by Peter Hart
Second Lieutenant Stanley Savige, 24th (Victoria) Battalion, 6th Brigade, 2nd Division, AIF
Up on Russell’s Top, Lieutenant James Caddy and his team of sappers sat in their dugouts waiting for the order to detonate their mines. They stayed there long after the front lines had been abandoned.
Everyone was now clear of the trenches and Major Fitzgerald having received permission by telephone from the Rearguard Commander, Colonel Paton, to fire the mines, instructed me to do so after he had got on top of the dugout to see the effect. At 5.30 a.m. Sergeant Contan pushed down the exploder connected with the mines in L8 and L11, and immediately afterwards I fired the big mine in Arnall’s tunnel. The ground vibrated, there was a dull roar and two large craters were formed. Immediately afterwards, heavy rifle fire opened up along the whole of the enemy line. After slabs of guncotton to destroy the exploders had been set off and Corporal Penny had lit the fuse of the mine on the track leading down to the beach, we made as quickly as possible down the hill.50
Lieutenant James Caddy, 5th Field Company, Australian Engineers, AIF
Also among the last to leave were the signallers who had been manning a signal station on Plugge’s Plateau to monitor the progress of the arrangements. They saw from close range the thunderous detonation of Caddy’s mines.
Half way down the hillside a mine in the direction of Russell’s Top was fired like a miniature Vesuvius. The Turks, apparently very nervous, instantly opened a furious rifle and machine gun fire. The bullets lobbed among and all round us, but miraculously no one was hit. Breath was not drawn till all were safely aboard the barge. The Turks, contrary to our expectations, appeared to know nothing of our withdrawal.51
Private A. H. Edwards, 2nd Divisional Signal Company, 2nd Division, AIF
Meanwhile, the exhausted last ditchers had got back to the beach. Even here they were not safe from some old enemies – the guns from behind Gaba Tepe that had been firing intermittently into Anzac since 25 April. Still McIlroy’s luck held good.
At the beach we found a sentry, who warned us to hurry past, as ‘Beachy Bill’ was dropping his ‘pills’ regularly every few minutes. We crowded on to the barge lying alongside the jetty and between decks was soon filled with a mass of unshaven, haggard and dirty looking ‘diggers’ all talking at once, and the air thick with tobacco smoke. After the recent strain and the prohibition on smoking for fear the lighting of matches might arouse suspicion, one can imagine the clamour which broke out – everybody at once trying to tell the other fellow his experiences. I will always remember those men – probably the pick of the whole Force, and they looked it, despite their ragged appearance; some with full beards, while the lean cheeks of the others were covered with several days’ stubble.52
Second Lieutenant George McIlroy, 24th (Victoria) Battalion, 6th Brigade, 2nd Division, AIF
As they sailed away from Anzac Cove for the last time there was at least a visually impressive send-off.
We were taken off to a small transport, from which the Turks could be heard still firing at nothing, and as a grand finale we had a panoramic view of the wholesale destruction of stores on shore. Hundreds of hospital tents had been soaked in kerosene and fired; as the guy ropes burnt through the tents floated up like fire balloons; the tremendous conflagration being reflected in the sky.53
Private A. H. Edwards, 2nd Divisional Signal Company, 2nd Division, AIF
The attempted destruction of the stores was a grand sight at both Anzac and Suvla. Huge fires blazed and the ships of the Royal Navy poured shells into the abandoned stores depots. They had done it: not only had Suvla and Anzac been evacuated, but it had been achieved without casualties.
ASHORE THE TURKS were slow to react. In recent days, the Anzacs had gone quiet before, but then burst back into lethal life. Had they really gone? Had the British left Suvla? It is not clear at exactly what time the Turks moved from tentative suspicions to certainty about the evacuation, but there were many factors hampering any response beyond opening up a vigorous artillery barrage and sending out patrols.
