On 2 July, the 9th Light Horse stumbled down Walker’s Ridge from the firing line for a fortnight’s ‘rest’, followed two days later by the men of the 8th. The two regiments were in terrible shape, both physically and mentally, as were the Western Australians of the 10th. The hospital ships were now taking 200 men a day off Anzac Cove, and the numbers going down with dysentery and diarrhoea just kept growing, seemingly in direct proportion to the swarming flies around them.
‘The strength of the troops visibly declined,’ Charles Bean observed. ‘The great frames which had impressed beholders in Egypt now stood out gauntly; faces became lined, cheeks sunken. Several warnings were sent out by medical officers pointing out the increasing weakness of the men.’
Lieutenant Colonel Richardson, the historian of another light horse regiment, described the situation that July:
Officers and men in great numbers had been evacuated to hospital sick or wounded and the remaining were often in the most wretched condition with diarrhoea or dysentery … some were so weak they could hardly stagger to their places in the firing line and men fainted where they stood at ‘stand to’ in the morning after a long night of watching.
By 14 July, an official return showed that a quarter of the men of the 9th were sick. As for the 8th, Tom Austin wrote:
[The] men suffering very badly with a vomiting sickness and with septic sores. The latter is a kind of scurvy and is similar to the Australian scourge known as Barcoo Rot to every bushman west of the Darling. The flies and vermin becoming intolerable and the Medical Officer at his wits end to know how to cope with disease owing to the very limited facilities at his disposal.
Aside from the obvious hazards of an appalling, monotonous diet and fly-borne diseases, modern medicine today says that the constant shortage of water in the furnace heat of the trenches would also have severely affected the men’s health. It is known that even moderate dehydration can lead to serious problems with mental functions such as judgement, focus and clarity of thought.
The toll through sickness was so bad that the return of the 8th to the front line would have to be delayed to await reinforcements, as, by 22 July, Colonel White wrote that he was reorganising his regiment. Instead of the normal three squadrons he had ‘just enough men and officers to make up 2 Squadrons, so now I have B and C’.
These men would stay in the rest camp until 29 July – but, of course, there was no rest. As Ernie Mack put it, they were ‘absolutely killed by the quantity of work and everyone of us got as thin and weak as starved kittens’.
His commanding officer appears to have agreed: ‘Although resting from the trenches we simply come out of the trenches and go straight on to road making, digging trenches, carry supplies, filling water tanks, cutting down hills, chopping down scrub and very often there are no men left in the rest camp at all.’
Up and down the men went, day and night, practising hill climbing or doing the fatigue duties. Dave McGarvie, with pick and shovel, was making roads, and carrying dirt from the miners busy tunnelling away at fresh trenches and saps.
In spite of the disease and exhaustion, huge plans were afoot and decisions were being made by the officers the men called ‘the Heads’. Plans that would throw the sick and exhausted men on Gallipoli, together with new reinforcements, into a giant and ambitious offensive. The August Offensive was to be a highly complicated series of interlocking actions on neighbouring battlefields, with each action largely dependent on the success of the other, in order to break out of the trenches and put the Turks on the run.
As rumours of all descriptions began to spread, Lieutenant Colonel Miell of the 9th made a bet with his second-in-command, Major Carew Reynell: he wagered his issue of rum for three months that the regiment would be in Constantinople before Christmas. The Western Australians of the 10th, who at that time were holding a position on the northern spur of Walker’s Ridge, could look down below and sense something big was in the offing, as the regiment’s historian, Colonel Olden, explained:
It was evident from the huge preparations that were being made that a big offensive was contemplated. Ammunition was constantly being brought up to our positions from the beach by the Indian Mule Corps detachments and stowed as safely in the ground as possible. Water in sealed petrol cans was also carried up and dumped just in the rear of Russell’s Top and jealously guarded. The scanty supply of bombs became augmented by numbers of homemade ones – the bully beef and jam tins being utilised as vehicles for the explosive charge.
More than 50 men worked on the beach at Anzac Cove making the bombs – packing the tins with gun cotton, shrapnel and varying lengths of fuse. A trooper in the 8th had invented a ‘fuse stick’ for easier lighting of the bombs, which had received wide approval for ingenuity. But otherwise, troopers in the trenches had smouldering lengths of rope hanging from their belts to easily touch off a five- or seven-second fuse. They would blow on the fuse to keep it alight before throwing the jamtin grenades. The Turkish bombs were like black cricket balls and had striker fuses. Sometimes these bombs were caught and thrown back at the Turks by the Australians; at other times a man misjudged and his hand would be blown off.
Forty men, experienced miners from the goldfields of Western Australia, were put to work up on Russell’s Top, digging new saps, edging their way forward cautiously, foot by foot, from the front-line trenches that faced The Nek.
As early as May, General Sir William Birdwood, the small and popular cock sparrow of a man in command of the Australians and New Zealanders, and his principal aide, Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Skeen, had come up with the first draft of a plan for a surprise movement from the north of the Anzacs’ position against the Turks on the heights of Sari Bair. The key points to be captured on the heights would be Chunuk Bair and Hill 971, further along towards Suvla.
One approach to Chunuk Bair was up Walker’s Ridge, along Russell’s Top, across the land bridge called The Nek, and then on up the ridge by way of the hump called Baby 700. But this direct route from Anzac was blocked by the Turks at The Nek, which was barely 30 metres wide. And beyond was Baby 700, the strongest Turkish position on the heights above Anzac, its row upon row of trenches filled with soldiers who could fire down below and pick off targets, as easily as shooting rabbits around a dam.
