Military History - The Chase: Anzacs on the Third Ridge
In contemporary military doctrine, the operational commander’s intent conveys the end-state, or the desired result, of an overall campaign. This focus is derived from the German Army’s concept of Auftragstaktik (mission-based tactics or, as it is currently termed in Australian Army doctrine, ‘mission command’). In 1940, General Heinz Guderian stated the purpose of the concept with characteristic precision: ‘Good-looking operation orders are immaterial. What counts are clearly stated intentions which can be executed with all one’s heart and determination’.1 Twenty-five years earlier, in April 1915, at the very beginning of the land offensive on the Gallipoli Peninsula, soldiers from the 10th Battalion, 3rd Division, 1st Australian Imperial Force (AIF), demonstrated an instinctive understanding of mission command when they reached the objective that was to elude their comrades for the rest of the campaign. This article details how, even at the lowest levels, subordinates with a clear understanding of the commander’s intent can react to the situation on the ground and make the best of the opportunities that they are afforded by both chance and enemy action.
In 1915, the Hellespont of the classics—the heavily mined constriction of the Dardanelles known as the Narrows, gateway to ancient Constantinople, modern Istanbul—would not yield to naval might alone. A decision to take the peninsula by a land offensive saw Australian and New Zealand troops make the now-famous landing one late April morning in 1915. Their principal objective was the ‘Third Ridge’, the prominent high ground on the Gelibolu Peninsula. The inability to seize and hold this objective at any time throughout what became a protracted and costly campaign has seen some call the Australian involvement on Gallipoli a failure. However, a number of Australians did reach the Third Ridge on the morning of 25 April. With a clear understanding of the commander’s intent and fired by the determination that would make Australian troops renowned, these men caught sight of the elusive Narrows and gave their fellows reason to doubt the impregnability of this Turkish stronghold.
From the very beginning of the war, the men of the 10th Battalion were imbued with a spirit of adventure and determination. The South Australian Governor, Lieutenant Colonel Sir Henry Galway, KCMG, DSO, heaped platitudes on these volunteers at their camp in the converted Morphettville racecourse as they trained to prepare themselves for overseas service. In the parched sands surrounding Mena Camp in Egypt, under the shadow of the great pyramids, the men of the 10th Battalion practised drill and musketry, responding to the exhortations of their company commanders to ‘get it right’ before deploying on whatever operation the campaign planners had in store for them.
During their initial training at Morphettville, Captain Mervyn Herbert had commanded the 10th Battalion’s D Company, predominantly made up of Port Adelaide boys, while his friend Captain Felix Giles had command of G Company. Herbert’s antecedents had been miners at Sandhurst in Victoria (now Bendigo) and his grandfather’s brother had been killed in New Zealand in 1864 while serving with the Waikato Regiment. From the Ballarat goldfields, Mervyn Herbert moved to Adelaide to pursue horticultural interests. Felix Giles was born to a family of explorers and adventurers, son of the first white woman to live on a station in the Northern Territory. His father had been deputy of the party responsible for surveying the Overland Telegraph Line route from Adelaide to Port Darwin in 1870–71, and before that his uncle had been a surveyor in the expedition that had in 1869 established the township of Palmerston (now Darwin). Herbert and Giles had been prewar militia officers, serving together at Torrens Depot with the South Australian Scottish Infantry, and had then commanded companies under the 1912 Universal Training Scheme. In Egypt, when the Australian battalions changed from eight to four rifle companies, A and G companies amalgamated and Giles became Herbert’s second-in-command.
