by John Keegan
PASSCHENDAELE
A water cart bogged beside a brushwood track, St. Eloi, 11 August 1917
Australians on a duckboard track, Château Wood, Ypres, 29 October 1917
SERBIA AND ITALY
Serbian headquarters crossing the Sizir bridge, Albania, October 1915
Austrian mountain gunners firing a 70mm M8 howitzer.
Austrian mountain machine-gun section, Italy, 1917
WEAPONS OF WAR
French 75mm field gun with limber and team
Austrian 305mm howitzer at Siemakowce, Galicia, 1915
British Vickers machine-gun crew
A Royal Engineers Signal Service visual signalling post, at Neuville-Vitasse, battle of Arras, 29 April 1917
German infantry training with an A7V tank, 15 April 1918
THE WESTERN FRONT, 1918
German infantry in a communication trench, Third German Offensive, May 1918
Breaking the Hindenburg Line: British infantry moving up, 29 September 1918
Breaking the Hindenburg Line: British Mark IV tanks going forward, 29 September 1918
American infantry advancing, autumn 1918
GALLIPOLI
Turkish gunners in action with Krupp 77mm gun
Australians and the Royal Naval Division share a trench
Wounded ANZAC coming down, replacements waiting to go up–a repeated Gallipoli scene
By 22 March, when Admiral de Robeck met General Sir Ian Hamilton, the nominated commander of the military force-in-waiting, aboard Queen Elizabeth, to discuss whether the naval advance towards the Narrows should be resumed, it was quickly agreed that it could not, without the assistance of strong landing parties. The combination of numerous moored mines and heavy fire from the shore was deadly. While the bigger Turkish guns in fixed positions could be targeted, the mobile batteries could move, as soon as they had been identified, to new positions, from which they could resume fire against the fragile minesweepers, thus preventing the clearing of the lines of mines running between the European and Asian shores and so denying the battleships the chance to get forward. The only solution to the conundrum was to land troops capable of tackling the mobile batteries and putting them out of action, so that the minesweepers could proceed with their work and the battleships follow in the swept channels.
Bold spirits, who included Commodore Roger Keyes, commanding the minesweepers, were for pressing on regardless of loss. Keyes believed the Turks were demoralised and out of ammunition. The more cautious officers thought more risk-taking must lead to more losses and the intelligence that came later to light revealed that to be certain. The cautious party in any case prevailed. By the end of March, the decision for landings had been taken—by de Robeck and Hamilton, independent of the Cabinet—and the only question remaining to be settled was where the landings should take place and in what strength. Raids by Royal Marines would not suffice. The intelligence service of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, as Hamilton’s command was now known, estimated that the Turks had 170,000 men available. That was an exaggerated guess; Liman von Sanders, their German commander, had six weak divisions with 84,000 men to guard 150 miles of coastline. As, however, there were only five Allied divisions in the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force—the 29th, Royal Naval, 1st Australian and Australian and New Zealand Divisions, and the Corps expéditionnaire d’Orient, of divisional strength provided by the French—every one would have been needed to secure beachheads, even had the Turks been weaker than they actually were. In practice, the decision to use all five divisions was taken at the start. From a hastily established base in Mudros Bay on the nearby Greek island of Lemnos, they would be embarked as soon as possible and got ashore. In the month between the naval defeat of 22 March and the eventual D-Day of 25 April, an extraordinary improvisation was carried forward. Mudros was filled with stores, a fleet of transports assembled and a collection of boats and improvised landing-craft got together to transship the troops to the beaches.
