Gallipoli: The August Offensive

Hill 60 - the last battle: 29 August 1915
by Brad Manera

In 1924, Charles Bean, Gallipoli veteran and Australia's official war historian, would describe the battle fought on Kaiajik Aghala (Hill 60) in August 1915 "as one of the most difficult in which Australian troops were ever engaged" (1). Like many of the actions fought on Gallipoli, the battle was confused and inconclusive.

This paper aims to focus on the final phase of the battle of Hill 60, the fighting that occurred before sunrise on Sunday morning, 29 August 1915 around a position marked on British maps as D-C Trench.

History and the battle of Hill 60

The Gallipoli campaign must rank among the most studied and analyzed in history. Yet the battle of Hill 60 is often overlooked and rarely examined in detail. It was not a victory that yielded seven Victoria Crosses like Lone Pine, nor has it been accorded the noble tragedy status of the loss of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade at the Nek. It was, however, some of the most fought over real estate on the ANZAC-Suvla front and was the last offensive action of the campaign.

Shortly after the failure of the British and French to capture the Dardanelles, John Masefield wrote a history of the campaign. His description of the action at Hill 60 was short and to the point:

Two thrusts made by the men of ANZAC in the later days of August, secured an important well and the Turkish stronghold of Hill 60. This Last success made the line from ANZAC to Suvla impregnable (2).

W. Stanley MacBean Knight in The history of the great European War, also published before the Armistice, gave Hill 60 two paragraphs:

The last days of the month were illuminated by a brilliant affair carried through by the troops under General Birdwood's command. Our objective was to complete the capture of Hill 60 north of the Kaiajik Aghala, commenced by General Cox on the 21st. … [MacBean Knight finishes with] its success gave us complete command of the under-feature, an outlook over the Anafarta Sagir Valley, and safer lateral communications between ANZAC and Suvla Bay. Our casualties in this highly contested affair amounted to 1000. The Turks lost out of all proportion more (3).

Both of these accounts, though brief, do not give an accurate indication of the outcome of the battle. These uncritical accounts were probably the result of the vague reports on the outcome of the fighting on the hill at the time. With impending winter and the inability to break the stalemates on the beachheads, critical examination of a single action was brushed aside by the failure of the campaign.

Even at the time, commanders at divisional level were unaware of the practical outcome of the action. Inaccurate reports led Birdwood to believed the hill had been taken and reported this to Lt Gen Sir Ian Hamilton, Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean Expeditionary Force (MEF), who would claim to Kitchener that the result of the action was "400 acres added to the territories of ANZAC" (4). In reality, the battle may have made the ANZAC-Suvla link marginally more secure. But it was not to prove a vital link anyway, and at no stage was the summit of Hill 60 ever in British hands.

Bean's Volume II devotes an entire chapter to Hill 60 and it remains the most complete account of the battle (5). General histories of the campaign since have offered few insights into any of the fighting around Hill 60 (6), despite Alan Moorehead's observation that the 21 August "assault on Scimitar Hill and Hill 60 …. in terms of numbers of men engaged this was the greatest battle fought in the Gallipoli campaign" (7).

Perhaps Bean did his job so well that few historians since have dared criticise or challenge his account. The individual histories of the Australian infantry battalions and Light Horse regiments that fought at Hill 60 offer substantially less detail than he provides and the unit war diaries are extremely brief (8). (When trying to confirm Bean's account using the war diaries, I recalled a comment by Spike Milligan, an often overlooked British military historian, made while he worked on his autobiographical account of the Second World War. While studying the war diary of a British artillery regiment he wrote, "If brevity is the soul of wit this [battery] diary was written by Oscar Wilde." (9)) So it is from Bean and from the letters, diaries and interviews of those who did the fighting that we can glean a reasonably clear picture of the confused fighting on Hill 60.

Taking the battle to the Hill

Hill 60, or Kaiajik Aghala (10), was described by Charles Bean, as "little more than a swelling in the plain", but "near its foot were two useful wells" (11) (a strategic feature in the thirsty Gallipoli campaign). The feature is so low that when Bean printed photographs of it in the official history, he had to outline it in black for the reader.

