Charles E W Bean, Diaries, AWM38 3DRL 606/6/1 - April - May 1915 - Part 3

[Sat. May 1. Abt 7 o'c this morning some Turks got
along the top of Walkers Ridge - unseen from the edge of Shrapnel Monash
Gully - & crept down into a big sandpit or landslide leading
down to Shrap. Gully. There seemed (to those who saw them from
3Bn) to be about 80 of them. They stayed in the sandpit but
some of them crept out along the W. slope of the gully to the
scrub ^above, where Monash Gully junctions w Shrap. gully.
A sniper lying there killed hit Sergt. Douglas of 3 Bn
on / opposite slope. Maj. Brown had a shot at him & so
did one of his men & / man lay still. They sent over &
found he ws a man in civilian clothes. Others were
seen cre in / scrub as far as the S. end of this plateau -
probably it ws from here tt Gellibrand, & I were sniped at
on Thursday.
The Turks "broke thro'" the top [by Popes Hill &
betw it & Walkers] on Tuesday & made things very awkward
- shot Maclaurin & Irvine. I think they only got thro
in 2s & 3s - Col. Pope wd have known of any
breaking thro on a large scale]]
I took the shellcap down to / Beach
to White - Gully ws already there. The beggar goes
straight across country everywhere

[These barges did not (except once or
twice as far as I know) go out under / Red X flag -
I believe they cannot do so. On subsequent occasions
/ enemy when he realised they were Red X barges,
shifted his shrapnel from them out other barges
lying in / anchorage.
 

16

I took / shell cap nose down to / beach to White
Gelly ws already there. The beggar goes straight
across country anywhere.
[The 6^th Bn: Brought ashore 950.
On Ap.29. had 420 men.
Has left 8 officers out of 26.
The day is a v. quiet one _∧Turk guns seem to have retired - our men have been
in process of being withdrawn from / trenches & the Naval
& Marine Bdes are going in. They went into / trenches
straight away their first night (last night, some of them).
It will be a tremendous relief to our men getting this
spell.
The beach is getting much clearer. There are
large red X flags over the N.Z. Ambulance. I doubt
if this is justified - the amb'lc'es are right in /
middle o / Ordnance, stores, provisions, landed guns
- & it simply brings / red X into contempt to put it
in such a place. [I believe we protested agst a
Red Crescent flag being placed behind / T. lines at
Helles]. Howse wont let our Australian casualty
clearing stn fly anything more then a little
sign to show / men where to go.
The wounded going out to / ships have had
a bad time but it's scarcely / fault o / Turks.
Today or yesterday there were 2 barge loads of
them being towed out, lying face upwards on / deck
o / barge, when / enemys shrapnel burst right over
them. I dont know tt anyone ws hurt - I believe
it is sd they were not. I hear tt / ships in port
have a surprise for / Goeben tomorrow.
 

17

Friday April 3O.
The warships in the anchorage _∧shortly after daybreak, this
morning all with one accord started to throw their shells
over into the Narrows of / Dardanelles. They fired hard for
about 10 minutes & we knew it was / "Goeben"
(or whatever is / cruiser wh xxxxx lies at / back o /
hills) - tt they were shelling. There was no reply whatever
from over for / hills - for / first time, pretty well, whatever
ship lies there ws silent. A shadow of an idea a hope crossed ones
mind tt she might have bn done for - set on fire or
damaged by these big 12 in. monsters. But twice this
afternoon a single by gun from over / hills has fired back
at us - so I suspect she is still there. We hear tt 
another submarine of ours has got thro' / Dardanelles.
Very quiet - our 3 brigades ^o / 1^st Divn pretty well
all out of / line now, apparently, reforming. [2nd
Bde ws not yet out, & 1^st Bde most of it went
in again after one day].
Glasfurd tells me he saw one piece of active
[*? New day.*] fighting today – / Turks came on agst / left Battn
(Chatham) o / Naval Bde - quite a spirited attack;
they came on jumping over / bushes most gallantly.
The British machine guns got onto them & drove them
back. British lost abt, 100 killed.
Hot firing abt 8-9p.m.
Frid. night. About midnight tonight as
I was lying in my dug out going to sleep I
heard some one on our staff say to another outside
- The Turks have got through the line. It turned out
tt there was one o / periodical "scares"  on - one
 

