A SECOND BALACLAVA.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11510, 5 October 1915, Page 2

A SECOND BALACLAVA.

CHARGE OF THE LIGHT HORSE. THE SIMPLE TRUTH OP IT. (By CAPTAIN BEAN.) GABA TEPE, August 15. Tt. differed from the charge of the Light Brigade in that it was made by horsemen who had volunteered to fight oil foot or in any other way, provided they could only got to Gallipoli and help tho other Australians there. There aro the two scaling ladders which they carried with them lying out there in tho scrub about half-way to the enemy's trenches, and a number "1 tumbled little heaps of that pea-soup coloured Australian khaki which is the hallmark of unrecorded heroism on every battlefield on this peninsula- You can piece together a few simple deductions as to iho details. There are 110 Victoria Crosses, there are no birthday honours, but I know just this: that for sheor self-sacrificing heroism there was never a d'eed in history . that surpassed the charge which tho two Australian Light Horse Brigades made in tho first light of Saturday, August 7, in order to help their comrades in a critical moment of a great battle. Tho charge was made against the centre of the Turkish position. Four long months we and the Turks have faced one another on a line shaped like two sidea of a triangle, the third sid'e or back, boing the sea. We held an inner triangle, and the Turks an outer one, and at the apex the two have from the first come very close together. At various times we have been separated from one anther only by a single barricade of eandbags 6ft in width, hastily piled across a communication trench, but of late conditions have been less strained, and the two sides have been facing one another on both sides of tho angle at about fifteen to twenty yard's at tho closest. Tho men of tho Australian and New Zealand Army Corps had been iu these J trenches sixteen weeks without rest and without relief. Each corner of i the war has its own peculiar difficul- | ties, and what distinguishes Anaac! from them all is that from tho first hour of landing almost all the heavy carriage that goes on wheels in other places has here to go on the backs of men. No part of the Army is at any time more than twelve hundred yards from tho enemy's trenches, consequently without making a. song about it, a§ they say, it may be imagined how'tthe men longed for any relief from this constant never-ending trench digging and water carrying. When tho orders for the attack came along the men grasped the fact that this might bo the last they would sec of* tHose intermingled trenches. SOUNDS THROUGH THE NIGHT. It was a part, a very small part, of I a very bier movement. After darkness &ther columns issued out from the northern end of our lines and one after another turned to the right into tho tangled and almost unknown foothills of the main ridge. All through the niglit came outbursts of rifle firing, first from fairly close at hand, where the New Zealand Mounted Rifles and the Maoris, amidst wild fierce fighting, were clearing tho Turks out from redoubt after redoubt amongst their strongly held positions in the nearer foothills. Later, far more distant, a faint knock knock amongst the more northerly hills, as the columns turned into their respective gullies and began to butt their heads against tho Turkish J posts there. Lastly, a little before daybreak there came over ever so faint the sound as of water bubbling and boiling. It was the first sign of the new British force landed that night four miles to the north, at Suvla Bay, before daybreak. The attacking parties filed into the trenches from which they were to make the rush. They were in their shirts, wftli the sleeves rolled up, and the brown forearm muscles snowing. Their knees 1 'were bare and sunburnt. Each man carried his full kit. with 200 rounds of ammunition. Waterbottles were full. They carried food for a day or two. Each man had stowed carefully into his pack such little mementoes as he especially prized, a fragment of Turkish shell, some Turkish coins bought off a Turkish prisoner, a home letter and a photograph or two. They were saying their good-bye - ? to theirown trenches. That night they would sleep in tho scrub. Tho attack on tho left-hand side of the apex was to bo made by tho Bth Light Horse, with the 10th Light Horso following. Four linos would start, of a hundred and fifty each, tho first and secpnd lines being from the Bth Light Horse, that is, Victorians, and tho third and fourth lines being 10th Light Horse. Western Australians. The first line was to carry, amongst other things, two sealing ladders for the occasion. The fourth line would oarry picks, shovels and ail sorts of engineering supplies, but it was to fight like the others if necessary. In order to help the men to get out of the trenches like a flash, pegs had been driven imo the side of the trench at Footholds. As the moment for the charge came near the first line got I its foothold on these, and the second line stood in the trenches behind it, j ready to give