Phillip F. E. Schuler

This narrative is devoted to the deeds of the Australians, but on that account it must not be judged that the scanty reference to the part played by the British troops indicates that part was but of secondary importance to the Dardanelles operations and the Gallipoli campaign. On the contrary, the position may be best summed up by the words of General Sir Ian Hamilton, who said to me on Imbros one day: "We [the British] have occupied the end of the peninsula, while the Australians are a thorn in the side of the Turks. When the time comes we will press that thorn a little deeper."

Yes, the British had occupied about 4 miles of the toe of the peninsula in those early days, and were slowly pushing the Turkish line back into the Krithia village and on to the great Achi Baba Hill; but to do so the aid of the French had to be called up and the Asia Minor campaign had to be abandoned.

Now, I was fortunate to have been near enough to watch the French and British warships bombarding the Turkish position on Sunday morning, 25th April, on either side of the Straits, and to have seen the hosts of transports creeping from round the shores of the islands. It was only a little Greek trading steamer that I was on, and it impudently pushed its nose into the heart of these stupendous operations. I was on her by design; she was there by accident. The whole of the fleet had lain for days at their anchorage behind Tenedos. I had seen them there, their anchors down, on the very ocean bed where the Greek anchors had rested when they planned their descent on Troy to rescue the beautiful Helen. It was one of those radiant mornings that are so typical of the spring months of the Levant. The sea was almost without a ripple on it. A haze hid the distant headlands as in a shroud and cast a soft, flimsy mantle round the ships. The smoke of battle hung on the shores and round the battle-cruisers. Along the Asiatic coast, opposite the island of Tenedos, was steaming slowly a huge six-funnelled battleship of the French, its guns darting tongues of flame, three or four or six every minute. On shore the French troops were fighting their way inland and pushing back the Turkish field batteries that were answering the warships and shelling the invaders. Then we went on up towards the entrance to the Straits amongst the great liners, on which was more than one high General directing the landing of the finest British troops that the Homeland had ever produced, the 29th Division. They had been the last regular Division available, and General Hamilton had in them the mainstay of his army, the tested stuff, for that difficult landing on four beaches at the Dardanelles entrance. I watched the cruisers come steaming by, and then, signalling, steer for the shore and commence the hurling of shells on the edge of the cliffs and farther inland, where the Turks were still clinging to the battlements round the shores of their peninsula. By dawn the British, as well as the Australian, landing had been effected—at fearful cost certainly, but nevertheless accomplished—and Fusilier regiments had pushed inshore and died on the beach in lines. Their comrades had scaled the cliffs, while the Turks inch by inch, one can write, were driven from their forts, their guns broken by the weeks of bombardment.

Round the toe of the peninsula the troops landed. All day the desperate fighters of the 29th Division clung to their terrible task, completing it under cover of darkness on the Sunday evening. From V beach to Morto Bay, 2 miles away, near which inlet, under the fortress of Seddul Bahr, the River Clyde, crammed with 2,500 men, had steamed in and been run ashore (or as near shore as reefs had permitted), the fighting continued. From the bows of this transport (an Iron Horse indeed!) a dozen machine guns were spitting darting tongues of red as still against her iron sides rattled the hail of Turkish bullets or burst the shells from the guns of the forts. It is not in my story to describe the landing from that ship—alas! now blown into fragments. It was not till some months after she had run aground that I was aboard her. In the last days of April she was the object to which all turned their eyes in recognition of a gallant undertaking, magnificently carried out by Captain Unwin, who was in charge of her. For his work this brave officer was awarded the V.C.

ARMY SERVICE WAGONS AT CAPE HELLES ON THE WAY TO THE LANCASHIRE LANDING FOR RATIONS, THE ONLY HORSED VEHICLES THE AUSTRALIANS LANDED AT GALLIPOLI.

Now the Australians faced sheer cliffs; they rushed down into gullies and up on to farther ridges. The British troops scaled cliffs or found stretches of sandy beach, defended with almost impenetrable barbed wire entanglements; but beyond was a garden of loveliness—almost level fields still bearing ripening crops, and trees laden with fruits; poppies, anemones, and the hundred smaller wild flowers of the Levant carpeted the soil. Those were the shores strewn with the bodies of the most gallant men that ever fought, who had never flinched as they faced murderous fire from far fiercer guns than any that opposed the first rush of the Australians up that narrow section of the Anzac hills. Yet the Turks fell back. The warships, with their protective armour, moved in and wrought havoc on the enemy as they were driven back and back. Behind steamed the transports. Amongst all this mixed fleet thickly dropped the shells, splashing the water in great fountains over the decks, casting it 50, 100 feet into the air.

