Читать книгу Glorious Deeds of Australasians in the Great War - Buley Ernest Charles - Страница 6

Four months in camp under the passionless gaze of the great Sphinx had shaken the men into a thoroughly fit and efficient army. It had also wearied them into an ardent desire to be up and doing. Each day brought them news of the fierce fighting in Belgium and Northern France. Their cousins and friendly rivals from Canada had already won undying glory, and the Australasians chafed at the monotonous round of hard work and military discipline that seemed to lead to nothing. Not for this had they come half-way across the world; they yearned to be in the thick of it, and show how they could fight for the Empire they were so proud to serve.

The glad excitement that followed the announcement that they were detailed for active and immediate service can well be imagined; and additional joy was displayed when it became known that they were to serve on the classic battleground that borders the Dardanelles. And indeed, there is something of the miraculous in the dispatch of this composite army from two nations that dwell where a century and a half ago no white man existed to the scene of the first great adventure recorded in written history: the quest of the Golden Fleece.

Their land of the Golden Fleece lay thousands of miles away, still unscarred by any war, whatever the future may hold for it. Many of them, until they embarked on this momentous expedition, had never seen any other lands than their own. They had read of the adventures of Homer's heroes, but the scene of those exploits might as well have been laid in some other planet, for all the conception they could form of it. They knew that Alexander the Great had crossed the Dardanelles with a force no greater than their own, and had returned as Conqueror of Asia. For thousands of years the possession of those few miles of narrow sea passage had been the subject of contention among nations that had passed away for ever. Now they, the first real army of the newest nations, came to dispute its possession with an old and decadent race, which for hundreds of years had terrorized Eastern Europe.

Yes, these sheep-farmers and fruit-growers, these land agents and miners and city clerks, were the new Argonauts. They had left the Golden Fleece behind them, and the peaceful sunlit plains of Australia. They had deserted the wind-swept heights of New Zealand, where the salt breeze fans the cheek, and the snow-clad summits of the mountains are mirrored in the placid bosoms of lakes more beautiful than any the Old World has ever seen. Their quest was honour for themselves and the young races they represented; they went to fight for justice, for the unity of the Empire, for the cause of the weak and small nations of Europe. Surely their dispatch to the Dardanelles ranks with the greatest of great adventures.

The whole of the Dardanelles Expedition was commanded by General Sir Ian Hamilton, a familiar name and figure to Australasians, since he was instrumental, by his report on the state of the Australasian defence forces, and by his recommendations, in the establishment of the system of compulsory military training in vogue throughout Australasia. Sir Ian Hamilton's plans provided for a number of separate but simultaneous landings on the peninsula of Gallipoli; and, as a blind, a landing by the French troops which formed a component part of the force at his disposal, on the Asiatic shore of the Dardanelles. Owing to the strong fortifications and defences which had been contrived by the Turks upon plans of German origin, the task of effecting a landing was an extremely difficult one; von der Goltz, the German general who had designed the defences, boasted that it was impossible of accomplishment. His boast, like that of the Emden's captain, was soon to be proved an empty and vainglorious one.

The place chosen for the landing of the Australasians was Gaba Tepe, a high point on the Gulf of Saros, opposite the town of Maidos on the Straits. It should be pointed out here that the landing of troops at this point was of the highest strategical importance, as the presence of a hostile force there would be a continual menace to the Turkish communications. A successful advance of such a force would drive a wedge between the strong forts at the Narrows, on which the attack of the Allies was concentrated, and the Turkish base at Constantinople.

The actual landing party was the Third Australian Brigade, a mixed body of men from Queensland, South Australia and West Australia, commanded by Colonel Sinclair Maclagan, D.S.O. These men 1,500 in number, embarked at Mudros Bay on April 24 on British battleships, and set out for Gaba Tepe. Following them were men of the 1st and 2nd Brigades, a covering force of 2,500. These were conveyed to the landing place in transports. The reason of embarking the actual landing force in warships was fairly obvious. It was hoped that a landing on the rough and inaccessible spot chosen for the Australasians might be effected unopposed; and it was argued that the Turks, who might have been alarmed at the sight of transports and so have time to prepare an opposing force, would accept the presence of warships as merely the prelude to one of the bombardments to which they were now accustomed.

As a matter of fact, the British plans were not hidden from the enemy, for the place actually chosen for the landing was afterwards discovered to have been elaborately prepared for resistance. Barbed wire was entangled under the water, and the beach was enfiladed with machine guns. The cliff was honeycombed with hiding places for snipers, and only a fortunate accident saved the Australians from a much hotter reception than the very warm one accorded them by the Turks.

