Just a handful of men—how many will hardly ever be known, probably it was not ten—managed to reach the section of the Turkish line facing the extreme right of our position. At other places some few others had pitched forward and fallen dead into the Turkish trenches. But those few men that won through raised a little yellow and red flag, the prearranged signal, the signal for the second part of the attack to develop. It were better that those gallant men had never reached that position. The third line were ordered to advance, and went over the parapets. There was nothing else to do. Comrades could not be left to die unsupported. At the same time from Bully Beef Sap (that was the trench that ran down into Monash Gully from the Nek) the Royal Welsh Fusiliers attacked up the head of the gully. Their first two lines, so soon as they came under fire, fell, crumpled; at which moment the third line—Western Australian Light Horse—had gone forward from the Nek. But before the whole of the 150 men could rush to their certain destruction, Brigadier General Hughes stopped the attack. So it happened that a small party of 40 on the left managed to crawl back into the trenches. The remainder fell alongside their brave Victorian brothers who had charged and died.
For the flag in the enemy's trench soon disappeared, and the fate of the brave men who erected it was never told. Late the next night a private named McGarry crawled back from beneath the parapet of the Turkish trenches, where he had feigned dead all day. He told of the forest of Turkish steel that stood in the series of three trenches, ranged one behind the other. Another man, Lieutenant Stuart, 8th Light Horse, who, after going 15 yards, fell wounded, and managed to crawl into the crater of a shell-burst, where he lay until the signal was given to retire, returned from amongst the dead and dying lying under the pale morning light on no man's ground between the trenches.
Thus in a brief fifteen minutes did regiments perish. Only an incident it was of the greatest battle ever fought in the Levant, but an imperishable record to Australia's glory. Nine officers were killed, 11 missing, 13 wounded; 50 men killed, 170 wounded, and 182 missing: and those missing never will return to answer the roll call—435 casualties in all.
What did the brigade do but its duty?—duty in the face of overwhelming odds, in the face of certain death; and the men went because their leaders led them, and they were men. What more can be said? No one may ask if the price was not too great. The main object had been achieved. The Turks were held there. It was learned that many of the enemy in the trenches had their full kits on, either just arrived or bidden remain (as they might be about to depart). And so right along the line were the enemy tied to their trenches, crowded together as they could be, packed, waiting to be bayoneted where they stood or disperse the foe. Above all, the Australians had kept the way clear for the great British flanking movement already begun. For all this, will the spot remain sacred in the memory of every Australian of this generation and the generations to come.
Now, while the 3rd Light Horse Brigade was charging from the Nek there was also a charge from round Quinn's Post by the 1st Brigade, under Brigadier-General Chauvel, who held this sector of the line. The 2nd Regiment attacked the Turkish position opposite Quinn's Post in four lines. Fifty men went in each. Major T. J. Logan led one section of the first line. Led! It was only fifteen or twenty paces to the enemy, yet few of the men managed to crawl up over the parapet. They were shot down as soon as they began to show themselves, and fell back into their own trenches. Major Bourne led the other party. Both gallant leaders fell dead before they or any of their troops could reach the Turkish lines. One man only, who returned unwounded, declares that he escaped by simply watching the stream of bullets from the enemy's machine guns striking the parapets of our trenches and leaping over it; for as usual, the Turkish guns were searching low. And as this assault was launched the 1st Regiment, led by Major T. W. Glasgow, charged from Pope's Hill, on the left of Quinn's. There was in front the small ridge—Deadman's Ridge—which had been attacked on the 2nd May, and won in parts by the 4th Infantry Brigade. It was covered with trenches, dug one above the other. From all three the Light Horsemen drove the Turks. In the forward line the men for a few minutes had the awful experience of being bombed by the Turks in front and their own men behind, until the mistake was suddenly recognized by Major Glasgow, who immediately charged with his men over the parapets to the third trench, and joined up the whole of the regiment. But the Turks held the higher ground above, and from their trenches it was an easy mark to throw bombs down on to the Light Horsemen in the trenches lower on the ridge. Our bomb supplies had all to be brought forward from Pope's position under machine-gun fire. The valiant men who still clung to the trenches they had gained, suffered cruel loss from bombs that the Turks hurled overhead and along the communication trenches. After two hours' desperate fighting, at 7.30 a.m. the order was reluctantly given to retire. Then only the right section of our line ever got back, and with them the gallant commander, without a scratch. Major Reed and Lieutenant Nettleton both died in those trenches. Twenty-one men were killed and 51 were missing after the attack.
So in the course of a terrible hour the Light Horse Brigades, National Guardsmen of Australia, won deathless glory by noble sacrifice and devotion to duty, and formed the traditions on which the splendour of the young army is still being built.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE BATTLE OF SARI BAIR—FIRST PHASE
It must be recognized that except for the 4th Infantry Brigade the offensive of the Australians was completed on the morning of the 7th. Part had succeeded—part had failed. Their further advance rested entirely on the success of the second phase of the great scheme, the assault of the Sari Bair ridge. This terrible task fell mostly on the New Zealanders, but partly, too, on the new British army and the Indian brigades. The Australians were the connecting link between this greater Anzac and Suvla Bay landing. When the time came, they joined in the general offensive on the crest of the Sari Bair ridge and the attempt to take Hill 971—Koja Chemen Tepe. As my story mainly rests with the Australians, if more details necessarily are given of their part in this action, it must not be considered as a slur on the brilliant achievements of the New Zealanders and Britishers. What fighting I did not see at close fighting quarters I learned from the officers of those splendid battalions, later.