Dawn on the 26th came stealing over the hills beyond the Straits and snow-capped Mount Ida, showing her pink peak above the dark grim fortifications of Kelid Bahr, and along the Dardanelles Straits. Dawn awoke to hear the thundering boom of the guns from the fleet in amongst the valleys and gullies of Anzac, the rattle of muskets and the rip-rip-rip of machine guns. It spread with an echoing roar to the beach; it was taken up by the ships that lay one or two miles off the coast; it was intensified and flung back to shore again by the monster guns on the deck of the Queen Elizabeth. Down to the entrance of the Straits rolled the sound; and back from the Straits came the thundering roar as of a million kettledrums, while the fierce attacks and counter-attacks of the British pushed in on to the fortifications, and turned the Turks in terror to the foothills of Achi Baba. The enemy had abandoned their smashed guns; they had evacuated the fortifications and the village of Seddul Bahr, as the magnificent, imperishable 29th Division had managed to gain a foothold round the toe of the peninsula. Word had early been flashed up to Anzac that the landing had been a success, but had been resisted more fiercely, more terribly than even the most sanguinary expectations predicted.

It was the naval guns that took the place of the field guns, bursting shrapnel in the front of the Turkish lines, that held back the enemy charges, that decimated their men, that enabled the British and the Australian troops to effect the landing and hang on to the ridges until their trenches were deep enough, their guns landed, and the lines organized to withstand any attacks, however violent. It was artillery fire that the infantry (30,000 infantry) needed most at Anzac, and it was heavy artillery fire with a vengeance they got. As I watched the warships pumping in shells on to the hills, saw the Turks answering with the bluish white, curling clouds of shrapnel that burst over the sea and the gullies, it gave me an indication of the fury of the battle of which these were the only visible signs at long range. There was a balloon observing for the ships. The Queen Elizabeth, the Triumph, and the Bacchante, and five other warships lay off Anzac. There were three times as many off Cape Helles, with the French fleet steaming off Kum Kale. I watched the leaping tongues of fire from the warships' sides, and heard the muffled report as the smoke blew back over the decks in a yellow cloud; and before it had vanished (but many seconds later, as it had whirled miles in the air), the explosion of the shell bursting on the side of the hills and among the trenches. The wounded felt that shelling most, as they lay on the cliffs, on the shore, on the decks of the transports, with the ships firing point-blank at them. It shook them—it chilled their blood. But the men in the trenches knew that on the naval gunners depended their lives, depended their success; it was these protecting screens of fire, of huge shells, that gave them time to dig, and to settle down into what was fast becoming trench warfare. The Turks gathered battalions to battalions and flung them against the parts of our lines where the configuration of the country made them naturally weakest. The shells from the warships decimated them.

If Sunday had been the critical night for the Army Corps at Anzac, Monday and Tuesday were the critical days. Each party of men fought as a separate, desperate unit. The Turk might throw his complete reserve battalions against the right, the centre, or the left of our thinned ranks, but it was only the grit, the determination of the fighting spirit of the Australians and New Zealanders that enabled them to hold back the enemy or continue the attacks in small units led by a corporal or a junior subaltern. Reinforcements were hastily gathered, such parties as might be found in the valleys going to join the scattered regiments, or trying to find their comrades of a battalion. No counter-attack on a large scale could be ordered while such disorganization prevailed; but each section of the line sought to advance, as it was found necessary to take and straighten and strengthen the position on the second ridge, so as to eventually link up the whole line.

