Henry Woodd Nevinson

“ Within a few minutes of the start, the Turkish guns had the range of the open ground, and swept it from end to end with a cross-fire of machine-guns and low-bursting shrapnel. At the same time, Turkish 6-in. howitzers continued to fling their crunching shells sheer into the emplacements of the Anzac guns, drawn right up among the parapets of the firing line. So thick was the air with shrieking missiles of death that it seemed impossible to live unsheltered. ”

“ In Suvla Bay itself a Sabbath peace appeared to reign. No shells burst; no bullets whined. It was evident that the Turks had withdrawn both guns and infantry during the night. We could walk at leisure round the whole beach from Suvla Point to Lala Baba. We could examine the surface of the Salt Lake, or climb Karakol Dagh and view the calm prospect over the Gulf of Xeros with equal security. Men whom good fortune had stationed near the beaches enjoyed the enviable refreshment of bathing in the sandy shallows. ”

“ The boom and flash of guns, the ceaseless repetition of machine-guns and rifles, the shouts of “Allah! Allah!” answered by British cheers and the yells of savage Africans, the liquid brilliance of star shells, the Bengal lights, red, white, and green, fired by Turkish officers from their pistols as signals to their gunners to lengthen range, or to avoid firing on taken trenches and main positions—all produced the din and spectacle of some battle in hell, lit by infernal fireworks. ”

“ The distance to V Beach was not great—barely half a mile—and if it could have been covered, the enemy must have abandoned their V Beach trenches. Wire-cutters fearlessly advanced. From headquarters on the Queen Elizabeth they could be watched, clipping the powerful entanglements as though pruning a garden at home. But the rows of wire were too thick, the fire from the ruins of No. 1 Fort too deadly. Exhausted by a sleepless night and the hot day’s fighting, these bravest of men abandoned the attempt, and sought rest in the trenches along the summit of the cliffs now deserted by the enemy. ”

“ The Regular troops had been fighting close upon a fortnight152 without relief. More than half their comrades were killed, wounded, or prisoners; more than half their officers gone. The relics of battalions were merged together; one whole brigade had disappeared. The surface of the hollow plain was strewn with dead, whom there was hardly time to bury; and before the lines, dead and wounded lay together in places which no one could reach and live. The bare sand, the flowering heaths, the groves of olive and fir were splashed with patches of sticky blood. The sinister smell of death pervaded all. ”

“ The surface of the pools and trenches froze thick. The men’s greatcoats, being soaked through with the rain, froze stiff upon them. Men staggered down from the lines numbed and bemused with the intensity of cold. They could neither hear nor speak, but stared about them like bewildered bullocks. The sentries and outposts in the advanced trenches could not pull the triggers of their rifles for cold. They saw the Turks standing up on their firing steps and gazing at them over the parapets, and still they did not fire. ”

“ At early dawn, about 4.30, the warships, monitors, and guns along the shore began a terrible bombardment of the whole crest along Chunuk Bair, “Hill Q,” and the saddle between. The enormous shells burst upon the edge just above the small assaulting party which crouched below, almost deafened but unharmed. A monitor’s shell striking the sky-line flings up a spout of black smoke, huge fragments, and dust which spreads fan-shape like the explosion of a sudden volcano. With such explosions the whole mountain edge smoked and shook. ”

“ Hospital tents remained standing, and some provisions were burnt. Not a man or gun or cart or horse was left behind.
Those of us who had reached the Cornwallis in Captain Unwin’s pinnace at four in the morning, were roused at six by bugles sounding to action quarters. Dawn was just breaking, as on the day when we landed upon that shore four and a half months earlier. But it was still dark except for the glare of flames consuming the piles of stores on Suvla Point and Lala Baba, and the lesser flames of a wrecked hospital lighter ashore by the “cut” in the sandy spit. ”

“ Certainly, to any one coming fresh from the dug-outs, dust storms, monotonous rations, and perpetual risks of the Peninsula, the Aragon was like an Enchanted Isle. All who have campaigned in a desert land know the first physical delight of getting on board a well-equipped vessel—the plenty and variety of food, the clean cooking, the iced drinks, tablecloths for dinner, sheets in the bunks, a good chance of washing, and baths. ”

