 
'The Yellow Slope', the southern
end of Russell's Top,
ending at the Sphinx, as seen from Walker's Ridge
with Ari Burnu in the distance.
(photo courtesy of Tom Curran)
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Lieutenant Wilfred Addison, aged 26, a bank accountant from
Sydney, New South Wales, landed on Gallipoli on 19 August
1915 with the 18th Battalion. The unit camped at North Beach
between the foot of the Sphinx and Walker’s Ridge.
According to Charles Bean, the very presence of these fresh
young soldiers lifted the spirits of the old hands:
The new arrivals were briefed on the challenges that lay
ahead of them on the peninsula. Lieutenant Addison wrote
to his mother:
As the men of the 18th Battalion pondered their fate, the
last British offensive on Gallipoli began on 21 August 1915
at Suvla and in the northern sector of the Anzac position.
Two British divisions and a composite force of Anzacs and
British troops attacked inland towards the Turkish village
of Anafarta. The objective of the composite force was a
low promontory at the northern end of a spur coming down
from the Kocacimentepe Range. To the Turks it was Kaiajik
Aghyl–the Sheepfold of the Little Rock. To the British
and the Anzacs, this feature was known prosaically as Hill
60–and its capture would both straighten the line between
the Anzac and Suvla positions and make communications along
the shore between the two sectors safer.
On 21 August, for the Australians of the 4th Brigade–men
of the 13th and 14th Battalions–the initial assault
on Hill 60 was a costly failure. They attacked across a
shallow valley where dozens of them were hit by Turkish
machine guns. Those who reached the comparative safety of
the slope on the far side looked back to see their wounded
comrades and soldiers of the Hampshire Regiment caught in
a bushfire started by Turkish shells. As uniforms caught
fire, grenades and ammunition carried by individual soldiers
exploded. However, the smoke allowed Captain H G Loughran,
the Regimental Medical Officer of the 14th Battalion, assisted
by his stretcher-bearers, and Battalion Chaplain Andrew
Gillison, a Presbyterian minister from East St Kilda, Melbourne,
to drag away some of the wounded.
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Private Joseph Walden, 18th Battalion,
AIF,
aged 22, was killed in action on 22 August
1915 in the attack on Hill 60. Like many
members of the battalion who were killed
that day, Walden had been in
Gallipoli for just three days. Private Walden,
of Punchbowl, New South Wales, is
commemorated on the Lone Pine
Memorial to the missing.
(AWM H05799)
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On the following morning there occurred in this remote and
now forgotten sector of the Anzac line one of those acts
of bravery and compassion which lie buried in the footnotes
of Charles Bean’s official history of the Australians
at Gallipoli. As Chaplain Gillison read the burial service
over some of the recent dead, he heard a groan from a nearby
ridge in no-man’s-land. Although he had been warned
against showing himself in this area, he went forward and
discovered a wounded English soldier of the Hampshire Regiment
who had lain out all night and was now being attacked by
ants. Together with two other men of the 13th Battalion–Corporal
Ronald Pittendrigh and Private Hinton–Gillison crawled
out to rescue the stricken man. After they had dragged him
for about a yard, a Turkish sniper severely wounded Gillison
and Pittendrigh. Both men subsequently died–Gillison
on the same day, 22 August, and Pittendrigh on 29 August.
Chaplain Gillison lies buried in Embarkation Pier Cemetery.
Pittendrigh died of his wounds on a hospital ship and his
grave is the sea off the shores of Gallipoli. His name is
remembered on the Lone Pine Memorial to the missing.
Those in charge at Hill 60 now decided that the only chance
of taking the hill lay in using fresh, fit troops. In the
early hours of 22 August, the 18th Battalion made its way
from North Beach to the Anzac lines opposite the Sheepfold
of the Little Rock. By candlelight, the commanding officer,
Lieutenant Colonel A E Chapman and his company commanders
were, for the first time, briefed that they were about to
be sent into action. They were to charge the Turks with
bomb and bayonet. When Chapman complained that they had
no bombs, he was told to do the best he could without them.
The lead companies were then taken to a position near Hill
60 behind a low scrub hedge and told to attack. Now, finally,
as the men were given the order to fix bayonets, they learned,
just two days after they had landed on Gallipoli, that they
were faced with the test of battle.
The first wave of the 18th dashed forward through a gap
in the scrub hedge and safely reached a recently dug Turkish
trench. By the time the second wave came on from behind
the hedge, the Turks were ready and poured down machine
gun fire. At the head of his platoon was Lieutenant Wilfred
Addison. Charles Bean described what happened:
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Other platoons issuing through openings south
of it were met by a tremendous fire, but a proportion
crossed the field, finely led by some of their officers;
among them was Lieutenant Wilfred Addison, who, with
dying and wounded men around him, and machine gun
bullets tearing up the ground where he stood, steadied
and waved forward the remnant of his platoon until
he himself fell pierced by several bullets.
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[C E W Bean, The Story of Anzac,
Sydney, 1924, Vol II, p.743]
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By 10.00 am that day the 18th Battalion’s attempt to
take Hill 60 had also failed. It had left North Beach 760
strong. In four hours on 21 August the battalion took 383
casualties, of whom approximately 190 were killed. In subsequent
actions on Hill 60 the unit suffered another 256 casualties.
Within a week of arriving at Gallipoli, over 80 per cent
of those who had been described as ‘great, big cheery
fellows’ lay either dead or wounded.
Despite the failures of 21 and 22 August, it was decided
to press on with the attempt to take Hill 60. As long as
the low summit remained in Turkish hands, the movement of
men and supplies between the Anzac area in the south and
the Suvla sector in the north was unsafe. This next assault
was, once again, to be made by a mixed force of Australian,
British and New Zealand units. By 27 August, the date set
for the attack, the Turks had constructed a complex system
of trenches on Hill 60. For these, the British Empire and
Dominion forces had no maps or plans and, consequently,
little idea of where they were once a section of enemy trench
was seized. Once again, elements of the Australian 4th Brigade–250
men from the 13th, 14th and 15th Battalions–were involved
in the attack at 5.00 am on 27 August. Within minutes of
their advance, two-thirds of them were dead or wounded,
and the attack in this sector was abandoned.
For the 4th Brigade, the Gallipoli campaign, which had begun
with such high hopes on 25 April, was over. At the landing,
the Brigade numbered 4016. Between 6 and 28 August, it had
fought exclusively in the battles to the north of the old
Anzac lines beneath Chunuk Bair and now at Hill 60. By 28
August, its paper strength had been reduced to 968 weary
soldiers. The medical officer of one of its battalions–the
15th, reduced to 170 men from 959 on 25 April–wrote:
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The condition of the men of the battalion was
awful. Thin, haggard, as weak as kittens and covered
with suppurating sores. The total strength of the
battalion was two officers and 170 men. If we had
been in France every man would have been sent to hospital.
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[Regimental Medical Officer, 15th Battalion,
quoted in A G Butler, Official History of the
Australian Army Medical Services, 1914–1918,
Gallipoli, Palestine and New Guinea,
Vol 1, p.321]
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