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By Root 1744 0

arrivals and the long-awaited signal to advance, and, chafing at the delay, General Johnston wondered more than anyone if the attack which he himself should have supported could possibly have gone ahead without him. On the spur itself everything was peaceful. A short distance ahead, just beyond two more spurs and dips, the tantalising slopes of Chunuk Bair stood out against the sun as it climbed into the eastern sky. All was quiet. Two hours passed. At 6.30 Johnston decided to wait no longer and led his troops forward some five hundred yards to the rocky hillock at the apex of Rhododendron Ridge. They were met by a few shots from the main ridge and halted again. From the apex they were looking down on their left to Suvla, and on their right they could see the Nek where, on a tiny patch of ground no larger than two tennis courts, the morning sun burned down on the bodies of more than six hundred Australian soldiers, lying so motionless and so at one with the earth that to the New Zealanders on their vantage point the Nek seemed to slumber undisturbed in the sun. General Johnston’s Brigade Major scanned the view through binoculars and was deeply impressed: ‘The situation as seen from the Apex was intensely interesting and indeed astonishing. Looking down towards Anzac all was quiet. At the Nek and Baby 700 not a shot was being fired. Above us we could see the trenches on Chunuk Bair bristling with rifles, and a certain amount of rifle fire was coming from that direction. On Hill Q all was quiet. There was no sign of the Indian Brigade or the 4th Australian Brigade. Away at Suvla the bay was a mass of shipping. Some men could be seen on the beaches walking about freely. Peace seemed to reign everywhere.’

Peace certainly reigned at Suvla. It was 9.30 in the morning. The first troops had landed twelve hours earlier, many more had arrived in the course of the night, and more still were now making for the beaches, but not much was happening and the worst of it was that no one, least of all the troops, seemed to know what was meant to be happening.

Spr. J. Johnston, 44th (Welsh) Field Coy., RE, 53rd (Welsh) Div.

We were loaded into small boats and rowed towards the shores of Suvla Bay where we had to wade ashore for about sixty yards as the boats couldn’t get in any nearer owing to the shallow water. In parts there was a lot of loose barbed wire which had been thrown there by the Turks to impede any landing, however we managed to get ashore about 5.45 a.m. and there were so many boats that we were told to move away as quickly as possible. The Turks had spotted the landing and opened up with shrapnel shell-fire, but we were fortunate to have been in the first boats and had travelled about two hundred yards inland, so the shrapnel shells went right over us towards the beach. This was our baptism of fire and we were all scared out of our wits, and as there were quite a lot of rocks near us we took what cover we could find until the firing slackened off. Then we began to look around for our officers for further orders, but there were no officers near us. It appeared that they had been landed further over from A beach. It was more than six hours before we were able to meet any of them, however like a lot of inquisitive war recruits that knew nothing about war, we went forward to see what was further on. When we had gone about three-quarters of a mile the heat was unbearable and we were thirsty. Then we saw a padre coming towards us with about two dozen water bottles over his shoulder. He was making for the beach to get water for the troops who were ahead of us. He was the padre of the 5th Welsh and generally known as ‘Dai 5 Welsh’. He advised us to make for Hill 10 as there were troops gathering there, however when we reached there we were advised to make for Hill 20 as it was considered there were too many troops in one place and we would be a target for the Turkish gunners if we were spotted, so off to Hill 20 we went. We hung around all day waiting for orders. No one told us what to do, so we stopped there all night.

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