Gallipoli (73 page)

And they are ready. There will be no surprise.

At 1.10 am, Colonel Şefik had sent a ‘secret' message to Blind Halis and the other Battalion Commanders to be ready for an attack:

At 4 am, just as planned, the barrage of shellfire starts to land on the Turkish trenches at the Nek, as the men of the 8th and 10th Light Horse Regiments steel themselves for what is to come, just 30 minutes hence. In the dimness of it all, they can just make out the Nek before them, its foremost trenches merely 50 yards away up a small slope, and behind that the hill of Baby 700, on which whole
tiers
of Turkish trenches are situated, all with guns aimed right at them.

Ideally, the barrage will make the bastards take cover, and yet, despite the bombardment – there is really not much to it, with one man noting in his diary that it is ‘desultory' and a ‘joke'
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– there is no sense that the Turks are bothered by it at all. Far from it.

Instead, there is simply a constant rain of bullets on the parapets of the Australian trenches, from both rifles and machine-guns.
³⁴
By Brigade-Major Jack Antill's count, ‘there must have been a score or more of the latter in action at close quarters, indicating a sure knowledge of our plans'. It is obvious to him, and to others, that the projected attacks are ‘foredoomed to failure',
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and it seems madness to go on with them. And still the machine-guns remain intact, firing on the Australians at will, obviously unaffected by what had been the ‘bombardment'.

And so, at least by Antill's later account, in this time ‘two urgent telephone messages were sent to divisional headquarters describing the situation, which was stated to be a most serious development and urging the abandonment or postponement of the attack'.
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It is to no avail.

For the ‘laconic reply' from Godley comes back: ‘The attack must proceed according to plan.'
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And for the Bullant, that is that. Divisional HQ has given him an order, and it is for him to see it through. (Shades of Alfred, Lord Tennyson: ‘Forward, the Light Brigade!/Was there a man dismay'd?')

After this second refusal to change plans, the men must go out into that withering fire and face certain death. For the vast majority of them, General Hamilton's ‘hourglass of eternity' again starts dropping grains of sand that hit like thunder, as every
second
brings them closer to the moment when the first wave must charge out into that fusillade of solid lead.

Can Colonel Alexander White ask his men of the 8th Light Horse Regiment – scheduled to be in the first wave – to go out into it and not go out himself? As the Commanding Officer, normally his role is to stay back, so he can best control his regiment as the fight develops.

But not this time.

This time, he comes to a key decision.

A little after 4.15 am, coatless and perhaps dazed by what he is about to do, he offers his hand to his Brigade-Major. ‘Goodbye, Antill,' he says quietly.
³⁸
Colonel White has decided he will personally lead the charge of his men.

Antill is stunned, admiring and disapproving all at once. Colonel White is still a young man, a good man, a married man with a young child. He has everything to live for. There is no expectation that he will lead the charge, and good military reasons for him not to go. And yet he insists, against all efforts from Antill and other senior officers to dissuade him.

Still the grains of sand in the eternity hourglass keep falling, and, with ten minutes to go, Colonel White moves among his brother officers, with his watch in his hand, encouraging them, but certainly not hiding what awaits. ‘Men,' he tells them, ‘you have ten minutes to live.'
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No one moves, no one complains, no one tries to dissuade him. They check their bayonets, look each other in the eyes, shake hands. They are going over the top. With eight minutes to go, Colonel White keeps moving down the line, checking that his men are also ready, calmly talking to as many of them as he can in the time that remains.

‘How are you feeling?' he asks Trooper Dave McGarvie, above the constant shattering roar of the bombardment, and the rifle and machine-gun fire.

‘We'll do our best, sir,' McGarvie replies.

‘I'm sure you will.'
⁴⁰

The Colonel moves on.

And then it happens.

The shattering roar of the bombardment stops. In the words of the injured Charles Bean, now near the Sphinx on his way to his dugout at Anzac Cove, it is ‘cut short as if by a knife'.
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Confused, Colonel White looks at his watch. It is only 4.23 am.

Among all the officers in the Australian trenches, there is confusion. All of them know that the bombardment should continue until 4.30 am, but now, unaccountably, it has stopped – with the sudden silence now broken only by scattered rifle shots from the Turks, hitting the very parapets that the Australians are about to climb over.

‘What do you make of it?' Lieutenant Wilfred Robinson whispers to Major Tom Redford, a native of Warrnambool. ‘There's seven minutes to go.'

‘They may give them a heavy burst to finish,' Major Redford replies hopefully,
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only to be ever more devastated with disappointment and frustration as every passing silent minute proves that hope to be without foundation.

There is all but equal amazement in the Turkish trenches. Having endured many bombardments like this, they know that, usually, no sooner has it ended than the charges begin.

But this time …
nothing?

‘Three minutes to go,' Colonel White tells his men quietly,
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praying that the bombardment will resume. And yet all is near silence.

