Before daylight on Sunday, August 8, the edge of the heights from Battleship Hill to “Hill Q” was heavily bombarded by monitors and cruisers, together with the batteries on the flats. At the first dawn (4.15) a column, led by Lieut.-Colonel W. G. Malone, the hero of Quinn’s Post, with his accustomed enthusiasm, dashed up the steep and narrow slope to the summit of Rhododendron Ridge. Colonel Malone’s own Wellington Battalion went first. The 7th Gloucesters closely followed. The Auckland Mounted Rifles and Welsh Pioneers came in support. The Wellingtons reached the actual top of the ridge. They sprang into a long Turkish communication trench, which they found empty but for an isolated party with a machine-gun just arrived from Achi Baba. They spread out towards the right. Immediately on their left, two companies of the Gloucesters also reached the summit, and sprang into the trench. Against the sunrise their figures could be dimly discerned from the sea, and the hope of victory rose high. Two other Gloucester Companies swung slightly to the right and entrenched below the sky-line in rear of the Wellingtons. But during the rush the Gloucesters had been exposed to a terrible storm of shrapnel and rifle-fire coming from the higher ground northward on their left, and were already much reduced. As often happens in a charge, the supports came under a heavier fire than the first lines, and though the Auckland Mounted Rifles got through and joined the Wellingtons, it was not till the afternoon. The remainder appear to have been checked.[166] In the meantime the position of the British and New Zealanders upon the summit was indeed terrible. Perceiving how small their numbers were, the Turks turned every kind of fire upon the trench. Large parties of them kept creeping up the trench itself from the right or southern end, and hurling bombs. So exposed was the position that Colonel Malone drew his men out of the trench, and marked out a fresh trench 15 yards in rear of it. Here they dug; but tools were short, bombs were short, and water had run out. The trench was less than a foot deep. On the left, the Gloucester companies were almost annihilated. Attack after attack swept up against them. Every officer was killed or wounded. In his dispatch, Sir Ian says that by midday the battalion (apparently the other two companies had by that time come into line) consisted of small groups of men commanded by junior non-commissioned officers or privates. “Chapter and verse,” he adds, “may be quoted for the view that the rank and file of an army cannot long endure the strain of close hand-to-hand fighting unless they are given confidence by the example of good officers. Yet here is at least one instance where a battalion of the New Army fought right on, from midday till sunset, without _any_ officers.”