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The Anzac Walk

6.Brighton Beach – Coast Road

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Directions:

From Shrapnel Valley Cemetery go back to the main beach road. Turn left and walk along this road for about half a kilometre. Ahead of you will be the promontory of Gaba Tepe and to your right the shore known to the Anzacs as Brighton Beach named after the beach of the same name east of Melbourne.

Naked as the day they were born

Cooks issuing light rations to sick men at No 1 Field Ambulance on Brighton Beach
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One wonders what a light diet consisted of! The monotonous food – bully-beef, biscuits, jam and tea – was a source of constant complaint – ‘Always the same bully and biscuits’. The biscuits also had their dangers as recorded by Private Pelham Jackson, 11th Light Horse Regiment, of Kyunna, Queensland:
I had the misfortune to break another tooth a couple of days ago a good back tooth … when I was trying to bite through a particularly hard biscuit. [Jackson, quoted in Bill Gammage, The Broken Years, Ringwood, 1990, p 90] [AWM A01805]

In his official history The Story of Anzac, Volume 1, Charles Bean has a chapter entitled ‘Landing at Gaba Tepe’. It reminds us that the Anzac landing was originally planned for this beach stretching southwards from Hell Spit to the promontory of Gaba Tepe ahead of you. Just before dawn on 25 April 1915, the four battalions of the 3rd Australian Infantry Brigade, known as the ‘Covering Force’, were to come ashore here and move rapidly inland to positions along what was known as Third or Gun Ridge. The 11th Battalion (Western Australia) would advance up and across the ridges in a north easterly direction to Battleship Hill; the 10th Battalion (South Australia) would make straight inland to Gun Ridge; and the 9th Battalion (Queensland) would land well south along the beach, split into two groups, one heading inland to the end of Gun Ridge and the other a little inland and then south to charge and take Turkish gun positions on Gaba Tepe. The 12th Battalion would land just south of Hell Spit and act as a reserve. Then the 2nd Brigade would land and push along the northern shore and inland to the heights of Chunuk Bair and Hill 971. The objective for the whole force that day was a hill known as Mal Tepe, well inland towards the other side of the peninsula from where they would command the road south towards the forts guarding the Narrows of the Dardanelles. With such a position in their hands the Anzacs would be able to cut off Turkish reinforcements heading south towards the main British landings at Helles which took place a little after dawn on 25 April 1915.

Captain Jarlath Duffy outside his dugout on Brighton Beach
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Captain Jarlath Duffy, Australian Army Service Corps, outside his dugout on Brighton Beach on 16 December 1915, just before the final evacuation. On the door of the dugout was a Crescent and Star sign and the words ‘Do Drop Inn’. [AWM H16587]

As we know, for the Anzacs none of this came to pass. They landed further to the north and during that first day’s fighting were held by the Turks to the ‘old Anzac’ area. As you can see, the country facing them inland of Brighton Beach was not as rugged as what they encountered at North Beach and Anzac Cove. The casualties suffered by the 3rd Brigade that day were high. It is thought, however, that casualties would have been even higher had they landed at Brighton Beach. Turkish guns at Gaba Tepe and artillery a little further back at a position the Anzacs later called the ‘Olive Grove’ could have decimated them as they came ashore.

A Sergeant-Major of the Indian Mule Cart Transport
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This was a unit of Britain’s Indian Army brought to Anzac to carry supplies all over the area. The Indians were able to use their carts along the coast and a little way inland but supplies were transferred to the backs of the mules for carriage up the hills to depots behind the front line. The Anzacs got on well with the Indians. Major H M Alexander, the commander of the Indian unit, recorded that ‘the Anzacs called every Indian "Johnny" and treated him like a brother, with the consequences that the Indians liked them even more.’ [AWM P00229.004]

During the campaign Brighton Beach was really a backwater. Men came down here to swim always in danger from Turkish snipers and shells, as they were at the other Anzac beaches. As Anzac Cove became overcrowded in the days after the landing, a stores depot was established at Brighton Beach at the mouth of Shrapnel Gully. Great stacks of boxes and other stores rose at this position and the space between Hell Spit and the beach was soon strewn with timber, barbed wire and all sorts of other engineering material. The Indian Mule Cart Company, renowned for their transporting of water and other supplies up into the hills on mules or along the shore in small two-wheeled carts, initially established themselves in this area. Shelling became severe but it was decided that this depot must be maintained as a more convenient spot than Anzac Cove to pick up stores for men coming from the southern Anzac trenches. The great stacks of boxes were carefully arranged to hide those working there and to allow some protection from shrapnel.

A water parade at Dawkins Point, Brighton Beach
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Sergeant Cyril Lawrence, Australian Engineers, described the problems of the front-line infantry on Anzac as they struggled to provide themselves with essential food and water:
We get about one water bottle (1 quart) per day. This has to do for washing as well … All water rations and goods, ammunition, shells, etc. has to be manhandled right up to the trenches – in some cases 500 to 600 feet up. The poor infantry … [The Gallipoli Diary of Sergeant Lawrence of the Australian Engineers, Sir Ronald East (ed), Melbourne 1983, pp 26-27]
[AWM A 01818]

On 22 May 1915 an extraordinary event occurred on Brighton Beach. At a point about a third the way along the beach from Hell Spit the ‘old Anzac’ position came down to the sea. Here was a sandbag wall and, reaching out into the water in front of it, two trip-wire entanglements. On the morning of 22 May, a white flag was seen on Gaba Tepe. The Australians had no white flag but someone quickly brought up a beach towel to serve. Turkish envoys then came along the beach towards the trip-wire where they were met by Australian officers. They had come to negotiate a truce to allow the thousands of Turkish dead along the frontline from their attack of 19 May to be buried. A Turkish officer was eventually blindfolded and led along the beach towards the trip-wires. Charles Bean was watching:

They directed his feet carefully over the first one … They shouted for coats to help him cross the second; but in the meantime someone had a brainwave. There were several Australians bathing … nearby. Someone rushed off for a stretcher – then they called the bathers. Two of these big Australians – naked as the day they were born – took the stretcher round the larger entanglement ... And I got three photographs! 