it a leg up. And then, at four o'clock to the ! moment, the bombardment by our guns 1 began. I have seen such bombardment"? often at Hel.es, but never since j the first week of our landing has the like of it been seen in Anzac. Every gun on land and shore that could lie j brought to bear emptied itself, as fast ' as the guns' crews could load, into the maze of Turkish trenches in the backbone of the ridge in front of tho apex of our position. The dust of tho bombardment rolled across the ridge in clouds, shutting out any view of the place from a distance. For half an hour the slope in front of our tienclies was an inferno, and then the uproar ceased as suddenly as it had begun, cea-sed a.s if cut off short by the stroke of a knife. At the same instant the Light Horse attack was launched. The men were standing thero in the trenches, without the least sign of excitement, hitching up their packs, getting a firm foothold below the parapet. The colonel of tho Bth, Lieutenant-Colonel A. H. White, insisted on leading his regiment. Ten minutes before the start he walked into the brigade offices and held out his hand to the brigade major. " Good-bye," he said. A couple or minutes later he was at his place on. tho parapet with his sen. AN APPALLING FIRE. Colonel White stood by the parapet, with his watch in his har.<. He and two other officers hud carefuhy set. and compared their watches, and the, three now stood under the parapet at three points in the line, watching the second hand fidget ils way round. "Three minute to go," jsaid the colonel, then simply, "Go!" They were over the parapet like a flash, the colonel amongst them, the officers in line with c-Wmen. I shall never forget that moment. I was making my way along a path from the left of the area and was passing not very far away when that tremendous fusillade broke out. It roe from a fierce cackle into a roar, in which you could distinguish neither rifle nor machine guns, but just one continuous roaring tempest. One could not help an involuntary shiver. God help anyone that was out in that tornado, but one knew very well that the men were out in it. The t'me for the moaning of it beyond all doubt—exactly 4.30. Tho Light Horse were making their charge. There were no Brit-if-h r'fl»s in all that five U was tho of ibe TurkUi riflta and machu.v

as the Light Morse cleared the Australian One knew that nobody could live in it. Many fell back into the trench wounded, eomo fell just outside and managed to crawl back and tumble in before they were a second and third time, and klled. as they certainly would ho if they remained lying out; there. Practically all those that were wounded were hit, in this way <m our own parapet. Colonel White managed to run eight or ten yards before he was Killed. The scaling ladders are lying out there, about tho same, distance out. _ Exactly two minutes after the first lino had cleared tho parapet the .second lino jumped out without the slightest hesitation and followed it. No one knew how it happened and probably no olio will ever know, but some, either of that first lino or tho second, managed to get into tho extreme righthand corner of the enemy's trench. They carried with them a small flng to put up in tho enemy's trench if they captured it. The flag was to be the signal for a party of tho lloyal Welsh Fusiliers to attack up the gully to tho right. Two men were put in the head of one of our foremost saps with periscopes to watch for the first sign of this nag in the enemy's trench. This tiiue a Frenoh seventy-five, a Run captured by tho Turks from the Serbians in 'the Balkan war, was firing her shells at the rate of about one in ten seconds. In the neck machine guns, far too many to count by their noise, wer& whipping up the dust, and it wast next 'to impossible to distinguish anything in the haze, but in tho extreme south-eastern corner of the Turkish position there did appear just for ten minutes the small nag which our party had taken. No ono ever saw them there. No ono will ever know who they were or how they did it. Only for those ten minutes the flag fluttered up behind the para\)«fc and then someone tore it down, Tho fight in the corner, of the trench, whatever it was, was over tuul it can only have ended one way. In the meantime, ten minutes after the second line, the third line had gone over the parapet as straight and as quick as the other. The attack was then stopped, and fortunately was stopped in time to prevent a small part of "this third line from reaching the lire zone. There was one point where our trenches were under a part of the slope aud the men had to crawl out some teu yards Br so before they put lip their heads into the torrent of lead. A dozen or two were stopped here before they made ijieir rush. ONLY A QUARTER OF AN HOUR. It wa-> all over within a quarter of an hour. Except for this wild fire, which burst out again at interval.