Details suggest that Cordner made it four miles inland on that first day before being “cut off by Turks”.
Given that the landing at Gallipoli was a geographical and topographical nightmare, and that by the end of the first day the Allied forces held what could only be described as a tenuous and delicate grip on the land where full advantage was with the defending forces, Cordner’s efforts with his fellow soldiers from the 6th represent a part of the Anzac legend’s genetic make-up, whereby there can often be triumph in adversity in some form.
As the Gallipoli campaign ventured towards a stalemate, Joseph Crowl, a four game veteran and Captain of the 8th Australian Lighthorse lost his life at Walker’s Ridge in June, barely two months after the first landing.
His 8th Lighthorse Regiment, which belonged to the 3rd Brigade, had diligently held Walker’s Ridge in late June.
But whilst in their trenches on June 27th, Turkish shelling killed seven of the Brigade, including Crowl, and injured fifteen others.
Walker’s Ridge, named after New Zealand Brigadier General Harold Bridgwood Walker, (its Turkish name Serce Tepesi means Sparrow Hill) became a cemetery in 1915 where it meets Russell’s Top and is predominantly home to the graves of Australian and New Zealander soldiers.
Crowl had played all four of his games for the Pivotonians, as Geelong were known until the years after the war, in 1906, the same year that the club would debut Slater and John Bell, both of whom would also lose their lives during the course of the war.
However, whilst the three would-be soldiers were all on the club’s list together for the 1906 season, there wasn’t a single occasion where they would take the field together.
Crowl would play the first two rounds, where the club’s poor season would begin with huge losses to Collingwood and Essendon.
His third game was yet another loss in the round 15 clash against South Melbourne, before he finally experienced the only win of his career in the final round against Essendon.
Bell would play the first of his games mid-season whilst Slater would play the first of his 108 games in round 16. The club would eventually finish last. One of the five unfortunate occasions this would happen.
The Battle of Lone Pine was a rare, but expensive victory for the Allied Forces.
Its commencement in the first week of August as a diversionary battle is remembered as a particularly violent and bloody battle at which the Anzacs charged the Turkish trenches.
What followed, as the Australians charged into the enemy’s trenches were battles fought not only with rifles, grenades and bayonets - the tools of a soldier, but also with fists and feet as bodies were strewn across each other in the blood filled ditches.
And it was somewhere near here, as information is sketchy, that Private James Aitken, who played one solitary game for the club in 1903, lost his personal battle with war.
He was the last Geelong player to lose his life during the 1915 Dardanelles campaign.
Private James Aitken, 5th Battalion, is one of 527 soldiers of the 1st AIF buried at the Shrapnel Gully Cemetery along with 56 New Zealanders and 28 from the United Kingdom.
The Lone Pine Battle in early August, saw, in a two and a half day period, seven Australian soldiers awarded Victoria Crosses. The Turkish suffered such heavy losses that Lone Pine became known to them as “Bloody Ridge.”
Arguably, the most successful part of the entire Gallipoli campaign was the December evacuation, using a series of ploys, elaborate planning and a steely resolve that would have tested the nerve of even the most ardent soldier.
Lieutenant General William Birdwood had the unenviable task of having to evacuate 80,000 troops from two major battlefields, to be done under the cover of darkness.
In the build-up to the evacuation a ploy was designed whereby for three days and nights the Allied troops in their trenches became silent, invisible ghosts.
When a Turkish plane flew overhead on the third day it appeared (as all soldiers were hidden inside shelters) that all had been abandoned.
Late that night, around 4:00am, the Turks snuck out of their trenches and moved stealthily across no-mans land.
Keeping their poise intact for as long as they could, the Anzacs and their fellow Allied soldiers used the silence to draw the Turks as close as possible before ambushing them.
When the bullets rang out, the Turks, out of their trenches and stranded in no-mans land were caught unsuspectingly by the Allied fire.
What was most important in the grand scheme of the evacuation was the Allied troop’s ability to be patient. It was this attribute that made the evacuation achievable.
The Turks couldn’t know of the Allied plans for evacuating their coastline. And given that in some instances Turkish and Anzac troops were merely twenty yards apart in their opposing trenches, this was a major achievement.
Over the two nights of the 19th and 20th of December, the entire force of 80,000 withdrew from Gallipoli.
After the evacuation from Turkey there was a three-month period of reorganization for the 1st AIF.
The stage of war would shift to France and the Western Front. The war was at its height in 1916. The Geelong Football Club was not.
