CHAPTER 12

The Aftermath
of Battle

The day of tragedy passed slowly on Russell’s Top. A stream of shocked and wounded survivors made their way to the aid posts and the dressing stations, while the recovered bodies of the dead were carried down to the cemeteries where they were laid in rows for burial. In front of The Nek the slain lay thick in crumpled heaps while the immobile, bloody from their wounds, remained where they fell, dying out of reach of any help. The suffering was pitiful but, as the day grew hotter, one by one their agonies ceased as death overtook them. Most of the survivors of the 8th Light Horse were gathered just behind Walker’s Ridge; they were in no state for any further action. The remnants of the rest of the brigade, mostly the 9th Regiment and some of the 10th, and the British troops, stood waiting expectantly for a counter-attack which mercifully never came.

The next few days saw more heavy fighting at various points at Anzac, but the grand plan to regain the offensive had failed. The British corps had got ashore at Suvla but no important advantage was ever derived from this. Lone Pine had been captured and, in succeeding days, it was defiantly held against wild counter-attacks. But Lone Pine had only been intended as a diversion to assist the main efforts elsewhere. The New Zealanders did get onto Chunuk Bair, but only to see it lost again, turning that short victory into another sorry disaster.

The 3rd Light Horse Brigade had suffered grievously. The 8th Regiment was no longer an effective fighting force and it would be some time before it could be built up and used again. The shortage of officers throughout the brigade was so acute that among the promotions which soon followed there were a number of corporals and lance corporals who received commissions.

It was difficult for the light horsemen to accept the scale of their losses for no gain at all. Arthur Olden, who had been a lieutenant with the 10th Light Horse on Gallipoli, later wrote: ‘Bitter as was the loss of their comrades, it was nothing compared with the bitterness of the knowledge that their lives were offered up in vain.’¹

For a few days men clung on to some misguided hopes that the efforts had been worthwhile, but these soon evaporated and disillusion set in. A week after the battle an officer in the 10th Regiment wrote in his diary: ‘We now realise we have failed. Before the attack the Regiment was buoyant, excited and hopeful. Now its aspirations are shattered like an electric globe. Our hopes are frozen tears.’²

Reynell had been optimistic before the battle, but his diary records a more sombre attitude in the days afterwards. He acknowledges the impossibility of the task and as he began to accept the failure of the offensive a sense of despondency crept over him, as the following extracts show:

After 6 weeks of influenza and dysentery I wasn’t very fit when the attack started and trusted to the excitement to keep me going. I am feeling very limp with headache, neuralgia, sore throat, cold in the head and chesty and pant like a grampus with the least exertion. Our offensive has come to a stop everywhere and there is no sign of revival. Into the bargain we are all ill to breaking point …

The attack … showed that the confined space across which any attack must be made is so swept by converging fire from rifle and machine-gun fire that no living thing can cross it. Each line as they reached a certain zone were just mowed down instantaneously and some men’s legs were completely severed by machine-gun fire. Not one got back except those who either didn’t get as far as this zone or who were wounded and dropped into dead ground and returned on their [bellies] in dead ground or came back after dark. I am ill, the officers – that there are left, are ill, the whole Regiment is ill, the army corps is ill and the news is ill.

Well I have seen more war the last week than one might ordinarily in years of war. [The Australians] are a d – d sight better tribe than I ever thought. Their dash and pluck I hoped was there. Their initiative and resource I knew was there. But their dogged determination, patience and cheerful fortitude I never believed in – but it’s there too.³

The brigade remained on Russell’s Top for just a short while longer, ready to repulse any Turkish attack. Some men were detached to try to recover bodies, while others were sent to join burial parties. Disinfectant – usually nothing more than lime, or an unlikely mixture described as petrol mixed with water – was distributed in the trenches because of the decaying bodies.⁴ Grappling irons were thrown out, and one of the forward saps was extended so that some of the dead could be reached. Major Redford’s body was among those dragged in.

It was ten days before Sergeant Cameron, who had been in charge of some of the sharpshooters in the 9th Light Horse providing covering fire, was able to find the time to bring his diary up to date.

