Note 210 — Chapter XIII · THE LAST EFFORTS

During the night Captain Gilleson, the Presbyterian chaplain of the 14th Australian (Victoria) Battalion, worked incessantly at bringing the wounded back to safety. After daylight next morning, still hearing cries from the exposed slope over the crest of the ridge, he crept out and found a British soldier (probably Hants or Connaught Rangers) wounded and tormented by ants. With help of two others (one also a Presbyterian chaplain) he had dragged the man about a yard when he fell mortally wounded. The man, I believe, was also killed; the Presbyterian was wounded. Later on (August 28) Captain Grant, a New Zealand padre (the form of religion was not mentioned to me at the time) went searching for a wounded friend along a trench filled with dead and wounded Turks. To the wounded he attended on his way; but hearing conversation farther on, he thought he recognised his friend’s voice. Turning a sharp corner of a traverse, he came face to face with the Turks, and was instantly killed.

Both Captain C. E. W. Bean (Australian papers, Oct. 28, 1915) and Phillip Schuler (Australia in Arms, p. 275) mention these incidents, which were described to me on the spot a few days after they happened. Taken with Sir Ian’s dispatch, these two authorities give a clear idea of the confused fighting around Hill 60. For the action of the Connaught Rangers, The Tenth (Irish) Division in Gallipoli should be read, as mentioned above. For myself, I had the great advantage of going over the ground with General A. H. Russell a day or two after the final action of August 29.