Failure to capture the feature during the Suvla landing does not appear to have unduly worried the commanders of the MEF. "All of these points, including Hill 60 could easily have been secured on August 7, when troops of the 40th British and 4th Australian Brigades had walked over them, or even on the 8th" (12). By the night of the 12th, when the 9th Battalion of the Worcester Regiment attempted to take one of the wells and was driven back by heavy Turkish fire, it was too late. The Turks were digging trenches across the summit of the hill and linking it by a long communication trench to their nearest fortified position, Hill 100, over a kilometre away to the southeast along a gradually rising ridge.

Hill 60 was included as an objective for the renewed Suvla offensive of 21 August. Its capture would link Suvla with the ANZAC beachhead. In this operation, Hill 60 and its surrounds were to be attacked from the southwest by the Connaught Rangers, New Zealand Mounted Rifle Brigade and the 4th Infantry Brigade AIF.

The attack was poorly coordinated and let down by inadequate artillery support. After initial success, the British and empire troops were driven back by a determined counter-attack, leaving only the New Zealanders in possession of a small section of captured trench. The next day, elements of the 5th Infantry Brigade, AIF were committed to the battle. Most of the Brigade had been on Gallipoli barely 48 hours before being sent into this fight. They were ordered to "assault with bomb and bayonet only." When the commander of the 18th Battalion, 46-year-old Alfred Ernest Chapman, pointed out that they had not been issued with bombs yet, the reply was that "they must do the best that was possible without them" (13). Nineteen-year-old Private Ernest Henry Stephenson, from the same battalion, recorded in his diary that "our men are being bombed and have no ammunition to retaliate" (14). The outcome was inevitable.

The attack on 22 August, though bravely pressed, was driven back with almost 50 per cent casualties. Of the 3,985 British and empire troops sent against the Turkish positions on Hill 60 on 21-22 August, 1,302 were killed, wounded or missing. Bean observed that "slight though it was, this gain was the only one achieved on the whole [Suvla] battlefront" (15).

The toehold on Hill 60 after 22 August was insufficient to adequately link ANZAC and Suvla. ANZAC Commander, General Birdwood, sought and received permission to strengthen his northern flank by capturing the summit of the hill. The renewed attack was planned for 25 August. The only available troops were those who had been sorely tested in the previous weeks. All of the units were under strength and most of the men were ill or nursing minor wounds.

The assault on Hill 60 was delayed to 27 August. The renewed attack would be undertaken by the New Zealanders, Connaught Rangers and 18th Battalion, AIF who had made the attacks on the same feature a week earlier. They were joined by elements of the 4th Infantry Brigade, AIF, survivors of the failed attack on Hill 971 on 7-8 August. Since the last attack, the Turks had been extending and strengthening their trenches. The intended attack was based on very vague ideas of the strength of the Turkish garrison and on maps of the enemy trenches that were largely supposition. Aerial reconnaissance was in its infancy and was not requested for this operational plan and most of Hill 60 was covered by metre high scrub.

The Connaughts would attack from the left, with New Zealanders and the 18th Bn in the centre and elements of the 4th Bde uphill from Kaiajik Dere on the right.

The attack began at 4 pm on 27 August. The bombardment, although heavy by Gallipoli standards, was particularly ineffective against the position to be attacked by the Australians. It served more to warn the Turks of the Australian attack than to destroy their defences. The 4th Brigade's attack was launched uphill from Kaiajik Dere. Bean wrote that, "while the men in the advanced trench awaited the order to charge hostile rifle and machine gun fire was tearing the parapet to pieces above their heads. When the whistle blew, and Capt Connelly [a solicitor from Bendigo] of the 14th led out the first line on to the wheatfield, it was at once swept away" (16). The second line met a similar fate. The dozen survivors, all wounded, crawled back to their trenches at dusk.

