Introduction by Lt Col George Hulse (Retd), co-author of The First Anzacs

The following essay on the Engineers who landed at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915 was written by Catherine Job of Canberra at my (George Hulse’s) request. It not only inspired the 60 Minutes TV item The First Wave but prompted us to produce this history of the Australian sapper in World War One.

As you will read in the early chapters of The First Anzacs, we have leant heavily on Catherine’s research in this essay to reveal the truth about the sappers and the fact that not only were they there at the first Gallipoli landings (contrary to official army histories) but were highly probably the first to hit the beaches.

Her family’s legend held that Catherine’s great-uncle, Sapper Cleve Page of 1 Field Company Australian Engineers, was killed in the first moments of the landing.  But official records said this could not have occurred as there were no engineers there.

So Catherine decided to get to the bottom of this inexplicable anomaly and her research was used as background material for the Channel 9 documentary which showed that not only were sappers among the first to hit the beaches but they included the first KIAs (killed in action) on that historic day.

The following is Catherine’s account (as received, without editing). And you can view the 60 Minutes track on Youtube Below.

Sadly, Catherine passed away in Canberra on April 29, 2021. She was a long-term member of the 1^st Field Squadron Group RAE Association. We appreciate her work and the legacy she left on one of the most challenging periods in our Corps history.

Ubique

CATHERINE JOB’s ACCOUNT OF THE LANDINGS AT GALLIPOLI
and the early days of the Corps

GALLIPOLI

The Landing.   When the history books and experts said our family oral history couldn’t be right, that there were no NSW units at the dawn landing, I went searching for 1 Field Company Engineers (1FCE), to find what they did do that day.  The search led right back to the beginning, confirming the family story.   So this is why nearly all my research has focussed on piecing together the story of that day, via the Orders and many Sapper diaries.   Hence the detail that follows.

The key to understanding how the role of 1FCE was overlooked by Bean and McNicoll is that the 1st Field Company were split up into their Sections and allocated to different Battalions in the 3rd Brigade.

Although 1 Fd Coy CO Col Elliott landed in the first wave, he did NOT land with his men.  They were up the pointy end, ahead of the infantry and landed and charged with the infantry in the front of the first wave.  COL Elliot was in the last boat of his tow, and also was not commanding his men in that action.  So, when Elliott wrote his War Diary that night, he couldn’t record what most of his men were doing – he wouldn’t even have known at that stage.  That night many were still up on the ridges in the firing line with the infantry.  (Sapper diaries).  Meanwhile, the infantry units they landed with were mixed up and the parties of Anzacs that charged up the ridges were rag tag bands of mixed units led by whoever was most senior in the general vicinity.  It was chaos.  And when the Battalion commanders wrote THEIR War diaries for the day, they only mentioned their own men, not the engineers who landed and fought with them.

The orders that you refer to: locating water, building a road, were the orders for the 2nd Field Company, not the 1st.   The 2nd Field Company, like the rest of the 2nd Brigade, were in the vanguard of the main force and they landed at 7am.  Their UWD is clear and comprehensive.  Lt Dawkns led his men up Shrapnel Gully prospecting for a well. Others sank wells at the mouth of the Gully, still others unloaded a ammunition barge which had drifted ashore and then the famous road was commenced up McGlaggan’s Ridge to Plugge’s.  No 2 Fld Coy sappers then dug trenches in the firing line on Plugge’s and manned them until they were relieved by NZ troops, when they remained in reserve for the NZers.

The orders for the 1st Field Company were different, and they’re completely and vividly supported by the many Sapper diaries that are now emerging on the Internet.

Divisional and Covering Force orders are clear:  1FCE engineers were to land and charge with the First Wave infantry, carrying explosives ashore with them, to capture and destroy three gun emplacements that intelligence had identified.  Intelligence and a cruise past the coast by the high command had identified what it believed to be heavy barbed wire fortifications on the beaches and in the shallows, under the water.   So other 1FCE sappers were equipped with grappling irons, rope and wire cutters, tasked with disembarking first, (under fire, most probably), and cutting and clearing away the barbed wire ahead of the infantry and engineer demolition parties.