The alarm was sent to all the Divisions, the reserves brought close up and orders issued to immediately send out strong officer patrols to approach the enemy trenches to establish whether they were occupied and report forthwith any evacuation by signal. It was urgently necessary to establish the enemy’s intention, and in the case of evacuation to immediately drive forward with all available forces to the seashore. The artillery was to open fire on the coastal area and the landing-stages. It was impossible to do more at the moment. A clearing of the position depended on the resolution with which the patrols advanced towards the enemy lines. Yes, this was the only possible way of clearing up the position, because about three in the morning a steadily increasing mist commenced rising which hid the full moon which so far shone, and clouded the English activities in a curtain which we were neither able to pierce nor penetrate. God had been stronger than Allah!54
Colonel Hans Kannengiesser, Headquarters, XVIII Corps, Fifth Army
The British have always claimed that they destroyed almost everything, but there were so many thousands of tons of stores squirrelled away in the ANZAC and IX Corps bases that this is not impossible. When the fires had burnt down and the explosions ceased, there was still a cornucopia of valuable supplies left to plunder for the Turks, who were short of almost everything.
Immense stores of all kinds were abandoned by the British on their withdrawal. Between Suvla Bay and Ari Burnu five small steamers and more than sixty boats were abandoned on the beach. We found large quantities of material for dummy rail lines, telephones and obstacles, piles of tools of all kinds, medicine chests, medical supplies and water filters. A great mass of artillery and infantry ammunition had been abandoned and whole lines of carriages and caissons, hand arms of all kinds, boxes of hand grenades and machine gun barrels. Many stacks of conserves, flour, food and mountains of wood were found. The tent camps had been left standing and sacrificed. This probably served better than anything else to mask the withdrawal. Several hundred horses which could not be embarked were killed and lay in long rows.55
General Otto Liman von Sanders, Headquarters, Fifth Army
The British and Anzac forces had also left behind their dead. As they departed, Private George Scott remembered two of his old comrades, linked together by a long-forgotten misdemeanour on Christmas Day back in Cairo.56
There was Company Quartermaster Sergeant Archie Bowers, killed by a shell fragment while shaving in the trench – prior to going down to the beach to be commissioned. He was the NCO who found our AWOL Aussies in the Eden Palace Hotel and marched them ignominiously back to Mena Camp. He would have made a first-class officer. Another grave is that of my great friend, Tom Harness. Shot through the eye, he died in my arms at Johnston’s Jolly, conscious just long enough to mutter, ‘Can you do anything for me?’ He was one of the four marched home by Archie.57
Private George Scott, 4th (New South Wales) Battalion, 1st Brigade, 1st Division, AIF
His friends’ graves are still there today in the 4th Parade Ground Cemetery at Anzac.
THE QUESTIONS LEFT were fairly simple. Would the Allies really want to continue to hold on to Helles? Would the Turks blast them off the Peninsula with their new, heavier guns? And, if the Allies did decide to evacuate, could they fool the Turks a second time? Or would there be another catastrophic slaughter on the shores of V and W Beaches? The Turks began to move their units south to Helles while the men of VIII Corps watched the weather patterns with considerable trepidation. Some 1,400 miles away at his headquarters in a freezing St Omer, General Sir Douglas Haig, just a few hours after being appointed to replace Sir John French as Commander in Chief of the BEF, received a telegram from Kitchener telling him that Suvla and Anzac had been evacuated. Haig expressed his grim satisfaction at this news in his diary. As well he might. Without any further draining of the Empire’s strength into the ‘Dardanelles sink’, as he called it, he could turn his full attention to th
e business of winning the war where he and the professional generals had always said it must be won, the Western Front.