The Nek was held by the Turks with two lines of trenches. Beyond was a maze of more trenches, while on either flank, slightly towards the Turkish rear, were inaccessible spurs from which Turkish machine-guns, free of interference, could sweep back and forth across the tiny No Man’s Land. As Bean described it, going forward here would be like trying to attack an inverted frying pan from the direction of its handle.
By July, Birdwood and Skeen would write: ‘These trenches and convergences of communication trenches … require considerable strength of force. The narrow Nek to be crossed … make an unaided attack in this direction almost hopeless.’
But they had a better idea. Chunuk Bair would be attacked from another direction. A force of New Zealanders would climb up an almost sheer ridge where it was thought the Turks were few, and attack the enemy on top, where they least expected it. Further on, the planners decided that the capture of Hill 971 would be carried out by an Australian force, led by John Monash, a future general. This attack would follow a night march over terrain so rough that it would be known afterwards as ‘the mad country’. Then, while the Turks were fully occupied with the New Zealanders, there would be a converging attack to capture Chunuk Bair. The 3rd Light Horse Brigade was chosen to make a frontal attack from its own home ground on top of Walker’s Ridge.
But the new plan was very much a plan of ‘ifs’. If Chunuk Bair was captured by the New Zealanders on time it would go ahead; if it was delayed, then a minor assault might be considered.
Because of the narrowness of The Nek, a force of 600 men was eventually decided upon to try to push through the funnel. They would be asked to capture nine lines of trenches to the front and several to the flank, totalling in all at least 40 separate trenches and saps. There would be other troops in reserve, standing by to help and to hold the trenches once they had been captured.
Birdwood and Skeen hedged their bets. The attack would occur ‘at 4.30 am … unless orders are given to the contrary’. First ‘if’, now ‘unless’.
At the same time as the attack at The Nek, other light horse units to the right would attack the Turks at Quinn’s Post and Pope’s Hill, to keep the pressure on. And these attacks, all set for 7 August, would be preceded by a major infantry push at Lone Pine on the evening of 6 August, a feint designed to make the Turks believe that the breakthrough would be from the south. Another infantry attack was planned on the sector known as German Officer’s Trench for midnight. This, it was hoped, would further confuse the Turks and help protect the light horsemen’s flank.
The rest of the grand plan for the August Offensive was being developed and devised by Sir Ian Hamilton’s generals, and seems to have remained something of a mystery to both Birdwood and Skeen. That was, until the arrival on 25 July of General Sir Frederick Stopford, who had been put in charge of operations overall. This ancient incompetent (who would later be sacked) told the no-doubt-astonished officers that a large force of troops would also be landing at Suvla to help in the capture of the Sari Bair range. When Anzac headquarters later tried to give general headquarters some local intelligence as to the location of guns and trenches on the range, they were politely told to mind their own business. It was that kind of high command.
Meanwhile, in faraway Egypt, Lieutenant Colonel Noel Brazier, left behind with the horses he had once personally selected from the farmlands of Western Australia, was packing his kit. At last he was to go to the front. His anger with the Bullant and Hughes had not subsided in the slightest and was still simmering away in the desert heat. He didn’t bother to return letters from the 3rd Brigade headquarters at Anzac and was now insisting that he would take his orders only from the local commander in Egypt.
There had been a fierce row over four motor cars that had been left behind when the three regiments sailed. Antill heard that Brazier was using one of the cars and wrote insisting they all be locked up and the keys sent to him at Anzac. Brazier appealed to his local commander, who ruled that he could keep the keys and the cars. More ill will festered with the brigade’s commanders, for it was by now essentially a divided command, with a sick Hughes and a compliant Antill in the wings.
When Brigadier Hughes returned to Egypt, exhausted, for a short rest, he had stayed the night at Brazier’s camp. The colonel thought Hughes looked ‘a wreck’.
The next day the old brigadier tried to outflank him by ordering the four cars to accompany him to Cairo to pick up comforts for the troops. Once there he dismissed the drivers and arranged for the cars to be sent to a motor company. But, after Hughes had left, Brazier simply went again to his local commander, who gave authority for the cars to be returned to him. Hughes was furious. He and Antill decided that Brazier had to be brought under their control on Gallipoli and replace Major Alan Love, the 10th’s acting CO, who was also falling out of favour.
Major Love wrote back to Heliopolis on 1 July:
My dear Brazier: I have just received a communication from Bgde HQrs that the Brigadier proposes bringing you over here and putting some other officer in your place. They casually tell me that they have written to you for several reports and such like on 2 or 3 occasions but rec’d no reply from you, or in fact a single line since we left …
Love asked Brazier to bring him a luminous watch that he had ordered, and then enquired after six officers who also had not been in touch with him:
I felt very annoyed. You can imagine with all these officers away I am having a rough passage … the 8th and 9th have recently been in the thick of it. Col. White was wounded and Major Gregory and Capt. Crowl killed. The 10th considering the work & engagements has been very lucky – although suffering big casualties there are only 6 killed. We are holding our end up and I don’t think you will have cause to be ashamed of your command.
I hope the end of our trench fighting will soon be over as it is most nerve racking. A fellow wants a spell every 5 or 6 weeks. When you arrive I will apply for a week’s trip and get away from dodging shells and bullets which lately has been a very difficult job as they have pelted them in at times like hail. I am told that 500 shells fell in 3 hours in 170 yards perimeter of our trenches, but we not only held on but repelled a heavy after attack with great slaughter, hundreds of whom are still lying outside of our trenches.
