That great writer of Australian military books Peter Brune once noted to me the arbitrariness of whether our fallen soldiers' individual sacrifice is remembered long afterwards – or quickly forgotten.
Aeons later we still revere those Australian soldiers who died in famous battles such as Long Tan, Kokoda, Tobruk, Polygon Wood, Pozieres, Fromelles and Gallipoli. However, many a soldier still lies in the foreign field of a forgotten battle who was every bit as brave but who, at sundown and in the morning, are not remembered – because how many understand what the Korean War was about anyway?
But can we still pause at the going-down of the sun today, and in the morning, tomorrow, to remember the centenary of Lone Pine and the Nek, at Gallipoli?
Both were iconic battles – Lone Pine beginning at dusk on 6 August 1915 and The Nek at dawn the next day – filled with staggeringly courageous acts. And both resulted in such senseless slaughter they had an enormous impact on our young nation when the news got out.
Planned as part of a feint by our forces at Anzac Cove, the idea was to distract the Turks and allow the British forces to land at nearby Suvla Bay with as little resistance as possible and to allow our troops to break out onto the heights at the other end of the beachhead.
As ever, Sydney Morning Herald correspondent Charles Bean was there, just before our blokes went over the top at Lone Pine, to charge at the Turkish trenches some 100 yards away.
"Au revoir, Bill," says one soldier to his mate. "Meet you over there."
"So long, Tom, see you again in half an hour," comes the reply.
"Jim here?" asks another soldier, who has been searching from bay to bay of the trenches.
"Right," a voice calls back, "Bill, here."
"Can you find room for me beside Jim here?" Bill says to one of the adjacent soldiers. "Him and me are mates an' we're going over together."
One soldier from the later lines suddenly comes forward, thrusts a sovereign into the hand of a man about to go, and says, "You go back there and take my place. My mate is here and I've got to go with him!"
"5.27, prepare to go over the parapet," says a young officer crouching in the corner of the fire-step gazing at his wrist-watch.
Immediately the men in the front line pull down the top bag of the parapet, to make it easier for them to climb up and over
Now the officer takes his whistle in his hand. "Prepare to jump out."
The men jostle a little as they put their front foot on the fire-step ready to launch, before the "starter's three short whistle blasts".
And now, in selected spots ahead of them, the ground erupts before the Turkish trenches. The men already in the tunnels in no man's land burst forth like escapees from a graveyard, closely followed by the next two lines of men from the trenches.
With a roar they are all up and over, charging forward, across a front some 200 yards wide, the sun immediately "pouring golden rays over the ridges and parapets, and gilding the white armbands and the calico square on each man's back . . ."
No less than five days' fighting at Lone Pine has just begun, in which there will be 2200 Australian casualties – a quarter of participants killed and no fewer than seven Victoria Crosses awarded for bravery.
The Battle of the Nek the next morning, was a far briefer affair.
As immortalised in Peter Weir's famous film Gallipoli, it involved four waves of Australian soldiers of the Light Horse – with 150 in each wave and two minutes intended between each – charging just 50 yards at entrenched Turkish positions across a narrow bridge of land with steep slopes on each side.
"It was like," Bean would describe, "attacking an inverted frying pan from its handle."
The Diggers were told not to put one "up the spout," meaning they didn't have a bullet ready to fire. This was to be bayonet work only.
A 30-minute bombardment was meant to keep the Turkish heads down, and it started on schedule at 4 am. Alas, at 4.23am it mysteriously stops. There has been a mix-up.
Many of the Turks now emerge and calmly set up their machine-guns and rifles.
A piercing whistle shatters the dawn, and up and over they "GO".
As one, the first wave of men of the 8th Light Horse, 150 horseless horsemen, charge forward, cheering and yelling as they go to "GIVE IT TO THEM, BOYS" – only for those cheers to be drowned out by the roars of Turkish rifles and machine-guns.
"It was one continuous roaring tempest," recounted Charles Bean, who was inevitably nearby. "One could not help an involuntary shiver – God help anyone who was out in that tornado. But one knew very well that men were out in it – the time put the meaning of it beyond all doubt."
How many could live in that roaring tempest? Very, very few.
Most of the Australians are cut down within just "10 paces" of the trenches. And it was as if, in the words of one eye-witness, "the men's limbs had become string" – their bodies and heads riddled with bullets, and still shaking long afterwards as yet more bullets thud into them.
When the second wave goes over, the same thing happens. Before the third wave, knowing what is to happen, one Digger turns to another, offers his hand to his mate beside him, and says, "Goodbye cobber, God bless you." His cobber takes his hand, and then the two turn, put their feet on the firing step, and start to pray together.
Now, from the Turkish lines, comes a strange . . . pleading . . . call: "Dur! Dur! Dur!" (Stop! Stop! Stop! Do not keep running into our guns, slaughtering yourselves.)
Too late. The whistle blows, and with a cheer for the ages, for all eternity, the vast wave of Australian humanity rolls out, eager to crash upon the enemy trenches, only to be cut down again.
So too with at least half of the fourth wave.
In the famed words of Charles Bean: "With that regiment went the flower of the youth of Western Australia, sons of the old pioneering families, youngsters – in some cases two or three from the same home . . . Men known and popular, the best loved leaders in sport and work in the West . . . rushed straight to their death."
Christ!
I repeat:
At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them . . .
Twitter: @Peter_Fitz
