So far as the 1st Australian Division was concerned, their offensive in the great battle of August began with the capture of Lone Pine, late on the afternoon of the 6th August, and ended with the desperate, heroic charge of the 8th and 10th Light Horse Regiments on the early morning of the 7th. Lone Pine had started the whole of the operations, and the Australian Division throughout the night was to carry them on by a series of offensives from their trenches right along the line. All this fighting, as has been explained, was to cover the main object of the plan, the landing of the new British force at Suvla Bay and the seizing of a base for winter operations; and, further, the capture of the crest of the main ridge, Chunak Bair and Koja Chemen Tepe, or Hill 971. So naturally the operations fall into sections. From what has been subsequently learned, the Turks, immediately after their crushing defeat at Lone Pine, hurried up reinforcements from Bogali and diverted others that were on their way to Cape Helles. It did not stay their attack at Cape Helles, however, which had been planned, by some curious chance, to take place almost at the identical hour that the British, on the 7th, were to attack the Turkish lines, which was the reason for the British being hurled back after desperate fighting.

But if there was a success for the Turk at Cape Helles, it was nothing to the blow they suffered by the loss of their declared impregnable Lone Pine trenches and the successfully accomplished landing at Suvla Bay. But in between these two operations were the long hours of the night, when the captured trenches at Lone Pine were subjected to fearful bombing attacks, and successive Turkish regiments were hurled against the closed breach, operations which lasted over all for four days. Two Divisions at least were massed by the Turks against the Anzac forces by midnight of the 6th. The enemy's trenches positively bristled with bayonets. Our green and red rocket shells showed them up; we could see them moving along the gullies and over the hills in the early dawn. The Light Horsemen on the Nek knew that the enemy were waiting to meet the charge they were in duty bound to make at grey dawn.

To retrace in detail the events of that night. On the Lone Pine section of the line the Turkish bombardment began to ease at eight o'clock, and the Turks, for a time, gave up searching the valleys of Anzac for our reserves and for the guns. Every available piece of artillery must have been trained on the position. Then the warships and our Australian and New Zealand howitzers kept up a regular, almost incessant fire. A gun banged each minute on various sections of the line. It had been determined by Major-General Walker that there should be an offensive by the men of the 2nd Infantry Brigade, occupying the trenches opposite German Officers' Trench. Our lines were but thinly held, as there had been a gradual easing off to the right towards the Lone Pine trenches, that had swallowed up the whole of the 1st Brigade, so that now the 2nd Brigade only was left to hold the position.

Lieut.-Colonel Bennett with the 6th Battalion was charged with the task of taking the almost impregnable German Officers' Trenches. Crowned with massive beams, bristling with machine guns, it had been demonstrated on more than one occasion what the Turks intended should be the fate of any men who dared attack these trenches. At eleven o'clock on the night of the 6th, the sappers exploded the first mine underneath the Turkish trenches immediately in front of them. Another charge was fired at 11.30, and two at 11.40. The battalion then began to occupy the forward gallery positions that had been prepared. Unfortunately, the guns did not do the damage that was anticipated. On the contrary, they did nothing but warn the already thoroughly roused enemy of an impending assault.

The first attack was planned for twelve o'clock. At that time the bombardment of the section of the Turkish trenches ceased. From the tunnel trenches the men scrambled up, a few only from each hole, as there was little space. The enemy's machine guns raged and raked our ranks from end to end. Few of the men got more than a yard or two. The tunnels became choked with dead and dying. The attack withered at its birth. What else could be expected under such conditions? Yet a second attempt was made at 3.55 a.m., but with no better result. A score or more of machine guns firing at various angles, with the range set to a nicety, swept down the attackers almost before they had time to leave their trenches. The position was desperate. Had the whole of the attack to be sacrificed because this line of men failed to do their duty? But did they fail? They charged twice, and were preparing to go a third time, on the determination of General Walker (but against the judgment of Brigadier-General Forsyth, who saw the hopelessness of it all), when, realizing that the object had already been served, as news came through of the successful landing at Suvla Bay, the third charge was cancelled at the last moment.

Dawn was beginning to steal into the sky behind the Turkish position. A thin, waning moon shed but little light over the terrible battlefields. From a forward observation station I noted the battle line spitting red tongues of flame all along to the Nek, while at Quinn's Post occurred every few minutes, terrible explosions of shell and bombs from either side. A gun a minute was booming constantly—booming from the heart of Anzac. The destroyers, the rays of their searchlights cast up on to the hill, swept the top of the Sari Bair ridge with the high-explosive shell from their 6-inch guns. Fearful as had been the night, the dawn was more horrible still, as an intense bombardment commenced on the Chessboard Trenches on the Nek. Howitzers and high-explosive shells fell thickly round those masses of Turkish trenches, so often and accurately registered in the weeks of waiting. The surmise that the Turks had brought up reinforcements had indeed proved correct, for they were waiting now in the trenches on the Nek—confidently, we learn, waiting any "English" attack, which now seemed inevitable. It was inevitable.