We had some severe fighting and it turns out that we have gained little in territory or position, yet sacrificed thousands of lives. The Turkish Machine-Guns just poured out lead and our fellows went down like the corn before a scythe. [Resumes next day.] Four hundred and ninety casualties in less than a quarter of an hour.⁵ Yes, it was heroic, it was marvellous, the way those men rose, yet it was murder. We are still holding Russell’s Top, and the strain is telling terribly on all ranks. Whenever one looks in the direction of the Turkish trenches one sees the bodies of our own chaps in almost the same places as were the bodies of the Turks after 30th June. Nothing can be done to get them buried or brought in except those which are very close to our own trench. The smell is dreadful. Nothing can compare with decomposed human flesh for horror. The intervening space is continually lit by flares and bombs and several bodies have been burnt thus. It seems cruel, but from the health point it is better, whoever does the burning.⁶

Captain Callary of the 9th Light Horse had been observing alongside Reynell during the attack and had seen the other regiments’heavy losses. He wrote home: ‘No doubt you got a shock when you noticed our [brigade’s] casualties. Never shall I forget the morning when we lined up in the rear of them. We have had some sad losses but Turkey is paying for it.’⁷

In the 8th Light Horse, 13 officers had been killed, and of the remaining six who took part, only Deeble and Higgins remained unmarked.⁸ Hore, Robinson and Crawford were evacuated with their wounds, while McLaurin, who had returned to duty on the 13th, could only hold on for a fortnight before he had to go away. Deeble was evacuated to hospital within a week, and Higgins had to be sent off for a rest. In the 10th Regiment, seven officers were dead and, among the seriously wounded, Robinson and Craig were returned to Australia. Soon afterwards Major Love’s badly injured leg required that he be sent to Australia for an extended period. Antill was glad to be rid of him. He did not return to the regiment until after the campaign was over and then he was mostly engaged in staff and training work.⁹

An officer of the 10th Light horse wrote:

The men carry on and do their duty, but each man seems to be brooding over the possibilities of ‘what might have been’. He does not speak for fear of starting the same train of thought in his mate. He has not appreciated the fact that his mate is thinking exactly the same unuttered thoughts.¹⁰

The enemy’s view of the action at The Nek first became known after a couple of Turks became prisoners of war and told their stories. The Nek and Baby 700 were occupied by parts of the 19th Division. This was an ‘Ottoman’ division as it consisted of both Turkish (18th, 27th, and 57th) and Arab Ürk, who was destined to become Turkey’s greatest military leader and statesman of the twentieth century.

Battalions of infantry from the 18th and 27th Regiments were opposing the light horsemen. These were good regiments raised over a wide region and already contained a core of regular soldiers who were veterans of the Balkan Wars, and many who had been fighting at Anzac since April. Some of the officers had been trained by the Germans. Very shortly after moving into the line at The Nek, the 18th Regiment had been ordered to make its ill-fated attack of 29 June. Their losses had been severe but they were still not given any relief. Even before this the regiment had lost its popular commanding officer, whose fearlessness had resulted in his becoming an early casualty of Australian snipers.

Most of the Turkish private soldiers were from villages, and many could neither read nor write. But they were tough and well-armed with modern rifles, machine-guns and hand bombs. Fortunately for the Australians they did not have a lot of artillery. Their uniforms were rough and usually ragged, a lot of their equipment was handmade, and they wore an assortment of footwear with just a few having stout boots. Sergeant Norman Worrall, in the 8th Light Horse, had noted that ‘they seem to wear their private clothes in addition to their uniforms … were loaded up with about 350 rounds of ammunition, and had their haversacks full of provisions [and] have very good rifles’.¹¹

The Australians had been quick to recognise their opponents’ fighting abilities – although what else could they do when their own bravery and determination were constantly being matched? Most of the Turks were devout Muslims and they were defending their homeland.

For the Turks, like the Australians, life in the trenches was hard. They suffered most of the same deprivations, there was no inoculation against disease, and their rations were poor; bread and soup were their staples. Conditions became more dangerous as the British guns commenced their shelling in the days leading up to the big offensive. During the night of 6 August the firing seemed constant, a shell bursting every five or ten minutes. There were many casualties and these continued to mount as dawn drew closer.