Meanwhile, another party of 12 were aboard the transport Nizam with the barrel piers they’d constructed at Lemnos.  They didn’t land in the first wave, but won Mentions for their courage under heavy shrapnel fire when at lunchtime they ferried in their several hundred yards of barrel piers, like a giant snake, across a mile or so of open water into Anzac Cove to construct the first, desperately needed, jetties.  The Turks spotted them and shelled them all the way in.  These jetties were credited with getting fifteen hundred wounded off the beach that day, something that could not occur without them, and thereby saving many lives.

But back to the dawn landing.

By the 17th of April, our sappers were ordered to start practising embarking and disembarking from the battleships that would carry the First Wave troops to Gallipoli.  They drilled hard and by all accounts became very expert: fast and silent.  There’s one reference where an RN officer asks when the men on the other side is his ship are going to start disembarking, only to be told they had completed it and were already sitting silently in the landing boats below.

By now, the various working parties of Sappers had been recalled from shore and reassembled.  1 FCE’s transport section was aboard the Nizam with some Company HQ and the barrel-piers party, while the four Sections, under Lts Mather, Dyer, Huntley and Biden, were on the troopship Ionion.  On the 23rd, they were given their orders for the Landing.  Their diaries mention how sad they were to learn the Company was to be split up.   No 1 Section, under Lt Mather, was assigned to the 9th Battalion, aboard HMS Queen, with orders to land at Brighton Beach, at the southernmost end of the line.  No. 3 Section, led by Lt Huntley, were assigned to the 10th Bttn, aboard HMS Prince of Wales, with orders to land at the southern end of Anzac Cove.  No 2 Section, under Lt Dyer, was assigned to the 11th Batttalion, aboard HMS London, to land at the northernmost end of the line, halfway up Anzac Cove. These three ships and the troops aboard them comprised the first wave of the dawn landing.   Each contained two companies, or half a Battalion, of infantry plus a Section of engineers.

1st Field Coy Lts Dyer and Biden

As soon as the moon set, these troops would disembark into tows of landing boats, (three boats per tow, pulled by a steam pinnace or picket-boat; with four of these tows per Battleships, for a total of 12 tows and 36 landing boats of troops.  Some accounts make the mistake of quoting

48 landing boats, not realising the steamboats did not carry landing troops. Pedantic? Moi?).  With bayonets fixed and barrels empty, these troops were towed silently several miles in to shore, hoping to take the Turks by surprise by landing before dawn.  The 3rd Bde CO, Col Sinclair McGlaggan’s orders are clear and precise, setting out the exact map references which were the objectives of each half-battalion and its engineer demolition party.  Divisional Orders for the landing even contain a neat one page handout on ‘How to Quickly Disable a German Field Gun’ in eight bullet points.  

Sapper diaries complain about the weight of their gear which, with cases of gun cotton or rope and grappling hooks on top of their standard kit, was much heavier than the Infantry’s, and much more dangerous to manoeuvre down the rope ladders into the landing boats.

No 4 Section, under Lt Mather, was assigned to the 12 Bttn, which was the reserve Battalion of the Covering Force.  They, plus the remaining half-battalions, (six companies in all), of the 9th, 10th and 11th Battalions comprised the Second Wave of the Covering Force.  These troops sailed to the assembly point near Imbros aboard transport ships, then transferred onto Torpedo Boat Destroyers, which motored in to the shore behind the landing tows.  These Destroyers were small and able to steam to 150 yards offshore, after which troops were ferried ashore on the returning landing boats, with the first of them landing only ten to twenty minutes after the First Wave.  

The battleships sailed out of Lemnos Harbour late afternoon of the 24th, full steam, flags flying, in full battle order and with 80 thousand troops on ships in Mudros Harbour cheering their lungs out. Spr Jack Hoey Moore has a heart stopping description.  

 Many Sapper diaries record what came next: a short, solemn church service, (on the London, the ships band broke the solemn silence by launching into a music hall tune that all the soldiers then belted out: We all Go the Same Way Home”, according to another Sapper). 

They were then given the run of the ship, played on the guns, were then fed, feted and treated like kings by the RN, before settling for a kip before being woken again after midnight to form up and disembark.

