20 • Mildura Weekly - Friday January 9, 2009
It is one of the most poignant, lasting and historic memorials to a bloody campaign that cost the lives of thousands of brave Australians. Mildura Weekly special writer Lisa Cooper has completed research on one of history’s most significant plantings, and says…
Rot, storm damage, but Lone Pine will live on… THE fierce storms that lashed Canberra the weekend after Christmas badly damaged one of Australia’s tangible links to the battlefield of Gallipoli, and the 8709 Australians who died there during The Great War. Fears were held that the storm, which severely damaged the Lone Pine tree at the Australian War Memorial, had so badly damaged thje tree that it would have to be removed. Strong winds ripped off a large part of the tree. An inspection discovered that the beautiful old pine had the beginnings of rot. Arborists, however, have thankfully given the tree the all clear, deciding that with a bit of rot repair work, removal of other branches to ‘balance’ the tree, along with some cable supports, this historic pine can be saved. The Aleppo Pine, or Pinus halepensis, was planted in the grounds of the Australian War Memorial by His Royal Highness The Duke of Gloucester on October 24, 1934, in honour of the thousands of Australian soldiers lost during the battle of Lone Pine at Gallipoli in 1915. It has taken 70 years for that seedling to grow to the mighty 30 metre giant of today. An imposing figure in the grounds of Australia’s national monument to our Anzac heroes, the Lone Pine tree is such an important part of our heritage that no expense nor effort will be spared in conserving it. The battle of Lone Pine was one of the most famous assaults that Australian and New Zealand troops took part in during the Gallipoli campaign. It was also one of the most deadly. The Lone Pine battlefield was given its name from the single pine tree growing on the site. The Australians originally called it ‘Lonesome Pine’, the name of a popular song from around the time the war started, ‘The Trail of the Lonesome Pine’. That ‘lone pine’ was destroyed early on in the fighting. By the end of July, 1915, Allied command had become frustrated by the stalemate that had developed at Gallipoli. Lone Pine was planned as one of many feints, or mock attacks, as part of what became known as the
Looipsaer
The
CDiaries
email: newsdesk@milduraweekly.com.au August Offensive.
Strategic Australian attacks The series of strategic attacks by the 1st Australian Infantry Division began on August 6. Including the murderous charge of the Light Horse at the Nek, these feints were used as a diversionary tactic to draw Turkish troops away from what were seen as more important positions, being Chunuk Bair, Hill Q and Hill 971, Thus giving the Allies a better shot at taking those positions in their push at driving the enemy from the peninsula. But the attack at Lone Pine would be deadly, murderous in fact. Author Les Carlyon later described it as “an epic of savagery and sacrifice.” Allied troops were being asked to run anywhere from 60 to 120 yards along a front line of no more than 220 yards, headlong into machine gun fire. All for very little, and questionable, gain, against an enemy that would not have been expecting an attack at that post. Lone Pine was one of the strongest posts the Turkish troops held at the time. Initially the attack on Lone Pine saw quick success, with relatively few casualties given the front-on assault. Anzac troops reached the main Turkish trench within 20 minutes of the initial charge. Wave after wave of Anzacs charged the Turks, clambering over the bodies of their fallen comrades, dead or wounded, sometimes piled three or four high, with nowhere else to place their feet. Most of the casualties occurred
• Private Leo Leach, of the 7th Battalion AIF. he was the son of Ouyen residents William Augustus and Elizabeth Leach. once troops reached the enemy lines, where the Anzacs discovered enemy trenches heavily fortified with pine logs. The only way the Anzacs could defeat the Turks was to get into the trenches with them. And so they did. It was what Charles Bean described as a battle of bombs and hand to hand fighting, “the heaviest of its kind in which Australian troops ever took part”. It was primitive, almost gladiatorial in nature, with men using bayonets and bullets, fists, boots, and rifle butts. Anything they could to defeat their enemy. In the end, Lone Pine for the Allies was somewhat of a rarity – a vic-
tory at Gallipoli. Every victory, even the smallest, would be one to savour, even if it was only short-lived.
Lone Pine held Regardless of the ferocious and unrelenting counter-attacks launched by the Turks, Lone Pine remained with the Allies. But this was not without the dogged determination of an Anzac defence that lasted three days and nights, all for very little ground won. Lieutenant-General Birdwood, at the time in command of Australian troops, later wrote of the heavy
losses suffered by both sides lost at Lone Pine. “We dragged a thousand corpses out of the actual trenches… and was irrespective of the large number lying around outside”. The scene facing survivors was horrific. Thousands of dead and dying, in various states of damage and decay, surrounded them. The overwhelming smell of rotting flesh in the confined space. It was something those who fought there never forgot. It was a measure of the unprecedented struggle at Lone Pine that seven Victoria Cross medals were awarded during the battle. Two of those were posthumous. Given for the most supreme acts of courage, incredibly six Victoria Crosses were earned on the one day, August 9. Today, it would be difficult to believe that along that stretch of coastline, one small area that became known to the world as Lone Pine could have such a lasting impact on the lives of thousands of Australians. With its sweeping, picturesque views of the Gallipoli Peninsula and out over the Aegean Sea, the spirits of those Anzac and Turkish soldiers who lived, fought, and died on the Lone Pine battlefield, will forever remain present there. In those three days of fighting at Lone Pine, more than 2200 Australian soldiers were lost. Turkish losses were estimated to be more than 7000. But back to THAT pine tree, now so firmly entrenched in Australian military folklore. There two known accounts of how seedlings from the battlefield’s pine trees made it back to Australia. Lance Corporal Benjamin Smith, 3rd Battalion AIF, is said to have sent a pine cone home to his mother in Inverell, NSW. The cone was souvenired from a branch of a tree the Turks had been using as shelter for one of their trenches at. She kept the cone for more than 13 years before planting its seeds in 1928. From those sprouted two seedlings. One was given to the town of Inverell, and the other to the Parks and Gardens section of the Department of the Interior, Canberra. It was that second seedling in Canberra that now stands tall in the
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