To get across to Pope's you had to go down into the gully again by the steep way you had come, and travel another 200 yards up towards its head until you came to an almost bare and precipitous hillside, which you climbed the best way you could, picking a path in and out amongst the dugouts. If you had a load of stores, you could go to a part where a rope hung down from the crown of the hill, about 100 feet up, and by it you might haul yourself to the top. Pope's was even more exposed than Quinn's when you entered it. The Commander's dugouts were perched on the back of the hill, facing the gully, and bullets and shells burst round his cave entrances. Lieut.-Colonel Rowell, of the 3rd Regiment of Light Horse, was in charge the day I went over every section of it. The Light Horsemen were desperately proud of their holding this dangerous and all-important knoll that blocked the entrance to the gully.
Here, again, there were tunnels connecting up the front and support trenches. They twisted about and wound in and out, conforming to the shape of the top of the hill. But they were not connected on either flank. It was just an isolated post. There were positions for machine guns that by a device were made disappearing guns. They were hauled up rapidly by a pulley and rope and then lowered out of sight again. It was a rough-and-ready makeshift, but the only means of keeping secret positions (on a hill that did not offer much scope for selection) for the guns. Iron loopholes were absolutely essential; an iron flap fell across them as soon as the rifle had been withdrawn. I remember standing opposite one of these till I was warned to move, and, sure enough, just afterwards some bullets went clean through and thumped against the back of the trench. Many men had been shot through the loopholes, so close were the enemy's snipers.
Down on the right flank of the post, just facing the head of Monash Gully and the Nek and Chessboard Trenches, was a remarkable series of sharpshooters' posts. They were reached through a tunnel which had been bored into the side of the hill. The bushes that grew on the edge had not been disturbed, and the Turks could know nothing of them. It was through these our crack rifle-shots fired on the Turks when they attempted, on various occasions, to come down through the head of Monash Gully from their trenches on the Chessboard and round the flank of Pope's Hill. Maps show the nearness of the Turks' line to ours, scarcely more than 15 yards away in places: what they do not show is the mining and countermining beneath the surface. Constantly sections of trenches were being blown up by the diligent sappers, and in July, Pope's Hill had become almost an artificial hill, held together, one might say, by the sandbags that kept the saps and trenches intact. Words fail to convey the heartbreaking work of keeping the communications free and the trenches complete, for every Turkish shell that burst did damage of some sort, and nearly every morning early some portion of the post had to be rebuilt. Looking here across the intervening space—it was very narrow—to the right and left I could see the Turkish strong overhead cover on their trenches, made of wooden beams and pine logs. Between was no man's land.
What tragedy lay in this fearful neutral zone! The immediate foreground was littered with old jam-tins, some of which were unexploded "bombs." There was a rifle, covered with dust, and a heap of rags. My attention was called to the red collar of the upper portion of what had been a Turkish jacket, and gradually I made out the frame of the soldier, who had mouldered away, inside it. It was a pitiful sight. There were four other unburied men from the enemy's ranks. Nearer still was a boot and the skeleton leg of a Turk, lying as he had fallen in a crumpled heap. I gathered all this from the peeps I had through the periscope.
Such is an outline of what the posts that Lieut.-Colonel Pope and Major Quinn won and established, had developed into after months of fighting. Something has already been told of the early battles round them. It is impossible to chronicle all the attacks and counter-attacks. It must here suffice to continue the history already begun in other chapters by referring briefly to the sortie on 9th May, the third Sunday after landing.
Quinn's was still a precarious position. On both sides the engineers had been sapping forward, and the trenches were so close that the men shouted across to one another. Near midnight on the 9th, the 15th Battalion, under Lieut.-Colonel Cannan, with two companies of the 16th in support, about 900 men in all, attacked the Turkish trenches in front of Quinn's. They issued forth in three separate bodies, and after a fierce struggle routed the Turks. Rapidly communication trenches were dug connecting up the forward with the rear trenches, which meant that two island patches of ground were formed. Then it was found that all three parties had not linked up, and the Turks held an intervening section of the line. An attempt by companies of the 15th and 16th Battalions failed to gain the Turkish parapets in the face of a terrible fire. When dawn broke the whole of the captured trenches became the centre of concentrated Turkish fire from two flanks, and our gallant men were compelled to make their way back along their new communication trenches to their own lines again. This, therefore, left the Turkish trenches and our own connected by three saps. It was an amazing position. Sandbag parapets had been hastily erected, and on either side of these the troops stood and bombed one another. The infantry called in Arabic they had learnt in Egypt, believing that the Turks would understand, "Saida" (which is "Good day") and other phrases. They threw across bully-beef tins or bombs, indiscriminately. It was what the troops called "good sport."
So the positions remained for five days until Friday, 14th May, when a Light Horse squadron of the 2nd Light Horse—C Squadron, under Major D. P. Graham—was chosen to attack the Turks and rout them from this unpleasantly close proximity to our line. The communication sap had first to be cleared. Two parties of men, 30 in each, with bayonets fixed, dashed from the trenches at 1.45 a.m. In the face of a tremendous machine-gun and musketry fire from the enemy they charged for the parapets, so short a distance away. The troops dropped rapidly. Major Graham, seeing his men melt away, endeavoured to rally those that remained. But the Turkish fire was too fierce, and the few that survived were compelled to jump into the communication sap, and thus make their way back to their lines. Major Graham himself, with the utmost coolness, brought in some of the wounded after the attack had failed, but at length he fell, mortally wounded. So ended the first May attack.
Desperate endeavours were made by the Turks, in their grand attack on 19th May, to enter our trenches, but the line was held safely under Major Quinn's command until Saturday, 29th May, when, after exploding a mine under part of our forward position, a strong body of Turks managed to penetrate, during the early morning, to our second line. The Post was at that moment in a desperate position. Major Quinn himself, at the head of the gallant 15th Battalion, commenced to lead a counter-attack. The din of battle was terrific. Few fiercer conflicts had raged round the famous posts than on this cool, clear morning. The Turks were routed and driven back to their lines, but the brave leader, Major Quinn, fell, riddled with bullets, across the very trenches which his men had dug. So fierce had been the charge that a certain section of trench held by the enemy had been run over by our troops. In that the Turks clung. They were caught in between cross-fires, but held desperately the communication trenches. After various attempts to dislodge them it was suddenly thought that they might surrender, which solution, on being signalled to them, they willingly agreed to. The post was immediately strengthened, and the dangerous communication trenches were effectively blocked and held by machine guns.
Lieut.-Colonel Pope, after desperate fighting on the hill that bore his name, still survived to lead his battalion in the great August attacks. The brigade, and, indeed, the whole Division, mourned the loss of so gallant an officer and so fearless a leader as Major Quinn. They honour his name no less than that of the dauntless Pope.