The photographs in this gallery, all from the collections of the Australian War Memorial, represent the few images in those collections dealing with the actual Battle of Lone Pine, 6-9 August 1915. There were no official photographers present during the battle and all of the images were taken by individual cameraman such as the official historian Charles Bean, Australian journalist Phillip Schuler or unknown cameramen.

Notice the white armbands and back patches. These were worn to make men more visible to each other in the dark. At 4.30 pm, by which time these men would probably have been in the trenches of the Pine, a bombardment of the Turkish positions began which lasted for one hour before the scheduled time of the attack - 5.30 pm. Charles Bean described the scene:

...through the Dip were now filing in three separate routes ... the 2nd, 3rd and 4th [Battalions - the 1st Battalion was held in reserve] which were to make the attack. The bright sun of a warm summer afternoon shone upon their backs ... Behind them, far down on the twinkling sea, lay the warships, firing occasional salvos. The three columns steadily disappearing into the dusty rabbit warren of trenches reminded onlookers of the regulated traffic of a metropolis ... When the bombardment was half through, the three assaulting columns were in position both in the tunnelled firing line and in the main line behind it, ready to launch the formidable demonstration upon which so much depended.

[Charles Bean, The Story of Anzac, Vol 2, Sydney, 1924, p502]

The man on the left is Captain Cecil Sasse, 1st Battalion (New South Wales), of Sydney, New South Wales. In the initial attack at Lone Pine at 5.30 pm on 6 August 1915, the 1st Battalion was in reserve and the enemy trenches were rushed by the other infantry units of the 1st Brigade - the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Battalions. Elements of the 1st Battalion were called forward into the captured trenches at about 6.20 pm and by 8.30 the whole unit was there. Bean refers to Captain Sasse as having gone in with a party to help the 3rd Battalion connect up its position with that of the 2nd Battalion. A line of captured trench was actually named 'Sasses' Sap' (A 'sap' is another word for trench and when used as a verb means to make or dig a trench.). [See Charles Bean, The Story of Anzac, Vol 2, Sydney, 1924, p.519]

According to the Australian War Memorial's photo caption, this image was taken at Lone Pine on 6 August 1915 by Australian journalist Phillip Schuler, a 'special representative' or 'correspondent' for The Age newspaper, Melbourne. There are a number of Schuler images from Gallipoli in the AWM photo collection. The British general, Sir Ian Hamilton, who commanded all Allied forces on Gallipoli, gave Schuler permission to visit Anzac between 20 July and 20 August. Read an article written by Schuler about being under fire at Gallipoli. Schuler was certainly in the captured Turkish positions on the evening of 6 August as he describes the scene there in his account of the Lone Pine attack in Australia in Arms: A Narrative of the Australian Imperial Force and their Achievements at Anzac, published in 1916. His photograph of Captain Sasse appears facing page 260 of that publication and is captioned:

The overhead cover of pine logs in the captured Lone Pine trenches.

None of the soldiers in the photograph in Schuler's book is named.

This image illustrates well the manner in which, after a portion of trench had been seized by the Australians, a new front line was created by the erection of a barricade in the trench itself constructed of sandbags and other material to hand. The Australian war Memorial's caption to this image states that the Australian soldier at the barricade was looking through a loophole down a Turkish trench at an enemy barricade just metres away. Enemy snipers shooting at this barricade were only able to hit the sandbags at the top. The photograph was taken by the official historian, Charles Bean.

The Turks, according to official historian Charles Bean, seemed to have an 'inexhaustible supply' of their cricket-ball style bombes and they had been well trained in throwing them. The Anzacs had come ashore without any kind of 'bomb' so a 'bomb factory' was hastily established near Anzac Headquarters at the beach. In this British official photograph, 'bombs' are being made by stuffing old jam tins with pieces of Turkish shell and barbed wire. Bean wrote of Lone Pine battle:

The Australians ... were learning that bombs were the most powerful weapon for hand-to-hand fighting, and that - though they knew little of bomb-throwing and mistrusted the crude 'jam tins' - if they could obtain a constant supply they could keep back the Turks.

[Charles Bean, The Story of Anzac, Vol II, Sydney, 1924, p.539]

The Turks, according to official historian Charles Bean, seemed to have an 'inexhaustible supply' of their cricket-ball style bombes and they had been well trained in throwing them. The Anzacs had come ashore without any kind of 'bomb' so a 'bomb factory' was hastily established near Anzac Headquarters at the beach. In this British official photograph, 'bombs' are being made by stuffing old jam tins with pieces of Turkish shell and barbed wire. Bean wrote of Lone Pine battle:

The Australians ... were learning that bombs were the most powerful weapon for hand-to-hand fighting, and that - though they knew little of bomb-throwing and mistrusted the crude 'jam tins' - if they could obtain a constant supply they could keep back the Turks.

[Charles Bean, The Story of Anzac, Vol II, Sydney, 1924, p.539]

The photographer is unknown but the image conveys a sense of the losses sustained by both sides in the three day battle. It was given to the Australian War Memorial by a Major C Jackson and this may be the Lieutenant Clarence Jackson, who sailed with the 1st Battalion (New South Wales) on 18 October 1914 from Sydney on the troopship Afric.