The landing force arrived opposite Gaba Tepe at 1.30 a.m., and the men were transferred in absolute silence to their boats. At the same time the covering force was transhipped from the transports to six destroyers; and all made for a point about four miles off the coast. The dying moon rose as they steamed to this place, and the outlines of the ships were visible to the Turks, who were watching from the shore. At half-past three the landing force was ordered to go forward, and the tows made for the land with all dispatch.

Now occurred the happy accident to which allusion has already been made. The tows got off the line they had intended to take, and reached the beach about a mile north of the spot actually selected for the landing. A description of the landing place, which will go down to history as Brighton Beach, is given by Sir Ian Hamilton in his first official dispatch of the operations at the Dardanelles.

"The beach on which the landing was actually effected is a very narrow strip of sand, about 1,000 yards in length, bounded on the north and the south by two small promontories. At its southern extremity a deep ravine, with exceedingly steep, scrub-clad sides, runs inland in a north-easterly direction. Near the northern end of the beach a small but steep gully runs up into the hills at right angles to the shore.

"Between the ravine and the gully the whole of the beach is backed by the seaward face of the spur which forms the north-western side of the ravine. From the top of the spur the ground falls almost sheer, except near the southern limit of the beach, where gentler slopes give access to the mouth of the ravine behind. Further inland lie in a tangled knot the under-features of Sari Bair, separated by deep ravines, which take a most confusing diversity of direction. Sharp spurs, covered with dense scrub, and falling away in many places in precipitous sandy cliffs, radiate from the principal mass of the mountain, from which they run north-west, west, south-west, and south to the coast."

Obeying orders to the letter, the Australians sat as quiet as mice in the boats as the tows neared the land; on the edge of the cliffs they could see the Turks scampering along at breakneck speed, to be in the right place to receive them. And now the boats were nearing the shore, and a new sensation was provided for the men of Australia.

"You know one of those hot days when a storm blows up in Australia," said one of the party, in describing it. "The air seems heavy, as if there was lead in it. Then, splash! All around you on the pavement appear big drops, that hit the asphalt with a welt. Well, all of a sudden something began to hit the water all round us just like that. We knew from the rattle on the shore what it was. Bullets! A man two places away from me sank quietly on the bottom of the boat; something touched my hat and ruffled my hair. We were under hot fire for a start."

As the boats reached the shallow water the Australians jumped in up to the waist, and made for the sand; some of them died in the moment their feet first touched Europe. "Like lightning," writes General Sir Ian Hamilton, in his official dispatch, describing the landing, "the Australians leapt ashore, and each man as he did so went straight as his bayonet at the enemy. So vigorous was the onslaught that the Turks made no attempt to withstand it, and fled from ridge to ridge pursued by the Australian infantry."

It must be remembered that the cliff up which this bayonet charge was made was from 30 to 50 feet high, and as described by Sir Ian Hamilton, was "almost sheer." At each end of the strip of beach was a higher knoll, about a hundred feet in height. On each of these were posted scores of sharpshooters, who were firing as rapidly as they could at the men scrambling up these cliffs; the Turks at the top could not even fire at them, the cliffs were so steep.

As the men sprang from the boats they set off in groups of five or six, acting on their own initiative. They had empty magazines, all the work being left to the cold steel. In that terrible scramble up the cliffside they fell by dozens, but the rest pressed on to the trenches at the top. The Turks who waited for them there had to encounter infuriated giants. One Australian still bears the name of "The Haymaker," for his way of picking Turk after Turk on the end of his bayonet and throwing them one after another over his shoulder and over the edge of the cliff behind. Two or three more great men preferred to use the butt, smashing down everything human that dared to resist them. In a few moments the Turks had abandoned their trenches and were flying up the foothills to another trench they had prepared on the top of a ridge.

Fast as they ran, the Australians ran faster. The cries of "Come on, Australians," rang through the ravines, and warned the Turks ahead of their coming. The first ridge was occupied, and a second; finally they reached a third nearly two miles inland. It must be understood that they had waited for no orders and had not tarried for any formation. Men of different battalions and from different States swept forward together, all acting on their own initiative, and all prepared to sacrifice themselves for the main object, which was to clear the clifftops so as to permit of a safe landing for the main body of the troops. These watched the fighting in the lightening morning from the decks of the ships, while waiting their turn to land.

They could see on one ridge after another the gaunt figures of their comrades appear, only to disappear over the crest, presently to become visible yet farther inland. How they cheered as the pioneers swept the Turks off the coast and drove them into the thick scrub that skirted the more distant ranges of hills! The audacity of that landing has no superior in history, and Australian soldiers will ever be remembered for their initiative, resource, and daring. Where men less used to acting on their own responsibility would have formed bravely, and waited for orders from some superior, these men from the South dashed off in little groups, all working efficiently, as if by some tacit understanding.

