World War, 1914-1918 -- Campaigns -- Turkey -- Gallipoli Peninsula
At Bulair one man, Lieutenant Freyberg, swam ashore from a Destroyer,
towing a little raft of flares. Near the shore he lit two of these
flares, then, wading onto the land, he lit others at intervals along the
coast, then he wandered inland, naked, on a personal reconnaissance, and
soon found a large Turkish army strongly entrenched. Modesty forbade
further intrusion. He went back to the beach and swam off to his
Destroyer, could not find her in the dark, and swam for several miles,
was exhausted and cramped, and was at last picked up, nearly dead. This
magnificent act of courage and endurance, done by one unarmed man, kept
a large Turkish army at Bulair during the critical hours of the landing.
"The Constantinople papers were filled with accounts of the repulse of
the great attack at Bulair." The flares deceived the Turks even more
completely than had been hoped.
While these operations were securing our hold upon the extreme end of
the Peninsula, the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps were making
good their landing on the Ægean coast, to the north of Gaba Tepe. They
sailed from Mudros on the 24th, arrived off the coast of the Peninsula
at about half-past one on the morning of the 25th, and there under a
setting moon, in calm weather, they went on board the boats which were
to take them ashore. At about half-past three the tows left the ships
and proceeded in darkness to the coast.
Gaba or Kaba Tepe is a steep cliff or promontory about 70 feet high with
a whitish nose and something the look of a blunt-nosed torpedo or
porpoise. It is a forbidding-looking snout of land, covered with scrub
where it is not too steep for roots to hold, and washed by deep water.
About a mile to the north of it there is a possible landing place, and
north of that again a long and narrow strip of beach between two little
headlands. This latter beach cannot be seen from Gaba Tepe. The ground
above these beaches is exceedingly steep sandy cliff, broken by two
great gulleys or ravines, which run inland. All the ground, except in
one patch in the southern ravine, where there is a sort of meadow of
grass, is densely covered with scrub, mostly between two and three feet
high. Inland from the beach, the land of the Peninsula rises in steep,
broken hills and spurs, with clumps of pine upon them, and dense
undergrowths of scrub. The men selected for this landing were the 3rd
Brigade of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, followed and
supported by the 1st and 2nd Brigades.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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