The Daisy Patch, Gallipoli
On the Gallipoli Peninsula there was an open field, covered in long stemmed white daisies interspersed with red field poppies. This description belies the Hell that happened there nearly 103 years ago. Writing and researching my great Uncle Charlie's war has been an incredibly emotional experience, learning about the events that took place there in 1915. I cried as I found each new piece of the harrowing account of the 8th of May 1915, the day Charlie Rose died in Gallipoli.
Soldier Profile:
Charlie Rose’s World
War 1 role was a short nine months in its duration. It began with his smeared
signature on his recruitment form at Ngahere, New Zealand on the 13th
August 1914, and ended with his death at the Dardanelles on May 8th,
1915.
Charlie’s father, Charles Rose signed his 1868 marriage
document with an X. His bride was Mary Lovell. They began their family of at
least fourteen children with the birth of Kezia in 1869. Charles snr was a
labourer, carpenter, bushman and farmer. Luther Charles Garnet (Charlie) was their fifth son.He and his siblings grew up in the town of Dover in Tasmania.
Charlie presented himself for enlistment within the first
week of the mobilization at the outbreak of war. Charlie had relocated to New
Zealand, enlisted there and was assigned to the 1st Canterbury
Battalion, 13th Company, NZEF. Charlie’s occupation was a bushman. Charlie would no doubt have been a fit, able bodied and capable young man, confident in risky and physically challenging situations.
Training began at Addington, near Christchurch, and
equipment was issued to the men as quickly as it became available. Every man
was keen, as he realized that if he failed to reach the required standard,
there were dozens of men anxiously waiting to take his place.
Presumably, an unmarried and capable young man like Charlie,
was keen to embark on an adventure like this.
On October 16th, Charlie boarded the Atltentic in Wellington Harbour and
two escort ships lead a fleet of thirteen ships into the Tasman Sea.
On the 21st, the fleet called in to Hobart.
Troops disembarked for a route march.. Briefly back on his home ground, was he
able to contact or see his family? Did Charles and Mary know their son had
enlisted?
The Australian transports joined them at Albany when they
reached there on the 28th. This now formed a large and imposing
fleet.
Charlie and the men on board spent their time in military
exercises and organized amusements. Food was reportedly good. Before breakfast
there was physical training, lectures, musketry, rifle exercises, and as much
drill as the limited space allowed.
When the fleet arrived at Suez, orders were received that the
Australians and NZEF would not be going on to France as expected. They were to
complete their training in Egypt. The NZEF were camped at Zeitoun, four miles
out of Cairo. Here the men worked on their drill, field training, route
marches, night work and entrenching practices in their makeshift, sandy and
dirty camp. By
the end of January, Auckland and Canterbury Battalions were sent to Ismalia,
half way between Port Said and Suez to defend the Suez against advancing Turks.
After a successful three-day attack, fighting ceased and Canterbury remained
there training and manning the area until they were shipped back to Zeitoun in
late February.
Charlie and the 12th and 13th Company
men arrived at Anzac Cove at 5 pm on April 25. Each soldier carried weaponry,
water bottle, entrenching tool, haversack and a pack containing 30 kg of
rations, water, firewood and clothing. They were immediately dispatched to Walker’s Ridge. The night was spent under
infantry attacks and heavy fire. The enemy was invisible to them and the men
were launched into the complete confusion of an unknown and difficult
landscape. For the first day alone, Canterbury had 198 casualties, 21 dead, 87
wounded and 100 missing, an indication of the desperate nature of fighting
conditions that the men were suddenly and chaotically thrown into.
The next two weeks were spent in the less than four square
miles of their occupied area. With about 25,000 men in such a small space,
conditions were harsh. Charlie and his mates had a staple diet of tinned bully
beef, army biscuits and jam.
“Bully beef and biscuits. You
couldn’t eat your biscuits dry. It was like chewing rock. You had to soak it.
For pudding we used to have biscuit soaking in water and the jam all mixed up
together.”
Conditions warmed up with the approach of summer.
Overflowing latrines, body lice, disease, flies, unburied dead and a steady
stream of enemy fire and casualties made physical and psychological conditions
increasingly difficult. On the 8th of May the New Zealanders moved
into an attack on a piece of ground named “The Daisy Patch”. This would also
become known as the “Gardens of Hell.”
The Daisy Patch was an open field, totally devoid of cover
and was overgrown with the common red field poppy and thick long-stemmed white
daisies.
“I watched the 12th
Nelson Company make an advance over open country called the Daisy Patch. There
was absolutely no cover for them. They lost their commanding officer……Our turn
to go across came next, and we went over the top in good order, with the best
of luck. At once we were greeted with a terrible fusillade of rifle and machine
gun fire…..the man on my right had his brains shot out into his face, and the
chap on my left was shot through the stomach”, Bill Leadly remembered.
All day advancements were unsuccessfully attempted. Charlie
Rose’s death occurred on the 8th of May. Charlie was one of the
young Canterbury Battalion men just like the ones who died next to Bill Leadley
that day at the battle for the Daisy Patch. That night was a rainy one and many
men were wounded and had to spend the night on the battlefield, as evacuations
were impossible. Two hundred Canterbury men were killed,
wounded or missing that day on the Daisy Patch.
