EARLY HOSPITALS ON ANZAC BEACH.
In this way, then, the firing-line was roughly divided—on the first morning after landing—into four sections. On the extreme right was mostly the 2nd Brigade, under Colonel M'Cay, next to him the 3rd Brigade, under Colonel Maclagan, with battalions of the 1st Brigade, under Colonel M'Laurin, on his left. The 4th Brigade, under Colonel Monash, filled the apex of the position, and turning back the flank to the beach were the New Zealanders, under General Russell. A rough-and-ready division of the line it was, but it held, and, with little alteration, was kept as the sections of the position. Units were terribly mixed, and battalions, irrespective of brigades, were ordered to defend weakened positions or reinforce where the Turkish attacks grew most violent. Daylight found the troops still digging for their lives. Rain fell slightly. The men had some cover now, and found to their satisfaction and comfort that shrapnel no longer worried them so long as they kept in their trenches. How true in those days that the safest part of the position was the firing-line; for the tracks across the gullies were naked and open to the fire of the snipers' bullets that came even behind the line where the Turk had crept (for the gullies had not yet been searched and cleared). One party of Turks, indeed, endeavoured to get a machine gun through the lines on a stretcher, roughly covered by a greatcoat, as if they were carrying out a wounded man. They had not gone far before the trick was discovered, and these daring men were shot down. They were German non-commissioned officers in charge of machine guns. Lieutenant Mangar told me how he lay wounded behind a bush watching these German gunners, not 10 yards from him, pouring lead into our retreating parties of men. Finally, they, in turn, were forced to retire, and he crept in, under cover of darkness, to his own trenches.
The opening round of our guns was the signal for rejoicing, and five guns were firing throughout the day. A New Zealand battery first came into action with a roar, and some of Colonel Rosenthal's 3rd Brigade were landed later in the day. Artillery lanes had been cut round steeper slopes, over which the gunners and infantrymen dragged them, once they had been brought along the beach by the gun teams. Desperate efforts were made by artillery officers to silence the battery of guns that the Turks had skilfully concealed on Gaba Tepe, and though our field guns, warships, and destroyers plastered the point, the enemy's guns still continued to do terrible execution on the landing beach and amongst the troops entrenching on the right of the position. A landing party had been repulsed with heavy losses, finding the beach a mass of barbed-wire entanglements, and machine guns concealed in the cliffs. Hang on and dig, hang on to the edge of the second plateau, back on to which they had been forced after the charge across the three ridges to the last lines of hills that looked down on the green, cultivated plains stretching almost to the Dardanelles, was all the Australians could do now. As far as possible the officers were endeavouring to reorganize their companies and battalions. Brigadiers have explained to me how for days, as they could, they gathered 50 or 60 men from this unit and that, and would communicate with the brigadier next along the line, and a transfer would be effected. It was not possible to let many men from the firing-line at one time, as the Turks were furiously making preparations for attack. Practically nothing could be accomplished on this Monday or Tuesday. In the still all too shallow trenches the "spotters" for the warships (young lieutenants from Duntroon College, Australia, had been chosen) telephoned to the beach, from whence, by means of a wireless signal station, they directed the ships' fire with telling effect. Officers had but to find targets to be able to get any number of shells from the Triumph or Bacchante, or the destroyers that nosed close inshore, hurtling in the required direction.
Throughout the morning of Monday the Turks again began their counter-attacks, which with brief intervals, it seemed almost without ceasing, for two days they dashed first at one and then at another section of the line. A Turkish order may be quoted to show the manner in which the German leader, Liman von Sanders, endeavoured to inspire his troops, which now numbered probably 40,000 men, to further sacrifices. It ran:—
Attack the enemy with the bayonet and utterly destroy him. We shall not retrace one step, for if we do our religion, our country, and our nation will perish.
Soldiers, the world is looking to you. Your only hope of salvation is to bring the battle to a successful issue, or gloriously to give up your life in the attempt.