The Gallipoli Story Read online

  This revised edition published by Allen & Unwin in 2015

  First published by Penguin Books Australia in 2003

  Copyright in original edition © Patrick Carlyon, 2003

  Copyright in revised edition © Patrick Carlyon, 2015

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

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  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  A Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available from the National Library of Australia

  www.trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 978 1 76011 247 9

  eISBN 978 1 74343 974 6

  Cover and text design by Sandra Nobes

  Cover photographs courtesy of the Australian War Memorial (top image: P06003.001; bottom image: G00903)

  Maps by Alan Laver, Shelley Communications

  Typesetting adjustments made by Midland Typesetters, Australia

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  CHAPTER ONE A Black Coast

  CHAPTER TWO The Rush to Enlist

  CHAPTER THREE War Games

  CHAPTER FOUR Courage Meets Chaos

  CHAPTER FIVE Digging In

  CHAPTER SIX Life at Anzac

  CHAPTER SEVEN A Private and a General

  CHAPTER EIGHT Play Ya Again Next Saturday

  CHAPTER NINE Flies and Bully Beef

  CHAPTER TEN Best Laid Plans

  CHAPTER ELEVEN Of all the Bastard Places

  CHAPTER TWELVE The Left Hook

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN Murder at Dawn

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN The Last Stand

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN Intrigues

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN The Barometer Swings

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Farewell to the Fallen

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Judgment

  Appendix I

  Appendix II

  Select Bibliography

  Endnotes

  Acknowledgments

  Photographic Credits

  List of Maps

  Europe before the Great War

  The Gallipoli Theatre

  The Landing – 25 April

  Anzac Terrain

  The August Offensive

  Conversion Table

  Imperial measurements were used in 1915, as opposed to the metric system we all use today.

  1 inch 2.54 centimetres 1 centimetre 0.394 inches

  1 foot 30.5 centimetres 1 metre 3.28 feet

  1 yard 0.914 metres 1 metre 1.09 yards

  1 mile 1.61 kilometres 1 kilometre 0.621 miles

  Author’s Note

  It is 5 am on Melbourne’s St Kilda Road. Streams of people trudge through the darkness, as though they are being pulled towards the Shrine of Remembrance.

  No one has ordered these people to get out of bed and trek through the chill. Yet 100 years since Australians landed at Gallipoli, the Anzac Day dawn service attracts a record crowd of about 60 000 people.

  Among them are children. Many were not born when the last surviving Gallipoli veteran, Alec Campbell, died in 2002. More and more young people, here in Melbourne and in towns and cities across Australia, turn out each year to commemorate our fallen soldiers.

  The Gallipoli campaign was a military folly, but it long ago came to double as something else – a measure of national character. Its place in the national imagination seems set to keep on growing. Tens of thousands of pilgrims missed a place in the ballot for the Anzac Cove dawn service in April 2015.

  Anzac Day, for many Australians, is a special moment each year when we think most deeply about who we are as a people. And the story of Gallipoli and its diggers thrives as one of our most compelling legends.

  But there is more to Gallipoli than legends. They were all brave Australians who landed on that Turkish shore, but some were scared Australians too. The Anzacs fought well, but they also made mistakes.

  They larked in the ocean and joked with their mates, and they missed their families back home. They went looking for adventure; instead, they stumbled into misery.

  This book sets out to explore the events of Gallipoli in 1915. I have tried to find the facts, but it is not always possible to separate fact from legend. Gallipoli may sound romantic to us, but it certainly wasn’t for the men who lived and died there; their stories are about hardship and loss and endurance. In those experiences, a century later, rests our story.

  Patrick Carlyon

  Melbourne, 2015

  EUROPE BEFORE THE GREAT WAR

  CHAPTER ONE

  A Black Coast

  Pre-dawn, Sunday 25 April 1915

  They huddled in lifeboats. Packs pinched their shoulders and their rifles felt heavier than usual. Legs stiffened and minds raced. What if a machine-gunner spotted them out here, sitting up like ducks on a pond? The soldiers had sharpened their bayonets the day before. A few bragged about how many Turks they would kill. The Turks would probably run away, someone said. No one believed that now.