Two weeks later, Love wrote again:
I am informed by Brigade HQrs that you are expected here any day and the sooner the better for they are worrying the life out of me.
A CO has not only to fight the enemy but the staff as well … the Brigadier and myself had a long yarn this morning and he finally agreed with me that there were 4 vacancies for commissions in the Reg’t. But he suggests a competitive examination and that the matter should await your arrival.
I have been bad with diarrhoea for about 14 days and am just about played out and intended, as soon as you arrived, having a week’s spell on the hospital ship or in Lemnos.
You can imagine I have had a rough passage with so many officers knocked out and can appreciate the urgency of getting others appointed.
Olden and McDonald arrived this morning with 51 men. I understand the Brigadier was very annoyed with you over something [Brazier’s handwritten note alongside: ‘Motor cars. He got kicked!’] hence his decision to relieve you and get you over here.
Antill is as great a bully as ever and leads us a cat and dog life [Brazier: ‘Wait awhile’.] I understand there is a possibility of his getting command of the brigade if the Brigadier again breaks down. What ho then! [Brazier: ‘Never’.]
Brazier would arrive on Gallipoli on 30 July, just eight days before the charge. In all the events that followed, his loathing for Antill never subsided.
The men of the 8th came down from the trenches on 11 July to find their colonel, head bandaged, back with them again. Jones, his batman, had made his dugout comfortable, and Sid Campbell was changing the dressing every day. The wound was healing nicely, but White thought it would leave a big scar. He looked forward to being able to swim again. Meanwhile, he busied himself with other duties.
A couple of days later, the popular CO received a request from Brigadier Hughes to visit him on his hospital ship. White described the trip:
I went out with a large load of wounded, the old chap was very glad to see me, had lunch on board with him, a good feed – soup, fish, beet (fresh), apple pie and milk. Gee, I did stuff, then some afternoon tea, with cake and bread and butter. Was hoping the trawler would not come alongside until after dinner, but she put in an appearance at 4 pm so I had to go. Was in the trawler for three hours waiting for a launch to come from shore. They are good chaps, all naval fellows, they gave me a huge bowl of tea and some bread and dripping.
Colonel Miell of the 9th (‘blooming old humbug’) also called in. But White was always thinking of his own officers and men. He organised a concert for the 8th – ‘it will do them good’ – although he acknowledged the lack of facilities: ‘Of course there is no campfire, wood is very scarce, so we will just sit on the hillside and sing songs, etc.’
And he was insisting that some of his officers, including Ted Henty and Keith Borthwick, go offshore for a spell on Lemnos, as they were ‘all very sick and tired out’. After fighting influenza and a high temperature for three days, Aub Callow, the signaller, was also to be sent off. Young Aub was much sicker than he thought, and would end up in hospital in Malta.
In the evenings Colonel White played bridge with Sid Campbell and the two young Duntroon graduates, Lieutenants Leo Anderson and Charles Dale, high up on the terrace outside their dugouts. From here they looked down on the beach and around the bluff of Ari Burnu to Anzac Cove.
On the evening of 12 July, Colonel White decided to go swimming again – ‘Can’t swim until dark, the snipers are getting brisk again, several chaps have been hit so it’s not worth the risk’. Afterwards he pronounced it a success: ‘It was grand, such a wash.’
Phillip Schuler was later to tell the readers of The Age of the scene at the Cove, near the wooden Watson’s Pier that had been built out from the sharply shelving shoreline:
Like the other piers that lie around it is stoutly built and broad enough for stretchers to pass along it. It is riddled with the enemy’s shrapnel, yet the pier is one of the favourite bathing resorts of those who live on or near the beach. Generally in the vicinity are some naval launches and barges – some stranded, others just afloat.
The toll taken by the enemy’s guns on the beach is amazingly small, it seems to me, for the amount of ammunition they fling over. Bathing is carried on at all times during the day, and it must not be supposed that one is safe at night.
You can see hundreds of men in the water; the greatest treat that can be given to the infantryman from the trenches is to bring him down to the sea.
They undress behind the piles of stores and they have so little to shed that it takes but a second. Then they are diving from the pier or off a barge, and the Turks commence to ‘pot’.
Immediately the sound of a shell is heard there is a scatter. Many men dive at once into the water; those in the water dive deep down. It is hard to believe, but I have seen a man swimming out of the circle caused by the disappearance of an unburst shell into the deep.
Everyone knew that swimming was a dangerous business but it seemed to be a risk worth taking, as Sid Campbell explained on 12 July to his sister Hetty: ‘We are singularly free from the effects of dirt and filth here chiefly because the sea is so close and the weather good. The beach is not the safest place to loiter on though, except late in the evening.’
Two nights later Colonel White, accompanied by the medical officer and Charles Dale, climbed down from the terrace outside their adjoining dugouts and went down together for a swim in the dark again. It had been a quiet day with little shooting and White had enjoyed reading a book as well as consuming ‘a feast’ of rice and golden syrup. Like their men, the officers were now wearing their trousers cut off at the knee and were mentioning in their letters home how very tanned they were becoming. ‘We are a rough looking crowd now, short pants, boots and singlets and plenty of beards,’’ the colonel admitted to his brother, Joe.
Senior Chaplain Merrington, attached to the 1st Light Horse, had been visiting patients aboard a hospital ship moored off Anzac Cove that day. On returning ashore the Presbyterian minister dropped in to see his friend Chaplain McPhee in his dugout, on the heights above the beach:
After tea, we were sitting in front for some time talking and watching the bathers who were very numerous on the beach below. It was getting quite dark when, suddenly, we saw the flash of a shell burst amid the forms of bathers who were dressing on a barge.
