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

by Phillip F. E. Schuler

Once, in the early days, the way to Quinn's was through a hail of bullets up Shrapnel Gully, dodging from traverse to traverse, till you came to the foot of a ridge that ran almost perpendicularly up 200 feet. On the top and sides clung Quinn's. The ridge was bent here, where one of the heads of the great gully had eaten into the plateau. That was what made the hillside so steep. Quinn's helped to form one side of the ravine called the "Bloody Angle." Yes, in the early history of Quinn's and Pope's, just across the gully, not 100 yards away, had flowed down those hillsides the best blood of the Australian army. For the enemy peered down into the hollow—then not afraid, as he was later, to expose his head and shoulders to take deliberate aim. The moral ascendancy of our sharpshooters was the first step in the victory of Quinn's.

After June it was no longer a matter of the same extreme peril coming up the broad valley, for there was a secret sap most of the way along Shrapnel Gully. Once you turned north, half way up the gully, you lost the view of the sea behind the hills, and you found yourself among a variety of Army Service Corps units—among water-tanks and water-carriers. You heard the clatter of pumps and the rattle of mess-tins as the men stood out in long lines from the cooks' fires that gleamed at half a dozen points. There was only a space of a few feet on either side of the path that contained the dugouts; the rest of the hillside was still covered with prickly undergrowth and shooting grasses. The sound of a mouth-organ resounded up the valley; bullets sped past very high overhead, and shells dropped very occasionally at this point among the inner hills behind the ridge. From the gully I turned on my left into a sap that wound about and shut off all views except that of Quinn's and Pope's. I came out of the sap again into the gully to a place where sandbags were piled thick and high to stop the bullets, for here it was not so comfortable, as far as the enemy's rifles were concerned. You went into a perfect fortress of low-lying squat huts, to which you found an entrance after some difficulty. I had to squeeze through a narrow, deep trench to reach it.

That was the headquarters of Brigadier-General Chauvel, who commanded the central section of the line that I could see all along the edge of the ridge about 150 yards away—almost on top of us—Pope's on the left, the isolated hilltop; then Quinn's, Courtney's, and Steel's. They were a group of danger points—a constant source of anxiety and despair to the General who commanded them. It was delightfully cool inside those caves in the gully after the heat of the sap. I was told by Major Farr and Major Williams, who were talking to the commanders of the posts by telephone, that I could not lose my way. "Keep on following the narrow path, and if you are lucky you will be in time for a battle." Each hung up the receiver and gave a curt order for some further boxes of bombs to be dispatched.

Battles on Quinn's were no mild engagements, for usually the hillside was covered with bursting shells and bombs that the Turks hurled over in amazing numbers. Fortunately, these "stab" attacks were brief. As I pushed on towards the narrow sap that ran into the side of the hill, I could see by the excavated earth how it zigzagged up the side of the ridge.

I passed great quantities of stores, and, under the lee of a small knoll, cooks' lines for the men holding the Post above, which was still obscured from view. All one could see was a section of the Turkish trench just where it ended 20 yards from our lines, and the barbed-wire entanglements that had been thrown out as a screen. The air was filled with the appetizing odour of sizzling bacon, onions, and potatoes, while shells whizzed across the valley. I was glad to be safely walking between high sandbag parapets.

Soon the path became so steep that steps had been made in the hill—steps made by branches interlaced and pegged to the ground. It was a climb, one ascending several feet in every stride. Sandbags were propped up here and there in pillars to protect us from the sight of the enemy on our left. One's view was confined to the wire entanglements on the skyline and the steep, exposed slope of the hill on the right. Behind lay the valley, full of shadows and points of light from dugouts and fires. They were quite safe down there, but you were almost on the edge of a volcano that might break out above you at any moment. You passed various sandbagged huts, until quite near the crest of the hill trenches began to run in various directions, and you saw the rounded top of the hill chipped away and bared under the constant rifle and bomb attacks. What had appeared ledges in the distance resolved themselves into a series of terraces, where the men found protection and, as busy as bees, were preparing for tea.