Before their departure from Adelaide, the Governor-General, the Right Honourable Sir Roland Craufurd Munro-Ferguson, had sternly warned the members of the 10th Battalion that they were about to fight for ‘the future of the Empire’, while Sir George Reid, the High Commissioner for Australia, told them in Mena Camp that their mission was ‘pure and noble’.2 General Sir Ian Hamilton, Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, told them that this great feat of arms would bring the war ‘one step closer to a glorious close’.3 Others spoke in patriotic terms of ‘deeds that will last forever’ and foresaw a unit flag bearing ‘stains of honour won by valour’. Finally, they learnt that their destination was to be the Gallipoli Peninsula, with the battalion to form the spearhead of the covering force, the 3rd Infantry Brigade. These were the men who would shortly enter the realm of legend. They would soon wear a bronze ‘A’ for ANZAC on their colour patch as recognition of their exploits and later march on a day of national commemoration established in their honour. Those who did not return from the war would have their names etched in permanent tribute on cenotaphs and memorials in Australia, Turkey and France. After the tedium of the eight-week passage to Egypt and the routine of camp life at Mena, Herbert recalled in his memoir the anticipation that all the men felt: ‘What matters it even if we are going to lose 70 per cent of our strength, as the pessimists predict? Have we not been chosen as the covering brigade—the place of honour? Are we not the envied of the envious?’4
In the week prior to the anticipated landing, however, talk was more prosaic and of more immediate practical matters. General Birdwood, commanding the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, directed his troops to carry three days’ worth of everything at the landing and to ration their water intake and use of ammunition. He emphasised concealment, covering fire and communication. Their brigade commander told them that there was no going back—’Forward’ until they reached their position, then ‘Hang On’ until the reinforcements arrive. Of the scene in Mudros Harbour on the Island of Lemnos, Herbert wrote: ‘There are battleships, clean cut and stately, moving out to their allotted stations—cruisers pregnant with possibilities, destroyers moving like lightning in line-ahead formation, twisting and gliding in and out amongst the transports like things of life’. He noted that there was, among the men, ‘a strong current of suppressed excitement—a stern resolve to do or die in the attempt. Wavering there is none. Buoyancy of spirit—even amongst serious-faced officers—everywhere.’5
During their unit preparation and training, Herbert and Giles had their focus squarely on developing unity of effort in order to facilitate decisive action. As the two captains saw their men into the boats in the pre-dawn Aegean Sea, Herbert was intimately aware of the brigade commander’s intention to occupy the Third Ridge, and ensured that several of his men put their heart and determination into achieving it. From the moment the boats moved towards the Turkish coast they were heading towards ‘rapid action’, which they carried out as the first shots rang out from the enemy dug-in on the cliff tops. From that instant, and essentially for the rest of the day, actions were largely decentralised (based on the concept of what we now term ‘mission command’) with those closest to the problem entrusted to solve it as they saw fit. Australian soldiers later wrote of the ‘tremendous welcome’ that they received as the first boats landed: ‘we had a whistling good tune of Mausers from the shore, and pompoms, etc, flying all round and splashing and zipping overhead’.6 This welcome, from elements of the 27th Regiment of Lieutenant Colonel Khalil Sami Bey’s 9th Division, only further encouraged the Australians in their assault directly up the hillside, ‘with bayonets flashing in the rising sun’. The brigade commander’s intention was to assault up the narrow tracks and precipitous gullies to the scrubby heights of the ridge overlooking the beach. From here they were to fight through to the Second Ridge, and then to push inland and seize the Third Ridge. Despite the landing error, this intention initially held firm and the men were directed to keep pushing forward. Several groups raced ahead at speed. Captain Herbert sent forward at least three parties to scout ahead in order to determine Turkish strengths and dispositions, the ‘going’ of the ground, and to find access routes that might provide cover from machine-gun fire.
Private Joseph Weatherill, a member of Herbert’s original D Company, was in one of the parties sent forward immediately after the landing.7 In the course of this reconnaissance he led a successful attack on a Turkish position and captured two enemy guns. Herbert also sent forward one of his platoon commanders, Lieutenant Noel Loutit, with a party of thirty-two men, to reconnoitre the terrain beyond the First and Second Ridges.8 Several scouting parties of various sizes were also sent forward from the other battalions and companies. In total, some two hundred men found their way to the forward slopes of the Third Ridge—the Australian objective. Many were pushed back by advancing Turks, but some of the larger parties remained out as a screen for the Australian battalions, to warn of any impending Turkish offensive and to impose delay on any assault launched by the enemy.