The following morning was fine. Reinforcements arrived that
evening and burial parties were sent out at dusk when all the dead within reach
were buried. Fir Tree Wood was the small cemetery where Charlie and his fellow
New Zealanders were buried when the opportunity had presented. On May 24, an
armistice was declared. The day broke with a steady drizzle the allies mingled
freely with “Johnny Turk” on ‘one of the strangest days of the campaign’.
Thousands were buried as chaplains searched for identity discs and read burial
services. Conditions made order and appropriate burial impossible. Charlie’s
final grave is at Twelve Tree Copse. There are 2226 unidentified burials here. Charlie is commemorated here as one of the six Australians who fought with the
New Zealand forces along side the 179 names from the NZEF Battalions most of
whom were killed at the Daisy Patch on the 8th of May.
News of Charlie’s death didn’t hit home for several months.
A local NZ newspaper announced in August:
“Private advice states that Pvt
Charles Rose……. was killed in action at the Dardanelles on May 8th.
The deceased was very popular in the Ngahere district, where he worked for Mr
John Wright, sawmiller. He was 26 years of age, a good hearted man, took a
great interest in chopping, athletic events, and was a prominent footballer.”
Charlie’s death notice appeared in local Tasmanian papers in
August too. Handwritten family records recall this event many years later:
“She could still see her mother’s
face (Kezia) when she was told of her brothers Charlie's... death, killed in WW1.
She was weeping.”
In November the family received a letter from the New
Zealand exchange from Charlie’s mate.
“I was very fortunate in only getting wounded,
as the whole air was a mass of lead; but it is not about myself I am writing
this. It is about poor old Charley Rose. Charley was the best friend I had in
the army. He was with me always, in gay times and hard times, ever since we
joined in August of last year: but he is dead now, and I deem it my duty to
write to you. Though I miss him very much, and you and your family miss him
too, we have this one consolation- he died like a real soldier. He faced the
shell, bullet and bayonet for thirteen days. During that time he showed
splendid courage and only a few minutes prior to his death when we were all in
a hollow preparing to rush across an open patch, which was literally swept with
lead, even as we sprang out of the hollow into this leaded hell. I heard
Charlie laugh and give a cheer- alas his last laugh, his last cheer. We had to
run about 200 yards to reach our next position such as it was- a mere rising in
the ground, hardly sufficient to cover our heads. Indeed about 26 were killed
while we lay under this cover, and this in less than five minutes. We rushed
across the hill in sections of about 12 or 14 men. My section had only started
when I saw two of my comrades fall, one along side me, the other about two
yards away. Then Charley fell, he just dropped to his knees, his head sank, and
he rolled over stone dead. He never spoke a word or uttered a cry. He just
rolled over and I knew what that sign meant. It was indeed a fearful sight,
made hideous by the cries and groans and curses of the wounded, but there is no
need to dwell on these things. Poor old Cummings fell the day after we landed,
and ‘Bumper’ Smith was killed the same day as Charley. The weather here in
Egypt is fearfully hot, quite the hottest I have felt anywhere. I believe we
are going back to Gallipoli on Wednesday. I could stay until the next boat, but
it wouldn’t be fair, as I am fit enough to scrap again, and every man is needed
there.”
As well as at Twelve
Tree Copse, L.C.G. Rose is memorialized on the Port Esperance Soldier’s
Memorial and the Greymouth War Memorial in New Zealand.
[1]
discoveringanzacs.naa.gov.au/browse/records/551762/2
[3]www,linctas.ent.sirsidynix.net.au/client/en_AU/all/search/detailnonmodal/ent:$002f$002fNAME_INDEXES$002f0$002fNAME_INDEXES:1072033/one?qu=nalta&qu=rose
accessed 20 Feb 2018
[4]
www. discoveringanzacs.naa.gov.au/browse/records/551762/2 and 571694/1 accessed
2/2/2018
[5]
The History of the Canterbury Regiment, N.Z.E.F. by Captain David Ferguson
Witcombe $ Tombs Limited, 1921. New Zealand Ekectronic Text Collection
[7]
Russell Weir, Wellington Battalion, in Jane Tolerton, An Awfully Big Adventure:
New Zealand World War One veterans tell their stories, 2013
[8]Walter (Bill )leadley of the
Canterbury Battalion Gavin McLean, Ian McGibbon and Kynan Gentry (eds)The Penguin Book of New Zealanders at War,
Penguin, Auckland 2009, p136
[9]
The New Zealanders at Gallipoli, Fred Waite. Whitcombe and Tombs Limited 1919. New
Zealand Electronic Text Collection
[10]Gallipoli,
The Battlefield Guide Mat McLachlan Hachette UK 2015
[11]
Gallipoli, The Pilgrimage Guide Garrie Hutchinson Black Ins 2007
[12]
The War, Greymouth Evening Star, 10 August 1915 www.
paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers
[13]
Huon Times Saturday 7th Aug 1915 trove.nla.gov.au
[14]
Joan Cupit, handwritten family memories and interviews. interview with Rene
Tuck, daughter of Kezia Cupit, in possession of family member
[16]
http://monumentaustralia.org.au/themes/conflict/multiple/display/70227-port-esperance-soldiers%60-memorial/ accessed 5/3/2018
