Gallipoli Landing as recalled by Corporal Nixon, 13th Battalion, AIF.

This article in the Eastbourne Gazette from 1915, gives a personal account of the landing at Gallipoli on 25th April 1915, by Corporal Nixon of the 13th Battalion. Corporal Nixon was convalescing at the Summerdown Camp in Eastbourne after a wound to his left shoulder.

This is a fascinating account for the Newspaper. It starts off with plausible information about the initial attack, but as you read on it gets more and more bizarre!

After reading it you are left with the impression that Corporal Nixon enjoyed telling a ‘tale or two’ and had a captive audience with the newspaper reporter who believed everything he recalled.

“How the Australians Routed the Turks

Colonial Wounded By Sniper

Corporal Nixon of the 13th New South Wales Battalion, who is a Sydney man, told a “Gazette” representative a thrilling story of the landing at the Dardanelles. He arrived there he said, on the memorable 25th April. They had been at the peaceful Greek island of Lemnos and while on their voyage to the scene of one battle they were watching another conflict in progress. It was an amazing spectacle. The landing of the Australians was unprecedented in any warfare. Men were landed in open boats in small parties, and when they reached the shore the positions was so difficult that there was no possibility of any military formation being attempted.

“We fixed bayonets and rushed the Turks over the hill in the most extraordinary manner,” he said. “It was never intended that we should land where we did; we were taken there by some strange current. There was barbed wire entanglement under and above the water and the sea was heavily mined.”

“There was also a sheer precipice in front of us. We hopped out and the Turks could not make much defence; they only had a few machine guns. It was a magnificent sight and I would not have missed it for the worlds. As the General said, ‘Our men fought with such wonderful cheerfulness and absolute fearlessness.’ We were without trenches for twenty-four hours. Our greatest source of trouble was the snipers. They had picked marksmen in every shrub and among the dead leaves. We had to take of our packs and leave them on the beach; we could not carry them up the hill.”

Corporal Nixon added that as night advanced they had orders to retreat, and they found there were German Officers in Australian uniforms in their trenches giving orders. These Germans could speak very good English with an accent which deceived the Colonials who had not travelled much. They also engaged one man as an interpreter. He said he was an Armenian, but at Alexandria he was found to be a spy and arrested.

The “Queen Elizabeth” is doing splendid work and Corporal Nixon saw one of her shells kill 300 Turkish cavalry. The Navy rendered wonderful assistance in the landing.

Corporal Nixon mentioned the case of a Turk who was a prisoner on board a British ship. The Turk had twenty-seven bayonet wounds and a broken thigh. He died eventually but it was remarkable that he should have lived so long. He had been taken out of goal (to which he had been confined for murdering his wife) to fight and this was not an isolated case. Turks had taken small farmers off their land with a threat to seize their holdings if they did not take up arms.

Corporal Nixon, who was wounded in the left shoulder by a sniper on April 28th, speaks very highly of the kindness shown them by a number of private residents of Eastbourne and remarked yesterday that they were having, ‘true Australian weather.”

(Corporal Rupert Charles Clive Wallace Nixon of Harriett Street, Neutral Bay, Sydney enlisted 24th September 1914 aged 22. (No. 663).
He embarked at Melbourne with the 13th Battalion on “HMS Ulysses”, on 22nd December 1914.)