The British and New Zealanders, attacking the maze of trenches leading up to the summit of the hill from the west and south-west, met with initial success but were driven back with severe casualties to a perimeter only slightly deeper than what the New Zealanders had held before the battle. Australian infantry from the 18th Battalion charged uphill over broken ground into withering Turkish fire, towards the southern trenches on Hill 60 and the communication and fighting trench that linked it to Hill 100. For the second time in less than a week, they were cut down in waves. As the light died, the survivors were directed to reinforce the gains the New Zealanders had made. In his diary, teenaged Private Stephenson wrote, "All that night the fighting was terrific, the trenches were very close, and consequently bombs were the chief weapons, and they are no toys" [emphasis added] (17). Adding to the terror of the battle, shelling set the wheat field alight. By the time darkness had fallen, the British position on Hill 60 had depth but faced a complex maze of enemy trenches to the east and was flanked to the north by a long trench, gently winding from west to east toward the summit of the hill. It was known on the British map as D-C Trench, with "D" being the western, or seaward, end and "C" the eastern end running into the northern sector of the Turkish trench system on the summit of Hill 60. Reinforcements were desperately needed before the attack lost all momentum. Two regiments, the 9th and 10th, from the 3rd Light Horse Brigade, AIF (who, like all of the Australian Light Horsemen on Gallipoli, were fighting dismounted) were rushed to support the operation.

At 11.30 pm, Lt Col Carew Reynell and 140 of his 9th Light Horse charged alongside the trenches held by the New Zealanders toward the summit of Hill 60. Exactly what happened to the South Australians and Victorians of the 9th that night will never be known. Whether they lost their way or were driven by rifle fire and bursting bombs, they veered to the left. They ended up arriving in D-C Trench in small groups. Reynell and his men took the trench and fought until killed by counter-attacking Turks.

Major Harry Parsons led another party of the 9th in an attack to capture D-C Trench from the western end. After initial success, Parsons and his men were driven back, holding onto barely 70 metres of the western end of the trench. At sunrise on the 28th, the survivors of the New Zealand Mounted Rifles and the 18th Battalion, AIF still held the trenches on the western approaches to Hill 60. The 9th Light Horse Regiment had their piece of the western end of D-C Trench, a position that had been taken then lost by the 18th Battalion on 22 August and by the 5th Connaught Rangers on the 27th. The day settled into what was becoming a pattern for the battle as both sides spent daylight hours deepening and extending the trenches and fighting bombing duels while trying to rest for the nights attacks and counter-attacks (18).

Hill 60 - the last battle

If there is a criticism of Bean's account of the Battle of Hill 60, it his failure to estimate the strength of the Turkish Army deployed to the battle. In 1919, Turkish officer Zeki Bey told Bean that he was sent to command the Turkish 21st Regiment on Hill 60 (Bomba Tepe) in the second half of August. He was away recovering from illness at the time of the attack but claims the garrison facing the Australians was only a single company of gendarmes supported by two machine-guns (19). This meagre garrison would have been insufficient to generate the counter-attacks described by Bean. The Turkish General Staff History, volume 2 indicates a much stronger force than Zeki Bey suggests. This account states that, for the attack on August 22, the Hill was held by the 2nd and 3rd Battalions of the 21st Turkish Regiment from the 7th Division, recently reinforced by the 2nd and possibly the 1st Battalions of the 33rd Regiment of the same Division (20). Even if the Turkish units were as depleted as the Australian units committed to the battle (and there is no reason to believe otherwise), the defenders were at least as strong as the attacking force and with possibly greater access to resupply and reinforcement.

At 4 pm on the warm afternoon of 28 August 1915, officers of the 10th Australian Light Horse Regiment were taken from their temporary bivouac on Damakjelik Bair, down across Kaiajik Dere, the gully still strewn with the detritus of recent battle, and up into the trenches on Kaiajik Aghala - Hill 60. These trenches, held by the remnants of the New Zealand Mounted Rifle Brigade and the 18th Australian Infantry Battalion, were the south-western perimeter of a maze of trenches that crowned the hill. Most of the trench system was still held by the Turks. The officers of the 10th were shown the position. According to Bean, General Godley instructed the officers of the 10th "that he wanted them to take a trench on the summit of Hill 60" (21). Capture of this trench would, after construction of a short linking trench, allow the Australians "to obtain touch with the New Zealanders and round off the position" (22). They were to take the rest of D-C trench. The attack would go in at 1 am. There would be no artillery support.

The 10th Australian Light Horse Regiment was raised in Western Australia. By 29 August it had been involved in some of the fiercest fighting on Gallipoli. From its usual strength of between 500 and 600, the regiment could barely muster 180 men. One of its officers, Lieutenant Tom Kidd, noted in his diary on the 28th, "we were not in very good fettle; although the men were game enough for anything & had no time for grumblers" (23). The regiment had just lost its founding CO, as Lieutenant Colonel Noel Brazier had been wounded in the face by shrapnel during the move from Russell's Top to Damakjelik Bair. For the attack on Hill 60, the regiment's under-strength A and B Squadrons were combined. Popular and brave 33-year-old grazier Captain Phil Fry commanded them. C Squadron was led by 20-year-old Duntroon graduate Captain Horace Robertson.