There are many accounts of the long, cold, silent journey in to shore on those landing boats.   Our Sappers have left more.  There was some confusion in the approach and the line of boats ended up landing a couple of hundred yards north of its objective, with the southernmost tows landing half-way up Anzac Cove, many landing clustered around the point of Ari Burnu, and the 11th Battalion, (and No 2 Section) tows landing into the most lethal fire of all, on North Beach.   The cliff line at Anzac Cove is dead zone for riflemen on the cliffs above, but North Beach was enfiladed by at least three Turkish positions: on top of Ari Burnu, on Plugge’s Plateau and up at Fisherman’s Hut.  Even pressed into the sandy cliffs, the bullets could reach them from behind.

A series of Sapper diaries weaves a rich picture of what unfolded, according the to UWD at 4.30 am, 25th April, 1915.

At the southern end of the line, No 1 Section landed in Anzac Cove itself.  Turkish gunfire broke out just as they approached the beach, but all the Sappers of No 1 Section made it ashore.  Sapper Fred Reynolds wasn’t killed landing, but only after going back into the water to retrieve a case of gun cotton, according to one account, and to help a wounded comrade ashore.  On his third dash back to the water he was shot and his body lay at the waterline when the beach was photographed later that morning.  His death was witnessed and recorded by many and is also described in the citation for the posthumous MID he was awarded for his feats.

Reynolds is the only casualty photographed on Anzac beach, suggesting that the casualty rate in the Cove was low, (see Brig Chris Roberts’ “The Anzac Landing”).

No 3 Section, landed with the 10th Battalion around the nose of Ari Burnu and had none killed.   It looks as though there was actually a Turkish rifle squad on the beach at Ari Burnu, who quickly retreated around to North and into the scrub as the Australians landed on Ari Burnu.

No 2 Section, and the 11th Battalion, were not so lucky.  As the shore of North Beach sweeps further east than does Anzac Cove, the northernmost tows had further to row to reach land and were still a hundred yards or more out when the shooting began.   Not only were the boats exposed to more rifles, but, unlike Anzac Cove, there was no refuge on the beach, either.   There were many more casualties on North Beach, as evidenced by 11th battalion and 3rd Field Ambulance accounts.

Not pausing to form up, the troops on North Beach just rushed the cliffs in random, scrambled parties, getting off the beach as quickly as they could. As per orders, they charged with bayonets fixed, no bullets being allowed until after sunrise.  They took the first trench, and within twenty minutes were in possession of Plugge’s Plateau.  Several Sapper diaries are quite graphic about their first experience of bayonet fighting.  

But even before that could happen, the Section lost Sappers Page, Moore and Freebairn, all dead before No 4 Section landed onto North Beach just minutes later.   There are four eyewitness accounts of engineer deaths on North Beach.  

Sapper Cleve Page’s death was remembered by his family, who always believed he was shot before dawn, as soon as he landed, before he’d fired a shot.  This is reflected in his mate Tom Drane’s diary, who describes landing with Page and Syd Cook, Cleve’s death almost immediately, and their subsequent storming of the first Turkish trench. (The family story was accurate because Cleve’s brother, Sgt Ray Page, 14th Fld Coy AE, served through Fromelles and the Western Front with three dozen of Cleve’s comrades who were transferred when the 5th Divison was formed in early 1916.)

Spr William Moore is described by Jack Hoey Moore, in a letter home, as having been shot in the head as soon as he landed. Jack was concerned that his mother would see the name in the casualty lists and think it was her son.  

Spr Sedgewick Mansfield, later Dudley Oakes, gave an interview to a 1975 documentary, filmed at Anzac for the 60th anniversary, where he describes the landing, and a comrade who “as soon as he got off the beach he got it right through the forehead.  He went down like a log.  Didn’t even twitch”. 

Mansfield shared a tent with Page, Drane and Cook and partied with them on their last night at Mena.  He is in two photos with Cleve and his mates, so clearly was close to him.  This description is an exact match for Drane’s.  Or it could describe Moore’s death, as he was also in No 2 Section and described by Jack Moore as being shot in the head. However, Jack Moore was not an eyewitness.  He was on another section of beach.

The final engineer death is described by the 11th Battalion’s young Medical officer, who landed in the same tow as Drane, Page and Cook and was busy attending to the many wounded on North Beach when an engineer was shot in the chest beside him, “and took a few minutes to die”.  This had to be one of these three Sappers.

I have no description of how Sapper Walter Freebairn died but he, too, was a mate of Drane, Page, Cook and Mansfield and was at their Mena party.  I have no written evidence that Freebairn was in Number 2 Section, but his membership of this close friendship group and his death in the first moments of landing suggests that he was.  