  They peered into the darkness and saw nothing. Just blackness. No one knew what lay ahead. Hell, they’d never heard of Gallipoli until a few weeks ago. A few weren’t even sure how to spell it. Some smiled to show they weren’t scared. Some squeezed their eyes tightly and prayed that their legs would work. Just blackness. Why was it taking so long?

  There were thirty-six lifeboats. Twelve steamboats towed them. There were thirty to forty soldiers in each lifeboat. These men would be the first of 12000 Australians to land. Soon they would know that war wasn’t as romantic as the people back home had said it was. The soldiers were farmers and lawyers, accountants and labourers. They had been the first to volunteer when war was declared in August 1914. They joined up thinking they were going to fight Germans in France. And here they were, bobbing on the Aegean Sea, wondering if Turkish snipers could see them through the mist.

  The landing was supposed to be a surprise. But the Turks had to know now, didn’t they? Surely they could hear the steamboats chugging? Shall we been seen, or not? thought Sergeant W. E. Turnley, a telephone mechanic from Sydney. Why don’t the - - - - - - - - fire at us?

  The first lifeboats neared the shore. The steamboats released their tows. Oars plopped in the still water. A hill jutted above the shore. It was like a black fist warning invaders to stay away. Were there Turks in the shadows below?

  A flame suddenly crackled from the funnel of one of the steamboats. It rose a metre and flared for twenty seconds or more. The engine had gone amiss. At once a yellow light gleamed high in the hills to the south. Now the Turks knew.

  The boats were about to nudge into the wrong beach. They had bunched up in front of Ari Burnu, a steep rise tumbling to the sea. Perhaps the tides had pushed the boats together. More likely, the warships that had brought the troops to within a few kilometres of the shore had anchored too far north. Not that it mattered now. In the smudgy light before dawn, the soldiers gazed up at soaring cliffs. They were supposed to be looking at a pleasant beach with a low hill behind it.

  ‘Tell the colonel that the damn fools have taken us a mile too far north,’ the naval commander yelled in the darknes
s.

  ‘Look at that,’ shouted Captain Ray Leane.

  A man stood on a hill ahead. There was a shout from the shore. A single shot rang out. A bullet hissed over the Australians’ heads. Silence. More shots. More hisses. The Gallipoli campaign had begun.

  4.29 am

  Queenslanders were the first to leap into the water and slip on the pebbly seafloor. Lance Corporal George Mitchell, of South Australia, was about 100 metres from shore. He saw a line of rifle-flashes near the crest of Ari Burnu. ‘Klock-klock-klock, wee-wee-wee came the little messengers of death,’ Mitchell later said. ‘Then it opened out in a terrific chorus . . . The key was being turned in the lock of the lid of hell.’

  Men crouched low in the boats to avoid the bullets. Here and there they crumpled ‘with a sharp moan or low gurgling cry’. They had been told the bullets would sound like small birds flying overhead. A cheeky private looked up and said to his mate: ‘Just like little birds, ain’t they, Snow?’

  Captain Eric Tulloch would be wounded later in the day. The brewer would see out four years of war only to be killed by a burglar in his Melbourne home. For now, he just wanted to reach the shore. The boat on his left was drifting. The men on board appeared to be slouching. They had been hit by Turkish fire.

  Lieutenant Ivor Margetts was a young teacher from a private school in Hobart. He was 193 centimetres tall and a keen Aussie Rules footballer. He landed a few minutes after the first wave. His battalion had piled into their first tow ‘amid a perfect hail of bullets, shrapnel and the rattle of machine-gun’. He was ordering men into the second tow when the soldier in front of him fell to the deck, shot in the head. Others were hit as they were rowed to shore.

