The Change to Trench–Warfare at Anzac

CHAPTER I1 TIIE ClIANGE TO TRENCH-WARFARE AT ANZAC HAMILTON’Sinstructions to Birdwood on May 1st were: I‘ Until you receive further orders, no general advance is to be initiated by you. But this is not to preclude any forward movements which may be usefully undertaken with a view to occupying such points as may facilitate your advance . hereafter and meanwhile conipel the enemy to maintain a large force in your front. By this means you will relieve pressure on the troops in the southern portion of the Peninsula, which is your present de.” The two strongest Anzac brigades having been sent to Helles, it became necessary for Birdwood to hold the line as best he could with the assistance of the two half-brigades of the Royal Naval Division which had been left him in place cf them. The N.Z. & A. Division, now reduced to one brigade -the 4th Australian-occupied the most difficult sector of the line. Birdwood therefore allotted to it all the naval troops, whose combined strength was only that of one full brigade. As the result, the N.Z. & A. remained two brigades strong, while the 1st Australian Division now also comprised only two. This garrison of 14,500 (10,400 actual rifles) with some 30 guns in position was much the weakest that ever, during these months, defended Anzac. In order to make the fullest use of it, Ari the whole line was divided into four sections: of which the Left and Left Central were held by the N.Z. & -4. Division under General Godley, and the Right Central and Right by the 1st Australian Division under General Bridges. The brigadier’ of the infantry of each section became also the section -/000 YdS commander, the section-engineers and ‘These sections were actually numbered from the smith ntutliwards I. z z and 4. hut to avoid confusion they are here termed Right, Right Central, Left Central, and Left. 2 Or senior brigadier, when there were more than oiie 44 May, 19151 CHANGE TO TRENCH-WARFARE 45 artillery being placed under his orders. As this system, with modifications, continued until the Evacuation, it is necessary to give a brief description of the sections. The Left Section, which had been that of the New Zealanders, began at the extreme north with two isolated posts established by them on the coastal foot-hills,5 the nearer being known as “ No. I Outpost’’ and the farther as “ No. 2.” Their garrisons, though out of touch by day, were during those hours protected by the warships, whose fire the enetny feared The main line of the New Zealand section had been established along Walker’s Ridge, the old goat-track which led deeply up it from the North Beach having been transfornied into a winding road cut immediately in rear of the crest. High on this spur, behind the knoll and gap where Tulloch had first fought, the brigadier had retained his headquarters exactly where they had been first established by Braund’ in the struggle of the Landing. Not far beyond this, where Walker’s Ridge ran into the main range at Russell’s Top, the New Zealanders had succeeded under the eyes of the enemy in digging their front line across the narrow summit to the steep wooded edge at Monash Valley. Here their sentries looked over the successive ridges inland, between one of which and the mountains of Asia could be seen the haze overlying the Dardanelles, though nowhere the water itself. Along the edge of Russell’s Top they had bent back their trench for some distance, so as to hang over Monash Valley: there the Left Section ended. Opposite its centre Russell’s Top narrowed to The Nek, held by the Turks, beyond which the crest rose to Baby 700 and, hidden behind it, the other summits of the range, all in the enemy’s hands. The direct line of advance against those summits had thus been barred by the Turkish ‘SPQ b 177 ‘See (for Tulloch) t’ol I, pp 257-91; (for Braund) idem, pfi 333-5, 471, 509 The trench on the summit also was that partly dug by the 2nd Bu. 46 THE STORY OF ANZAC [May. 191s trench sixty yards in front of the New Zealanders, who, in order to approach it more closely, were proposing to sap forward and eventually to connect the sap-heads by a new front line. In addition there was occupied on May 9th on the sea- ward side of the Top an advanced knuckle (known as “ Turks’ Point ”), which subsequently proved a position of great advantage The line, which in the New Zealand section had .run roughly eastward, now turned southward and leapt 250 yards across the western branch of Monash Valley to Pope’s Hill. Here began the Left Central Section, in which Monash’s 4th Australian Brigade had been struggling to establish an even more difficult foothold. The post on Pope’s Hill lay, as it were, upon an island or peninsula in the fork between the two branches. A hundred and fifty yards farther south, on the Second ridge, separated from Pope’s by the eastern branch of the valley, lay Quinn’s, the apex of the Anzac position. This post, little over half-a-mile from the sea, was the farthest inland. Thence the troops held a line of trenches for a mile and a quarter south-westwards along the Second ridge to the sea, thus occupying what was roughly a triangle, with coast-line for base, one side running due east for half-a-mile, and the other south and south-west for a mile and a half. It was the difficult apex of this triangle (Pope’s, Quinn’s, Courtney’s, and the gaps at the head of Monash Valley) which formed the Left Central Section. At the beginning of May the exact compass bearing of Monash’s sector from that of the New Zea- landers had been uncertain, and on May Sth, when it was proposed to connect the two by sapping between Pope’s and Russell’s Top, the staff had to exhibit flags at the nearest points of the two positions in order to make sure of them. It was realised that only by means of such a sap down the lofty exposed side of Russell’s Top could movement in daylight between the two positions be rendered possible. The avenue (known as “ Bully May,1g15] CHANGE TO TRENCH-WARFARE 47 Beef Sap ’’1 which was eventually carried, partly IJY tunnelling, down the alniost sheer hillside, was until the end of the campaign the only practicable direct approach by day from the front of the Left to that of the Left Central. Further, as an obvious precaution in case the garrisons were ever driven from the head of Monash Valley, an inner line of defence was dug 400 yards in rear down both its sides, from the Top to Courtney’s. By tunnelling the troops gradually connected Quinn’s, Courtney’s, and Steele’s, which had at first been detached from each other; but this connection existed only in the front line, the folds in the valley-side that sheltered the headquarters of the post and the bivouacs of the garrisons remaining without unio~i. ,qt Courtney’s on the Second ridge the Left Central Section and the sector of the N.Z. 8z A. Division ended; at the next post, Steele’s, the Right Central Section and the holding of the 1st Australian Division began. The 1st Divi- sion’s line was now practically continuous. Men of the 1st Brigade were sapping across one small gap on Maclaurin’s , , Hill, where on May 7th there 440 Yds remained five yards to be com- pleted. A further negligible interval at the “nick’’ of Wire Gully remained to the end of the campaign filled only with barbed ~ire.~South of this, across the .-- 400 Plateau, the trenches were now continuous. In the last of the four sections, the Right, which began immediately south of the 400 Plateau and ran along Bolton’s Ridge to a point above the sea, the troops, as on the cxtreme left, had been comparatively uninterrupted, and their trenches were consequently deep and secure. A few posts on the steep ‘See Vol I, pp. 350-1. On a day in May men citting in their dugouts above Bridges’ Road (the valley on the Anzac side of this gap) saw a ,:ohtar): Turk with a numher of waterhottles slung round him standing in this nick almve them and looking down on the scene as if dazed. He had evidently been sent to bring water to the Turkish trenches. and, making his way up the wrong gully had found himself in the Australian linea. He dived back and escaped down’ the cnerny’s side of the hill. a few abota ringing after him. 48 THE STORY OF ANZAC [May, 1915 slope above the shore connected the trench-line with a wire entanglement upon the beach, which formed the extreme right Hank. The enemy had at this stage approached the Anzac line very closely at Russell’s Top and in the two Central Sections, but especially in that of Monash’s brigade-the Left Central. Here the Turks were on the Second ridge with the Aus- tralians, each holding their own side of the hill. At Quinn’s the voices of men speaking could be heard in the opposing trenches. across a crest the width of a tennis court and almost as level.

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