‘Gallipoli.’
The troopers had never heard of it. Few could spell it and even fewer could pronounce it. But even before their transport boat approached the thin finger of Turkish land running into the Aegean, it was legend to the Australian and New Zealand brigades that made up the 2nd Division—the first ‘Anzacs’. The troopers would be joining them. ‘Anzac’ already had a mystical, proud ring to it, as did the land they would soon be invading.
By 12 May 1915 Gallipoli was ‘sacred’ ground after seventeen days of fighting the 40,000 Turks ensconced in the heights above the beach at Anzac Cove. The first landings had been made on 25 April. Since then hundreds of Anzacs had been killed in this the first action. British generals running the campaign had never expected the battle to go on this long, but the campaign—a harebrained, undermanned, underequipped, poorly planned, poorly financed fiasco—seemed doomed to be an inglorious ‘bog’. None of the Allied troops, French and British at the tip of the Gallipoli Peninsula and the Anzacs on its coast, had managed to scale the heights and take the high ground. Far from it. They were bound to the beaches where encampment tents—looking like giant mushrooms—had sprung up at the water’s edge.
The troopers were called ‘reinforcements’. In reality they were replacements, such was the attrition rate of Allied forces getting killed, wounded and fatigued in uncomfortable if not alarming numbers. Excitement interlaced with fear enveloped them as their boat steamed closer to the dark blobs of Gallipoli’s coast and Anzac Cove. They could hear the boom of the big guns before making out the imposing cliff-faces and hills behind them, hills that became shadows as evening set in. Soon they could be seen only when shells from British artillery hit them like exploding fireworks. The troopers watched, their eyes darting here and there as the shells made their marks in an asymmetrical pattern.
The ships timed their advance so they were under cover of darkness as they anchored off the coast. Artillery gave way to rifle fire drowned sporadically by the harsher, more concentrated spitting of machine-guns. Chauvel ordered his troops to wait until the morning before going ashore. They would be preceded by the small contingent of mules and horses, including Bill. For the moment, even he was going with the mob, the prodding, the instructions and the noise.
At sun-up, a tiny beach could be seen. It was much smaller than Bondi in Sydney, St Kilda in Melbourne or Cottesloe in Perth. This sandy, pebbled strip, already the subject of a thousand amateur poems and a hundred artists’ paintings, was unprepossessing and made uninviting by the intermittent clouds of shrapnel hovering over it. Cliffs that seemed to merge with steep peaks and ridges on dark, scrubby hills hung over the beach.
The horses and mules were roped in barges, which wobbled their way to shore. They became the day’s first target for Turkish snipers, who had barely had their first nip of black coffee before taking up positions. They had been ordered to fire at the soldiers, not waste their bullets on quadrupeds. But the targets were much bigger and more than tempting. Tucked in crevasses out of sight of their officers, the odd Turk disobeyed instructions and took a pot shot at the animal barges. Bill was the biggest horse on board, but there were two other sizeable packhorses, who were both shot in the head. They crumpled in the boat, disturbing the others. Turkish officers with binoculars noticed the ‘wasted’ hits and used megaphones to bark orders to the snipers: Anyone caught doing that again will be shot. The threat by officers to waste bullets even more extravagantly on their own snipers caused the hidden hill assassins to wait for the troopers’ barges.
The troopers, led by Harry Chauvel and including Lieutenant Shanahan, slipped into landing barges. All the men were ordered to keep low. Bullets pinged into the water, some striking the barges as they meandered past massive battleships to the shore. Light showers of shrapnel rained down. The small beach was shelled from the right flank. Rifle fire was coming from everywhere, creating a chaotic atmosphere under the face of the steep cliffs. Tents, stacks of ammunition boxes, stores and equipment of all kinds took up much space, with soldiers and animals accounting for the rest. The gangly, tall and strict British Major-General Godley directed Chauvel and his regiments to take over from Monash and his decimated brigade. It had taken the brunt of the fighting and had held the line since the day after the diggers arrived. Godley told Chauvel he would be in Monash Valley. His troopers would man the trenches in this vital defence post. If it were penetrated by the Turks, they would haemorrhage down to the beach. Left unsaid was the certain massacre of Anzacs that would follow. The Turks were unlikely to bother about taking prisoners from among the invaders of their land.