In this way, then, the firing-line was roughly divided—on the first morning after landing—into four sections. On the extreme right was mostly the 2nd Brigade, under Colonel M'Cay, next to him the 3rd Brigade, under Colonel Maclagan, with battalions of the 1st Brigade, under Colonel M'Laurin, on his left. The 4th Brigade, under Colonel Monash, filled the apex of the position, and turning back the flank to the beach were the New Zealanders, under General Russell. A rough-and-ready division of the line it was, but it held, and, with little alteration, was kept as the sections of the position. Units were terribly mixed, and battalions, irrespective of brigades, were ordered to defend weakened positions or reinforce where the Turkish attacks grew most violent. Daylight found the troops still digging for their lives. Rain fell slightly. The men had some cover now, and found to their satisfaction and comfort that shrapnel no longer worried them so long as they kept in their trenches. How true in those days that the safest part of the position was the firing-line; for the tracks across the gullies were naked and open to the fire of the snipers' bullets that came even behind the line where the Turk had crept (for the gullies had not yet been searched and cleared). One party of Turks, indeed, endeavoured to get a machine gun through the lines on a stretcher, roughly covered by a greatcoat, as if they were carrying out a wounded man. They had not gone far before the trick was discovered, and these daring men were shot down. They were German non-commissioned officers in charge of machine guns. Lieutenant Mangar told me how he lay wounded behind a bush watching these German gunners, not 10 yards from him, pouring lead into our retreating parties of men. Finally, they, in turn, were forced to retire, and he crept in, under cover of darkness, to his own trenches.

The opening round of our guns was the signal for rejoicing, and five guns were firing throughout the day. A New Zealand battery first came into action with a roar, and some of Colonel Rosenthal's 3rd Brigade were landed later in the day. Artillery lanes had been cut round steeper slopes, over which the gunners and infantrymen dragged them, once they had been brought along the beach by the gun teams. Desperate efforts were made by artillery officers to silence the battery of guns that the Turks had skilfully concealed on Gaba Tepe, and though our field guns, warships, and destroyers plastered the point, the enemy's guns still continued to do terrible execution on the landing beach and amongst the troops entrenching on the right of the position. A landing party had been repulsed with heavy losses, finding the beach a mass of barbed-wire entanglements, and machine guns concealed in the cliffs. Hang on and dig, hang on to the edge of the second plateau, back on to which they had been forced after the charge across the three ridges to the last lines of hills that looked down on the green, cultivated plains stretching almost to the Dardanelles, was all the Australians could do now. As far as possible the officers were endeavouring to reorganize their companies and battalions. Brigadiers have explained to me how for days, as they could, they gathered 50 or 60 men from this unit and that, and would communicate with the brigadier next along the line, and a transfer would be effected. It was not possible to let many men from the firing-line at one time, as the Turks were furiously making preparations for attack. Practically nothing could be accomplished on this Monday or Tuesday. In the still all too shallow trenches the "spotters" for the warships (young lieutenants from Duntroon College, Australia, had been chosen) telephoned to the beach, from whence, by means of a wireless signal station, they directed the ships' fire with telling effect. Officers had but to find targets to be able to get any number of shells from the Triumph or Bacchante, or the destroyers that nosed close inshore, hurtling in the required direction.

Throughout the morning of Monday the Turks again began their counter-attacks, which with brief intervals, it seemed almost without ceasing, for two days they dashed first at one and then at another section of the line. A Turkish order may be quoted to show the manner in which the German leader, Liman von Sanders, endeavoured to inspire his troops, which now numbered probably 40,000 men, to further sacrifices. It ran:—

It may be added here, too, that after two days' constant attack the Turkish leaders refused to ask their troops to face the ships' fire again during the day. For it was the ships' fire (with the Queen Elizabeth's enormous 15-inch shrapnel pellets—a thousand in a case) as well as our machine guns and the rifles and the Indian Mountain Artillery (magnificently served were these guns) that the Turks faced as they charged.

First on the right of the line the attacks began. The Turks were hurled back by the 8th Battalion, under Lieut.-Colonel Bolton. The Australians stood steady, sweeping the enemy's lines, heaping up the dead. The Turks advanced in the favourite massed German formation. Grimly, with bayonets fixed, the Australians waited in their unfinished trenches. At the apex of the line, the head on Monash Gully, the great Turkish attack of the day developed. Two ridges met here, and formed what was named at once the "Nek." The Sari Bair ridge ran at right angles to the beach, beginning with what had been named Walker's Ridge and Russell Top, and continuing on past Chunak Bair to Hill 971, or Koja Chemin Tepe. Just above Russell Top the broad plateau (on the edge of which most of the Australian army now clung desperately) joined the Sari Bair ridge at the Nek. This main Australian ridge ran in a bow round to Gaba Tepe. So steep was the head of the gully and so cut up with hills (for a spur ran out from the very centre of it—Pope's Hill) that it was not possible to get a continuous line of trenches across to the Nek. There was no alternative but to dig in here from Russell Top, down across the gully, and up again on to the knob which struck out into the gully, dividing its head in two (called subsequently Pope's Hill), and from this point across to Quinn's Post, so linking up with the rest of the right of the line. The summit of the arc, as I have described our position—now for the first time more definitely defined—was the gully. On the left the New Zealanders held Walker's Ridge, Plugge's Plateau, and the section of Russell Top, and the trenches leading down on their left into the valley; with the result that the Turks chose this point as the best for breaking through our position and coming in behind our lines. Had they succeeded in their endeavours, which lasted till Wednesday, it would have meant the cutting of Anzac in two.