The Turks knew from the preparatory fire that an assault on The Nek could be expected. A captured soldier, a former schoolteacher, told Charles Bean that he had noticed a pause between the shelling and the appearance of the first wave of light horsemen. He and his comrades were two deep in their front trench with the forward rank behind the parapet and the rear one standing behind them. Each man had his bayonet fixed, but these were not needed as their rifle fire and machine-guns swept the Australian attacks away. Within an hour they had settled their score with the invaders. After the battle the regiment received a special order from their commander complimenting the men on their performance; in addition several awards were given and promotions made.¹²

In late August troops of the 2nd Australian Division began arriving at Anzac. One of the infantry battalions, the 20th, was sent up to Russell’s Top where it took over from the light horse brigade. This single battalion could provide a similar number of men in the line to that of a brigade of light horse. The survivors of The Nek fighting were glad to be at last able to leave this place, where so many of their comrades had been slain. The fresh arrivals received quite a shock. The small space between their own trenches and the enemy’s had been a slaughterhouse. Victor Portman, who had joined the 20th Battalion after having already taken part in the capture of German New Guinea, recalled:

The bodies of more than 200 light horsemen still lay on the parapet and in the scrub within a few hundred yards of our post. There was a frightful reek of death, and huge swarms of flies seethed over the place, living on the dead and poisoning the living. The trench walls in places were reinforced with dead men and everywhere on the surface of the ground were limbs and bodies, adrift in the debris of smashed rifles, bloody equipment and the flotsam and jetsam of the mad battles fought in the scrub and tangle of those harsh, forbidding slopes in early August.¹³

The infantrymen set about clearing up the mess of battles, and in the following weeks lengthened and developed the front line. Further sapping extended their reach into no-man’s-land, and more bodies could be recovered. The memory of these corpses haunted Portman. Referring to the dead, he wrote:

All of this unhappy band wore pith helmets and shorts. The positions of several of them had given us some very vivid memories. About five yards from the parapet of the post I first had on The Nek, one of them faced us on his hands and knees. He had evidently been wounded and had started to crawl back to the trench when a second bullet killed him. A bush on one side had held him in that position, and the sentry on this post had to look straight into his face while observing. In the night time the only thing one could see was the faint smudge of the man’s figure, and his face always seemed to be asking a question. Sentries could not stand that for very long, so we had to remove him. Another dead man was found lying under a bush with his prayer book in his hand, and half of it ripped clean away as though cut by a knife.

It was inevitable that many survivors within the light horse brigade should try to place the responsibility for the calamity on somebody. In the few weeks after the battle there was a heavy undercurrent of anger and disillusionment. The tendency among the men in the ranks to blame the faceless officers ‘high up’ deflected some of the attention from the local commanders. Within the brigade The Nek became known as ‘Godley’s abattoir’.¹⁴

Brazier was furious. He blamed Hughes and Antill for the disaster that had befallen his regiment, and he made his anger and resentment known. His frustrations had turned to blind contempt. Hughes had found him difficult to work with earlier, but now he was impossible. Deciding that he would have to tell Godley of Brazier’s behaviour and recommend that he be sent back home, Hughes wrote:

His manner lately has been anything but respectful and he has chosen to adopt an attitude which I cannot but regard as objurgate, litigious and sullen. He resents being corrected and acts in such a way as to make it utterly distasteful and almost impossible to have anything to do with him. His demeanour is such that the present situation cannot continue and I therefore reluctantly, after the most careful consideration, feel it my duty to report him as quite unsuitable for the office of command on active service and accordingly recommend that he be struck off the strength of the Brigade and returned to Australia.¹⁵

Brazier tried to defend himself, but after speaking to Godley he saw that ‘things looked quite against me’.¹⁶ Eventually, he was told that he should resign to avoid being sacked. However, at the height of the dispute, and before his resignation was effective, he received a nasty wound to the left eye from a shrapnel ball when the camp of the 10th Light Horse was shelled.

Brazier was evacuated. His wound would leave him blind in one eye and force his return home. He declared bitterly that it was ‘goodbye to Antill and two wars’. He briefly resumed an association with the militia in Western Australia, and for six months in 1917 was attached to the Sea Transport Service looking after the movement of troops, but took no further fighting part in the war. He remained bitter about his treatment, and about the conduct of the Gallipoli campaign, for the rest of his life.¹⁷

Despite the horror of their experiences at The Nek, the regiments were not spared from further heavy fighting during the rest of August. Immediately after it was relieved on Russell’s Top, the brigade was again in action at Hill 60, where an attempt was made to improve the link between the Anzac and Suvla positions.