18
is getting used to them. A message has come down from
/ line to say tt / Turks charged w / bayonet & drove /
Naval Bde out o / trenches wh Maclagans 3rd Bde
had made & held for five days - there was quite
a stir at Divl H.Q. where on / opposite side o / gully
where / lights a few yds away from me - lights
were burning & Glasfurd & some other officers were
standing there talking. I told Glasfurd I wanted to
to somewhere where I could see the show - wh by
the account received of it seemed to be pretty
serious - some of our trenches had bn taken &
wd have at all costs at once to be retaken.
He sd "Well, if you go up to Maclagan's old
Headquarters you cant go far wrong - but I hope
you have your first field dressing w you."
I started off straight away - didn't much want
to go but I thought this is a show I ought not to miss
- it may mean heavy hand to hand fighting & I may
hear / Turks charging & shouting "Allah" & seee what a
Turkish charge is like. I went up the gully & when
I reached abt / corner where (as far as one cd tell in
/ dark) you turn off for the 3rd Bde H.Q. (wh is in / firing
line where I ws on Monday) I struck off up / hill.
There were some of our men firing up the hill - through /
dense scrub in / little gully or gutter wh, overgrown w
leaves & undergrowth ran almost perpendicularly up /
hillside. Other men of ours were camped apparetntly in
support all along / course of this gutter - you cd scarcely
avoid treading on them as you climbed up its uneven
bed; every little sandy pocket wd contain two or three
sleeping men amongst whose bodies, wrapped up in their overcoats,
it ws quite difficult to find room to place your feet. Thhose who Here and there a
 

19
man was awake - & they he looked at me suspiciously in / dark.
Once or twice they sentries asked me questions - but they never stopped me.
I missed  / right gully somehow but dont think I went much too f
wrong & finally scrambled up over / hill  back face o /
hilltop - where it is quite exposed - through a short communicatn
trench into / shallow trench wh ran along / hill top just
inside / edge o / slope.
I found tt this trench had not been abandoned rushed by / Turks
at all - and no one seemed to know much of any fighting,
although they was a sort
See Bk 4 p. 59. 61.
[This ws left unfinished till 8.9.20. The following
as I remember it is what happened C.E.W.B.] 
There were marines in the trench & some
of our 4^th Bde - I thought 15^th Bn - in with them.
There ws a great deal of firing by the Turks - bullets
cracking overhead, sometimes deafeningly so that
your ears sang & were filled with the report. The
bullets had got some men in the trench – the
marines had lost an officer ^wounded (I daresay by
enfilade or else looking over). Stretcher bearers went
down the trench bending low & squeezing over the
men in it, & presently came back hauling (I think
in a sheet) a wounded man.
The marines struck me as very jumpy.
Sitting fair in ^at the opening of the communication trench into in the
valley fire trench was a young Tasmanian officer.
 

I saw that he was very suspicious of me. So
had the men been in the creek bed on the way
up, I heard afterwards. The young officer told me
that asked me some feeling probing questions & I brought
into my conversation some details about Tasmania
which I think set his mind fairly well at ease,
though he ws never cordial.
The cracking of bullets along the top parapet & the
occasional scatter of earth flicked up by
machine gun ^or other bullets on the trench's edge continued.
Presently, along the trench in the dark: the crawled
on hands & knees the figure of a marine. He was
a dumpy, rather stout soft chap & I don't know
why but in the dark he struck me as having the figure &
the voice of a porkbutcher or a porkbutcher's assistant.
He crawled for the opening of the Communication trench.
As He passed the young officer & was crawling down it
when the youngster stopped him. "Here – where are
you going?" he asked.
The man stared at him.
"Where are you going - Nobody more is to
leave this trench tonight", sd the officer.
"There isn't any trench down there anymore," sd the
man. "The top's fallen in."
"What do you mean?" asked the Officer -
The man ws clearly stupid & the officer ordered him
 

back, & off he crawled over and round the others
in the trench. We went on talking & presently
round the corner came the same figure again
on hands & knees. He had crawled past the
officer again, when the latter noticed him &
pulled him by the coat.
"Here, I thought I told you that
you were not & leave the trench", he sd.
"I want to go out there, "the man sd.
"What do you mean?"
"They've knocked the trench down on
me - I want to to out & shake myself,"
sd the man
The machine gun which was playing on
the parapet had I suppose knocked the earth of
the sandbags & the earth of from the parapet down his
neck & it was the first excuse that entered
his poor scared head when the officer
spoke to him.
The officer sent him back again,
Two men of the 3rd Bde or 3rd Bn
 

had come along saying that they had received
an order tt they were to be relieved. [The
relief was going on this night & no doubt it
ws true.] The young officer let them go, with
obvoius doubts as to whether he ought to do
so. Per
A dark ^sunburnt officer, ^rather handsome with a dark trim moustache 
& a crumpled cap (with a twig spray of
green leaves sticking in it) came up from the
rear & knelt there talking for a while to
the young officer. I suppose it was his captain.
They were very new & untried - it ws
about their first experience of this sort. I wondered
what the leaves in the officers cap were for
& do either heard or realised that they were
to let him look over / trench by day
without his cap being too obvious. Many
men were wearing them at this time.
The of senior man went away. Up the
trench came a message, repeated. "Expect
Turks on the right." " Look out for Turks
 

on the right." The young Tasmanian
could see nothing. Nothing came. He ws ^seemed puzzled what to do
Presently
he said. "I expect we'd better give them
two rounds rapid."
The order went along to fire two
rounds rapid fire. The Australians &
the marines in / trench stood up & fired two
(or was it five?) rounds into the darkness, &
sat down again. I noticed that ^a marine
next to me did not stand up at all. He put
his rifle over the top of the trench holding it
high in both hands, & pulled the trigger.
"That's a good idea," he remarked.
"Don't you think the Turks will
think that you're afraid of them?" sd
the Tasmanian.
He did ^not treat the marines as
he treated his own men - if it ha out of a sort of
diffidence in dealing with strangers. If it
had been one of his own men he would have
spoken more sharply, I fancied.
 

