Australia in Arms / A Narrative of the Australasian Imperial Force and Their Achievement at Anzac

by Phillip F. E. Schuler

A MAP COMPILED FROM AERIAL RECONNAISSANCE OF THE TURKISH AND OUR TRENCHES ON THE NEK, POPE'S HILL, QUINN'S POST, COURTNEY'S POST, AND GERMAN OFFICER'S TRENCH.

On either flank of Pope's Hill are the heads of Monash Gully, the Bloody Angle between Pope's and Quinn's.

To face p. 180.

You came out into the open again where the gully broadened out. Looking round, there were three or four wells visible, where the engineers were busily erecting pumps. Iron tanks, too, were being brought into use, part of the great reticulation scheme of Anzac, and round them were grouped the men who had come down from the hilltops. That water, blessed though it was, was thrice blessed by the men who once carried it on their shoulders, grown sore under the weight. Some men with 18-pounder shells tucked under their arms passed. "Heavy, lads?" "Too blooming heavy altogether; one's about enough up them hills!" Thus, by a stream of munition-carriers, was the artillery kept supplied with its ammunition. Shells were not too plentiful in those days, but the gunners were busy laying in supplies for the great artillery duel that all knew one day would be fought. Ammunition, it may be recorded, went by the beach at night, and so up to the very highest point of the gullies possible, on mules.

Just at this broadening of Shrapnel Gully on the right (south) was the Indian encampment. A mass of rags and tatters it looked, for it was exposed to the fierce sun, and when gay coloured blankets were not shielding the inmates of the dugouts, the newly washed turbans of the Sikhs and Mohamedans were always floating in the idle breeze. Their camp was always busy. They never ceased to cook. Though the wiry Indians could speak little English, they got on well with the Australians, who loved poking about amongst their camps hunting for curios, while the Indians collected what trophies they could from the Australians.

If you looked intently hereabouts, you might make out, smothered away in the shadow of a hill, the dark muzzle of a gun in a pit, with the gunners' camp beside it. He would have been a keen observer in an aeroplane who could have detected those guns and marked them on his maps. Sufficient proof of this might be found in the fact that nearly all these guns were brought away at the evacuation. One or two that I saw in the firing-line, or just behind it, had been battered.

Three ways lay open to you, now that you had crossed the broad bottom of the gully. You might turn to the right and continue on up the main gully till it joined with Monash Gully, and so go on a visit to the apex of the position. You might turn off slightly to the left and reach, by a rather tortuous track, the centre of the left flank (or by this route travel behind the firing-line along the western slopes of the hills to Lone Pine, and then reach the extreme left). A far shorter, and the third way, was to go round the Indian encampment, and either up White Gully or through a gap in another spur of the main ridge, and come out on to Shell Green. This patch of once cultivated land was a small plateau—the only cleared space on Anzac. The Turkish shells passed over it on their way to the beach from the olive-grove guns concealed 2 miles away. Sometimes, also, they dropped on it. You crossed at the northern end of it, and reached the artillery headquarters of Colonel Rosenthal's 3rd Brigade dug into the side of the hill. It was across the gully facing the southern edge of this green that the big 6-in. field gun, fired for the first time in August, was placed. I remember watching the huge pit that was dug for it, and the widening of the artillery roads that enabled it to be dragged into position. Directly above Shell Green—a very dirty patch of earth after very few weeks—was Artillery Lane, which was a track that had been cut in the side of the hill, and which also served as a terrace. Dugouts were easily accessible along this road, though it was subject to some shell fire, so lower down the hillside was preferable, even if the climb was steeper and the promenade more restricted. Brigadier-General Ryrie, commanding 2nd Light Horse Brigade, had his headquarters at this spot, and also the 3rd Infantry Brigade, under Brigadier-General Maclagan. Lieut.-Colonel Long too, with the Divisional Light Horsemen, also made his camp there. All of which troops were holding, in July, the section of the line that reached down to the sea on the extreme left.

It was a complicated position, for a series of small crests had had to be won before Chatham's Post was established and an uninterrupted view obtained of the Turkish huts along Pine Ridge and the plain where the olive-groves were. Down on the beach that led round from Gaba Tepe—the beach where the troops should have landed—were barbed-wire entanglements and a series of posts manned only at night. Along that beach a little way, the commander of the post, a Light Horseman, pointed out to me a broken boat. It was a snipers' nest, he explained, where the Turks sometimes lurked and waited. We now stood out in a cutting looking down on Gaba Tepe at the Turkish trenches that ran in parallel lines along the hills, till a bracket of bullets suggested the wisdom of drawing back to cover. Along a very deep sap (so narrow that in some places one had to squeeze one's way through) and down a hill brought one up to Chatham's Post, called so after a Queenslander, who captured it, of that name. Right on the crown of this knoll and along its western slope were a series of machine gun positions, striking at the heart of the left of the Turkish lines.

I was asked, "Like to see an old Turk we have been laying for, for some time?—a sergeant he is. The beggar doesn't care a jot for our shooting." Several rifles cracked as the observer made way for me to put my eye to a telescope. Very clearly I saw a fine big Turk moving along one of the enemy's communication-ways; it was apparent he was supervising and directing. He bore a sort of charmed life, that man. Eventually (some days later) he was shot. His name? Why, Abdul, of course—they all were. Our telescope was withdrawn just in time, and the iron flap dropped over the loophole as bullets splashed against it and the sandbag parapets above.