Chauvel left the beach with an armed guard of troopers, including Shanahan. They were followed up the scrubby valley by a single file of horses and mules packed with regimental gear. Bill was the lead animal. His reputation for remaining steadfast in all circumstances except when attempts were made to ride him, saw him given this dubious honour. Monash’s engineers had buttressed the valley track with sandbags two metres thick. They were placed intermittently along the twisting path on the left and also on the right at points exposed to sniper fire. Screens of brushwood to hide approaching Anzacs had been mounted on wires. Evidence of Turkish ‘successes’—hits on mules and horses—lay rotting in the spring sun. Some of the animals in the train seemed agitated by the noise of shells exploding overhead or hitting the valley walls, but Bill trudged on, his head unusually low as he hauled his 400-kilogram load up the gradient towards Monash Valley, an 800-metre narrow cleft. Its high walls were baked yellow and free of vegetation. Coming the other way past them was a steady trickle of mules carrying dead and wounded soldiers. The path up curved around hills to the most treacherous part of the valley, which was more vulnerable to snipers than any other point along it. This perpetually dangerous valley would be the troopers’ ‘home’ for now.
Michael Shanahan was one of the officers assigned to command Queensland troopers up to the worst possible post at Monash Valley. It was known as Quinn’s, after the major in charge. This was the eastern-most post in the valley and had been held ever since the landing on 25 April. Quinn’s lay lower than the ridges on either side of it, which made it suicidal for a trooper to raise his head to the level of the trench’s parapets either to fire or observe. Worse still, the Turks above them to the left and right could elevate themselves with far less fear of being hit. This gave the enemy fire superiority. Quinn’s also had more enemy bombs hurled at it than any other Anzac position. It became the centre of most of the fighting. Other soldiers looked up at it as they would a haunted house. The Turks knew that if they could take Quinn’s, they could crash down the valley to Anzac Cove.
The post’s precariousness was driven home to the British generals on the beach at the cove on 14 May when General Birdwood, the chirpy, well-respected British commander of both Australian divisions at Gallipoli, was accompanied by Monash and Chauvel up to Quinn’s for the first time to have a look at the Turkish positions. Chauvel introduced the general to Shanahan, who briefed him on what he could or could not do in the trench.
‘You will have heard of Major Irvine here seventeen days ago, General?’
‘Yes, yes,’ Birdwood replied briskly, ‘he was arguing with some diggers who told him not to stand. He was hit by a sniper. I won’t be doing that, Lieutenant, I assure you.’
Diggers and now troopers had asked for periscopes attached to rifles to avoid the fate of Irvine and others. They could aim and shoot without raising their heads above the parapet.
Shanahan handed Birdwood a periscope and showed him how to use it. ‘Still keep your head well down, General,’ he warned.
Birdwood was using a periscope when a sniper fired and hit the mirror. A bullet fragment struck the top of his head. Birdwood slumped back, bleeding from the scalp. He was helped down into the valley and stretchered off, a piece of lead lodged in his head.
The cutting down of the commander of the two divisions at Anzac Cove was the lowest point in the siege up until that time. Much to the relief of the Anzac force, Birdwood was up and about the next day with just a headache. But it had an impact on General Godley, who wanted ‘swift revenge’ on the nearest Turkish trenches. On Saturday 15 May, he ordered Chauvel to make countermoves, whatever the cost. Just as this overreaction was being conveyed to Shanahan and the others at Quinn’s, Major-General William Bridges, the Australian commander of the 1st Division, and two senior staffers (Captain Dick Casey and Colonel Cyril White) were three-quarters of the way up Monash Valley. Bridges wanted to stop and a have a cigarette at the sandbag barrier protecting a dressing station just below Steele’s Post on the front line west of Chauvel/ Monash HQ. After the Birdwood incident, Bridges was on his way to see the notorious Quinn’s for himself. He lit up and moved from behind a barrier back to the path to smoke. He was a tall man, and therefore an easier target for snipers on Dead Man’s Ridge, high above him. He had a reputation for being foolhardy and often unnerved his staff by his reckless behaviour, especially the risks he took moving near the trench posts. He chided White and Casey for their caution. Bridges was warned by them to be careful and advised firmly to come back behind the barrier. He ignored them. Seconds later, a bullet struck him in the thigh, splitting open his femoral artery and vein. He was carried behind the sandbags. Stretcher bearers hurried him down to the beach and he was ferried to a hospital ship in a very bad way.
Bridges died three days later. It was another needless waste of a commander when they were in short supply. His body and his big charger, ‘Sandy’, were shipped back to Australia for a state funeral. Sandy, saddled and stirrups reversed in honour of a fallen division commander, led a parade down Melbourne’s Collins Street. Bridges’ high profile as Australia’s most senior soldier drew a huge crowd. The solemn and dramatic event with Sandy on show provided a sobering contrast to otherwise sanitised reporting on the Gallipoli conflict.
