Army Mom’s Safe Haven

The Charge of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade at the Nek: 7 August 1915 by George Lambert. [AWM ART07965]
The Charge of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade at the Nek: 7 August 1915
by George Lambert. [AWM ART07965]

THE NEK

A three-pronged diversion was needed
To capture the high ground at Chunnuk Bair;
On the seventh of August nineteen-fifteen
The 8th and 10th were ordered, "Prepare!"

Their objective – to capture "Baby 700"
(High-ground held by the Turks)
But the artillery bombardment finished early
Allowing the enemy to prepare for the worst.

On foot, Victorian and West Aussie Horsemen
Needed to cross a sixty-foot-wide neck of land
That separated the ANZAC and Turkish positions
... And so the terrible massacre began.

And the devil's terrain was no wider
Than two tennis courts... but 'twas no game
With screams of the limbless and dying
And in piles - the wounded and the slain.

No Aussie reneged on his mate or sworn duty
Despite the slaughter each digger could see;
a hundred 'n' fifty in each of the four waves
Charged into the mouth of the Turk's killing spree.

Each wave after the first saw the losses
And the dark Angel of Death, they all knew
More Aussie corpses piled onto wounded
But still the enemy wasn't hidden from view.

After wave four, the attack was called-off
The terrible carnage had ceased;
The killing fields fell into silence
Broken only by moans of the weak.

Charles Bean, an Aussie with the British Graves Unit,
wrote, after burying three hundred Aussies or more,
"Their graves mark one of the bravest of actions
That was ever fought in the history of war!"

"The Nek" is the name of that hallowed ground
Where hundreds of Aussies were slain;
Only ten graves mark their earthly existence
But in Aussie hearts they'll always remain.

©Copyright April 24, 2006 by Anthony W. Pahl, OAM
(Revised and completed April 27, 2006)

"The Nek" is dedicated to those who fought in that battle, the men of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade, which consisted of the 8th Light Horse Regiment from Victoria, the 9th from South Australia, and the 10th from Western Australia. Only elements from the 8th and 10th took part in the action at the Nek.

The information for the poem was obtained from the "Visit Gallipoli" website, particularly the page relating to The Nek and The Nek Cemetary.