Stretcher bearers were called for at once and we saw four of those who had been enjoying a bathe a few minutes before carried along the beach towards the hospital … We went down and found Captain Campbell, a medical officer, lying on the operating table with his feet shot away. McPhee, who had known him at Ormond College, Melbourne, stood beside him and spoke to him. I understand there is no hope of his recovery.
Sid Campbell, described by officers and troopers alike as being the best-loved man in the 8th Light Horse Regiment, was dying.
Another of Sid’s old friends from those happy, far-off days, ten years before at Ormond College, was Captain Mervyn Higgins, the young man they had called ‘Buggins’ at university. Two days later, Merv wrote what had occurred, in pencil, on the last sheets he had of the 8th’s fine notepaper with the raised engraving of the regiment’s emblem, the prancing horse. The letter was addressed to Sid’s father at ‘Maretimo’, the grand house on the hilltop near Portland in Victoria:
This is how it happened. The evening before last Sid left our rest camp here with the CO and adjutant to have a swim down by the base, about a mile away. They undressed on a barge and were just ready to go into the sea.
The CO had stepped off on to another barge and Dale, the adjutant, was bending down about two feet in front of Sid, who was standing. An 8-inch shell came along and caught Sid sideways on, cutting off both legs below the knee, before it burst at the bottom of the barge, where it wounded three or four others.
There was a field ambulance within a few yards and he was brought in in less than a minute.
He was conscious for a few seconds and gave the stretcher-bearers instructions as to tying him up, but he was unconscious by the time he got into the ambulance hospital from which he was soon removed to the hospital ship.
He died about one o’clock yesterday morning.
I know how agonising these details must be to you but I thought you would prefer to know exactly how it happened and I have given them to you just as Dale gave them to me …
Colonel White was distraught as he wrote home to Myrtle:
A sad, sad, day, poor dear Campbell, how we all loved him. The best and most honoured of men. Doctor, soldier, gentleman, friend, how I shall miss him. I was very, very fond of Campbell, how he worked; he was always so gentle, sympathetic and kind. The men loved him; the officers called him a man.
He was my own special friend, dear, straight upright clean living Campbell, cut off just as your splendid young life and career was just beginning, why should it be so? You who could so ill be spared to us. God comfort your parents; the whole Regiment mourns for you. Oh war is horrible.
I don’t feel much like writing, it was so horrible. Campbell and I always bathed together; we went as usual to the safest place, and all the adjutants with us, undressed on a barge. I was undressed first and about to plunge in when the shell came by where I had been sitting beside Campbell, missed Dale and me by inches and caught Campbell – it was horrible.
Poor chap, the last shell of the night, it made a tremendous row and my clothes were blown to bits, not a stitch left. I managed to borrow something from the Hospital people to come home in.
Perhaps I should not have mentioned this, it will make you sad and troubled and anxious – but remember this, I could not have been closer to death than I was and quite untouched. I said at the first I would come back to you all and I now say it more fully than ever – but no more bathing for me, except at dead of night, it’s not safe, I have learned my lesson; no more.
The grief that swept the regiment as they learned of Campbell’s death was palpable. Major Tom Redford said he was ‘beloved by all who knew him’; Lieutenant Charles Carthew wrote how ‘very cut up’ he was, ‘we miss him sorely – he was a splendid fellow – nothing was too much trouble and he was one of my closest friends’. The doctor was ‘very well liked and his loss is sorely felt’ were Aub Callow’s words.
It was the third major blow to the men’s morale. The doctor’s death ranked alongside the sinking of the battleship Triumph and the loss of Gregory and Crowl in the bloody shelling on the heights in June.
Merv Higgins’ letter would take many weeks to arrive in Australia, of course, and the Campbell family would hear of the tragedy through official channels. Back in Melbourne, the Defence Department arranged for the Premier of Victoria, Sir Alexander Peacock, to break the news of Sid’s death to his father, the Member for Glenelg, Mr Hugh Campbell. Sir Alexander got the message on 21 July. It was just two days after the Campbells would have been unwittingly celebrating Sid’s twenty-eighth birthday.
Captain Campbell was buried at sea off Gallipoli on 15 July. Today his name is inscribed at Lone Pine among the 960 Australians who incurred mortal wounds or sickness and were buried at sea. If you search at the other end of the world you can also find his name in weathered script, black on white marble – in the windswept front porch of the RSL in Portland, Victoria, just a few kilometres from Maretimo, the family house.
From his dugout on Walker’s Ridge, Frederick Hughes also wrote to Hugh Campbell, grieving at ‘Maretimo’. The brigadier was writing on scraps of grid-lined mapping paper now, not crested notepaper:
Your son was not only wrapped up in his work which he performed with great skill and care whether in the Trenches or Field Hospital but in addition his charming manner and personality endeared himself to everyone who came in contact with him … thus ended the life of one of our finest young men in the service of the Empire and one whose life gave every promise of a very brilliant professional career.
The Speculum magazine of October 1915 had the finest epitaph: ‘Poor Sid. A faithful, gentle, stalwart soul.’ But life went on. A new medical officer, Captain Frank Beamish – ‘a nice chap … glad to come to us’, wrote White – had joined the 8th. Beamish, who had also studied medicine while at Ormond College, was seconded from the 13th Infantry Battalion to take Sid’s place.
