‘In the breaking light they swarmed over the skyline in a massed bayonet attack. The 1000 British of the garrison at Chunuk Bair and the nearby Pinnacle disappeared from view and from life . . . Ten NZ machine gun crews in flanking positions cut down hundreds of Turks, and gun crews on the warships threw salvo after salvo of shrapnel into the mass. But it was as irresistible as lava. Down the seaward slope it went, rolling onto the small plateau at the farm and leaving 1000 men dead or dying after savage fighting. Dead Turks lay everywhere—perhaps 5000 of them—but Kemal had done what he intended—removed the cancer from Gallipoli’s throat.’
—John Laffin, Damn the Dardanelles!
With the taking of Chunuk Bair on the morning of 8 August, the Allied offensive at Gallipoli reached its climax. At 5 p.m. that day, the hour Malone was killed, it was held by fewer than a hundred Wellingtons, two contingents of Russell’s mounteds, and a scattering of Gloucesters and Welsh Pioneers. They were hungry, thirsty and half-dead with fatigue after ten hours of heavy fighting. The Gloucesters alone had lost all of their officers and over 350 of their men.
That night, the Otago Battalion and two squadrons of the Wellington Mounted Rifles relieved the defenders of Chunuk Bair. Malone’s oldest son Edmond—a Wellington mounted rifleman—may well have been among the reinforcements. Whether he found his father’s body lying amongst the dead and wounded is not recorded.
Of the 760 Wellingtons who had advanced at first light that day, only 70 unwounded men walked off Chunuk Bair. Their uniforms were torn, drenched in sweat and blood, and caked in dust; most of them had had no sleep for 48 hours, none had had any water since dawn. The remnants of the two New Army battalions were in no better shape.
Throughout the next day, the Otago infantry and Wellington mounteds hung on to the crest. ‘These suffered throughout the day an ordeal even more intense and dreadful than Malone’s men had endured. Bombed, shelled, sniped, raked with machine gun fire, suffering extremely from thirst, they utterly refused to be dislodged . . . And all day the sun blazed down on their agony.’1
The end came that night when all New Zealand troops were withdrawn from Chunuk Bair and its defence handed over to two New Army regiments—the 6th Royal North Lancashires and the 5th Wiltshires. Some 1500 British troops now held the crest, about 2500 were occupying a plateau below it known as The Farm, and the same number were dug in on the slope below Hill Q.
That night, Mustapha Kemal’s battalions massed behind Sari Bair and attacked at dawn, bayoneting the defenders on the crest to a man and flooding down over the Wiltshire Battalion resting at The Farm. Baldwin, almost all of his officers and a thousand of his men were killed.
In twenty lines, 300 men in a line, the Turks swept down the slopes of Chunuk Bair towards the Apex. British, Indian and New Zealand troops fell back in a panic, and between 300 and 400 New Army men ran towards the Turks with their hands up. Threatened with the collapse of the whole line, Temperley ordered the New Zealand machine-gunners to fire into their backs, and those who could ran back to their lines.
The artillery batteries and the warships off Anzac Cove picked up the range and together with Wallingford’s ten machine guns at the Apex they turned the attack into a massacre. ‘Thousands came down, hundreds went back,’ Wallingford recalled after the war.2 Days later, a New Zealand patrol found a small group of Wiltshires in a cleft in no-man’s-land. They alone had survived the holocaust.
With the debacle at Suvla and the loss of Chunuk Bair, Hamilton’s great August offensive was over and with it any hope of victory in the Gallipoli campaign. Some 25,000 men had been thrown into the attack, but by 10 August, after suffering some 12,000 casualties, most of them were back at the point from which they had advanced three days earlier. The Turks remained firmly in possession of the high ground dominating the Allied positions. Only on Chunuk Bair had New Zealand troops reached, and held, their objective.
‘The Turks are well commanded: that I admit,’ Hamilton wrote after it was all over. ‘Their generals knew they were done unless they could quickly knock us off Chunuk Bair. So they have done it. Never mind: never say die.’3
Back on Rhododendron Ridge, British troops held the line with Wallingford’s machine-gunners in position behind them. Behind them again were the remnants of Malone’s Wellingtons and the three other New Zealand battalions. On the morning of 12 August, Hamilton sent Johnston’s brigade back to the Apex with orders to entrench and ‘hold on forever’.