[Bean, quoted in Frontline Gallipoli:C E W Bean’s diary from the trenches, Kevin Fewster, Sydney, 1990, p 112]

Presumably it was thought not the done thing to allow this high-ranking Turkish officer to get his feet wet!


The white flag stopped
The Turkish envoy, 22 May 1915

Presently the first horseman I have seen at Anzac came over the ridge and cantered up the neck of the side of Kaba Tepe. The white flag stopped. The horseman came down the hill again and on to the beach, and came along towards us. Out with our white flag was an officer from G.H.Q. and an officer from Anzac. Blamey and an interpreter were waiting some way nearer to us with a second white flag. I went down to the sapper post on the beach. The horseman came along to our foremost officers waving a white handkerchief. He got down, talked for a minute, left his horse and started walking back to Kaba Tepe, when three more horsemen appeared coming along the beach. They came up to our officers; there were clearly two officers and two horse-holders. The officers shook hands – took out cigarettes. Presently they signaled up Blamey. It turned out they wanted an officer of equal rank to stay with their junior officer (a major) whilst their senior officer came to see us. Our two officers brought their senior officer along the beach. When about a quarter of a mile from our sappers post they blindfolded him very carefully with two handkerchiefs, and then each taking an arm led him between them like a child, chatting volubly – I suppose in English.

Blindfolded Turkish envoy being carried around the barbed wire entanglements on Brighton Beach on 22 May 1915
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The blindfolded Turkish envoy seated on a stretcher being carried around the barbed wire entanglements on Brighton Beach by two naked Anzac swimmers on 22 May 1915. He had come to negotiate a truce to bury the thousands of Turkish dead who lay out in front of the Anzac trenches after the failed Turkish attack of 19 May. [AWM G00988]

He had two small wire entanglements to cross before he reached our sandbag wall; a low trip wire maze and a higher one stretching down to the sea. They directed his feet carefully over the first one – like you do in the game where a man is blindfolded and set to step over a lot of books that aren’t there – irresistibly like it. They shouted for coats to help him cross the second one; but in the meantime someone had a brainwave. There were several Australians bathing along the beach near by. Someone rushed off for a stretcher – then they called for the bathers. Two of these big Australians – naked as the day they were born – took the stretcher round the larger entanglement. The Turkish colonel got on to it – the two naked men carried him into the water, round the edge, and back to the beach. And I got three photographs!

[Kevin Fewster, Frontline Gallipoli: CEW Bean, diaries from the trenches, Sydney, 1990, p.112]

A pitiful sight
Dead mules on Brighton Beach with the Gaba Tepe peninsula in the background
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Dead mules on Brighton Beach with the Gaba Tepe peninsula in the background. In the early days the Indian Mule Cart Transport unit was stationed on Brighton Beach where they were much exposed to Turkish shelling. Major H M Alexander wrote of the aftermath of a particularly severe shelling:
Many mules were killed outright, and many others lay where they had fallen, unable to rise; those had to be shot, and that evening the beach was strewn with dead animals – a pitiful sight.
[Major H M Alexander, On Two Fronts: Being the Adventures of an India Mule Corps in France and Gallipoli, London, no date, p 171] [AWM P166/25/15]

The Turks opened with shrapnel, fired in salvoes of four guns, right into the middle of the mule camp.  Everybody went to ground as far as possible, but cover was inadequate, and men and animals began to fall. As soon as there was a lull – but not before a good many mules had been knocked over – an attempt was made to shift the camp, and the mules were rushed round Hell Spit Corner, where – out of the enemy’s sight – they were picketed again. All was quiet for two or three hours, and the men were sent back to Brighton Beach to fetch the saddlery and gear. There was only a guard of one N.C.O. and twelve men present, when Colonel Lesslie, the Military Landing Officer, came along with the message from headquarters that all animals were to be moved off the beach and kept in gullies leading into the hills. Colonel Lesslie had scarecely given the order, when “Beachy Bill”, as this gun was afterwards called, opened fire again. The guard turned out at once, and – assisted by Australians and New Zealanders who were standing about and at once volunteered for the work – hurriedly unshackled the mules and led them away. They were followed along the beach by the persistent and obnoxious attentions of Beachy Bill, whose fire was more like a violent hail-storm than anything else. The men who had gone to fetch the gear came rushing up, headed by Ressaidar Hashmet Ali, and joined in the rescue. Although the site of our new camp could not be seen by the enemy, they must have known where it was, for the fire was deadly accurate, and before the safety could be reached eighty-nine mules and two horses had been hit; the N.C.O. of the guard was wounded, Driver Bir Singh hit in the head, and other Indians and several Australians were casualties. Many mules were killed outright, and many others lay where they had fallen, unable to rise: those had to be shot, and that evening the beach was strewn with dead animals – a pitiful sight.

[H M Alexander, On Two Fronts, London, 1917, pp.170-171]