Australia and the Gallipoli Campaign
May 1915
3 May 1915
First Gallipoli casualty lists appeared in the Hobart Mercury under the heading — Roll of Honour, Killed and Wounded.
5 May 1915
The Turks begin shelling Anzac Cove from a new position behind their lines. The Australians called this Turkish battery ‘Beachy Bill’ and during the campaign ‘Beachy Bill’ is said to have caused over 1000 casualties at Anzac Cove.
8 May 1915
The Australian 2nd Brigade (Victoria) - 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th Battalions - attacked Turkish positions at Krithia in the British area at Helles. The attack was unsuccessful. Charles Bean wrote:
The stone houses of Krithia were still 2000 yards away, but in advancing 1000 yards the brigade, already reduced at Anzac to 2900 men, lost in one short hour another 1000.
9 May 1915
A party from the 15th Battalion (Queensland, Tasmania) crept out at night and captured the Turkish trench in front of Quinn's Post. Next morning they were driven back with many men wounded as they ran for the Australian line. Lieutenant Francis Armstrong, of Brisbane, was killed as he tried to climb out of his trench to rescue the wounded.
Chaplain William McKenzie, Salvation Army, recorded his first burial after arriving on Gallipoli:
It was pleasing to be able to bury the Col.'s body [McKenzie did not specify who the Colonel was] the first night I was in the firing line and we buried him at 9 pm in an exposed position and for safety I had to kneel in a crouching position to conduct the service. He had been dead a fortnight.
12 May 1915
1st Australian Light Horse Brigade arrived during Turkish shelling at Anzac Cove, Gallipoli. These light horsemen came without their horses and were used as infantry in the trenches of Anzac, as were other light horsemen who arrived later.
15 May 1915
Major-General William Throsby Bridges, commander 1st Australian Division, was wounded in the thigh by a Turkish sniper in Monash Valley. He died on 18 May on his way to Egypt aboard the hospital ship Gascon. His last words were:
Anyhow, I have commanded an Australian Division for nine months.
17 May 1915
Corporal J Slack, 15th Battalion (Queensland, Tasmania), of Wellington, New South Wales, a miner by trade, while lying on the floor of a forward ‘sap’ at Quinn’s Post, heard the noise of picks tunnelling underground towards the Australian position. This was the first indication of mining operations at Anzac which were aimed at tunneling close to an enemy trench and then using an explosion to break into it.
24 May 1915
A truce allowed the Turks to bury their dead lying in no-man's-land between the trenches. Because of the summer heat the bodies had begun to rot and the smell was overpowering.
26 May 1915
Commencement of a factory at Anzac Cove to make periscope rifles. This device, which allowed a soldier to aim and fire at the enemy from his trench without showing himself, was invented by Lance-Corporal W C B Beech, 2nd Battalion (New South Wales), of Sydney.
Turkish snipers opened fire down Monash Valley from a new trench near the Nek. Fifty Australians were hit until a field gun knocked out the trench.
Four destroyers arriving at Anzac Cove with troops were shelled. The shelling killed four soldiers and a seaman and wounded 41 others of whom seven subsequently died. As a result daytime landings ceased. After this all troops and animals were landed at night.
27 May 1915
Night attack by the British destroyer HMS Rattlesnake and men of the 9th Battalion (Queensland) under Lieutenant M Wilder-Neligen on a Turkish trench near the beach at Gaba Tepe. The purpose of this, and subsequent attacks, was to make the enemy think that a major offensive would be launched from the southern positions of Anzac.
29 May 1915
The Turks attacked and broke into Quinn's Post after exploding a mine close to the Australian front line. After heavy fighting the enemy was driven out and the position restored. During the fighting Major Hugh Quinn, 15th Battalion (Queensland, Tasmania), of Charters Towers and Townsville, Queensland, after whom the post was named, was killed.