Days to Remember: The British Empire in the Great WarBuchan, John
History
Days to Remember: The British Empire in the Great War
Buchan, John
World War, 1914-1918
Let us assume that an aeroplane enabled us to move up and down the
shores of the peninsula and observe the progress of the different
landings. About one in the morning the ships arrive at a point 5 miles
from the Gallipoli shores. At 1.20 boats are lowered, and the troops
line up on the decks. Then they embark in the flotillas, and steam
pinnaces begin to tow them shorewards in the hazy half-light before
dawn. The Australians destined for Gaba Tepe are carried in destroyers
which take them close in to the shore.
The operations are timed so that the troops reach the beaches at
daybreak. Slowly and very quietly the boats and destroyers steal
towards the land. A little before 5 an enemy’s searchlight flares out.
The boats are now in shallow water under the Gaba Tepe cliffs, and the
men are leaping ashore. Then comes a blaze of rifle-fire from the
Turkish trenches on the beach, and the men who have landed charge them
with the bayonet. The whole cliff seems to leap into light, for
everywhere trenches and caverns have been dug in the slopes. The fire
falls most heavily on the men still in the boats, who have the difficult
task of waiting as the slow minutes bring them shoreward.
The Australians do not linger. They carry the lines on the beach with
cold steel, and find themselves looking up at a steep cliff a hundred
feet high. In open order they dive into the scrub, and scramble up the
loose yellow rocks. By a fortunate accident their landing is farther
north than was intended, just under the cliffs of Sari Bair. At Gaba
Tepe the long slope would have given the enemy a great advantage in
defence; but here there is only the 40-foot beach and then the cliffs.
He who knows the Ægean in April will remember those fringed sea walls
and bare brown slopes. From a distance they look as arid as the Syrian
desert, but when the traveller draws near he finds a paradise of curious
and beautiful flowers—anemone, grape hyacinth, rock rose, asphodel, and
amaryllis. Up this rock garden the Australians race, among the purple
cistus and the matted creepers and the thickets of myrtle. They have
left their packs at the foot, and scale the bluffs like chamois. It is
an achievement to rank with Wolfe’s escalade of the Heights of Abraham.
Presently they are at the top, and come under the main Turkish fire.
But the ground gives good cover, and they set about entrenching the
crest of the cliffs to cover the boats’ landing. This is the position
at Sari Bair at 7 a.m.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive