ANZAC: The dawning of a terrible day

New Zealand soldiers during World War I.

In the year we commemorated 100 years since the Gallipoli campaign it seems incredible that 50 years ago there was little interest in what was considered a hopeless tragedy. Veteran Cecil Malthus changed that when he wrote his trench-eye view in Anzac: A Retrospect. It now features in a new anthology of New Zealand war writing.

This proved to be a terrible day. At early dawn a weary mass of humanity disentangled itself from that hateful trench and plodded about a mile up a creek bed (Krithia Nullah) which at one spot was full of monstrous swollen corpses.

Their uniforms were dusty blue and their faces looked black, but I think they must have been Turks, not Senegalese, as it seems all the French troops had been over on the right from the outset. We shuddered to think that we had just filled up with a drink from the stream below them.

At last we reached, with little hostile fire, a line of trenches occupied by the Munster and Dublin Fusiliers, who had made a gallant advance the day before. They had had such heavy losses that they were now a composite unit christened "the Dubsters".

Hardly encouraging for us. Their trench was already closely occupied, but we managed to squeeze in amongst them. They looked worn and dirty, and being mostly close cropped they would have passed for a gang of convicts.

We gathered that we must be approaching the danger zone, but we were taken aback by the next order: "New Zealanders prepare to advance." Where on earth were the enemy and what were our objectives?

Hastily we threw off our packs and piled them in heaps - which were promptly looted by the Irishmen - and it was only in the act of springing over the parapet that we were told of another line of British still lying a hundred yards ahead of us.

We sprinted the distance all abreast, in fine style, and thanks to our smartness it was only in the last few yards that the enemy woke up and loosed his fire.

The tragedy of it was that from that moment he remained awake, and we were left with the certainty, in our next advance, of having to face a living stream of lead. There seemed to be no reason why our advance up to this point, and further, should not have been made peaceably the night before, when we could almost certainly have dug in without losing a man.

This front line was held by men of the Worcester Regiment. They were even more dirty and woebegone than the Irishmen. They assured us it was madness to think of advancing, which certainly seemed to be dead right.

Years after writing this I read Sir Ian Hamilton's Gallipoli Diary and learnt that he himself had favoured a night advance. "I hold the idea myself," he wrote, "that it would be good tactics ... to cross the danger zone ... by night and overthrow the enemy in the grey dawn." And after the battle he adds: "I still think we might have done as well at much less cost by creeping up these 200 or 300 yards by night."

But, as so often in the campaign, he allowed himself to be overruled by a subordinate, in this case the divisional commander, Major-General Hunter-Weston, who despised such subtleties and was all for frontal assaults in broad daylight. He had already had three failures in this particular assault, one on the 6th of May and two on the 7th, but had insisted on a fourth.

In justice to General Hunter Weston it should be added that he was, according to historians, a man of blithe good humour and in many respects an admirable commander. He also seems to have been the soundest theorist in sight, as well as a brave and determined soldier.

A few phrases from his report on the prospects of the landing: The prizes of success in this expedition are very great. It was indeed the most hopeful method of winning the war.But there is not in present circumstances a reasonable chance of success. No action should be taken ... unless there is a reasonable probability of success.

Imust end this over-lengthy parenthesis by quoting the Australian historian, C. E. W. Bean, in favour of Sir Ian Hamilton's view.

"At 8.30 on the 8th," he writes, "the New Zealand Brigade was [a] hundred yards in the rear of the front line, to which it could have been led without any difficulty or loss during the hours of darkness, so that the troops could have attacked the enemy unexpectedly 'in the grey dawn'."

Bean is less romantic and more discreet in his language than Sir Ian. For my part, I would carry Bean's contention a few hundred yards further.

Whether the enemy would then have been overthrown is anybody's guess, but at least we would have got to grips with him. The previous attacks had all taken place over the same ground, an area between the Gully Ravine on the left and Krithia Nullah, in the centre of the peninsula.

All had been decisively repelled by murderous machine-gun fire from three main sources - a curved -redoubt half a mile in front of us, and perhaps more particularly from two strong points nicely placed in fir copses on either flank.

The ground was flat and open for a long way ahead, with no natural cover at all, except for the nullah on our right. We were now lined up for the slaughter, Wellington on the left, Auckland in the centre, Otago - badly damaged at Baby 700 - in reserve, and Canterbury on the right, with its flank on Krithia Nullah.

At twenty past ten the scouts were called together, luckily for us as it proved, and were asked to make the first dash from cover at 10.30. Major Brereton knew nothing of objectives, but suggested that we should keep 500 yards ahead and make for the village of Krithia, about two miles in front of us.