At this time the 3rd Light Horse Brigade, under Brigadier-General Hughes, held the Nek. I have already described this position. It was barely 120 yards wide. The Turkish trenches were scarcely 80 yards away from [239]
[240]our line. They sloped backward slightly up the ridge to the sides of Baby 700 and Chunak Bair. On the right of this narrow causeway was the head of Monash Gully, a steep drop into a ravine, and across it, Pope's Hill and Quinn's Post. On the left the sheer precipices fell away down into the foothills of the Sari Bair ridge. Row after row one could see of the enemy trenches—Chessboard Trenches; the name significant of their formation.

It fell to the 8th and 10th Light Horse Regiments to storm these enemy redoubts. They were to charge at 4.30 in the morning—the morning after the bloody battle of Lone Pine, after, as I heard Colonel Antill, Brigade-Major of that Light Horse Brigade, say, we had gone along the whole of our battle front "ringing a bell." Then, when that had tolled and sounded, were the Light Horse to face their certain death. The story is simply told. It is very brief. The attack was to be made in four lines. The 8th Light Horse (Victorians) were to supply the first two lines, 150 men in each. Besides scaling ladders that had been specially made to enable men to get into the trenches, these Light Horsemen each carried two empty sandbags. They had food supplies, and plenty of ammunition. But they were not to fire a shot. They had to do their work with the cold steel of the bayonet. Following them was a third line of 150 men of the 10th Regiment, and yet another line—the last—ready with picks and shovels and bombs—any quantity of bombs—and reserves of water and ammunition. They were to help to make good the trenches when they were won.

Against the sandbags of our lines thumped the bullets as the Turkish machine guns traversed from end to end of the short line. A hard purring and the whistle of bullets, then a few minutes' pause. Still the bombardment continued furiously, smashing, it was thought, the Turkish trenches to atoms. But while the communication-ways were blocked and heavy casualties were inflicted, the front Turkish trenches remained practically unharmed. In three lines of trenches, their bayonets fixed, standing one above the other to get better shooting, resting on steps or sitting on the parados of the trenches, the Turks waited the coming of the Light Horsemen. The trenches were smothered in a yellow smoke and dust from the bursting lyddite from the ships, that almost obscured from our view the enemy's position. It was a bombardment the intensity of which had never been seen yet on Gallipoli; the hill was plastered with awful death-dealing shells. Just at 4.25 the bombardment slackened significantly. Immediately there began to pour a sheet of lead from the Turkish trenches. Musketry and machine guns fired incessantly. Could anything live for a minute in it? At the end of three minutes our guns ceased.

Lieut.-Colonel A. White elected to lead the men he loved. He made a brief farewell to his brother officers. He shook them by the hand and went into the firing-line. He stood waiting with his watch in hand. "Men," he said, "you have ten minutes to live." And those Light Horsemen of his regiment, recruited from the heart of Victoria, knew what he said was true. They waited, listening to the terrible deluge that rained against the parapets of their trenches. "Three minutes, men," and the word came down from the far end of the line, did the order still hold good? It was a sergeant who sent it, and by the time he had received the reply passed back along the waiting line, the whistle for the charge sounded. With an oath, "—— him!" he leaped to the parapet of the trench; he fell back on his comrade waiting below him—dead.

The whole line went. Each man knew that to leave those trenches was to face certain, almost immediate death. They knew it no less than the glorious Light Brigade at Balaclava. There is surely a comparison between the two deeds, and shall not the last make the young Nation more honoured! Those troops, with all the knowledge, after months of waiting, of what trench warfare meant, of what they might now expect, never flinched, never presented a braver front.

Theirs not to reason why; theirs but to do—and die.

They charged.

Lieut.-Colonel White had not gone ten paces when he fell dead, riddled with bullets. The first line of 150 men melted away ere they had gone half the distance to the trenches, and yet the second line, waiting and watching, followed them. One small knoll alone gave a little protection for a few dozen paces to the advancing line from the Turkish machine guns, that rattled from a dozen different points along that narrow front, and swept from the right flank across from the enemy trenches opposite Quinn's Post. Adding to the terror of it all came the swish of the shells from the French "75" guns that the Turks had captured from the Servians, and which were now firing ten shells a minute on to the Nek. The parapets were covered with dead and dying. Stretcher-bearers rescued men where they could from just above the parapets, and dragged them down into the trenches, while over the same parapets went other men, doomed like their magnificent comrades.

