I want to talk today about Gallipoli and Beersheba specifically, but in the limited time I have, to touch on as many events in the course of the war as possible.  There are no obvious cases of Divine intervention, but when we take an overall view, the hand of God is seen displayed in awesome fashion.  God has a divine plan, and it is governed by a timetable.  One of the outstanding dates in this great timetable is the 9th of December 1917, which is the date of the deliverance of Jerusalem into British hands.  In 1886 Dr. Grattan Guinness was bold enough to predict from Biblical prophecy the very year 1917 when Jerusalem would be delivered.  This was confirmed in 1898 by Dr. H Aldersmith - another student of Biblical prophecy.  He also stated privately that he believed some type of flying machine would play a major role in this deliverance.

DANIEL
Turning to the book of Daniel, we find that chapter 9 records Daniel's prayer concerning his own city, Jerusalem.  The prophet Daniel records that, in a crucial time towards the end of the age, Jerusalem would be delivered from the abomination of desolation (i.e. Moslem power) after one thousand three hundred and thirty five days (Daniel 12:12).  We are told in Numbers 14:34 and Ezekiel 4:6 that God gives us each day for a year, so 1335 days equals 1335 years.  If we take the rise of Mohammedan power from its beginning in 622 AD, 1335 lunar years later, by the Mohammedan calendar, we come to our Christian year AD 1917.  The Mohammedan calendar reckoned in lunar years.  Egyptian coins minted in 1917 bear two corresponding dates, side by side, the Moslem date in Arabic numerals 1335 and in ordinary numerals 1917.  Mohammedanism as a religious movement dates  its commencement from 622 AD - the Hegira - when Mohammed fled from Mecca to Medina and was received as a prophet and prince.

Let us also consider the other time scales given in Daniel 12:7, 11 and again verse 12.

1260 - "THE DOWN TREADING"
Daniel 12:7    "and it shall be for a time, times and an half"

As most of us are well aware, a 'time'      =    360
                                                'times'     =    720    (2 x 360)
                                                 'half''      =    180    (½ x 360)
                                                                  1,260

Rev 11:2    The Holy City shall they tread under foot forty and two months.
(42 months x 30 = 1,260 days)

1290 - 'THE DESOLATOR' or 'DESOLATION'

DANIEL 12:11    From the time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken away, and the abomination that maketh desolate set up, there shall be a thousand two hundred and ninety days.

1335 - 'BLESSEDNESS

Daniel 12:12    Blessed is he that waiteth, and cometh to the thousand three hundred and five and thirty days.

These periods grouped together in the twelth chapter of Daniel are connected with the same subject.  Commencing with the rise of the desolating Moslem power (AD 622) and using the LUNAR year measure, let us see where these time periods are placed in history.

The year AD 1844 was the year that Britain and other Christian European nations forced the Sultan of Turkey to sign the Decree of Toleration which abolished the death penalty for conversion from Mohammedanism to Christianity or any other religion.  This was a definite stage in the breaking of the power of the desolator (Mohammedanism).

The year AD 1873 saw the beginning of the agitation amongst Ashkenazim (Khazar) Jewry of central and eastern Europe for a home in Palestine.  Turkey's national debt in 1873 was reaching a level where national bankruptcy was being forecast.   Finally, this year also saw a great blow suffered by Turkey.  Its occupied states of Herzgovenia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Bulgaria rebelled in open warfare against the Sultan.

The year AD 1917 saw the fall of Jerusalem to British forces under General Allenby.

Much more could be said about time measures, but this is not the place.  However the following is of interest.  After Mohammed, founder of Islam, died in 632 AD, he was succeeded by Omar, the first Imperial Caliph, in 634.  Omar led an army into Palestine and captured Jerusalem in 637.  On entering the city Omar asked at once to be shown the site of David's temple,  In 638 Omar erected a wooden mosque - the Mosque of Omar - on the temple site  This was rebuilt in stone and called the "Dome of the Rock".  The Patriach Sophronius later came to Omar and accosted him, saying, "Verily this is the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the Holy Place."