LAST RITES AT HELLES
There must have been a dead man of ours to pave every yard of that last march. And we were leaving them, lads of our platoon, gallant officers who were merry at mess, who died to win trenches we had left behind us. Trudging past the sombre-brooding cypress trees we remembered our dead and the pity and tragic waste of it all, and tried to hope that someday a British service bugle would once again ring out over those little graves in that lost land of ours.1
Sub Lieutenant Ivan Heald, Hood Battalion, 1st Naval Brigade, RND
FOR THE ANZAC CORPS the Gallipoli campaign was over. The operations at Anzac had been a failure, but the responsibility for that failure did not lie with the Australian and New Zealander troops themselves, who had demonstrated remarkable resilience. What they had been asked to do was not a realistic operation of war. But now they had gone; now the VIII Corps was left marooned in its lines at Helles. By this time the Helles garrison, which still numbered 42,000 in late November, was in a dire state. Both the RND and the 42nd Division were played out and needed a lengthy period of rest and recuperation to rebuild their depleted ranks. It was therefore decided that the 13th Division, fresh from their evacuation of Suvla, should be sent to relieve the 42nd Division; the RND would have to wait. An additional complication was the attitude of the French, who were keen to remove their remaining division and artillery contingent as soon as possible. The North African troops were already being gradually withdrawn, to be replaced in the line by the 29th Division, which was also in a terrible condition. The French artillery perforce remained, for not only were they irreplaceable but their departure would be a sure sign to the Turks that an evacuation was imminent. Of their infantry soon only the Colonial Brigade remained perched on the cliffs above Kereves Dere on the extreme right.
The Turks now had the freedom to focus their energies on Helles. More to the point their increasingly effective artillery could move up and blast the British and French to perdition. The Turks were well aware that Helles was likely to be evacuated, but they still had no idea when.
It was thought possible that the enemy might hang on for some time. That could not be permitted. Hence a plan of attack on the enemy’s position at Sedd el Bahr was at once taken in hand, giving due consideration to the technical troops expected from Germany. An attack was prepared on the entire south front by the four divisions there and eight others to be brought up.2
General Otto Liman von Sanders, Headquarters, Fifth Army, Turkish Army
The guns were already being stacked up around the shoulders of Achi Baba and their shells crashed down on the Allied lines. The odds in the lottery that decided life or death were getting shorter for the troops left at Helles. On 20 December, Lieutenant Henri Feuille was at his observation post looking out towards Achi Baba. Already several shells had dropped nearby, but Feuille had been ordered to locate a concealed Turkish battery.
Suddenly, the characteristic roar of another shell approaching rapidly! The whistle grew to a crescendo – was it going to pass over us? To my sorrow the question had no sooner crossed my mind when the answer came: it was a direct hit! It had a terrifying rending effect on the paltry roof protection, just 60 centimetres from my head. The earth seemed to open up like a volcano. In a flash my shelter was overwhelmed as huge stones crashed down on my men and on me! Struck violently all over the left hand side of my body, I was thrown to the ground. My telephonist Dechamboux fell across me and we were covered by an avalanche of building material and rough stones, enveloped in acrid fumes, unbreathable, locked in like the night. A few moments passed following this incredible explosion. The melinite fumes slowly dissipated. I hadn’t lost consciousness, despite the pain I felt. I was buried alive, not able to move, buried in a mass of earth and stones as in a straitjacket. The blood flowed freely from two wounds in my skull, covering my face and blinding me.3
Lieutenant Henri Feuille, 52nd Battery, 30th Regiment, CEO
With a supreme effort he managed to shout out and was rescued and evacuated. Besides the head wounds, his left arm was broken in two places and his left leg had been ripped open by a shell splinter. But he was lucky. The other two men occupying the observation post were killed.
This shelling steadily increased as more Turkish batteries arrived from Suvla and Anzac, their gunners determined to make their presence felt at Helles.
