HEROES.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 4, Issue 107, 12 November 1915, Page 1 (Supplement)

HEROES.

CHARGE OF THE LIGHT HORSE. THE SIMPLE TRUTH OF IT. (From Captain C. E. \V. Bean, Official Presn Representative with tlie Australian Expeditionary Forces.) GABA TEPE, Aug. 13. It differed from the charge of the Light Brigade in that it was made by horsemen who had volunteered to fight on foot or in any other way, provided they could only get to and help the other Australians there. There are the two scaling ladders which they carried with them lying out there in the scrub about half-way to the enemy's trench, and a number of tumbled little heaps of that pea-soup-coloured Australian khaki which its the hallmark of unrecorded heroism on every battle-held in this peninsula. You can piece together a few simple deductions iij to the details. There are no \ ictoria Crosses —there are no birthday honours. But I know just this, that for sheer self-sacrificing heroism there was never a deed in history that surpassed the charge which the two Australian L'ght Horse brigades made ni the first light of Saturday, August i, in order to help their comrades in a critical moment of a great battle. The charge was made against the centre of the Turkish position. I'our long months we and the Turks have faced one another—a line shaped like two sides of a triangle, the third side or back being the sea. A\ e held an inner triangle, and the Turks an outer one, and at the apex the two have from the first come very, very close together. At various times we have been separated from one another only by a single buiricade of sandbags, 6f.t in width, hastily piled across a comniunicution trench ; but ot late conditions have been loss strained, and the two bides have been facing one another on both sides of the angle at about 1) to 20 vnrde at the closest. The "men of the Australian and NewZealand army corps had been ill these trenches sixteen weeks without rest, and without relief. Each corner of the war has its own peculiar difficulties, and what distinguishes Anzae from ' them all is that from the first hour of landing almost all the heavy carriage that goes on wheels in other places has here to go oil the backs ot men. Xo part qi the army is at any time more than twelve hundred yards from the enemy's trenches. t'<msci|uently, without, making a sung about it, as they say—it may lie imagined huw the men longed for any relief from this constant, never-ending trench digging and water carrying. When the orders for the attack'came along the men grasped at the fact that thjs might be the they would see of thqte intermingled treuehei-.

SOUNDS THROUGH THE NIGHT.' It was all a part —a very small part —of a very big movement. After darkness other columns issued out from the northern end of our lines, and one after another turned to the right into the tangled and almost unknown foothills of the main ridge. All through the night came outbursts of rifle tiring —first from fainy close at hand, where the New Zealand Mounted Rifles and the Maoris, amidst wildly fierce lighting, were clearing the Turks out from redoubt after redoubt amongst their strongly-held positions in the nearer foothills; later far more distant —a faint knock, knock, amongst the more' northerly hills as the columns turned into their respective gullies, and began to butt their heads against the Turkish posts there. Lastly, a little before daybreak, there came over ever so faint the 60und as of water bubbling and boiling. It was the first sign of the new British force landed that night, four miles to the north at Suvla Bay. Before daybreak the attacking parties filed into the trenches from which they were to make the rush. They were in their shirts with the sleeves rolled up and the brown forearm muscles showing. Their knees were bare and sunburnt. Each man carried his full kit with 200 rounds of ammunition. Water-bottles were full; they carried food for a day or two. Each man had stowed carefully into his pack such little mementoes as he especially prized—a fragment of Turkish shell, some Turkish coins bought off a prisoner —a home letter, and a photograph or two. They were saying goodbye to their own trenches—that night they would sleep in the scrub.

The attack on the left hand side of the apex was to be made by the Eighth Light Horse, with the Tenth Light Horse following. Four lines would start of a hundred and fifty each, the first and second lines being from the Eighth Light Horse, that is Victorians, and the third and fourth lines being Tenth Light Horse, Western Australians. The first line was to carry amongst other things two scaling ladders for the occasion. The fourth line would carry picks, shovels, and all sort& of engineering supplios, but it was to light like the other if necessary. THE BOMBARDMENT. In order to help the men to get out of the trenches like a flash pegs had been driven into the side of the trenches as footholds out. As the moment for the charge came near the. first line stood in the trenches behind it, ready to give it a leg up. And then, at 4 o'clock to the moment, the bombardment by out guns began. 1 have seen such bombardments often at Helles, but never since the first week of our landing has the like of it been seen in Anzac. Every gun on land and shore that could be grought to bear emptied itself as fast as the gun's crew could load into the maze of Turkish trenches on the backbone of the ridge in front'of the apex of our position Tli.e dust of tin. bombardment rolled across the ridge in clouds, shutting out any view of the place from a distance. For half all hour the slope in front of our trenches was an inferno, and then the uproar ceased as suddenly as it had begun—ceased as if cut off short by the stroke of a knife. And that same instant the Light Horse attack was launched. The men were standing there in the trenches without the least sgn of excitement, hitching up then packs, getting a firm foothold below the parapet. The colonel of the Bth, Lieutenantcolonel A. H. AVliite, insisted on leading his regiment. Ten minutes before the start lie walked into the brigade office, and held out his hand to the brigade Major. "Goodbye," ho said. A couple of minutes later lie was at his place on the parapet with his men, AX APPALLING FIRE. Colonel White stood b.v the parapet with his watch in his hand. He and two other officers had carefully .set and compared their watches, and the three now stood under the parapet at three points in the line, watching the second haiill fidget its way round. "Three minutes to go,''' siid the Colonel. Then simply "Go." They were over the parapet like n Hash, the Colonel amongst them, the officers in line with the men. 1 shall never forget that moment. 1 was making my way along a path from the left of the area, and was parsing not very f;ir away when that tremendous iusilutje bruke out. It fuse from W fierce