This statement has been supported through the centuries by many eminent Biblical scholars.  In addition to this desolation of Jerusalem, between the years 634 and 644 Omar destroyed some 4000 Christian churches and built 1400 Mohammedan mosques.  He initially built many mosques of wood after cutting down thousands of trees, thus causing a physical as well as a spiritual desolation of the land.  A once fertile land was transformed into a barren and desolate wilderness by the bad husbandry of the Moslems, leading to widespread soil erosion.  The daily sacrifice had ceased, of course, when the Romans destroyed the temple in AD 70, and when the Mosque of Omar was built on the temple site the desecration of the Holy Place was complete.

Omar began his career in 634 AD and 1290 SOLAR years later (Daniel's number for the activities of the desolator) brings us to the year 1924.  It was on 6 March 1924, seven years after the fall of Jerusalem, that the office of the Caliphate was abolished.  As already stated, Omar built the first mosque on the temple site at Jerusalem in 638.  Exactly 1290 Solar years later in 1928 Islam was abolished as the Turkish State religion.

The marvels of Divine timing comprehend the entire scope of history in all its related aspects, for God has weighed, measured, numbered and timed all things.  To this the prophet Esdras testifies:  'For He hath weighed the world in the balance.  By measure hath He measured the times, and by number hath he numbered the times; and he doth not move nor stir them, until the said measure be fulfilled.'   II Esdras 4:36-37.

But Daniel was deeply distressed about his people's departure from Divine Law and he prophesied a long period of national chatisement.  This was seven 'times' or 7 x 360 = 2520 years.  This chatisement began for Judah in 604 BC, when Babylon invaded and captured Jerusalem.  This was the first of three deportations of the people.

If we use 604 BC as a starting point, 2520 years later we come to 1917 and the capture of Jerusalem by the British forces.  Even the day and the month of Jerusalem's deliverance was recorded by the little known prophet Haggai.  He said that the 24th day of the Hebrew month Kislev, which for the year 1917 was 9 December, would be a blessing to the people if they obeyed God.
 

Haggai 2:15:18  And now, I pray you, consider from this day and upward, from before a stone was laid upon a stone in the temple of the Lord:
Consider now from this day and upward, from the four and twentieth day of the 9th month, even from the day that the foundation of the Lord's temple was laid, consider it.

GALLIPOLI
With the armies of Great Britain, France and Imperial Germany locked in a stalemate midst the mud and slaughter of the Western Front, the British in 1915 evolved an amphibious  operation to force the famous straits known as the Dardanelles.  These straits separate the Gallipoli Peninsula of European Turkey in Asia.  The aim then was to send a fleet through the Sea of Marmara to Constantinople to give help to the Russian armies fighting the Germans in the east, and thereby reduce pressure on the Western Front in Europe.

Winston Churchill, the chief proponent of the enterprise, also reasoned that with the Royal Navy steaming toward the Golden Horn (a curved inlet of the Bosporus forming the harbour of Constantinople), the Turks would collapse in panic and possibly revolt.  Imperial armies would occupy Constantinople, Germany would be threatened from the rear, at a bold stroke the whole war might be ended, and the British would hold the destinies of the near east in their hands.

The plan failed on the hills and in the ravines of the Gallipoli Peninsula, which forms the western shore of the Dardanelles, as the British and Turkish soldiers fought each other to a standstill.  It was at that time the greatest reverse the British Arms had suffered.  The only successful feature of the entire campaign being the withdrawal from Suvla Bay and Anzac Beach in December 1915 and from Cape Helles in January 1916.  The British Imperial forces and allies had suffered 252,000 casualties.  The Turks, who were near the breaking point, had suffered similar losses.  It could be argued that while Gallipoli was an undoubted defeat for the British, for the Turks it was a Pyrrhic victory.  The Turkish Army had fifteen divisions ultimately engaged and some were bled white.  Perhaps the one benefit that Gallipoli produced for the British was that the destruction of some of the best Turkish units during that campaign facilitated the eventual British victory in Palestine during 1917-1918.