In the valley, Loutit’s party encountered Lieutenant Haig from A Company, an Imperial Reserve officer and nephew of Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig. Loutit and Haig reached a spur at the western foot of the Third Ridge plateau by around 8 o’clock in the morning, and found Turks in large numbers advancing on them in skirmishing formation. These men were reinforcements from the 27th Regiment, deploying to bolster the Turkish defences north of Gaba Tepe. While Haig engaged the Turks with rifle fire, Loutit and Private Fordham moved up to the crest of the Third Ridge. They were about 200 metres south of ‘Scrubby Knoll’, which was the 10th Battalion’s objective. From this position, Loutit later recalled that he ‘saw the waters of the Narrows’ not quite 5 km away to the south-east.9 They saw no other Australians, but were engaged by Turkish fire and were forced to withdraw. By the time Loutit returned to the 10th Battalion position, after four days of screening and interdicting Turkish reinforcement columns, his party had been reduced to eleven men. In the original publication of Volume I of the official history of ANZAC (1920), Loutit’s penetration to the Third Ridge was recorded as being the nearest anyone came to the objective of the expedition.10
Meanwhile, from the beach the D Company men had run inland to where dips in the ground sheltered them, dropped their packs and fixed bayonets. ‘Until broad daylight the bayonet is your weapon’, their brigade commander had told them. One short mad rush, and those Turks who had dared to wait were no more. Then the coo-ees rang out to let those in the rear know that the hill was won. Having seized the First Ridge, they were under strict orders to push on. A message from the commander was passed up from the beach, ‘Get the next ridge and dig in’. Herbert and Giles led their men into Shrapnel Gully where they re-formed into platoons. From here they moved eastwards into the steep branch of a valley, past ‘the Razorback’, over the foot of a spur of Braund’s Hill, and up ‘Bridge’s Road’ towards a gap at the head of the valley alongside the 400 Plateau. The Second Ridge in fact comprised a range of hills that runs from Hill 971 in the north, through Chunuk Bair, Battleship Hill, Baby 700 and the 400 Plateau, and thence to the coast via Bolton’s Ridge. It had taken the 10th Battalion three hours to fight through to the Second Ridge, just a mile inland from the coast. On the edge of the 400 Plateau the companies dug protective shelters, and prepared for an advance across ‘Legge Valley’ to the Third Ridge.
When the third edition of Volume I of the official history of ANZAC was published in 1934, it recorded that evidence had come to hand of a party reaching further than Loutit’s.11 Lance Corporal Phil Robin and Private Arthur Blackburn had apparently not only reached Scrubby Knoll, but had gone beyond it. The historian Charles Bean assesses them as reaching further inland than any other Australian. Robin and Blackburn were early volunteers at Morphettville and former students of St Peter’s College in Adelaide (as was Felix Giles).12 From the beach, Blackburn had raced forwards through the prickly arbutus and up the face of the First Ridge. He met up with Phil Robin and another of the battalion scouts in the valley, and the three of them took off for the next ridgeline. They found D Company digging in on the 400 Plateau, and Captain Herbert directed Robin and Blackburn to scout forwards to watch the company’s flank and the valley to their front in order to give him a degree of protection and early warning.
The pair moved inland so quickly that, in his diary, Robin called it ‘a chase’. They scaled the ragged slope and crossed the peak of the Third Ridge at a plateau just north of Scrubby Knoll. Blackburn later wrote in a letter of the ‘decidedly lively time’ that they had racing across the valley while being constantly engaged by Turkish snipers.13 Loutit’s party was visible some distance off, to their right rear (south-west). Blackburn and Robin then moved southwards past Scrubby Knoll on its eastern face, with a clear view of the glistening Narrows, to a position south-west of the knoll. They were then forced to retire into Legge Valley as Turkish reserves began moving towards their position. The Turkish occupation of Scrubby Knoll, by two battalions of the 27th Regiment, was achieved by about 8 o’clock that morning. The Anzac positions were subsequently shelled by Turkish gun batteries positioned on the reverse slope of the Third Ridge, which then became known to the Australians as ‘Gun Ridge’; the Turks called it Topçuluk Sirt (‘Artillery Ridge’).
These scouting parties would have been of inestimable value had they been able to lead an Australian advance onto the Third Ridge. As it happened, the delay that they imposed on the Turks was invaluable in allowing defensive lines to be prepared. Although the covering force battalions could easily have pushed on to the Third Ridge as originally intended, it became apparent that, had they done so, they would have faced the risk of being encircled and cut off. The Second Ridge was not yet properly held, and the flanks were insecure, so the covering force battalions were held back and told to dig in on the Second Ridge. Loutit’s party was not sufficiently strong to overcome the Turkish group he encountered, and by 10 o’clock that morning the Third Ridge had been fully evacuated by those Australians who had penetrated that far.
As Bean noted, Loutit and the others ‘had carried out to the letter the plan of the day’,14 fuelled by little other than an understanding of the commander’s intent. It is interesting to speculate how different those first few days might have been had the advance companies been allowed to continue in their race to the Third Ridge, where their additional firepower might have bolstered Loutit’s party and held the Turkish reinforcements at bay.
