Gallipoli

by Peter Hart

Very rowdy morning. Got action before breakfast and kept a warm fire for an hour. Immediately afterwards got to it hot and strong. Our gun was detailed to keep reinforcements from getting to the firing line, via a small nullah. And it did. We just waited for them to come over the far crest and they got it. We had them on toast alright. Couldn’t advance or retreat and our guns cut off flanking movements by spraying each side with shrapnel. The only thing for them to do was to take cover in a bit of light scrub which they did and we got on to that scrub and searched every inch of it for two solid hours. I’ve just been to the observation station and had a look at it with the glasses. Not a man came out of it alive. The ground is packed thickly with them. I am as deaf as a mule in the right ear and both hands burnt a bit. We’re having another go in a few minutes.70

  Gunner Ralph Doughty, 2nd Battery, 1st Field Artillery Brigade, AIF

  After the main battle petered out there was a series of minor attacks to straighten the line or to counter the equivalent activities of the Turks. Thus it was that Second Lieutenant Bertie Bradshaw found himself faced with an acute dilemma on 10 June.

  The Company Commander asked Platoon commanders for a list of subalterns and men from Platoons who would volunteer for an attack on a Turkish sap which is getting perilously near ‘B’ Company’s lines. It means a DCM for men who get through. It is hardly fair to ask for volunteers, work of this [kind] should be done by rota. I have volunteered of course, and I expect the rest of the subalterns will do also. Out here one does everything that comes one’s way. Trusting in God.71

  Second Lieutenant Bertie Bradshaw, 1st Border Regiment, 87th Brigade, 29th Division

  Led to his fate by his sense of duty, poor Bradshaw was killed in the attack that followed.72

  THE BRITISH AND FRENCH OFFENSIVE had ground to a halt, not with them positioned astride Achi Baba poised for an untroubled advance on Kilid Bahr, but clinging on to their meagre gains and with no hope of a successful advance. A French staff officer realised the gravity of their situation.

  Theoretically our situation is untenable. I’d say that if we were on peacetime manoeuvres the exercise umpires would have adjudicated that we were all dead. That is the logical consequence of our troops living under the cross fire of Turkish batteries firing from Achi Baba to our front and the Asiatic coast to our rear. Happily, practice and theory are two different things. In practice our situation is tenable because from current military experience it takes ten times a man’s weight in steel to kill him! Also the Turkish bombardment, even on their best days, is far inferior in intensity to the deluges of shells that the Germans fire on the Western Front.73

  Captain François Charles-Roux, Headquarters, CEO

  The British and French sat in their trenches, their every move obvious to the Turkish artillery observation officers high up on the slopes of Achi Baba. The failure of the attack meant that instead of augmenting their force the 52nd Division, which had begun to disembark during the final stages of the Turkish counter-attacks, was merely restocking depleted ranks.

  The story of Helles was not a tale of defensive actions, skirmishes, patrols and small-scale company attacks, as at Anzac in May and early June. At Helles the real battle for Gallipoli had been fought out as whole divisions hurled themselves at each other time and time again on a front of about 5,000 yards from the Aegean to the Straits. Now the British and French horizons had closed in. Their aspirations were no longer Kilid Bahr or Achi Baba, or even Krithia, but merely the unprepossessing vista of the next in an endless sequence of trenches. The British had suffered 4,500 casualties and the French 2,000 at the Third Battle of Krithia; the Turks had lost about 9,000 men. Would a Fourth, Fifth or Sixth Battle of Krithia offer anything but more deaths?

