One Survived
An Episode of the Gallipoli Campaign Typical of the Fighting
This account of a desperate engagement is brief, but it tells a wondrous story. It appeared in the London Times:
The first capture of a Turkish trench and its retention deserve special notice because this brilliant exploit fired the whole of Anzac, after fifteen weeks of monotonous trench fighting, for the great aggressive operations of August and September. The work was known as Northern Turkish Despair Trench, or Tasman Post, and it was stormed under severe fire on July 31, by a composite company of the 11th Battalion (West Australia) of General E. G. Sinclair-MacLagan’s Third Brigade, under Captain R. L. Leane. After two days a heavy counter-attack was launched by a battalion of Turks, who regained a section of the work, but were again driven out. The episode cost Anzac 300 casualties, but showed what could be done. Near the close of the series of attacks which this success began was another charge, the simple truth of which was worth accomplishing, even at the cost. It was the charge of the First and Third Light Horse Brigades, differing from the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava only in that it was made by horsemen who had volunteered to fight on foot, and that it succeeded in one object—that of holding large bodies of Turks who would otherwise have been used against the new British landing at Suvla Bay.
The Eighth and Tenth Regiments of the Third Brigade went out from Walker’s Ridge. It was a charge into death from the first moment, and before the men of the second line leaped from their trenches they shook hands, knowing that they could not survive. They were met by a fusillade that became a continuous roaring tempest of machine gun and rifle fire, and out of the 300 men in the first line only one returned. The Second Regiment of the First Brigade was sent out from Quinn’s Post, charging into so impossible a fire that the first line had to be left to its fate, and the second, third, and fourth lines held in the trenches. The First Regiment of the First Brigade charged up the slopes of Dead Man’s Ridge and found a similar fate. It was all over within ten minutes—in the case of the charge from Quinn’s Post within a few seconds. “The Turkish machine guns drew a line across that place which none could pass,” wrote Captain C. E. W. Bean, official observer with the Australian Division, “and the one man who went out and returned unwounded put his escape down to the fact that he noticed the point on our sandbags on which the machine gun bullets were hitting, and jumped clear over the stream of lead. The guns were sweeping low, and a man who was hit once by them was often hit again half a dozen times as he fell through the stream which caught him. The whole of the first line was either killed or wounded within a few seconds of their leap from our trenches.” But though the charges shattered four regiments of as good fighting men as the Empire possessed, they created an imperishable impression.
Approximately 23,709,000 males in the United States, between the ages of 18 and 45, inclusive, registered under the terms of the Selective Draft Law.
Returns on casualties in the American Expeditionary Force up to November 18, 1917, include deaths from disease as well as battle casualties, slightly as well as severely wounded. Deaths from battle alone would be about 36,000. Compared with the reported British battle deaths of 659,000 for the period of the war, our losses were astonishingly light.