  ‘Get out,’ Margetts yelled, as his boat crunched on the shingle. His men jumped over the sides, arms above their heads to keep their rifles dry. All along the beach dozens of men splashed in the water. The heavy packs pulled them under. Mates tried to haul men up but some drowned. Margetts slipped twice before getting his footing.

  He staggered onto the sand. Bullets struck sparks at the men’s feet. Shrapnel shells exploded like puffs of cotton wool above. Turkish fire screeched and boomed and rattled. Margetts was luckier than some. Four boats, carrying 140 men of the 7th Battalion, came under machine-gun fire. More than one hundred men would be dead or wounded when the boats reached the shallows.

  Perhaps Donald and Arthur Veitch were among them. They enlisted in Fitzroy, Melbourne, on 17 August 1914. Arthur was only sixteen years old but he told the recruitment officers that he was nineteen. Donald was in his early forties but said he was younger. They sat in the same lifeboat. They probably died side by side in the boat or as they clambered ashore. Back home, Mary Veitch would grieve the loss of her husband and son and wonder how she would raise eleven children on her own.

  Margetts and his men took cover under a ridge and wriggled out of their packs. Wet sand clogged their unloaded rifles. Margetts peered up. How would he get to the top? To his right, men were already pushing through the prickly bush on Ari Burnu. They clutched at roots to haul themselves up.

  Margetts dragged himself up a tawny slope that was even steeper than Ari Burnu. He came upon a trench but the Turks had already retreated to the tangle of gullies and ravines ahead. They shot back at the Australians, their bullets humming like bees. Margetts found his commanding officer, Colonel L. F. Clarke, a 57-year-old shipping manager.

  Clarke was panting from his climb. It wasn’t his fault he didn’t know where he was. His troops were scattered across hundreds of metres. So much for his orders. They’d said he was to form up and wait in reserve. Clarke was scribbling a message to headquarters – wherever that was – when he was shot in the heart. He died with a notebook in one hand and a pencil in the other.

  Some soldiers remembered their orders and raced ahead. Others wandered about searching for their commanders.

  It wasn’t meant to be like this.

  Major Walter McNicoll, a teacher from Geelong, had fretted over his 6th Battalion troops as they climbed into the lifeboats, silent and scared. ‘Then began the strain of waiting,’ he wrote later.

  How would we face it? The question was never spoken aloud, but each man asked it of himself, and wondered if his neighbours were doing so too. They were trained to the minute . . . their minds prepared to guide those bodies rightly to meet any and every emergency. But in all this training the big element of ‘the man who hits back’ had been absent . . . The bayonet would no longer be thrust viciously into an inoffensive and spineless sack. Our future targets would not wait patiently for the marker to flag the result. How would we face it?

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Rush to Enlist

  Joe Cumberland was said to be the youngest train driver in New South Wales. He was a friendly soul, tall with blue eyes, and one of the first to enlist from the Hunter Valley when England declared war on Germany. Cumberland did not need to know how the Great War, as it would be later called, began. Few Australians did. They simply knew that Germans had invaded Belgium. Cumberland was unquestioningly loyal to the British Empire. If Britain went to war, so did Australia. No need to think about it.

  Europe had lurched towards war after a Serbian terrorist shot dead an Austrian archduke in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, on 28 June 1914. We now know this as ‘the shot that echoed around the world’. Austria had annexed Bosnia several years earlier, which antagonised the Serbs. But there is no evidence that the terrorist was acting for the Serbian government. Austria pretended that he was – it had wanted to invade Serbia for years. Now Austria placed impossible demands on its neighbour.

