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With Manchesters in the East

Chapter 4 THE AUGUST BATTLES AT CAPE HELLES

Word Count: 2734    |    Released on: 06/12/2017

the Suvla Bay landing was effected. The line of communications that linked the Achi Baba position with Maidos and Gallipoli was to be cut by our forces operating from Suvla and Anzac, and the

anisation and personnel through the literature and correspondence of the orderly-room, or from mere glimpses on the occasion of our rare visits to the base on Gully Beach. I am glad to have once seen the Commander-in-Chief, Sir Ian Hamilton. He passed our Headquarters on the Western Mule Sap, walking briskly towards the trenches. The fine appreciation of the Manchester Territorial Brigade's work on

y was to assault the enemy's position si

that time our Brigadier. Secondly, we had to tell our men that the Turkish lines would have been rendered almost untenable before their advance, in consequence of the heavy bombardment, which was to precede the

onstration, and would probably lead to success. The discovery that the Turks had in reality been

tes, worn by our men for the enlightenment of artillery observers, twinkling under the dust and smoke. Some other Manchesters were lending a hand in the battle already, and were struggling under heavy shrapnel fire to gain a footing in the trenches immediately to the north of the sector to be assaulted by the Brigade on the morrow. Then gradually the firing sank. By 4.45 P.M. there w

orth of where we were. A Company (Captain A.E.F. Fawcus) and D Company (Captain H. Smedley) were ordered to comply. The men were resting for the work planned for the next day

t they were out of touch with our line, and it was intended to reinforce them. The night was dark, and the direction to be taken after leaving our trenches could only be rou

, already littered with dead and wounded. Both Companies eventually lined u

We laid down these brave men on the narrow fire-step, and our stretcher-bearers worked nobly. Several men went out with stretchers under heavy fire, and fetched in as many survivors as they could find. One, I remember, was called Corris. At midnight the Colonel and Ca

ility to go, and with a companion he climbed over the parapet. A few moments later he was shot through the heart. Smedley's messenger was Lance-Corporal G.W.F. Franklin, whose services on the field won him a commissio

on, a plucky Australian officer attached to us, was among the killed. He had been in charge of

ia nullah. A gap was therefore made overnight in the barrier that had hitherto crossed the mouth of the defile and linked our fire trenches with those neighbouring. A machine gun was placed at the north-west corner of this gap under cover of the end of our fire trench. On the south-east side of the gap, a barricade ran up a steep slope to the trenches of other Manchesters, whose assault was to be simultaneous with ours

illery thundered against the enemy's position. Then the hour came, and C Company, under Chadwick (bravest of the brave),

tain J.R. Creagh, fo

ed against the Turkish line on the left of the redoubt, and another, under Lieut.-Col. Pilkingto

chine-gun fire. A few of them gallantly reached the Turkish trenches and fell there. Long afterwards, during the last flicker of a British offensive in December, some Lowland Scots s

om the support line through the long grass of the nullah, and dropping in their tracks under the constant fire of the redoubt. Chadwick and J.R. Creagh were both in the forefront of the advance, and Chadwick signalled back its hopelessness. His subaltern, Bacon, had been the first to pass the gap, and had been killed on emerging. The whole battle in this sector was really over, and I stopped the men under cover from moving out into the open. In the

ing-stations, pictures of suffering and patience. The attack still further reduced th

rtum S

am. Genera

trench captur

y. The guns used to boom all day long from the hidden north until the 22nd August, when the attempt was given up. Several wee

limited results of the battle on

hia nullah, the Lancashire Fusiliers succeeded, with great gallantry, in capturing a small

fully achieved its purpose. It was, however, difficult to look upon it in this somewhat n

the very names. There was a postman from Bradford, who was forty-seven years old and had thirteen children. I remember his telling me of South African experiences. He fell. Most of our men were far youn

ole campaign. About the time when I finally left the unit Captain Smedley joined the Egyptian A

very soon afterwards to conduct a newly formed Bombing School on the Peninsula. He was the recipient of ma

ds Company Sergeant-Major) J. Joyce; Lance-Corporal (afterwards Lieutenant) G.W.F. Franklin; Lance-Corporal (afterwards Lieutenant) W.T. Thorp; Corporals Hulme a

the cliff. We used to go down its steep side on to the coast road, full of soldiers of the Allied Armies, of carts and mules with long tassel fly protectors, and of Indian or Zionist muleteers. Across the road a lighter was moored, from which we bathed happily in a peaceful sea, with the pale blue contours of Im

g biscuits into a palatable porridge, cooking rice and raisins, picking lice from their grey woollen shirts, reading papers (all very light and very old), grumbling, but ever cheerful. It was in the Scotch dug-out

The same day we left our bivouac, and after a long, hot, march, through the dusty gorge called Gully Ravine, we

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