Visit Gallipoli

Another who landed with Margetts, and whose name is closely linked with the fighting on 25 April, was Captain Peter Lalor. Before joining the AIF, Lalor had a colourful career which included time with the Royal Navy, from which he deserted, the French Foreign Legion and a revolutionary army in South America. At the landing he carried, wrapped in khaki, a family sword given to him by his father-in-law.

As they came ashore the Australians were fired on from near the Sphinx and further north. Several of these men were killed or wounded. Among these initial casualties were 17 men of the 3rd Field Ambulance, the only medical unit to participate in the initial landing. Three of the Field Ambulance men died in their boat before they reached the shore. Coming ashore at North Beach as part of the 3rd Field Ambulance was Private John Simpson Kirkpatrick, who later achieved fame for his work with the wounded on Gallipoli. So heavy was the fire from a machine gun on the left that Colonel Clarke of the 12th Battalion sent Lieutenants Rafferty and Strickland off along the beach and inland to seek out and silence the Turkish gun.

The orders to these first waves of Australians were to press on inland as rapidly as possible. Clarke, Margetts, Lalor and others now led the way off the beach. A northern party worked its way up Walker’s Ridge to the left of the Sphinx while Margetts went directly up the cliffs to the right. Charles Bean, the Australian official historian, later described this climb off the beach:

	Odd parties of the 11th and 12th Battalions were scrambling up these gravelly and almost perpendicular crags by any foothold which offered. …One of this party, Corporal E W D Laing … clambering breathless up the height, came upon an officer almost exhausted half way up. It was the old Colonel Clarke of the 12th Battalion. He was carrying his heavy pack, and could scarcely go further. Laing advised him to throw the pack away, but Clarke was unwilling to lose it, and Laing thereupon carried it himself. The two climbed on together, and Margetts … reaching the top, found to his astonishment the Colonel already there.
	[C E W Bean, The Story of Anzac, Sydney, 1924, Vol I, p.272]

The battle raged for the rest of the day on the tops of the ranges above North Beach as the landing parties, reinforced by other units who came ashore in subsequent waves, tried to secure the all-important objectives of Battleship Hill and Baby 700. Eventually, a determined Turkish counter-attack late in the afternoon of 25 April drove the Australians and New Zealanders back to lines not far from the crests of the cliffs that they had climbed up after the landing. Both Captain Lalor and Colonel Clarke were killed. Lalor’s sword disappeared. His remains lie in Baby 700 Cemetery, close to that vital section of the Gallipoli peninsula for which he gave his life. Clarke, who was killed in the morning shortly after he had made his way up from the cliffs at North Beach, lies further away in the Beach Cemetery, just past the southern edge of Anzac Cove. At 57, he must have been one of the oldest Australian soldiers to die on 25 April 1915.

North Beach was also the scene of one of the great tragedies of the early landings at Anzac. After the 3rd Brigade–9th, 10th, 11th and 12th Battalions–were ashore, men of the 2nd Brigade–5th, 6th, 7th and 8th Battalions–began to land. At the top of North Beach, at the end of a spur of the main range which sweeps down to the sea there, the Turks had established positions on a hill overlooking the beach near a fisherman’s hut (the position became known as Fisherman’s Hut). It was from here that a machine gun fired on the 12th Battalion’s boats landing near the Sphinx and to silence this gun Colonel Clarke dispatched Rafferty and Strickland.

As he worked his way towards the Turks, Rafferty saw four white boats full of Australians of the 7th Battalion from the transport Galeka heading for the beach opposite Fisherman’s Hut. He rushed on to assist their landing but, as his men crossed an open field, 12 of them were killed and another eight wounded. Rafferty temporarily lost sight of the approaching boats but when he climbed a rise and looked down on them he saw they had beached. He could see a line of men on the sand immediately in front of the boats but not one of them moved. Private Stubbings of Hobart went out to see what had happened and he reported that most of the men in the four boats had either been killed or wounded by intense Turkish fire from the Fisherman’s Hut area. In fact, of the 140 men of the 7th Battalion who had attempted to land there, only about 35 were unhurt or lightly wounded. Of the dead, many lie buried in No 2 Outpost Cemetery, near where they fell. This is one of the most northerly cemeteries on Anzac and it contains more identified Australian burials from 25 April 1915 than any other cemetery on Gallipoli, except for the Lone Pine Cemetery.