Corporal Cyril Bassett
New Zealand Divisional Signals Company
We were really worn out…
- All my mates ever got were wooden crosses: Corporal Cyril Bassett VC, New Zealand Divisional Signal Company, late 1915. Bassett’s Victoria Cross was gazetted on 15 October that year. Bassett was presented with the award in England where he had been sent to recover after being evacuated from Gallipoli on 13 August 1915.[PAColl-6001-05, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand]
- Lieutenant-Colonel William Malone (1859-1915), commander of the Wellington Battalion, prior to the departure of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force overseas, 1914. An inspirational leader and outstanding officer, Malone was arguably one of a number of New Zealanders whose actions at Conkbayiri (Chunuk Bair) deserved, but did not receive, official recognition.[G-12824-1/1, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand]
It was a scene from hell. As the sun rose over the heights of Chunuk Bair on the morning of 8 August 1915 the cost of the battle that had engulfed its approaches for the previous two days was revealed in full. From this vital point along the Sari Bair Range you could actually look down upon the straits of the Dardanelles and as part of the British August Offensive the New Zealanders had been given the task of capturing it. Now hundreds of New Zealand dead and wounded lay scattered over a tangled trail of ridges, spurs and gullies leading up towards Chunuk in bloody testament to their efforts to do so. Yet that morning it appeared that this sacrifice had not been in vain: Together with support from British reserves (the 7th Gloucesters and 8th Welsh Pioneers) the Wellington Battalion of the New Zealand Infantry Brigade had finally managed to seize Chunuk Bair just before dawn.
However as the darkness faded the Wellingtons found themselves coming under intense artillery, machine gun and rifle fire from Turkish positions either side of them along the Sari Bair Range, ‘Hill Q’ to the north and ‘Battleship Hill’ to the south. At the same time to their front they faced the first of many determined Turkish counterattacks. The British had taken up positions on the Wellingtons’ flanks but were soon in disarray, particularly the Welsh, as key officers were killed and discipline broke down. Shortages of ammunition and water quickly became critical and the treatment or evacuation of the wounded was all but impossible. In short Chunuk Bair had been taken but whether it could be held was another question entirely.
Colonel William Malone, the commander of the Wellingtons, needed a lot of things that day but first of all he needed to get in contact with his superiors at brigade and division headquarters to let them know exactly what was happening up there. Only they could order the reinforcements and supplies he so desperately needed to be sent to him. So the sight of a small signals party scrambling its way up towards Malone’s command post later that morning must have been a welcome one.
At Gallipoli in 1915 only one method of long-distance instantaneous communication was available to frontline commanders like Malone the portable field telephone. The alternative was to send runners back and forth but this meant that the information was usually hours out of date by the time it was received (assuming the runners weren’t killed or wounded before they could deliver their message – which they often were). Weighing around 2½ kilograms the field telephones had to be physically connected to a central switchboard via a copper wire and rubber-insulated cable. It was the job of signal parties such as the one making its way towards the Wellingtons that morning to not only carry and operate the field telephone but also to roll out and hook up the lines of cable needed to connect it.
In fact two New Zealand signal parties had been sent up to establish contact with the Wellingtons that day with the intention of setting up two separate telephone lines. However after ducking and weaving their way along Rhododendron Spur, the last critical ridgeline below Chunuk itself, the first party ran out of wire cable. Confronted with this situation when it arrived half an hour later the second party, under the command of Corporal Cyril Bassett, New Zealand Divisional Signals Company, abandoned its line and used the rest of its cable to complete the first connection. The telephone operators from both parties had by then joined Malone’s command post and set up one of the field phones.
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- This Wills’s cigarette card from 1915 shows Corporal Cyril Bassett, Divisional Signals, New Zealand Engineers, New Zealand Expeditionary Force, laying his telephone lines on 7 August 1915.
Unfortunately, that was not the end of the Wellingtons’ communication problems. Having established the telephone link it was now up to Bassett and his signallers to make sure it kept working. This was no easy task. Unless it could be buried (and there was no time for that) the telephone cable could easily be cut by a single stray bullet or piece of shrapnel. As it was, the immediate approaches to Chunuk Bair, particularly Rhododendron Spur, were being subjected to relentless Turkish artillery and small arms fire.
Sure enough, within half an hour of being set up the line went dead. Bassett had to send one of his signallers off to brigade headquarters with an urgent message from Malone while he and another one of his men, Sapper William Birkett, went back down the slope of Rhododendron Spur to find out where the line had been cut and repair it. So began an extremely frustrating and dangerous three day ordeal for Bassett and his small band of signallers:
We were there practically until the morning of August 10th on these lines. Well, what we should have done really was to run out new lines but we didn’t have [any]… All day on the 8th we were working on these lines, mending breaks, and on the 9th we did a bit of mending, but we were really tired. We were really worn out.