In the days following Malone’s death, commanders and subordinates alike paid their tributes. Hamilton extolled Malone’s ‘brilliant leadership—a hero killed while leading his men with absolute contempt for danger’. Godley and Birdwood praised his loyalty and leadership skills. None at the time made any mention of the loss of Chunuk Bair, for which he was subsequently, and unfairly, blamed.
In spite of bearing the brunt of the fighting on Chunuk Bair, the New Zealanders received little official recognition. Cyril Basset, the signaller, was awarded a Victoria Cross (VC) for his heroism under fire below Chunuk Bair; Captain Wallingford and Lieutenant Turnbull received the Military Cross (MC). Malone’s inspiring leadership during the offensive was recognised by a second mention in despatches, but there was no talk of a Victoria Cross, the only honour he was entitled to receive posthumously.
By contrast, General Walker ensured that his Australians received no fewer than seven VCs for their bravery at Lone Pine, one of them for Captain Alfred Shout, a New Zealander serving with Australian forces. The Gloucesters, who broke on Chunuk Bair, also did well. Their colonel got a CMG (Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George) and his officers several DSOs and MCs. In later years Godley would acknowledge Malone’s ‘magnificent leadership’ on Chunuk Bair, but in the aftermath he had nothing to offer.4 In the general’s eyes, Malone had done no more than his job.
Godley’s report to Birdwood on the Sari Bair operation was sparse, leaving out any potentially controversial material or a detailed description of his role in it. The report acknowledged the ‘valuable’ service rendered by brigade commanders Monash and Johnston, and battalion commander Hughes—all of whom could be said to have mishandled their commands during the operation. Malone, who was responsible for the capture of Chunuk Bair and its tenacious defence, was not mentioned.5
There was more to come. Initiated by a signaller in Birdwood’s headquarters, a story began to circulate amongst the troops that the New Zealanders had been thrown off Chunuk Bair because they had failed to dig in on the forward slope of the hill. From the same source came a story that the Australian 4th Brigade attack had failed because it had not been pushed with sufficient vigour (the brigade had suffered 50 per cent casualties). The men down on the beach, and particularly the survivors, were furious and blamed Birdwood, Godley and their staff for spreading false information.
On 21 August, Malone was remembered in a memorial service attended by the few surviving members of his battalion. In mid-September, his Wellingtons were withdrawn to the Allied base on Lemnos Island to rest and reorganise. In spite of having absorbed three contingents of reinforcements, the 1000-strong Anzac battalions of the landing on 25 April were now pathetically weak, with the strongest down to no more than 300 men. ‘Five months of monotonous food and thirst, of constant hammering at the Turk, of constant danger and fatigue, had left its mark on the hollow-cheeked, sunken-eyed men of Anzac.’6
By mid-October all thoughts of further Allied offensives at Gallipoli had ceased and Hamilton had been replaced as commander of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force by General Sir Charles Monro. Bulgaria had allied itself with the Central Powers, allowing Germany to supply Turkey with artillery and ammunition directly by rail to Constantinople. The Allies would soon face the prospect of being blasted off Gallipoli by fresh Turkish batteries of heavy guns.
British leaders, both political and military, were by now convinced that the war would be decided on the Western Front and that it made little sense to divert forces elsewhere. Pressure was mounting for the abandonment of the Gallipoli campaign before the approaching winter made the supply and reinforcement of the besieged force impossible. As Chris Pugsley put it: ‘Gallipoli was now an embarrassing backwater, expensive in men, material and effort and difficult to shrug off.’7
After consulting his senior commanders, Monro recommended that all Allied forces on the peninsula be withdrawn forthwith. Hamilton, however, had opposed any such move, telling his superiors in London that it would result in the loss of up to 45 per cent of his force and most of his artillery and stores. To no avail. After a surprise visit to Gallipoli in early November, Kitchener, now Secretary of State for War, made the final call and planning began for the only successful British military operation on the peninsula—its evacuation.
All non-essential men and supplies were sent away in early December, followed a week later by the evacuation of one regiment or battalion in each brigade to Lemnos. Heavy guns were taken off the beach by night; surplus supplies, arms and ammunition dumped at sea, burnt in piles onshore or buried, and fires kept burning in deserted bivouacs. Self-firing rifles and booby traps were fixed in position and mines laid under the Turkish trenches at the Nek. If the Turks attacked during the critical stages of the evacuation, the rearguard would be sealed off behind large barbed-wire barriers and expected to fight, and if necessary die, where they stood.