After staying for a good time – as there
ws no attack - I came back down the
gutter through / scrub over the sleeping
men. Near the bottom one of them
said: "Here, our officer wants to
see you."
I asked why. I forget whether I
saw a sergeant & satisfied him or whether
the man didn't persist. Long afterwards
Maj. Steele of the 14th told me that he
had wanted to see me. They weren't at
all satisfied that I was not a spy.
The Turks had I believe taken me part of
the old battle outposts this night -
the Marine Trench (as it ws later called).
It was, to the men when we visited
Gallipoli last year - March 1919 - full
of dead marines & men of the 3rd Bn. "
[The hiatus in the diary is filled by notes
in book 4 pp 61 -3 & at the back of
book 5 pp. These were written at the time &
never transcribed. The rest (excepting
the above was transcribed a month later at Anzac.]
 

23. (No 1 copy)
(This Diary, No.6, apparently ends abruptly here. It was written up from the
notes in Diary No.4, and I seem to have broken off at the end of p.59 of that
book. But this night is particularly vivid in my recollection, and I am going
to try, 37 years afterwards, to expand the account which I find in Book 4 as I
would have expanded it a few days after it was written.) C.EW.B. 21/4/52.
(there was a sort) of disturbance and tension in the air. I had got, I think,
rather to the left of where I had intended, among the Royal Naval Bde, who were

[*Later, in France, Maj. Steel of the 14th Bn told me that he and his men were in the gully up which I had climbed. Steel says that several of his men suspected that I was
a spy and he very nearly had me arrested. Looking back I think it is a wonder that he
did not - the Marines out in the front shot their own Colonel, Bendyshe, in a spy
scare the same night next day.*]

being reinforced by the 16th Battalion. The trenches
were very bad ^-there had been several casualties, a Marine officer wounded etc. Some very tired men of the 3rd were
there, still unrelieved, and two officers - one a dark
moustached, strong-looking dark officer sitting near the
entrance to the communication trench, and with him a
fair haired good-looking boy, both of the 4th Brigade.
xxxx The trench was only 3ft 6in deep or thereabouts and
you had to keep low - the men were sitting on the floor
of it. The elder officer asked me who I was and I told
him but I had a feeling that, though they did not hint it, neither he nor the
boy were fully sure of me. The Royal Marines seemed to me very jumpy. One man
put his rifle over the parapet and fired with his head below the parapet. "That's
a good idea", he said. The Australian Officer said he didn't think much of it,
or words to that effect, There The trench was congested owing to men passing
along it in the relief, and the Turkish fire was very hot, the top of the parapet
being constantly blown in our faces. Some shots were almost deafening. One
marine presently came creeping along the trench from the right. He said the top
of it had been blown down on him and there was no trench there any more and he
wanted to go. The officer stopped him and he sat down for a while but presently began to go on again, feeling the back of his collar and saying that
he wished to get rid of the gravel that had been blown down his neck. The officer
er sent him back. Doing nothing amid all this row was rather trying, and no one
could have kept watch over the parapet. The elder officer said, "I think we'll
give them five rounds rapid", and at his order all the men in that part stood
up and blazed away five quick shots in the direction of the Turks, and then sat
down again.
The trench needed deepening and our fellows were passing up in tools.
There was an argument as to the way in which it should be done.
Clearly our main trench or trenches in that part had not been taken, so I made
my way back down the same gully by which I had come. The work on the trench
had not been finished when 1 left.
Saturday, May 1st.
The Goeben opened this morning with quite a hot bombardment.
 

24
the two big shots landing side by side. When the range was increased the
interval between them widened. Range expremely good and regular. About
midday a hot outburst of Turkish machine gunfire. Beach heavily shelled today and
several men hit. 
May 2nd, Sunday.
A Territorial colonel and Col. McNicholl of the 7th were shot
by Marines last night when coming up a communication trench (they were taken for Turks), and bayoneted afterwards.
[* I heard later that the Marine Colonel Bendyshe was taken by his overstrained
men for a spy, and killed. McNicoll was attacked with a bayonet before he could explain, but only wounded.*]
The shelling on the Beach was very accurate this
morning. At noon there was a very heavy bombardment
going on in the South.
The cable ship Imogen arrived. This night
there was an attack by Monash's brigade and the
New Zealanders, at the head of the valley. The
guns above Hell Spit bombarded the head of the valley just before the attack.

(This ends the section of diary/ -two pages- written up from Book IV thirty seven years
later).