Chapter 4

The Beachhead

Once ashore the problems of securing a beachhead position had to be overcome.  As the Anzac landings were bungled, and did not take place in the area that was originally intended, this left the men that had survived being either shot at and killed, wounded, or even drowned under the weight of the equipment that they were carrying, the problem of scaling the crumbling cliffs and slopes to get off the beach.  The men who had made it to the shore in the first flotilla of small boats were of the 3rd Brigade of the Australian Army who had previously practiced landing only on reaching Lemnos a month before the start of the battle.  Once ashore, they were supposed to regroup, and quickly push forward, dealing with any resistance from the Turks, and allowing the rest of the force to continue on into the interior of the peninsula.  However, because of a catalogue of errors that befell the attacking armies, such as being landed in the wrong place, and without the cover of darkness, also combined with the unexpected strength in the Turkish resistance, a beachhead position was hard fought to establish and to maintain.  For the next eight months the Anzacs were not to move out of the positions that they had gained in the first few days, apart from a few poorly planned and ill fated attacks.  
One such attack that was planned for 2 May, only a week after the landing, was up a hill called Baby 700, named after its height above sea level.  Men of the New Zealand forces were supposed to scale a cliff in the dark, in order to capture and hold the Turkish position that was giving a great deal of problems to the men trying to move off the beach.  This attack failed, with the New Zealanders suffering appalling casualties.  
Another disastrous attack involving the men from New Zealand was to the highest point of the peninsula, the Sari Bair range, and in particular a summit called Chunuk Bair.  Men of the New Zealand battalions, were intended to fight their way up to the heights.  This was to be achieved by crossing  a series of gullies through some pretty difficult terrain, and then eventually overcoming the defending forces that were by now well dug in.  After some particularly fierce fighting the New Zealanders had managed to gain control of the heights, which had a commanding view of the landing area below it, as well as the first view of the Straits.  But, however, before they could consolidate their position, they were shelled by the guns of the fleet, killing most of those that managed to fight their way to that position.  Other attacks were planned to break out of the deadlock of the beach head such as the attack at Lone Pine, and the Nek, where many Australians were to lose their lives.
The attack on the Nek was particularly powerfully portrayed in the Peter Weir film Gallipoli, where wave after wave of Australian troops of the Light Horse Regiment were shown charging a heavily defended Turkish position, armed with only empty rifles, and bayonets.  
In the film the officer who gave the order that sent so many men to a certain death was portrayed as being British, when it was more likely for him to have actually been an Australian.  Most of the first month on the peninsula was spent by the Anzacs securing their positions as best they could under sniper fire, and intermittent shrapnel shelling.  Attempts to break out of the beachhead were stopped by determined Turkish defence, while the Anzacs had to do a lot of repelling of Turkish attacks, which saw the fiercest fighting on May 19/20.  
Mustapha Kemal Bey, a young officer in charge of the Turkish troops in the area,  was determined that the attackers should be driven into the sea, and spent the early part of May preparing a huge force to attack the Anzac positions.  These massive increase in the Turkish numbers was seen by the crew of an Australian spotter plane during a reconnaissance flight, and reported.  This build up combined with a reduction in the number of attacks the Turks had made in the area led the Anzac leaders rightly to  conclude that they were about to be attacked in force.  
The Turks began their attack at around 3.30 in the morning of the 19th of May, with some 42,000 men involved, while the strength of the Anzac force in the area was believed to be nearer 12,000.  The main thrust of the Turkish attack was centred on a small plateau (400 plateau), and by the end of the first part of the battle, some 10,000 Turks were critically wounded, and as many as 3,000 lay dead.  One Anzac soldier said that they ’waited for the attack to get within range, opened up with rapid fire, and brought them down in their hundreds ’.  The Anzac casualties received were reported  as being 160 dead, and 468 wounded, with nearly 100,000 bullets being fired at the Turks during this time.   Later in the month an armistice was arranged to bury some of the mounds of decaying bodies that lay in the area between the opposing trenches, because the smell was terrible, and life on the peninsula was becoming hard enough.  
Life on the Anzac beach head was particularly hard as all the food and water had to be brought to the beaches from Egypt, and then transported to the different trenches by the soldiers themselves.  Water was particularly hard to find, as there was little natural water on the peninsula, and as the Turks would have control of any that there was it was thought that it would have been most likely poisoned by them.  Other hardships that they faced were the plagues of flies that swarmed every where, and were instrumental in the spread of diseases such as dysentery. The flies were at their worst in the summer months, and were everywhere.  The number of decaying bodies lying in no mans land between the Anzac and Turkish trenches were the breeding ground for the huge number of flies, and because of this and their swarming around the food and drink that the men were trying to have, diseases spread.  ‘I could never get used to them, crawling in ones soup, sticking in ones jam, it was horrible.  If we were eating bread and jam it was a race to get it in ones mouth before the flies got entangled - to me the fly pest was the worst hardship of the campaign ’.  
Another infestation that all troops on Gallipoli had to contend with was lice, that bred in the seams of the battledress that they wore.  Various ways of dealing with this pest were tried, including over the counter powders from chemist shops that the families of the soldiers were requested to send to them.  Unfortunately none of these could combat the lice, and other ways of fighting the lice problem were necessary, including the government proposing that every man should be supplied with a little bag of camphor, that he was to wear around his neck to combat the lice.  However many of the men were convinced that any amount of camphor worn around the neck could do nothing at all for lice that bred in the seams under the arms, and under the crotch, and one man even opened up the bag he was wearing and found a nest of lice inside it.  Needless to say this idea was rapidly dispensed with and the men went back to a daily inspection of the seams of their clothing.  During the time spent on Gallipoli there was an acute shortage of weapons such as field guns along with the ammunition for them, and at the start of the campaign the MEF were not supplied with any weapons such as Trench Mortars or hand grenades.  
The Turks were supplied with a succession of different types of German made hand grenades that were very useful in the fighting at places such as Courtney’s and Quinn’s Post where the opposing trenches were only a few yards apart.  One resourceful Anzac in this area became adept at throwing these back at the enemy, especially the early grenades which were detonated by a protruding ten second fuse, which had to be lit before being thrown.  Equally resourceful were the Anzacs who made their own grenades known as jam-tin grenades because they were made out of empty tins that were packed with any bits of shrapnel lying around, bullets, explosive and piece of cloth for a fuse.  These weapons were made in their hundreds, but unfortunately were unpredictable, and could be as dangerous for those throwing them as their intended targets.  
Later in the year with the Anzacs still clinging to their precarious positions, a change of season brought the first of the rains.  Heavy rainfall flooded the trench systems sometimes to a depth of as much as 6-8 feet, and because of this many soldiers were drowned in the trenches they had dug to avoid being shot by snipers.  Worse was still to come with the onset of winter.  This brought both snow, a new experience for many Australians, and conditions so cold that men weakened by both disease and meager rations found it a struggle to cope.  Many suffered either frostbite, or worse still, froze to death where they were.