The 2nd Battalion, under Colonel Braund, had held the trenches nearest the Nek until relieved by the New Zealanders on Sunday night. Meanwhile the 4th Brigade, less many companies, had been flung into the central position. All the hills were still at this time covered with thick scrub, and favoured the tactics of the Turks, who crept through it until they were near enough to make a rush at the trenches. But the men of the 2nd Battalion and the New Zealanders stood firm. From the Nek, and what afterwards became the Chessboard trenches, the Turkish snipers shot down into the gully, which was a veritable death-trap with this menace above it. No wonder to it clung the name of the "Valley of the Shadow of Death." It took many days for our sharpshooters from the high positions we had won to compel the enemy to keep under cover, and eventually to withdraw their snipers—those who were not shot at their posts.

Farther along the line M'Cay's Hill and Braund's Hill, in the centre of the right of the position, were subjected to a furious bombardment by the Turkish artillery, and their machine guns were playing on these points until nearly three o'clock, when the attacks of the Turks began to increase in fury. They sent wave after wave of men against our lines, and the 8th Battalion were forced to retire to the edge of the ridge. The enemy now came across from up Happy Valley and other gullies on the right, and were threatening to break through and get behind our lines round M'Cay's Hill. It was then that two battalions, the 9th, now under Major Robertson, and 10th, under Lieut.-Colonel Weir, which had already suffered under racking fire, and had had to retire from distant ridges to which they had penetrated in a counter-attack, were brought up from a gully where they had been held in reserve. They straightway commenced to retake the lost hill. Three times they charged before the Turks finally broke, unable to face the reckless bravery of the Australians, and the hill was finally in our possession. But our losses were again heavy. This finally settled the possession of the hill, which enabled the line to be drawn straighter along the right.

Meanwhile General Bridges had completed an inspection of the ground of the position, and determined that certain portions would have to be straightened out so that the best advantage might be taken of the country before them. For this duty the 4th Battalion, or rather remaining section of it, which had been kept in reserve, were ordered to advance some hundred yards and occupy the new line. Since the landing the enemy had crept into our lines as spies, dressed in the uniforms of fallen men, and had been successful by various ruses in trapping more than one officer. They had passed false messages down the line, and had caused men to cease fire for a time, before the fallacy of the orders had been discovered. On this occasion the 4th, led by Lieut.-Colonel Thompson, believing that the whole of the line was to charge, went forward, charging on and on through two valleys to a distant ridge—Pine Ridge. They passed a small Turkish camp, and were only stopped at length by a terrible machine-gun fire when still 1,000 yards from the mouth of the enemy's heavy artillery. They had then to retire, realizing the hopelessness of their position. They fell back. As they reached what was intended for their objective they entrenched. But their gallant leader was killed in the charge.

Again and again during Monday night and Tuesday the Turks charged and counter-attacked along the whole front, but the Australians, confident of their prowess after twenty-four hours' continuous fighting, grimly held their ground. They had learned that trenches gave some protection from shrapnel, and those that were not fighting were burrowing like rabbits, digging in, while their comrades held the line. The Turks continued to direct their hardest blows against the centre, but as fast as they hurried up their reserves so did the Australians come hurrying up from the beach. The unloading of the shells and supplies had proceeded rapidly now that it had been determined to hold on. The Anzacs had come for good, they left no doubt about that, and, with the guns firing from the very trenches, it was with a cheer that the lads waited for the Turks. Never would the foe face the last 20 yards and the glistening line of bayonets. Sometimes a section of our men would leave the trenches, sufficient indication of what would follow, so sending the Turks shambling back. They feared the Australian in those days and the use he made of his bayonet. It even happened that the fixing of bayonets, the men stopping their digging, halted a Turkish charge. Not that I wish to suggest that the Turk was not brave, but he had been badly rattled and shattered with the ships' appalling fire. But our troops were getting sleepy and tired, for they had been fighting for three days continuously. They had plenty of munitions and rations, and with judicious use (a thing that the Australians taught the English Tommies later on) their water supply held out. But everything had to be laboriously carried up those hills from the beach.

