World War, 1914-1918 -- Campaigns -- Turkey -- Gallipoli Peninsula
The day passed thus, but at nightfall the Turks' fire paused, and the
men came ashore from the _River Clyde_, almost unharmed. They joined the
survivors on the beach and at once attacked the old fort and the village
above it. These works were strongly held by the enemy. All had been
ruined by the fire from the fleet, but in the rubble and ruin of old
masonry there were thousands of hidden riflemen backed by machine guns.
Again and again they beat off our attacks, for there was a bright moon
and they knew the ground, and our men had to attack uphill over wire and
broken earth and heaped stones in all the wreck and confusion and
strangeness of war at night in a new place. Some of the Dublins and
Munsters went astray in the ruins, and were wounded far from their
fellows and so lost. The Turks became more daring after dark; while the
light lasted they were checked by the _River Clyde's_ machine guns, but
at midnight they gathered unobserved and charged. They came right down
onto the beach, and in the darkness and moonlight much terrible and
confused fighting followed. Many were bayoneted, many shot, there was
wild firing and crying, and then the Turk attack melted away, and their
machine guns began again. When day dawned, the survivors of the landing
party were crouched under the shelter of the sandbank; they had had no
rest; most of them had been fighting all night, all had landed across
the corpses of their friends. No retreat was possible, nor was it
dreamed of, but to stay there was hopeless. Lieutenant Colonel
Doughty-Wylie gathered them together for an attack: the fleet opened a
terrific fire upon the ruins of the fort and village, and the landing
party went forward again, fighting from bush to bush and from stone to
stone, till the ruins were in their hands. Shells still fell among them,
single Turks, lurking under cover, sniped them and shot them, but the
landing had been made good, and V beach was secured to us.
This was the worst and the bloodiest of all the landings.
_The Landing at W Beach, under Cape Tekke._
The men told off for this landing were the 1st Battalion Lancashire
Fusiliers, supported (later) by the Worcester Regiment.
The men were landed at six in the morning from ships' boats run ashore
by picket-boats. On landing, they rushed the wire entanglements, broke
through them, with heavy loss, and won to the dead ground under the
cliffs. The ships drew nearer to the beach and opened heavy fire upon
the Turks, and the landing party stormed the cliffs and won the trenches.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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