If the Gallipoli landings had been successful and Constantinople had been occupied, the Turkish Empire in Palestine and Arabia would have collapsed or slowly bled to death.  Jerusalem would not have fallen according to the divine time scale nor in the way prophesied.  After the failure of Gallipoli, the attention in the Middle East was  focussed on Palestine.

There were several battles and engagements at Gallipoli which deserve mention.

THE CHARGE OF THE 3RD LIGHT HORSE BRIGADE AT THE NEK

"…a deed of self-sacrificing bravery which has never been surpassed in military history - the charge of the Australian Light Horse into certain death at the call of their comrades need during a crisis in the greatest battle that has ever been fought on Turkish soil…"
Captain Bean, noted was historian, official observer

…The Turkish trenches were found to be densely packed with troops.  The Allies, in fact, had anticipated by an hour or two a Turkish attack on the British trenches.  News of the sweeping advances of the Germans into Russia had reached the Turkish troops and they had regained their morale.

On the morning of August 7 1915, they attacked the British lines in force, but they were driven back.  These operations, despite their partial failure, had the effect, which was intended, of drawing certain Turkish reinforcements to the southern area.
The first twenty-four hours of the Anzac offensive will ever remain a memorable day in Australian history.

In that short period, Australian heroism attained the pinnacle of prowess.  History furnishes no finer deed of self-sacrificing heroism than the charge of the First and Third Light Horse Brigades from Walkers Ridge and Quinns Post at dawn on Saturday, August 7, while the successful assault a few hours earlier by the First Australian Infantry Brigade on the formidable system of Turkish entrenchments at Lone Pine, called for a display of tenacious courage and initiative unequalled in the whole campaign. It yielded the record award of seven Victoria Crosses.

Although second in point of time, the charge of the Light Horse may be described first.  It differed from the historic charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava only in that it was made by horsemen who had volunteered to fight on foot and that it succeeded in its object, the holding in the trenches of large bodies of Turks, who otherwise would have been used against the British landing at Suvla Bay.

THE ATTACK OF THE 3RD LIGHT HORSE FROM WALKER'S RIDGE AT THE NEK

In preparation for the attack, the British Guns maintained a half-hours' bombardment of the Turkish Trenches, and when the uproar ceased at 4.30 am, the Light Horse attack was instantly launched.  Captain Bean (the noted war historian), the official observer, who was present, supplied a thrilling narrative of the glorious charge.

"The men," he said, "were standing there in the trench without the least sign of excitement, hitching up their packs, getting a firm foothold below the parapet.  The Colonel of the eighth, Lieut.-Col. A.H. White, insisted on leading his regiment.  Ten minutes before the start he walked into the brigade office and held out his hand to the Brigade-Major.  'Good-bye, Antill!' he said.  A couple of minutes later he was at his place on the parapet with his men.

Colonel White stood by the parapet with his watch in his hand.  He and two other officers had carefully set and compared their watches and the three now stood under the parapet at three points in the line, watching the second hand fidget its way round.  'Three minutes to go,' said the Colonel.  Then, simply 'Go'.

They were over the parapet like a flash, the Colonel amongst them, the officers in line with the men.  I shall never forget that moment.  I was making my way along a path from the left of the area, and was passing not very far away when that tremendous fusilade broke out.  It rose from a fierce crackle into a roar in which you could distinguish neither rifle nor machine gun, but just one continuous roaring tempest.  One could not help an involuntary shiver - God help anyone who was out in that tornado.  But one knew very well that men were out in it - the time put the meaning of it beyond all doubt.

Exactly 4.30 am - the Light Horse were making their charge.  There were no British rifles in all that fire - it was the greeting of the Turkish rifles and machine guns as the Light Horse cleared the parapet.  One knew that nobody could live in it.  Many fell back into the trench wounded before they had cleared even the parapet.  Others wounded just outside managed to crawl back and tumble in before they were hit a second and third time and killed, as they certainly would be if they remained lying out there.  White managed to run eight or ten yards before he was killed.  The scaling ladders are lying out there about the same distance out.

