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The battle for Chunuk Bair began after dark on 6 August 1915. In the late afternoon, before the long columns of men began their march along North Beach to Ocean Beach and then up into the range, the 1st Australian Division mounted its famous attack on the Turkish line at Lone Pine. So strong was this attack that initially the Turkish commanders were of the opinion that a major break-out from Anzac towards the south-east was being attempted. At 9.30 pm, Brigadier General John Monash’s 4th Australian Brigade–the 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th Battalions–left their bivouac positions in Reserve Gully beneath the Sphinx and, with Monash marching in the middle of his brigade, made their way north along a newly constructed road.

	The 4th Brigade formed part of the North Assaulting Column, and I had associated with me the famous 29th Indian Brigade … with one battalion of Sikhs and three battalions of Gurkhas. My Brigade was in the lead and at 9.30 pm … my column swept out of Reserve Gully into black darkness for its two mile [3.2 km] march northwards along the beach into enemy territory. It was like walking out on a stormy winter’s night from a warm cosy home into a hail, thunder, and lightning storm. We had not gone half a mile when the black tangle of hills between the beach road and the main thoroughfare became alive with flashes of musketry, and the bursting of shrapnel and star shell, and the yells of the enemy and the cheers of our men as they swept in to drive the enemy from the flanks of our march.
	[F M Cutlack (ed), War Letters of General Monash, Sydney, 1934, p.61]

What the men of the 4th Brigade heard on the right flank of their march was the noise of the attack by the New Zealand Mounted Rifles on Turkish positions in the foothills of the range. The Mounted’s task that night was to clear the way for the New Zealand Infantry Brigade who were to take Chunuk Bair by first light on 7 August. That struggle in the dark in the foothills was a brilliant success for the New Zealanders. Charles Bean described it as:

	… this magnificent feat of arms, the brilliance of which was never surpassed, if indeed equalled, during the campaign.
	[C E W Bean, The Story of Anzac, Sydney, 1924, Vol II, p.576]

Hot on the heels of the Mounteds, the New Zealand Infantry Brigade–Otago, Auckland, Wellington and Canterbury Battalions–began the long climb through the valleys and over the scrub-covered ridges towards Chunuk Bair.

Monash’s men, accompanied by the British 40th Brigade and the 29th Indian Brigade, made their way beyond No 2 Outpost and into the foothills to the west of Hill 971, Kocacimentepe. Here they became lost and dawn on 7 August found them well short of their intended position from where they were to have attacked and seized Hill 971. The men were exhausted and the debilitating summer months in the trenches of Gallipoli had left them unfit. The 4th Brigade was allowed to stop and dig in. The Indian battalions had also taken the wrong route and were in no position to attack. The 6th Gurkha Battalion pressed on up the slopes towards what turned out to be Chunuk Bair. Only the New Zealanders ended that night march somewhere near their objective. As they came out on the top slopes of what was called Rhododendron Ridge, they could see Chunuk Bair about a kilometre ahead.

It was at this point–dawn on 7 August 1915–that there occurred one of best-known Australian tragedies on Gallipoli–the charge of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade at The Nek. The original plan had envisaged the New Zealanders attaining Chunuk Bair and then coming down the range behind the Turkish positions towards the Nek. This did not happen. Just before dawn the lead New Zealand battalion–the Otagos–were still short of Chunuk Bair. General Birdwood, the commanding officer of the Anzac forces, allowed the light horsemen to proceed in order to give all possible support to the Chunuk Bair assault. If Turkish reinforcements could be held from that vital height for even an extra half hour then its capture, the main purpose of the whole new August offensive, might be achieved. However, Birdwood had written earlier of the Turkish positions at the Nek and up the slopes of Baby 700:

	These trenches and convergences of communication trenches … require considerable strength to force. The narrow Nek to be crossed … makes an unaided attack in that direction almost hopeless.
	[Birdwood, quoted in C E W Bean, The Story of Anzac, Sydney, 1924, Vol II, p.464]

At 4.30 am the first wave of the 8th Light Horse Regiment–men from western Victoria–rose from their trenches and dashed for the Turkish line at the Nek. Minutes later a second wave went over. Lieutenant William Cameron, 9th Light Horse, was watching the charge:

	We saw them climb out and move forward about ten yards and lie flat. The second line did likewise ... . As they rose to charge, the Turkish Machine Guns just poured out lead and our fellows went down like corn before a scythe. The distance to the enemy trench was less than 50 yards yet not one of those two lines got anywhere near it.
	[Cameron, quoted in P Burness, The Nek – The Tragic Charge of the Light Horse at Gallipoli, Kangaroo Press, 1996, pp.105106]

Within half an hour two further waves–men of the 10th Light Horse from Western Australia–met a fate similar to the Victorians. From his vantage point on the approaches to Chunuk Bair to the north, Sergeant John Wilder of the Wellington Mounted Rifles saw the destruction of the 8th and 10th Light Horse:

	I saw the whole thing … and don’t want to see another sight like it. They were fairly mown down by machine guns.
	[Wilder, quoted in C Pugsley, Gallipoli – The New Zealand Story, London, 1984, p.283]

Historians now see the charge at the Nek as a waste of life that should have been stopped after the slaughter of the first wave. Writing years later, Australia’s official historian, Charles Bean, tried to salvage some meaning from this futility:

	Probably the attack on the Nek effected its purpose of holding temporarily near Baby 700 at least part of the Turkish reinforcements which were just then streaming northward towards Chunuk Bair.
	[C E W Bean, Anzac to Amiens, London, 1984, p.271]

On Chunuk Bair and its approaches there now ensued what has been called ‘the climax on Anzac’. This was the battle, fought from early morning on 7 August to early morning on
10 August by Australian, New Zealand, British, Indian and Gurkha soldiers, to take and hold the peaks of Chunuk Bair and Hill 971. Resisting them, in an equally brave and determined manner, were Turkish soldiers led in the later stages of the battle by Colonel Mustafa Kemal.