  HELLES: WRITING ON THE WALL

  We were afraid of being attacked, but, believe me, we were even more afraid of attacking ourselves. In scarcely three months my regiment has lost 1,700 men. And it isn’t over yet.1

  Private Jean Leymonnerie, 1st Battalion, 175th Regiment, 1st (Métropolitaine) Brigade, 1st Division, CEO

  SOMETHING HAD TO GIVE. The Allies could not keep battering themselves senseless against the Turkish trenches at Helles. When the members of the Dardanelles Committee met for the first time on 7 June to discuss the progress of the campaign it was evident that nothing much had changed in the three weeks since their last meeting as the War Council. They had still to steer between the rocks of evacuation and the expense of massive reinforcements. Although after the fall of the Liberal government Winston Churchill was no longer at the Admiralty, he had nevertheless retained his membership of the committee, and he contributed an influential memo recommending giving General Sir Ian Hamilton all four divisions he had asked for on 17 May to push on for a rapid success. Kitchener had also submitted a paper urging caution, but by the time of the meeting he had already changed his mind, buoyed up by a renewed assertion from Hamilton that he really could deliver on his promise to take Kilid Bahr. The decision was finally made and the committee consented to sending out three more divisions to join the 52nd Division. A week later, bad news from Russia triggered another offer at the Dardanelles Committee meeting of 17 June of a further two divisions to try to use success in the Balkans and the capture of Constantinople to bolster their failing ally. This caused no little consternation to the generals engaged in fighting the Germans on the Western Front.

  I still think it is fatal to pour more troops and ammunition down the Dardanelles sink. The whole British Expeditionary Force here if added to the Force now there cannot clear the two sides of the Dardanelles so as to make the Straits passage safe for ships and ensure the fall of Constantinople.2

  General Sir Douglas Haig, Headquarters, First Army

  Such protests, well grounded in experience and the study of war, fell on deaf ears.

  To accelerate the transportation of troops to Gallipoli in order for them to participate in a new offensive planned for August, it was decided to use specially chartered commercial liners. Ships like the Mauritania and the Aquitania could carry 6,000 men each. Capable of travelling at 25 knots, they could also complete a trip in just a week – all but invulnerable to the slow-moving U-boats.

  In the meantime, at Helles the generals and their men seemed to be locked into a campaign without hope. Yet, as they still believed that continuous pressure must be exerted on the Turks, Hunter-Weston and Gouraud came up with an alternative to the discredited idea of a general advance. They decided to concentrate all possible artillery resources to support strictly localised attacks, with the aim of biting off small chunks of the Turkish line and then using a wall of shells to assist the infantry in holding off the Turkish counter-attacks. The French were given the honour of trying out the new tactic. On 21 June they would launch an attack on the Turkish lines between the Ravin de la Mort offshoot of Kereves Dere and the Haricot and Quadrilateral Redoubts that dominated the Kereves Spur. They would attack on a very narrow front of just 650 yards, but it contained three objectives of excessive difficulty in not only the Haricot and Quadrilateral Redoubts but also the trenches overlooking the Ravin de la Mort. The crucial artillery support centred on the deployment of seven batteries of French 75mm guns, two batteries of 155mm howitzers, trench mortars and seven British howitzers to shatter the Turkish defences. At the same time six more batteries of 75mm guns were assigned to fire into the rest of the Turkish lines facing the French, while other French long-range batteries, accompanied by the pre-dreadnought Saint-Louis, attempted to suppress interference from the Turkish guns on the Asiatic shore. In all it worked out at one gun or howitzer for every ten yards of front to be assaulted. In the days leading up to the attack the level of French fire increased as they tried to eradicate the Turkish trenches. Second Lieutenant Raymond Weil was in a forward observation post.

  All along the French front the artillery raged. For our part we made our range corrections with a slow deliberation. Then we proceeded to methodically mop up every last fragment of the Turkish trenches which h
ad to be completely destroyed. Each of our guns had its own predetermined task.3

  Second Lieutenant Raymond Weil, 39th Régiment d’Artillerie, 1st Division, CEO

  As ever, not all the infantry were overly appreciative of the gunners’ efforts. The trenches were close together and there was little margin for error. If the artillery played safe then the Turkish line might survive and the casualties would once again be heavy. But if they dropped their range to ensure eradicating the Turks in the front line, then some shells would surely drop short and hit the French lines. This led to some recriminations.

