by Simon Fowler
When almost a thousand casualties had been lost, it was agreed to call off the landing until nightfall. But for the relative weakness of the Turkish forces on the southern peninsula – where the landings at S and Y beaches were unopposed – the whole Allied operation might well have been thrown back into the sea.
Rear Admiral R.W. Wemyss, who was in command of the naval forces, described the landings at W Beach:
… the fire, though not quite so murderous as on V Beach, was tremendous. In spite of this, all the boats landed, and the Lancashire Fusiliers jumped out of them only to meet what appears to be an almost impassable wire entanglement, in their attempts to pass which the leading men were nearly all killed.
Watching this incident, as I was, from the fore bridge of the Euryalus, it seemed as though the impossible had been performed, for before many minutes had passed it became clear that the beach was gained. I cannot conceive that it has ever been the lot of anybody to witness a finer exhibition of dash and heroism. The boat’s crews who showed equal spirit were much knocked about, but in all cases managed to get their boats back, although sometimes with not more than two men able to pull an oar.
Lancashire Landing (W Beach), where men from the 1st Lancashire Fusiliers attempted to land in the early hours of 25 April. No fewer than six Victoria Crosses were awarded for acts of heroism during the landing.
Of the thousand Lancashire Fusiliers who landed, six hundred lost their lives.
The landings were supported by a dawn attack 15 miles to the north by men of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps under General William Birdwood. The beach swiftly became known as Anzac Cove, or just Anzac. Unfortunately, the troops landed at the wrong beach, a swift current having carried them a mile north of their intended target. By the time this was realised, it was too late to go back. Captain Herbert Kenyon of the Royal Artillery was among the first wave of troops:
It was about eight or ten yards from the water’s edge to the foot of the hills and we all doubled in under the bank and then we went after the others, shouting, yelling, cursing, tumbling down and tripping over bushes and holes. It was impossible for the men to climb in their kit so they chucked them as they scrambled up.
Soon the Turkish guns started firing on the beach and on the men who were either clambering up the cliff side or had already reached the top. Everywhere there was chaos. The Allied ships were unable to fire their guns against the Turkish positions for fear of hitting their own troops. During the day some nine hundred men lost their lives here.
After the landings, little was done by the British to exploit the situation and, apart from a few limited advances inland by small groups of men, most troops stayed on or close to the beaches. The attack lost momentum and the Turks had time to bring up reinforcements and rally the small number of defending troops.
Having established, at great cost, two beachheads at Anzac and Cape Helles, Hamilton determined to extend the Allied position in the south, with attacks directed towards the village of Krithia (now Alçitepe). Three successive operations were launched, all of which were thrown back by Liman’s increasingly effective Turkish defence force. Ironically, a small number of British troops had actually entered the village on 25 April, but withdrew because they had no orders to take Krithia. Had they remained there, it is likely that the Gallipoli campaign would have been successful.
By 4 May it was clear that without troop reinforcements there was no hope of victory. Several months of intense trench warfare ensued. Such were the conditions on the peninsula that almost no location was safe from enemy bombardment or snipers. Artillery support was also ineffective. An early lesson from the Western Front had been the need for sufficient guns to pound enemy positions and demoralise their troops. At Gallipoli this only rarely happened, in part due to ammunition shortages. Lieutenant Colonel Grant of the Royal Artillery later grumbled that: ‘It was a mistake to conquer the Turks with 8 Howitzers [heavy guns] and little ammunition.’ The Royal Navy battleships possessed sufficiently powerful guns, but it was hard for their gunnery officers to pinpoint targets and there was the constant worry that they might end up shelling the Allied ground troops. On 9 May Brigadier Cunliffe-Owen, who was in charge of the Anzac artillery, wrote: ‘it must be understood that naval guns cannot fire on enemy’s guns close to our [Anzac] line. It is too dangerous because all fire from ships is by compass, as the map is not accurate …’.
Attempts to use aircraft to observe the effectiveness of artillery barrages were also frustrated, in part because very few planes were available, but a more serious problem was the lack of communication between the observers and the ships. Pilots complained that after they had flown to the right position and given the ready sign, there was a delay of an hour or two before the ship opened fire. Then the ship would either fire slowly or simply leave, generally to avoid counter-fire from the enemy. In addition, the aircraft often experienced mechanical difficulties and there was an acute shortage of air observers. A post-war report on Gallipoli concluded that: ‘It is clearly proved that the fire of ship’s guns cannot be considered an adequate substitute for well-organised support of field or heavy artillery on land.’
Back in London, the Cabinet was becoming increasingly desperate for accurate information about the situation in the Dardanelles. At the end of July Sir Maurice Hankey, Secretary to the government’s Dardanelles Committee, was sent to investigate. Scrambling up Gully Ravine, he found that ‘proper sanitation is impossible in places as the Turkish dead lie in heaps, the smell being bad, while the thought of masses of flies in such conditions makes the flesh creep’. One of the beaches was ‘really rather horrible. A dust storm rages for a great part of most days, the sun is intensely hot, of shade there is none … the flies are execrable, and worst of all, the Turks shell at frequent intervals.’ Hankey was, however, particularly impressed by the Anzacs:
Their physique is wonderful and their intelligence in high order. Harassed by continuous shelling, living in intense heat … compelled to carry their water and most of their supplies and ammunition by hand 400 feet up the hills and deprived of any recreation except occasional bathing, they are nevertheless in the highest sprits and spoiling for a fight.
In fact, the Australians and New Zealanders were pretty fed up with the diet and with the monotony of everyday existence with no rest to look forward to. One man grumbled to Colonel George Beith, 24th Battalion AIF, that ‘If I could get off this bloody place I’d volunteer to scrub out the Melbourne exhibition building with a toothbrush.’
