Gallipoli Review: Episode 5 - "The Breakout"

Hamilton’s bold plan for breaking out of the shackles of Gallipoli will become known as the August Offensive. The reporters talk about the same rumours. Ashmead-Bartlett doesn’t think it will work.

Regardless, the attack at Lone Pine goes ahead, Australian infantrymen charging across No Man’s Land to discover that, in many places, the Turks have laid wooden logs down. The attacking Australians have to remove them whilst being fired on from beneath by the enemy, and then there is bloody hand-to-hand combat in the partially covered trenches. The scenes are graphic, confronting and very well done. The Australians grab the first line of trenches and get ready for the inevitable counter-attack.

Meanwhile, off Suvla Bay, the British general Frederick Stopford, commander of the troops scheduled to land and take some of the pressure of the Australians attacking at Lone Pine and The Nek, and the New Zealanders, under Malone, at the summit of Chunuk Bair, is resting his sore ankle.  He doesn’t go ashore, and doesn’t seem inclined to issue any orders of real substance.

So when the Australians attack at The Nek – after confusion ends the artillery barrage too early – the Turks, with no New Zealanders pressuring their rear via Chunuk Bair, pour into the trenches and from less than twenty yards away, mow down to waves of Australian light horsemen. On the beach, Colonel Antill (a polarising figure in the campaign’s history), claims marker flags have been seen in the enemy trenches, and orders the attack to continue.

The famous line, “Sorry, lads, but the order is to go,” sends another two waves of men against impregnable Turkish defences. The light horse troopers who had brawled with Tolly and his friends in earlier episodes are cut down almost immediately. Whilst not as stark as the corresponding scenes in Peter Weir’s Gallipoli film, director Glendyn Iwin does a good job of capturing the hopelessness of the attack, and the stoic nature of the Australians, who almost certainly knew they would be charging to their deaths.

Speaking of hopelessness, the Wellington battalion under Malone (who argued that a daytime attack was suicide, and refused to move until darkness) reach and capture the heights of Chunuk Bair, despite being held up on Rhododendron Ridge. They come under heavy attack, but cling precariously to their position, and for a time hold the fate of the campaign in their hands.

We see Malone’s eventual death (the late afternoon August 8), a day after Lone Pine and The Nek, when he was killed – along with many of his men – by friendly fire. Either a British or Australian battleship mistook the New Zealanders for the enemy, and launched an artillery salvo.

[Historical Note: The New Zealanders were later relieved, replaced by British infantry from North Lancashire, who were soon swept away by a Turkish attack led by Mustafa Kemal]

As the episode ends, Tolly and his friends cling to their positions in Lone Pine. Technically, it was an Australian victory, but a costly one.

One last thought: aside from a cameo from Colonel Antill, we still haven’t seen anyone like a major or a lieutenant. It’s all sergeants and captains. Interesting that the writers didn’t create a junior officer character, which worked so well in The Anzacs miniseries.