Charge at the Nek 7 August 1915

The attack

The Nek was at the northern end of the Anzac front. This narrow bridge of land stretched between 2 hills – Russell's Top and Baby 700. The topography of the Nek made it challenging to attack but easy to defend.

Russell's Top was held by the Anzacs. But the Turks held trenches on the slopes of Baby 700, which overlooked Australian-held positions below.

Lack of planned support

The plan was to attack after New Zealand troops had captured the heights of Chunuk Bair on the night of 6 August. The New Zealanders were then to attack the Turkish position at the Nek from behind while the Australians attacked from the front.

The New Zealanders were unsuccessful in taking the heights on 6 August. Despite this, it was decided that the Australian assault at the Nek should still go ahead as a feint. The hope was that the charge at the Nek would distract the Turkish troops. If successful, it would give the New Zealanders another chance to capture Chunuk Bair.

Mistimed start

The men of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade moved into position at Russell's Top before dawn. New Zealander Howitzer guns had been shelling Turkish positions at and near the Nek through the night.

At 4 am, before the ground assault started, the Allies intensified the bombardment at the Nek. The British 26th Mountain Battery and a British naval destroyer joined the Howitzers. The bombardment was intended to provide cover for the Australians during the attack.

The barrage of shelling from the field and naval guns came to an abrupt end, and too early – 7 minutes before 4:30 am. Possibly due to poorly synchronised watches. Despite this, the officers of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade at the Nek did not adapt their plans. They held back their men until the appointed time for the charge.

The 7-minute time lag gave the Turkish soldiers time to emerge from shelter and set up their machine guns. They were ready for an Allied ground assault.

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First 2 waves

The men followed their officers' orders and rose from their trenches to charge.

The first wave of Australians was immediately shot down by devastating rifle and machine-gun fire. The second line of troops climbed over the dead and wounded and suffered the same fate.

Major Tom Todd was in command of the third wave. After the first 2 waves, Todd suggested a cancellation of the attack to his regimental commander, Lieutenant Colonel Noel Brazier. The officer in charge of the 3rd Brigade, Lieutenant Colonel John Antill, refused to halt the assault. He was told that some Australians had reached the Turkish trenches. War historian Charles Bean's official account mentions this:

Yet about this time observing officers stationed in the trenches on Russell's Top undoubtedly saw, through the haze of dust raised by machine-gun bullets, a small red and yellow flag put up in the enemy's front line.

[CEW Bean, The Story of ANZAC: The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918, vol II, 11th edn, p 615]

Last 2 waves

The third wave went over and met the same fate as the previous 2 waves.

Sometime during or after the third wave, word had finally reached Hughes at his forward position. He gave an order to stop any further attacks. Sadly, this arrived too late. Around half of the men in the fourth wave also went forward into the same hail of gunfire. Some say they saw a signal to attack, while others maintain no such order was given.

By around 4:45 am, the attacks at the Nek had stopped. Three waves and part of a fourth had been quickly shot down by the Turkish small arms fire.

Australian casualties

The Australian casualties of the action were devastating. Of the 600 Australian troops involved, 234 died during or soon after the attack with another 138 wounded.

It's worth noting that some sources differ in their definition of a casualty. This can lead to different values being listed in different publications. The figures listed here are taken from Bean's Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918.

Australians involved

The conditions for the 3rd Light Horse Brigade at the Nek were extraordinarily challenging. They had to contend with tactical errors in timing and poor chances against strong enemy defences. Despite these conditions, Bean's account of the event shows the soldiers were courageous, determined and loyal.

The attacking force at the Nek were men of the 8th and 10th Light Horse regiments. The 9th Light Horse was also present, although they were the appointed reserve unit. The 8th Light Horse was made up of men from Victoria. The 10th Light Horse was raised in Western Australia.

Charles Bean later wrote of the men of the 10th Light Horse who went over in the third and fourth waves at the Nek:

With that regiment went the flower of the youth of Western Australia, sons of the old pioneering families, youngsters-in some cases two and three from the same home-who had flocked to Perth at the outbreak of war with their own horses and saddlery in order to secure enlistment in a mounted regiment of the A.I.F. Men known and popular, the best loved leaders in sport and work in the West, then rushed straight to their death.

One of the Western Australians who survived the charge at Nek was Hugo Throssell VC. He was leading a section of the line in the fourth and final wave. Although Hugo's wave was quickly called back to the trenches, 82 men and officers were killed in just a few minutes. Hugo later described the battle of the Nek as 'that FOOL charge'.

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Trooper Rowland Peake of the 10th Light Horse wrote an account of the charge for his local paper. He was invalided back to Australia late in 1915:

We got the order at 3 oclock in the morning to “Stand to arms.” We were then marched up to the firing line and told to fix bayonets and wait the order to charge. Hour after hour we waited for that order, and at last just as the sun was rising we got the order. We then scrambled out of our trenches and made for the Turkish trenches. They met us with a terrible hail of bullets from rifles, machine guns, shrapnel and bombs; our men fell like hail stones everywhere.

