A SECOND BALACLAVA.

Taranaki Daily News, 8 October 1915, Page 6

A SECOND BALACLAVA.

CHARGE OP THE LIGHT HORSE. THE SIMPLE TRUTH OF IT. (By Captain Beau). Gaba Tepe, August 15. 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 Gallipoli and help the other Australians there. There are the two seaJing ladders which they carried with them lying out there in the scrub about half-way to the enemy's trenches, and a number of tumbled little heaps of that pea-soup colored Australian khaki which is the hall-mark of unrecorded 'heroism on every battlefield on this peninsula. You can piece together a few simple deductions as to the details. There are no Victoria Crosses, there are' no birthday i honors, 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 Light Horse Brigades made in the first light of Saturday, August 7, 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. Four long months we and the. Turks have faced one another on ? line shaped like two sides of a triangle, the third side, or back, being the sea. We held an inner triangle, and the Turks ah outer one, and at the apex the two have from the first come very close together. At various times we have been separated from one another only by a single barricade of sandbags fift in width, hastily piled across a communication trench, but of late conditions have been less strained, and the two sides have been facing one another on both sides of the angle at about fifteen to twenty yards at the closest. The men of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps had been in these trenches sixteen weeks without rest and without relief. Each corner of the war has its own peculiar difficulties, and what distinguishes Anza-c 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 .on the backs of men. No part of the Army is at any time more than twelve .hundred ysirds from the enemy trenches, consequently without making a- song about it, as they say, it may be imagined how the men longed for any relief from tin? constant never-ending trench digging and water-carrying. When the orders for the attack came along the men grasped the fact that this might be the last they would see of those intermingled trenches.

SOUNDS THROUGH THE NIGIHT. It was a part, a very small pa.rt, 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 firing, first from fairly close at hand, where the Xew Zealand Mounted Rifles and the Maoris, amidst wild fighting, were clearing the Turks out from redoubt after redoubt amongst their strongly-held position 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 faiftt the Sound 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 mu&les showing. i Their knees were bare and sunhurnt. 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 Turkish prisoner, a home letter and a photograph or two. They were saying their good-byes 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 bv the Bth Light Horse, witli the 10th Light Horse following. Four lines would start, of a hundred and fifty each, the first and second lines being from the Sth Light Horse, that is, Victorians, and the third and fourth lines being from the lOtii Light Horse, Western Australians. The first line was to tarry, amongst other things, two scaling ladders for the occasion. The fourth line would carry picks, shovels anil all sorts of engineering supplies, but it was to fight like the others if necessary. In order to help the men to get out of the trenches like a flash, pegs had been driven into the side of the trench as footholds. As the moment for the charge came near the first line got its foothold on these, and the second line stood in the trenches behind it, ready to give it a leg up. And then, at four o'clock to the moment, the bombardment by our'guns began. I have seen such bombardments often at Holies, 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 brought to bear emptied itself, as far as the guns' crews could lead, into the maze of Turkish trenches in the backbone of the ridge in front of the apex of our position. The dust of the bombardment rolled aews the ridge in clouds, shutting out any view of 'the place from a distance. For half an hr.ur the slope in.front of our trenches was an inferno, and then the uproar ceased as suddenly as it had hegun, ceasc-.d as if cut off short by the stroke of a knife.

At tlio panic instant Ihp Light Tlovsc attack was launched. The men were standing there in tlm trenches without (lie least sign of excitement, hitching up their picks, getting a. firm foothold lielow the parapet. The colonel of the Sth, Lieutenant-Colonel A. H. White, insisted on leading his regiment. Ten minutes before the start lie walked into the brigade offices and held out his hand to the brigade major. "Good-bye," he said. A couple of minutes later he was at his place on the parapet with his men.

AN APPALLING FIRE. Colonel White stood by 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 hand fidget its way round. "Three minutes to go," said the colonel, thea simply "Go!" They were over the parapet like a fiash, the colonel amongst them, the officers in line with the men. I shall never forget that moment. I was making my way along a path from the left of the area and was passing not very far away when that tremendous fusilade broke out. It rose from a fierce cackle into a roar, in which you could distinguish neither rifle nor machine guns, but just one continuous roaring tempest. One could not help an involuntary shiver. God help anyone that was out in that tornado, but one knew very well that the men were out in it. The time for the meaning of it beyond all doubt—exactly 4.30. The Light Horse were making their charge. There were no British rifles as the Light Horse cleared the Australian parapet. One knew that nobody could live in it. Man}- fell back into the trench wounded, some fell just outside and managed to crawl back and tumble in hfefore they were hit a second and third time, and killed, as they certainly would be if they remained lying out then. Practically all those that were wounded were hit in this way on our own parapet. Colonel White managed to nin eight or ten yards before he was 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 the second, managed to get into the extreme right-hand corner of 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 gully to the right. Two men were put in the head of one of our foremost saps with periscopes to watch for the first sign of this flag into the enemy's trench. This time a French seventyfive, a gun captured by the Turks from the Serbians in the Balkan war, was firing her shells at the rate of about one 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 anything in the haze, but in the extreme south-eastern corner of the Turkish position there did appear just for ten minutes the small flag which our party had taken. No one ever saw them get there. No one will ever know who they were or how they did it. Only for those ten minutes the flag fluttered up behind the parapet and then someone tore it down. The fight in the corner of the french, whatever it was, was over, and it can onlv have ended one wav.