The evacuation was more successful than anyone in the British military or political establishment could have foreseen. The entire Anzac/Suvla force of 134,000 men, nearly 400 guns and 14,000 animals was embarked for Lemnos almost without loss. Appropriately, the Wellington Battalion that had fought so magnificently on Chunuk Bair was the last to leave Anzac. Given his pride in his men and his fierce sense of duty, Malone would have wanted no less.
In the following years, soldiers and historians would blame Johnston for halting his brigade on Rhododendron Ridge instead of pushing on to capture Chunuk Bair as ordered by Birdwood. Malone would be blamed for subsequently siting his trenches ‘wrongly’ on the crest of Chunuk Bair, surrendering the heights to the Turks and with them the promise of final victory in the Gallipoli campaign. ‘The cost in blood was not light,’ wrote Temperley in his report of the action. ‘The ultimate cost to the Empire and the cause for which the allies fought no one can measure.’8
Establishing just what took place at the Apex and later on Chunuk Bair, and why the New Zealand commanders made certain decisions, however, will always be difficult. The descriptions of what happened and at what time differ considerably and there are gaps in the information so far available.
What is known is that Johnston halted his column on Rhododendron Ridge just 500 metres from the summit of Chunuk Bair to await the arrival of the Canterbury Battalion and the 29th Indian Brigade. This was contrary to Birdwood’s strict instructions that all units were to push on towards their objectives regardless of the progress of other formations.
It is clear, however, that Johnston consulted Temperley and at least two of his battalion commanders before making his decision. All, including Malone, appear to have agreed that a frontal assault up a steep slope in broad daylight had no hope of success and that the brigade should wait for the missing battalions to arrive.
In hindsight, their decision was the wrong one. Johnston should have pushed Malone’s battalion or the Aucklanders on to Chunuk Bair as soon as he arrived at the Apex.9 The crest could then have been in the New Zealanders’ hands before the Turks began to arrive in force about 9 a.m. and the brigade came under increasingly heavy fire.
New Zealand’s best-known historian of the Gallipoli campaign, Dr Chris Pugsley, has no doubt that Johnston committed a serious tactical blunder that day.
Malone had done what he had been ordered to do—establish a firm base on Rhododendron Spur for the next stage of the operation, the capture of the crest of Chunuk Bair.
Johnston, possibly because he was drunk, and Temperley, took counsel of their fears and halted their brigade for some hours, which gave the Turks time to consolidate on the crest. By waiting at the Apex instead of attacking at once, Johnston doomed the Aucklanders who finally made the assault on Chunuk Bair later that morning.10
Johnston and his commanders, however, had to deal with an overambitious plan that had gone badly wrong. It was daylight when they finally arrived on Rhododendron Spur, and all possibility of surprise was gone. A force of Turks of unknown strength was in occupation of the crest, and only two of the four battalions that were supposed to make the attack had arrived on the spur. Cox’s Indian Brigade and Monash’s 4th Australian Brigade were meant by now to be attacking Hill Q and Hill 971, but were nowhere to be seen.
For the New Zealanders to attack now would be to do so under fire from the crest of Chunuk Bair and with both flanks in the air—a hazardous operation as Helles had already shown. Acting on what they knew, Johnston and his commanders decided to wait and so the opportunity passed.
In 1919, Major H.V. Howe, formerly of Quinn’s Post and now a member of the Australian Historical Mission to Gallipoli, went over the battleground with Zeki Bey, a Turkish staff officer who had commanded the Turkish defence against the Australians at Lone Pine. Howe’s conclusion was that Johnston and his battalion commanders would not have departed from their orders without very good reason.11
Howe offered two possible explanations. The first was that leading elements of the New Zealand Infantry Brigade—three companies of Otagos under Major Statham—reached the crest of Chunuk Bair at 4 or 4.30 a.m. on 7 August but were repulsed by Turkish troops stationed in force just below the summit. Johnston and his battalion commanders then decided that any daylight attack on Chunuk Bair would be suicidal and that they should wait for dark and the arrival of the missing battalions.
This version of events was supported by Zeki Bey, who told Howe that some New Zealanders had indeed reached the summit of Chunuk Bair at dawn on 7 August, but were stopped by a Turkish counter-attack and then wiped out by artillery and machine-gun fire.12 The proof of this theory, Howe wrote, lay in the fact that when the Otago Battalion was sent to relieve the Wellingtons on Chunuk Bair two days later its strength was down to two companies.