The casualty lists show the high percentage of officers killed and wounded, due, I believe, not only to their heroism and example of leadership, but to the nature of the country. Brigadiers and battalion commanders exposed themselves, standing among the bushes and undergrowth, so as to find out where the attack might be coming from, while a tornado of lead swept past them. There was no cover other than very rough and very inadequate look outs. The snipers of the Turks were still playing havoc in our lines; many, indeed, were still behind the troops, dug into pits, with days' supplies of food and ammunition, concealed by bushes, and that was why the men as far as possible kept down in their trenches; it was that which made Shrapnel Valley the Valley of the Shadow of Death. It was while reconnoitring thus the Brigadier of the 1st Brigade—a soldier who could ill be spared at such a time or at any time, Colonel M'Laurin—fell, shot through the heart, and his Brigade-Major, Major Irvine, was killed standing alongside of him. This sad loss happened on Tuesday during the afternoon, when the Brigadier had come out from his dugout close to the firing-line (all quarters were in those early days, and were little better afterwards, so far as situation went). Some idea of the fierceness of the fighting may be gleaned from the casualties the 1st Division suffered. The 3rd Brigade in the first two days, Sunday and Monday, had 1,900, the 2nd Brigade 1,700, the 1st Brigade 900 killed and wounded. In the 2nd Brigade alone 11 officers were killed at the landing, 34 wounded, and 2 missing, afterwards discovered to be killed.

There but remains now to complete the story of this great landing battle by reference to the part that the 4th Brigade took during the days till Wednesday, some mention of which has already been made.

Two separate manoevres were tried by the Turks to break our line. They tried them both at once. One was an attempt to drive in our right flank and get round by the beach to the heart of the position. This they failed to do, as the knolls were so strongly held (the 2nd Battalion had been specially thrown on to the extreme right flank to guard against this); while the fire from the warships, especially the Queen Elizabeth, was far too accurate and bloody, so that the enemy dared not show themselves on those exposed slopes and in the gullies, easily raked either by direct or indirect fire from the warships, officers spotting, as I have said, from the trenches. The other attempt, a separate and even sterner battle, was the stabs that the Turks made at the highest point of the arc of our semicircular position—or at the apex, as it has been termed—near the head of Monash Gully. Our trenches were down in the gully. They were overlooked by the Turks. Shrapnel fell over them constantly and for long periods at a time. On the edges of the main ridge the position grew more and more perilous. Only for the gallant defence of Quinn's and Pope's Hills nothing could have stopped the wedge that the Turks sought to make being driven in. An officer of the 14th Battalion seized the point known as Quinn's Post, a knoll on the side of the ridge, and held on like grim death with his gallant men. I venture to say that had the Turks, rallying their numbers, succeeded in dislodging this little band of heroes from their position on this knoll, who must then have been dashed to their doom in the Shrapnel Gully, they would have gained their purpose and that great and important artery would have been commanded by Turkish fire. On Wednesday Major Quinn took it over and held it, and the post from that time on bore his name.

Pope's Hill filled the gap between the heads of Monash Gully. It will easily be realized from a glance at a map (it was a thousand times more evident to see) that only for this post and this feature, the Turks would have wrought havoc in our position. An officer of the 1st Battalion took Pope's Hill with a body of about 100 men, composed of various units. In fact, he had under his command men from practically the whole of the 1st Division, whom he had gathered up as they wandered up the gullies looking for their units. He held on until the evening of Sunday, when he was relieved by a composite force, under Lieut.-Colonel Pope, with whose name this dangerous and vital hill has been ever since associated. Under his command Lieut.-Colonel Pope had about a battalion and a half, consisting of a company of the 15th, a company of the Auckland Battalion, and the 16th Battalion, about 400 men in all. In this first conflict the 4th Brigade won its renown, and Colonel Pope his name. This gallant officer had been guided up from the beach by a Staff officer, but the force, small as it was, in the darkness got divided. Part debouched to the south flank and were absorbed in the trenches there; the remainder pushed on firmly and reached the spur, Pope's Hill, and relieved Captain Jacobs, who had all the day been clinging with his little band of 100 men to this desperate position.