  Today we had a powerful bombardment. Was this the sign of an imminent attack? A 155mm shell, one of ours, passed over us and burst a few metres in front of our trenches. The result: panic and energetic protests, as we were showered with soil and stones of all sizes, and the appearance of a cloud of stinking yellow smoke. A mortar shell fell not far away at the same time. Later an idiot artillery adjutant believed that it was this mortar bomb and not his shell that caused our scare.4

  Private Jean Leymonnerie, 1st Battalion, 175th Regiment, 1st (Métropolitaine) Brigade, 1st Division, CEO

  The final bombardment, opening at 05.15, lasted for just forty-five minutes. At 06.00 the 176th Regiment lunged for the redoubts, while to their right the 6th Colonial Regiment tried to clear the Ravin de la Mort. The French had plentiful ammunition and would expend over 30,000 shells during their attack on that narrow front. The British looked on with something approaching awe.

  The 75s were going like machine guns and every now and again great columns would rise up and then a dull rumble, some gun about the size of our 6″ firing HE. There were some wild shots, but on the whole the shooting was magnificent. Some bursts were too high and you saw a long chain of ‘spurts’ from the ground extending across two lines of trenches. There was a battleship lying off Sedd el Bahr with her usual escort of destroyers. She was hurling shells into batteries in Asia or trying to do so anyway. The bombardment went on till 6.10 a.m. and then suddenly ceased and there was a moment’s oppressive silence. There was a cloud of smoke hanging over the trenches and running right back to the beach. Till then I had not seen a man and had only heard an occasional rifle speak. And then a glorious sight – the French advancing through the smoke, a long line extended for the most part, but composed of extended groups of six or seven men. On they came out of the smoke and then rifles and Maxims began to make music, but it struck me the Turkish artillery was very slow, perhaps they could not see for the covering black mantle of smoke. Then they came but the French were very near the first trench and only a few fell – as they got into it shrapnel and ‘Black Marias’ ploughed up the ground behind them.5

  Second Lieutenant Angus McCracken, 368th Battery, 147th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery

  The attack was going well and the dreaded Haricot was swiftly over-run by the 176th Regiment, then the Turkish second line, although the Quadrilateral behind it remained inviolable. Corporal Charles Thierry had been engaged in digging a sap when at 15.00 he was sent forward with extra ammunition to the newly captured Turkish front line.

  The men go in threes: Legeay gets a shell fragment in the back, Legèndre is wounded – many men fall! Our turn to go, a little shiver up the spine! I pass through a small communication trench, treading on the corpses of dismembered men, dry arms, one can no longer find anything human in these corpses. Only 25 metres across the open. At last I am in the first Turkish trench at the side of a wounded captain. We are subjected to a short bombardment. Surrounded by corpses we occupy the trench – I am almost alone in more than 100 metres of front, all the men are wounded. At every moment reinforcements are called for but none come; ammunition is also demanded but nothing arrives. I attend to a wounded Turk in the trench. In gratitude he kisses my hand and lifts it twice to his forehead. I want him to write something in my pocket book but there is nothing to be done. The heavy shells from the Asian side rain down: Brumel is hit, Henriot as well. At about 6 p.m. an intense and well-directed bombardment from their lines warns us of a counter-attack, besides the situation demands it. But we enfilade them and they retreat swiftly. It is a veritable manhunt with our bullets. We throw our kepis in the air with shouts of joy. The bombardment is terrible; the shrapnel rains down. I lie down in the trench but a few moments later I am hit in the left hand. At last the bombardment stops.6

  Corporal Charles Thierry, 176th Regiment, 3rd (Métropolitaine) Brigade, 2nd Division, CEO

  Thierry was safely evacuated to the French lines, despite the close attentions of the Turkish machine guns. This time the French, aided by their massed artillery, threw back the Turkish counter-attacks and the Haricot was finally captured.

  The 6th Colonials were also successful in taking the Turkish front line but could get no further forward. The newly captured line had been severely damaged by the French bombardment and what remained was choked full of dead and dying Turks. There was little effective shelter and, as Turkish fire lashed across the trenches the 6th Colonials commander, Colonel Noguès, was badly wounded. Confusion set in and by 07.00 the 6th Colonials had fallen back in disarray to their start line. At 14.15 they tried again, with no success. A final attempt was made at 18.45 when the Régiment de Marche d’Afrique recaptured and this time held the line overlooking the Ravin de la Mort.

