Gallipoli (58 page)

Ready?

Ready.

Go!

In an instant, Jacka is gone …

Some 45 seconds later, at the agreed count, Crabbe and his soldiers hurl their bombs and wait. Sure enough, an instant after their bombs have detonated – exploding close enough to the Turks to cause confusion and let carnage reign – they can hear the sounds of a furious struggle going on, with several shots and many screams.

Among the Turks, Jacka is a blur of movement, a whirling dervish with the bayonet in the manner that the Chief Bayonet Instructor at Broadmeadows, Captain Leopold McLaglen, had taught him so well. Alternating between using the tip of his bayonet to knock theirs out of the way, and thrusting it forward, Jacka rips and tears, parries and thrusts, all the while expertly dodging their attempts to get
him
. First one Turk goes down, and then another, and then another, and then …

And then, for the other Australians who have been listening to the screams of the struggle, all is calm …

When Crabbe cautiously ventures forward 15 minutes later, just as the first glimmers of dawn appear around 5 am, it is to find Jacka surrounded by dead Turks and the Australians those Turks have previously killed.

The face of the Victorian is flushed, an unlit cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. He has his gun trained on three terrified Turks, their shaking hands raised in surrender.

‘I managed to get the beggars, sir,' he says, nodding towards the seven Turkish soldiers he has shot and bayoneted.
²¹

‘I am going to recommend you for a Victoria Cross,' the stunned Lieutenant Crabbe replies.
²²

Elsewhere, the furious battle goes on as the Australians keep firing at the oncoming Turks, working the bolts of their rifles as fast as they can, while other lads feed endless canvas belts of bullets into the chattering machine-guns.

For no less than an hour, the waves of Turks keep coming, only to fall before the withering fire.

‘
Saida
, goodbye,' one Digger yells as he despatches yet another Turk. ‘Play you again next Saturday!'
²³

At last, the tide turns. Instead of rushing forward, the Turks begin to pull back to their own trenches, pursued by a furious fusillade of fire all the way.

And what is this? From out of the Turkish trenches now leaps a Mohammedan priest, ‘his white robes flying in the gentle breeze, calling on his men to charge in the name of “
Allah
God”'.
²⁴

No doubt this fellow is big on religious ceremony, but at least one Australian soldier does not stand on any ceremony at all. He simply lines up the priest and pulls the trigger, dropping him immediately. Still, Trooper Bluegum would report, ‘He was a brave man and rose twice only to go down each time.'
²⁵

Yes, a tragedy to have a non-combatant so slaughtered, but Colonel Mustafa Kemal realises the importance of such holy men among the common troops. Though not a man of religious conviction himself, most of his troops are, habituated to kneeling to pray five times a day towards Mecca. Colonel Kemal would even write to a female friend, Corinne, that the soldiers' ‘private beliefs make it easier to carry out orders which send them to their death. They see only two supernatural outcomes: victory for the faith or martyrdom. Do you know what the second means? It is to go straight to heaven. There, the
houris
, God's most beautiful women, will meet them and will satisfy their desires for all eternity. What great happiness!'
²⁶

Also shot on this morning is Turkish soldier Hasan Ethem, the law student who had written so lovingly to his mother the month before, expressing his confidence that Allah would prove his ‘glorious name to the British and the French'.
²⁷
Now dead in a ditch.

Offshore, the horseless horsemen of the 2nd Light Horse Regiment climb high into the rigging of their transport ships and gaze at the Promised Land: Anzac Cove!

In this near-darkness, it almost looks like a volcano that has received a great shotgun blast – it is now belching flame and fire from a dozen places at once. What look like toy ships offshore are firing back at the enraged mountain, drawing more high spurts of dust in the upper reaches.

Before disembarking, Colonel Granville Ryrie gathers the men to give them one last collective talk. ‘My only fear,' he begins, ‘is that you will be too impetuous. Your comrades who have gone before have made history. Their courage and dash and their invincible charge on a well-nigh impregnable position will be a theme for historians throughout the ages. Their only fault was – they were too brave. They were ordered to take one strongly fortified line of trenches and they actually took three.'
²⁸

Concluding, the Colonel says, ‘If I get back to Australia and some of you fellows don't, I know I shall be able to tell your people that you fought and died like heroes. If you get back and I don't, I hope you will be able to tell my countrymen that Colonel Ryrie played the game.'
²⁹

And here they come again. In mid-morning, the Turks launch more attacks, though for the most part these offensives seem to have a lot less force behind them, perhaps in part because – emotionally and physically – it is hard for a man to run powerfully at his enemy when the ground between is covered with the dead and still-dying soldiers who have already tried to do exactly that. And all the harder still when, in broad daylight, the charging men present such easy targets.

So now, instead of the men charging out and shouting ‘
Allah! Allah! Allah!
', most of the shouting is coming from the Turkish officers behind them who are threatening to shoot their soldiers in the back if they don't face up to be shot from in front. It is
pitiful
. Sometimes the Turkish soldiers even emerge from their trenches without rifles, in just twos and threes, only to be immediately shot down. The heads of the next lot of reluctant Turks soon appear, ‘the dust whipped up by the Australian and New Zealand machine-gun bullets following them in small clouds along the parapets'.
³⁰

While the Turks are being slaughtered in devastating numbers, inevitably the Anzacs, too, are losing men. In rare pockets, there is actually some penetration.

