Just before dawn on August 7, 1915, the men of the 8th and 10th Australian Light Horse Regiments waited in silence on a narrow strip of Turkish soil known as the Nek. They stood shoulder to shoulder in the dark, clutching rifles with bayonets fixed, their nerves tight as piano wire. In the trenches behind them, mates shared final words, quick prayers, a letter home folded into a breast pocket. Some kissed crucifixes, others stared ahead into the blackness, hearts thudding. Then, as the first grey wash of light crept over the ridgeline, the whistle blew.
They went over the top in lines - neat, ordered, hopeless. They charged not into glory, but into annihilation. Within minutes, dozens lay dead, cut down by Turkish machine guns positioned just yards away. Still the whistle blew again. And again. And again.
The Battle of the Nek would last less than an hour. It would leave nearly 400 men killed or wounded. It would never achieve its objective. And yet, in the years that followed, it would be remembered with honour and grief....as a moment when courage met catastrophe, and where the cost of obedience was paid in blood.
A Thin Strip of Land, A Grand Illusion
The Nek - barely thirty metres or 40 metres wide - was a narrow saddle of land at the top of Russell’s Top on the Gallipoli Peninsula. It was supposed to be a feint: a diversionary attack to draw Ottoman fire and attention away from the New Zealanders attacking Chunuk Bair. The hope was that a coordinated, multi-pronged assault might finally break the deadlock of the Gallipoli campaign. But coordination, as it turned out, was already fraying.
The New Zealanders were meant to take Chunuk Bair before the Australians charged. But they were delayed. Communication failed. Orders weren’t adjusted. And the artillery barrage that was supposed to suppress the Turkish defenders at the Nek ended seven minutes too early - just enough time for the Ottomans to return to their positions, set up their machine guns, and wait.
Yet no one on the Australian side called it off.
The 8th and 10th Light Horse Regiments were filled with young men from Western Australia and Victoria. They were country boys and bushmen.....riders, shearers, farmhands, clerks.....many of whom had signed up expecting to fight as cavalry. At Gallipoli, their horses had been left behind in Egypt. Now, they fought as infantry in the steep, unforgiving gullies and ridges of Anzac Cove.
When the men of the 8th and 10th Light Horse leapt over the parapets at the Nek in August 1915, their mounts were thousands of miles away, left behind in the sands of Egypt. The steep ridges and confined gullies of Gallipoli offered no place for cavalry tactics. Instead, these horsemen fought as infantry, trading reins for rifles, hooves for boots.
They knew it was a death trap. Lieutenant Colonel Noel Brazier, commanding officer of the 10th Light Horse, begged for the assault to be called off. He could see the Turkish trenches barely thirty yards away, their rifles glinting in the early light. But his concerns were dismissed. Higher command had drawn up the timetable. The whistle would blow. The men would charge.
And charge they did.
The first wave climbed from the trench and ran forward in a straight line, bayonets glinting. Within seconds, they were gunned down. Turkish fire swept the ground in a storm of lead. Bodies fell in heaps, men screaming, crawling, dying.
Then the second wave went up. They too were cut down before they reached the wire. Blood pooled in the dirt. Limbs twitched. The Australians in the trench could now see what was happening - surely the charge would be halted?
But it wasn’t.
The third wave was ordered forward. Some refused. Some went over and were killed. Lieutenant Wilfred Harper, just 21 years old, was seen charging like a man possessed, sabre in hand, as if galloping across an open plain. He never reached the enemy trench.
Lieutenant Colonel Antill, left in command, believed the earlier waves had succeeded in taking ground. He kept sending men into the guns. A fourth wave was readied. Some light horsemen broke down. Some hesitated. Still, the whistle blew. And once more, they climbed out into the fire.
One soldier, Trooper Harold Rush, turned to a mate and said quietly, “Goodbye cobber, God bless you,” before charging to his death.
When it was finally called off, the Nek was choked with the dead and the dying. Rows of fallen light horsemen lay where they had been shot, many never having made it ten paces. The survivors dragged themselves back behind the line, stunned and silent. There was no glory, no ground taken, no enemy line broken.
The bodies remained where they fell until December, when a temporary truce allowed for burials. They were found in orderly rows, some still clutching bayonets, many never having fired a shot. In all, 234 Australians were killed, 138 wounded...many from bullets to the head or chest. The Ottoman defenders suffered barely a scratch.
In later years, commanders would call it a tragic mistake. An error of timing. A necessary distraction. But to those who lived it - or loved those who died in it - it was something more painful. It was a betrayal by the very system they trusted.
The Battle of the Nek came to symbolise the very best and worst of war. Unflinching courage. Unquestioning obedience. Wasteful sacrifice. Command failure.
Peter Weir’s 1981 film Gallipoli captured that spirit in its devastating final scene. Mark Lee’s character, Archy Hamilton, sprints toward the Turkish line in slow motion, arms wide as the bullets cut him down, his youthful body frozen in a final moment of resistance, futility, and tragic beauty. That single image burned the Nek into Australia’s cultural memory.
And yet the film, like the story itself, leaves us asking: what is the line between sacrifice and slaughter? Between honour and obedience? Between command and conscience?
Each ANZAC Day, Australians gather at dawn to remember. They speak of bravery, of mateship, of spirit. They whisper the words “Lest We Forget.” And in the silence, some may think of a narrow ridge above the Aegean Sea, where four whistles blew and nearly 400 young Australians obeyed.
The Nek teaches us that courage can live even in futility. That loyalty to one’s mates can carry a man into the teeth of death. But it also warns us about the price of rigid authority - about the need to question, to adjust, to value human life above military plans drawn on distant maps.
It teaches us that the whistle must never blow blindly again.
If you stand at the Nek today, it’s quiet. The grass moves in the wind. The sea glimmers beyond the cliffs. And somewhere beneath your feet, in the dust and the rock, are the echoes of those who never returned.
They came from the bush, the suburbs, the paddocks and pubs of a young nation. They died not because they lacked courage, but because they had too much of it.
And still, each year, as the sun rises over Gallipoli, we remember them. Not just as heroes. Not just as victims. But as men....whose story demands we remember not just how they died, but why.
Footnote
After the evacuation of Gallipoli, the regiments returned to Egypt and were reunited with their horses. The bond between man and mount, forged in the dust of outback drill grounds, became central once again. Together they rode across the Sinai and into Palestine - through battles like Romani, Magdhaba, and Gaza - culminating in the thunder of hooves at Beersheba. (Read more about Beersheba [here].)
But the final heartbreak came not in battle, but in peace. At war’s end, the horses did not come home. Of the more than 130,000 horses sent overseas, only one - Sandy- ever returned to Australia. The rest were either sold to local forces or put down by their own troopers, who could not bear to see them mistreated.
For many Light Horsemen, the hardest goodbye wasn’t to their mates in the trenches - it was to the silent, loyal companions who had carried them through hell and desert dust alike.
BLOG COMMENTS POWERED BY DISQUS