Bean writes of the actions of Captain Cyril Sasse, 1st Battalion, who during a lull in the fighting on 8 August:

...organised an effort to clear it [Jacob's Trench] of the dead by heaping them in certain of the saps, shelters and tunnels which were not in use.

[Charles Bean, The Story of Anzac, Vol 2, Sydney, 1924, p.552]

The pine logs used by the Turks to cover the trenches are clearly visible. Notice the white arm bands. Journalist Philip Schuler wrote of this device:

Each man, besides the white arm bands on his jacket, had a white square on his back. The badge was worn throughout the attacks during the first two days as a distinguishing mark from the enemy in the dark; a very necessary precaution where so many types of troops were engaged.

[Philip Schuler, Australia in Arms: A Narrative of the Australian Imperial Force and their Achievements at Anzac, London, 1917, p.229]

The photograph was, according to the Australian War Memorial, given to the Memorial by 'Major H Jacobs, 3rd Battalion'. This is most likely Major Harold Jacobs of the 1st Battalion, an officer who played a prominent role in the Lone Pine attack and whose actions there have been closely described by Charles Bean in the official history.

Notice the pine logs roofing the trench. Some of these were broken open by the Anzac bombardment of the Turkish trenches on 6 August and in the initial attack at 5.30 pm some Australian soldiers jumped through these holes into the Turkish positions. Others entered the Turkish front line through gaps that had been left in this head cover. At that stage, fortunately for them, many Turkish soldiers had actually left the front line to seek shelter from the shelling in mining tunnels which ran back towards the Australian lines and were trapped there owing to the speed with which the Australians crossed no-man's-land in the opening advance and entered the trenches. The soldier in the photograph with the bandage on his right hand is Major David McConaghy, 3rd Battalion, who played a prominent role in the battalion's actions at Lone Pine.

The man with the bandage to his eyes is Captain Cecil Sasse, of Sydney, New South Wales. Sasse was awarded a DSO (Distinguished Service Order) for his courage and leadership during the Lone Pine battle. In part, his DSO read:

For conspicuous gallantry and determination during the attack on Lone Pine, Gallipoli Peninsula, on the 6th-7th August, 1915, when he led several bayonet charges on trenches occupied by the enemy, resulting in substantial gains. Captain Sasse was wounded three times, but remained on duty.

[The Commonwealth Gazette, 27 January 1916]

This melancholy image suggests the large number of Australian dead and wounded suffered at Lone Pine, somewhere in the region of 2,000 men. One of the great tragedies of the battle was the way in which narrow trenches became clogged with the wounded, the dying and the dead. Sergeant Cyril Lawrence of the Australian Engineers was in Brown's Dip on 7 August 1915 and recorded in his diary:

A short distance from where I am sitting is a pile of rifles and equipment ... simply those that have been collected in the immediate vicinity.

Clearly, a lot of the dead still remain unburied which can be accounted for by the fact that it would have been too dangerous to go out, in full view of the enemy, to retrieve the bodies. It was in this area after the war that the Lone Pine cemetery and memorial were constructed. This photograph was given to the Australian War Memorial by Lieutenant Colonel Balcome Quick who, as Captain Balcombe Quick, a surgeon, sailed from Melbourne with the 2nd Field Ambulance on the troopship Wiltshire on 19 October 1914. This unit served at Anzac throughout the Gallipoli campaign. Sergeant Cyril Lawrence of the Australian Engineers wrote a description of the Lone Pine battlefield in his dairy:

The whole way across is just one mass of dead bodies, bags of bombs, bales of sandbags, rifles, shovels and all the hundred and one things that had to be rushed across to the enemy trenches. The undergrowth has been cut down, like mown hay, simply stalks left standing, by the rifle fire, whilst the earth itself appears just as though one had taken a huge rake and scratched it all over.

[The Gallipoli Diary of Sergeant Lawrence of the Australian Engineers, Sir Ronald East (ed), Melbourne 1983, pp 68-69]

The location is not given in the original AWM caption but from the landscape it could be Shrapnel Gully cemetery or possibly Brown's Dip which lay in the gully behind the Lone Pine plateau. The graves at Brown's Dip were removed to Lone Pine Cemetery after the war.

The date on the cross - 7/8/15 - is interesting. The only one of the four infantry battalions of the 2nd Brigade (Victoria) which became heavily engaged in the Lone Pine battle was the 7th Battalion. Initially the unit, along with the 12th Battalion of the 3rd Brigade, was in close support waiting to be called if required. On the afternoon of 7 August, the bomb throwers of the 7th were called forward but the bulk of the battalion did not join the fighting until 1.30 pm on 8 August. Bean recorded that the 32 bombers sent in the previous day had by that time almost all been killed or wounded. Overall, according to the official history, the 7th Battalion suffered 354 casualties (dead and wounded) at Lone Pine and it is likely that the 7 August on the cross refers simply to the day on which the battalion began to be committed to the battle. While the official history does not record the figure it is believable, given the ferocity of the fighting in which the battalion was involved, that 55 of its members were killed in action of died of wounds at Lone Pine.