Fifteen miles away Anzac was stormed and won. The Australians held with the same bulldog grit that gave the British their footing ashore. How did the French come to Helles? It was a few days afterwards, when the reinforcements for the British force were so urgently needed that it became necessary to evacuate the Kum Kale position, on the southern entrance to the Straits, and transfer the entire French army to the right flank of the Cape Helles position. That was the way the French troops came with their wonderful 75's, that later in the week were so accurately finding out the Turkish trenches, throwing a curtain of fire before the Allied lines.

I do not believe in the history of any war (and one remembers particularly the storming of the heights of Quebec in this regard) has there been any battle panorama so truly magnificent, so amazingly impressive, as that 20 miles of beaches and the entrance to the Dardanelles as seen from the hilltops of the islands scattered round the entrance to the Straits. Rabbit Islands may not be marked on maps—they are only little dotted rocks on charts—but they have a light on them to guide the mariner to the entrance to the Dardanelles, which is about a mile and a half away. From them and the shelter of a single farmhouse you might look right up almost to the Chanak forts, certainly up to Kephez Bay, where the warships, screened by destroyers and mine-sweepers, were pressing their attack on the Narrows. They commanded a view of the beaches, round which transports had gathered with lighters, tugs, trawlers, pinnaces, and barges, disgorging materials and men for the great fight progressing now over the flowered fields above from the tops of the cliffs. The white hospital ships loomed like aluminium-painted craft in the fierce sun, and their yellow funnels seemed fairer still by the side of the darkened smoke-stacks of the panting destroyers, the smoke belching from their short stacks as they raced back and forth amidst them, dragging barges here, nosing in between warships there—warships from whose grim grey sides sprang red-tipped tongues and sheets of flame and rolled clouds of smoke. High into the air tore the screaming shells, which in their parabola passed over the defenceless shipping and the troops bayoneting the Turks on shore, to destroy the main Turkish position. Battleships, standing farther off still, sent shells 5, 6, 8 miles up on to the enemy forts that barked and snapped still in the Narrows.

That was one picture. Take, then, the broader view from the hills of Imbros, 9 miles away. The whole peninsula was sprawled out in all its irregularity, with its still green slopes ending abruptly at the dark cliffs. In the centre were the masses of gathered hills (Kelid Bahr position), crowned with forts, invisible even at the closest observation except from aeroplane above; and beyond, across the slender rim of blue of the Narrows, the towering white of Mount Ida. I remember looking right down into the Narrows from a certain hill on this salubrious island. How intensely blue its waters were, on which I saw quickly pass a transport and a cruiser. I wondered that the yellow balloon looking down on to the Straits, signalling to the Allied warships, did not sink them with those shells which long-range guns dropped right across the 7,000 yards of the narrow neck on to the town of Maidos and Turkish transports lying at the wharves there. At Nagara there was a lighthouse that was an easy landmark to pick out, and not far distant white barracks and hospitals. Then, passing down towards the entrance, the huge citadel of the Straits, Kelid Bahr, blocked the view of the opposite shore and of the fortress Chanak, and yet lower down still, where the peninsula fell away, I could see across the narrow channel the white scarps of Dardanus and the town called Whitecliffs. These towns in the afternoon looked like miniature cities on the side of a vivid, wonderful landscape; they were a mass of white domes and towers. The sun glinted on the windows of the houses, and a thousand scintillating lights darted like the fire of rifles from the dwellings. Blue, beyond, the hills round Troy stood back from the raging battle being fought on the point of the peninsula. An aeroplane swung out of the distance and flew up and down the Straits, its observer prying into the secrets of the forts.

Achi Baba was the dominating feature of the lower end of the peninsula, yet it seemed very flat beside the greater feature of Kelid Bahr and the hills of Anzac. From the angle at which I was observing the village of Krithia was just visible, snuggling between two shoulders of low hills, tucked away, it seemed, from the guns. Yet I was destined to see that village reduced to crumbling ruins by the battering guns, and watch the burning fires covering the peninsula with grey smoke. At night how they glowed and smouldered dully!

Far more terrible was the fire that broke out at Maidos on the afternoon of the 29th April, when the shells from the warships destroyed the barracks, the wharves, the granaries, the arsenal, and set fire to the town. The smoke rose in a huge black column, and then, reaching a higher current of air, was carried down to the very entrance of the Straits, until in the oblique rays of the setting sun it became a dirty brown smudge above the peninsula. Next day the fires were burning still; at night the reflection lit the sky and silhouetted the hills beyond. For days afterwards the smoke was shielding from view the waters of the Narrows.