Meanwhile, just as No 2 Section were landing on North Beach, No 4 Section’s Corporal Alexander MacDonald, a Boer War veteran, stood 150 yards off shore on the deck of TPD Scourge, mustering his men into their landing boats, when the first gunfire broke out.  The men on the decks of these destroyers were sitting ducks, and MacDonald became one of Australia’s first casualties when his voice trailed off into a gurgle as he slumped to the deck.  He died later that day aboard the hospital ship, Gascon, without having set foot on Turkish soil.  Although he never landed, MacDonald may even have been the first Sapper shot. Reynolds is remembered as the first recorded Australian death on Turkish soil, but it’s likely the North Beach deaths were earlier, although no one was making notes or taking photos in the mayhem there.   I had assumed it was because he is the only identified body photographed on the beach, and that his death was witnessed and chronicled by so many.  It’s quite possible that Alexander MacDonald was the first sapper shot, even though he hadn’t even left his ship.  Or the three from Number 2 Section, who landed on North Beach.  The diaries are consistent in that those three, (Moore, Page and Freebairn), plus Reynolds, were all dead before the second wave landed.

Several more 1st Field Company Sappers ended their war as casualties on the beach in those first few moments, and a couple left records.

Returning to the bigger picture, the Sapper diaries suggest that the men of Nos 2 and 3 Sections joined the infantry charge and became pinned down on the forward firing line overnight or for days afterwards.  No 4 Section, who also landed on North Beach just fifteen or twenty minutes after the first wave, also joined them on the firing line, all effectively acting as infantry until they rejoined their unit.

When the Company had its first muster, on the 29th, the toll was four dead, (actually five, as Cpl Alexander MacDonald had died at sea after being shot in the Landing), and 14 wounded.

At 7am, the 2nd Field Company landed in forefront of the Main Force, and commenced the tasks that McNicoll mistakenly attributes to the 1st Fld Coy.  

Then, in the early afternoon, Lt Bachtold and his sappers ferried their barrel piers in, built their jetties and won their Mentions.  

By this time, work on the road had begun, as well as trench building under fire up on Plugge’s Plateau, while Dawkins and his men sourced the water supply.  See the UWD of the 2nd Fld Coy.

Re Engineer history at Gallipoli, the most famous episode is the 3rd Field Company’s action in the Gaba Tepe raid, led by former Antarctic explorer, Lt Robert Bage, AE which is well documented.  

The 1st Reinforcements, comprising a couple of dozen men under Lt Bachtold, were raised in September and October and sailed on HMAT Berrima from Melbourne on 22 December.  The men of the 1st Reinforcements were transferred to join 1FCE as actual members, not reinforcements.

3rd Field Coy at Suez.  I don’t think there’s any doubt that they were they first Australian Anzacs to see action.  The only Australian unit to see action before them was the Force that went to PNG in late 1914.  Their unit war diary details their clash with the Turks in early February, and the Turkish pontoons they captured.   There’s a lot of detail about a very flash new searchlight they were using.

– It was at Mena that the Engineers were disappointed to have their smart leather bandoliers recalled and replaced with webbing.  They complained they were now indistinguishable from the Infantry.

LEAVING EGYPT

Background: 

The Detached Force:  this was the name of the force despatched from Egypt to Lemnos at the end of February, from which the Covering Force was later chosen.  Churchill’s original plan was to capture the Dardanelles via a Naval assault on the Straits Forts.   Once the Straits Forts were subdued by the French and British Navies with the Royal Marines, the Detached Force was to hop over from Lemnos to garrison them while the RN sailed triumphantly to Constantinople.  Accordingly, the Detached Force was bigger than the Covering Force, as it included a field hospital, field butchery, bakery and other support units.  

The decision to give up on a Naval-only attack and instead to try to take the Straits via amphibious invasion across the Peninsula was only dreamt up by Churchill after the most disastrous day of the Naval battle, the 18th March, 1914 – a battle, by the way, that included some of our 1FCE sappers.  Only after this abject defeat was Hamilton hastily appointed and sent from London to lead a land invasion.  Divisional Orders for the Gallipoli Landing are dated, I think, the 18th of April, and Sinclair McGlagan’s Covering Force Orders were written on the 21st April.  I cant remember the date of the MEF Orders, but it is easily checked, (although not tonight). The entire enterprise was planned in a matter of only weeks – and many argue that it showed.