The West Australians did not have a clear idea of the enemy's strength and much of the Turkish position on the hill to the east of D-C Trench was hidden by metre high scrub. They could not know that the Turks also were being reinforced, this time by elements of the 17th Regiment of the 6th Division (24).

The men of the 10th filed through the trenches held by the New Zealanders toward their start line. Tom Kidd was Fry's second in command. He described the attack in his diary:

Leaping over our parapet of our trenches (where we had assembled) previously at 1 am, a momentary pause was made on top of & the men formed a strait line in close order. At ordinary times this might have proved dangerous but as it happens it gave a sort of elan to the Charge. The Turkish trenches could be plainly seen in the moonlight. As arranged they were rushed quietly in order to make a complete surprise which … eventuated in our sector. C squadron was not so lucky & had many casualties between the trenches (25).

Bean explains that C Squadron was caught in the open and took casualties because "the line … cheered as it started. A [Turkish] machine gun immediately flashed in the dark" (26). Lieutenant Burges, Robertson's second in charge was hit at this time, Sergeant Major McWhirter and a number of men from C Squadron were killed. As soon as the machine-gun started it was pelted by bombs. The bombs were thrown by a five man team who had left the trenches ten minutes before the attack to crawl forward to locate and silence the machine-gun that was known to be in the area. The bomb throwers were led by Lieutenant W.L. Sanderson (27) who had survived the charge at the Nek and had just been commissioned in the field.

About twenty men were killed or wounded in the assault, most of them with Burges and McWhirter. The rest reached the Turkish trenches and drove off the defenders in a series of short, bloody clashes. They were confronted with not only dead and dying Turks but also the corpses of Reynell's 9th Light Horse who had been killed the night before. Although short in duration, the taking of the main trench involved fighting with bayonet, bomb and rifle at very close quarters. Kidd's diary records, " I myself made rather an undignified entrance to the enemy trench. As I made a leap over the parapet my foot caught and I ended up in the trench bottom pretty well on my head wrenching my knee and back a bit. (28)" Others dashed along the winding trench in the dark alone or in small groups driving out the defenders and trying to link up with the other squadron. Again Kidd describes the scene. "[Second Lieutenant Colin] MacBean was killed in this. He met 4 Turks killed 2 the third shot him in the stomach. Sgt [Noel] Kidson shot one Bill Hunter shot the other" (29).

From the western end of D-C trench a strong bombing party from the 9th Light Horse led by Lieutenant J.M. McDonald broke into the Turkish position, "advancing so rapidly that it narrowly escaped a struggle with the troops of the 10th into whom it ran" (30). At the other end of the trench, the Western Australian light horsemen had got to within 20 yards of the intersection of D-C Trench and the labyrinth of Turkish defences on the summit of Hill 60. They stopped to consolidate their position with a wall of sandbags at a bend in the trench. They knew the Turks would counter-attack at any minute. While his men filled sandbags 2/Lt Hugo Throssell peered into the darkness straining for sight or sound of Turkish counterattack. He did not have long to wait. Before the barrier was complete "the Turks began to feel their way back … he shot five in succession at this corner before the enemy ascertained the position of the Australians and began to bomb" (31). All along the line, the light horsemen were heaving corpses over the parapets and digging to deepen and strengthen the trench. Captain Fry was everywhere instructing and encouraging his men, frequently walking along the parapet to move from position to position quickly until his men "almost forced him to come down into shelter" (32).

The Turks may have been holding D-C trench with a light garrison at the time of the attack, but their response and counter-attack was immediate and very violent. On Hill 60 that night, small groups of men killed each other at very close range with the bayonet and hand grenade or thrown "bomb". The war diary of the 10th Light Horse Regiment states that on 29-30 August, Australians and Turks flung between 3,000 and 4,000 bombs at each other (33). So many that the Turks would remember the knoll as Bomba Tepe (Bomb Hill).