I take the following extract from my diary, written at the time from the Imbros hills:—

• 2 p.m. Discovered four tents Cape Tekel. Balloon observing over Straits.
• 2.15 Turkish guns observed in wood on the left of Tree Hill (Achi Baba).
• 2.30 Smoke rising over Straits north of Kelid Bahr.
• 2.35 Aeroplane flying up the Dardanelles over Turkish forts.
• 2.40 Ships dropping shells on village of Everden (Turkish headquarters).
• 3.0 Smoke rising south of Maidos.
• 3.15 Considerable activity amongst warships.
• 3.20 Dense smoke 100 yards long, 400 feet high, believe to be Cham Kalesi.
• 4.0 Certain smoke from village Maidos, rising now 2,000 feet high—still
• burning. Bombardment ceased for last ten minutes.
• 4.30 Firing at Gaba Tepe, warships plastering cliffs.
• 4.45 Intense fire from the fleet.
• 4.50 Maidos still burning. Balloon observing north Tree Hill (Achi
• Baba).
• 6.30 Queen Elizabeth and balloon observing ship Ark Royal going
• towards entrance to the Straits. All quiet. Maidos burning
• fiercely. Turkish guns silent.

And so it was day after day.

What of Anzac! It was 9 miles away, but with powerful field-glasses the boats near to the beach could be seen. The glinting rays of heliographs shone from the cliffs. An aeroplane came rapidly from over the crests of the hills and dropped down beside the parent ship and was hauled on board. Four, five, or six times a day would the "Baby" observation balloon ascend and remain with its line of flags below, motionless in the air for hours. The destroyers, those rats of the seas as they have been called, scampered over the blue water. Their guns thumped the flanks of the Australian position close to Gaba Tepe, near which point always there lay some battleship, generally the Queen Elizabeth, while at Suvla Bay, close inshore, the warships closed in to throw shells on to the Sari Bair ridge and Battleship Hill, a flat peak that just showed a bald top above the ridge. Anzac itself was wrapped in impenetrable mists for those first three days. From the gullies darted flashes of the guns—our own guns, almost in the infantry trenches—while the Turkish woolly balls of shrapnel came tumbling above the beaches, above the tops of the hills where the troops were digging—digging for their lives. Our own shrapnel I could see bursting far inland and on the point of Gaba Tepe, where hidden enemy guns were silenced. It was awe inspiring to watch the mass of earth thrown skyward by the striking of the Queen Elizabeth's shells on Mal Tepe, a feature which dominated the alluring plain, crowned with olive groves and guarded solely by the batteries at Gaba Tepe. How entrancingly green those plains looked with their few scattered vineyards and olives! I remember wondering what would have been the result if the troops had been advancing across them just in the same way as I was watching the British advancing from the shores up the peninsula.

There came the morning—29th April—when on the end of the peninsula, near Cape Tekel, white-topped tents appeared, and horses could be seen in lines. They were hidden from the Turkish view by the cliffs, but none the less shells fell among them occasionally. It denoted the British were firmly established. The press of shipping had increased. At a hundred I lost count of the ships. At Anzac there was not less than half that number, all transports, waiting—waiting as if to remove the landed army. I could find no other reason for their being there, idly changing position, while from their sides constant strings of boats came and went; but in them, I learned later, were the wounded. The transports became floating hospital wards. Up and down the shore from Anzac to Helles patrolled the cruisers, bombarding the red road open to view, where the Turkish columns were moving. From the very midst of the merchant fleet the warships' guns thundered with their "b-brum-brum-m-m," two guns together, and the faint, dull shell explosions sounded on land along the road to Krithia, where wide sheets of riven flame rolled along the ground, and a sickly yellow cloud enveloped horses, men, and guns in its toils as the Turks retreated.

Then there dawned the day when the Royal Naval Air Service armoured motor-cars dashed into action, grappling wire entanglements, and sped back, with the Turkish shells bursting after them from the guns on Achi Baba as they retired.

Unforgettable will remain the memory of the panorama: the calm of the sea, the havoc on shore, the placidness of the shipping, the activity of the fleet. Down below me in the mountain glens, where trickled sparkling brooks, patient Greek shepherds called on Pan pipes for their flocks, and took no more notice of the distant roar of battle—the crackle of rifles and machine guns could be heard—than of the murmuring of the sea on the seashore; and like it, unceasingly, day and night for weeks, was a horrible deadly accompaniment of one's dreams.