Meanwhile, the planning for the August Offensive was continuing apace. On 21 July, Brigadier (soon to be Brigadier General) Hughes, Brigade Major Antill, and the three regimental commanding officers – White, Miell and Brazier – went out to sea aboard the British torpedo-boat destroyer HMS Chelmer, ‘to have a look at the Turkish position’.
Quite what the officers saw of the Turkish position, even through the best field glasses, is open to conjecture. Cruising down the same stretch of sea today, the jagged skyline which is the Sari Bair range reveals little to the naked eye. Details of trench lines on the summits would have been almost impossible to pick up. However, reconnaissance by British aircraft was continuing over the Turkish lines along the ridge and beyond.
Still, the officers enjoyed the day’s outing, White would write:
It was very nice out at sea – a cool wind – no dust and no flies. The officers were very decent to us. Had a good lunch, Irish stew made from fresh mutton, spuds and onions, also some mazena pudding, also some bread and butter – it was grand to see a table cloth again. We also had some afternoon tea with some toast and butter. Just think of it. I was quite sorry when we had to come home again.
The discussions continued between the senior officers. After breakfast on 26 July, White had to attend ‘a pow-wow of C.O.s that took all the morning’, where the topic was the ‘great preparations for the supposed attack that is to come’. While one can detect a tone of indifference in those words, there is no mistaking the faith he had in his men:
I am certain my chaps will do well. It will be a pleasure to lead them – good old 8th. The numbers are going down but they are still full of grit and go yet. I am very fortunate in my officers, could not have a finer lot of men, and all loyal to the backbone. I love them all but it does seem a waste of troops doing this work – such a bonnie Regiment of Light Horse.
Anyhow we have done what we can and relieved the Infantry a lot, we could not do more. I believe our horses are looking very fine and well – only wish we had them – no chance here for mounted work.
This light horseman was still looking ahead to glorious days fighting on horseback. ‘In Austria we should have our chance and do something,’ he enthused.
But, just three days later, the troopers were ordered to hand in their leather light horse bandoliers and exchange them for the ordinary webbing equipment of the infantryman. ‘It appeared to us we were parting with our last link with the horses and as a consequence we were not too pleased,’ wrote Tom Austin, who also noted that it took the men a while to put the new equipment together.
At about the same time, reinforcements began arriving. White said he was ‘dashed glad’ to get two officers and 70 other ranks from Egypt, which enabled him to get the regiment up to three squadrons again. More men would arrive on 3 August, four days before the grand offensive.
The light horsemen were being readied for an extraordinarily impossible infantry feat of arms. As Peter Burness wrote, ‘Godley was proposing to use the light horsemen in a massed bayonet attack of a kind which had been rendered ineffective by weapon developments back at the time of the American Civil War’.
But according to the brigade major, Jack Antill – writing after the war to Charles Bean, as the latter prepared the final draft of his Official History – the officers of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade had opposed the idea from the start:
From the initial intimation of the proposed operations and right through the subsequent discussions and conferences, in the definite and reiterated judgment of the brigadier, his brigade-major and of regimental commanders, the projected attack on The Nek was fore-doomed to failure.
On the contrary, and in opposition to this view, both Anzac and divisional headquarters were confident of success.
The brigade had been in occupation of this narrow and contracted frontage since its arrival on the Peninsula and from the advantage of close contact and constant observation might be assumed to be competent judges of the situation.
Except for their attack on the 29th June, the Turks, while fairly quiescent after their disastrous failure on that occasion, were intensely active in strengthening their positions on the sloping open area in rear.
The Chessboard now somewhat resembled a mining camp. Line after line of close parallel and deeply dug trenches, inter-connected with innumerable inter-links as far as the crest of the hill; and, during the week or so immediately preceding the attack on The Nek, every morning disclosed large quantities of fresh earth thrown up during the night, thus indicating feverish anxiety, in undoubted anticipation of attack.
All these preparations were fully know to headquarters; notwithstanding, superior authority thought this frontage was comparatively lightly held, and contrary to brigade estimation, discounted and waved aside their views.
In this, Colonel Skeen (representing headquarters), who took a prominent part in the discussions, was particularly optimistic and confident. Headquarters decided the attack should proceed and the necessary preparations and orders drafted accordingly. This was done. Brigade orders were drafted and duly examined and approved by division.
But as Major General Sir Brudenall White wrote to Bean after it was all over: ‘Skeen’s plan was quite a brilliant conception and was sound from a military point of view, but it totally disregarded the almost impossible nature of the country.’
The Bullant sent a later handwritten note to Bean in 1931. In it he said: ‘Skeen and the other superiors always seemed to pooh-pooh the idea of any serious opposition at The Nek – we realised and pressed it from the very outset.’ But Antill was writing long after the disaster. He wanted to lay the blame squarely on divisional headquarters and distance himself from the decisions that he would make that day on 7 August. Perhaps, nearly sixteen years later, he had convinced himself in his own mind, because he scrawled to Bean: ‘I regard the launching of that attack as a callous and unforgivable blunder and the massacre, for it was nothing else, must rest with higher authority.’
However, in those last, fatal days of July 1915, a higher authority ruled and reassured Hughes and the Bullant. They should prepare their orders for a successful charge on 7 August because they would not be acting in isolation. Other attacks would be going on at the same time, they were told. The 1st Light Horse Brigade would be attacking the Chessboard from Pope’s opposite, and others from the 1st Brigade would break out of Quinn’s in four waves of 50 men. The infantry at Steele’s Post would be attacking German Officer’s Trench and knocking out the machine-guns that enfiladed the ground in front of The Nek. And meanwhile, the successful New Zealanders would have captured Chunuk Bair and now would be coming down Battleship Hill, firing into the back trenches of Baby 700, as the light horsemen attacked those in the front from The Nek.
