Now the fight for that main ridge was fierce in the extreme. While the beach and the landing waters were raked with shrapnel that caused hundreds of casualties, the gullies were also swept by fearful machine-gun fire. Overhead whizzed and burst the continuous pitiless shells. "Don't come up here!" yelled an officer to Lieutenant Mangar as he attempted to lead a platoon of men over a small under feature that formed a way to the main ridge. "This is riddled with machine-gun fire!" It was an exclamation often heard as parties of men strove to link up the firing-line. Early in the afternoon the Turkish first attack developed. At three o'clock they attempted to pierce our line in the centre along the main ridge. Already many of the most advanced parties, that had gone well forward, unsupported on either flank, for more than a mile farther (nearly three miles from the landing shore), led by corporals, sergeants, and what officers were available—alas, whose names must go unrecorded!—had been driven back and back fighting, even cutting their way out. They saw that to remain would mean to be slaughtered. The Turks were hurrying up reinforcements. How many men fell in that retirement I would not like to estimate. Of the 5th Battalion alone, Major Fethers, Major Saker, Major Clements—all leading groups of men towards the heart of the Turkish position—each fell, mortally wounded—finest types of soldiers of the army. Hundreds of men sold their lives in reckless valour, fighting forward, led by their officers, who believed that while they thus pressed on, the hills behind them were being made secure. This, indeed, was exactly what did happen, which always leaves in my mind the thought that it was the very bravery and zeal of those first lines of men—men from all battalions of various brigades, who pushed forward—that enabled the position in rear to be held and made good, though the pity was that sufficient reserves were not ready at hand to make good the line, farther inland, on the last ridge that overlooked Boghali and the main Turkish camp—a ridge some men reached that day, but which the Army Corps never afterwards gained.
On Lieut.-Colonel M'Nicol, commanding the magnificent 6th Battalion and a portion of the 7th as well (Lieut.-Colonel Elliott, their leader, having been wounded), the main fighting fell in that first attack made on the right of the main ridge. Between him and the next battalion on his flank, the 8th, under Lieut.-Colonel Bolton, was a gap of some 400 yards. It was a desperate time holding these until the arrival of Lieut.-Colonel Thompson with the 4th Infantry, that effectively filled the gap, driving back the Turks, though losing their gallant leader in the charge. No time yet to dig in; the Turks' attack was pressed with fury. Hand-to-hand fighting resulted in the Turk going down as the Australian yelled defiance at him in his excitement and frantic despair at the terrible hail of shrapnel raining from above. There seemed to be constant streams of men making their way to the dressing-station. Major Cass told me "four well-defined and partly sheltered tracks were followed, but even along these tracks men were being killed or wounded again by shrapnel coming over the firing-line on the ridge. This continual thinning of the already weakened line for a time seemed to imply disaster. The shrapnel of the Turks was doing its work with a deadly thoroughness. The enemy's guns could not be located by the ships' guns. We had only one mountain battery ashore, and it was seen and met by a storm of shrapnel, losing half its strength in casualties. Reinforcements were urgently needed, and so slowly did they come that they appeared to be drops in the bucket. But with dogged persistence our troops held the main ridge. In advance of this line were still to be seen a few small parties of men—the remains of platoons which had pushed forward and hung on."
ANZAC POSITION ON MAY 19TH, 1915.
To face p. 112.
As night fell, the line, though not continuous, was linked in two sides of a triangle round the position, with the beach as a base. The 4th Brigade had, under Colonel Monash, been dashed up to the central portion of the line, where the Turks were massing in the greatest numbers. General Bridges had come ashore and so had Lieut.-General Birdwood, and sought to gain the true strength of the situation from the leaders. For a memorable conference had been held between the three Brigadiers earlier in the day, when roughly the line was divided up, the 2nd being to the south, then the 3rd, the 1st, and finally the 4th near the Sari Bair main ridge. It was not as the original plans had been conceived, but it served well. The line was now desperately in need, everywhere, of reinforcements.
On the beach the scenes were indescribable. The wounded were pouring into the temporary dressing station that Colonel Howse, V.C., had rapidly erected ashore; the boats that brought to the beach the living, went back to the ships with the wounded and dead. General Bridges would not permit the guns to be landed—thereby adding to the chaos on the beach, where stores, equipments, and ammunition came tumbling from the boats on to the narrow shore, not 10 yards wide—until after dusk, when the first gun was brought into action, a Victorian gun, under Colonel Johnston. Some guns of Colonel Rosenthal's Artillery Brigade had come ashore at noon, but Colonel Hobbs, under orders from the Army Corps, sent them back. It was, as yet, no place for guns, with the Turks massing for attack and the situation critical, but it was guns that were urgently needed.
The cry for reinforcements became more insistent as the night wore on. Lieut.-General Birdwood was recalled to the Queen. Orders were given to prepare for evacuation, and at midnight the boats were simply carrying off the wounded in tightly packed boatloads. Delay was inevitable with such casualties—three or four thousand—yet it was this delay that made the situation desperate. Would the wounded have to be abandoned when the position was relinquished and another 3,000 men lost? Before night had deepened the Turks commenced to counter-attack again. Charge after charge they made, their shrapnel bursting in front of them over our lines; but they would never face the lines of bayonets that waited for them, and well directed volleys sent them back to their trenches and silenced their shrill cries of "Allah, Allah Din!" Towards early morning the position became calmer, as the Turks were flung back. What troops could be spared dug and dug for their lives, exhorted by their officers. Orders, counter-orders, false commands, came through from front to rear, from rear to front, from flank to flank. Snipers fell to blows from the butt of a rifle, prisoners prayed for safety, never dreaming it would be granted them.
So the crisis came and passed. A determination, long fostered in the hearts of all, to "stick for Australia," to hang on or die in their trenches, won the day. Moral, if not very sanguinary support was given by two 18-pounder guns that opened fire from our own trenches on the Turkish positions at dawn of the Monday morning. I doubt if more surprised men ever faced shells than the Turkish leaders when they realized that in the very firing-line, by the side of the landed infantry, were field guns, generally in rear of the battle line, and now firing at point-blank range at the enemy entrenched lines. It was a feat of no mean importance to drag by lines of men, as the Italian gunners later did at Gorizia, those great guns to the front of the battle; it required great grit to keep them there. How the "feet" cheered the gunners on that morning as they plumped shell after shell into the disordered Turkish ranks. "There they go! Give it them, the blighters!" yelled the excited infantrymen; and they poured their rifle fire into the bodies of Turks that could be seen moving or crawling in the green bushes which in those days covered the plateau.