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HERITAGE AND ARCHIVES THE BATTLE OF SARI BAIR The August Offensive DAVID WATTERS AND ELIZABETH MILFORD July 1915 was spent in planning a new offensive and amassing the necessary troops. The August offensives were the last major attempt to take the Gallipoli peninsula and ultimately failed to achieve their objective. August 6-29 is memorable also for individual campaigns that took Lone Pine, and the New Zealanders reaching Chunuk Bair, before their reinforcements were driven off by Mustafa Kemal’s forces. The Turks know these battles as Anafarta and Conkbayiri. The objective would be the same as on 25 April – occupying the high points Kocaçimentepe (Hill 971) and Conkbayiri (Chunuk Bair), but this time simultaneously with a landing of British troops of Kitchener’s New Army, IX Corps, at Suvla Bay under Stopford. This would extend the foothold to a wider front and create a bigger supply base. A simultaneous three pronged assault from the ANZAC sector attacking the heights from different directions would achieve the objective. It was ambitious and complicated… 1 New Zealand and Australian forces supported by Indian and Gurkha troops participated in attacks at Chunuk Bair and Hill 60. The Australian 1st Brigade launched an attack at Lone Pine (named for its solitary pine tree) on 6 August. The difficulty of the attack was exacerbated because reconnaissance aircraft had failed to observe that the Turkish trenches were roofed with pine logs. Although the main Turkish trench was quickly taken, Turkish counter attacks and ferocious hand to hand fighting resulted in a large number of casualties – over 2,000 Australian and 5,000-6,000 Ottoman casualties. Up at the Apex, the wounded of the Gurkhas and Aucklanders were lying on the forward slopes where the daylight attack on Chunuk Bair had been arrested. Many wounded were awaiting evacuation; stretcher bearers were urgently required… By 3pm both Aghyl Dere and Chalaik Dere appeared to be choked with wounded… The 4AFA much congested with wounded and could not advance further up the Dere, they were held up by fire. 2 On the 9 August, the summit of Chunuk Bair was briefly captured by New Zealand forces (Otago Battalion and Wellington Mounted Rifles) but the position became untenable and it was recaptured by the Turks. A Turkish memorial plaque states that during this campaign Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) was hit in the chest by shrapnel but it was deflected by his breast pocket watch and he was uninjured. It is said when he realised his good fortune, he roused his troops and drove the invaders off the summit of Chunuk Bair. At the New Zealand Dressing Station at Walker’s Ridge, Lt Col Begg held 200 casualties for evacuation but they had to wait until reinforcements made their way up the Chalaik and Aghyl Dere. The wounded waiting at the foot of Walker’s Ridge could not be evacuated via Walker’s pier till the tide turned, so only walking wounded could leave during the day. Lt Col Begg wrote in a letter some months later: It is quite possible that some wounded remained three days at No 3 outpost as the whole of the sea front was subject to shell fire and machine gun fire and it was impossible to get wounded away by sea from this point. All carriage was by hand through narrow saps and trenches and in this manner many thousands were transferred to barges. 3 The August Offensive resulted in a stalemate that was challenging for the medical services. The intense fighting and number of casualties put pressure of the Australian and New Zealand Field Ambulances and effective evacuation of the wounded was a constant problem. 4 1. Harvey Broadbent, Gallipoli: The Turkish Defence, MUP, 2015, 241 2. Captain Baigent’s diary cited in Carberry: The New Zealand Medical Service in the Great War, 86 3. Erickson EJ. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Osprey Publishing, Oxford, 2013 4. Milford, E & Watters, D, Anzac Surgeons of Gallipoli, 2015 50 SURGICAL NEWS AUGUST 2015
HERITAGE AND ARCHIVES Photo: Begg Family Charles Mackie BEGG Colonel, CB, CMG, Croix deGuerre (1879-1919), MB ChB Otago1903, FRCSEd 1906 EARLY LIFE Charles Begg was born in Dunedin in 1879. Educated at Otago Boys High School he entered the Otago Medical School in 1898, gaining his MB ChB in 1903 and FRCSEd in 1906. That same year he returned to surgical practice in Wellington where he was also appointed Honorary Consultant to the Wellington Hospital Children’s Ward and commissioned Captain in the NZ Medical Corps. By 1909 he held command of the 5 NZ Fd Amb (Territorial Force). GALLIPOLI Begg sailed with the NZEF in October 1914 and saw early action in the battle to repel a Turkish attack on the Suez Canal in February 1915. At Anzac with NZ Fd Amb, Begg initially established a dressing station on the Beach which cared for many thousands of wounded and sick. In June Begg wrote:Turks now enfilade beach from both ends and give us a rotten time.Have had half a dozen men killed just about [sic] hospital door. Begg was wounded a few days later and was treated at the Field Ambulance for concussion and a shrapnel wound to the knee. During the offensive for Chunuk Bair, Colonel Manders, the ADMS, NZ & A Division was killed in action and Begg was appointed to this role. However within days he was stricken with paratyphoid and evacuated from the peninsula. He returned to Anzac in November 1915, resumed as ADMS, and was responsible for many of the medical aspects of the evacuation from Anzac in December. AFTER GALLIPOLI Begg served the remainder of the war in France and became ADMS in both the Anzac Corps and XXIII Corps on the Western Front. In these roles he was responsible for the delivery of medical care to tens of thousands of soldiers taking part in all the major Allied offensives from the battle of the Somme to the conclusion of the war. In October 1918 he was also given overall responsibility for the medical services of the French 5th Army as the war entered its final weeks. PROFESSIONAL LIFE AFTER WW1 Following the Armistice, Begg was appointed Director of Medical Services in London, but he died of influenza on 2nd February 1919 aged 39. Charles Begg was the most decorated member of the New Zealand Medical Corps, ending the war with CB, CMG, Croix de Guerre and MID three times. Had he survived, this Edinburgh Fellow may ultimately have become a Fellow of the College. Andrew Connolly SURGICAL NEWS AUGUST 2015 51
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