The plan for the charge at The Nek seemed simple enough: in essence, four lines, limited to 150 men each because of the width of the sloping ground, would charge across a narrowing hillcrest between steep gullies in quick succession.
The first two lines would be made up of men from the 8th Light Horse, the next two lines from the 10th Light Horse, while the 9th Light Horse would also be on Russell’s Top in reserve. A battalion of the British Cheshire Regiment would help to consolidate while two companies of the 8th Royal Welch Fusiliers were to climb up Monash Valley in support as well.
The first line would attack the Turkish trenches across The Nek using just handmade bombs and bayonets. They were to charge with no bullets in their magazines, not even a single round up the spout. This was an instruction from Godley, a literal interpretation of a Birdwood instruction that the rifles be unloaded. The presumption is that these British officers believed the bayonet charge up a hill might be slowed if the men stopped at any stage to aim and fire their rifles.
The second line was to pass over the first and take the nearest saps on Baby 700. The third line would capture the farther trenches, while the fourth, armed with picks and shovels, would either fight or dig in as required.
The actual brigade orders were more elaborate, more astounding. Brazier said after the war: ‘If you want to know how NOT to write an operational order you will find it in that order for the attack; as the Brigadier called it a “comprehensive order”. It took my adjutant an hour or two to copy it and almost detailed individual men to take specified machine guns!’
The orders included capital letters and numbers identifying Turkish trenches that had been marked on British maps from aerial reconnaissance. ‘Y’ and ‘Z’ referred to centres or junctions of several trenches. The basic orders read:
8th L.H. 1st Line – First line will consist of troops already in firing trenches and saps. On a given signal, silently and without rifle-fire, it will rush The Nek (A1) and with bayonet and bomb engage the enemy, taking possession of the flank, communicating and advanced trenches (A9, A5, A8, A11) paying special attention to the machine guns, which must be sought for and rushed, and to the trenches to the north of The Nek and to those on the southern flank of same, so as to prevent flank interposition by the enemy – mine fuses and ’phone wires to be sought for and cut.
8th L.H. 2nd Line – Second line (already on banquette) will immediately follow. Jumping advanced trenches (already engaged by first line) it will sweep on and attack, supporting and subsidiary trenches (A12, C1, C4). Its action will be forward, ignoring trenches behind, but accounting for those to right and left (C6a, B1, B2, B3). Bayonet and bomb without fire. Note – As soon as first line has moved from our trenches, second line will take the position vacated in order to make room for third line. In passing over intervening space officers will take post in the ranks so as not to make themselves a conspicuous target.
10th L.H. 3rd Line – Having moved up communicating trenches, third line will in like manner be prepared and follow on at once. Its objective will be the next line of trenches (C2, C3, C5, C7, C8) and, if possible, Z, Y, C10, C11 to C12-13. With bomb and bayonet only, the enemy will be driven back and out without turning back, and avenues blocked. Once in the trenches the enemy will not be able to make effective use of his machine guns. When the extreme limit of advance has been reached the gain must be made good and safe against machine gun fire and against counter attack. Here fourth line plays its part.
10th L.H. 4th Line – Fourth line will in like manner follow and act in concert with 2 and 3. It must endeavour to join up with the latter. Every second man will carry digging tools in the proportion of one pick to two shovels. It is impossible to define precisely what this line may be called upon to do. This must in necessity depend upon the progress of its predecessors. It may have to down tools and assist, but it must make every effort to join up with third line and block the approaches. This is its role.
The orders did warn that the enemy’s garrison at The Nek was believed to be ‘not light’ or that machine-guns were believed to exist in five positions, all commanding the approach to The Nek, or that, with the exception of one, all these positions were around 200 metres beyond the Turkish front. All the attackers were told was that the fighting might disclose other machine-guns.
While these weapons might not be silenced at the first rush, the light horsemen were assured in their orders that the attackers would have ‘the full assistance of naval guns and high explosive fire from the full strength of our howitzer and other guns’.
In the few remaining days of July, as these orders were being finalised, the men of the 8th were aware of rumours of a big attack to be launched soon at Suvla, and by the time they returned to the trenches, on 29 July, they knew something big was afoot, as they were put to work supplying parties to haul artillery pieces up onto Russell’s Top.
There had been a false alarm.
On 25 July, Ted Henty and Keith Borthwick had returned from sick leave and called on their colonel who said they were ‘both looking much better’. Ted had brought White some big packets of chocolates and some writing paper and envelopes, which were well received.
The next day, White had attended the ‘Pow-wow of Cos’ which had lasted all morning.
White then held a meeting with his own officers where ‘I passed on the information and made my own plans, so now feel that everything is attended to’. It was now also suspected that the Turkish were planning a concentrated attack on 27 July and Aub Callow wrote that:
General Birdwood has written to the troops here saying the Turks have brought up 100,000 reinforcements and are going to make a final attempt and wish everyone to be on the alert and hold the position.
The Turkish had been expected to attack again at any time and there was a new fear. This time the enemy might use asphyxiating gasses and the troops had been issued with respirators in an attempt to combat this new menace. They stood to arms fearfully in their rest trenches waiting – but nothing happened.
This false alarm meant White and his men were not called to the trenches until two days later to wait anxiously for further orders. ‘It will be great when the advance comes,’ wrote the colonel, ‘what a yelling and a shouting there will be’.
