ANZAC
Australian and New Zealand Army Corps

ANZAC Day, 25th April, is the most important date in Australia's calendar. Across the length and breadth of Australia her people turn out to salute, honour and pay their respects to the fallen and to the surviving servicemen who willingly offered their lives to the service of their country. If you should ever travel across Australia you will pass through a myriad of regional towns, cities and suburbs that at the time of the Great War were merely small villages of perhaps only a few thousand people or less. A conspicuous feature of all these typically Australian settlements is the local Cenotaph. Dedicated to the men who gave their lives in the Great War For Civilization. Upon these monuments the names of the fallen are inscribed. Most bear too many names for such small towns and districts and there was barely a family or person in Australia whom, by war's end in November 1918 were not affected. The lists of names are often tragic for in many small towns and districts multiple inscriptions of the same name appear on the same monument, only the initials are different - The term ANZAC embodies the true spirit of our nation. The (acronyn) name ANZAC became famous with the landing of the Australian & New Zealand Army Corps on the Gallipoli Peninsula at the Dardanelles, Turkey, on 25 April 1915. It has since become synonymous with the determination and spirit of our armed forces. The significance of the day, and the acronym, in Australia’s heritage is probably best stated by Dr. C. W. Bean in the following excerpt from his official Australian history of World War One: "It was not merely that 7600 Australians and nearly 2500 New Zealanders had been killed or mortally wounded there, and 24,000 more (19,000 Australians and 5,000 New Zealanders) had been wounded, while fewer than 100 were prisoners. But the standards set by the first companies at the first call - by the stretcher-bearers, the medical officers, the staff, the company leaders, the privates, the defaulters on the water barges, the Light Horse at The Nek - this was already part of the tradition not only of ANZAC but of the Australian and New Zealand peoples. By dawn on 20 December, ANZAC had faded into a dim blue line lost amid other hills on the horizon as the ships took their human freight to Imbros, Lemnos and Egypt. But ANZAC stood, and still stands, for reckless valour in a good cause, for enterprise, resourcefulness, fidelity, comradeship and endurance that will never own defeat". The Band Played Waltzing Matilda (Windows Streaming Media)- Click Here

From there came ever-increasing machine gun and artillery fire. Although eight thousand Australians were ashore by 7.30 a.m., and the whole twelve thousand infantry of the 1st Australian Division by early afternoon, the withering hail of Turkish shrapnel that descended upon them pinned them down to the beach and a small area on top of the cliff where the first Anzacs had dug in. Held down by the enemy guns, they were nowhere more than a few hundred yards in from the beach — and with a counter-attack obviously coming at any time, their chances of holding what they had did not look bright.

The counter-attack came at 3.30 p.m. and gradually mounted in intensity as the Turks threw in everything they had at the thin Anzac line. They streamed down shoulder-to-shoulder from their strong-points on the heights. The Diggers met them with rifle fire, and when that did not stop them they hurtled out of their hastily-dug trenches and fought with their bayonets in hundreds of fierce and blood-curdling melees until the Turks had had enough and dropped back to their own defences.

Down to the beach streamed the Australian wounded for medical attention. Anzac Cove was then a crazy turmoil of death and confusion. Heaped everywhere were cases of stores, equipment and ammunition. More troops were still coming ashore, but the unceasing hail of shrapnel took heavy toll.

The Landing - ANZAC Cove

In the casualty stations the wounded from the heights lay everywhere, many of them shell-shocked from the Turkish barrage which was estimated to have reached a peak of fourteen hundred shells per hour landing on the Anzac beachhead. From the front on the heights came word that the enemy onslaughts were continuing and threatened to overwhelm the Australians at any time and push them all back into the sea.

The position seemed critical and after consulting with General Bridges, Commander of the 1st Australian Division, General Birdwood, the Anzacs’ Commander, sent an urgent message to the G.O.C., Sir Ian Hamilton, on board the British battleship Queen Elizabeth, that an immediate evacuation of the whole force might be necessary once darkness fell.

Sir Ian Hamilton consulted with Royal Navy officers. They told him it would take at least two days to pick up the Anzacs. It would be impossible to take them off that night. Accordingly Hamilton wrote back to Birdwood: "There is nothing for it but to dig yourself right in and stick it out. Make a personal appeal to your men to hold their ground."

General Birdwood knew there was no need to make such an appeal to the Anzacs. They would stick it out to the last man if necessary. So there was no more talk of evacuation, but over the succeeding days as the Turkish offensive mounted to a new peak of ferocity and casualties mounted alarmingly, it did seem that they might eventually reach the last Digger.

However, from the point of view of casualties the Turks were even harder hit. At the end of a fortnight they had lost twenty-five thousand men as against the fourteen thousand Anzacs who were out of it through death, wounds or sickness. Still the enemy kept up the pressure and on May 19, three and a half weeks after the landing, came the bloodiest conflict of all.

The Anzacs were then in a clearly defined triangle, with its base on the sea and its apex Quinn’s Post on the slopes of the ridge known as Sari Bair, about a thousand yards from the shore. Mustafa Kemal, the enemy commander, who as Kemal Ataturk was to found modern Turkey, had received reinforcements and was able to concentrate thirty thousand troops for a do-or-die thrust at the Australian position. Their principal objective was Quinn’s Post because directly behind it was a cliff which fell away into an indefensible gully. The Turks had only to get past Quinn’s Post and they had driven a wedge right into the middle of the Anzac bridgehead.

Even with thirty thousand fresh troops, however, they could not do it. Their blood drenched the ground in front of the Australian trenches and their dead were piled up in mounds. Once about hundred Turks, hurling an avalanche of bombs, got into an Australian trench in the Quinn’s Post area. It took the Diggers two hours of hand-to-hand bayonet combat and neverceasing counter-attacks to get them out. Only seventeen still lived when they gave up the trench and fled back to their own lines.

By the next day the Turks realised they were not going to get past Quinn’s Post. Accordingly, under a flag of truce they approached the Australians and asked for a cease-fire to bury their dead. This was agreed to for nine hours, and during that period they removed an estimated five thousand bodies. One minute after the cease-fire period, both sides were at it again hammer-and-tongs and before long there were several hundred more dead Turks littering the recently cleared area in front of Quinn’s Post.

So it went on over many more months of bloodshed on Gallipoli until it became obvious that it was a stalemate. The Turks would never conquer the Anzac positions but likewise the Australians and New Zealanders would never break through the defenders’ lines and achieve the objectives that had brought them to the peninsula.

Lest We Forget

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