Their uniforms were torn, their knees broken

The battle for Chunuk Bair began after dark on 6 August 1915. In the late afternoon, before the long columns of men began their march along North Beach to Ocean Beach and then up into the range, the 1st Australian Division mounted its famous attack on the Turkish line at Lone Pine. So strong was this attack that initially the Turkish commanders were of the opinion that a major break-out from Anzac towards the south-east was being attempted. At 9.30 pm, Brigadier General John Monash’s 4th Australian Brigade—the 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th Battalions—left their bivouac positions in Reserve Gully beneath the Sphinx and, with Monash marching in the middle of his brigade, made their way north along a newly constructed road.

The 4th Brigade formed part of the North Assaulting Column, and I had associated with me the famous 29th Indian Brigade … with one battalion of Sikhs and three battalions of Gurkhas. My Brigade was in the lead and at 9.30 pm … my column swept out of Reserve Gully into black darkness for its two mile [3.2 km] march northwards along the beach into enemy territory. It was like walking out on a stormy winter’s night from a warm cosy home into a hail, thunder, and lightning storm. We had not gone half a mile when the black tangle of hills between the beach road and the main thoroughfare became alive with flashes of musketry, and the bursting of shrapnel and star shell, and the yells of the enemy and the cheers of our men as they swept in to drive the enemy from the flanks of our march.

[F M Cutlack (ed), War Letters of General Monash, Sydney, 1934, p.61]

What the men of the 4th Brigade heard on the right flank of their march was the noise of the attack by the New Zealand Mounted Rifles on Turkish positions in the foothills of the range. The Mounted’s task that night was to clear the way for the New Zealand Infantry Brigade who were to take Chunuk Bair by first light on 7 August. That struggle in the dark in the foothills was a brilliant success for the New Zealanders. Charles Bean described it as:

… this magnificent feat of arms, the brilliance of which was never surpassed, if indeed equalled, during the campaign.

[C E W Bean, The Story of Anzac, Vol II, Sydney, 1924, p.576]

Hot on the heels of the Mounteds, the New Zealand Infantry Brigade—Otago, Auckland, Wellington and Canterbury Battalions—began the long climb through the valleys and over the scrub-covered ridges towards Chunuk Bair.

Monash's men, accompanied by the British 40th Brigade and the 29th Indian Brigade, made their way beyond No 2 Outpost and into the foothills to the west of Hill 971, Kocacimentepe. Here they became lost and dawn on 7 August found them well short of their intended position from where they were to have attacked and seized Hill 971. The men were exhausted and the debilitating summer months in the trenches of Gallipoli had left them unfit. The 4th Brigade was allowed to stop and dig in. The Indian battalions had also taken the wrong route and were in no position to attack. The 6th Gurkha Battalion pressed on up the slopes towards what turned out to be Chunuk Bair. Only the New Zealanders ended that night march somewhere near their objective. As they came out on the top slopes of what was called Rhododendron Ridge, they could see Chunuk Bair about a kilometre ahead.

It was at this point—dawn on 7 August 1915—that there occurred one of best-known Australian tragedies on Gallipoli—the charge of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade at The Nek. The original plan had envisaged the New Zealanders attaining Chunuk Bair and then coming down the range behind the Turkish positions towards the Nek. This did not happen. Just before dawn the lead New Zealand battalion—the Otagos—were still short of Chunuk Bair. General Birdwood, the commanding officer of the Anzac forces, allowed the light horsemen to proceed in order to give all possible support to the Chunuk Bair assault. If Turkish reinforcements could be held from that vital height for even an extra half hour then its capture, the main purpose of the whole new August offensive, might be achieved. However, Birdwood had written earlier of the Turkish positions at the Nek and up the slopes of Baby 700:

These trenches and convergences of communication trenches … require considerable strength to force. The narrow Nek to be crossed … makes an unaided attack in that direction almost hopeless.