Nothing was more improvised than the plan. In the absence of firm intelligence about Turkish dispositions, it had to be based on guesses as to where landings would be least opposed and do most good. The Asian shore was tempting, for there the shore is level—Troy’s windy plain leads inland nearby—but Kitchener had forbidden it to Hamilton, for the excellent reason that a force as small as his could all too easily be swallowed up in the vastness of the Turkish hinterland. Kitchener’s diktat determined that the European peninsula, known as Gallipoli from the tiny town at the Narrows, must be the choice, but its topography presented difficulties. The narrow waist at Bulair, forty miles from the point of Cape Helles, offered level beaches on the Mediterranean side and the chance to cut off all the Turkish forces below. They, however, had covered the Bulair foreshore with barbed wire that looked impenetrable. Along much of the rest of the seaward side of the peninsula, steep cliffs descend to the water. Only at one place was there a practicable beach, which was allotted to ANZAC. The only other possibilities were at Cape Helles itself, where there is a chain of small, if narrow, beaches giving by reasonable gradients to the summit of the headland. As it could be covered all round by fire from the fleet standing offshore, Helles was chosen as the objective of the 29th Division. The Royal Naval Division was not to land at once, but make a demonstration at Bulair, designed to draw Turkish reinforcements away from Cape Helles, and the French were to do likewise on the Asian shore, at Kum Kale near Troy, before landing later alongside the 29th Division. Five beaches at Helles were selected, lettered Y, X, W, V and S, with Y lying three miles from the point on the Mediterranean side, S within the Dardanelles, and X, W and V under the Cape itself.
In retrospect, it is possible to see that Hamilton’s plan could not work, nor could any other have done with the size of the force made available to him. Seizing the tip of the peninsula, below the minefields, still left them covered by Turkish artillery. An Asian landing would have proved equally ineffectual, and very exposed, while even a successful landing at Suvla Bay, below Bulair, would have left the Turkish forces between it and Helles not only intact but easily to be re-supplied and reinforced across the Narrows. The only certainly successful scheme would have required the deployment of a force large enough to land at and hold Bulair, Helles and the Asian shore simultaneously. Such a force was not available nor could it have been assembled speedily enough to bring urgent aid to the Russians. A large commitment of troops was, in any case, outside the spirit of the enterprise, which was designed to achieve large results without dissipating the force engaged on the Western Front. Hamilton’s only hope of achieving success in the essentially diversionary mission he had been given, therefore, lay in the Turks mismanaging their response to the landings. Surprise there could not be. The naval offensive had alerted them to the Allies’ interest in Gallipoli and they had used the month following the fleet’s withdrawal to dig trenches above all the threatened beaches. Only if the Turks failed to counter-attack quickly could the Allies secure footholds deep enough from which to threaten their possession of the Gallipoli peninsula.
The soldiers of the 29th Division and ANZAC, dissimilar as they were, expected to succeed. Those of the 29th Division were regulars of the pre-war army, sunburnt Tommy Atkinses of the type Kipling knew, collected from the overseas garrisons for service in France but then brought to Egypt in case troops were needed at Gallipoli. The ANZACs, staging through Egypt to Europe, were citizen soldiers, products of the most comprehensive militia system in the world, which trained every male from early school age upwards for military service and enrolled all fit men in their local regiments. A comparable military obligation, accepted in Australia, was taken with deep seriousness by the tiny colonial community of New Zealand, strategically the least vulnerable settled place on earth. “To be a New Zealander in 1914 was to be taught that: ‘The Empire looks to you to be ready in time of need, to think, to labour and to bear hardships on its behalf.’ ”56 More practically, when the call came, “university classes empt
ied … sports fixtures were abandoned. To be left behind was unthinkable. If your mate was going, then somehow you had to get away too.”57 Out of a male population of half a million, New Zealand could provide 50,000 trained soldiers aged under twenty-five. Australia furnished proportionate numbers. Fewer of the Australians were countrymen than the New Zealanders, whose settler independence and skills with rifle and spade would win them a reputation as the best soldiers in the world during the twentieth century, but Australian dash and individualism, combined with an intense spirit of comradeship, were to create units of formidable offensive power, as the Germans would later acknowledge and the Turks were soon to discover.