Exactly two minutes after the first line had cleared the parapet, the second line jumped out without the slightest hesitation and followed them.  No one knows how it happened.  And probably no one will ever know.  But some either of that first line or the second line managed to get into the extreme right-hand corner of the enemy trench.  They carried with them a small flag to put up in the enemy trench if they captured it, and the appearance of this flag was to be the signal for the party of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers to attack up the gully to the right.  Two men were put in the head of one of our foremost saps with periscopes to watch for the first sign of this flag in the enemy's trench.

By this time, a French 75 - a gun captured by the Turks from the Serbians in the Balkan War - was pouring her shells at the rate of one in ten seconds into the Nek.  Machine guns, far too many to count by their noise, were whipping up the dust and it was next to impossible to distinguish anything in the haze.  But in the extreme south-eastern corner of the Turkish trench, there did appear just for two minutes the small flag which our men had taken.  No one ever saw them get there.  No one will ever know who they were or how they did it.  Only for those two minutes the flag fluttered up behind the parapet, and then someone unseen tore it down.  The fight in that corner of the trench, whatever it was, was over; and it can only have ended one way."
In the meantime - ten minutes after the second line - the third line had gone over the parapet as straight and as quick as the others.    The attack was then stopped and, fortunately, stopped in time to prevent a small part of this third line reaching the fire zone.  There was one point where our trenches were under cover of the slope and the men had to crawl out some ten yards or so before they put up their heads into the torrent of lead.  A dozen or so were stopped here before they made their rush.  It was all over within a quarter of an hour.  Except for the wild fire which burst out again at intervals, there was not a movement in front of the trenches only scrub and the tumbled khaki here and there.  All day long the brilliant sun of a perfect day poured down upon them from a cloudless sky.  That night after dark, one or two maimed figures appeared over our parapet and tumbled home into the trench.  They were men who had fallen wounded into some corner where there was a scrap of cover and had waited for this chance to get back.  One of them came from below the parapet of the Turkish trench on the right.  He had lain there all day, too close to the parapet for the Turks to see him without exposing themselves.  There was another wounded Australian near him.  After dark they heard the Turks come out over the parapet of their trench searching the bodies of the men there for papers and diaries, so they arranged to make as fast as they could for the trenches.

The man who arrived back was shot through the ankle.  His mate never arrived.  But from that man we know all that will ever be known of what those Light Horse men found facing them as they ran through the dust haze.  The nearer trenches were crammed with troops.  The bayonets of the front row of Turks could be seen just over the parapet and behind them there appeared to be two rows of Turks standing waist-high above the parapet emptying their rifles as fast as they could fire them.  So much for the charge of the Third Light Horse Brigade against the Nek.

THE CHARGE OF THE 2nd LIGHT HORSE BRIGADE  FROM QUINN'S POST

The First Light Horse Brigade attacked partly from Quinn's Post on the opposite side of the gully and partly from the hill in the gully between the two.  The 2nd Light Horse Regiment was to attack from Quinn's Post in four lines of fifty each.  The first line was led by Major T.J. Logan.  It scrambled from the trench the instant the signal was given, but more than half were actually knocked back, killed or wounded, into the trench before they were clear of the parapet.  The first few out managed to reach a few yards before they were killed.  They left our trenches at two points and there were only 15 to 20 yards to go.
Major Logan, who led one party, is said to have actually reached the Turkish parapet and fallen into it.  Lieut. Bourne, who led the other, fell about ten yards from our trench.  The boy who fell beside him had his leg practically severed by machine gun bullets.  The Turkish machine-guns drew lines across that narrow space which none could pass, and the one man who went out and returned unwounded puts his escape down to the fact that he noticed a point on our sandbags on which the machine gun bullets were hitting and jumped clean over the stream of lead.  As the whole of the first line was either killed or wounded within a few seconds, the attack was stopped and the other lines did not start.  Four of the finest Anzac regiments were shattered in this glorious charge, but they created an imperishable impression.

