8. Lone Pine – Lone Pine Cemetery and Memorial
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Directions:
At the end of Artillery Road you will reach what was known as 400 Plateau or simply Lone Pine. You are now on Second Ridge. The path lies through pine trees and out into an open area. Turn right, and walk to the entrance of Lone Pine Cemetery. Once inside, turn left and make your way through the cemetery, go up a small flight of steps and cross to the Lone Pine Memorial. From the memorial there is a magnificent view in all directions. To the south-west, to your right, you can see the sweep of Bolton’s Ridge leading down to the sea and beyond the promontory of Gaba Tepe. Looking south, across the flat valley, through which you most likely came to reach Anzac from Eceabat, the land rises again to the hump of Achi Baba in the middle distance. From there, the land falls away to the tip of the peninsula at Helles where the British landings took place on 25 April 1915.
At Anzac, men could hear the artillery fire from Helles. Despite terrible bloodshed on both sides, the British were unable to break through the Turkish lines and they evacuated the position on 9 January 1916. Australians and New Zealanders also fought with great loss at Helles – in the Second Battle of Krithia on 8 May 1915. The Helles cemeteries contain Australian graves and on the Helles Memorial, at the very tip of the peninsula, are recorded the names of Australian soldiers who died at Krithia and whose bodies were either never recovered or could not be identified at burial. On the Helles Memorial are also listed the units of the AIF (Australian Imperial Force) that fought at Gallipoli – the only place where this information is recorded on the peninsula – for the Helles Memorial is the British Empire’s tribute to the whole campaign. Every year, thousands of Australians go to Anzac; few visit Helles.
Looking left, back to the east across the valley, you will see the long low rise of Third or Gun Ridge. Throughout the campaign this was behind the Turkish lines although a few Anzacs reached it on 25 April 1915. Looking north-east, Second and Third Ridge merge in the near distance and the slope rises up across Battleship Hill and then more steeply to Chunuk Bair. On that height is the New Zealand Memorial.
Look up to the road outside the cemetery. It bends away from here along Second Ridge past smaller cemeteries that you can pick out in this order – Johnston’s Jolly, Courtney's and Steel's Post and Quinn’s Post. The Anzac trenches ran along this narrow ridge to the left of the road while the Turkish line was just metres away on the other side. Bean described his return to Second Ridge in 1919:
Thus as we rode northwards along this road the trenches were never, except where a gully broke them, more than about fifty yards away on either hand … It gave a strange thrill to ride along this space in front of Steele’s, Courtney’s and Quinn’s where three years before men could not even crawl at night. The bones and tattered uniforms of men were scattered everywhere…
[Charles Bean, Gallipoli Mission, Sydney, 1990, p 50]
In the vicinity of the Lone Pine Memorial there stood on 25 April 1915, in Bean’s words, a ‘single dwarf pine tree’. Within days the tree had been shot away but not before it gave its name to the position, Lone Pine. Within months, Lone Pine had entered Australia’s national story as the site of one of the bloodiest and hardest fought actions of the campaign – the Battle of Lone Pine.
Bare white bones, piled or clustered
- Looking back from the captured Turkish trenches at Lone Pine towards the Australian jumping-off trench
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- This photograph was taken looking back from the captured Turkish trenches at Lone Pine towards the Australian jumping-off trench in September 1915. This is approximately the area where the Lone Pine Cemetery and Memorial stand today. [AWM C01685]
Stand on the northern end of the Lone Pine Memorial and look back over the cemetery. Beneath you in 1915 would have been Turkish trenches on the eastern side and roughly at the other end of the cemetery would have been the Anzac lines. If you had been in the Turkish trenches on the afternoon of 6 August 1915 at 5.25 pm you would have had the sun in your eyes and you would have been enduring a fierce artillery barrage from Royal Navy warships offshore and from batteries in the Anzac area.
At precisely 5.30 pm the barrage lifted and, rising from concealed trenches in no-man’s-land and the Anzac line, came the men of New South Wales, soldiers of the 1st Brigade (1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th Battalions). They charged straight across the area in front of you, meeting Turkish fire. Then they paused. Instead of an enemy trench to jump down into they found much of the front line trenches were covered in sand being held up by timbers. Some men ran on over these covered areas and reached the Turkish communication trenches; others found gaps in this head cover and leapt down into the darkness beneath. The preliminary bombardment had been so fierce that Turkish soldiers holding the front line had moved back into nearby mine galleries for cover and many fled at the sudden appearance of the Australians. By nightfall, most of the enemy front line was in Australian hands and outposts had been established further ahead in former Turkish communication trenches. The Australian Engineers had also dug safe passage across no-man’s-land and reinforcements were able to come over without exposing themselves to Turkish fire. However, the real battle for Lone Pine was just beginning.
Lone Pine was a strong and important position to the Turks. They had not expected such an attack here and the order was quickly given to retake lost positions. For three days and nights Australians and Turks struggled in the trenches and dark tunnels of Lone Pine until the area was choked with the wounded, dying and dead:
- A trench at Lone Pine on 8 August 1915
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- A trench at Lone Pine on 8 August 1915. The scene captures something of the
savagery of the action. Sergeant Apear de Vine, 4th Battalion, NSW, of Maroubra,
Sydney, wrote of the dead:
[AWM A04029]… they are stacked out of the way in any convenient place sometimes thrown up on to the parados so as not to block the trenches, there are more dead than living …
[De Vine, quoted in Bill Gammage, The Broken Years, Ringwood, 1990, p 84]
The wounded bodies of both Turks and our own … were piled up 3 and 4 deep … the bombs simply poured in but as fast as our men went down another would take his place. Besides our own wounded the Turks’ wounded lying in our trench were cut to pieces with their own bombs. We had no time to think of our wounded … their pleas for mercy were not heeded … Some poor fellows lay for 30 hours waiting for help and many died still waiting.
[Private John Gammage, 1st Battalion, quoted in Les Carlyon, Gallipoli, Sydney, 2001, p 360]
Lone Pine was a battle of bombs, bullets and bayonets fought to defend sandbag walls built by both sides to block up a trench at the forward most point of the advance or counter attack. The Australians tried to hold what they had taken; the Turks fought equally determinedly to expel them from it.
- Australians in a captured Turkish trench at Lone Pine on 10 August 1915
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- Australians in a captured Turkish trench at Lone Pine on 10 August 1915, a day after the battle had ceased. The pine logs which covered the enemy’s front line trenches are clearly visible. The gaps in the logs were caused on 6 August by the preliminary Australian bombardment and during the actual attack some men ‘of reckless gallantry’ according to Bean, ‘let themselves down, feet foremost, through the holes’. In this way, although some were killed, the Australians seized the front-line Turkish trenches. Other men ran on and jumped into trenches devoid of this cover. [AWM G01126]
The action at one spot was typical of the fighting at Lone Pine. Lieutenant Frederick Tubb, 7th Battalion, of Longwood, Victoria, defended a position with eight men against a Turkish onslaught. As the enemy bombs fell upon them, Tubb told his men to smother them with Turkish greatcoats that lay about the trench. Some Turks broke through but were shot or bayoneted; others that tried to crawl in the open around the position were also killed. Tubb was everywhere, firing his revolver and leading by example. Slowly, men who were trying to catch and return bombs were being wounded. Corporal Frederick Wright, 7th Battalion, of Melbourne, clutched at a bomb that burst in his face killing him. Corporal Harry Webb, described by Bean as ‘an orphan from Essendon’, had both hands blown off, walked back out of the action and died. Bombs continued to burst and four more men were killed or wounded.
Eventually, only Tubb, wounded in his arm and scalp, and two others, Corporals William Dunstan of Ballarat and Alexander Burton of Euroa, were left. A violent explosion blew down the Australian sandbag wall. Tubb drove the Turks back while Dunstan and Burton strove to rebuild the barrier when another bomb went off, killing Burton and blinding Dunstan. At that point reinforcements arrived, the position was saved and the Turks pulled back.
When it was all over, Burton, Tubb and Dunstan, along with four other Australians, were awarded Victoria Crosses for their outstanding courage at Lone Pine. Many more men received other bravery decorations. The battle, which raged here between 6 and 9 August, cost Australia more than 2,000 casualties and the Turks somewhere in the region of 7,000. The whole action had been mounted as a diversion to keep Turkish attention and reserves focused on Lone Pine while the main battle to the north – to capture Chunuk Bair – was being waged by New Zealand, British, Indian and Gurkha forces. While Chunuk Bair did not fall, Lone Pine was a success for the Anzacs – but a success won at great cost.
All of this occurred in the vicinity of the Lone Pine Memorial. Because of the losses incurred here between 25 April and 3 May and during the days of the Lone Pine battle, it was decided to build Australia’s principal memorial on Anzac at this spot. To the Turks, Lone Pine was Kanli Sirt – Bloody Ridge – and when, shortly after the end of the war in 1918, an unnamed British visitor came to this ridge he saw everywhere the evidence of the blood that had been spilt there:
On the tumbled soil of the trenches lay the bare white bones, piled or clustered so thickly in places that we had to tread upon them as we passed.
[Visitor to Lone Pine in December 1918, quoted in John North, Gallipoli:The Fading Vision, London, 1936, p 219]
Burst in his face
Lone Pine VCs
Go to the AWM website for Bean's Official History of Anzac
Tubb had at that position ten men, eight of whom were on the parapet, while two corporals, Webb and Wright, were told to remain on the floor of the trench in order to catch and throw back the enemy’s bombs, or else to smother their explosion by throwing over them Turkish overcoats which were lying about the trenches. A few of the enemy, shouting “Allah!”, had in the first rush scrambled into the Australian trench, but had been shot or bayoneted. Tubb and his men now fired at them over the parapet, shooting all who came up Goldenstedt’s Trench or who attempted to creep over the open. Tubb, using his revolver, exposed himself recklessly over the parapet, and his example caused his men to do the same. “Good boy!” he shouted, slapping the back of one of them who by kneeling on the parapet had shot a sheltering Turk. As the same man said later: “With him up there you couldn’t think of getting your head down.”
- Captain Alfred Shout, 1st Battalion, NSW, of Sydney, at Quinn’s Post, Anzac
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- Captain Alfred Shout, 1st Battalion, NSW, of Sydney, at Quinn’s Post, Anzac, on 7 June 1915. On the afternoon of 9 August, in the captured Turkish trenches of Lone Pine, Shout and Captain Cecil Sasse advanced together with Sasse shooting and Shout throwing bombs. At the end of every short advance down the trench, which forced the Turks back, they built a sandbag barricade. As they prepared to make another advance, one of three bombs that Shout was igniting burst in his hand shattering it and causing terrible wounds to his face. Shout was evacuated, ‘still cheerful’, and sat up to drink tea. He died on a hospital ship and was posthumously awarded a Victoria Cross, one of seven awarded to Australians for their courage at the Battle of Lone Pine. [AWM G01028]
But one by one the men who were catching bombs were mutilated. Wright clutched one which burst in his face and killed him. Webb, an orphan from Essendon, continued to catch them, but presently both his hands were blown away and, after walking out of the Pine, he died at Brown’s Dip. At one moment several bombs burst simultaneously in Tubb’s recess. Four men were killed or wounded; a fifth was blown down and his rifle shattered. Tubb, bleeding from bomb-wounds in arm and scalp, continued to fight, supported in the end only by a Ballarat recruit, Corporal Dunstan, and a personal friend of his own, Corporal Burton of Euroa. At this stage there occurred at the barricade a violent explosion, which threw back the defenders and tumbled down the sandbags. It was conjectured that the Turks had fired an explosive charge with the object of destroying the barrier. Tubb, however, drove them off, and Dunstan and Burton were helping to rebuild the barrier when a bomb fell between them, killing Burton and temporarily blinding his comrade. Tubb obtained further men from the next post, Tubb’s Corner; but the enemy’s attack weakened, the Turks continued to bomb and fire rifles into the air, but never again attempting to rush the barricade.