At Hill 60 the 9th and 10th Light Horse Regiments were thrown into another attempt to capture the Turks’ trenches. Again losses were high, and many of the 9th Regiment, who had been spared their part in The Nek disaster, died here. Among the officers, both Reynell, who had assumed command, and Callary were killed not far from each other, while Cameron, who had just recently been commissioned, was mortally hit as the regiment was being relieved.

Of the Western Australians, Phil Fry and Colin MacBean, who had been at The Nek, were among the officers now dead. Major Scott and Lieutenants Kidd and Throssell were again lucky and survived to be commended for their good work. Hugo Throssell was subsequently awarded the Victoria Cross, the only light horseman to receive the highest award for gallantry.

The fighting in August 1915 remained the brigade’s worst experience during the entire war. All three regiments suffered severely at The Nek, or at Hill 60. The effects were deeply felt and even Antill became despondent. During the fighting at Hill 60, he wrote:

No particulars yet of the 9th and 10th casualties last 2 days but hear they are heavy and serious – At this rate we shall have absolutely no neucleus [sic] to rebuild upon: but nobody seems to care – merely fill the gap, get blown out, and done with – The feeling on this point is particularly strong and our troops are being butchered to try to make good for the recent drafts of men from Eng[land].¹⁸

Within a fortnight family and friends in Australia began to get word of the disaster which had befallen the brigade. At first it was the private and official telegrams advising a next of kin of a death. Then newspaper stories began to appear. Often wives or parents learnt of their loss from their local church minister or priest, who would have received advice from the Department of Defence asking that they break the sad news and provide comfort. One of those who took on this burden throughout the war was Canon Hughes, brother of the brigadier. He delivered the tragic messages around inner Melbourne and sometimes to the suburbs. Friends saw how the strain affected him; he was one of many.

The Victorian town of Hamilton lost at least three men at The Nek. On 19 August Archdeacon Harris was asked to advise Ted Henty’s young wife that he had died on the 7th. There were no other details. Shortly afterwards the local newspaper, in publishing the death notice, had also to report that one of its own former employees, Trooper William Hind, had died in the same attack.¹⁹

In the following days more news came in. In Perth a private cable, which was passed to a local newspaper, advised that the Harper brothers and Lieutenant Turnbull had been killed. In the absence of any formal reports, rumours of a disaster involving the state’s light horse regiment spread. The premier was approached for information, so on 26 August he sent a telegram to the Department of Defence seeking confirmation or a denial. The minister could only advise that heavy casualties had been reported and that more details were awaited.²⁰

By late September the correspondents’ cables had arrived, and the full extent of the disaster became apparent as the casualty lists were released. Charles Bean submitted a vivid account of the fighting at The Nek and edited versions were taken by some of the newspapers.²¹

Very few of Bean’s stories from Gallipoli were censored. However, in this instance the scissors and blue pencil removed parts of the typescript, and the Commonwealth censor made an amendment before this official version was released. It is notable that although Bean had twice written that the yellow-and-red marker flag had flown for just two minutes after the 8th Light Horse attacked, the censor evidently felt more comfortable in altering this to 10 minutes. If there had been a flag seen for a longer time, this would better explain why the attack was allowed to continue. Bean’s account may have been slightly softened in this way, but it did remain substantially unchanged.

The losses from the battle were widely felt. Some larger towns found that they lost several of their young men in the August offensive, and often a few of these had died at The Nek. Some homes lost more than one son, and there were instances of cousins dying together. Other smaller communities – Marong in central Victoria was one – were to mourn the loss of their first local boy. There would be others to follow.

The congregation of the Presbyterian church at Armadale, in Melbourne, had been praying for the safety of Keith Borthwick. The death of the lieutenant removed the first soldier from their church community. A local youngster, Brian Lewis, remembered the news being received and, in describing it, gave a brief glimpse into his own household. Three of his mother’s relatives had been killed and a cousin’s fiancé, one of the Cole brothers, was among them. The cousin was to lose her fiancé, father and brother in the war. Lewis recalled that ‘mother asked her to stay with us to cheer her up, but she remained pretty miserable’.²²

Some of the light horsemen had been schoolmates. When the news was received that a couple of its former students had died, the flag at Hamilton College was flown at half mast. Melbourne Grammar School had half a dozen old boys killed in this small action, and the Scotch College recorded four deaths.

