The assault from Russell’s Top across this terrific position was entrusted to the 8th (Victorian) and the 10th (West Australian) Regiments of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade (Brigadier-General F. G. Hughes). Two parties of 150 men apiece were selected for the charge from each of the two regiments--600 men in all. Just before dawn on Saturday, the 7th, they filed into the Russell’s Top trenches, all in their shirts and “shorts,” with sleeves rolled up, but carrying water-bottles and their packs containing food, photographs, letters, and “souvenirs,” such as soldiers like, though hardly one of them wanted food or looked at mementoes again. Each man had 200 rounds also, but was ordered to trust to the fixed bayonet alone. The first line took two scaling-ladders, and the fourth was provided with picks and shovels. [Illustration: MONASH GULLY, LOOKING TOWARDS THE NEK] At 4 a.m. a heavy bombardment from all available guns was poured upon the carefully registered Chessboard, and it lasted twenty-five minutes. Lieut.-Colonel A. H. White, commanding the 8th Regiment, said to the Brigade-Major, “Good-bye, Antill!” and with two other officers stood by the parapet watching the minute hand move. “Three minutes to go,” he said, and then simply “Go!”[159] Springing from pegs placed in the parapet as foot-rests, the 150 leapt into the open. They leapt into a blinding storm of bullets. Turks, raised tier above tier in the Chessboard, poured bullets upon them at 80 yards’ distance. Machine-guns in the Chessboard and in the trenches opposite Quinn’s pumped bullets upon them as from fire-hoses in convergent streams. A French “75,” captured by the Turks from the Serbians in the first Balkan War, burst shrapnel low above their heads every ten seconds. Many rolled back from the parapet to die in their own trenches. Colonel White was killed within the first 10 yards. Not one of the 150 got more than half-way across the brief space of the Nek.