Fortunately most of the bullets went high, but,
nevertheless, many men were hit as they sat huddled together forty or
fifty in a boat.
It was a trying moment, but the Australian volunteers rose as a man to
the occasion. They waited neither for orders, nor for the boats to reach
the beach, but, springing out into the sea, they waded ashore, and,
forming some sort of a rough line, rushed straight on the flashes of the
enemy's rifles. Their magazines were not charged, so they just went in
with cold steel, and I believe I am right in saying that the first
Ottoman Turk since the last Crusade received an Anglo-Saxon bayonet in
him at 5 minutes after 5 a.m. on April 25th. It was over in a minute.
The Turks in this first trench were bayoneted or ran away, and a Maxim
gun was captured.
Then the Australians found themselves facing an almost perpendicular
cliff of loose sandstone, covered with thick shrubbery, and somewhere
half-way up the enemy had a second trench strongly held, from which they
poured a terrible fire on the troops below, and the boats pulling back
to the destroyers for the second landing party.
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