“ All these objections could have been urged, and, indeed, were urged at the time by Generals to whom, as to the German commanders of the Turkish defence, a landing appeared impossible. But if any one believes that a high-spirited and optimistic officer was likely to consider a retirement to be his duty just when he had received a command which he regarded as the surest means of terminating the war, he errs like a German psychologist in his judgment of mankind. ”

“ As at Anzac itself, the front of the range breaks down to the sea in a crumbled and complicated formation of edges, ridges, spurs, cliffs, and ravines, the haphazard and perennial work of winter storms and rains acting for ages upon soft sandstone and sandy deposits mixed with clay and a little chalk. This labyrinthine region naturally follows the north-easterly course of the hills out of which water has carved it, leaving a gradually extending plain along the seacoast as far as the low hills forming Nibrunesi Point, the southern extremity of Suvla Bay. ”

“ The assailants came on so thick, the ground to be covered was so narrow—in places only a few yards across between the confronting trenches—that the Anzacs had but to fire point-blank into the half-visible darkness before them, and at every shot an enemy fell. Many Australians mounted the parapet, and, sitting astride upon it, fired continuously, as in an enormous drive162 of game. Morning broke, the sun rose behind the teaming assailants, machine-guns and rifles mowed them down in rows, and piled them up into barriers and parapets of the dead and scarcely living. ”

“ Three and a half tons of amenol, laid by the 5th Company Australian Engineers, had blown a great chasm across the Nek, and that ready entrance to the deserted lines was blocked as by a moat and rampart. Rifles continued to fire from the old positions—fired by sand running from buckets. The Turks burst into one of their panic rages of fire against the empty trenches, from which they now expected a general assault. The naval guns pounded the hills. The last of the transports departed, and Anzac shore was nothing but a lasting name. ”

“ THE V BEACH LANDING
Hardly had the first man set foot on the gangways, when the invisible enemy broke the silence with an overwhelming outburst of rifle fire, pom-poms, and machine-guns. The Munster Fusiliers of the first company fell so thick that many were suffocated or crushed by the sheer weight of the dead dropping upon them. Few if any of those eager Irishmen struggled across the lighters to the beach unwounded.96 In the tows, the boats were riddled with holes, and the greater number destroyed. ”

“ Remembering the V and W Beaches, no one can call any position impregnable to such men as ours; but the spot was thickly wired from the water’s edge; it was fully exposed to the guns hidden on Gaba Tepe, in an olive grove farther inland, and on Kilid Bahr plateau itself; to advance over the gradual slope would have meant advancing up an unsheltered glacis crossed by almost impenetrable obstacles, in the face of entrenched and invisible machine-guns and rifles. ”

“ Intermittent outbursts of firing came from the Turks, and we could hear the rumbling explosions as they toiled at blasting new trenches—an interesting example of labour lost. Once an aeroplane whirred overhead, invisible until she dropped one green star, which blazed for a few seconds just below Saturn and showed her to be ours. On the earth a few fires burned where camps were once inhabited, but gradually they faded out. Two lights glimmered from deserted hospital tents along the curving shore; for our doctors had remained to the last in readiness for the deaths and wounds of disaster. ”

“ The bursting shells concealed the slopes of Achi Baba on both sides. Sudden volcanoes spouted rock and earth in dark cones. The orange of the lyddite curled over the enemy’s trenches. It seemed impossible for human beings to survive that quarter of an hour. At 5.30 all guns ceased like one, and with bayonets fixed and rifles at the slope, the whole line again moved forward. The brunt of the fighting now fell to the Australians. Two battalions in front and two in support, they walked or ran in “rushes” of 50 or 60 yards on about 1000 yards of front to the left of the Krithia road. ”

“ Hand to hand the Turks rushed upon them as they rose. The struggle was for life or death. Major Allanson was wounded. Men and officers fell together. But the fight was brief. Shaken by the bombardment, overcome in daring and activity by some 400 startling Gurkhas and solid Lancastrians, the surviving Turks suddenly turned and ran for life down the steep slope to the refuge of the steeper gullies below.
For a moment Major Allanson and his men paused to draw breath. They were standing on the saddle between Chunuk Bair and “Hill Q.” The dead lay thick around them. ”

