This website has been prepared by
the first "hotel de charme" on the Gallipoli peninsula
Before the landing a
message by the Corps commander Birdwood was distributed among the men :
Officers and Men,
In conjunction with the
Navy, we are about to undertake one of the most difficult tasks any soldier
can be called on to perform, and a problem which has puzzled many soldiers for
years past. That we will succeed I have no doubt, simply because I know your
full determination to do so. Lord Kitchener has told us that he lays special
stress on the role the Army has to play in this particular operation, the
success of which will be a very severe blow to the enemy – indeed, as severe
as any she could receive in France. It will go down in history to the glory
of the soldiers of Australia and New
Zealand. Before we start, there are one or two points which I must impress on
all, and I most earnestly beg every single man to listen attentively and take
these to heart.
We are going to have a real
hard and rough time of it until; at all events, we have turned the enemy out
of our first objective. Hard rough times none of us mind, but to get through
them successfully we must always keep before us the following facts. Every
possible endeavour will be made to bring up transport as often as possible;
but the country whither we are bound is very difficult, and we may not be able
to get our wagons anywhere near us for days, so men must not think their wants
have been neglected if they do not get all they want. On landing it will be
necessary for every individual to carry with him all his requirements in food
and clothing for three days, as we may not see our transport till then.
Remember then that it is essential for everyone to take the greatest care not
only of his food, but of his ammunition, the replenishment of which will be
very difficult. Man are liable to throw away their food the first day out and
to finish their water bottles as soon as they start marching. If you do this
now, we can hardly hope for success, an unfed man cannot fight and you must
make an effort to try and refrain from starting on your water bottles until
quite late in the day. Once you start drinking you cannot stop and a water
bottle is very soon emptied.
Also as regards ammunition – you must not waste it by firing away
indiscriminately at no target. The time will come when we shall find the
enemy in well entrenched positions from which we shall have to turn them out,
when all our ammunition will be required; and remember: Concealment whenever
possible, Covering fire always, Control of fire and control
of your men, Communications never to be
neglected
W.R. Birdwood
"Gallipoli, The New Zealand Story", (Auckland 1998), Christopher Pugsley, p. 102-103Officers
At that moment there came up the trench Captain Bage, a regular officer of the Australian Engineers, well known in the commonwealth as a member of Mawson’s Australasian expedition to the Antartic. “Here’s the man,” cried Bridges, and directed Bage to make the survey. To mark out such works (*) was a traditional duty of military engineers; it would avoid unplanned
At 1 a.m. on May 4 the gallant
Colonel Braund of the 2nd Bn., returning to the rest camp in the scrub on Braund’s Hill met his death .... He was slightly deaf, and appears to have disregarded the challenge of one of his own sentries. The sentry shot him.
This morning one of our chaps was firing through a loophole when a bullet came in, glanced along the barrel, then ricochetted at an unfortunate agle and killed young
Trooper Bellinger, one of the best lads in my troop.
Commander Cater, hoarse from shouting through his megaphone, directed the
incoming barges to their proper piers and superintended the Anzac Beach
parties in making them fast –no easy matter, while the only illumination for
the whole bay and its foreshores was the light of the stars, or of a rare
stable lantern swinging in the hand of one of the officers or tucked behind
some stack of provisions where work was active.
On August 5
the gallant Cater was killed and Lt Cowan wounded in rushing out along the
pier to steady the crew of a small steamboat which had been holed during a
bombardment.
"The story of Anzac", Volume II, (Sydney 1981), Charles E. W. Bean, p.
352 & 357
Glass”. Many
British officers wore monocles, but Kater’s was what would be known now as a
king size one. The black silk ribbon attached to it was much wider than those
normally used. There was a current story of some Australian soldiers who put
their identity discs in their eye-sockets as they approached a British officer
who was wearing a monocle. The officer looked at them, removed his
glass, threw it in the air, and caught it neatly in the socket of his eye. “Do
that, you blighters”, he said.I have no evidence that Kater was the officer concerned, but that is the kind
of thing which he might well have done, although he would have used a stronger
word than blighters.
"These Things Happened", (Melbourne
1975), F.F. Knight, p. 159-160
April, but by the following day had established him-self as virtually an inde-pendent unit, leading a donkey carrying wounded from the front down Monash and Shrapnel Valleys to the beach. In the first three weeks of the campaign he became a familiar sight, always cheerful and oblivious of danger. He was killed by machine-gun fire near Steele's Post on 19 May. Although recommended for a Distinguished Conduct Medal and later the Victoria Cross, no single act of heroism could be isolated. He was, however, mentioned in Dispatches for gallant and distinguished service in the field. In 1967 Lord Casey, Governor-General of Australia, who had served at Gallipoli as General Bridges' aide-de-camp, presented Simpson's sister with the first Anzac Commemorative Medallion.