[Birdwood, quoted in C E W Bean, The Story of Anzac, Vol II, Sydney, p.464]

At 4.30 am the first wave of the 8th Light Horse Regiment—men from western Victoria—rose from their trenches and dashed for the Turkish line at the Nek. Minutes later a second wave went over. Lieutenant William Cameron, 9th Light Horse, was watching the charge:

We saw them climb out and move forward about ten yards and lie flat. The second line did likewise ... As they rose to charge, the Turkish Machine Guns just poured out lead and our fellows went down like corn before a scythe. The distance to the enemy trench was less than 50 yards yet not one of those two lines got anywhere near it.

[Cameron, quoted in P Burness, The Nek—The Tragic Charge of the Light Horse at Gallipoli, Kangaroo Press, 1996, pp.105106]

Within half an hour two further waves—men of the 10th Light Horse from Western Australia—met a fate similar to the Victorians. From his vantage point on the approaches to Chunuk Bair to the north, Sergeant John Wilder of the Wellington Mounted Rifles saw the destruction of the 8th and 10th Light Horse:

I saw the whole thing … and don’t want to see another sight like it. They were fairly mown down by machine guns.

[Wilder, quoted in C Pugsley, Gallipoli—The New Zealand Story, London, 1984, p.283]

Historians now see the charge at the Nek as a waste of life that should have been stopped after the slaughter of the first wave. Writing years later, Australia’s official historian, Charles Bean, tried to salvage some meaning from this futility:

Probably the attack on the Nek effected its purpose of holding temporarily near Baby 700 at least part of the Turkish reinforcements which were just then streaming northward towards Chunuk Bair.

[C E W Bean, Anzac to Amiens, London, 1984, p.271]

On Chunuk Bair and its approaches there now ensued what has been called 'the climax on Anzac'. This was the battle, fought from early morning on 7 August to early morning on 10 August by Australian, New Zealand, British, Indian and Gurkha soldiers, to take and hold the peaks of Chunuk Bair and Hill 971. Resisting them, in an equally brave and determined manner, were Turkish soldiers led in the later stages of the battle by Colonel Mustafa Kemal.

At 11.00 am on 7 August, the Auckland Battalion advancing towards Chunuk Bair ran into intense Turkish fire. They advanced only 100 metres and took 300 casualties. For the rest of the day the New Zealand battalions dug in under constant Turkish artillery and rifle fire. They could see far below at Suvla Bay the new British landing force establishing itself. However, the British at Suvla made little effort to advance and throughout the battle Turkish guns, situated near the village of Anafarta, not far from the British lines, were able to fire unimpeded on the New Zealanders and other British units on Chunuk Bair.

At dawn on 8 August men of the Wellington Battalion took Chunuk Bair from the small number of Turks defending the summit. From there they gazed down on the objective of the whole campaign—the straits of the Dardanelles at the Narrows. Sergeant Daniel Curham of the Wellingtons was aware of the significance of this peak on Gallipoli:

Some chaps had a glimpse of the sea and all the country in between and we knew perfectly well that this hill was the key to victory or defeat on the Peninsula.

[Curham, quoted in C Pugsley, Gallipoli—The New Zealand Story, London, 1984, p.290]

There are some lines from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem about the death of King Arthur—'The Passing of Arthur’—which well describe the fate of the New Zealand Infantry Brigade and Mounted Rifles as they now tried to hold Chunuk Bair:

So all day long the noise of battle rolled
Among the mountains by the winter sea;
Until King Arthur’s Table, man by man,
Had fallen in Lyonnesse about their lord …

[From 'The Passing of Arthur', The Idylls of the King, Alfred Lord Tennyson]

For two days—8 and 9 August 1915—the New Zealanders fought off numerous Turkish counter-attacks. On 8 August it was the Wellington Infantry Battalion that held the two trenches at the summit—one on the reverse and one on the forward slope. British units—the 7th Battalion, the Gloucestershire Regiment and the 8th Battalion of the Welsh Pioneers—dug in behind and on either side of the New Zealanders. Private Reginald Davis of the Wellingtons, who was taken prisoner that morning, remembered the intensity of the fighting:

Private Surgenor was hit in the head somewhere, but kept on firing with his face streaming with blood, until he got another hit in the head, which dazed him for a while, and knocked him back in the trench. This time I thought he was killed, but he partly came to after, and loaded rifles for me to fire. At that time I was using three rifles and each was burning hot … On the right of my position I was able to see about thirty yards [30 metres] of trench in which all our men were wounded or dead.