So the 3rd Brigade cleared the way for the 1st and 2nd Brigades, so that 12,000 infantry and two batteries of Indian mountain guns were landed by two o'clock – smart work on such a difficult coast, in ten hours. For this splendid record the greatest credit is due to the Navy men, of whom the Australasians all speak as they would of the greatest heroes on earth. Their coolness, their unassuming courage, and their steadfast adherence to the object in view are topics of which Australians who were there will never tire of talking. And the men of the Navy have an equally high opinion of those law bushmen whom they set down on that narrow strip of bullet-swept beach.

For it must not be supposed that the clearance of the trenches opposite the landing place made the task of landing in any way a safe one. All day long batteries posted in the hills, which had the range of the beach quite accurately, continued to spray the landing with shrapnel. One sandy point was christened by the Australians Hellfire Spit, and will go down to history by that name. Their name for the landing place was Brighton Beach, which name it now bears on the official maps. British people must not suppose that this name has any reference to the seaside town which is sometimes called London-by-the-Sea. The Australians had in mind another Brighton, 12,000 miles away, where the cliffs rise abruptly from a sandy beach, and where the eye rests on slopes covered with a thick growth of scrubby ti-tree, of which the scrub on the hillsides at Gaba Tepe reminded the men of Australia. So it is Brighton Beach near Melbourne, and not Brighton Beach in Sussex, that gave its name to the landing place at Gaba Tepe.

There were also guns on each of the two knolls which terminated Brighton Beach, and from them and from machine guns very cleverly placed on high points a cruel enfilading fire was directed upon the beach. The guns on the knolls were one by one put out of action by the warships, and three were captured by the infantry, but some of the machine guns, as well as innumerable snipers, continued to fire on the boats and on the landed men throughout the day. Many a brave Australasian met a bullet before ever he set foot on the soil of Europe, and the sailors suffered heavily but doggedly as they rowed their boats to and fro between the ships and the landing place.

It is now necessary to follow the fortunes of the little bands of the gallant 3rd Brigade, whose rush had carried them over three successive ridges on to a high tableland, where the backs of the retreating Turks were still visible. "Where's the Light Horse?" the men shouted as they rushed on in pursuit. The Light Horse was then eating out its heart somewhere in Egypt, wishing that such an animal as the horse had never been created, and that they might be with their comrades of the infantry, fighting in Australasia's first great battle. Of course they could never have got cavalry up on to that plateau, though mounted men would have been very useful when the first Australian soldiers crossed the ridges, and reached its wide, scrubby slopes.

These devoted little bands found more than stragglers on that high plateau. Soon the advance guard of the main Turkish defence force arrived on the scene, and then it went very badly with these bold spirits. The fate of many of those little groups of brave, resourceful soldiers is yet to be learned; most of them appear on the sheets as "Missing." Those behind them were thrown back by sheer force of numbers, as the main body of the Turks pressed on, and fighting gallantly, fell back on the second line.

By nightfall the main body of the Australians, all mixed up just as they had landed, and without regard to battalions or anything else, was dug in on the clifftop, and fighting desperately to prevent the Turks from dislodging them.

"The troops had had no rest on the night of the 24th-25th," writes the General, "they had been fighting hard all day over most difficult country, and they had been subjected to heavy shrapnel fire in the open. Their casualties had been deplorably heavy. But despite their losses and in spite of their fatigue, the morning of the 26th found them still in good heart, and as full of fight as ever."

Such is the story of the battle of Brighton Beach, ending with our boys "in good heart, and full of fight as ever." The wounded and dying men were also in good heart. Mr. Ashmead Bartlett describes the arrival of the first batch of Australian wounded back to the ships in a passage that will stir every Australian's pulse till the very end of time.

"I have never seen the like of these wounded Australians in war before, for as they were towed among the ships while accommodation was being found for them, although many of them were shot to bits and without hope of recovery, their cheers resounded through the night, and you could just see amid a mass of suffering humanity arms being waved in greeting to the crews of the warships. They were happy because they knew they had been tried for the first time in the war, and had not been found wanting. They had been told to occupy the heights and hold on, and this they had done for fifteen mortal hours under an incessant shell fire without the moral and material support of a single gun ashore, and subjected the whole time to the violent counter-attacks of a brave enemy led by skilful leaders, while his snipers, hidden in caves, thickets, and among the dense scrub, made a deliberate practice of picking off every officer who endeavoured to give a word of command or to lead his men forward.

"No finer feat of arms has been performed during the war than this sudden landing in the dark, this storming of the heights, and, above all, the holding on to the points thus won while reinforcements were being poured from the transports. These raw Colonial troops in those desperate hours proved themselves worthy to fight side by side with the heroes of Mons and the Aisne, Ypres and Neuve Chapelle."