Probably the enemy would be found to lie somewhere in between! Poor man, he was all at sea, as he had every right to be, and could only conjure up this notion, derived from our unrealistic training in Egypt, of putting the scouts out in front. I had just time to get the scouts spaced along the trench, so that we would be scattered when we went over the top, and then we were off.

New Zealand soldiers during World War I.

That first dash - I believe I was the first man out of all our line - not only gave me a thrill of self-importance but probably saved my life, for we had covered 50 yards or more before the hail of fire began.

At any rate, the scouts had no casualties, but the other unfortunates, rising to follow our example, were met by the wall of fire and were cruelly slaughtered.

The major and many more were fated not to leave the Worcester trenches. Instead of a general advance, only our 9 and 10 Platoons ventured out, which meant that all the enemy's fire was centred on us.

We were racing ahead. For 200 yards we sprinted, thinking how beautiful the poppies and daisies were, then from sheer exhaustion we rushed to ground in a slight depression and lay there panting. We had kept about ten yards apart, but soon the spaces were filled by those of our mates who managed to get so far.

Now the storm was let loose, and increased every moment in fury, until a splashing, spurting shower of lead was falling like rain on a pond. Hugging the ground in frantic terror we began to dig blindly with our puny entrenching tools, but soon the four men nearest me were lying, one dead, two with broken legs, and the other badly wounded in the shoulder.

A sledgehammer blow on the foot made me turn with a feeling of positive relief that I had met my fate, but it was a mere graze and hardly bled. Another bullet passed through my coat, and a third ripped along two feet of my rifle sling.

Then the wounded man on my right got a bullet through the head that ended his troubles. And still without remission the air was full of hissing bullets and screaming shells.

After an hour the fire slackened, but we continued working feverishly, in the cruel pain of sheer weariness, until each man, including the wounded, had a shallow pit to lie in. By then it was nearly two o'clock and I devoured a tin of bully beef and fell asleep for a while.

Later on, shovels were passed along, and with them we improved our shelters and made room to dress the wounded men afresh, as they were suffering terribly from the burning heat. We still had only a vague idea of the location of the Turkish trenches.

They seemed to us to be everywhere, in line after line up the slope. Actually it seems they were few and scattered, but very effectively placed. The nearest regular trench was still 500 yards in front, but the wood of stunted fir trees on our left, where the Auckland Battalion tried in vain to advance, was full of snipers.

The enemy's machine-gun fire had been terribly effective and came as usual from several directions. We now began to do a little shooting, but seldom had a visible target except a vague and distant line of trench, where we could see the dust of our bullets rising.

There were snipers at quite short range in vantage points up Krithia Nullah, but we could not get at them. Our helplessness was perhaps the most heart-breaking feature of the day.

We were not ended yet. At 5.15 our ships' guns and the heavy howitzers ashore set up a terrific bombardment, in which we could see timbers and bodies of men flying in the air, and under cover of this we again advanced about 200 yards.

This time the advance was general and well co-ordinated. The enemy's fire, being distributed everywhere, was not nearly so deadly as in the morning, but our company's losses were heavy enough and included our best officer, Lieutenant Forsythe, who was killed.

Another officer just posted to us from reinforcements, Lieutenant F. D. Maurice, died of wounds two days later. The Auckland Battalion was again badly impeded by machine-guns and snipers, and made little headway.

So for the rest of the day the left flank of our battalion was in the air. However, the successful advance of Wellington and Canterbury on either flank forced the Turks to withdraw from the fir copse during the night, so Auckland were able to move forward and straighten the line.

But they were badly mauled and were shortly relieved by Otago. The weary business of consolidation and digging trenches continued all night, but I was sent back to look after four of our wounded at the first line of trenches.

I took the opportunity to get a boot from a dead man, to replace the one that had been ripped open. No stretchers nor bearers were available. I spent most of the night searching for them, losing my way continually, till I could hardly stand.

Once I came to with a start, to realise that I had been on the very edge of falling asleep while walking. Luckily I always managed to get back to my wounded, who required frequent attention. When I finally got them away at 3am Corporal McInnes was at the point of death.

He was not listed as dead until 12 June, but there was often a time lag in such matters on that campaign. My French friend, Vallieres, lay neglected all night and died next morning, as I heard later.

It was just breaking day when I returned to the front line, which I found packed to its utmost capacity. I had to dig - for the fourth time - a shallow grave for myself just behind the line, and fell into it exhausted.

Extract from The Penguin Book of New Zealand War Writing, edited by Harry Ricketts and Gavin McLean, published by Penguin Random House (NZ). RRP $65. Reproduced with permission from the copyright holder ©Malthus, Cecil, Anzac: A Retrospect, Reed, 2002,
pp 72-76.