Before dawn on 25 April, 200 merchant ships, of every variety from liners to tramp steamers, supported by most of the bombardment fleet that had been turned back from the Narrows on 18 March, stood in towards ANZAC cove—as the Australians’ and New Zealanders’ landing place was soon to be known—and Cape Helles. Queen Elizabeth was flagship and headquarters, though its 15-inch guns were also to join in the preliminary bombardment by the older battleships. They were also troop carriers, however; from them, and other warships, the landing parties were to move to the beaches in “tows,” lines of rowing boats pulled in column behind steam pinnaces commanded by junior officers; two of those were thirteen-year-old first-term Royal Naval College cadets. As the shore shelved, the tows were to be cast off and the boats rowed ashore by bluejackets. Only one specialised landing ship had been included, the collier River Clyde, which was to be grounded off V Beach, alongside the old Byzantine fortress of Sedd el-Bahr. Holes had been cut in its bow through which the soldiers of the Royal Munster Fusiliers and the Hampshire Regiment were to run down gangplanks on to lighters, positioned between ship and shore, and so onto the beaches, under the covering fire of machine guns positioned behind sandbags on the forecastle.
The bombardment began about five o’clock, as day dawned, and soon the tows for all beaches were moving inshore. What lay ahead was largely unknown, for the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force intelligence service was deficient not only of information about Turkish strength and dispositions but even lacked maps of the area to be assaulted. It was believed, for example, that the ground behind Cape Helles, in fact broken by numerous gullies, formed “a … uniform and [un]accidented slope.”58 The terrain behind ANZAC cove was known to be dominated by ridges but the chosen landing place was to their south, from which routes opened to a central crest where, it was intended, observation posts could be established to direct naval gunfire against the batteries at the Narrows.
That might or might not have been possible. In the event, and for reasons never satisfactorily explained, perhaps human error, perhaps a last-minute but inadequately communicated change of plan, the forty-eight boats of the ANZAC tows touched ground a mile north of the beach originally selected, under steep slopes that give onto a succession of ridges, rising in three jumbled steps above the cove. To north and south, high ground comes down to the sea, so that ANZAC takes the form of a tiny amphitheatre—the smallness of the Gallipoli battlegrounds is the most striking impression left on the visitor—dominated on three sides by high ground. Unless the Australians and New Zealanders could reach the crests before the enemy, all their positions, including the beach, would be overlooked, with calamitous effect on subsequent operations.
The ANZACs knew the importance of getting high quickly and, after an almost unopposed landing, began climbing the ridges in front of them as fast as their feet could take them. The reason their landing had been unopposed soon, however, became apparent. The enemy were few because the Turks had dismissed the likelihood of a landing in such an inhospitable spot and the landing parties rapidly found that the terrain was as hostile as any defending force. One crest was succeeded by another even higher, gullies were closed by dead ends and the way to the highest point was lost time and again in the difficulty of route-finding. Organisation dissolved in the thick scrub and steep ravines, which separated group from group and prevented a co-ordinated sweep to the top. If even some of the 12,000 ashore could have reached the summits of the Sari Bair ridge, two and a half miles above ANZAC cove, they would have been able to look down on the Narrows, and the beginnings of a victory would have been under their hands.59 Their maximum depth of penetration by early afternoon, however, was only a mile and a half and, at that precipitous point, they began to come under counter-attack by the assembling Turkish defenders. The ANZACs, clinging lost and leaderless to the hillsides, began, as the hot afternoon gave way to grey drizzle, to experience their martyrdom.
