The Big Fight (Gallipoli to the Somme). David Fallon

back, his smile widening into a horrible grin. A bullet had taken him in the neck. He was done for.

      Of course, and luckily, there were only a few of our thousands that had been blown out of their boats and most of the lusty fighters of the landing force had their ammunition in hand. They were going after the Turks with rifle volleys of deadly accuracy.

      Having come alive through the terrible ordeal of that shell and bullet strand of open beach, the Australians and New Zealands were fired to the highest fighting pitch. Companies of them sang as they climbed and pushed and struggled along—sang or rather yelled snatches of all manner of songs though they didn’t sound much like songs. More like strange, sustained savage war cries.

      There was no staying the impetuosity of some of them.

      When we had gained the upper ridges under the very face of the cliffs and a furious mêlée it was till we got there, orders flew from the lips of the officers for the men to stop and “dig in.” The ragged sandstone cliffs were pierced by hundreds of tortuous pathways and there was no telling what traps might lie in these crevices and mazes. The enemy had already given evidence that in tunnels in the cliffs were located batteries from which had come the most withering of fires until the warships’ guns got after them. But beyond the face of the cliffs it was foolhardy for any officer to lead his men against an enemy save one in full retreat. And although it was evident by this time that we had the Turks on the run, it was equally evident to our officers that their commanders had been so confident in the frightfulness of the fire upon the landing parties and the impediments of barbed wire they had planted in the ocean, that they had not massed a strong force in the sand dunes on the face of the hills. The probability of a much stronger force back of the cliffs practically amounted to a certainty.

      And although we had the Turks on the run, their forts two and three miles away were still pouring their fire without an instant’s let-up on the beach and for half a mile or more into the water.

      But, in spite of orders, hundreds of our warriors refused to stop. They charged right on through the pathways and tunnels in the cliffs. We never saw them again. Those that were not killed were captured by the Turks. We used to say in speaking of them afterward that they had “gone on to Constantinople.”

      My little band, now numbering eleven, I brought together on a shelf near the face of the cliffs and we tried to dig in. But we had only our bayonets for implements and the ground was a hard, brittle admixture of sand and stone. So, instead, I ordered them to gather a sufficient number of the chunks of rock that had been shattered from the face of the cliffs by the battleship’s big guns and we constructed a horseshoe shaped retreat—one that would protect us against an enfilade. In this we esconced ourselves and looked from time to time on the bombardment, going as furiously as ever between the warships and the distant forts with an occasional vicious spurting exchange between our light land batteries which we had got ashore in the face of everything, and the hidden batteries that still held on among the cliffs. But mostly we snuggled with heads well down below the walls of our little forts for the bullets of snipers were pinging all around us. And you can imagine they had made things damned merry for us while we were doing our bit of architecture. The Turks at the time must have been pretty well demoralized for let me tell you that, in ordinary circumstances, the Turk is altogether too accurate a shot. As it was, there was only one member of my little crowd who got hurt—a Melbourne boy who had two fingers ripped off his left hand as he was shoving a big, ragged chunk of sandstone in place on the fortress wall.

      Just as we had settled down to hold out until nightfall should take from us the uncomfortable job of being targets for snipers, I was startled by a big, horny-handed man in my company, a fellow with a cave-man’s face and wicked eye. He had suddenly started blubbering. Before any of us could stop him, he jumped to his feet, showed himself head and shoulders above our baby fortress’ walls, and shook his fist fiercely in the general direction of the Turks. Their snipers answered him with a furious spitfire of bullets. We dragged him down and I demanded:

      “What the devil’s got into you, anyhow? Want to get us all killed?”

      “The little admiral!” he roared back at me in fury. “I was thinking it was those dogs and their guns killed that kid—I tried to get to him when the barge blew up. Plucky little devil! He was hanging on to the stern and yelling orders to us to be ‘Steady’ and ‘Hold on.’ And then another shell hit the damn’ thing and he was gone.” He tried to get up again, but we held him down. “The damn’ kid-killing bunch of dogs!” he yelled.

      But there were other hearts, yes, thousands and thousands of hearts as staunch as the “little admiral’s” in that red day of horror. There was the work done by the Australian Army Service Corps—landing a steady procession of boats loaded with medical and food supplies as well as ammunition, fleets on fleets of these boats from the transports and battleships moving to shore with the coolest regularity with the waters around every one of them constantly thrashed by tons of falling shells. Scores of the boats were blown up. But the others never stopped only where there was a chance of rescue of the men flung from the shattered boats.

      The stretcher-bearers and the doctors we could also see working calmly among the sand dunes, ignoring snipers’ bullets as though they had been harmless flakes of snow. Slow and painful files of the wounded—those who could walk or stagger along were being guided to protected places until the coming of night might enable their removal to the hospital ships.

      As for the dead whose countless prone bodies strewn upon the beach with curious pitiful inertness so different from that of sleep, that you know instinctively means death—there was no use then risking live men to give the dead the attention, to award them such decencies of care and burial as were their due. This also would be the work of the night. Yes, and with many a man as he worked over the graves of his fallen comrades pitching into that grave, himself become a dead man—betrayed to a sniper by the moonlight’s gleam.

      Twilight veiled the sun and then very suddenly black night came.

      Well, we had done the thing, done what many men of authority had thought it would be impossible for us to do, what Lord Kitchener was afterward to describe as one of the most brilliant feats of bravery and soldiering of the war. We had effected a landing at Gallipoli. Perilously we were to hold our place on this narrow little peninsula, this back door of the Dardenelles, for months to come.

      But at what a price! And through what suffering and horror!

      Out of the 20,000 men who landed at Gallipoli by my own observation and all report, I do not think that 1,000 are alive today!