Men of the 1st Brigade were sapping across one small gap on Maclaurin’s where on May 7th there remained five yards to be completed. A further negligible interval at the “nick’’ of Wire Gully remained to the end of the campaign filled only with barbed wire. 5 South of this, across the 400 Plateau, the trenches were now continuous.
In the last of the four sections, the Right, which began immediately south of the 400 Plateau and ran along Bolton’s Ridge to a point above the sea, the troops, as on the extreme left, had been comparatively uninterrupted, and their trenches were consequently deep and secure. A few posts on the steep
5 On a day in May men sitting in their dugouts above Bridges’ Road (the valley on the Anzac side of this gap) saw a solitary Turk with a number of waterbottles slung round him standing in this nick above them and looking down on the scene as if dazed. He had evidently been sent to bring water to the Turkish trenches. and, making his way up the wrong gully had found himself in the Australian lines. He dived back and escaped down the enemy’s side of the hill, a few shots ringing after him.
See Vol I , pp. 350-1.
Chapter XVI – The 3rd Brigade on the“400 Plateau”
From the Razorback the side of the plateau curved northward in front of the 10th to the point where it joined the Second ridge. Braund’s Hill, a minor back-jutting spur of the Second ridge, shut in the valley on the north. Along this valley ran a path, which had evidently been used by the Turks from inland for reaching the shore. The path wound very steeply up to a curious nick in the skyline at the northern corner of the valley-head.
48 THE STORY OF ANZAC [May, 1915
slope above the shore connected the trench-line with a wire entanglement upon the beach, which formed the extreme right flank.
The enemy had at this stage approached the Anzac line very closely at Russell’s Top and in the two Central Sections, but especially in that of Monash’s brigade-the Left Central.
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