Soon I came upon
Col. Clarke and Lieut. Patterson and together on our hands and knees we climbed to the top of the first ridge (it was Russell’s Top). Up to this time I had not seen the sign of a Turk, but as we moved a little to our left we discovered a trench overlooking the beach and, fixing bayonets, we received the order to go for it but, unfortunately, the Turks had no desire to wait for us when the saw the bayonet. ...A few hours after the first man landed, two special parties on the 2nd Field Company of Engineers, under Captain T.R. Williams and
Lieutenant W. H. Dawkins, began to search the gullies for water. By nightfall they had two tube wells sunk at the mouth at Shrapnel Gully. Next day Dawkins, a Duntroon boy, moved to Dawkins’ Point – the seawards end of M’Cay Hill- and by the second evening he had sunk twenty shallow wells, which gave 20.000 gallons daily of good soakage water. Troughs were immediately erected there for 500 animals. Pipes had to be laid under fire.
On the CWGCs' website one can find the following
information on Simpson :
Son of Sarah Simpson Kirkpatrick, of 14, Bertram St., South
Shields, Eng-land, and the late Robert Kirkpatrick. Private J S Kirkpatrick
served as
"British Cemetery near Anzac beach - Gallipoli" reproduced from a period postcard (Başar Eryoner - private collection)
His (*)
headquarters were simple, and not seldom in dangerous places. At Anzac he
lived on a site in the most dangerous area of the beach, and his anxious staff
insisted on piling a few bales of hay against the exposed side of the
general’s shelter as a partial protection against the Turkish guns which
chiefly played upon it. There his aide-de-camp, Captain B.W. Onslow, a
gallant, handsome English boy, who insisted sleeping out-of-doors in the heat
of the Anzac summer, was killed, and many a man lost his life within a stone’s
throw of the place.
"The story of Anzac", Volume II, (Sydney 1981), Charles E. W. Bean, p. 122
(*) General Birdwood
On the evening before the battle I found the battalion’s officers gathered on the Parade Ground, their
Colonel, E.S. Brown, in the midst discussing with them the final arrangements for the attack. …
…, I should like to pay a tribute to one of the men whom I
admired most at Anzac Cove. He was not an Australian; he was a British naval
officer,
Lieut-Commander Kater. I think that he was the senior Naval Landing
Officer. That title may not have been the correct one, but he was in fact
responsible for all small craft coming in and going out of Watson’s Pier. It can be said with
confidence that many hundreds of Australians who saw and heard him at work,
admired his efficiency and sang-froid. His coolness under fire set a
wonderful example and he seemed to bear a charmed life.
He was known amongst the Australians as “The bloke with the Eye-
In beach
cemetery –one remade by the Turks- there stood in the centre the small bronze
memorial tablet that had marked the grave of Captain Brain Onslow, Birdwood’s
fine young A.D.C. who was killed by a shell from Beachy Bill while sleeping on
the roof of his shelter one hot night.
"Gallipoli Mission", (Crows Nest 1990), Charles E.W. Bean, p. 65
"Graves of Major Ellis and Lieut.-Col. Braund", picture reproduced from "Five Months at Anzac, A Narrative of Personal Experiences of the Officer Commanding the 4th Field Ambulance, Australian Imperial Force", Joseph Lievesley Beeston, (Sydney 1916)
digging, and Bridges did not ask of Bage more than he himself would
have performed. Nevertheless the task could hardly have been more
perilous. At 3 in the afternoon Bage and Drake Brockman went out ...
... The two officers, holding a stretched cord between them, had fixed the
southern face of the proposed redoubt and Bage was hammering in with a stone
the eastern peg, when the Turks at the head of the same knuckle and also
farther back on Lone Pine, 250 yards distant, opened fire. It had been
establised that at least five machine-guns were directed upon them. Bage was
hit first in the arm, then in the leg, and finally through the head, and
killed; ...
... Bage’s body was left until dark, when at great risk one of the covering
party, Lance-Corporal Joyce, and some men of the 11th searched for and brought
it in.
"The story of Anzac", Volume II, (Sydney 1981), Charles E. W. Bean, p. 257
(*) the line of a redoubt/trench east of Bolton’s ridge