Following the wounding of General Birdwood, Chauvel had no choice but to carry out Godley’s impetuous order to retaliate from Quinn’s. The troopers were well aware that the nearest Turkish trenches were doing the most damage by fire and bombs on Quinn’s and other posts. The no-man’s land between the opposing entrenched forces was no more than twenty metres. Any Anzac counterattack would have to negotiate that hemmed-in stretch. Troopers would risk heavy casualties if detected.
‘I think this is a harebrained idea,’ Major Quinn told his officers when they met at a hut fifteen metres from rope ladders leading up to the treacherous post, ‘but Godley wants it done. He is pushing Chauvel. But we just don’t know what awaits us. Godley says there are no machine-guns in the nearest trench, but he lied to Brigadier Monash a few weeks back—he told him the Turks had mostly gone down to help their mates at Cape Helles, but they hadn’t. They were above Anzac Cove in big numbers and Monash’s men were cut down.’ Quinn looked into the faces of all his officers. ‘I really don’t want to command anyone to attempt to run the gauntlet.’
He looked for input from his commanders.
‘Under this circumstance, we should draw straws on who commands and what squadron is to be chosen,’ one officer said.
Others commented but came to no more definitive solution. Quinn turned to Shanahan, who had kept his peace. ‘What do you recommend, Mike?’
All heads turned to Shanahan. At forty-five years of age he was now one of the eldest of the officers and someone who already had shown strong and protective leadership in dealing with the younger troopers. Many of them were teenagers who were unnerved by the experience of being under fire in such a vulnerable position and with very little hope of even effective defence from the post, let alone retaliation. In the space of forty-eight hours, Shanahan had emerged as the embodiment of the cliché: you would want to be in the trenches with him. At Quinn’s, where nobody wanted to be, including Shanahan himself, his impact on others was paramount. Some officers and troopers were talkative; others were cheerful and kept up morale with comments and jokes to ease the tension; some showed bravado in standing up at Quinn’s, an act that had seen a British officer and two diggers killed. Shanahan was none of these. He was the classic example of ‘less is more’. He already had a reputation for taciturnity. Words from him were at a premium. But when he did speak, everyone listened. He had the rare ability of getting to the heart of a problem, including this one put by the troubled Major Quinn. Shanahan took his time before answering.
‘We are all volunteers,’ he said quietly. ‘This should be a voluntary exercise, at least for officers.’ He paused and added, ‘I shall lead a squadron. But it has to be done at night, not at dawn.’
A few nights later, at 2 am, Shanahan led a silent assault by sixty troopers over the parapet. The Turks detected movement and sent up flares. Despite Godley’s certitude about there being no machine-guns in the closest enemy trench, the Turks had a bank of fifteen lined up looking right down the narrow, short slope into no-man’s land and then the post. They opened up and mowed down many in the first wave of thirty. Shanahan managed to crawl on his stomach to a rock for cover. He called for the second wave to stay put but his command was drowned out by more fire. He could hear several wounded troopers calling for help. Shanahan bent down and dived towards one, who had been hit in the arm and shoulder. Bullets spat in his direction and kicked up a spray of dirt and dust. A second flare went up. Shanahan lay still and close to the wounded trooper. When the light died he put his body in front of the injured man and manoeuvred him the five metres to the rock. Shanahan again yelled for the second wave of thirty to stay put but his order was once more drowned out. He heard the troopers scream as they charged. The machine-guns opened up again, this time without the benefit of the flare-light. But the damage was still heavy. After an hour, Shanahan was able to ascertain that he had perhaps just a handful of men who were not either killed or wounded. His squad had been decimated, literally. He ordered the troopers to withdraw.
At dawn, Shanahan did the count at the post. Twenty-five men from his aborted mission were dead; a further twenty-seven were wounded. Just eight had survived unscathed. Of those injured, many had terrible wounds from the intense machine-gun fire which could sever a limb. Some fourteen would not fight again.
Shanahan was devastated at losing so many of his squad. The troopers had now shared the morale-shattering experience endured by Monash and his diggers in the seventeen days before the Light Horse arrived. This had been caused by ill-prepared schemes by British commanders who had no concern for soldiers on the front line. Shanahan kept busy, preoccupying himself with looking after the wounded and not dwelling on the deadly folly he had just been through. He supervised their evacuation by a dozen pack animals from Monash Valley until two hours after dawn.
One horse caught his expert eye. He asked a fresh-faced, pudgy medical orderly about it.