crackle into a roar in which you could distinguish neither rifle nor machinegun, but just one continuous roanng tempest. One could not help an involuntary shiver—God help any one that was out in that tornado. But one knew very well that the men were out in it —time time put the meaning of it beyond all doubt. Exactly 4.3U—the Light Horse were making their charge. There were no British rifles in all that fire—it was the greeting of the Turkish rifles and machine-gun as the Light Horse cleared the Australian parapet. One knew that nobody could live in it. Many fell back into the trench wounded just outside, and managed to crawl back and tumble in before they were hit a second and third time and killed, as they certainly would be if they remained lying out there. Practi. cally all those tnat were wounded were hit in this way on our own parapet. Colonel White managed to run eight or ten yards before he wa6 killed. The scaling ladders are lying out there about the same distance out. Exactly two minutes after the first line had cleared the parapet the second line jumped out without the slightest hesitation and followed it. No one knew how it happened. And probably no one will ever know. But some, either of that first line or of the 6econd, managed to get into the extreme righthand corner of the enemy's trench. They carried with them a small flag to put up in the enemy's trench if they captured it. The flag was to be the signal for a party of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers to attack up the gu ly to the right. Two men were put in the head of one of our foremost saps with periscopes to watch for the first eign of this flag in the enemy's trencji. This time a French seventy-five—a gun captured by the Turks from the Servians in the Balkan war—was firing her shell at the rat© of about ono in ten seconds in the neck. Machine guns far too many to count by their noise, were whipping up the dust, and it was next to impossible to distinguish any. thing in the haze. But in the extreme south-eastern corner of the Tun lnsh position there did appear just for ten minutes the small flag which oil! party had taken. No one ever saw them get there. No one will ever know who they were, ot how they did it. Only for those 10 minutes the flag fluttered up behind the parapet, and then someone tore it down. The fight in the corner of the trench, whatever it was, was over; and it can only have ended one way. In the meantime, 10 minutes atfer the second line, the third line had gone over the parapet as straight and as quick as the other. The attack was then stopped, and fortunately was stopped in time to prevent a small part of this third line from reaching the fire zone. There was one point where our trenches were under a part of the slope, and the men had to crawl out some 1U yards or bo before they put up their heads into the torrent of lead. A dozen or two wero stopped here before they made their rush. ONLY A QUARTER OF AN HOUR. It was all over within a quarter of an hour. Except for this wild fire, which burst out again at intervals, there was not a move in the front of the trenches —only the scrub and the tumbled khaki here and there. All day long the brilliant sun of a perfect day poured down upon them Irom a cloudless sky. That night after dark one or two maimed figures appeared over our parapet, and tumbled home into the trench. They were men who had fallen wounded in some cot nor where there was a scrap of cover, snd had waited for this chance to get back. One of these came from below the parapet of a Turkish trench on the right. He had lain there all day, too close for the Turks to see him without exposing themselves. There was another wounded Australian near him. After dark they heard the Turks come oyer the parapet of their trench searching the bodies of the men there for papers and diaries; 60 they arranged to make as fast as they could for our trenches. The man who arrived back was shot through the ankle. His mate never came back. But from that man we will know all that will ever bo known of what those lighthorsemen found facing them as they ran through the dust haze. The nearer trenches were crammed with troops. The bayonets of the front row of the Turks Could be seen over the parapet, and behind them there appeared to be two rows of the Turks standing waist high above the parapet emptying their rifles as fast as they could fire them. This is confirmed 'by the accounts of the officers in other parts of the line who had a view of the Turks in their trenches opposite this. "Look, you know the way a stubble paddock looks when jou have put the sheep across it; they have turned the earth up a bit and you see the stubblo standing in rows behind them. Well, that was wliai tho Turkish bay. ouots looked like across that slope that morning." That was how the field was described. There is no question that the charge of the Light Horse pinned down 1.0 that position during ite continuance, and for hours afterwards every available Turkish soldier. Our own'niachijv? guns were able to get in some work amongst those. Some of the Turks, and those who know, say that their losses must have been an simple set off to our own. FROM QUINN'S POST. So much for tho charge of the Third Light Horso Brigade. The Second Regiment was to attack from Quinn's Post in lour lines of fifty each. The first line was led by Major T. J. Logan. Tliey scrambled from the trenches the instant the signal was given, but more than half were actually knocked backkilled or wounded into the trench before they were clear of tho parapet. The first few out managed to reach a few yards before they were killed. They left their trenches at two points, and they had only from lo to 25 yards to go. Major Logan, who led the partv, is said actually to have reached the -Turkish parapet and fallen on to it. Lieutenant Bourne, who led the other, tell about ten yards from our trench. The boy who fell beside him had hi? practically covered by machine-gun hu.Hot«. Th<> Turkish uia-cbine-guns drew a line across that liarrow .Space that none etiuld pu.su. the whnlo of tho first line was either killed or wounded within a few seconds tbo attack was stopped and the other lines did not start. The first regiment attacked From the bill in the gully. In front of that lull i* a small branch of that same gully, vwry on both sidcs : and only

