Audio transcript
At the Nek Cemetery it is difficult to realise that there are 326 men buried here. Where are their graves? Beneath the cross are a few headstones, mostly Special Memorials, memorials to soldiers believed to be buried here. Some of these are to Australian light horsemen and carry the date 7 August 1915, the day these men, along with 234 of their comrades, were killed in action at the Nek. In 1919, Lieutenant Cyril Hughes of the Graves Registration Unit found and buried here the unidentifiable remains of more than 300 Australians, men who had died in an area described by Charles Bean, official historian, as a 'strip the size of three tennis courts'.
These Australian deaths occurred during and shortly after one of the most tragic Australian actions on Gallipoli - the charge at dawn on 7 August 1915 of the 8th and 10th Light Horse Regiments at the Nek. The purpose of the charge was to tie Turkish attention down to this sector as New Zealand troops were supposedly seizing the heights of Chunuk Bair during the great August offensive. This would distract the enemy at the critical moment as the Turks holding the trenches at the Nek realised that Allied soldiers might be coming down the slopes behind them. This did not happen, and the light horsemen rose from their trenches, immediately behind where the cemetery is today, to be met with a hail of bullets. Within three-quarters of an hour three waves of Australians, and part of a fourth, had been cut down, most before they even got near the Turkish lines.
Charles Bean felt this charge would go down as one of the bravest acts in the history of Australians at war. In memorable words, Bean described the scene:
The Nek could be seen crowded with their bodies. At first here and there a man raised his arm to the sky, or tried to drink from his water bottle. But as the sun climbed higher … such movement ceased. Over the whole summit the figures lay still in the quivering sun.