“ Emptying their rifles into trenches manned with equal constancy, rushing wildly up to the sandbag lines, they scrambled over them, only to die of rifles which scorched their skin, or of bayonets dripping blood.
From 3.30 till nearly 11 the conflict raged; but before the sun was at its height the noise and shouting gradually died away. The great assault was finished, and had failed. In heaps and lines, more than 3000 Turks lay dying or already dead. The defence lost only 100 killed, and about 500 wounded. Not a yard of Anzac had been yielded up. ”

“ Its gradual slopes, free from dead ground, made the hill an ideal position for defence, and this natural advantage had been so increased by a complicated system of frontal and communication trenches, by barbed wire, machine-guns, scattered batteries, and a series of powerful redoubts, that an almost impregnable fortress by this time checked further advance. In fact, the army at Helles was like a besieged garrison, being continually threatened with assault from the front, and by the Asiatic guns on its right flank and rear. ”

“ In modern warfare a commanding General cannot allow himself to become entangled in one part of the widely-extended front or in another. When once his dispositions have been made and his orders issued, the control passes out of his hands; and the more complete his dispositions and orders have been, the less is the part he is justified in taking upon himself. He can but await the result, listening anxiously to reports as they come. The wretchedness of such a position, for a soldier born to lead forlorn hopes or to command the rush of onset, was here increased by the sea. ”

“ Accuracy and justice have been my only aims, but in a work involving so much detail and so many controverted questions mistakes in accuracy and justice are scarcely to be avoided. I know the confusion of mind and the distorted vision so frequent in all great crises of war, and I know from long experience how ignorant may be the criticism applied to any soldier from the Commander-in-Chief down to the private with a rifle. ”

“ Usually, in the afternoon, the prospect from340 Suvla towards the hills is brilliantly clear. The whole range stands visible in every detail. The westering sun appears to reveal every kink and cranny, every tree and mass of bush. Even as far away as Sari Bair, the rocks of Koja Chemen ravine, the “chimney” down the face of Chunuk Bair, and the yellow patch of the Farm are distinct in the clear air and sunlight. For this reason the afternoon had been chosen for attack, the sun being then behind us, but glaring, as might be hoped, in the enemy’s eyes. ”

“ Though the Australian, New Zealand, and Indian units had been confined to trench duty in a cramped space for some four months, and though the troops of the New Armies had only just landed from a sea voyage, and many of them had not been previously under fire, I do not believe that any troops in the world could have accomplished more. All ranks vied with one another in the performance of gallant deeds, and more than worthily upheld the best traditions of the British Army. ”

“ Fighting of some sort was continuous day and night along that ridge of Posts. Bombs, rifles, machine-guns, and artillery were incessantly at work. At night especially the Turks would sometimes be seized with a kind of frenzy, and pour out streams of bullets, most of which went wailing and whining overhead to fall in showers upon the sea. But on the 29th they made another genuine night attack under orders from Enver, who again called upon them to chase the Infidel from the soil of Islam. It was further provoked by a sortie the previous afternoon from the southern end of the Anzac position. ”

“ They leapt into a blinding storm of bullets. Turks, raised tier above tier in the Chessboard, poured bullets upon them at 80 yards’ distance. Machine-guns in the Chessboard and in the trenches opposite Quinn’s pumped bullets upon them as from fire-hoses in convergent streams. A French “75,” captured by the Turks from the Serbians in the first Balkan War, burst shrapnel low above their heads every ten seconds. Many rolled back from the parapet to die in their own trenches. ”

“ The method I have followed, in treating divisions or brigades or, at the lowest, battalions as the units of action, almost obliterates the individual soldier from consideration. Divisions, brigades, and battalions are moved like pieces on a board, and Commanding Officers must regardxi each of them only as a certain quantity of force acting under the laws of time and space. Yet each of the so-called units is made up of living men—men of distinctive personality and incalculably varying nature. Men are the actual units in war as in the State, and I do not forget the “common soldiers.” ”

“ The beach continues sandy, the sea shallow, and walking very tedious till nearly half-way round the northern side of the semicircle, when one strikes the rocky formation of the northern point. The coast-line then rises into rocky cliffs of no great height under a low hill called Ghazi Baba, and runs into rocky inlets or creeks. The sea becomes deeper, the land undulates and is thickly covered with heath and prickly bush. So it continues up to the final hill, where the bay ends in the jagged rocks of the extremity called by us Suvla Point, and by the Turks Biyuk Kemikli. ”