The most threatened position was the eastern end of the trench held by 2nd Lt Throssell and a small band of light horsemen, including Squadron Sergeant Major Henderson, Corporal Ferrier, Lance Corporal MacNee and Troopers Renton and Stanley. They stood behind a flimsy wall of sandbags and held back assault after assault along the trench from the east or through the scrub from the north. Throssell, in a letter to Ferrier's mother, tried to recreate the scene:

The Turks are fine fighters and extremely brave men, and all that night they stood one side of this barrier within five yards of us trying to bomb us out. … I have just casually mentioned that the Turks counter-attacked three times; that does not sound very much, but I can assure you that with the Turks within 5 yards of you with only a couple of feet sandbag barrier between, and with hundreds of them coming at you with fixed bayonets in the front, the chances of coming through that ordeal alive are very remote (34).

During the first counter-attack the Turks hurled what appeared to be a large biscuit tin full of explosive at Throssell's position. The blast demolished his wall of sandbags. He and his surviving men were driven back a few metres and threw up another sandbag barrier.

All along the line, groups of Turkish infantry assaulted D-C Trench from the north and from the north-east. Lt Arthur Leake was shot in the back of the head while facing an attack from this quarter - the Turks were attacking the newly captured position from three sides.

After more than half an hour, the counter-attack was beaten back. But barely had the surviving light horsemen gathered their breath when a second counter-attack emerged from the darkness. A line of Turkish assault troops stormed down from the northeast while teams of bombers probed the rest of the line. They almost reached the barricade of sandbags. A bursting bomb killed Captain Fry, leaving Throssell the only officer alive at the top end of D-C Trench. This attack was also beaten back.

The third and most serious counter-attack was made just before first light. Two waves of Turkish infantry advanced, with bayonets fixed, up the gentle slope to the trench from the north. Their numbers seemed overwhelming. Kidd wrote, "the men fought valiantly against great odds. … The trench … & shelters were soon filled with our dead and dying but the few men left under Lt Throssell and Sgt Henderson fought like lions & killed many Turks" (35). Throssell, in an interview with his hometown newspaper the Northam Advertiser, claimed the Turks who attacked during the third counter-attack appeared to be fresh and very determined troops (36). These may have been the recently arrived reinforcements from the 17th Regiment.

Again Throssell and his men were all injured by bullets and bomb fragments and forced to yield a few yards of trench. Kidd noted, "as Throssell was hit I ordered him to withdraw after pulling out our wounded as these places were perfect death pits" (37). At the climax of the third counter-attack, the Turks closed to within ten metres of the light horsemen. In one small pocket of the battle Throssell, Henderson, Ferrier, Renton MacNee and Stanley were all wounded but still fighting from their exposed position. McMahon was killed at this time and the Turks launched another attack at the Australian rear. Kidd met this threat by personally leading a dozen of his men in counter-attack. Just as they appeared to be overrun, a small party of New Zealanders and men from the 18th dragged a machine-gun into the open to engage the enemy. Kidd's men and the machine-gun fire drove them back. It is not clear who dispatched the machine-gun. Whether it was the inspired initiative of an individual or small group will never be known, but D-C Trench held and the attack faded to a deadly bombing and sniping duel. The attack had lasted an hour.

Sid Ferrier (reputed to have thrown 500 bombs that night) (38) caught a bomb thrown by a retreating Turk but it exploded before he could return it. He would have his arm amputated and die of tetanus ten days later.

With daylight the counter-attacks ceased. According to Lt Col Arthur Olden, author of the 10th Light Horse's regimental history and one of the officers wounded in the August fighting, there were barely 70 men of the 10th Light Horse left alive and fighting on Hill 60 by the 30th of August (39).

Tom Kidd recorded that, "All of the officers withdrawn to rest in bivouac, being the healthiest animal I remained on duty & took command … weary but damned pleased with myself" (40).

After the battle, Kidd recommended Throssell for the Victoria Cross. He would be the only Australian light horsemen to win that greatest of awards for valour. Of his men, Henderson, MacNee, Renton and Stanley would be awarded Distinguished Conduct Medals. Tommy Renton lost his leg (41).

