clouds as the party passed the deserted walls and tanks. Empty dugouts gaped like bottomless pits on either side of their path. Suddenly behind on the heights, like a thunderclap, there was a roar, as a vivid flash lit the sky, and tongues of flame rolled along the hills. The whole of the Nek was thus blown up by an immense series of mines. Three and a half tons of Amenol, placed there by the 5th Company of Australian Engineers, were used to throw a barrier across this entrance. The sight, awful in its meaning to the army now embarked, lent speed to the steps of those brave rearguards. From off that same Nek the Australians were rushing down the track to the boats waiting by the piers. The Turkish fire broke forth, growing, swelling in volume, as if a door were suddenly opened on a raging battle. Guns from the warships began to pound the hills. It was not yet four o'clock, but the dawn was creeping in, and with it the Turks to our trenches. Fearful of a trap, they began their exploration of Anzac as the guns of the Navy completed the destruction of our few guns on the beach (that had fired till the end) and on the piers, and swept the ranks of the advancing enemy.
Suvla Bay was also evacuated on the same evening, and with the same success, for, as the news broke on an astonished world, it was reported—and will be recorded—as one of the most extraordinary feats of naval and military history, that only three men at Anzac and two at Suvla Bay had been wounded in this astonishing masterpiece of strategy.
Before the closing days of the year, the English and French positions at Cape Helles had been abandoned also, and the Gallipoli campaign was brought to a sudden but very deliberate close. I have suggested that there were strong enough reasons for its commencement, and others for its conclusion. As to the failure, it can but be attributed to the lack of men, the lack of reinforcements, the lack of munitions. When and where these armies and reinforcements should have been landed, the campaign shows significantly enough. But in the contemplation of this failure there comes a not unpleasant feeling of achievement, the full significance of which has not yet been recognized, and will not be fully understood till the Turks lay down their arms and sue for peace. The exhaustion of the Turkish nation and its army during that Gallipoli campaign was great, and how near to collapse historians will discover. The new Russian offensive in the Caucasus found it ill prepared to resist. Over 250,000 casualties were suffered by the Turks in the Dardanelles; a great mass of the Turkish mercantile fleet was lost. And still their coast lies as open as ever to invasion, so that large armies are compelled to be kept along it.