Glorious Deeds of Australasians in the Great War. Buley Ernest Charles

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СКАЧАТЬ abandoned their trenches and were flying up the foothills to another trench they had prepared on the top of a ridge.

      Fast as they ran, the Australians ran faster. The cries of "Come on, Australians," rang through the ravines, and warned the Turks ahead of their coming. The first ridge was occupied, and a second; finally they reached a third nearly two miles inland. It must be understood that they had waited for no orders and had not tarried for any formation. Men of different battalions and from different States swept forward together, all acting on their own initiative, and all prepared to sacrifice themselves for the main object, which was to clear the clifftops so as to permit of a safe landing for the main body of the troops. These watched the fighting in the lightening morning from the decks of the ships, while waiting their turn to land.

      They could see on one ridge after another the gaunt figures of their comrades appear, only to disappear over the crest, presently to become visible yet farther inland. How they cheered as the pioneers swept the Turks off the coast and drove them into the thick scrub that skirted the more distant ranges of hills! The audacity of that landing has no superior in history, and Australian soldiers will ever be remembered for their initiative, resource, and daring. Where men less used to acting on their own responsibility would have formed bravely, and waited for orders from some superior, these men from the South dashed off in little groups, all working efficiently, as if by some tacit understanding.

      So the 3rd Brigade cleared the way for the 1st and 2nd Brigades, so that 12,000 infantry and two batteries of Indian mountain guns were landed by two o'clock – smart work on such a difficult coast, in ten hours. For this splendid record the greatest credit is due to the Navy men, of whom the Australasians all speak as they would of the greatest heroes on earth. Their coolness, their unassuming courage, and their steadfast adherence to the object in view are topics of which Australians who were there will never tire of talking. And the men of the Navy have an equally high opinion of those law bushmen whom they set down on that narrow strip of bullet-swept beach.

      For it must not be supposed that the clearance of the trenches opposite the landing place made the task of landing in any way a safe one. All day long batteries posted in the hills, which had the range of the beach quite accurately, continued to spray the landing with shrapnel. One sandy point was christened by the Australians Hellfire Spit, and will go down to history by that name. Their name for the landing place was Brighton Beach, which name it now bears on the official maps. British people must not suppose that this name has any reference to the seaside town which is sometimes called London-by-the-Sea. The Australians had in mind another Brighton, 12,000 miles away, where the cliffs rise abruptly from a sandy beach, and where the eye rests on slopes covered with a thick growth of scrubby ti-tree, of which the scrub on the hillsides at Gaba Tepe reminded the men of Australia. So it is Brighton Beach near Melbourne, and not Brighton Beach in Sussex, that gave its name to the landing place at Gaba Tepe.

      There were also guns on each of the two knolls which terminated Brighton Beach, and from them and from machine guns very cleverly placed on high points a cruel enfilading fire was directed upon the beach. The guns on the knolls were one by one put out of action by the warships, and three were captured by the infantry, but some of the machine guns, as well as innumerable snipers, continued to fire on the boats and on the landed men throughout the day. Many a brave Australasian met a bullet before ever he set foot on the soil of Europe, and the sailors suffered heavily but doggedly as they rowed their boats to and fro between the ships and the landing place.

      It is now necessary to follow the fortunes of the little bands of the gallant 3rd Brigade, whose rush had carried them over three successive ridges on to a high tableland, where the backs of the retreating Turks were still visible. "Where's the Light Horse?" the men shouted as they rushed on in pursuit. The Light Horse was then eating out its heart somewhere in Egypt, wishing that such an animal as the horse had never been created, and that they might be with their comrades of the infantry, fighting in Australasia's first great battle. Of course they could never have got cavalry up on to that plateau, though mounted men would have been very useful when the first Australian soldiers crossed the ridges, and reached its wide, scrubby slopes.

      These devoted little bands found more than stragglers on that high plateau. Soon the advance guard of the main Turkish defence force arrived on the scene, and then it went very badly with these bold spirits. The fate of many of those little groups of brave, resourceful soldiers is yet to be learned; most of them appear on the sheets as "Missing." Those behind them were thrown back by sheer force of numbers, as the main body of the Turks pressed on, and fighting gallantly, fell back on the second line.

      By nightfall the main body of the Australians, all mixed up just as they had landed, and without regard to battalions or anything else, was dug in on the clifftop, and fighting desperately to prevent the Turks from dislodging them.

      "The troops had had no rest on the night of the 24th-25th," writes the General, "they had been fighting hard all day over most difficult country, and they had been subjected to heavy shrapnel fire in the open. Their casualties had been deplorably heavy. But despite their losses and in spite of their fatigue, the morning of the 26th found them still in good heart, and as full of fight as ever."

      Such is the story of the battle of Brighton Beach, ending with our boys "in good heart, and full of fight as ever." The wounded and dying men were also in good heart. Mr. Ashmead Bartlett describes the arrival of the first batch of Australian wounded back to the ships in a passage that will stir every Australian's pulse till the very end of time.

      "I have never seen the like of these wounded Australians in war before, for as they were towed among the ships while accommodation was being found for them, although many of them were shot to bits and without hope of recovery, their cheers resounded through the night, and you could just see amid a mass of suffering humanity arms being waved in greeting to the crews of the warships. They were happy because they knew they had been tried for the first time in the war, and had not been found wanting. They had been told to occupy the heights and hold on, and this they had done for fifteen mortal hours under an incessant shell fire without the moral and material support of a single gun ashore, and subjected the whole time to the violent counter-attacks of a brave enemy led by skilful leaders, while his snipers, hidden in caves, thickets, and among the dense scrub, made a deliberate practice of picking off every officer who endeavoured to give a word of command or to lead his men forward.

      "No finer feat of arms has been performed during the war than this sudden landing in the dark, this storming of the heights, and, above all, the holding on to the points thus won while reinforcements were being poured from the transports. These raw Colonial troops in those desperate hours proved themselves worthy to fight side by side with the heroes of Mons and the Aisne, Ypres and Neuve Chapelle."

      CHAPTER V

      OCCUPYING THE LAND

      The morning of April 26 found the Australasians occupying the cliff top in a long semicircle, with its right resting on the sea at a point opposite the hill of Gaba Tepe, and the left resting on high ground above the coast at a place called Fisherman's Hut. The New Zealanders were on the extreme left, with the 4th Australian Brigade in support of them; next were the 1st Brigade from New South Wales, next to them were the 2nd Brigade of men from Victoria, while on the right were the 3rd Brigade, or what was left of it.

      All night they had been fighting, the Turks making brave but ineffectual attempts to dislodge them, and being quite unable to prevent them from digging themselves in. The scattered groups of pioneers were soon sorted out into their various battalions, missing men turned up from all sorts of unexpected places, and order was rapidly instituted among the ranks. This was a very necessary step, for men had been fighting side by side with perfect strangers, a state of things which afforded unlimited opportunities to the host of spies and snipers who swarmed boldly among the Australians, and, employing perfect English, did much to create confusion and loss among them.

      Some incidents that occurred during that temporary confusion СКАЧАТЬ