Meanwhile, Jack Mack had been taken from his troop to join Lance Corporal Don Oliver’s ‘howitzer bomb gun’ crew, where he replaced a man who was sick. It was a decision that probably saved the Berrybank man’s life.
Don Oliver would play a critical role in what was to come. Each line in the charge would carry four small red-and-yellow marker flags. As soon as he saw one waved from the first line of the Turkish trenches, Don was to hurry across with his trench mortar crew.
On 29 July both the 8th and the 10th were on Russell’s Top. The 10th’s historian, Colonel Olden, described how the average distance separating them from the front line Turkish trenches was no more than around 35 metres, while a sap running from the main trench line came as close as 10 metres. The Turks with machine-guns, rifles, bombs and shells were constantly harassing the whole position. Observation was only possible by periscope, but these were frequently shattered in the hands of observers on being raised above the parapets. Olden continued:
Only the most fleeting glance, consequently, could be had of the enemy works, but even these disclosed the tremendous advantage he still held as to ground. Everywhere one looked, the gradient was with him and his spherical bombs would often roll of their own accord for yards after being hurled, to eventually find lodgement in one of our saps.
The 10th made a ‘demonstration’ on 3 August to test whether this section of the Turkish line was as strong as suspected. It was. The feint drew forth ‘such a hurricane of machine gun and rifle fire, supplemented by shells and bombs, as to leave no doubt as to the enemy’s never-tiring vigilance’.
On the first day back, the 8th soon learned of this vigilance when they were shelled heavily and Trooper John Kane, a 41-year-old horse trainer from Castlemaine, was killed and two others injured just before tea time. It was a bad start, but not unexpected, according to White: ‘It’s always a rotten job changing over – one crowd going out, the other going in. It always takes some time to get them in their right positions and when they are, it’s a job to get the blighters to keep a good look out.’
Less phlegmatically, perhaps, the commanding officer told his wife that he was still dreaming of what it would like to be at peace again and out of uniform, but that ‘when I come home and a motor-tyre bursts, I shall make a rush to the nearest door for cover.’ He was still recovering from his head wound, and would take time off to lie down and rest in a new dugout in the trenches, trying to escape the heat and the flies, while passing some of his duties on to his squadron leaders and his second-in-command, Major Deeble.
His last letter to his brother was written in pencil on scraps of paper, at twilight, three days before the charge. By then he knew what he would be facing, and his words are disjointed yet strangely fatalistic:
Trenches
4.8.15
Dear old Joe
Jolly glad to get your second letter from Tasmania yesterday and hear that you know now what is wrong; you can build up your system – swig all the claret you feel like.
Those blighters had no need to open your letter, it was already censored. I am wondering if Capt Hillard came over – it is up to him – all military chaps should come – did you notice in the casualties just what a lot of immigrants there were. Nearly half of this show is not very Australian after all.
We are still plugging away and I think that this show will soon end – by the time you get this we shall be just about finished. It is nearly autumn here and the early mornings have quite a nip in them now – but very beautiful days and calm sea. Sgt Parker went away sick tonight – he has not been too well for some time – thank goodness I am right and very fit.
I have just written the Mater, hope she is not worrying, a few wounds are sure to come but they soon heal up again. It will all come right. I often think of our meals in the office and how we used to make the average come down about 3d a bushel. It’s good to hear that things are going right with you and only hope you are not just telling me so as you are always thinking of other people.
Pascoe you mention is a decent chap in the 9th. He has gone over to some dentist job in Egypt.
It’s wonderful the work the mule does here, the loads they carry up the hills – all run by Indians. Sorry I cannot tell you military news – censor won’t stand it.
It’s a great pity the papers are not allowed to publish facts. We do not know what is happening here at all.
Any Germans we find will get short shrift. The Turk is all right and plays the game fair.
I get very home sick for you all at times. It will be a great home coming. Wait until – wedding we shall hit it up. Old Moll sends me long interesting letters, so do the others.
Of course I always keep yours and Myrtle’s letters to the last, read them over about 10 times.
It’s almost dark and no candles – so good-bye old chap – keep fit and well and don’t get too lonely. Love to Rose and regards to old pals.
Always, your Alex
PS. Am very hot and dirty. Burn this when finished; it’s not too clean.
Immediately before he wrote this, Colonel White and the other senior officers had met again over the first three days of August with the brigade staff to receive their final orders to pass on to the men. Lieutenant Wilfred Robinson, the tall farmer from the Wimmera, was particularly scathing afterwards in describing to Bean what he thought of the headquarters briefing: ‘The work of the Brigade staff as far as arrangements for the attack of the 8th and 10th regiments were concerned was disgraceful. Beyond being given the time for the attack we officers were practically left to make our own arrangements. There was no cohesion.’
Antill’s own written orders to the light horse troop leaders reflect his usual bluster:
One thing must be clearly understood and appreciated – WE ARE OUT TO STAY – THERE IS NO COMING BACK – the surest means are DASH and DETERMINATION. No time to waste on prisoners – no notice of tricks of the enemy such as ‘cease fire’ and there is no RETIRE.
ONCE OUT OF OUR TRENCHES – OUT FOR GOOD and the assault, once for all goes right home.
On Wednesday 4 August, the men received their final orders for the charge. It was, coincidentally, the first anniversary of the declaration of war. Back home in Melbourne, Prime Minister Andrew Fisher, amid cheers from both sides of the House of Representatives, had moved:
That we, the Representatives of the Commonwealth of Australia, in parliament assembled, do, on the expiration of a year of war, present to His Majesty our most loyal service and record our unchanging determination to continue to a victorious end the struggle for the maintenance of the ideals of liberty and justice which are the common and sacred cause of the Allied Nations.