about 40 yards from one 6ide to the other. On the northern slope of this gully the Turks have three lines of trenches, the further up being on the edge of the gully, with many other lines of Turkish trenches across the gentler slope above it. Some of the lower Turkish trenches were really those made by the 13th Australian Infantry as its support lines, when it temporarily won this part of the hill on Sunday, May 2. Two squadrons of the First Light Horse went out, one working up the gully and the other going straight over the parapet as soon as the first was in position. The lower trenches were never held by the Turks by day, and the Light Horse, by using stick bombs, drove the Turks clean out of tho other two. One party rushed the second trench, and from there began to bomb the trench ahead of it. Suddenly a white head appeared over the parapet of the trench in front furiously waving. The colonel of the regiment, who had come out with his men, recognised it for the head of a subaltern who had led his men right over into the> third trench. He immediately leapt over, and joined the party in the third trench, which had previously been in the most uncomfortable position of being bombed by its friends from behind and by the enemy from in front. There for two hours this party remained fighting the Turks in the the trenches further up as best they could with the slender supply of bombs that came over to them. Even to supply these bombs the niiin had to imperil their lives by running over tho top from their own trench in full view ot the Turks. But the Turk in his trenches up the hill had it all his own way iu this bomb battle. His higher trenches were connected with tho trench which he held by frequent nar row manhole tunnels. At the same time as the Turk pitched a bomb through the air towards the lower trench he would bowl a second bomb down the tunnel in the same direction, and our men, intent upon dodging the bomb that was coming through the air, would find a bomb bursting underneath their feet. THE FUSILIERS. The First Kegiment saw the third line melt out as the Third Light Horse Brigade charged across the ridge to their left. The Welsh Fusiliers, in tin valley on their left, advanced through the dust haze until their two first lines fell almost in a heap at the foot of a cliff, down which the Turks rolled bombs on them when the attack was stopped. Th j lurks at once—good soidiers that they are—swooped down thw cliff face until some of the Light Horso saw what they were at, and detached two or three snipers, who shot 20 of these Turks in quick time. In tho meantime all the other attacks having ended, the whole of the Turkish machine guns that could bear upon tho spot were turned upon the three trenches still held by the Ist Light Horse; and after two hours of furious lighting the commander of the regiment ordered a retirement. They managed to get most of their wounded bacK into their trenches —they even managed to steal up the gully side and rescue one or two ol their comrades of the 3rd Brigade, whom they could see still living on their side of the slope. Of the ift ltegiment only about one in six of the men who went out came back unwounded. And by some miracle tho one officer who returned without a scratch, in spite of the fact that hu had been through the thickest of that two hours' turmoil, was the commander himself. WHEN' THE DAY ENDED. So ended the attack of the two Light Horse brigades. The one man who came back from the parapet of the Turkish trenches on the next reported that the Turks there had their packs on, and were in full marching order—evidently part of a battalion that had been hurried up from the reserves or else which was being hurried off to reinforce further north when this attack in the centre delayed it. The Australian Light Horse in the richest and fullest manner achieved the object for which their help had become necessary at a critical period of a great movement. And aa fat the boys—the singleminded, loyal Australian country lads —who left their trenches in the grey light of that morning, with all their simple treasures on their backs, to bivouac in the scrub that evening—the shades of evening found them lying in the scrub with God's wide sky above them. Tho green arbutus and tho holly of the peninsula, not unlike their native bush, will some day again claim this neck i» those wild ranges for its own, But the place will always l«j sacred as the scene of two very brave deeds, the first—let us not forget it—the desperate attack made by the Turk across that same neck on the dawn of June 30. and secondly of a deed of self-sacrifice and bravery which has never been surpassed in military history—tho charge of the Australian Light Horse into certain death at the call of their comrades' need during a crisis in the greatest l«iHle that has ever-been fought- on Turkish soil.