[Davis, quoted in C Pugsley, Gallipoli—The New Zealand Story, London, 1984, p.297]

Lieutenant Colonel William Malone, the Wellingtons’ commanding officer, fought alongside his men. One man recalled Malone’s leadership that day:

Twice it looked very bad so with Colonel Malone we joined the lads in front. I had my revolver and a handful of cartridges and Colonel Malone seized up a rifle and bayonet. The Wellingtons seemed to rise up each time from nowhere and the Turks were hurled back. In the first of these attacks the bayonet on Colonel Malone’s rifle was twisted by a bullet, so after this he kept it with him; as he said it was lucky.

[Major W H Hastings, quoted in C Pugsley, Gallipoli—The New Zealand Story, London, 1984, p.302]

As the day wore on, many of the New Zealand and British wounded from the trenches at the summit found their way back to a gully in the rear. Lance Corporal Charles Clark of the Wellingtons wrote:

There were about 300 wounded lying in the gully … we lay there in the sun … each man looked after himself … and you would speak to a man, one of your own men and later on you would get no reply, they were dying, dying out as the day went on.

[Clark, quoted in C Pugsley, Gallipoli—The New Zealand Story, London, 1984, p.299]

Late in the afternoon Colonel Malone was killed in his headquarters trench by a shell fired from either a British naval vessel or from the Anzac artillery. Beside him that day died many men of the 7th Battalion, the Gloucestershire Regiment. These Englishmen, and some Welshmen of the 8th Welsh Pioneers, fought beside the New Zealanders throughout that day of battle. Charles Bean recorded that so heavy were the losses of the Gloucesters that eventually they were 'placed singly among the New Zealanders'. In trying to send reinforcements to the Wellingtons, the Auckland Infantry Battalion also suffered heavy casualties. At 10.30 pm on 8 August what was left of the Wellingtons was relieved. Charles Bean described this moment:

Of the 760 of the Wellington Battalion who had captured the height that morning, there came out only 70 unwounded or slightly wounded men. Throughout that day not one had dreamed of leaving his post. Their uniforms were torn, their knees broken. They had had no water since the morning; they could talk only in whispers; their eyes were sunken; their knees trembled; some broke down and cried.

[C E W Bean, The Story of Anzac, Vol II, Sydney, p.679]

As the New Zealand and British troops fought during 8 August at Chunuk Bair, General Monash’s 4th Australian Brigade met with disaster on the slopes leading to Kocacimentepe. The Australians were never able to find their way onto the correct spur of the range that led up to this peak. Throughout 7 August, in their hastily dug positions, they had been subjected to Turkish artillery fire and had suffered casualties. In the evening, Monash was ordered to send his men forward on 8 August to take Kocacimentepe. In the words of General Alexander Godley, the officer in charge of the Chunuk Bair operation, 'the assault should be carried out with loud cheering'.

In the early hours of 8 August, three battalions of the 4th Brigade—the 14th, 15th and 16th—set out. Dawn found them nowhere near the approach to Kocacimentepe. As the Australian battalions advanced over an exposed slope, Turkish machine guns opened up. Against this concentrated Turkish fire little progress was made. In the words of the Australian official history, the 15th Battalion, with most of its officers dead or wounded, 'broke southwards' for cover. One Australian who disappeared on 8 August as the 15th came under attack was Sergeant Joseph McKinley of Yass, New South Wales. A comrade wrote:

The men fell under furious fire. It was terrible; the men were falling like rabbits. Many were calling for mothers and sisters. They fell a good way, in many cases, from the Turkish lines. Sgt McKinley … did very good work on the Peninsula. It was commonly believed that he was killed on that morning during the advance. He was never seen again.

