by john masefield.

e from “gallipoli.” by john masefield. (heinemann.)

the men told off for this landing were: the dublin fusiliers, the munster fusiliers, half a battalion of the hampshire regiment, and the west riding field company.

three companies of the dublin fusiliers were to land from towed lighters, the rest of the party from a tramp steamer, the collier river clyde. this ship, a conspicuous seamark at cape helles throughout the rest of the campaign, had been altered to carry and land troops. great gangways or entry ports had been cut in her sides on the level of her between decks, and platforms had been built out upon her sides below these, so that men might run from her in a hurry. the plan was to beach her as near the shore as possible, and then drag or sweep the lighters, which she towed, into position between her and the shore, so as to make a kind of boat bridge from her to the beach. when the lighters were so moored as to make this bridge, the entry ports were to be opened, the waiting troops44 were to rush out on to the external platforms, run from them on to the lighters, and so to the shore. the ship’s upper deck and bridge were protected with boiler plate and sandbags, and a casemate for machine guns was built upon her fo’c’sle, so that she might reply to the enemy’s fire.

five picket-boats, each towing five boats or launches full of men, steamed alongside the river clyde and went ahead when she grounded. she took the ground rather to the right of the little beach, some 400 yards from the ruins of sedd-el-bahr castle, before the turks had opened fire; but almost as she grounded, when the picket-boats with their tows were ahead of her, only 20 or 30 yards from the beach, every rifle and machine gun in the castle, the town above it, and in the curved, low, strongly trenched hill along the bay, began a murderous fire upon ship and boats. there was no question of their missing. they had their target on the front and both flanks at ranges between 100 and 300 yards in clear daylight, 30 boats bunched together and crammed with men and a good big ship. the first outbreak of fire made the bay as white as a rapid, for the turks fired not less then 10,000 shots a minute for the first few minutes of that attack. those not killed in the boats at the first discharge jumped overboard45 to wade or swim ashore. many were killed in the water, many, who were wounded, were swept away and drowned; others, trying to swim in the fierce current, were drowned by the weight of their equipment. but some reached the shore, and these instantly doubled out to cut the wire entanglements and were killed, or dashed for the cover of a bank of sand or raised beach which runs along the curve of the bay. those very few who reached this cover were out of immediate danger, but they were only a handful. the boats were destroyed where they grounded.

meanwhile the men of the river clyde tried to make their bridge of boats by sweeping the lighters into position and mooring them between the ship and the shore. they were killed as they worked, but others took their places; the bridge was made, and some of the munsters dashed along it from the ship and fell in heaps as they ran. as a second company followed, the moorings of the lighters broke or were shot; the men leaped into the water, and were drowned or killed, or reached the beach and were killed, or fell wounded there, and lay under fire, getting wound after wound till they died; very, very few reached the sandbank. more brave men jumped aboard the lighters to remake the bridge; they were swept away or shot to pieces. the average life on those boats was some three minutes long, but they remade the bridge, and the third46 company of the munsters doubled down to death along it under a storm of shrapnel which scarcely a man survived. the big guns in asia were now shelling the river clyde, and the hell of rapid fire never paused. more men tried to land, headed by brigadier-general napier, who was instantly killed, with nearly all his followers. then for long hours the remainder stayed on board, down below in the grounded steamer, while the shots beat on her plates with a rattling clang which never stopped. her twelve machine guns fired back, killing any turk who showed; but nothing could be done to support the few survivors of the landing, who now lay under cover of the sandbank on the other side of the beach. it was almost certain death to try to leave the ship, but all through the day men leaped from her (with leave or without it) to bring water or succour to the wounded on the boats or beach. a hundred brave men gave their lives thus; every man there earned the cross that day. a boy earned it by one of the bravest deeds of the war, leaping into the sea with a rope in his teeth to try to secure a drifting lighter.

the day passed thus, but at nightfall the turks’ fire paused, and the men came ashore from the river clyde, almost unharmed. they joined the survivors on the beach, and at once attacked the old fort and the village above it. these works were strongly held by the enemy. all had been ruined by the fire from the fleet,47 but in the rubble and ruin of old masonry there were thousands of hidden riflemen backed by machine guns. again and again they beat off our attacks, for there was a bright moon and they knew the ground, and our men had to attack uphill over wire and broken earth and heaped stones in all the wreck and confusion and strangeness of war at night in a new place. some of the dublins and munsters went astray in the ruins, and were wounded far from their fellows, and so lost. the turks became more daring after dark; while the light lasted they were checked by the river clyde’s machine guns, but at midnight they gathered unobserved and charged. they came right down on to the beach, and in the darkness and moonlight much terrible and confused fighting followed. many were bayoneted, many shot, there was wild firing and crying, and then the turk attack melted away, and their machine guns began again. when day dawned, the survivors of the landing party were crouched under the shelter of the sandbank; they had had no rest; most of them had been fighting all night; all had landed across the corpses of their friends. no retreat was possible, nor was it dreamed of, but to stay there was hopeless. lieut.-colonel doughty-wylie gathered them together for an attack; the fleet opened a terrific fire upon the ruins of the fort and village, and the landing party went forward again, fighting from bush to bush and from stone to stone, till the ruins were in48 their hands. shells still fell among them, single turks, lurking under cover, sniped them and shot them; but the landing had been made good, and v beach was secured to us.

this was the worst and the bloodiest of all the landings.