[Stephen Snelling, VCs of the First World War: Gallipoli, London, 1995, p.184]
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- An artists’ impression of the action on 7 August 1915 for which Corporal Cyril Bassett, Divisional Signals, New Zealand Engineers, New Zealand Expeditionary Force, was awarded the Victoria Cross. [Drawing in Stephen Snelling, VCs of the First World War: Gallipoli, Stroud, 1995, p.183]
All of this work had to be carried out under the unforgiving scrutiny of Turkish snipers, machine-gunners and artillery observers, all of whom kept a constant watch for fresh targets. Rhododendron Spur, where Bassett and his men had to spend most of their time repairing breaks, was so exposed to Turkish fire that a mid-morning attempt by soldiers of the Maori Contingent to cross it and reinforce Malone on 8 August was swiftly driven back and had to be abandoned. No further attempts were made to reinforce by that route during daylight.
It was here that Bassett narrowly escaped being killed on at least two occasions
when bullets clipped his clothing, one going straight through his collar and
the other tearing off his right-hand pocket. Bassett himself quipped that
his survival was due to his modest stature:
- Two New Zealand signallers using a portable field telephone in a forward trench, Conkbayiri (Chunuk Bair), Gallipoli, 1915. The operator on the left is wearing the head receiver and talking into the handset. Powered by two dry cell batteries the field telephone also included a buzzer to allow transmissions in morse code. [PAColl-1292, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand]
It was just that I was so short the bullets passed over me.
[Stephen Snelling, VCs of the First World War: Gallipoli, London, 1995, p.185].
Such humility was typical of the man. When told some two months later that he was to be awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions at Chunuk Bair Bassett initially refused to believe it. He certainly didn’t believe that his actions in any way surpassed those of the other signallers there.
Nonetheless the fact that Bassett had taken charge of both signal parties, had clearly led by example and had already previously been cited by his officers for bravery during the failed Anzac assault against Baby 700 on 2 May produced a cumulative effect that led to his being awarded the highest honour (for valour) of all. Major Fred Waite, author of the official New Zealand history of the Gallipoli campaign and veteran of the same, summed it up thus:
No VC on the Peninsula was more consistently earned…This was not for one brilliant act of bravery, but for a full week of ceaseless devotion.
[G. A. Bryant, Where The Prize Is Highest: The stories of the New Zealanders who won the Victoria Cross, Auckland, 1972, p.36]
- Soldiers of the Maori Contingent departing for Egypt prepare to board their troopship, Wellington Harbour, 1915. Organised into companies and platoons based on tribal affiliations the 500-strong Maori Contingent was an all-volunteer force raised at the behest of Maori leaders. The Contingent suffered a total of 104 casualties during the battle for Conkbayiri (Chunuk Bair). [Ref Number: F-11079-1/2Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand]
- Troopers of the Wellington Mounted Rifles take a break from entrenching the
newly captured position of Table Top, one of the key features leading up towards
Chunuk Bair, 7 August 1915. The New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade paved
the way for the New Zealand Infantry Brigade’s assault on Chunuk Bair by
seizing the foothills below it during the first 24 hours of the offensive. [PAColl-1655,
Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand]
Read more about this image in the Panels section
But in the end it was all for nought. The New Zealanders held on at Chunuk Bair for just over two days, an act of defiance for which they paid a truly horrific price. However, within a few hours of being relieved by two inexperienced British New Army battalions the Turks mounted yet another assault on the battered position and this time, under the direct command of Mustafa Kemal himself, they succeeded and drove the British off.
Small wonder then that for the rest of his life Bassett remained somewhat ambivalent about his award. This ambivalence was compounded by the fact that he was the only soldier of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force (NZEF) at Gallipoli to be awarded a VC.
When I got the medal I was disappointed to find I was the only New Zealander to get one at Gallipoli, because hundreds of Victoria Crosses should have been awarded there.
[ Stephen Snelling, VCs of the First World War: Gallipoli, London, 1995, p.187].
The scale of New Zealand’s sacrifice at Chunuk Bair, and indeed the entire Gallipoli campaign, was easily on a par with that of their Anzac brethren, the Australians. Yet official recognition, at least as far as the Victoria Cross was concerned, was not as forthcoming for the New Zealanders as it was for the Australians. The New Zealand soldiers’ bitterness at this perceived neglect was largely directed towards their British commander, Major-General Alexander Godley, who was rumoured to have quashed numerous VC recommendations arising from Chunuk and other Gallipoli battles.
Then again, in the case of Chunuk Bair, the New Zealand casualties were so high, particularly among the officers, that often there was simply no one left to officially recommend anything. This was especially so in the case of the Wellingtons. They had begun their battle for Chunuk Bair with 760 men - they ended it with less than 70 able-bodied survivors. Colonel Malone was not amongst them, killed by shellfire early in the evening of 8 August.
Perhaps the most succinct observation on the lingering controversy surrounding the issue was made by Bassett himself in an interview some fifty years later:
All my mates ever got were wooden crosses.
[Christopher Pugsley, Gallipoli: The New Zealand Story, Auckland, 1984, p.314]
[Written by Damien Fenton, Department of Veterans’ Affairs]