[Charles Bean, The Story of Anzac, Vol 2, Sydney, 1924, p. 560-561]
So long Tom
The attack at Lone Pine
Until the last only one doubt obsessed the regimental officers – whether the men, sick with diarrhoea and strained with lack of sleep and heavy work, could sustain prolonged fighting and marching. But, as the battalions marched to the starting-point and settled themselves to wait for the signal, their officers – as often afterwards in France – watched with intense interest the evidence of qualities which, till the end of the war, never ceased to surprise even those who knew the Australian soldier best. Whatever their present feelings, the actual filling and dumping of their packs, the march through the trenches, and the imminence of the advance after months of trench life, provided an excitement which put new vitality into the troops. As they waited in the crowded bays, there was not the least sign of nervousness in face, speech, or action. The prevailing thought was: “It’s the turn of the1st Brigade to show what they can do.” The men chafed each other dryly, after the manner of spectators waiting to see a football match. Some belated messenger hurried along the trench to find his platoon, and in passing, recognized a friend. “Au revoir, Bill.” He nodded, “meet you over there.” “So long, Tom,” was the answer; “see you again in half-an-hour.” In the opening in the main tunnel – B5, leading forward from the old firing line to the new underground line – stood Major King, whistle in one hand, watch in the other. At the corresponding opening in the underground line was Major McConaghy of the 3rd, ready to repeat the signal for the attack – three blasts of the whistle. Watches had been twice compared and corrected, and while the officers gave a few last hints to their men they kept on eye on the minute-hand as though they were starting a boat race. “Five twenty-seven – get ready to go over the parapet,” said a young officer crouched in the corner of one fire-step, glancing at his wrist-watch. Almost immediately the order came: “Pull down the top bags in that recess.” The men of the second line on the fire-step crouched higher against the wall. Those of the third, on the floor of the trench, took a firmer foothold for their spring. A whistle sounded and was repeated shrilly along the front. In a scatter of falling bags and earth the young officer and his men scrambled from the bay. Rifle-shots rang out from the enemy’s trenches, gradually growing into a heavy fusillade. One of the men leaving that particular bay fell back, shot through the mouth. From every section of the Pimple, and from the holes of the forward line, troops were similarly scrambling; the sunny square of the daisy Patch and the scrub south of it were full of figures running forward.
[Charles Bean, The Story of Anzac, Vol 2, Sydney, 1924, pp.502-503]
One mass of dead bodies
- ‘The taking of Lone Pine’ by Fred Leist
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- This painting, ‘The taking of Lone Pine’ by Fred Leist, shows the attack on 6 August 1915 at 5.30 pm on the Turkish front-line trenches by men of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Battalions, NSW. The Australians wore white calico arm bands to clearly distinguish themselves from the Turks in the heat of battle. In the painting the attackers have just reached the pine log head cover on the Turkish front-line trenches. [AWM ART02931]
The whole way across it is just one mass of dead bodies, bags of bombs, bales of sandbags, rifles, shovels and all the hundred and one things that had to be rushed across to the enemy trenches. The undergrowth has been cut down, like mown hay, simply stalks left standing, by the rifle fire, whilst the earth itself appears just as though one had taken a huge rake and scratched it all over. Here and there it is torn up where a shell has landed. Right beside me, within a space of fifteen feet, I can count fourteen of our boys stone dead. Ah! It is a piteous sight. Men and boys who yesterday were full of joy and life, now lying there, cold – cold – dead – their eyes glassy, their faces sallow and covered with dust – soulless – gone – somebody’s son, somebody’s boy – now merely a thing. Thank God that their loved ones cannot see them now – dead, with the blood congealed or oozing out. God, what a sight. The major is standing next to me and he says “Well we have won”. Great God – won – that means victory and all those bodies within arm’s reach – then may I never witness a defeat. Just where we have broken into their tunnel there is one of our boys lying with his head and shoulders hanging into the hole; the blood is drip, drip, drip into the trench. I sit watching it –m fascinated; the major has just sat down too on the step into the tunnel and it is dripping on his back. I wonder who this poor devil was. I will look at his identity disc. It is under his chin and his face hangs downwards into the trench. Each time I lift his head it falls back; it is heavy and full of dirt and Ugh, the blood is on my hands – a momentary shudder – but one is used to these sights now, and I simply wipe my hands upon the dirt in the trench. Lying right against the trench ( I could get him if it was worth while ) lies another; his back is towards me, and he is on his side. From the back of his head down his neck runs a congealed line of dark red, but that is not what I notice; it is his hands. They are clasped before him just as though he was in prayer. I wonder what the prayer was. I wonder if it will be answered, but surely it must. Surely the prayer of one who died so worthily (he was right on the parapet of the Turkish trench ) could not fail to be answered.
[The Gallipoli Diary of Sergeant Lawrence, Sir Ronald East (ed), Melbourne, 1983, p.68]