Chapter 41 – Jayjay

Dale Blair includes an account of the 1st Battalion landing in Dinkum Diggers , p. 76-80. Blair includes a quote from soldier Robert Grant’s memoirs: “The destroyer Scourge came alongside. Her funnel was riddled with bullet holes and her decks were slippery with the blood of the wounded she brought to our ship. I watched them slung aboard. Never did I hate a ship more or want to leave it less than I did the Minnewaska.”

Blair states that orders were to “push on at all costs”, and that “At about 7 am the 1st Battalion prepared to disembark from its transport. Unlike the covering force that landed at dawn, the 1st Battalion landed in comparative safety. The lead companies clambered down onto the decks of a destroyer, which dashed them to within fifty yards of the shore and lowered its boats for the men to make the final leg of the journey, each boat under the guidance of a Royal Navy midshipman. The men, in groups of thirty or forty per tow, were set down in waist-deep water…Major Swannell’s D Company was the last of the Battalion to arrive on the beach.”

AWM photo G00897 shows “Men of the 1st Australian Infantry Battalion transferring from the Minnewaska to the destroyer, Scourge , about 8 a.m. on the first day of the Gallipoli landings.”

AWM photo G00899 is described: “At Sea, Turkey. 25 April 1915. The destroyer Scourge towing strings of boats, alongside and astern, to the landing beach at Anzac Cove, Gallipoli Peninsula. When about 200 yards from shore, the troops were transferred to the boats and were rowed ashore.”

The 1st Battalion war diary states that the battalion landed from 6:45 to 7:30 without loss. Les Carlyon states in Gallipoli that the 1st Battalion landed at around 10:00am, and that officers Shout and Swannell joined the left (p. 141).

Extracts from 1st Battalion soldier Archie Barwick are included in In Great Spirits . Barwick describes how he was paid on 22 April with notes which had Turkish writing on them. He was told that there was to be no haggling with the natives as all prices would be fixed (p. 29). On 25 April, they were served a generous breakfast of steak and bread (p. 30) and after landing via a destroyer and then row boats controlled by sailors, scrambled up the hill for about 200 yards then dumped their packs. Barwick claims that his pack weighed about 150 pounds. Bullets sounded “funny” cutting into the scrub, men were joking and laughing (p. 31).

Tim Travers in Gallipoli 1915 states that the covering ANZAC force was to obtain the high ground from Gaba Tepe to Gun Ridge and the Sari Bair heights.

Loaded rifle with safety cut-off closed mentioned in The Anzacs by Patsy Adam-Smith (p. 88). Men issued with 200 rounds.

The history of the 3rd Battalion, Randwick to Hargincourt by Eric Wren records that the teenage midshipmen from the British Navy were known as “middies” (p. 42).

A diary account of J. H. Driver from the 8 ^th Battalion included in Gallipoli Diaries by Jonathan King (p.34) describes how a 15 year old “middy” was in charge of a landing boat. This middy was shot and killed at the shore during the landing on 25 April 1915.

The History of the First Battalion AIF describes the landing arrangements for 25 April 1915 as follows:

“We were to carry three days’ rations in packs and an extra 150 rounds of ammunition. We were warned that there would be difficulty about getting more water; and General Birdwood advised us to drink all we could before leaving the ship, as after that our water bottles might be all we should have for a couple of days…We knew very little of the actual plans for the attack. In fact, the whole thing seemed to be rather in the air, and so it proved. We understood that the 3rd Brigade was to land from warships at about 4 a.m., and endeavour to rush the enemy positions and hold on until the rest of the Division got ashore—and that was about all.”

Charles Bean describes the equipment carried by those first to land on 25 April 1915 in Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-18 , vol I: “…each man had two empty sandbags rolled around his entrenching tool; the pouches of his equipment were filled with 200 rounds of ammunition…water bottles were filled; and each man carried two little white bags which contained two extra days’rations (a tin of bully beef, a small tin of tea and a number of very hard coarse biscuits in each bag).” (p. 245).