[Account from Red Cross file, Sergeant Joseph McKinley, AWM IDRL 428]

A Turkish attack, which then threatened the whole left flank of the 4th Brigade, was held off by half of the 16th Battalion. Meanwhile, more Turkish units began to appear and the position of the 14th and 15th Battalions looked increasingly hopeless. At 7.00 am Monash was told that the three battalions had suffered heavy casualties and that there was no hope of an attack on Kocacimentepe. Indeed, the 15th Battalion, which on 6 August had left North Beach 850 strong, had been reduced to 280 men. Fortunately for the Australians in their exposed positions, the machine gun sections of the 4th Brigade now appeared and covered the retreat. Thus ended the 4th Brigade’s attempt to capture Kocacimentepe, the highest vantage point of the Sari Bair Range.

During the period 7–10 August, what would have struck any observer looking along the great sweep of North Beach and Ocean Beach and up into the ranges, would have been the sight of thousands of wounded men. Many lay in pain on the heights and died before help could reach them. Those capable of walking or crawling made their way back down to aid posts and assembly points at the end of the valleys near the beach. Sergeant H M Jackson, 13th Battalion, AIF, described the scene:

From the trench down to the beach, about 4 miles, is one long line of grey stiff bodies of men who have died trying to get down to the beach unassisted.

[Sergeant Harold Jackson, 13th Battalion, AIF, Diary, 26 August 1915, AWM, IDRL/0592]

At the beach below Chunuk Bair a small jetty had been built—Embarkation Pier—to take off the wounded to the hospital ships but because boats bringing in supplies also used the pier, it was shelled by the Turks. From the pier, hundreds of walking wounded struggled down the 'long sap' to Ari Burnu point and on to Anzac Cove. As had happened at Anzac Cove during the landing of 25 April, the sheer numbers of wounded overwhelmed the medical services.

Throughout the battle the men of the Australian, New Zealand and British Army Medical Corps, along with the battalion stretcher-bearers, worked night and day to the point of personal collapse. Some died as they tried to carry the wounded down from the heights. Corporal William Rusden saw two lots of stretcher-bearers shot within minutes as they worked their way down a valley. In one of these valleys Private Ormond Burton, New Zealand Medical Corps, witnessed the plight of some 300 wounded:

No-one appeared to be responsible for them. Their wounds were uncared for and in the heat some were in a shocking state. They had no food and no water .... Many were hit a second and third time as they lay helplessly … Many died there—some able to see the hospital ships with their green bands and red crosses no distance out to sea. On one trip I gave my water bottle to a Turkish officer with four or five of his men about him. He gave every drop to his men and took not a mouthful himself. I saw nothing more dreadful during the whole war than the suffering of those forgotten men.

[Burton, quoted in C Pugsley, Gallipoli—The New Zealand Story, London, 1984, p.308]

On 9 August, the New Zealanders clung to Chunuk Bair. A mixed garrison of the Wellington Mounted Rifles and Otago Infantry Battalion manned the trenches at the summit and were subjected to the same fierce Turkish counter-attacks that had befallen the Wellington Infantry Battalion on the previous day. Below them, on the seaward side of the range, British and Indian reinforcements struggled in vain through the valleys to reach the New Zealanders but the only unit to gain the summit was the 6th Gurkha Battalion. At 5.23 am the Nepalese burst over a crest to the left of the New Zealanders on Chunuk Bair and saw the Dardanelles in the distance. Their commander, Major C J L Allanson, described the moment:

Then off we dashed, all hand in hand, most perfect and a wonderful sight. At the top we met the Turks … [and for] ten minutes we fought hand to hand, we hit and fisted, and used rifles and pistols as clubs and then the Turks turned and fled, and I felt a very proud man: the key to the whole peninsula was ours… We dashed about 200 feet [61 metres] down towards Maidos [a Turkish village on the Dardanelles] but only got about 200 feet when suddenly our Navy put twelve-inch monitor shells into us and all was terrible confusion. It was a deplorable disaster … and we had to go back.

