[wordup] ANZAC Day

[Adam Shand]

So I'm a day late (well two in NZ) but a friend looking at his calendar
just reminded me that the 25th was ANZAC day, and I figure all those on
the list who aren't in Australia or New Zealand could do with a little
historical learning. :-)

It's not the same without people on the street corners selling poppies
though.

From: http://www.azmetro.com/nzanzac.html

ANZAC Day is the 25th of April. It is a day that is set aside in both
New Zealand and Australia to think about and honour those who have
fought for our freedom. ANZAC stands for the Australian and New Zealand
Army Corps. ANZAC Day is a public holiday.

ANZAC day is strongly linked to the landing of the ANZAC forces at
Gallipoli in the Dardanelles in 1915. ANZAC Day was first celebrated in
1916 with memorial services, commemorating the lives lost in the 8 month
period spent by ANZAC forces on the Gallipoli Peninsula. Pressure was
brought to bear by returned soldiers and their organisations, and the
day became a public holiday in the early 1920s. Although the term
"ANZAC" only officially referred to those who fought in WWI it was later
decided that the day should also officially remember those who served in
WWII. These days it also incorporates the men and women who served in
later wars such as Vietnam and Korea; and those who have served in
actions such as "Desert Storm", and peace keeping operations such as
those in Bosnia and Bougainville.

From: http://www.anzacday.org/the_landing.htm
More: http://www.anzacday.org.au/spirit/gallipoli/gallip03.html

The Anzacs came ashore approximately two kilometres north of their
planned landing area due to a navigational error on the part of the
Royal Navy. The terrain they were confronted with is the most wild and
savage in the entire Gallipoli Peninsula. When the general staff were
reconnoitring the Gallipoli coastline from the decks of the battleship
Queen, on April 13th for possible landing zones, one area ruled out
without question was this spot where the Anzacs were now coming ashore,
terrain which would have deterred adventurers in peacetime.

The men from the battleship tows landed first, around 4.30 am, in and
around a cove dominated by a 100-metre rugged hill, which they
immediately set about climbing, under intense machine-gun and rifle fire
from the Turks on the plateau above. The tows from the destroyers Ribble
and Usk landed their soldiers slightly to the north of the cove. On
board the Ribble Capt. Douglas McWhae was waiting for the return of the
lifeboats, being towed back by a steam pinnace. It was almost light now,
about 5 am and a savage machine-gun and rifle fire was being directed at
the ships and the men coming ashore by Turks on the cliffs above the
beach. Bullets were clanging off the destroyer’s armour plating. McWhae
recalled:

“Several men were wounded on the destroyer and a young naval officer
shot dead through the head [while waving the men off with a ‘Good Luck’]
and Symonds of B Section shot through the chest. I saw one infantryman
shot, fall into the water and drown with heavy pack despite the efforts
of one of the sailors to save him. The rowboats returned to the
destroyer and we entered them under heavy fire. Then we rowed to shore
under a frightful fire.”

McWhae’s C Section was packed into one boat so tight that Jack and his
mates could hardly move. Lyle Buchanan’s A Section was in another boat.
The last 50 metres or so row to the beach, after the pinnace had cast
off, was a terrifying experience, under heavy fire all the way in.
Buchanan remembered it vividly:

“I don’t know what it was, shrapnel, maxim or rifle fire - I was
frightened to look, but I was never so frightened in my life as when I
had to stand up in the bow to dominate the men [to keep rowing]... I
could feel the damned things hitting me all the time in my imagination,
while we couldn’t see the other boats for the spouts of spray all
around, and the men hit yelped and then whined and clawed the air as
they died.”

“At first the beach was absolutely swept with machine-gun and rifle
fire”, McWhae recorded, “so that there was no possibility of going near
the boats [of the first tows] or to help the wounded lying on the
beach.” Jack’s boat grounded in deep water, about 300 metres north of
Ari Burnu Point, almost opposite the Sphinx. He was the second man out
of his boat. The first and third men out, on either side of him, were
killed instantly. During the landing the 3rd Field Ambulance lost three
bearers killed and another fourteen wounded. One of those wounded was
Otto Kirkby. His diary records the events after the lifeboats returned
to the destroyer: “We took a wounded and a dead chap out of the boat
before we could get into it. Meanwhile the Turks were firing at us. One
of our chaps was hit through the shoulder otherwise we got away from the
destroyer alright. Then came the awful time. We were pulled some of the
way by a pinnace but had to row a long way. The poor sailor that was
rowing just in front of me was shot through the head a couple were
wounded too. We got within 10 yards of the beach when we began to
scramble out of the boat. I fell over the starboard side and made a rush
through the water. I fell a couple of times and regained my feet again.
I scrambled ashore and got about 3 yards ashore when I felt an awful
smack on my side & I knew that I was shot. I crawled for about 5 yards
and found I could not go any further. So as the bullets were whistling
all around us I put a few stones around my head and laid there for about
15 minutes. The boys had chased [the Turks] back again by this time so I
crawled to my mates and they fixed me up. The doctor took the bullet out
of my wound. I laid there till about midday.” Kenneth Fry, Bearer
Officer of B Section recalled his experience in a typical brief
understatement “Struggled to land with storm of shots, shrapnel and the
like about. Tumbled men into deep water and followed.” The bearers raced
across the narrow stretch of sand and took what cover there was behind a
low bank fringing the beach. “Sat tight for 20 minutes or so... Rowe
hit, could do little, morphia given,” Fry writes. By about 5.30 a.m. the
Turks had been driven off the cliffs above by superior numbers of Aussie
soldiers arriving. “Soon after dawn the rifle fire stopped”, writes
McWhae, and “we were able to look after the wounded - now shrapnel fire
only. There were great numbers of wounded whom it took all the morning
to attend to and get away”.