-,, there was not a move in tho front of the trenches, only the scrub and the tumbled khaki here and there. All day long- the brilliant sun of a perfect day noured down upon them from a cloudless sky. That, night, after dark, cue or two maimed figures appeared over our parapet and tumbled home into the trenches. They were men who had fallen wounded ill some corner where there was a scrap of cover and had waited for this chance to pet back. One of these cam© from below the parapet of a Turkish trench on the right. He had lain there all day, too close for the Turks to see him without pxnosing themselves. There was an her wounded Australian near him. After dark, they heard the Turks come over the parapet of their trench searching the brrd'es of the men there for papers and diaries, so they arranged to make as fast as they cou'd for our trenches. The man who arrived back was shot through the ankle. His mate never came back, but from that man we will know all that will ever ho known of what those Light Horso men found facing them as they ran through the dust haze. The nearer trenches were crammed with troopers. Th? bayonets of tho front row of the Turks could be seen over the oarapet-. ai.d behind them there appeared to be two -ows of Turks standing waist hich above the parapet emptying their rifles as fast as they could fire them. This is confirmed by the accounts of the officers in other parts of the line who had a view of the Turks in their trenches opposite. "Look, you know the way a stubble paddock looks when you have put the sheep across it. They havo turned the earth up a bit and you seo the stubble standing in rows behind them. Well, that was what the Turkish bayonets looked like across that slope that morning." That was how the field was described. There is 110 question •that the charge cf the Light Horse pinned down to that position during its continuance and for hours aftei wards every available Turkish soldier. Our own machine, guns were able to get in soma work amongst some of the Turks, and those who know .say that their losses nnrt have been an ample set off to our own. FROM QUIKN'S POST. So much for the charge of the Third Light Horse Brigade. The Second Regiment was to attack irom Quinn's Post in four lines of fifty each. The first line was led by Major T. J. Logan. They scrambled vroin the trenches the instant the sienal was given, but more than half were actually knocked back, killed or wounded, into the trench before. they were dear or the parapet. Tho first few out managed to reach a few yards before they were killed. They left their trenches at two points, and thev had only from fifteen to twentyfive" yards to go. Major Logan, who leu' one party, is said actually to have reached the Turkish parapet and fallen to it. Lieutenant Bourne, who led the other, fell about ten yards from our trench. Tho boy who fell beside him had his leg practically severed by maclrne gun bullets. The Turkish machine guns drew a line across that narrow space that none could pass. As the whole of the first lino was either killed or wounded within a few seconds the attack was stopped and the other lines did not, start. The First Regiment attacked from the hill in the gully. In front of that hill is a small branch of that same gully, very steep on both sides, and only about forty yards from one side to the other. On the northern slope of this gully the Turks have three lines of trenches, the further up being 011 the edge of the gully, with many other lines of Turkish trenches across the gentler slope _ above it. Some of the lower Turkish trenches were really thoso made by the Australian infantry, as its support lines, when it temporarily won this part of the hill on Sunday, May 2. Two squadrons of the Ist Light Horse went out, one working up the gully and the other going straight over the parapet as soon as the first was in position. The lower trenches were never held by the Turks by day and the Light Horse, bv using stick bombs, drove the Turks clean out of the other two. One party rushed the second trench, and from there began to bomb the trench ahead of it. Suddenly a white head appeared over the parapet of the trench in front, furiously waving. Hio colonel of the regiment, who had come out with his men, recognised it, for tne head of a subaltern who had led his men viglit into th© third trenchHe immediately over and joined tho party in the tre-ucvt, which had previously been in the most uncomfortable position of_ being bombed by its friends from behind and by the enemy from in front. There, for two hours, this party remained fighting the Turks m tlie trenches further Up as best they coivld with the slender supply of bombs that came over to them. Even to supplv these bombs the men had to imperii their lives by running over the top from their own trench iu full view <>f the Turks, but tho Turk in the trenches tu> the hill had it all his own way in tins bomb battlo. His higher trenches were connected with the trench wh eh he held by frequent narrow manhole tunnels. At the same time as the Turk pitched a bomb thromrb the u'r towards Hie 1,-tve: trench ho wo 11 Id '->wl a second l uiiih iowu ).he, t.tiui';! in the ts«n> 4 -'