"As for the boys," wrote Captain Bean, "the single-minded, loyal Australian country lads, who left their trenches in the grey light of that morning with all their simple treasures on their backs, to bivouac in the scrub that evening - the shade of evening found them lying in the scrub with God's wide sky above them.  The green abutus and the holly of the peninsula, not unlike their own native bush,  will some day again claim this Nek in those wild ranges for its own.  But the place will always be sacred as the scene of two very brave deeds, the first - let us not forget it - the desperate attack made by the Turks across that same Nek in the dawn of June 30 and, secondly of a deed of self-sacrificing bravery which has never been surpassed in military history - the charge of the Australian Light Horse into certain death at the call of their comrades need during a crisis in the greatest battle that has ever been fought on Turkish soil."

The official figure of casualties for that memorable charge  are 16 killed and 37 wounded out of the 56 who charged in the first wave.  There was no valid reason for flinging away the later lines after the first had utterly failed.

THE 2ND LIGHT HORSE REGIMENT AT QUINN'S POST - May 1915

Quinn's Post was the farthest Anzac post along the eastern branch of Monash Valley, taken and held by a handful of New Zealanders and Australians through the wild night of the landing.  Four days later, Quinn, who was in command of C Company, 15 Battalion, A.I.F., led  his men forward up the steep stony shoulder of the ridge.  Under Turkish sniper-fire, they sprinted across open ground to a string of shallow rifle-pits a few yards below the crest.  C Company relieved the tired diggers of 14 Battalion, who ran back down behind the ridge, leaving Quinn and his men in the centre of the Anzac front line.

Quinn then sent back his first report to Colonel John Monash, commanding the 4th Infantry Brigade.  "Enemy entrenched about 50 yards in front of centre of line and commenced at daybreak to throw hand grenades.  Half a dozen have already burst about the trench.  H.Quinn Capt 6.30 am."   The stretch of trenches Quinn and his company were marked up on battle maps back at headquarters.  But from then on, the Australians knew the position as "Quinn's Post".

Hugh Quinn was born at Charters Towers in 1888.  His father was a mounted police trooper, and young Hugh was educated in the city.  When he left school he went back to Charters Towers and joined a firm of auditors.  He found release for his spare energy in boxing and the Army.  He was agile and solidly built, and became a handy light-heavyweight.  He joined C Company of the Kennedy Regiment, the local militia unit, and rose from private to acting quartermaster-sergeant before being commissioned in 1908.  He was promoted Lieutenant in 1911 and Captain in 1912.  In 1913 Quinn started his own business  as a commission agent in Townsville.  He was in command of A Company of the Kennedy Regiment when the unit was mobilised on the outbreak of war in August 1914.

The men of the Kennedy Regiment provided a 500-strong volunteer unit in the Australian force sent to capture German possessions in New Guinea and the islands.  Captain Quinn was made the unit's adjutant.  But on the way from Port Moresby to Rabaul their transport's stokers mutinied.  The soldiers had to stoke the boilers all the way back to Townsville.  Quinn had missed his first chance of active service.  As soon as he landed, Quinn went to Brisbane to enlist.  He was granted his militia rank of captain and given command of E Company in 15 Battalion, with two lieutenants and about 100 men.  In September 1914, they started training at Enoggera and in November they joined the other units of 4 Brigade under Colonel Monash.  In December they were on their way to war aboard the liner Ceramic.  In February 1915, the battalion landed in Egypt.  Quinn was given command of C Company.  On April 11 Quinn and his men sailed to the Greek island of Lemnos where they spent 10 days practising beach landings.  On the night of April 24 they sailed for the attack.  Quinn's company was in reserve on the first night, while the Anzacs won the beaches and battled up the hill in the dark,  The post Quinn's company took over was the very point of the Anzac lines.  The post was destined to be held for the whole period of Anzac occupation.

