Gallipoli (44 page)

When that darkness at last blessedly comes, it is not simply the Australians and New Zealanders who are relieved at the possibility of a pause. The most senior officer left standing of the 3rd Battalion of the 27th Regiment of the Ottoman 5th Army, Lieutenant Ahmet, would later recount, ‘Hundreds of British boys were lying on our land never to open their eyes again. These boys with clean-shaven and endearing faces were curled up in their blood-stained uniforms. Their sight aroused in us feelings of both revenge and compassion …'
⁴³

On balance, however, it is the desire for revenge for this invasion of their land that wins out, as the Turkish soldiers continue to fight strongly. (The non-Turkish soldiers … not so much. The men of the 77th Arab Regiment, for example, who are only here because they have been dragooned by their Turkish masters, start to drift away in the darkness and have to be rounded up once more, threatened with their lives from behind if they don't face up to what is in front of them.)

Finally, though, as Lieutenant-Colonel Şefik of the 27th Regiment is reconnoitring to ensure there is no gap in the firing line between his regiment's right flank and the left flank of the 57th Regiment to the north, he suddenly hears strange sounds close by. ‘We realised,' he would later recount, ‘that these were the sounds of English conversations.'
⁴⁴

The invaders are dug in that close to their own lines. After such a day as the Turks have had, can they possibly get their surviving men, as exhausted as they are, to attack once more? No. Lieutenant-Colonel Şefik can see that his own men are too exhausted to go again. Yes, there will continue to be attacks from now, some serious, but for the moment the best thing is to dig in where they are.

The Anzacs come to much the same conclusion, and the basic footprint of the combatants on the Gallipoli Peninsula starts to be carved out in roughly parallel lines. Broadly, it sees the forces of Lieutenant-Colonel Mustafa Kemal's 19th Division – into which Lieutenant-Colonel Şefik's 27th has now been absorbed – controlling the heights, while the devastated invaders are just down from there, furiously digging in and firing back.

And yet the Turks, too, have paid a heavy price on the day. Those soldiers at whom Lieutenant-Colonel Mustafa Kemal had roared that morning ‘I don't order you to attack, I order you to
die
' had for the most part done exactly that. It is likely that not more than 200 of the 800 soldiers who had started the day can still hold a rifle and fire it. Of the 200 men in Captain Faik's company who had been manning the trenches closest to the spot where the Anzacs had landed, there are only ten left. Private Âdil is alive, along with just ten or so men of his platoon. But those who are left are still fighting strongly, and are supported more than ever by the fresh reinforcements that keep arriving.

Though offshore, Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett is one who already has a fair idea of just how appalling the whole situation is. All day now, the steamboats have been going back and forth to the shore ferrying supplies to – and, since noon, the wounded from – the beaches. Their reports are catastrophic, their cargo worse …

Things are going badly. The number of mortalities and casualties is horrifying, and the southern end of Anzac Beach is piled high and spread wide with both. In terms of casualties, things are now so much worse than they had been in the morning, which was appalling enough. While sporadic enemy fire harries the beach throughout the day, the enemy's afternoon bombardment of the Anzac frontline is devastating, killing many more men with every passing minute. And now it gets even worse, as Mustafa Kemal launches a ferocious counter-attack and the Turks control the high ground once more, with the Anzacs clinging to the cliff edge by their fingernails …

And what now for Charles Bean? Here are some fellows from Jack's 3rd Battalion who – oh God – seem to be unaccountably quiet around him, even averting their eyes. Has something happened to JACK?

Yes … but it could have been worse. Colonel Neville Howse – the Chief Medical Officer of the Australian 1st Division, temporarily in charge of clearing the hills of the wounded and bringing them down to the beach for evacuation – tells Bean that Jack stopped a bullet about 4 pm, but he had not collapsed. ‘I don't think the bullet hit any important part,' he tells Charles. ‘It was still in – but I don't think it hit the intestine. He has been taken off on a hospital ship …'
⁴⁵

As it will be recorded in the 3rd Infantry Battalion War Diary on this evening,
Captain JW Bean wounded in execution of his duty attending a wounded man under heavy fire
.
⁴⁶

Charles is proud, but worried, but relieved, but worried again about how their parents, and most particularly their mother, will take the news.

At 7 pm, Colonel MacLagan comes down from the firing line to see Bridges. ‘Well, old pessimist,' Bridges laughs, in that always confident way of his, ‘what have you got to say about it now?'

‘I don't know, sir,' MacLagan answers gravely. ‘It's touch and go. If the Turks come on in mass formation … I don't think anything can stop them.'
⁴⁷

Bridges stops laughing immediately. Is it really possible that his fine forces are about to be swept back into the sea whence they came? If so, withdrawal has to at least be a possibility, but he refuses to countenance it …

At Cape Helles, the situation is at least as bad for both the British and the Turks, with 3000 casualties for the attackers, and some 1500 Ottomans killed and wounded. For that cost, the British have advanced – and the Turks have conceded – no more than 1000 yards from the shore, and their first day's objective, Achi Baba, is almost as far away as it ever was, glaring at them in the distant moonlight, furious at their folly.

