At 4.32 am (4.39 am) the second Victorian wave followed and shared the same fate, adding to the pile of dead and wounded. If the machine guns were not bad enough, bombs were thrown towards the Australian lines, shortly to be joined by shrapnel fire from the Turkish artillery. It was about this time, through the dense cloud of dust that now shrouded the battlefield, that it was reported that an Australian red and yellow marker flag had been observed fluttering above the Turkish parapet to the right of the line, but within a few minutes it had disappeared. Hope that some men had actually gained a footing in the Turkish trenches saw the third wave line up and prepare for attack. Major Tom Todd, 10/LHR, who commanded the third wave, realising that the first two waves had failed and the futility of sending another, went to see the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Noel Brazier. Brazier needed no convincing, knowing that any further attack would be insanity. Brazier went to Brigade Headquarters to see General Hughes, who had only just left to watch the attack from another vantage point. The Brigade Major, John Antill, knowing that a marker flag had been reported, insisted that the attack must continue. Brazier argued that no marker flag had been seen and to ‘push on’ would be ‘murder’. After this furious row with Antill, who ordered Brazier to ‘Push on!’, he reluctantly left, but not before he said: ‘Thanks, but don’t forget I told you so’. Brazier returned to the waiting line and told Todd that the attack would proceed. He said to his men: ‘I’m sorry lads but the order is to go’.

At 4.45 am (4.52 am), Trooper Harold Rush, 10/LHR, said to his friend ‘Goodbye Cobber. God bless you’, and then with the rest of the third wave went over the top to the waiting annihilation by the Turkish guns. In this wave was also Trooper Wilfred Harper, who was witnessed sprinting towards the Turkish trench, and this run was the inspiration for the last scene in the film Gallipoli. The characters in the film were loosely based on two brothers, Wilfred and Gresley Harper. Bean wrote of them:

With that regiment went the flower of the youth of Western Australia, sons of the old pioneering families, youngsters, in some cases two and three from the same home who had flocked to Perth at the outbreak of war with their own horses and saddlery to secure enlistment in a mounted regiment of the A.I.F. Men known and popular, the best loved leaders in sport and work in the West, then rushed straight to their death. Gresley Harper, and Wilfred, his younger brother... last seen running forward like a schoolboy in a foot race, with all the speed he could compass ...

With the repeated carnage to the third line, Brazier raced back to confront Antill in an effort to prevent the fourth wave going. However, Antill once again told Brazier to ‘Push on!’ Furious, Brazier went off to find Hughes who, after listening to the facts, decided to suspend the attack. Tragically, the order did not reach the fourth line in time. At 5.15 am an officer asked why the line had not gone and, without the signal and in some confusion, part of the fourth line actually charged. Once again The Nek erupted into a deafening hail of Turkish rifle and machine gun fire, which culled the line and halted it in its tracks. The attack was now over. In just under an hour 8/LHR had 234 casualties, dead and wounded, from the 300 in the charge, whilst 10/LHR lost 138 men out of the 300 who charged. When the order was given for the survivors from the earlier waves to fall back, many were shot and killed in trying, so those who did not die in No Man’s Land that day returned during the night.

Months after the attack the Australians, whilst sapping forward at The Nek, found the body of Lieutenant Colonel White, identified by a bullet damaged pocket watch:

The tunnel of the new firing line had been finished and cleaned out, and that night the crust collapsed and rapidly bagged up and built into a parapet. The enemy was suspicious all that night, but did not interfere much with the work. By morning the whole line was roughly complete and only needed deepening. As soon as dawn broke the enemy saw what had been done and shelled the trench furiously, so that most of the garrison had to be withdrawn. In opening this new line many of the bodies of the Light Horsemen in No Man’s Land came within reach and were drawn in and suitably buried. Among them were those of a Colonel ... All of this unhappy band wore pith helmets and shorts, just as they had come from Egypt in. 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 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 a sentry on this post, while observing, had to look straight into his face. In the night time the only thing one could see was the faint smudge of the thin man’s figure, and his face seemed always to be asking a question. Sentries could not stand the sight very long so we had to remove him. It was a hard job, as the Turk trench was almost within bayonet reach of him. Another man was found lying under a bush with his Prayer Book open in his hand and half of it ripped clean away as though cut by a knife.12