Seventy-five thousand Australian troops were now overseas and another 40,000 were in training. On the eve of the charge at The Nek, the 60th casualty list would be published in the newspapers. It would have nearly 200 new names to add to the one printed on 3 August, bringing the total so far to 12,469 men killed and wounded.
The list would soon grow much, much longer. At the end of August, Colonel C. St C. Cameron, Assistant Adjutant General to the Imperial Headquarters and adviser to General Birdwood, would arrive back in Australia to declare:
Blood and bone and iron alone can win the present struggle … although Australia has answered nobly to the call we must double our efforts. As yet we are only at the beginning of a great struggle for national existence and the Turks must be wiped out before we can hope for any successes that will lead to the final victory. I would like to see Australia get another 100,000 men ready for transport by Christmas and a third 100,000 men ready by the following June …
On Walker’s Ridge, the light horsemen were shivering in the dawn. Four days before the attack in a mistaken order they had been told to hand in their woollen tunics – a mistake because, despite the daytime heat, it was freezing cold in the trenches at night. All they had left to wear were their light sun helmets, flannel shirts, ragged torn-off shorts, wound-up puttees around their ankles, and their boots.
The order of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade was for: ‘Shirt sleeves, web equipment, helmets, 200 rounds, field dressing pinned right side inside shirt, gas helmet, full waterbottle, 6 biscuits, 2 sandbags (4 periscopes per line and gas sprayers to be carried by fourth line), wire cutters, rifle (unloaded and uncharged) bayonet fixed.’ Some would also carry planks and scaling ladders to help climb over barbed-wire entanglements and up over the parapets and into trenches.
Only bayonets and bombs were to be used. Each line would have 24 bomb throwers and carriers. Each squadron carried 48 bombs and a reserve of 400 bombs was to accompany each line.
No further water was to be issued, and whatever there was was to be conserved as much as possible. The men were told that all wounded were to be left to the stretcher-bearers, and any prisoners were to be sent to the rear. Nothing was to stop the impetus of the charge. Officers and men were ordered to stow all their spare belongings in kitbags, which were thrown into big heaps by the cliff edges at the rear of the trenches.
There were some exceptions, according to Bean: ‘Most of the men crammed into some corner among their clothes certain specially-treasured mementoes – a fragment of Turkish shell, some coins bought off a prisoner, a home letter, a photograph or two. There was no chance of taking such treasures with them; they expected to bivouac on the open hills.’
Dave McGarvie noted in his diary that he had been issued with calico ‘to sew on back and both arms’, adding: ‘No tunic to be worn. Spent very cold night in shirt sleeves.’
‘Throughout the whole day everyone was busy and as soon as the work was done most of us sat down to pen a note of farewell home,’ Tom Austin reported.
Ernie Mack wrote a cheery letter to his sister, Nell, in which he had news about a good friend of the Mack brothers: ‘Roger Palmer who was wounded a few days after landing came back last week but he has the bullet still in his leg.’ Then he added a postscript: ‘Maybe this is the last note I may ever write so, if so, goodbye to all. Can’t say more but am quite ready to do my share or so I feel at present.’
The Macks’ other friend, Lex Borthwick, had to leave his farewell letter until the next day due to his being detailed for a burial party. Trooper Ernest Butcher, the errant milkman from Port Melbourne, was cooking his tea in the trenches when he’d been struck by a piece of flying shell fragment; Ernest died at the field dressing station, and they carried his body back down the ridge to Ari Burnu, where Lex dug the grave and helped bury him.
So, the following day, Lex sat down and wrote to his parents back in Sale of the task that lay ahead:
We will be called upon to charge a strongly fortified hill opposite … it is a difficult job and the 8th will have a rough journey. I hope Keith and I pull through all right but if we don’t you will know we have done our little bit. Poor old Mother must not worry too much, and I hope, if we should have the bad luck to get hit that Father will console both of you by remembering that we quitted ourselves like men.
The regiment’s historian, Tom Austin, summed up the situation that the men of the light horse faced:
All realised that ours was to be no light job. The difficulties and strength of the enemy position had long been known, not only to us but had practically become a bye-word to every Anzac on Gallipoli. However there was never a thought of hanging back, rather did each man look forward with expectancy to having a real try-out with Brer Turk.
The 3rd Light Horse Brigade had been stuck for eleven long weary weeks on the side of a rotten hill in Turkey, shot and shelled at, with never a major advance. Instead of glorious victories there had been only flies and filth, diarrhoea and enteric fever, Barcoo Rot and lice. The heroes who had jingled and jangled as they rode in style through the cities of Australia had been reduced to coolies toiling up and down the slopes of Walker’s Ridge with their loads of tins and water bottles, digging away forever on roads and in holes with the picks and the shovels. They had been enveloped by the stink and the popping of dead men’s tunics on the parapets, and splattered with the blood and brains of their mates in the trenches.
Now, here at last, was the chance to break free. To burst out of the trenches and shake off the ignominy of being enforced infantrymen. To become light horsemen again, to be reunited with their horses, their mates, and to do what they had been trained to do and ride away to glory. To dream, as Colonel Alexander White dreamed, of charging to fresh victories in Europe, among the white men where they really belonged. To be part of greater deeds for the empire, new adventures to thrill a fresh generation of schoolboys.
They would, wrote Charles Bean, be moving through the green and open country again. ‘The prospect filled them with a longing akin to home-sickness.’