This is why these troops were on Lemnos for two months, much longer than Main Force. (for details of the Detached Force, see the 3rd Bde Unit War Diary for February/March 1914)

Engineers:

– 1FCE were given their orders to leave Mena on the 28th, causing great excitement.  They marched out on Sunday, March 1st, in the late afternoon, after all the infantry, marching to Cairo, then entraining for Alexandria where they arrived the next morning, and sailed on the 2nd for a two day passage to Lemnos.

– the 1st Field Company sailed with the Detached Force on the Suffolk along with the 11th Battalion, under command of Lt Col Johnson, who they called “Tipperary”, and Major Brockman.  (Diary descriptions exist, including receiving the news they were leaving Mena and the party they had that night to celebrate).

LEMNOS

There were several significant achievements of the Engineers on Lemnos.

–  Members of 1FCE were the second Australian Anzacs to see action in WW1, (after 3FCE on the Suez) and the first in action in the Dardanelles.  Half of the1st Fld Coy’s No 3 Section, under Lt Huntley, were detached to the RN and took part in the catastrophic March 18th attack on the Straits Forts.  They were sent as a demolition party, intended to land with the Royal Marines in order to blow up the Forts.  There are a couple of eyewitness  Sapper diary accounts of this, the most vivid being that of Spr Jack Hoey Moore.  Our blokes didn’t land, of course, but watched the whole catastrophe unfold from the decks of the their ship, the Cawdor Castle. 

– Their other significant achievement was building the Australian Pier, of which they were very proud and which is in daily use today on Lemnos.  It became the focal point for a settlement of Greek refugees from the Turkey in 1922 and the new village which grew around it remains to this day.  The Australian Engineers were very aware of the antiquity of the Mediterranean culture, (the Pyramids, Troy, Greece), and were anxious that their Pier stand beside these ancient engineering marvels as a worthy and enduring contribution.

Lt Bachtold has left us a (typically for him) meticulous account of the design and construction of the Pier, and there are many other Sapper diary entries about this work. There is one photo of the work in progress, as far as I know.

Finally, a third episode on Lemnos: after finishing the Australian Pier, Bachtold was given orders to start building barrel piers in preparation for the Gallipoli invasion.  Part of the Landing plan included these prefabricated jetties. 

The 1st Fld Coy received their colour patched on Lemnos.  

The engineers’ story is an interesting one.  Five 1st Field Company engineers were killed landing, not four. Cec Howlett’s name is listed as being one of them, but this is not the case. Poor Cec had his head blown off in Shrapnel Valley a week later.   And, in addition to Reynolds, another party of twelve were awarded Mentions for their actions during the landing.  

RAISING THE ENGINEER COMPANIES FOR THE EXPEDITIONARY FORCE

The most eager rushed to Victoria Barracks to register their interest in volunteering well before formal recruitment started, indeed before an Australian Expeditionary Force was even offered. Some of our engineers were amongst these earliest “volunteers”.  

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, 8th Aug 14, setting up the NSW contribution to the Expenditionary Force was organised into three subsections with Assistant Quartermaster Capt Page of the Engineers in charge of one of those. (NOT Capt Reuben Page, my G-grandfather.  This is another Capt Page, RAE, who was prosecuted the following year, along with a couple other men, for what looks like embezzlement).

I think the 1st Field Coy filled its ranks in just a few days, not weeks. About the initial lack of equipment, 53 Spr Tom Drane describes sleeping the first week in the RAE’s equipment shed, (called the sand shed), with no uniforms, kit or even eating irons until the 22nd of August, when they were finally issued uniforms, tents and assigned their SERN numbers and Sections.  It’s a lovely diary passage.  He lists his six Tent B1 mates, (six Sappers and a Corporal). Its founding RSM, Sgt Pantlin, was a regular, and was discharged and sent home quite early in the war for being over age.  But not before he led his No 2 Section onto North Beach in vanguard of the dawn landing.

A couple of its founding Lieutenants were members of the very first class at Duntroon, which was graduated early to supply the Expeditionary Force.  A couple more of its men regarded themselves as “Duntroon men”, because they had moved to Canberra to build it.