Chunuk Bair.
That's why the Kiwi flag whips from the staff at Castle Argghhh! today. A battle in the Gallipoli campaign of the Great War.
As Kiwi and Castle Metalsmith Murray notes at his place:
In the early hours of this day in 1915 the Wellington battalion under Col William George Malone took Chunuk Bair, the highest point reached by the allied forces during the Gallipoli campaign. The previous day Malone had refused to advance up Rhododendron Ridge after the Aucklanders had just taken over three hundred casualties in 20 minutes attempting to make the attack under concentrated machinegun fire.He made his attack under cover of darkness without casualties.
Under Malones leadership they held the crest under constant enfilade machinegun fire and repeated assaults which they threw back with bombs, bullets and the bayonet. Withdrawing from the crest didn’t occur to them. In the late afternoon when the fighting died down Malone stood up to survey the area and was killed by a shell from a Royal Navy destroyer. The claim has been made that it was “either a navy destroyer or New Zealand artillery” became popular and this has more recently morphed into “missdirected New Zealand artillery”. I’m not a fan of revisionism and my source is one of the few Wellingtons who survived Chunuk. “I saw the destroyer swing about then fire.”
That evening they were relieved but mixed troops mainly from the New Zealand Brigade under Col Meldrum. This force withstood more determined Turkish attacks all the follwing day and were finally relieved by two British battalions. The Turks threw them off 20 minutes later, routing the British who did not halt their flight untill New Zealand machineguns encourged them to stop moving down the hill.
Few if any of the Wellinton wounded left on Chunuk Bair seem to have survived the Turk reocupation. During the entire campaign just over 20 New Zealanders were taken prisoner by the Turks, all had been incapacitated by their wounds. It is resonable to expect that of 700 men a high proportion of wounded would have been alive when the hill was retaken.
Of the 700 who took and held the feature reports are conflicted as to how many survived. Multiple sources number 79 has having not been wounded but none of these list any wounded. Other sources detail 79 as having come down the hill with only 11 unwounded. Another source puts the numbers as 760 men of whom 711 became casualties.
Either way the unit was destroyed.
There's more, and you should read it - over at Murray's place, Hitting Metal With A Hammer.