Scrubby Knoll is today known as Kemalyeri (‘Kemal’s Place’) because it was here that Lieutenant Colonel Mustafa Kemal Bey’s divisional headquarters was located from the night of 25 April until the Allied forces evacuated. A Turkish monument on this site records his direction given in a Divisional Order of the Day on 3 May, reminding his men that ‘there must not be one step towards the rear’. Just as Kemal Bey had directed his men that there must be no withdrawal, so Australian commanders had imbued their troops at all levels with the idea that they were to ‘hit the beach and go like hell’ for the Third Ridge. Weatherill came close before being committed to an engagement, in which he was successful. Loutit was the first person to reach the crest of the Third Ridge and see the Narrows, and Blackburn and Robin actually reached the farthest inland of anyone on the day of the landing or at any time during the Allied occupation of the Peninsula throughout 1915. Significant to each of these exploits, according with the commander’s intent, was the role of Captain Mervyn Herbert in sending them forwards.
Mervyn Herbert was shot by a sniper three days after the landing, forcing his evacuation and the subsequent amputation of a finger. While recuperating in Egypt, he recorded his recollections of the first and most dramatic phase of the Dardanelles campaign. Herbert observed that the continuous Turkish bombardment, a certain prelude for a counterattack, was too late as far as he was concerned ‘for the occupation of the famed impregnable Gallipoli Peninsula was an accomplished fact’.15
Endnotes
1 Australian Defence Doctrine Publication (ADDP) 3.0—Operations, para. 3.49.
2 Address to the 1st Australian Division at Mena Camp, 31 December 1914. See C. B. L. Lock, The Fighting 10th, Webb & Son, Adelaide, 1936, p. 39.
3 Ibid., pp. 310–5.
4 Captain M. J. Herbert, ‘Description of the landing at Anzac, Gallipoli’, 1915, unpublished typescript, Mortlock Library of South Australiana, C. B. L. Lock Private Record Group, PRG 272/9.
5 Ibid.
6 Letter to the Editor, undated: The Northern Territory Times and Gazette, 1 July 1915.
7 Joseph Weatherill’s bravery and initiative as a scout immediately after the landing was reported by Herbert, and he was ‘mentioned’ in the 1st Dardanelles Despatch. Herbert also nominated him for the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM), one of only two DCMs awarded within the battalion for actions on the day of the Gallipoli landing. Herbert reported Noel Loutit for his exploit on the Third Ridge, and he was ‘mentioned’ in Army Corps Routine Orders; Loutit was later twice awarded the Distinguished Service Order for actions in France. Herbert and Giles were themselves ‘mentioned’ in the same Routine Orders for their gallantry and devotion to duty on the day of the landing and immediately afterwards. Herbert went on to serve with distinction in the 50th Battalion, held senior appointments in France and England, and was accorded the great honour of being escort to King George V at the opening of Parliament in London at the beginning of 1917.
8 Loutit had been a 1912 Universal Training Scheme compulsory trainee under the tutelage of Mervyn Herbert in the 78th Infantry Battalion (‘Adelaide Rifles’), and then became an original member of Giles’s old G Company in 1914.
9 Lock, The Fighting 10th, p. 197.
10 C. E. W. Bean, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, Volume 1, 1st edn, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1920, pp. 346, 603; C. E. W. Bean, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, Volume 1, 3rd edn, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1934, pp. xlvi–xlvii, 344–9, 351, 354; Lock, The Fighting 10th, pp. 178, 197.
11 L. Carlyon, Gallipoli, MacMillan, Sydney, pp. 144–6; Bean, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, Volume 1, 3rd edn, pp. xlvi–xlvii; Lock, The Fighting 10th, pp. 162, 197–8.
12 Phil Robin, a bank accountant from Adelaide and Australian Rules champion before the war, was killed on 28 April, and his name is commemorated at the Lone Pine Memorial. Arthur Blackburn, the son of a clergyman and a practising solicitor, received an immediate field promotion to Lance Corporal and then in August was commissioned in the field as a Second Lieutenant. He went on to distinguish himself in France as a platoon commander in a company of the 10th Battalion commanded by Major Felix Giles, who nominated Blackburn for the Victoria Cross for his outstanding gallantry at Pozières. Giles himself was recommended for honours on six separate occasions throughout the war, finally securing the award of the Distinguished Service Order, as well as being Mentioned in Despatches. Robin, Blackburn and Giles were among 1800 old scholars and masters of St Peter’s College who had their names inscribed in gold lettering on the face of the balustrade of an impressive Great War Honour Roll in the Memorial Hall.
13 Carlyon, Gallipoli, p. 146.
14 Bean, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, Volume 1, 3rd edn, p. 349.
15 Captain M. J. Herbert, ‘Description of the landing at Anzac, Gallipoli’, 1915.