In one area, known as ‘the Pimple' – a bulging off shoot of the key Australian post of Lone Pine – the fighting is so fierce that Lance-Corporal William Beech from the 2nd Battalion races away to get reinforcements.

Elsewhere, the calls go out: ‘Stretcher-bearer, left! Stretcher-bearer, right! Stretcher-bearer, forward! STRETCHER-BEARER!'

And, of course, John Simpson Kirkpatrick and his donkey are right in the middle of it from the first, risking shot and shell to take wounded man after wounded man back down to the dressing station. As ever, when warned of the danger he is in, Simpson replies with a dismissive wave, ‘My troubles!'
³¹

As to his worthy donkey, the soldiers love him. These days, there are no more jokes about ‘Arab stallions'. The sturdy little beasts are capable of traversing these cruel hills, carrying unimaginable burdens, and ‘Simpson and his donkey' are already legendary for getting to the spots where many others fear to tread.

Usually Simpson would have breakfast about halfway up Shrapnel Gully, but with the huge attack on there is none ready.

‘Never mind,' Simpson calls out to the cook as he passes. ‘Get me a good dinner when I come back. I'll be back soon; keep it hot for me.'
³²

The battle grinds on, with the Turks' officers continuing to push their soldiers forward to entirely useless sacrifice, proving that military madness is not the privileged purview of the Allied Commanders alone.

By around 10 am, the worst of the fighting comes to an end, though a steady stream of wounded keeps coming down Shrapnel Gully. They include a man being carried by the donkey, but where is Simpson, aka ‘Murphy'?

Where is Murphy?

Quickly, a troop goes out to look for him, only to find him some 200 yards up Shrapnel Gully, lying on his back with a bullet in his heart.

As subsequently recorded in the 3rd Australian Field Ambulance War Diary:

The troops who know him are devastated.

‘Where's Murphy?' a soldier of the 1st Battalion asks shortly afterwards.

‘Murphy's at heaven's gate,' the sergeant replies, ‘helping the soldiers through.'
³⁴

Up at the Pimple, Lance-Corporal William Beech returns and is horrified to find five of his comrades shot through the head. One of them, Sergeant Higgins, has obviously died because he had risen above the parapet to have a quick shot. Taking a periscope to sneak a quick peek, the Lance-Corporal and Private John Adams are shocked to see hundreds of Turks massing. Obviously, if they lift their own heads and rifles to shoot at them, they will last no longer than a couple of seconds.

Crying out with anger, Beech spits out the words, ‘To think we can see so many Turks and we're unable to fire at them.'
³⁵

And it is in such an extreme circumstance as this that the gentle muse of inspiration alights on Beech's shoulders, prompting him to think out loud: ‘I could attach a periscope to a rifle and fire it from undercover …'
³⁶

Though on the Anzac side there are 160 dead and 468 wounded from this battle, those figures pale in comparison to their enemy's losses. Of the 42,000 Ottoman soldiers who have engaged in the attack, no fewer than 3400 dead lie in no-man's-land, while a devastating 6700 have been wounded.

(Inevitably, in death and wounds, the two sides come together. Just offshore aboard
Sicilia
, Nurse Lydia King – infinitely relieved not to see Gordon among those being offloaded from yet another bloody stretcher – will shortly write in her diary: ‘Anchored off Anzac near Gaba Tepe where our Australians are … Another busy day but it is just great being with our own again … I have two wounded Turks in my ward. They are very dirty and smelly.')
³⁷

Seeking to capitalise on the devastating loss, the Anzacs arrange for interpreters to call out in Turkish that the best thing the Turks could do now would be to surrender, something that achieves no result whatsoever. It clearly takes more than 10,000 casualties over just a few hours to make these Turks lose faith. Later, when a message asking the Turks to surrender is thrown into the nearest trenches, the reply is all but instantaneous: ‘You think there are no Turks left. But there are Turks, and Turks' sons!'
³⁸

And you know what, cobber? Maybe they aren't such bad bastards after all.

As Charles Bean would note, ‘After the terrible punishment inflicted upon the brave but futile assaults all bitterness faded. Moreover, seeing the dreadful nature of the wounds inflicted by their own bullets at short range, the troops were less ready to believe – as they had done previously – that the wounds of their own men were caused by “explosive” bullets. The Turks had displayed an admirable manliness. When, by order of the intelligence authorities, interpreters called out to them that they would be kindly treated if they surrendered, the invitation was frequently answered by a bomb or a bullet.'
³⁹

The Diggers
like
that attitude, and recognise in the Turks' aggressive obstinacy … themselves.

And something else, while we're at it. It has become clear that the Turks are careful not to send artillery shells onto hospital ships marked conspicuously in white and green paint with the Red Cross,
⁴⁰
and brilliantly lit at night. And they oft do the same for stretcher-bearers. (It is thought more likely that poor Simpson was felled by a stray bullet or piece of shrapnel, rather than specifically targeted.)