[Letter from Trooper R Peake of the 10th Light Horse about August fighting – 1915 'In the Thick of It with 10th Light Horse.', The Eastern Recorder]

Private Frank Merritt of the 8th Light Horse wrote his own account of the experience:

I am sending you this letter which I thought I would never be lucky enough to write. We have been out for a big job and our poor regiment has almost been wiped out. Only two officers left, and I am one of 20 to return out of 600 of the poor old 8th. We were ordered to stand to arms at 4 a.m on the 7th August and rush the neck that divides us from the enemy. I was a bomb thrower, loaded with 10 bombs. Previously the enemy's trenches had been subjected to a heavy shelling, but did not succeed in clearing the way for our advance, which was made under the withering fire of eight machine guns (firing 600rounds per minute) in a space of 30 chains. It was terrible; it simply mowed the men down like grass. I got caught in the barbed wire entanglements, which was awful, and my legs are cut about considerably. The war ships, eight of them, kept up a heavy bombardment; it was beyond description. Old timers, who were at the landing, said that was like hell but that this was like 20 hells in one.

[Letter from Private F.L. Merritt of 8th Light Horse – 1915 'The 8th Light Horse.', South Gippsland Shire Echo]

Bigger picture

The Nek was one part of a broader Allied strategy, the August Offensive. The objective of the offensive was to break out of the beachhead and extend the front line to higher ground. It was thought that this would lead to an eventual allied victory.

There were some small successes. At places like Lone Pine, Australian troops managed to capture and keep the Turkish positions after days of tough fighting.

The New Zealanders also eventually took control of Chunuk Bair, but it was retaken by the Turks soon afterwards.

The landings at Suvla Bay were another important part of the offensive. Mainly a British component of the strategy, 300 Australians of the Royal Naval Bridging Train were also involved. Despite some early success, the British also failed in their attack.

Despite the moments of success, the August Offensive ended in an Allied defeat. The failure resulted in a return to a stalemate. This result did however help to quicken the end of the campaign.

Conditions and terrain

The charge of the Nek took place in early August of 1915. This was during the middle of the Turkish summer. The timing of the attack at 4:30 am means it should not have been too hot. However, when the heat did arrive later in the day, it would have added to the woes of the survivors.

The Nek itself was relatively flat in comparison to much of the peninsula. This was due to its position as a pass between the 2 peaks of Russel's Top and Baby 700. One of the difficulties facing the Australians was that the Turkish trenches were on the higher ground. Another was that the Nek acted as a bottleneck, meaning the Australian lines could not spread out while advancing. This is important as it meant the Australians would have made an easy target from the Turkish positions.

Naming of the Nek

Two main theories exist about the naming of the Nek.

The first idea comes from the Nek's physical form as a narrow pass linking 2 hills, like a neck.

The second idea is that the Nek resembled a location some soldiers had seen during the South African (Second Boer) War. The word nek means 'mountain pass' or 'crevice' in Afrikaans.

The Turkish name for the Nek is Jessaret Tepe.

The sketch below is a first-hand depiction of the ridge lines at Gallipoli, drawn by Captain Sydney James Campbell at Gallipoli in 1915. It shows the relatively flat area of Anzac Cove and then the second and third ridgelines that the Anzacs never fully captured. It shows the first hill captured on 25 April, Plugge's Plateau, to Walker's Ridge. The Nek is located to the east of Walker's Ridge. Captain Campbell died 4 days after drawing this sketch, after being wounded in a Turkish shelling attack.

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Aftermath

Charles Bean felt the Light Horse charge at the Nek 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 waterbottle. But as the sun of that burning day climbed higher, such movement ceased. Over the whole summit the figures lay still in the quivering heat.

Both the charge at the Nek and the larger offensive failed. By the middle of August, the stalemate had resumed.

Not long after the August Offensive, the British agreed to withdraw all forces from Gallipoli. The withdrawal began in December 1915 with a successful evacuation of troops from Anzac Cove and Suvla Bay. It was completed in January 1916 when British and French troops evacuated from Cape Helles.

Commemoration

The men who died at the Nek are commemorated in Australia and overseas. One such place is the Nek Cemetery. The cemetery is on what was once no-man's-land between the trenches.

Many of those who died at the Nek are commemorated in Lone Pine Cemetery on the Memorial to the Missing. Men of the 8th Light Horse are commemorated on panels 5 to 8 and men of the 10th Light Horse on panels 9 to 11.

The 8th Light Horse is no longer an active unit of the Australian Army. Its guidon (identity flag) is laid up and on display in the Crypt of Melbourne's Shrine of Remembrance.

A cenotaph dedicated to the 10th Light Horse sits in Perth's Kings Park.

Visiting the Nek today

In 1919, Lieutenant Cyril Hughes of the Graves Registration Unit found and buried the unidentified remains of more than 300 men. They had died in an area described by Charles Bean as a 'strip the size of three tennis courts'.

Of the 326 men buried at the Nek Cemetery only 10 were identified. There are 5 headstones, 4 New Zealanders and one Australian. A further 5 Australians known to be buried there have special memorials beneath the cross.

The Nek Cemetery is open to the public year-round and has wheelchair access through the main entrance.