  Russia backed Serbia. Germany backed Austria. By late July 1914, Europe had divided into two armed camps. On one side were Germany and the Austro–Hungarian Empire, on the other, France and Russia. Britain tried to find a diplomatic solution, but Austria kept threatening Serbia and on 28 July, declared war. Now the alliances came into play. Russia went to war against Austria. Germany invaded France, through Belgium. Britain, bound by treaty to defend Belgium, declared war on Germany. This automatically brought Australia and New Zealand into the war.

  Few in August 1914 thought the conflict would last long. Many thought the war would be over by Christmas. Some nations, including Turkey, waited. They wanted to see who might win before they made a commitment. Unlike World War Two, the Great War wasn’t about a clash of beliefs. There was no creed, such as Nazism, to be challenged. There was no madman, such as Adolf Hitler, loose in Europe.

  The Great War grew out of jealousies and fears and misunderstandings that had been simmering for decades. Germany wanted to expand its borders. Austria wanted to extend its influence in Serbia and the Balkans. Russia also eyed the Balkans – and the Turkish capital, Constantinople. None of these nations had any idea that they would create a conflict that would leave 21 million people dead.

  Cumberland celebrated his twenty-first birthday on board a troopship sailing to Egypt. His brother Oliver, twenty-five years old, had rushed from his job on a Queensland cattle station to be with him. Oliver wanted to protect his brother. Their sister Una fretted over them. She wore a purple and green brooch – the 2nd Battalion colours – as a good luck charm. The brothers sent her letters asking that she take good care of their little sister Dorrie.

  ‘I got in by the skin of my teeth,’ Oliver wrote to Una the day before they sailed.

  But I know Una that in your heart you won’t blame me. I could not see Joe go alone and remain behind myself and I think it will be better now that we are together. I promise you I will never leave Joe wounded on the field whilst I have the strength to carry him off, and I know he will do the same for me.

  Australian men rushed to enlist. Some 30000 Australians and New Zealanders sailed in the first convoy, which left for Europe less than three months after war was declared on 4 August 1914. By the end of that year, almost 53000 men had joined up across Australia. Many were more scared of missing out on the war than fighting in it. Most thought the Bri
tish Empire would destroy the Huns, as the Germans were called, within six months.

  People lined the streets to cheer the volunteers parading through capital cities. Thousands of Union Jacks fluttered among the crowd at Parliament House in Melbourne. Volunteers received civic send-offs in country towns. It was as if Australia had been waiting for the opportunity to present itself on the world stage. ‘It is our baptism of fire,’ declared the Sydney Morning Herald.

  Enlistment Figures During 1914

  Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec

  NSW Total of 20 761

  VIC 6326 2929 2512 1366 1714

  QLD 1481 1556 1386 673 1054

  WA Total of 4096

  SA 2012 921 493 658 728

  TAS 981 487 167 163 97

  Crowds waited outside the Age office in Melbourne for the latest war news. They broke into renditions of ‘Rule Britannia’ and ‘Soldiers Of The King’. Faith in the British Empire was blind. Strange as it seems now, most Australians thought the British race the most superior on earth. In the 1911 census, 96 per cent of the population of 4.8 million considered themselves British, even if their families had lived in Australia for generations.

  Both candidates for Prime Minister at the 1914 federal election, Joseph Cook and Andrew Fisher, were born in Britain and had worked in coalmines as children. Neither man disputed that Australia should put 20000 Australian men at the British government’s disposal. Campaigning in a Victorian country town, Fisher declared that Australia would defend the motherland ‘to our last man and our last shilling’.

  ‘Hundreds of thousands of Australians had unconsciously been waiting even before the war for such an event,’ writes historian Geoffrey Blainey. ‘Without knowing what event was needed they longed for Australia to parade in triumph before the nations of Europe. Here at last, they decided, was that triumph.’

  Australia had much to learn about war. When death rates later soared and enlistment numbers sagged, the Australian government tried to conscript men. But the public wouldn’t have it. By 1918, nearly 65 per cent of the 332000 Australian men who had joined up had been killed or wounded. Nearly 60000 were dead.