‘Aye, that’s Bill,’ the orderly replied as he and an assistant strapped a stretchered trooper on the back of his mule. ‘They call him “Bill the Bastard”, because no one can ride him. But we’ve had no trouble with him. One silly bugger at the cove did try to mount him for a bet.’ The orderly paused to laugh. ‘Bill hurled him so high that it took a while for him to come back to mother earth. Broke his arm in three places. No one has been stupid enough to make another attempt.’
Shanahan walked up to Bill. Two more stretchered troopers were being angled and strapped onto his broad back. One of the two orderlies with Bill said: ‘Best damned packhorse we’ve got. He’s already been up the track twice today. Never complains, although he can be moody and it’s best to steer clear then because, boy, he can kick! But he never gets in a bad temper on the job.’ He patted Bill. ‘He’s a real digger, aren’t you, Bill mate?’
Shanahan stroked Bill’s face before the orderly led the horse back down the track. He had a chilling feeling he would be seeing a lot of this horse for all the wrong reasons.
He quickly learned how right he was. Soon afterwards, at 4.20 am on 19 May, the Turks hit, with more than 10,000 soldiers screaming their love of Allah as they descended into the valley with a band inspiring them with marching songs. Shanahan opted to climb up to Quinn’s to be with his men during the enemy assault. He had been in the trench for ten seconds with his head well down when two grenades were lobbed within a metre of him. A trooper fell on one with two doubled-up blankets. He pushed down hard. The explosion a split second later threw the trooper hard into a trench wall. He was stunned but relieved to feel all his body parts and limbs intact. Shanahan had nothing to smother the second grenade with. It bounced on soft earth and spun like a top in front of him. Instinctively, Shanahan scooped it up and hurled it back at the Turkish trench. It exploded. Judging from the accompanying screams it had hit home.
Quinn’s Post was not the only one being hit as the Turks surged down into the face of a powerful defence from Anzac machine-gunners. Brigadier Monash’s engineering skills had paid off. He had placed gunners at strategic spots in a rim of trenches at the head of the valley with orders to move forward if at all possible. At first the Turkish deluge of men was not supported by artillery. This allowed Shanahan and other officers to urge their riflemen to climb onto the parapets and mow down the enemy without the fear of shrapnel raining down on them. The pre-dawn light allowed the defenders to see shadowy figures coming at them.
‘It became a wild-pig shoot,’ Shanahan later wrote to a relative, ‘they kept coming and we kept firing. The Turks fell in huge numbers. It was a bit liberating for my men who had not been able to put their heads up in the week they have been here.’
The defence was effective right around the defensive rim. The Anzacs were able to fulfil Monash’s wish to set up their weapons forward of the trenches. Thousands of Turks were cut down by 8 am but they kept coming, like tidal waves, from the heights.
The defenders did not have it all their own way. Bill and the other horses and mules were kept busy, especially when the Turks finally got their artillery operating. The Anzac field ambulancemen and animals showed as much courage as any of the combatants operating all around them as they moved about the valley retrieving the fallen. Everyone noticed Bill in particular and his minder, along with a gritty yet always cheery Englishman, John Simpson, and his small donkey. These four did not stop in the first few hours when the crossfire was at its peak. They scurried into no-man’s land, loaded up with two injured men and hurried down to dressing stations. Seeing this, the troopers and diggers applauded. This kind of appreciation from the men was repeated many times, with Bill or the donkey being led alternately into the firing zone.
Monash, who witnessed Simpson’s selfless, fearless missions, wrote to his wife: ‘This man [Simpson] has been working in this [Monash] valley since 26th April in collecting the wounded … He had a small donkey, which he used to carry all cases unable to walk. Private Simpson and his little beast earned the admiration of everyone at the upper end of the valley … Simpson knew no fear. He moved unconcernedly amid shrapnel and rifle fire, steadily carrying out his self-imposed task day by day.’
But on the day when Monash’s defence and a thousand diggers and troopers had shown enormous tenacity in holding back the onslaught, Simpson’s luck ran out. At about 9 am it was his turn to take his donkey out in front of Bill and his ambulanceman as they spotted yet another fallen digger. A spray of shrapnel hit him and his animal. Without a second thought, the ambulanceman hustled forward with Bill. Simpson, his body limp, was placed on Bill and hurried away. The Anzacs applauded again, but this time it was muted as they saw the donkey had not moved and Simpson’s body was not receiving any urgent attention from the orderlies. This wonderful and inspiring combination of fearless man and beast would no longer come to the aid of hurt comrades.