Lieut.-Colonel Malone was my guide. He was an Irishman, and keen about the Post and just the man to hold it. His great motto was "that war in the first place meant the cultivation of domestic virtues," and he practised it. He brought me up a gently inclined track towards a point at which barbed wire could be seen across a gully which ended in a sharp fork. That was the "Bloody Angle." Then we turned around and looked back down the gully. In the distance, 100 yards away on the right, along the top of the ridge, were two distinct lines of trenches, with ground between which you at once knew was "dead" ground. The hill doubled back, which almost left Quinn's open to fire from the rear. "That is our position—Courtney's Post and Steel's to the east," said my guide, "and those opposite are the Turkish trenches. We call them the 'German Officers' Trenches,' because we suspect that German officers were there at one time. Now we have given them a sporting chance to snipe us; let us retire. I always give a visitor that thrill." It was only the first of several such episodes which vividly brought home to one's mind the desperate encounters that had been waged around this famous station. The men who held on here had a disregard of death. They were faced with it constantly, continuously.

There were four rows of terraces up the side of the hill. Once the men had just lived in holes, dug as best they could, with a maze of irregular paths. That was in the period when the fighting was so fierce that no time could be spared to elaborate the trenches not actually in the firing-line. Afterwards, when the garrison was increased to 800 and material came ashore—wooden beams and sheet-iron—conditions underwent a change. Four or five terraces were built and long sheds constructed along the ledges and into the side of the hill. These had sandbag cover which bullets and bombs could not penetrate. Just over the edge of the hill, not 30 yards away, were our own lines, and the Turkish trenches 4 to 25 yards beyond again. When the shells came tearing overhead from our guns down in the gully the whole hillside shook with the concussion of the burst. No wonder the terraces collapsed one day! I was standing talking to Lieut.-Colonel Malone and saw about 100 of the men who were in reserve leaning against the back of the shed that belonged to a terrace lower down. They were all looking up at an aeroplane, a German Taube, skimming overhead. A huge bomb burst in the trenches on the top of the hill, and the men, involuntarily, swayed back. That extra weight broke away the terrace, and it collapsed with a roar. Fortunately, the damage done was small, though about eight men were injured.

To go through Quinn's was like visiting a miniature fortress. The whole extent of the front was not more than 200 yards. One dived down innumerable tunnels that ran 10 or 20 feet in the clay under the enemy trenches, and contained mines, ready set, to be blown up at the first sign of an enemy attack in mass. A certain amount of protection had been gained at Quinn's from the deluge of bombs that the enemy accurately threw, by a screen of wire-netting that caught the bombs so they burst on the parapets. But such protection was no use against the heavy football bomb. Loopholes were all of iron plating, and in most cases of double thickness, and even thus they were almost pierced by the hail of bullets from the Turkish machine guns. The Turks did not occupy their forward trenches by day. Only at night they crept up into them in large numbers. Several craters formed a sort of danger-point between the lines where mines had been exploded, and into these it was the endeavour of some Turks to steal at night on their way to an attack.

Now, one of the stories about Quinn's—alas! how many tales of gallantry must go unrecorded—is that the enemy's troops became so demoralized by the nearness of the trenches and the constant vigilance of our men that, in order to properly man their trenches in this sector, the Turks had to give non-commissioned rank to all the men there posted. Our own garrison in June and July were changed every eight days. Lieut.-Colonel Malone, however, remained in charge, having under him mixed forces of New Zealanders and Australians. One day I went with him into one series of tunnel trenches that wound back and forth and that opened up unexpectedly into a strongly fortified emplacement either for a machine gun or an observation post. Lying all along the tunnels, either on the ground, pressed close to the walls, or in a niche, or ledge, were the garrison. It was difficult not to tread on them. We came to a point where, pegged to the earthen walls, were any number of pictures—of Sydney beach, of St. Kilda foreshore, of bush homes and haunts, of the latest beauty actresses, and—most treasured possession—some of Kirchner's drawings and coloured work from French papers.