Improvised metal sign, '3 Inf Bde Anti Aircraft Machine Gun' : Clarke's Gully, Gallipoli

Handmade rectangular tin sign. The words '3 Inf BDE / ANTI AIRCRAFT / MACHINE GUN' have been produced by hammering a nail or centre punch to create holes for the outlines of the letters. There are five holes (possibly bullet holes) in the sign. The sign is rusted (inert).

Clarke's Gully (or Valley) was located between Victoria Gully and Shell Green at the southern Anzac sector. This sign indicated the position of the 3rd Infantry Brigade's anti aircraft machine gun, located at the head of Clarke's Gully.

Dedicated anti aircraft positions were not established until late in the campaign. A memorandum, dated 24 September, details the machine gun positions that were selected to deal with hostile aircraft. The 1st Division had two anti aircraft positions. One was a 6th Light Horse Machine Gun crew at Bolton's Hill, the second was a 3rd Infantry Brigade Machine Gun crew, located at the head of Clarke Valley.

Initially when one of these positions sighted an enemy aircraft they were to report Divisional Headquarters and the Divisional anti-aircraft machine gun officer. A month later the procedures were changed. When an aircraft was spotted, the nearest officer would be called. He would then make the decision as to whether the aircraft was hostile. It was the officer's duty, if he deemed the aircraft to be hostile, to contact the nearest signal office with the information of where and when the aircraft was spotted, and where it was headed.

This message would then be transmitted to the headquarters of other units with anti aircraft machine gun crews, and to ANZAC and Divisional Headquarters. The message was then disseminated to the officer in charge of the anti aircraft machine guns on the Big Table Top. Changes in direction of the aircraft were not to be reported. Instead, after the message of the sighting was received, each gun crew were to be on sharp look out. The responsibility for opening fire on the aircraft was the responsibility of the officer in charge of the gun, once he had satisfied himself that it was an enemy aircraft.

This sign was found at Clarke's Gully on 9 February 1919 by Lieutenant Cyril Emerson Hughes. At the time Hughes was the Australian representative for the Graves Registration Unit at Gallipoli. The role of the GRU was to locate graves of allied soldiers and identify their remains, find and inter all unburied remains, record the burials and chart the cemeteries. Hughes worked mainly in the Anzac area, where he often came across interesting relics of the campaign, such as this one.