New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915: April-September, 1915Various
History
New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915: April-September, 1915
Various
World War, 1914-1918
It was a trying moment, but the Australian volunteers rose as a man to
the occasion. They waited neither for orders nor for the boats to reach
the beach, but, springing out into the sea, they waded ashore and,
forming some sort of a rough line, rushed straight on the flashes of
the enemy's rifles. Their magazines were not even charged. So they just
went in with cold steel, and I believe I am right in saying that the
first Ottoman Turk since the last Crusade received an Anglo-Saxon
bayonet in him at five minutes after 5 A.M. on April 25. It was over in
a minute. The Turks in this first trench were bayoneted or ran away, and
a Maxim gun was captured.
Then the Australians found themselves facing an almost perpendicular
cliff of loose sandstone, covered with thick shrubbery, and somewhere
half way up the enemy had a second trench strongly held, from which they
poured a terrible fire on the troops below and the boats pulling back to
the destroyers for the second landing party.
Here was a tough proposition to tackle in the darkness, but these
colonials are practical above all else, and they went about it in a
practical way. They stopped a few moments to pull themselves together
and to get rid of their packs, which no troops should carry in an
attack, and then charged their magazines. Then this race of athletes
proceeded to scale the cliffs without responding to the enemy's fire.
They lost some men, but did not worry, and in less than a quarter of an
hour the Turks were out of their second position, either bayoneted or in
full flight.
THE THIRD DISPATCH.
Dardanelles, April 26.
After the events I have previously described, the light gradually became
better and we could see from the London what was happening on the beach.
It was then discovered that the boats had landed rather further north of
Gaba Tepe than was originally intended, at a point where the sandstone
cliffs rise very sharply from the water's edge. As a matter of fact,
this error probably turned out a blessing in disguise, because there was
no glacis down which the enemy's infantry could fire, and the numerous
bluffs, ridges, and broken ground afford good cover to troops once they
have passed the forty or fifty yards of flat, sandy beach.
This ridge, under which the landing was made, stretches due north from
Gaba Tepe and culminates in the height of Coja Chemen, which rises 950
feet above the sea level. The whole forms part of a confused triangle of
hills, valleys, ridges, and bluffs which stretches right across the
Gallipoli Peninsula to the Bay of Bassi Liman above the Narrows. The
triangle is cut in two by the valley through which flows the stream
known as Bokali Deresi.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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