At noon on 13 May, 2nd Light Horse was charged with the  defence of Quinn's Post which became for a month the centre of almost all the fighting at Anzac.  These Queenslanders, including many who were little more than boys, suffered heavily because of their inexperience in such a precarious position.    The holding of Quinn's was becoming a nightmare and it became vital to destroy old communication trenches from which the Turks were bomb-throwing.

Monash ordered that 15 and 16 Battalions hold Quinn's in turn every two days.  Anzac losses had been very heavy.  Nine days after landing, 15 Battalion had 8 officers and 350 men fit for action - but 25 officers and 934 men had come ashore.  Quinn was then promoted Major, and his company took its turn in Quinn's Post again.  On May 10 he led a battalion attack on the Turkish trenches on the far side of the crest.

Quinn's diggers took the trenches after confused, hand-to-hand fighting in the dark.  But the Turks counter-attacked in strength, and after a tough second fight the Australians had to fall back.

"The Turkish Army is not to be trifled with," Quinn wrote home.  "They are great fighters, well equipped and daring."   On May 19 the Turks launched a major attack on the whole of the Anzac position.  A total of 42,000 Turks took part in the attack but were successfully repulsed, suffering over 10,000 casualties.

But by now the diggers were well dug in with sandbags and sheet-iron roofs, armed with grenades and behind barbed wire.
The Turks were checked at the wire, and Vickers guns cut them down along it.    Diggers tossed grenades and sniped.  The waves of Turks fell back, leaving their dead in heaps.

On the 24th there was an armistice for the Turks to bury their dead, during which the 2nd Light Horse supplied a burial party of 50 men.

During the silence of the armistice, the Anzacs heard digging underground.  The Turks were tunnelling to lay explosives and blow Quinn's Post sky-high.  There was nothing the Australians could do but wait for the bang.  On the morning of May 29, the Turks fired the charges.  The front trenches vanished in a burst of black smoke and rubble.  The Turks broke into Quinn's in the centre.

The staff of Quinn's Post had always expected that, by a mine or other means, the Turks would some day force their way into their trenches.  Lieutenant T. McSharry of 2nd Light Horse, the post-adjutant, had determined his own action.  When on 27th May the Turks broke in, McSharry went straight to the bomb-store and rallied the men tumbling out of occupied trenches by crying, "Come on Australia!"  To McSharry, very cool in the thick of the fight, it seemed very obvious that the one efficacious plan for dealing with the Turks then in Quinn's was by filtering men into the trenches on either side of them to attack them from both flanks through the trenches.  Meanwhile, 15 Battalion was climbing Monash Gully to the rescue in the growing daylight.  Quinn and other company commanders were told to charge and drive the Turks out.  Quinn assemble his men and briefed them, and at a blast from his whistle they went over the top.  They closed on the Turks with the bayonet and drove them out of one big dugout.  But the enemy still held out in a second redoubt.  A Light Horse Colonel told Quinn he'd have to make a second frontal attack.  Quinn knew the ground.  He believed the first two attack waves would be mown down by the Turks.  He wanted to close in on the Turks from the flanks, but the Colonel refused.

The Colonel told Quinn that he couldn't put it off any longer.  Quinn went back to the head of his men.  He lifted his whistle, then changed his mind.  He went forward with another officer for a last look.

He didn't make it.  As he scrambled over the last stretch of shallow trench, a Turkish bullet rang out.  Quinn toppled back, killed instantly.

Quinn's death did save his men by accident.  The Australian attack was delayed again, and when the diggers went over the top they met a fresh Turk attack head-on.  The Turkish machine-guns couldn't fire with their own men in the way, and the diggers cut the assault waves to pieces.  They went on to drive the Turks out of the last dug-out.

Quinn's Post was held and repaired.  It held out until the final evacuation of Gallipoli, and its stubborn defence at point-blank range became a legend.

Australia was to lose 8,100 dead and New Zealand over 2000 of their finest sons.

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
Our country mourns for her dead across the sea
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill: death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted:
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn;
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the daytime;
They sleep beyond our country's foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the night

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
moving in marches upon the heavenly plain
as the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
to the end, to the end, they remain.