The great 6-inch howitzers of the enemy tore up the gully and hillside, sending stones and dirt up in lumps, any one of which would inflict a blow, if not a wound. They ripped an old graveyard to pieces. They tore round the dressing-station. We watched them on the hill amongst the trenches. Would our turn be next? No one knew. You could not hear except in a distant kind of way, for our guns fired at point-blank range, and their noise was even worse than the bursting shells. Yet when the call came, there rose from their dugouts another company of men of the 1st Battalion, and formed up and dashed for the comparative cover of a high bank of earth prior to moving off. The men went with their heads down, as they might in a shower of rain. A foul stench filled the air from explosives.
"Orderly, find Captain Coltman [machine-gun officer]!" called Major King, Brigade-Major. Away into the firing-line or towards it would go the messenger. "Orderly, Orderly!" and again a message would be sent to some section of the line. The officer giving these directions was a young man (he had already been wounded in the campaign). His face was deadly white and his orders crisp and clear. He dived into his office, only to come out again with a fresh message in his hand (ammunition was wanted) and dash off himself into the firing-line. He was back again in a few minutes to meet his Brigadier. They stood there in the lee, if one may so call it, of some sandbags (the office had been blown down) asking in terse sentences of the progress of the battle. "I think it is all right. They say they can hold on all right. They want reinforcements." I saw the signallers creeping over the hill, feeling for the ends of broken wires, trying to link up some of the broken threads, so that information could be quickly sought and obtained. Doctors I saw treating men as they passed, halting with a case of bandages; men past all help lay in a heap across the path leading into the sap. It was, after all, just a question of luck. You kept close into a bank, and with the shells tearing up the earth round you, hoped that you might escape. After a time there was so much else to think of, especially for the men fighting, that it was no time to think of the shells. They arrived with a swish and sickening explosion and a thud. Where the next was coming, except it was sure to be in the vicinity, was a matter for the Turks and Kismet. Men ran like rabbits and half fell, half tumbled into the dugouts. Somehow the whole thing reminded me of people coming in out of a particularly violent storm. Once in the firing-line, the shells were going overhead, and curiously enough one felt safe, even in the midst of the dead and dying.
To look with a periscope for a minute over the top of the parapet. The machine guns were traversing backwards and forwards, not one, but five or six of them. I was with Captain Coltman. He went from end to end of the line, inspecting our machine guns. Some were firing, others were cooling, waiting a target, or refitting, rectifying some temporary trouble caused by a bullet or a shell. Men were watching with periscopes at the trenches. It was exactly an hour since the battle had begun, and the Turkish trenches, now ours, were almost obscured by the battle smoke and the coming night. Yet I could just see the men rushing on. The 1st Battalion reinforcement launched out at 6.20 to consolidate the position and strengthen the shattered garrison. They disappeared into the trenches. In some cases the best entrance had been gained by tearing away the sandbags and getting in under the overhead cover. I was down a tunnel that led to our advanced firing-line when I faintly heard the men calling, "There goes another batch of men!" I could hear a more wicked burst of fire from the enemy's machine guns, and then the firing died down, only to be renewed again in a few minutes. In the captured trenches a terrible bomb battle was being fought. Gradually the Turks were forced back down their own communication trenches, which we blocked with sandbags. By 6.30 the message came back, "Everything O.K.," and a little later, "Have 70 prisoners." These men were caught in a tunnel before they could even enter the battle.
COOKS' LINES IN BROWN'S DIP JUST BEHIND LONE PINE TRENCHES.
AUSTRALIAN AND TURKISH DEAD LYING ON THE PARAPETS OF THE CAPTURED LONE PINE TRENCHES.
All the Australian troops in the August offensive wore a white armlet and white square cloth on their backs as a distinguishing mark.