CHOCOLATE & GREEN HILLS
last updated : 20/04/08
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"21st August: Chocolate Hill reached", period picture reproduced from "Gallipoli, 1915-Pens, Pencils and cameras at war", (London 1985), Peter H. Liddle, p. 140
CHOCOLATE
HILL, 7 AUGUST
The Pals arrived at Hill 10 to find it had been taken by another battalion. So
the final advance on Chocolate Hill began with several hundred soldiers from
other Irish regiments and a considerable number of troops from the 11th. They
headed off across the salt lake bed in an easterly direction, then ran over a
couple of empty water-courses and through a number of dry, ploughed fields,
before crawling through hedgerows. The troops now entered a network of
Chocolate and Green
Hills –so named because of their natural coloring- rise from the East bank
of the Salt lake and were captured by the 6th Lincolns and the 6th
Borders on the evening of the 7th August. Unsuccessful efforts
were made to advance beyond Green Hill, culmination on 21st
August in the battle of Scimitar Hill –the last great action of the
campaign- but the frontline remained there until the evacuation
Transcribed from the plaque inside the gate of Green Hill Cemetery
empty but
well-constructed trenches at the base of Chocolate Hill, which some men assumed
had been built under German supervision.
The enemy
strategically withdrew to the very top pf the hill. Now it was time for a wild
and heart-stopping charge up to the summit, using both bayonet and bullet.
Even those who were not in the vanguard of the assault could see that an
officer was signaling the men for “the off” with a green cloth tied to a
stick. Then with a deafening roar and a concerted rush, the Dublins stormed
Chocolate Hill. To many of the Pals it looked and sounded like a gigantic
version of a forward rush on the rugby pitchat Dublin’s Lansdowne Road.
By the time
the Pals had reached the top, all the turkish defenders hadeither been
bayoneted or shot or had fled into distance. Dead bodies lay in the brushwood
on a hill-top that looked like a volcanic landscape in places, thick with
smoke and pockmarked with craters of shells sent overearlier by British naval
gunners. It was a blea and lifeless scene, but the Dublin Pals had helped the
Irish Division to take its first big objective and there was an intense
satisfaction for many of the men in that fact.
"Field of Bones", (Dublin 2006), Philip Orr, p.
81
"Trench at the foot of chocolate hill", period picture reproduced from "The national army museum book of the Turkish front 1914-18", (London - 2003), Lord Carver, p. 74.
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