The summit of Hill 60 was never wrested from the Turks but, by holding the seaward slopes, the ANZAC flank was secured and the link with Suvla opened. In 1920, Major Fred Waite, New Zealand's historian of the Gallipoli campaign wrote, "The struggle near Kaiajik Aghala was the last pitched battle on the Peninsula" (42).

Looking back, the fighting on Hill 60 on 29 August 1915 seems inconclusive. However, after the failure - or at best, limited success - of the grand offensives that started the month - the British landing at Suvla, the Australian charges at Lone Pine and the Nek, the assaults by the New Zealanders at Chunuk Bair and the Australians at Hill 971 - little victories in the battles to consolidate limited gains had impact beyond the raw statistics of ground taken and casualties inflicted. Hill 60 was such a battle.

Endnotes:
1. Bean, C.E.W. Official History of Australia in the War 1914-1918 Volume II A&R 1924 page 747
2. Masefield, J. Gallipoli Heinemann London 1916 page 160
3. Knight, W. Stanley MacBean The history of the great European War volume V England c1918 page 162
4. Hamilton to Kitchener, 31 Aug. War Office Tels 3, 15, Cab 19/31.
5. Bean, C.E.W. Official History of Australia in the War 1914-1918 Volume II A&R 1924 Chapter XXVI
6. For example, John Robertson's excellent ANZAC and empire, published in 1990, gives a more detailed account but still takes no more than a page. Others omit it altogether.
7. Moorehead, A. Gallipoli London 1956 page 295 [Mead and Beckett illustrated edition 1989 page 246]
8. One of the most heavily committed units the 18th Battalion AIF did not produce a unit history. Wanliss N. The History of the Fourteenth Battalion AIF Melbourne 1929 and Chataway, T.P. History of the 15th Battalion 1914-1918 Brisbane 1948 each devote less than ten pages to their accounts of the battle.
9. Milligan, S. Rommel gunner who? Penguin 1974 page 48
10. Spelling of Turkish place names are based on those used in the Australian Official History published in the 1920s
11. Bean, Official History of Australia in the War 1914-1918 Volume II A&R 1924 page 724
12. Bean, ibid. page 724
13. Bean, Official History of Australia in the War 1914-1918 Volume II A&R 1924 page 740
14. War diary of Private E.H. Stephenson 18th Bn AIF, unpublished, in the possession of his son, Mr Jim Stephenson of Goulburn
15. Bean, Official History of Australia in the War 1914-1918 Volume II A&R 1924 page 744
16. Bean, Official History of Australia in the War 1914-1918 Volume II A&R 1924 page 749
17. War diary of Private E.H. Stephenson 18 Bn AIF, unpublished, in the possession of his son Jim Stephenson of Goulburn
18. War diary of Private E.H. Stephenson 18 Bn AIF, unpublished, in the possession of his son Jim Stephenson of Goulburn
19. Bean Gallipoli mission AWM Canberra 1948 pages 225-226
20. Troop strengths at Hill 60 (Bomba Tepe) according to Kenan Celik's translation of the Turkish "official" (i.e., General Staff) history, Volume 2, June 1915 to January 1916. The title is: Birinci dunya harbi'nde Turk Harbi: Canakkale cephesi harekati Call No: 940.4259 T939
21. Bean, Official History of Australia in the War 1914-1918 Volume II A&R 1924 page 756
22. Bean, ibid. page 756
23. PR82/137 Kidd, Thomas Anderson (Major b.1879 d.1957) Diaries mentioning Gallipoli; Hill 60 (Gallipoli); Nek (Gallipoli); Palestine; Quinn's Post; Walker's Ridge; Romani; 10 Light Horse Regiment; 1915-1916
24. Troop strengths at Hill 60 (Bomba Tepe) according to Kenan Celik's translation of the Turkish "official" (i.e., General Staff) history, Volume 2, June 1915 to January 1916. The title is: Birinci dunya harbi'nde Turk Harbi: Canakkale cephesi harekati Call No: 940.4259 T939
25. Kidd diary op. cit.
26. Bean, op. cit page 757
27. William Lauchlan Sanderson would survive the war and return to Western Australia with a Military Cross and an Order of the British Empire. AWM 133 AIF Nominal Roll
28. Kidd diary op. cit.
29. ibid
30. Bean op. cit. page 757
31. ibid page 758
32. ibid
33. 10 ALH war diary entry for 29 August AWM 4 Roll 165 10 ALH R 10/15/1-10/15/50
34. 1DRL/0581 Throssell, Hugo Vivian (Captain, Vc, 10 Light Horse Regiment, AIF B. 1884 D. 1933) Letter written by THROSSELL to mother of Cpl Ferrier giving circumstances of his death; Report by Throssell on action at Hill 60, Gallipoli 29 Aug 1915, the action for which he received his VC and recommendation for "Special mention" for two troopers of 10 ALH Regt
Gallipoli; Hill 60 (Gallipoli); 10 Light Horse Regiment; 1916 , 3 ITEMS letter 2/Lt Throssell to Mrs Ferrier, 4 March 1916 re death of Cpl Sid Ferrier
35. Kidd diary op. cit
36. Northam Advertiser March 1918
37. Kidd diary op. cit
38. Olden, A C N Westralian cavalry in the war McCubbin Melbourne 1921 page 59
39. ibid. page 61
40. Kidd diary op. cit
41. For the citations of the decorations earned at Hill 60 by members of the 10th Light Horse Regiment see the London Gazette of 15 October 1915 for Throssell's VC and the Commonwealth Gazettes of 24 February 1916 for the Distinguished Conduct Medals to Henderson, MacNee and Stanley and the CG of 21 September 1916 for Renton's DCM
42. Waite Maj DSO NZE The New Zealanders at Gallipoli Whitcome and Tombs Ltd Auckland 1921 page 259