  The results of the hard fighting represented a considerable achievement, but even a successful battle has its melancholy harvest and Second Lieutenant Weil was not alone in carrying out a grim task the next day.

  This morning we had to bury the two under-officers killed yesterday at the Projecteur Observation Post. Captain Michel made me the battery representative. It was a very sad task. The poor devils yesterday were in full health; sadly they fell so far from France with no chance for their families to have the consolation of another day with them. In descending down the gully, the Turks, as if forewarned of what we were doing, fired across several 105mm shells of the highest quality. The explosions followed us from top to bottom as if drawn by an invisible hand. It was next to Morto Bay that we found the cemetery, unhappily filled with numerous graves. The ceremony was quick; terrible in its simplicity. The chaplain intoned the usual prayer. We rendered the honours in front of the two graves into which we would lower the unlucky pair. Captain Sainpère made a short address interrupted at every moment by the explosion of 105mm shells very nearby. But no one turned a hair. Yet each of us was thinking that at any moment he could be rejoining those that had gone to their last resting place. The prospect of mouldering away under 2 metres of Turkish soil beside the sea, 900 leagues from France, was not a prospect to rejoice in!7

  Second Lieutenant Raymond Weil, 39th Régiment d’Artillerie, 1st Division, CEO

  At least the two Frenchmen were decently buried. Far too many were missing and would never receive the consolation of any kind of individual burial. Their collected anonymous remains now lie in three large ossuaries in the French Cemetery. Despite over 2,500 killed and wounded, the French attack on 21 June had been a great success: the Haricot had been taken at last and the Turks had suffered nearly 6,000 casualties. Yet the Quadrilateral remained in their hands, meaning the Turks still had the potential to fire into the right flank of any advance by the RND in line next to the French.

  NOW IT WAS THE TURN of the British to try a narrow frontal attack. On 28 June they were to attack along Gully Spur to capture a series of five trenches numbering back from J9 to J13. At the same time they would push up Gully Ravine, hoping to move forward to where the Nullah tributary joined the main gully, while on Fir Tree Spur an attack would be made on the formidable Boomerang Redoubt and the H12 trenches. They would be supported by some seventy-seven guns and howitzers. In the course of the battle, they fired just over 16,000 rounds, or nearly half the total British ammunition supply at Helles. Yet that still fell short of what was required, for most of the guns were concentrated on the Gully Spur and Gully Ravine sectors. The attack on the H12 trenches on Fir Tree Spur was an afterthought
as far as gun allocation was concerned.

  Before the action the Corps Commander sent for me to say that he did not consider that enough guns and ammunition had been allotted to this portion of the Turkish trenches. I replied that I agreed, but that there were no more available, and that to reduce the bombardment of the hostile trenches on the left of our front would gravely prejudice the success of the 29th Division in that quarter, and that I understood success there was more vital than on our right flank. After consultation with the GOC 29th Division, the Corps Commander agreed with my allotment of the artillery. We then did our utmost to obtain the loan of more guns from the French without success.8

  Brigadier General Sir Hugh Simpson Baikie, Headquarters, VIII Corps

  From 06.00, prior to the main bombardment special attention was devoted by borrowed French trench mortars to eradicating the Boomerang Redoubt. Although the redoubt was on the right of Gully Ravine it was in a position which would allow it to enfilade any attack up Gully Spur. Then the main bombardment opened at 09.00. The concentration of artillery paid dividends when the 1st Border Regiment successfully attacked the Boomerang at 10.45 some fifteen minutes before the main assault. As they consolidated they could see the main attack going in across Gully Ravine at 11.00.

  Wave after wave of khaki clad troops sweep over their trenches and rush one Turkish trench after another. Behind come the supports marching in a steady unwavering line with sloped arms, their bayonets glittering in the sunlight. It is a fine sight and we give them an encouraging cheer as they pass our position. The enemy artillery now switch their artillery fire on to this advancing line but with little effect. Gaps occur here and there as the shrapnel mows its way through them but they close up as if on parade and steadily advance onwards.9

  Private Sydney Evans, 1st Border Regiment, 87th Brigade, 29th Division