On Christmas Eve the Turks put up the heaviest bombardment on our section that I had experienced and inflicted, despite the dugouts, very severe casualties. The disadvantage of deep dugouts is the extreme unpleasantness of leaving them. It is relatively easy to be conscientiously brave when you have no alternative, but excuses for remaining under cover where cover exists are damnably easy to find. Fortunately I was robbed of mine because the telephone to the front line from battalion headquarters was seventy yards away from our headquarters mess, and it had to be answered. I know nothing more unpleasant than walking along a trench which is being shelled by howitzers. The bullet which kills you is inaudible, so they say, but the howitzer which kills you is unmistakable. You can hear it coming down for some seconds and you know whether it is going to be close or not, and no parapet or trench can save you, so you just wait or walk on, feeling extremely curious as to what is going to happen. One’s curiosity, I found, is strangely mundane. Curiosity about the next world is rare. And yet perhaps the most interesting thing of all is that no one has any sense of grievance against the enemy for trying to kill him, as he tried so very hard, on that unpleasant Christmas Eve, to kill us. And after it is all over, one has much the same feeling of exhilaration as after a cold bath.4
Lieutenant Douglas Jerrold, Hawke Battalion, 1st Naval Brigade, RND
Christmas at Helles was a strange affair. Far from home and in the glowering presence of their enemies the troops found the festive season somewhat depressing.
Christmas Day in the trenches! A fitting title for an ode by Dante! Morning found us wet and cold, without a fire to warm us, without change of clothing or hot food or drink: a Christmas without home, friends or cheer. Somehow the thought was so melancholy, while the fact in itself was so small. Why should the 25th of December be any harder than any other day spent under the same circumstances? The Padre and the men looked so disheartened and sad that I could not resist the temptation to laugh – there was a sardonic humour in it all.5
Lieutenant Norman King-Wilson, 88th Field Ambulance, RAMC
As on the Western Front, there was no attempt at a Christmas Armistice in 1915. The war had become a serious business with no room for such sentimentalities.
THE FINAL DECISION TO EVACUATE HELLES was accelerated by the appointment of Lieutenant General Sir William Robertson to the position of Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) on 23 December 1915. He was replacing General Sir Archibald Murray, who had only held the post for three months, but was already generally regarded as indecisive and unable to exercise a meaningful influence on Kitchener; traits that Murray shared with his partial namesake and predecessor, Lieutenant General Sir James Wolfe Murray. Robertson was a very different beast; he was a career soldier who had risen right through the ranks from private to general. His last posting had been as Chief of Staff to General Sir John French at BEF Headquarters. Before taking up his new role as CIGS, Robertson had taken the precaution to define closely his relationship with Kitchener in an effort to reduce the great man’s ability as Secretary of State for War to interfere directly in military operations. It was clear that this would be no mere post-holder. Indeed, Asquith was consciously looking for a source of independent advice on the great strategic issues of the day and in Robertson he got an unbiddable, strong-minded individual who was totally committed to the primacy of war on the Western Front.
It is one of the first principles of war that all available resources should be concentrated at the ‘decisive’ point – that is, at the place where the main decis
ion of the war is to be fought out. There may be a difference of opinion as to where that point should be, but there should never be more than one such point at a time, and once the selection is made, no departure from the principle just mentioned is admissible except (a) when it becomes necessary to detach troops for the protection of interests vital to oneself, for example the Suez Canal; or (b) when by detaching them the enemy will be compelled as a counter-measure to send a still larger detachment in order to protect interests which are vital to him. This principle, as old as the hills, had been inexcusably violated in 1914–15, and however much we might afterwards try to mitigate the evils resulting there from they could never be entirely removed.6
General Sir William Robertson, Imperial General Staff
Robertson’s appointment followed that of another career soldier, General Sir Douglas Haig, to command the BEF. Over the next three years the two men would attempt to apply increasing levels of professionalism to the ramshackle British war strategies. But first Robertson had to sort out the inherited chaos of Gallipoli.
But, after all, the main question was what useful purpose would be served by keeping a detachment at Helles, now that the troops had been withdrawn from Anzac and Suvla? Clearly there was none, and to continue hanging on to the place merely because we were afraid to leave it, was not only a waste of men but would be a constant source of anxiety. On the 28th of December, five days after becoming CIGS, I placed before the War Committee a memorandum drafted for me by Callwell, who was acquainted with my views, advocating the immediate and total evacuation of the peninsula. Lord Kitchener supported the recommendation, evacuation was approved, the necessary orders were despatched the same day.7