It was shortly after these relieving troops arrived that a most curious incident occurred, which showed the cunning tactics of the Turks. Information, originating no one knew where, was passed along the short firing-line from the left that Indian troops were in possession of the ground immediately to the left of the hill at the very head of the gully. It was clearly advisable that the gap which existed between the Australian line and these Indian troops should be closed, as it gave the Turks a free passage-way down the gully, steep as it was, thereby cutting our position in two. Immediately on receipt of the verbal message Lieutenant Easton, 16th Battalion, and Private Lussington, who understood Hindustani, were dispatched, and they soon got in touch with a party of Indians that were entrenched on the side of the hill. The Indians stated that a senior officer was required to discuss matters with their officer, and accordingly Captain R. T. A. M'Donald, the adjutant, was sent forward. He had not gone far—the whole of our line to the Turkish trenches at the very head of the gully where the parley took place was not more than 150 yards—when he called back out of the darkness that the O.C. alone would do to discuss the position with. Colonel Pope went at once, and reaching the northern edge of the gully, found his adjutant and the two men who had been first sent forward talking with a party of six Indians, who had stood with their bayonets fixed. One glance was sufficient to convince the O.C. that these men were not Indians at all. He had suspected that something was wrong when called, and no sooner had he joined the party than he called out a word of warning. The Turks—for such these Indians proved themselves to be in disguise—at once formed round the Australians. Colonel Pope, who was nearest the edge of the gully, with rare courage, broke through the ring and leaped down some 12 feet into the gully below. Shots were fired after him, but he escaped, and, with a severe shaking, reached his lines. The other three men were taken prisoners at once and sent to Constantinople. In the possession of the Adjutant were important documents, plans, and maps, which in this way early fell into the hands of the Turks.

Colonel Pope lost little time in extending his position across the hill that he held. His front covered about 300 yards. He had barely 400 men under his command. From this onward, through the night and succeeding days, every spare moment was spent in improving the trenches on the hill which sloped down into the gully. It was almost a sheer drop at the head of it of 80 feet, and the hillside was covered with loose earth and dense bush. There were snipers on the hill still, in concealed pits, and snipers, too, firing from the opposite side of the gully, where there had been a small Turkish camp. At periods through Monday, on until Tuesday morning, fierce attacks were made against Pope's Hill, but the Turks were repulsed by the steady fire of the defenders of the post. Reinforcements had brought the garrison up to 450 men. But both machine guns of the 16th Battalion were put out of action during Monday, and it was not till Tuesday that these were replaced by guns from the Royal Marine Light Infantry, who were now hurried up as a reserve, as will be explained in a subsequent chapter. On the 30th the 16th Battalion was relieved by the 15th. So began in bloody battle the history of this famous post, some of the still bloodier onslaughts against it remaining to be described, as they occurred, later. The topography and defences of this post and this section of the line must form always a separate chapter in the history of Anzac.

The failure of the Turks to smash the resistance in the first days determined the success of the Australians. Fit as no troops have been, fit for fierce fights, from thence onward the invaders had a contempt for the Turks, and only were anxious that he should attack. In those few early days it is said that the Turks suffered nearly 50,000 casualties at Anzac and Cape Helles. Ours were over 8,000, and the British twice as many again. The enemy left thousands of dead on the battlefield before the trenches. But while they were reorganizing their great attack on Wednesday there was a lull, a curious solemn quiet that spread all along the line, which had ceased to spit and splutter except in a spasmodic way. On Tuesday the commencement of the reorganization of the Australian army was begun. It was completed by Friday. Anzac, after four days' fighting, was established. Australians had won their first battle, had gained, in that first desperate encounter, deathless fame by deeds that have no parallel in history (not even remembering the scaling of the heights of Abraham), and which rank in glory with the imperishable records of the gallant 29th Division and their attack and capture of the Turkish positions at Cape Helles.