40 he Battle of the Nek was fought as part of the Gallipoli
campaign. "he Nek" was a narrow stretch of ridge in the
Anzac battlefield on the Gallipoli peninsula. It was a perfect
bottleneck - easy to defend.
For three months since the 25 April 1915 landings, the Anzac
beachhead had been a stalemate. his August offensive
was intended to break the deadlock by capturing the high
ground of the Sari Bair range and linking the Anzac front
with a new landing by the British to the north at Suvla Bay.
As part of this offensive on 7 August two regiments of the
Australian Light Horse Brigade mounted an attack on the
Turkish trenches
at the Nek. his
attack was meant
to coincide with
an attack by New
Zealand troops from
Chunuk Bair on the
Sari Bair range.
In the event
there was no
simultaneous attack
- the New Zealand
advance was
held up and they
were not to reach
Chunuk Bair until
the morning of 8
August, a day late.
he Australian
attack on the Nek
was scheduled
to commence at
4.30am on 7 August
and was to be
preceded by a naval
bombardment. In
the event the naval
bombardment finished 7 minutes early giving the Turkish
soldiers time to return to their trenches and prepare for
the assault. he plan was for the troops to advance in four
waves of 150 men in each on a front of 80 metres wide. he
distance they would have to travel to reach the Turkish lines
was 27 metres.
Amongst those attacking on the second wave was Roger
Palmer who had 'turned up at the recruiting office in
Geelong [Victoria, Australia] on 11 September [1914] … He gave his father's address as 11 Broadway, New York, and
although he had been born in Kew in Melbourne, he had
gone to school at King's Alfred's College at Taunton, in the
English country of Somerset between 1906 and 1911. He
had been head prefect, captain of the cricket team and had
won the school's 'Fortis and fidelis' prize for being a good allrounder.
He was a natural leader and, after being a sergeant
in the cadet corps and a members of the school's shooting
team, had served in the Officer Training Corps with the 2nd
Somerset Regiment. Yet he enlisted as a humble trooper
in the 8th Light Horse, having refused a commission in the
infantry. Within
a month he been
promoted to
sergeant'.
'Roger was 21, nearly
6 feet tall, dark
and handsome…..
Roger's father was
a mining engineer
who travelled the
world with his wife
and three children.
…His parents
separated and then
his father died
while testing a new
explosive.
Instead of entering
Magdalene College,
Cambridge after
school as planned,
Roger and the two
other children
were sent home to
Australia' which is
why he joined up at
Geelong.
On 26 May 1915 Sergeant Roger Palmer received a shrapnel
pellet to the hip. He was evacuated to hospital in Heliopolis.
But while others were repatriated back to Australia, Roger
Palmer had different ideas, as his friend Stan Mack outlined
later in a letter home. "It was shrapnel that brought poor
old Roger Palmer down first time we were in the trenches.
He heard the gun go off and made a dive for a small dugout
but fat QM Fry [Quartermaster Hubert Fry] got in
before him …. Roger did not get the bullet taken out of him
but was quite all right and did not affect him in any way.
SERGEANT ROGER EBDEN HARCOURT PALMER
OAs in Action
he third of our centenary series of true stories from the first world war