Alternatively, Howe suggested that the Otagos had reached the Apex about dawn on 7 August. Statham then sent scouts forward to reconnoitre the ground over which the planned attack on Chunuk Bair was to take place. What they saw, less that 100 metres below them, was a battalion and a half of Turkish infantry ready for action and able to completely command the narrow nek from the Apex to the slopes of Chunuk Bair. They would also have seen two Turkish divisions marching along the valley towards Hill 971 and possibly activity around the Turkish artillery battery on Hill Q.13
Acting on the information supplied by the scouts, the commanders of the New Zealand Infantry Brigade decided that a daylight attack was impossible and that they should wait. When the Auckland Battalion assaulted the position on Godley’s orders at 10.30 a.m., however, it was too late—the Turks were in force on the crest and the attack was repulsed with heavy casualties.
The subsequent claim that Malone lost the heights of Chunuk Bair by wrongly siting his trenches was first made in a report by Johnston’s brigade major, Major Arthur Temperley. Temperley’s report was accepted by Godley, Birdwood and Hamilton, and subsequently by the official historians, Brigadier-General Cecil Aspinall-Oglander and the Australian Dr Charles Bean. Temperley was in a perfect position to damage the reputation of a man he disliked, and his unfair and inaccurate description of Malone’s actions on Chunuk Bair became the accepted version of what happened on 8 August 1915.
In 1927, Harston, who was Malone’s adjutant and had seen the action at first hand, sent a detailed account of it to Aspinall-Oglander who promised to incorporate it in the official history to be published in 1931. He did not do so, and historian John North, who had also relied on Temperley’s report for his account of the battle, refused to publish a correction.
Harston recalled the discussion between Malone, Johnston and Temperley over a War Office pamphlet outlining the latest tactics being adopted on the Western Front. A key recommendation was that troops should occupy the reverse slope of a hill rather than the forward one so as to protect themselves from artillery fire. Malone felt that this also applied to Gallipoli, but Johnston disagreed. Artillery fire on the peninsula, he argued, was not as heavy as on the Western Front and so the troops should be positioned on the forward slope to give them a good field of fire.14
According to his version of events, Temperley was worried that Malone would entrench his troops on the reverse rather than the forward slope of Chunuk Bair. He and Johnston agreed that, if possible, Malone should not be given the chance to do so: in other words, that another commander would be given charge of the assault on the crest. In the event, the destruction of both the Auckland and Canterbury regiments forced their hands and Malone was ‘entrusted’ with the critical attack on Chunuk Bair.15
That night, Temperley said he again impressed upon Malone the importance of gaining ‘command, observation, and a good field of fire, and of denying all of these to the enemy’. Malone assured him that this would be done. Having had first-hand experience of Malone’s ‘obstinacy’, Temperley felt sure that he would do exactly the opposite—dig in on the reverse slope of the hill and surrender all initiative to the Turks.
‘The convictions formed in Malone’s stubborn, rather narrow mind overrode and obliterated the memory of all orders, discussion, argument or reasoning. He withdrew his line to the reverse slope: we could plainly see the troops digging in a pitifully impossible position on the lower position of the ridge, which became abruptly precipitous, without command, observation, field of fire, depth, or room for any supporting trenches.’16
In Temperley’s mind, the bad siting of the trenches was a main cause of the loss of the crest of Chunuk Bair and the destruction of the two New Army battalions that held it after the New Zealanders had been withdrawn. Once more, Malone was to blame: ‘The weight of the counter-attack was immense, the surprise complete. Here once more we had to pay dearly for the way the trenches were sited.’17
Temperley now acted to correct Malone’s ‘error’. He explained to the colonel of the North Lancashires, who were about to relieve the New Zealanders on Chunuk Bair, that the trenches had been wrongly sited. The colonel assured him that saps would be pushed out from the existing trenches and a new forward trench line gradually constructed. He was not to get the chance. The North Lancashire battalion was destroyed to a man in the massive Turkish counterattack launched at dawn the next morning.
Temperley had no basis for his conclusions. He did not take part in the final battle for Chunuk Bair, and there is no evidence that he was on the crest at any time during its defence. For this reason, and because of his obvious antipathy towards Malone, historian Robert Rhodes James refused to use his version of events as a source for the reinterpretation of the Gallipoli campaign that was published in 1965.