Ten miles south, at Cape Helles, day had also broken to the crash of heavy naval gunfire, under which the ninety-six boats of the tows and the crammed River Clyde moved shoreward. On the flanks, at Y and X Beaches in the Mediterranean and at S Beach within the Dardanelles, the attackers met little or no opposition and soon established themselves ashore. Across the water, at Kum Kale on the Asian shore, the French also found their landings unopposed and, after early delays, took possession of the old Byzantine fort, the village under its walls and the cemetery on the outskirts. The Turks in the vicinity were disorganised and badly led. At Y, X and S Beaches on the peninsula the British experience was similar: the enemy was either not present or else stunned by the explosion of 12-inch shells around their positions. The landing parties sunned themselves, made tea, humped stores up from the shore and wandered about in the pretty countryside, as if the war was miles away. At W and V Beaches, just down the coast, the Lancashire Fusiliers and the Dublins, Munsters and Hampshires were fighting for their lives and dying in hundreds. The two beaches are separated by the headland of Cape Helles itself. To the west, on W Beach, ever afterwards known as Lancashire Landing, the Lancashire Fusiliers were struck by a hail of rifle and machine-gun fire a hundred yards from the shore. Most of the boats beached, nevertheless, only to find themselves in front of barbed wire at the water’s edge, behind which Turks in trenches were shooting every man who rose from the sea. Major Shaw, of the Lancashire Fusiliers, recalled that “the sea behind was absolutely crimson, and you could hear the groans through the rattle of musketry. A few were firing. I signalled to them to advance … I then perceived they were all hit.”
Amid these ghastly scenes, a few Lancashire Fusiliers managed to struggle through the wire and find a way round, reorganise and advance. Out of the 950 who landed, over 500 were killed or wounded but the survivors pressed inland, chasing the Turks before them and by evening had consolidated a foothold. On the other side of the headland, at V Beach, the scenes were even worse. The Dublin Fusiliers, landing from tows, thought themselves unopposed until, as the boats touched bottom, they fell under a hail of bullets. As the River Clyde grounded and the Hampshires and Munster Fusiliers struggled to find a way out of the ship and on to the gangplanks that were to lead them ashore, four Turkish machine guns opened fire. They had already raked the tows which beached first. The columns on the gangplanks, packed like cattle ranked for slaughter in an abattoir, tumbled one after another to fall bleeding into the sea, there to drown at once or struggle to their death in the shallows. Yet some survived, found shelter under the lip of the beach, gathered their force and drove the Turks from their trenches.
At Lancashire Landing and V Beaches many Victoria Crosses, Britain’s highest award for bravery, were won that morning, six by Lancashire Fusiliers, two by sailors who struggled in the sea to hold steady the lighters bridging the gap between River Clyde and the shore. There were numerous other, unrecorded, feats of courage, inexplicable to a later, more timorous age. By evening, above beaches choked with bodies and a shoreline still red with blood, Lancashire Landing had been consolidated with X Beach, and V, Y and S were secure. There had been 2,000 casualties at ANZAC, at least 2,000 at Cape Helles, out of 30,000 men landed, and the number was rising by the hour, as the Turks gathered to counter-attack. The question remained whether beachheads gained at such cost could be held on the morrow.
What should have alarmed the Britis
h commanders—Hamilton of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force (MEF), Hunter-Weston of the 29th Division, Birdwood of ANZAC—was that the injuries done to their brave and determined soldiers had been the work of so few of the enemy. MEF’s estimate of the Turkish strength committed to the defence of the Dardanelles had been a gross exaggeration. The number of troops deployed by Liman von Sanders on the Gallipoli peninsula was only a fraction of his force, the rest being dispersed between Bulair and Kum Kale, between Europe and Asia. The assault area was held by a single division, the 9th, with its infantry deployed in companies all the way down the coast from ANZAC to Cape Helles and beyond. In places there were single platoons of fifty men, in some places fewer men or none: at Y Beach none, at X twelve men, at S a single platoon. Even at ANZAC there was only one company of 200 men, while V and W Beaches were defended by single platoons.60 The massacre of the Lancashire, Dublin and Munster Fusiliers and the Hampshires had been inflicted by fewer than a hundred desperate men, survivors of the naval bombardment, and killing so that they should not be killed.