The right covering column had to clear the Turks off from their right flank positions upon Old No. 3 Post and Table Top.
Old No. 3 Post connected with Table Top by a razor back. Working parties had done their best with unstinted material to convert this commanding point into an impregnable redoubt. Two lines of fire trench, very heavily entangled, protected its southern face.
Table Top is a steep-sided, flat-topped hill, close on 400 feet above sea level. The sides of the hill are mostly sheer and quite impracticable.
Amongst other stratagems the Anzac troops, assisted by H.M.S. Colne, had long and carefully been educating the Turks how they should lose Old No. 3 Post, which could hardly have been rushed by simple force of arms. Every night, exactly at 9 P.M., H.M.S. Colne threw the beams of her searchlight on to the redoubt, and opened fire upon it for exactly ten minutes. Then, after a ten minutes’ interval, came a second illumination and bombardment, commencing always at 9.20 and ending precisely at 9.30 P.M.
The idea was that, after successive nights of such practice, the enemy would get into the habit of taking the searchlight as a hint to clear out until the shelling was at an end. But on the eventful night of the 6th, the sound of their footsteps drowned by the loud cannonade, unseen as they crept along in that darkest shadow which fringes a searchlight’s beam—came the right covering column. At 9.30 the light switched off, and instantly our men poured out of the scrub jungle and into the redoubt. By 11 P.M. the whole series of surrounding entrenchments were ours!
The remainder of the right covering column carried on with their attack upon Bauchop’s Hill and the Chailak Dere. By 10 P.M. the northernmost point, with its machine-gun, was captured, and by 1 o’clock in the morning the whole of Bauchop’s Hill, a maze of ridge and ravine, everywhere entrenched, was fairly in our hands.
The attack along the Chailak Dere was not so cleanly carried out—made, indeed, just about as ugly a start as any enemy could wish. Pressing eagerly forward through the night, the little column of stormers found themselves held up by a barbed-wire erection of unexampled height, depth, and solidity, which completely closed the only practicable entrance to the ravine. Here that splendid body of men, the Otago Mounted Rifles, lost some of their bravest and their best, but in the end, when things were beginning to seem desperate, a passage was forced through the stubborn obstacle with most conspicuous and cool courage by Captain Shera and a party of New Zealand Engineers, supported by the Maoris, who showed themselves worthy descendants of the warriors of the Gate Pah. Thus was the mouth of the Chailak Dere opened in time to admit of the unopposed entry of the right assaulting column.
Table Top
Simultaneously the attack on Table Top had been launched under cover of a heavy bombardment from H.M.S. Colne. No general on peace manœuvres would ask troops to attempt so breakneck an enterprise. The angle of Table Top’s ascent is recognised in our regulations as “impracticable for infantry.” But neither Turks nor angles of ascent were destined to stop Russell or his New Zealanders that night. The scarped heights were scaled, the plateau was carried by midnight. With this brilliant feat the task of the right covering force was at an end. Its attacks had been made with the bayonet and bomb only; magazines were empty by order; hardly a rifle shot had been fired. Some 150 prisoners were captured as well as many rifles and much equipment, ammunition and stores. No words can do justice to the achievement of Brigadier-General Russell and his men. There are exploits which must be seen to be realised.