Unlike Temperley, Harston knew exactly what had happened on Chunuk Bair as it was he who transmitted Malone’s orders for its defence to his troops. These were that two companies were to dig in on the forward slope and two companies on the reverse slope with a communication sap driven between the two. Temperley’s statements about the siting of the trenches on the crest, Harston told Denis Malone, had therefore no possible justification.18
Having gone carefully over the ground and spoken to men who had fought in the battle, Howe was convinced that Malone occupied the only position on which he and his men could have survived for even half an hour. The story that Malone wrongly sited his trenches began, he was convinced, with Johnston who wanted to cover up his own shortcomings. It was then ‘assiduously’ promoted by Godley and Birdwood as a convenient method of excusing themselves for the failure of the August offensive.19
The myth, however, persisted for fifty years and to Malone’s great cost. A British Army training pamphlet published in 1941 advised that in mountainous country where the enemy’s artillery fire was likely to be of less importance than a good field of fire, trenches should be sited on the forward slope. It cited a commander of a ‘British’ battalion on Gallipoli who ignored this precept and established his trenches on the reverse slope of the hill. Lack of a good field of fire then allowed the Turks to mass in dead ground for an overwhelming attack. ‘Unhappily this commanding officer’s military qualities of tenacity were matched only by the tenacity of his ideas. Rigidity of mind made him a slave of a text book.’20
Why then did the assault on Chunuk Bair fail? A number of factors contributed, among them an over-ambitious plan that took no account of the difficulties of a long night advance in very rugged terrain and the poor physical condition of the men making the assault. The decision to give key tasks to inexperienced British battalions was a critical factor, as was the leadership of a number of key commanders.
As Pugsley put it, the men who fought for the heights of Chunuk Bair were betrayed by the poor judgement and tactical incompetence of their commanders, particularly Godley and Johnston. Instead of going forward and taking control of the battle, Godley isolated himself at his headquarters at Old No 3 Post close to the beach. By contrast, the Turkish commander, Mustapha Kemal, moved quickly to the sound of the guns, counter-attacking at Suvla and after consolidating the position there moving to Chunuk Bair.21
It was Godley who ordered Johnston’s brigade into a disastrous daylight attack on Chunuk Bair on the morning of 7 August without going forward and assessing the situation for himself. He remained at his headquarters when important decisions had to be made on 8 August about the best route for Baldwin’s 38th Brigade to take to attack Hill Q.
In Godley’s absence, Johnston became de facto divisional commander and insisted that Baldwin and his troops follow a route through steep and unreconnoitred country below Sari Bair instead of an easier route across the high ground of the Chunuk Bair ridge. The result was that Baldwin’s two battalions were unable to assault Hill Q before daylight on 9 August.
As for Johnston, it is hard not to agree with Howe’s judgement that he was not fit for command at Gallipoli and that Birdwood should have replaced him with Malone once his alcoholism was known. ‘The plain fact is that Johnston was drunk—dead drunk,’ Howe wrote to Denis Malone. ‘In the words of a sergeant on his brigade headquarters, “The old bastard was drunk as he always is when there’s anything on.”’
It was one of Birdwood’s many failings, Howe claimed, that he would not sack or discipline senior officers, no matter how unfit they were. ‘Johnston was well known to be an alcoholic and was so drunk just before the landing that he was not allowed to land. Allegedly he had the measles, and Walker took over his brigade until he was sober enough to land.’22
Bean was no less critical: ‘Johnston was completely unfitted by habit and physique for withstanding prolonged strain . . . By the afternoon of August 8th he was both mentally and physically incapable of affording that clear judgement and lucid exposition which were vitally required.’23
Temperley was well aware of Johnston’s condition, but rejected the idea that he should have reported his superior’s state to Godley as divisional commander: ‘It would have seemed to me, a regular officer, such a terribly disloyal thing to do that I am certain I could not have done it.’24
According to Gallipoli campaign historians, Johnston failed on two counts. The first was that by not taking Chunuk Bair he ruined the plan by which his troops attacking down the ridge would combine with forces on the lower slopes of Sari Bair who were to attack up the ridge. The failure of the New Zealand Brigade to arrive meant that the Australians attacking at the Nek went in unsupported and were slaughtered.
