As an Australian Gallipoli is obviously a big part of our history and their is a lot of British hate that comes out of it, one of the most common things I hear is that the British officers ordered the ANZAC forces to unload their rifles and charge the Ottoman forces with just their bayonets, so here's my question, did this really happen or was this just a myth that was born from Australian patriotism?
The refers to the attack on the Nek, 7th August, 1915. The attack was made by the 3rd Light Horse Brigade, with the 8th Light Horse Regiment attacking in the first two waves, and the 10th Light Horse Regiment attacking in the 3rd and 4th waves. The attack was a complete failure, with casualties of over 50% for no gain and negligible enemy casualties. The two biggest problems with the execution of the attack were that:
The artillery fire stopped at 4.23am, while the attack was scheduled for 4.30. This was a mistake, rather than part of the plan. This allowed the Turks to man their defences and be fully prepared for the attack.
The commander of the 8th LH Regiment, Lieutenant Colonel White, attacked as part of the first wave, and was promptly killed, and thus unable to stop the 2nd wave and thus the futile attack.
The commander of the 10th LH Regiment asked for the 3rd and 4th waves to be cancelled; the brigade command (in the form of Colonel Antill, the brigade major and in command due to the brigade commander being away from the command post) ordered the attack to continue. The 4th wave attacked without being ordered to, while further attempts were being made to get permission to halt the attack.
The first three waves were ordered to attack with bomb and bayonet only, no rifle fire. The Australians were indeed ordered to attack with rifles empty. The operation order specified the equipment to be carried:
Shirt sleeves : Web Equipment : Helmets : 200 rounds : Field dressing pinned right side inside shirt : Gas helmet : full W B 6 biscuits : 2 Sand bags : [4 periscopes per each line and Gas Sprayers to be carried by 4th line]: Wire Cutters : Rifle (unloaded + uncharged), bayonet fixed.
(W B = water bottle). This order was from Brigadier General Hughes, the commander of the 3rd LH Brigade, thoroughly Australian, Melbourne-born, Aussie Rules player in his youth. Very Australian, not at all British. This one is to be blamed on Australian officers, not British officers. Specifically, Hughes and Antill. (The corps commander and division commander, Birdwood and Godley respectively, were both British, but the details of the attack were planned by the brigade.)
The order for rifles to be unloaded (i.e., no round in the chamber) and uncharged (i.e., no rounds in the magazine) was not issued out of stupidity. With the volume of fire expected from the Turkish lines, the only safety in the attack was simply to reach the Turkish lines as quickly as possible - stopping in No Man's Land to return fire would expose the soldiers to the Turkish fire for longer.
The supposed Britishness of the order appears to come from Peter Weir's 1981 film, Gallipoli, with many viewers and critics believing that Colonel Robinson - the film's version of Antill - was English.
For a detailed history of the ANZAC role in the August offensive, see Cameron, David, 'Sorry, Lads, but the Order Is to Go': The August Offensive, Gallipoli: 1915, University of NSW Press, 2009. The quote in the title is how Antill's order to continue the attack was conveyed to the 3rd wave.
The operation order is included in the Brigade war diary, available online courtesy of the Australian War Memorial: https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C1338857 - the relevant month is August 1915: https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C1351487 and the operation order is pages 70-74 in the pdf document.
In addition to /u/wotan_weevil's excellent response, rifles were also ordered to be left unloaded and uncharged during the initial landings. Again, this order was not given out of stupidity or like it be later at the Nek, given to prompt the men to advance as quickly as possible. As the landings were taking place before dawn under the cover of night and were intended to be a surprise, empty rifles meant it was less likely that anxious, scared or excited soldiers would fire at what they suspected to be enemy soldiers, thus giving the whole show away.
Some units did load their rifles with magazine cut offs or feed interrupters, a device used to prevent the rifle being loaded from the magazine, only by hand. This allowed some soldiers to charge their rifles (have a round ready in the chamber) but would prevent them from firing more then one shot unless they reloaded manually.
While hindsight shows us that this was in many ways foolish given that the landings were discovered fairly quickly, Australian soldiers had not yet seen combat and were thought to be undisciplined based on their behavior in Egypt. Such an order was a response to the needs to keep the landings a secret and also to dissuade trigger happy volunteer soldiers from blazing away at shadows.
With the exception of the last paragraph which is my own thoughts based of different accounts, the information regarding the order to leave rifles unloaded comes from Charles Bean's Volume 1 of the Official History of Australia During the War of 1914-18.