Just a handful of men—how many will hardly ever be known, probably it was not ten—managed to reach the section of the Turkish line facing the extreme right of our position. At other places some few others had pitched forward and fallen dead into the Turkish trenches. But those few men that won through raised a little yellow and red flag, the prearranged signal, the signal for the second part of the attack to develop. It were better that those gallant men had never reached that position. The third line were ordered to advance, and went over the parapets. There was nothing else to do. Comrades could not be left to die unsupported. At the same time from Bully Beef Sap (that was the trench that ran down into Monash Gully from the Nek) the Royal Welsh Fusiliers attacked up the head of the gully. Their first two lines, so soon as they came under fire, fell, crumpled; at which moment the third line—Western Australian Light Horse—had gone forward from the Nek. But before the whole of the 150 men could rush to their certain destruction, Brigadier General Hughes stopped the attack. So it happened that a small party of 40 on the left managed to crawl back into the trenches. The remainder fell alongside their brave Victorian brothers who had charged and died.

For the flag in the enemy's trench soon disappeared, and the fate of the brave men who erected it was never told. Late the next night a private named McGarry crawled back from beneath the parapet of the Turkish trenches, where he had feigned dead all day. He told of the forest of Turkish steel that stood in the series of three trenches, ranged one behind the other. Another man, Lieutenant Stuart, 8th Light Horse, who, after going 15 yards, fell wounded, and managed to crawl into the crater of a shell-burst, where he lay until the signal was given to retire, returned from amongst the dead and dying lying under the pale morning light on no man's ground between the trenches.

Thus in a brief fifteen minutes did regiments perish. Only an incident it was of the greatest battle ever fought in the Levant, but an imperishable record to Australia's glory. Nine officers were killed, 11 missing, 13 wounded; 50 men killed, 170 wounded, and 182 missing: and those missing never will return to answer the roll call—435 casualties in all.

What did the brigade do but its duty?—duty in the face of overwhelming odds, in the face of certain death; and the men went because their leaders led them, and they were men. What more can be said? No one may ask if the price was not too great. The main object had been achieved. The Turks were held there. It was learned that many of the enemy in the trenches had their full kits on, either just arrived or bidden remain (as they might be about to depart). And so right along the line were the enemy tied to their trenches, crowded together as they could be, packed, waiting to be bayoneted where they stood or disperse the foe. Above all, the Australians had kept the way clear for the great British flanking movement already begun. For all this, will the spot remain sacred in the memory of every Australian of this generation and the generations to come.

Now, while the 3rd Light Horse Brigade was charging from the Nek there was also a charge from round Quinn's Post by the 1st Brigade, under Brigadier-General Chauvel, who held this sector of the line. The 2nd Regiment attacked the Turkish position opposite Quinn's Post in four lines. Fifty men went in each. Major T. J. Logan led one section of the first line. Led! It was only fifteen or twenty paces to the enemy, yet few of the men managed to crawl up over the parapet. They were shot down as soon as they began to show themselves, and fell back into their own trenches. Major Bourne led the other party. Both gallant leaders fell dead before they or any of their troops could reach the Turkish lines. One man only, who returned unwounded, declares that he escaped by simply watching the stream of bullets from the enemy's machine guns striking the parapets of our trenches and leaping over it; for as usual, the Turkish guns were searching low. And as this assault was launched the 1st Regiment, led by Major T. W. Glasgow, charged from Pope's Hill, on the left of Quinn's. There was in front the small ridge—Deadman's Ridge—which had been attacked on the 2nd May, and won in parts by the 4th Infantry Brigade. It was covered with trenches, dug one above the other. From all three the Light Horsemen drove the Turks. In the forward line the men for a few minutes had the awful experience of being bombed by the Turks in front and their own men behind, until the mistake was suddenly recognized by Major Glasgow, who immediately charged with his men over the parapets to the third trench, and joined up the whole of the regiment. But the Turks held the higher ground above, and from their trenches it was an easy mark to throw bombs down on to the Light Horsemen in the trenches lower on the ridge. Our bomb supplies had all to be brought forward from Pope's position under machine-gun fire. The valiant men who still clung to the trenches they had gained, suffered cruel loss from bombs that the Turks hurled overhead and along the communication trenches. After two hours' desperate fighting, at 7.30 a.m. the order was reluctantly given to retire. Then only the right section of our line ever got back, and with them the gallant commander, without a scratch. Major Reed and Lieutenant Nettleton both died in those trenches. Twenty-one men were killed and 51 were missing after the attack.

So in the course of a terrible hour the Light Horse Brigades, National Guardsmen of Australia, won deathless glory by noble sacrifice and devotion to duty, and formed the traditions on which the splendour of the young army is still being built.