 

References
Published
Books
Bean, C E W Gallipoli Mission AWM Canberra 1948
Bean, C E W Official History of Australia in the War 1914-1918 Volume II A&R 1924
Chataway, T P History of the 15th Battalion 1914-1918 Brisbane 1948
Knight, W Stanley MacBean The History of the Great European War volume V England c1918
Masefield, J Gallipoli Heinemann London 1916
Milligan, S Rommel Gunner Who? Penguin 1974
Moorehead, A Gallipoli Hamish Hamilton London 1956
Moorehead, A Gallipoli Mead and Beckett illustrated edition 1989
Olden, A C N Westralian Cavalry in the War McCubbin Melbourne 1921
Robertson, J ANZAC and Empire Cooper London 1990
Waite Maj DSO NZE The New Zealanders at Gallipoli Whitcome and Tombs Ltd Auckland 1921
Wanliss N The History of the Fourteenth battalion AIF Melbourne 1929

Newspapers/Gazettes
Commonwealth Gazettes of 24 February 1916
Commonwealth Gazettes of 21 September 1916
London Gazette of 15 October 1915
Northam Advertiser March 1918

Unpublished
war diary of Private E H Stephenson 18 Bn AIF, in the possession of his son Jim Stephenson of Goulburn

AWM Research Centre
AWM 133 AIF Nominal Roll
1DRL/0581 THROSSELL, HUGO VIVIAN (CAPTAIN, VC, 10 LIGHT HORSE REGIMENT, AIF B. 1884 D. 1933) LETTER WRITTEN BY THROSSELL TO MOTHER OF CPL FERRIER GIVING CIRCUMSTANCES OF HIS DEATH; REPORT BY THROSSELL ON ACTION AT HILL 60, GALLIPOLI 29 AUG 1915, THE ACTION FOR WHICH HE RECEIVED HIS VC AND RECOMMENDATION FOR "SPECIAL MENTION" FOR TWO TROOPERS OF 10 ALH REGT
Gallipoli; Hill 60 (Gallipoli); 10 Light Horse Regiment; 1916, 3 ITEMS letter 2/Lt Throssell to Mrs Ferrier, 4 March 1916 re death of Cpl Sid Ferrier
10th ALH war diary entry for 29 August AWM 4 Roll 165 10 ALH R 10/15/1-10/15/50
PR82/137 KIDD, THOMAS ANDERSON (MAJOR b.1879 d.1957) Dairies mentioning Gallipoli; Hill 60 (Gallipoli); Nek (Gallipoli); Palestine; Quinn's Post; Walker's Ridge; Romani; 10 Light Horse Regiment; 1915-1916
Birinci dunya harbi'nde Turk Harbi: Canakkale cephesi harekati Call No: 940.4259 T939
Hamilton to Kitchener, 31 Aug. War Office Tels 3, 15, Cab 19/31