By the evening of 9 August the New Zealanders were exhausted. Countless determined Turkish attacks had taken their toll. Trooper Harry Brown of the Wellington Mounted Rifles described the desolate scene in the trenches:

If only Abdul had known how many were left … but there, he didn’t and possibly he was as exhausted as ourselves for New Zealanders had not died for nothing. In the little neighbouring trench, over which no Turk had come alive, the only sign of life among the many there, was the stump of an arm which now and then waved feebly for help and a voice called ‘New Zealand’ to four listeners who could give or get no aid to him.

[Brown, quoted in C Pugsley, Gallipoli—The New Zealand Story, London, 1984, p 311]

At 8.00 pm on 9 August the New Zealanders finally left Chunuk Bair. In their place stood soldiers of the British 6th Battalion of the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment and the 5th Battalion of the Wiltshire Regiment. Beyond the British trenches, the Turks were massing for a great attack.

The Turks had been highly alarmed by the threat at Chunuk Bair and Suvla to their whole position at Gallipoli. Fighting back the Australian diversionary attack in the south at Lone Pine was Major Zeki. Zeki later told the Australian official historian:

The situation at Kanli Sirt ['Bloody Ridge'—the Turkish name for Lone Pine] was now better, and it was well known that the danger was elsewhere. Indeed all these days I had been looking over my left shoulder seeing your shells burst on the rear slope of Chunuk Bair. Although the situation at Kanli Sirt was critical I could scarcely keep my eyes on it—I knew things must be happening at Chunuk Bair which were more critical by far, and if you succeeded there, what use would be our efforts at Kanli Sirt.

[Zeki, quoted in C E W Bean, Gallipoli Mission, Canberra, 1948, pp.198–199]

To take charge at Chunuk Bair, the Turkish high command now dispatched Colonel Mustafa Kemal, a senior officer who led from the front. On 9 August, Kemal routed the British as they advanced across the Suvla plain. In the evening he rode up to Chunuk Bair where the Turks were faltering under the British naval bombardment and the strong stand of the New Zealanders. Convinced that the time had come for an all-out counter-attack, Kemal ordered his men forward at dawn on 10 August in a bayonet charge:

The blanket of night had lifted. Now was the hour for the attack. I looked at my watch. It was nearly 4.30 am. After a few minutes it would become quite light and the enemy would be able to see our troops. Should the enemy infantry open fire with his machine guns and should the land and naval guns open fire on our troops in our close packed formation I didn’t doubt the impossibility of the attack .... I greeted the men and addressed them:

'Soldiers! There is no doubt that we can defeat the enemy opposing us. But don’t you hurry, let me go in front first. When you see the wave of my whip all of you rush forward together!'

Then I went to a point forward of the assault line, and, raising my whip, gave the signal for the assault.

[Kemal, quoted in RR James, Gallipoli, London, 1999, p.299]

The Turks rushed forward and swept the British from the heights of Chunuk Bair. They dashed on down the seaward slope only to be slaughtered by the British naval guns and the New Zealand machine guns. Sergeant Daniel Curham of the Wellington Infantry Battalion was operating one of those machine guns:

I knew the gun was in good order and I was still fingering it and looking up the hill and I saw a most amazing sight. A great mass of Turks coming over the hill … . I had my gun trained on the very spot and all I had to do was press the trigger and, of course, they fell all over the place.

[Curham, quoted in C Pugsley, Gallipoli—The New Zealand Story, London, 1984, p.312]

The Turks were held but the battle for the summit, which had so nearly ended in a complete rout for the British Empire soldiers, was over and with it the August offensive. The Turks had regained Chunuk Bair and no British Empire soldier ever again beheld the Dardanelles from that peak.