A primitive collecting post was established using the cover of the
overgrown vegetation beyond the beach. “The Red-Cross flag was put up
after a time”, McWhae continues. “The three sections were going for all
they were worth... they had iodine and field dressings; all splints were
improvised using rifles and bushes. They were terrible wounds to deal
with.”

Sometime around 6 a.m. a Major Jackson, of the 7th Battalion, arrived at
the collecting post requesting urgent assistance for his men about 1200
metres north of the Sphinx and at the extreme left of the landing area.

McWhae and C Section set off at once, skirting the chest-high thorny
bushes inland which they used for cover. When they arrived at their
destination - a small hillock with a fisherman’s hut at its base, it was
a gruesome scene which met their eyes.

At the water’s edge, three boats were grounded. In front of these lay a
line of men, unmoving. The boats themselves retained a part of their
grisly cargo, held frozen in a variety of postures - some lying, some
still sitting bolt upright, pressed tight together, dead where they sat.

In one boat “a sailor was lying in a life-like attitude, chin on hand,
gazing up at Walker’s Ridge.” In another “a dead man sat with an arm
thrown over the gunwhale.” Of the original 140 occupants only 35 were
unscathed. The rest were either dead, dying or seriously wounded. The
boats had been caught under direct machine-gun fire all the way in. With
the Turks having been driven off the cliffs above the ambulancemen
carried the wounded up the beach to shelter and began treating their
wounds. Later in the morning Buchanan brought A Section up the beach and
a collecting post was established somewhere near Fisherman’s Hut. Fry
remained near the Sphinx with B Section. After treating all the wounded
on the beach the ambulancemen began climbing the razor-back ridges to
reach the wounded on the cliffs above. B Section climbed Walker’s Ridge
to clear the seaward ridge, later to be named Russell’s Top, while A and
C Sections began the scrambling climb up the razor-back approach to
clear the wounded on Baby 700. Just managing it across these
150-metre-high spiny ridges, along a heart-stopping goat track which
allowed for single traffic only, unencumbered by a stretcher, would have
been a feat in itself. How the bearers made that trip repeatedly,
bringing the wounded down from the heights defies the imagination.

Between 9 and 10 am the Turks began a massive counter-attack. By midday
they were in possession of all the high ground around Baby 700 and the
collecting post at Fisherman’s Hut (where there “were over a hundred
wounded” according to McWhae), was under serious threat. By 2 pm the
Turks were holding the foothills and spurs leading down to the beach. It
was a desperate scramble to evacuate the wounded ahead of the Turkish
advance. Private Cedric Rosser, of C Section, won the first
Distinguished Conduct Medal awarded at Anzac for his role during this
evacuation. His citation records that: “Totally regardless of the
danger... he showed the greatest bravery and resource in attending to
the wounded... under a continuous and heavy shell and rifle fire
dressing and collecting the wounded from the most exposed positions.”
Under Rosser’s supervision most of the wounded were loaded into the
boats grounded near the shoreline. While this was going on bearers
continued carrying casualties from the Firing Line right up until the
last. “3 Field Ambulance bearers showed great bravery in evacuating from
the Front Line over open ground as the retirement continued”, Lyle
Buchanan wrote, “the obvious nature of their work seemed to offer no
safeguard at all ... stretcher bearers worked their way through and in
several instances were between the Turks and our own parties.” The boats
were rowed off, just in the nick of time, with Rosser in control. “He
was not long away”, McWhae noted. The boats were taken in tow by naval
pinnaces and taken out to the hospital and transport ships. The
remaining bearers made their way along North Beach, and past the Sphinx
carrying the wounded. They made their way around Ari Burnu Point and in
to Anzac Cove, where they were urgently needed to help dress the wounds
of the mounting casualties. Otto Kirkby remembered being carried along
the beach by “Andy [Davidson] and Ted [Langoulant]. We laid on the beach
till about 5 o’clock. Shrapnel was bursting over our heads all the time.
We got off at last in a horse barge.” By evening the entire twenty-five
metre width of the southern end of the beach was covered to a distance
of about a hundred metres with wounded, the bodies lying so close
together, on stretchers or groundsheets, that it was difficult to pick a
way through them.

The British military leaders had confidently expected that the Turks
would put up a token resistance against the invasion force then turn
tail and run in the face of a “superior” British Army. But the Turks
fought fiercely in defence of their homeland. There were over 2,000
Australian and New Zealand casualties at Anzac on this first day (with
3,000 British and French casualties further south at Cape Helles). The
British leaders had predicted that no more than 5,000 casualties would
be sustained by the entire 75,000-strong allied army in the winning of
this brief campaign. The actual figure would be 252,000 casualties, with
51,000 allied soldiers killed over an eight-month campaign which they
would lose.

By 2 am on the morning of the 26th the last of the wounded had been
cleared from Anzac Cove and taken out to the hospital and transport
ships. ‘Slept on the beach’, Fry records. ‘By this time we had no
stretchers and had to wait for returns from the transports.’
Unfortunately, to a large extent these were not forthcoming - presenting
a major and unforeseen obstacle over the next few days.

Information resource & page design by ANZAC Day Commemoration Committee
(Queensland) site.(www.anzacday.org.au)