But, at this breaking of the wave of victory, this panting moment in the race, when some of the runners had lost their first wind, encouragement reached our men: a message came to the beach from Sir Ian Hamilton to say that help was coming, and that an Australian submarine had entered the Narrows and had sunk a Turkish transport off Chanak.
This word of victory, coming to men who thought for the moment that their efforts had been made in vain, had the effect of a fresh brigade. The men rallied back up the hill, bearing the news to the firing line; the new, constricted line was made good; and the rest of the night was never anything but continued victory to those weary ones in the scrub.
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By the night of the second day, the Australian and NewZealand Army Corps had won and fortified their position.
John Masefield,in Gallipoli
General Notes.-Rccall what you know about the Anzacs. Have a map in front of you; look up the ?gean, Mudros, Gaba Tepe. A battalion is a body of infantry composed of several companies and forming part of a regiment. A brigade consists of several regiments. The Southland was transport conveying Australian troops from Alexandria to Mudros Bay, Lemnos Island; it was torpedoed on the 2nd of September, 1915. On board were the headquarters staff of General Legge"s Second Australian Division, Brigadier-General Linton, and the headquarters staff of the 6th Australian Infantry Brigade, the 21st (Victorian) Battalion,and one company of the 23rd Battalion. Volunteers went down into the stokehold and worked gallantly to keep the ship afloat, Brigadier-General Linton died afterwards from shock and exposure. Sir Ian Hamilton was the British General in command of the expedition. What is the main thought that arises in your mind after reading this graphic account of the Landing? How can the Spirit of Anzac be shown in times of peace?
Drawn by R.C.Fricke
The Australian War Memorial. Chanuk Bair Gallipoli.
LESSON 23
lEAVINg ANzAC
It was not an easy task to remove large numbers of men, guns, and animals from positions commanded by the Turk observers and open to every cruising aeroplane. But, by ruse, and skill, and the use of the dark, favoured by fine weather, the work was done, almost without loss, and, as far as one could judge, unsuspected.
Had the Turks known that we were going from Anzac and Suvla, it is at least likely that they would have hastened our going, partly that they might win some booty, which they much needed, or take a large number of prisoners, whose appearance would have greatly cheered the citizens of Constantinople. But nearly all those of our army who were there felt, both from observation and intelligence, that the Turks did not know that we were going. As far as men on one side in a war can judge of their enemies, they felt that the Turks were deceived, completely deceived, by the ruses employed by us, and that they believed that we were being strongly reinforced for a new attack. Our soldiers took great pains to make them believe this. Looking down upon us from their heights, the Turks saw boats leaving the shoreapparently empty, and returning apparently full of soldiers. Looking up at them from our position, our men saw how the sight affected them. For the twelve days during which the evacuation was in progress at Anzac and Suvla, the Turks were plainly to be seen digging everywhere to secure themselves from the feared attack. They dug new lines, they brought up new guns, they made ready for us in every way. On the night of the 19th and 20th of December, in hazy weather, at full moon, our men left Suvla and Anzac unmolested.
It was said by Dr. Johnson that no man does anything consciously for the last time without a feeling of sadness. No man of all that force passed down those trenches, the scenes of so much misery and pain and joy and valour and devoted brotherhood. without a deep feeling of sadness. Even those who had been loudest in their joy at going were sad. Many there did not want to go, but felt that it was better to stay, and that then, with another 50,000 men, the task could be done, and their bodies and their blood buy victory for us. This was the feeling even at Suvla, where the men were shaken and sick still from the storm; but at Anzac the friendly little kindly city, which had been won at such cost in the ever-glorious charge on the 25th, and held since with such pain, and built with such sweat and toil and anguish, in thirst, and weakness, and bodily suffering, which had seen the thousands of the 13th Division land in the dark and hide. and had seen them fall in with the others to go to Chanak, and had known all the hopeand farvour, all the glorious resolve, and all the bitterness and disappointment of the unhelped attempt, the feeling was far deeper. Officers and men went up and down the well-known gullies moved almost to tears by the thought that, the next day, those narrow acres so hardly won and all those graves of our people so long defended would be in the Turks" hands.