9.45 PM, 25 APRIL 1915, DARDANELLES, THE BLACK THING FROM THE DEEP SURFACES

First there is a ripple on the otherwise dead calm of the Dardanelles, somewhere north of Nagara and south of Gallipoli, then a swirl, and now a rushing of water as a massive black bulb breaks the surface. The
AE2
is at last emerging from the deep after a long, suffocating day on the bottom. It is one thing to have got through the Narrows, but in many ways even more important to get word through to High Command that they have done so, that it
is
possible.

‘It was of the utmost importance,' Stoker would recount, ‘that we should get into communication with the admiral and tell him that the most difficult part of our task was accomplished. Whether any other submarine should be risked would depend on the success or failure of our attempt, so he must know as quickly as possible that we had practically succeeded.'
⁴⁸

Stoker pens a quick note to this effect, advising Admiral de Robeck of their triumph – even as the hatch is thrown open and glorious fresh air rushes in, to be greedily inhaled by all – and hands it to Able Seaman William Wolseley Falconer. This worthy now huddles at his tiny station behind
AE2
's wardroom and starts frantically tapping away at his largely experimental Marconi wireless telegraph, ‘the damp aerial wire throwing purply blue sparks as the longs and shorts of the call sign were flashed'.
⁴⁹
Falconer occasionally adjusts his headset to make sure that he will instantly be able to hear a response.

But there is no reply.
No reply!

Desperately, knowing the importance of the message, Falconer keeps tapping, but soon enough Lieutenant-Commander Stoker must make a decision. Even more important than getting the signal through is surviving, and every minute they stay on the surface is another minute of risk.

Reluctantly, Stoker gives the order to submerge once more. ‘This wireless failure,' he would later recount with considerable understatement, ‘was a very great disappointment.'
⁵⁰

9.45 PM, 25 APRIL 1915, ANZAC BEACH, THE FOURTH ESTATE ARRIVES

And who, then, is this strangely elegant man stepping ashore from a steamboat and carefully picking his way through the carnage on the beach? In khakis and rakish green, it is Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, whose hallmark has always been to be in the thick of the action. On this evening, after waiting all day, he is at least glad to be ashore.

What is most shocking, however, is the ‘indescribable confusion' he finds among a unit of men that just that morning had been superbly well organised and healthy. ‘The beach,' he would later describe, ‘was piled up with ammunition, stores … among which lay dead and wounded, and men so absolutely exhausted that they had fallen asleep in spite of the deafening noise … It was impossible to distinguish between the living and the dead in the darkness.'
⁵¹

All he can discern in this dark fog of war are ethereal, ghost-like groups of men dazedly moving back and forth, as they exhaustedly head back to, or stagger from, the firing line. It is chaos, and catastrophic chaos at that, with the only semblance of calm being found in a tight group of men, all of them with caps, standing a small way off.

Officers. Generals.

Ashmead-Bartlett carefully approaches and gets close enough to recognise one of them as General Birdwood. Though they've not met, the war correspondent recognises him from the many photographs he has seen. He is just about to delicately announce himself, however, when an officious Australian voice rings out.

‘Who are you? What are you doing here?'

‘I …'

‘Seize that man, he's a spy.'

Instantly, the correspondent is surrounded by soldiers, and it is all he can do to get out, ‘I am Ashmead-Bartlett, the Official War Correspondent attached to the Expedition.'

Do you have an official pass?

Not actually, no. Just a kind of unofficial one, penned by an officer on the ship.

Not good enough.

‘How do I know you are what you say you are?' roars the Australian Colonel. ‘Does anyone here know this man?'

A gruff voice comes from the darkness. ‘Yes, I do.'
⁵²

It proves to be a boatswain who has ferried the journalist here and there over previous months, who knows that whatever else he is, he is not a spy. It proves enough to save him from being ‘executed on the spot', and to his great relief Ashmead-Bartlett is released.

Not that he can go anywhere particularly. Heading up into the hills in the darkness is out of the question, and Birdwood's Chief of Staff soon tells him that he cannot go back on the steamboat either, as it is the only boat ashore and it will shortly be needed for an urgent despatch. Just what that despatch will consist of he is not told, but he receives a fair clue, not just by the dead and dying men all around him but also by a very excitable Beach Officer Commander who rushes up and says, ‘Do not send your boat away, whatever you do. We have to go round all the transports and get them to send in their boats. It is impossible for the Australians to hold out during the night, they are being too hard pressed.'
⁵³

Ashmead-Bartlett is stunned. Really? Just 18 hours after landing and they are contemplating first extricating all the soldiers from the crazy mix-up of gullies and hills – where they are nose to nose with the Turks – and then evacuating them?

Apparently.

That tiny glow of light by the bit of canvas shelter you can see in yonder gully, just back from the shore – a tiny chirp of cheer in the blackness, with death, destruction and chaos reigning all around? Therein lies a story, and in this case appearances are deceptive. For here are gathered the two highest ranking officers at the landing place, Major-General William Bridges and General Sir Alexander Godley – Commanders of the Australian 1st Division and New Zealand and Australian Division – both imploring General Sir William Birdwood, who has just come ashore in response to their desperate wirelessed request, to give the orders to
evacuate.