Many parents or wives would eventually receive letters from their dead soldiers’ mates expressing sympathy and giving the details of the battle so anxiously sought by the families. Until his own death, Lieutenant Colonel White found writing these letters very painful. The people at home may have been told of their sons’ ‘glorious deaths’, but back on Gallipoli their bodies lay mutilated and rotting, stinking and feeding the flies until after December, when the hills became quiet again and the wild animals came down to scatter the bones.

The Irish parents of Trooper Henry McNeill of the 10th Regiment received a typical letter describing their boy’s part in the charge. It went on:

When we had to retire to the trenches that we started from, I looked for your son and to my sorrow could see him lying a few yards out. I watched him for a few minutes and could not see him move. That night we got him and several more in and carried them down to our medical station. We could not bury them that night, as we could not be spared from the firing line for long, but the next night we carried your son down and gave him a decent burial, our Army Chaplain reading the burial service and saying a short prayer. We mounded his grave up with stones and put a small wooden cross at the head of it with his name and regiment on it.²³

David Griffith’s squadron sergeant-major wrote to his parents in Wales:

Your son was in my squadron and I was near him when he was killed. I thought a lot of him, and am proud to say he was a pal of mine. We were in such a very bad place; our regiment made a grand name for themselves. You can always feel proud he belonged to the 8th L.H. We were set a very bad task that morning but console yourself he died nobly doing his bit like the fearless boy he was.²⁴

Hundreds of households were thrown into mourning by the tragic charge of the light horse on that fateful day, and it was women, and sometimes children, who carried the major part of this burden. Their sorrowful stories remain one of the least recorded aspects of the war experience. Many years afterwards Trooper Michael Larkin’s mother was asked to complete a form confirming his personal details for the nation’s roll of honour. She provided the simple facts as requested, but was compelled by her pride and sorrow to add that he was ‘one of the best and bravest men that left these shores’.²⁵ A mother’s simple notation, to be stumbled upon by future researchers, carried more impact than the name and initials borne on any bronze roll of honour.

Other equally poignant expressions are to be seen as epitaphs on the headstones of the few men whose graves on Gallipoli can be identified in the cemetery at Ari Burnu. Among these, Sergeant Rawlings’ mother had written in stone: ‘My only darling son’. Trooper Northey’s family wrote: ‘Our loved son and bro. One of the best’. Trooper Cumming’s people had the words ‘Rest dear son rest. Sadly missed’ inscribed on his headstone.

Mervyn Higgins survived the charge, but his death the following year was further evidence of the tragedy of that war. This officer continued to serve with the 8th regiment until a sniper got him in the forehead, just above the left eye, at Magdhaba on 23 December. He had survived the gale of bullets at The Nek to be killed by a single aimed shot. McLaurin was still serving with him and their friendship had been welded by their common experiences on Gallipoli. McLaurin stayed with the body of his dead colleague until an ambulance wagon came up in the evening to take him away. It was dark so they waited until next day, Christmas Eve, to prepare his grave.

Young Higgins’s death was a brutal blow to his parents. ‘My grief has condemned me to hard labour for the rest of my life,’ declared his father.²⁶ He and his wife were united in their shared sorrow until they died. After the war they journeyed to Egypt to visit their son’s grave, and then went to Magdhaba to see where he had died seven years earlier. A Celtic cross was erected as a memorial in the Dromana cemetery, the Mervyn Higgins Bursary Fund was endowed to help students at Ormond College, and a shield was presented for the annual inter-college boat race. This family was able to express its sorrow publicly, but their loss was an experience too common throughout the war years.

The consequences of the losses at The Nek were felt within the AIF and far beyond. In many ways the disaster typified the Gallipoli campaign and, in particular, the failure of the August offensive. The story of the attack became quickly known among the men of Anzac. The awareness that lives could be lost for no gain, and that commanders could make large-scale and fatal blunders, had an effect on morale. After the Australian journalist Keith Murdoch visited Anzac in September 1915, he reported to the Prime Minister that the Australians ‘loathe and detest’ the English staff officers.²⁷ The repercussions from the failed offensive extended throughout the entire force and ultimately affected its character. There was little likelihood that by 1918 Australian officers or men would have accepted tasks such as they had attempted on 7 August 1915.

The official historian had seen just how great the impact of the disaster had been, and later wrote: ‘With the exception of the attempt of the 4th Infantry Brigade … the following day, no other experience in 1915 was so powerful to create that disillusionment which superseded the first fine fervour of Australian soldiers.’²⁸