In the meantime, ten minutes after 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 slop and the men had to crawl out some ten yards or so before they put up their heads into the torrent of lead. A dozen or two were stopped here before they made their rush.

ONLY A QUARTER OP 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 Jay poured down upon them from a cloudless sky. That night, after dark, one or two maimed figures appeared over our parapet and tumbled home into the trenches. They were men who had fallen wounded in some corner where there was a scrap of cover and 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 coming over the parapet of their trench searching the bodies of the men there for papers and diaries, so 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 be known of what those Light Horse men found facing them as they ran through the dust haze. The nearer trenches were crammed with troopers. The bayonets of the front row of the Turks could be ■en over the parapet, and behind them Bierc appeared to be two rows of 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. "Look, you know the way a stubble paddock looks when you have put the sheep across It, They have turned the earth up a bit and you see the stubble standing in rows behind them. Well, that whs what the Turkish bayonets looked like across that slope that morning." That was how the field was described, i There is no question that the charge of the Light Horse pinned down to that position during its continuance and for hours afterwards every available Turkish soldier. Our own machine guns were able to get in some work amongst some of the Turks and those who know say that their losses must have been an ample set off to our own.

FROM QUIXX'S POST. So much for the charge of the Third Light Horse Brigade. The Second Regiment was to attack from Quinn's Post in four lines of fifty each. The first line was led by Major T. .1. Logan. They scrambled from the trenches the instant the signal was given, but more than half were actually knocked back, killed or wounded, into the trench heforo limy were clear of the parapet. ' The first few out managed to reach a few vards before, they were killed. They' left their trenches at two points, anil they had only from fifteen to twenty-five yards to go. Major Logan, who led one party, is said actually to have reached the Turkish parapet and fallen Into it. Lieutenant lloiirne, who lfd the other, fell about ten yards from our trench. The boy who fell beside him had his leg practically severed by ma-chine-gun bullets. The Turkish machine guns drew a line across that narrow space that none eouid pass. As the whole of the first line was either killed or wounded within a few seconds the attack was stopped and the other lines did not start.

The First Regiment attacked from the hill in the gully, In front of that hill is a small branch of that same gully, very steep on both sides, and only about forty yards from one side to the other, On the northern slope of this gully the Turks have three lines of trenches, the further up being on the edge pf 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 Australian infanky, as its support lines, when it temporarily won this part of the Jiill on Sunday, May 2. Two squadrons of the Ist 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 anA the Light Horse, by using stick bombs, drove the Turks clean out of the 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 tJm Turks in 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 men had to imperil their lives by running over the top from their own trench in full view of the Turks, but the Turk in the trenches up the hill had it all his own way in this bomb battle. His higher trenches were connected with the trench which he held by frequent narrow manhole tunnels.

The first regiment saw the third line melt out as the 3rd Light Horse Brigade charged across the ridge to their left. The Welsh Fusiliers, in the 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 the Turks at once, good soldiers as they are, swooped down this cliff face until some of the Light Horse saw what they were at and detached two or three snipers, who shot twenty of these Turks in quick time. In the meantime all the other attacks having ended the whole of the Turkish machine-guns that could bear upon the spot were turned upon the three trenches still held by the First Light Horse, and after two hours of furious fighting 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 of their comrades of the 3rd Brigade, whom they could see still living on their side of the slope Of the Ist Regiment only about one in six of the men who went out came back unwounded, and by some miracle the one officer who returned without a scratch, in spite of the fact that he 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 hack from the parapet of the Turkish trenches on the neck reported that the Turks there ha<i 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 delaved 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. As for 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. The green arbutus, and the holly of the Peninsula, not unlike their native bush, will some day again claim this neck in those wild ranges for its own, but the place will always be sacred as the scene of two very brave deeds—the first, let us not. forget it. the desperate attack made by the Turks across that 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, the charge of the Australian Light Horse into certain death at the call of their comrades' new! during a crisis in the greatest battle that has even been fought on Turkish soil.