Australia in Arms A Narrative of the Australasian Imperial Force and Their Achievement at Anzac

Private Skeyhill trained in Egypt from January 1915 to April 1915. He landed with his battalion on Anzac Beach on 25th April, taking part in the fighting of that first fierce week. The next week he was with his battalion at Cape Helles, and shared in the well-known charge by the 2nd Brigade on the 8th May, when a high-explosive shell burst beside him and sent him to hospital, a blind and helpless man. There are hopes that eventually he may recover his sight, but at best the time must be long. His poems breathe love of country and of courage, the spirit of battle, soldiers' comradeship, and sympathy for the fallen.

PART III

WATER CARRIERS FROM THE SPRINGS AT CAPE HELLES 148

CHAPTER XI

In reality, the first battle of Anzac began when the transports commenced to steam out of the great harbour of Mudros on Saturday afternoon, 24th April. All that was needed for the swift commencement of the deep-laid plan was a perfectly calm sea. This condition General Sir Ian Hamilton had, as he sent forth, under the care of the Navy and Rear-Admiral Thursby, his fine army of Australians and New Zealanders. Already on the evening of the 23rd, the covering force for the British landing at Cape Helles, which had been entrusted to the 29th Division, had steamed to Tenedos, where the fleet lay enchained as in the story of ancient Troy, waiting for the remainder of the ships, which on the morning of the 24th began to stand off Tenedos. It was as if the shipping of the Levant had been suddenly diverted to lock the gates of the waterway leading to the heart of the Turkish Empire, for the sea was covered with ships--ships one-funnelled, two or four-funnelled; ships that went creeping along, skulking inshore; ships that were guarded by giant battleships and destroyers and escorted up to the land; and tiny little ships--scouts, picket boats, pinnaces, and trawlers.

CHAPTER XII

It was the naval guns that took the place of the field guns, bursting shrapnel in the front of the Turkish lines, that held back the enemy charges, that decimated their men, that enabled the British and the Australian troops to effect the landing and hang on to the ridges until their trenches were deep enough, their guns landed, and the lines organized to withstand any attacks, however violent. It was artillery fire that the infantry (30,000 infantry) needed most at Anzac, and it was heavy artillery fire with a vengeance they got. As I watched the warships pumping in shells on to the hills, saw the Turks answering with the bluish white, curling clouds of shrapnel that burst over the sea and the gullies, it gave me an indication of the fury of the battle of which these were the only visible signs at long range. There was a balloon observing for the ships. The _Queen Elizabeth_, the _Triumph_, and the _Bacchante_, and five other warships lay off Anzac. There were three times as many off Cape Helles, with the French fleet steaming off Kum Kale. I watched the leaping tongues of fire from the warships' sides, and heard the muffled report as the smoke blew back over the decks in a yellow cloud; and before it had vanished (but many seconds later, as it had whirled miles in the air), the explosion of the shell bursting on the side of the hills and among the trenches. The wounded felt that shelling most, as they lay on the cliffs, on the shore, on the decks of the transports, with the ships firing point-blank at them. It shook them--it chilled their blood. But the men in the trenches knew that on the naval gunners depended their lives, depended their success; it was these protecting screens of fire, of huge shells, that gave them time to dig, and to settle down into what was fast becoming trench warfare. The Turks gathered battalions to battalions and flung them against the parts of our lines where the configuration of the country made them naturally weakest. The shells from the warships decimated them.

I received a passport through the British and French lines and travelled from Helles to Anzac and Suvla Bay at will. Lieut.-General Birdwood and his Staff, Major-General Legge and the officers throughout the 1st Australian Division, and Major-General Godley and the leaders of the New Zealand Brigades, extended to me such courtesies as lay in their hands. I was able to witness the whole of the August offensive from the closest quarters, being in our trenches at Lone Pine during the engagement of the 6th.

CHAPTER XI

The 2-1/2-knot current that sweeps along the coast from the mouth of the Straits, bore the bows of heavily laden but shallow draft lifeboats and barges down the Gulf farther than was intended, and so the landing beach was mistaken in the dark. The attack once launched, there was no withdrawal or remedy, so the troops began to pour ashore a mile farther along the coast to the north than was intended; not, on landing, to reach a plain, but to be faced with terrible hills and deep ravines. But was it so awful an error? Chance had carried in her womb a deeply significant advantage, for at the original point the beach had been carefully prepared with barbed-wire, that ran down into the very water. Trenches lined the shore--making similar obstacles to those the British troops faced 9 miles away at Helles. So Chance guided the boats into a natural cove, certainly not very large--just a segment of a circle some 400 yards long. Never anticipating an attack at the foot of such a ridge, the Turks had dug but few trenches to protect this spot, more so as the whole of the beach might be commanded by machine guns, concealed in certain knolls. Around the northern point of the cove, however, the breach broadened out again into what, in winter, was a marsh about 200 yards wide, which eventually, towards Suvla Bay, opened out into the marshes and plains of Suvla Bay and the valley that leads up to the Anafarta villages.

CHAPTER XI

The Beach Casualty Clearing Station was situated behind the boxes. Suvla Bay, over Ari Burnu Point, to the north.]

CHAPTER XXV

In the face of such achievements, was it to be wondered that General Hamilton, Lieut.-General Birdwood, Major-General Godley, all wrote of the men who fought these battles in terms of the highest admiration? "Whatever happens," were General Hamilton's words to General Birdwood, "you and your brave army corps have covered yourselves with glory. Make good the crest, and the achievement will rank with Quebec." Yes, it ranked alongside any of the fighting in history. It had been in turn trench fighting, bayonet charges, and fighting in the open, and everywhere the overseas troops had won. But at what cost! At Lone Pine the casualties were 2,300 killed and wounded men. From the captured trenches there were dragged 1,000 killed, Australians and Turks. They were buried in the cemetery on the side of the hill in Brown's Dip. The Army Corps in four days had lost 12,000 men killed and wounded. The British casualties on the Anzac section were 6,000 out of 10,000 troops engaged. In all 18,000 casualties for a gain of 2 miles and a position on, but not the crest of, the ridge. I have omitted the casualties of the fighting at Suvla Bay.