‘Dawn was beginning to steal into the sky behind the Turkish position,' journalist Phillip Schuler will later report. ‘A thin, waning moon shed but little light … From a forward observation station I noted the battle line spitting red tongues of flame all along to the Nek …'
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A message now comes to Colonel White from a Sergeant at the far end of the line, worried by the now unrelenting machine-gun fire atop his parapets: ‘Does the order still hold good?'

Colonel White does not hesitate and sends back the message: ‘Yes.'
⁴⁵

And now, with two minutes to go, first one, and then another, and then another Turk tentatively lifts his head above the parapet, like rabbits sniffing the wind.

For, unlike their fallen comrades at Lone Pine, who had been ‘cooped up in dark trenches that could be demolished with high explosives and set on fire',
⁴⁶
and with thanks to the prescience of their Regimental Commanders, their trenches are not closed over. (Other trenches with those coverings have frequently caved in and been set alight under the bombardment.)

And so, when there is still no reaction from the Australian trenches, and the mass of Turkish soldiers realise they can look over without having their heads blown off, a handful of them stand up, their rifles forward. Realising there is to be no fire upon them, a few even climb out and sit on the parapets, aiming their rifles forward, with bayonets fixed, allowing yet more Turkish soldiers to take their positions in the trenches and rest their own rifles on the seated men.

Soon the Turks are lined two deep between the machine-gunners – now aiming their German-made, water-cooled Maxims at the top of the Australian parapet.

All up, some 200 Turkish soldiers are now in the front trench looking through their sights at the Australian trenches just 50 yards away. None are more eager than the survivors of Turkey's 18th Regiment, the same men who had charged across this ground, downhill, on the night of 29 June, to be decimated by these same soldiers who are lining up against them now. Now it is
their
turn, as the wave of Australians prepares to run at them, uphill.

The Turks fire off a few scattered shots, while all of the Turkish machine-guns – including the ones on the Chessboard and Baby 700 – also unleash a quick, chattering burst, just to make sure everything is in working order.

No man running into that solid wall of rifle and machine-gun muzzles could possibly last for long, and for many of the Turks it is inconceivable that the enemy will even try. (And it also seems strange that they are not calling out to their God, the way calling out to Allah is so ingrained on their own side of the trenches.)

Isn't it?

And yet the Turks are more than ready for whatever it is the Australians are about to throw at them, their fingers white on their triggers, just awaiting the last ounce of pressure to fire.

In the Australian trenches, the first wave of the 8th Light Horse Regiment are jostling forward in turn, getting into position, shaking each other by the hand, wishing each other luck, looking into each other's eyes, getting their feet onto the firing step. In many of the deepest parts of the trench, ‘pegs had been driven into the wall for the men to hold, and niches cut for their feet, so that when the signal came they would be able to spring out in a flash'.
⁴⁷
Right behind them are the soldiers of the second wave, ready to give them a ‘leg-up'.

‘Two minutes.'

Now the Turkish firing becomes even more intense, both from their machine-guns and from their three-inch field guns near Hill 60. The shells are now landing so thickly all around the Australians that not only is there a constant barrage of shrapnel overhead, but the salty and acrid fumes from the multiple explosions are so thick many begin to cough.

‘One minute.'

No one speaks, bar muttered prayers.

As the second hand creeps towards the 12, the officer next to White brings the whistle up to his lips an instant after taking a long, deep breath. He is looking at White expectantly …

…

…

In the trenches, Major Tom Redford remarks quietly to Lieutenant Robinson, ‘See you later, Robbie.'
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…

…

Colonel White's roar – ‘Go!'
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– hangs momentarily suspended, before the piercing whistle shatters the dawn, and up and over they ‘
GO!
'. As one, the first wave of men of the 8th Light Horse, 150 horseless horsemen, charge forward, cheering and yelling as they go to … ‘GIVE IT TO THEM, BOYS'
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… only for those cheers to be drowned out by the instantaneous roars of 500 rifles and five machine-guns. The Turks are firing not only from the Nek but also from Baby 700, behind and above it, a fusillade so heavy and concentrated that the individual stutters combine into one almighty roar as the Maxim machine-guns grow red with rage.

‘A thousand sticks rattled across a thousand sheets of corrugated iron at the rate of a thousand revolutions a minute,' as Colonel Noel Brazier would later put it, ‘would hardly give a conception of what the sound of the guns was like.'
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At the time, the still bleeding Charles Bean is limping along some 600 yards downhill from the Nek, as he tries to get back to his dugout. At the battle's boom, he takes pause, as he hears ‘a sudden roar of musketry and machine-gun fire, like the rush of water pouring over Niagara'.
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Watching on, Lieutenant-Colonel Şefik feels that ‘because of the success their friends had achieved the day before [at Lone Pine], the Australians attacked with greater courage and recklessness … The short distance of ground between the two sides was once again covered with the dead bodies of Australia …'
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