In the view of Australian historian Robin Prior, however, this charge has no substance. Birdwood’s staff were aware that none of the attacking columns would meet the dawn deadline and had been told that they were meeting stiff opposition. Birdwood ordered the attack at the Nek to proceed to draw off opposition to the New Zealanders’ advance, not as part of a failed pincer movement.25
The second charge against Johnston is that Chunuk Bair could have been taken had he acted earlier. As Pugsley and others have pointed out, this criticism has much more substance. At 4.30 a.m. on 7 August the crest was occupied by just twenty Turkish infantrymen guarding an artillery battery. The crest could have been taken and consolidated before the Turks began arriving in force from about 8 a.m.
Once captured, could the heights of Sari Bair have been held and the broader objectives of the offensive been achieved? Again the verdict is mixed. In hindsight, Godley himself thought the ridge could have been captured and held without difficulty had Russell’s New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade and the Australian Light Horse jointly spearheaded the attack. The New Zealand, 4th Australian, and Indian brigades could then have relieved Russell and established themselves on Chunuk Bair and Hill Q.26
Cunningham thought so too, but only if, as planned, the Wellington Battalion had reached the heights of Chunuk Bair 24 hours earlier with the Auckland, Otago and Canterbury battalions close behind. The New Zealand Infantry Brigade could then have opened the way to the capture of Hill 971 and assisted the advance of the Indian Brigade on its immediate left. Between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m. on 7 August a gap in the Turkish line lay open for the commanders on the spot to exploit, but ‘the precious hours passed and the gap was finally and effectively closed’.27
Malthus, who was with the Canterbury Battalion that morning, would not have agreed. Chunuk Bair, he wrote, was untenable with the limited forces available and therefore had no future. What was needed was a force strong enough to sweep along the heights in both directions, taking and holding Hill 971 on the left and then driving down Battleship Hill on the right and linking up with Russell’s Top. This would have required days or weeks of battle by a whole army, and an army with its huge supplies of food, water and ammunition could not have been got up onto the heights of Sari Bair.28
Pugsley, however, believes that Chunuk Bair could have been held if the right troops had been used. Birdwood, he argues, should have deployed two veteran Anzac brigades for the assault—the New Zealand brigade and another Australian brigade—and left the raw British battalions behind as garrison troops.29
The British battalions selected for a key role in the offensive had no experience of fighting on the peninsula and, as subsequent events were to prove, were simply ‘not up to the job’. Nor was Godley, who ideally should have been replaced for this offensive by the best of the senior generals, General ‘Hooky’ Walker. Had this happened, argues Pugsley, the assault on Chunuk Bair could have resulted in one of the greatest victories of the war.30
Forty-five years on, Prior doubts whether 1500 sick and exhausted men could have held the crest of Chunuk Bair against enfilading fire and frontal attacks by a full division of Turkish troops. Like the New Army divisions on 10 August, they would almost surely have been forced off Chunuk Bair.31
After walking the ground with Turkish staff officer Zeki Bey, Howe concluded that the attack on Chunuk Bair was the worst mistake of the Gallipoli campaign. ‘Only a lunatic,’ the Turk told him, would have expected to capture such a crest in a single engagement. It could not have been taken in months of heavy fighting—not even behind creeping barrages such as British armies used in France. ‘Your commanders,’ he said, ‘must have been mad.’
Zeki Bey laughed when told that the attackers expected the height to be undefended or only very lightly held. A full battalion, he told Howe, was bivouacked behind Su Yatagha, just 200 metres from the crest and well sheltered from Australian artillery fire. Two other battalions were deployed between there and Hill 971. The crest was covered by machine guns sited on the western edge of the Chunuk Bair ridge, two batteries of field guns on Hill 971, and two mountain batteries around Hill Q. These guns had been in position for months and deliberately sited there to defeat any attempt to take the heights.32
The only practicable approach to Chunuk Bair, wrote Howe, was the one taken by the New Zealanders across the narrow, steep-sided nek at the Apex, which was overlooked by the Turks on the crest. The gully up which the Gurkhas of the 29th Indian Brigade climbed was overlooked also from the top of the slope and from both flanks. The Abdul Rahman Bair spur by which the Australian 4th Brigade approached the heights was quite impractical for infantry.
‘The troops did their job,’ Howe concluded, ‘but at no time did they have any chance to survive the storm of fire directed upon them.’33