The retrieval and burial of the dead lying out in no man’s land between the two sets of trenches proved particularly difficult. Near Anzac a short armistice was held on 19 May for this purpose. Likewise, the war diary of the 2nd South Wales Borderers for the morning of 3 May noted that: ‘Turkish burial parties under cover of a white flag searched the ground in front of the immediate front. We accordingly also sent out parties to bury the Turkish dead, of whom there was a great quantity just in front of our right flank.’ [WO 95/4311]
On 6 August 1915 fresh British and French troops landed on A, B and C Beaches at Suvla Bay in an attempt to break the deadlock. Suvla Bay lay a dozen miles or so north from Helles on the Aegean side of the peninsula. On paper it seemed ideal, being flat and wide enough to allow British and French forces to disembark easily, and with few Turkish defences. The operation took the form of a three-pronged attack: a diversionary action at Helles, which was cut to shreds by Turkish artillery; a movement northwards from Anzac Cove towards Sari Bair, which lay halfway to Suvla; and the centrepiece of the offensive: a landing in force at Suvla by fresh divisions under General Sir Frederick Stopford. The idea was for Stopford’s forces to link up with the troops at Anzac Cove and make a clean sweep across the Gallipoli peninsula.
The area around Anzac Cove and Suvla Bay on the west of the peninsula, where much of the fiercest fighting took place.
The view from a Royal Navy ship of the landings at Suvla Bay on 6 August 1915.
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bsp; The landings at Suvla Bay achieved total surprise and Stopford’s initial progress was almost unopposed. However, the wider offensive rapidly lost momentum as the result of indecision by the commanders and their failure to press home the battle.
Stopford had been recalled out of retirement and had had no experience of commanding troops in battle. He also had deep doubts about the plan that had been agreed. And worst of all, he had little idea about what was going on because he changed his mind about moving his headquarters to Suvla and instead remained on board a ship stationed off the coast. His inactivity and complacency forced his removal in mid-August, but by then the damage had been done. According to Nigel Steel, author of Gallipoli (1999): ‘Stopford did not believe in the possibility of success, and so did not drive his men to fulfil it. He allowed the failure in which he believed to come about’. Rather more succinctly, Wikipedia describes his performance in command as ‘one of the most incompetent feats of generalship in the First World War’.
It probably did not help that the troops available for the landing hardly inspired confidence. The official historian, Brigadier Aspinall-Oglander, graphically described XI Corps as being like a motor car ‘whose hurried assembly had only been completed by the inclusion of spare parts of various different makes … Doubtless before using it for important work Sir Ian Hamilton should have tested it. But he had no space [to do so]… . No sooner was the car set in motion than its inherent faults became apparent.’ Hamilton later commented that the combination of ‘old generals and new troops’ was fatal.
Sir Maurice Hankey, who went ashore on 8 August, found that: ‘A peaceful scene greeted us. Hardly any shells. No Turks. Very occasional musketry. Bathing parties around the shore. There really seemed to be no realisation of the overwhelming necessities for a rapid offence, of the tremendous issues depending on the next few hours …’. Meanwhile the Anzacs were being torn apart as they attempted to break out of Anzac Cove to meet up with IX Corps, in accordance with the original plan. Turkish machine gun fire cut swathes through the Australians and New Zealanders who attempted to cross the pinnacles of Sari Bair and Rhododendron Ridge. From the tops of these hills the troops could see Suvla Bay.
British troops too were soon in the thick of the action. At 6pm on 8 August Sir Ian Hamilton finally arrived at Suvla. He was appalled by the lethargy he found and immediately ordered an attack on a range of hills a few miles to the east of the bay, in the hope that success would lead to a British breakout into the flatter country beyond. However, the two days’ delay since the landings had allowed the Turks to move their forces from the north and by the time the British assault on the hills began at dawn on the 9th, the Turks were streaming down to meet them.
Among the British forces was the 6th Battalion, East Yorkshire Regiment. Part of the New Army, which had been raised in the autumn of 1914 from the flood of volunteers to the colours, it had been designated the regiment’s pioneer battalion, responsible for digging trenches, making repairs and building roads, and although the men had had some military training it was not expected that the battalion would see action. But due to the very heavy casualties in other units, it was decided to use the 6th Battalion as a normal infantry battalion, despite its inexperience. On the morning of the 9th the East Yorkshires began to clamber up Tekke Tepe hill. Confusion resulted in Lieutenant Colonel Henry Moore, the battalion’s commanding officer, taking one company forward and leaving the three other companies to follow on as soon as they could be put in order. The first party initially took the hill, but all of them were then killed or captured (eyewitnesses reported that Moore himself was bayoneted by a Turkish soldier). The other companies attempted to advance but came under withering fire and were forced to retire. For that day the battalion’s casualties were given as 13 officers killed, wounded or missing, 78 men killed and another 104 wounded. The failure of the British to take the hills meant that the Allies’ last possible strategic move had been thwarted.
A few weeks later, on 21 August, the 6th Battalion, now some 12 officers and about 500 men strong, joined an attack on ‘W’ Hills, part of the Battle of Scimitar Hill, which developed into the largest land battle of the campaign. At 3pm, under cover of a naval barrage, two battalions went into the attack. The 6th Battalion was in support, but its men soon found themselves in action. Advancing, they took several Turkish trenches. Once they had achieved their objective, their orders were to wait to allow reinforcements to pass through their position to make a further advance. The battalion remained in position under heavy fire all day and into the night but no reinforcements came and by the next morning the men were exhausted, and running out of food, water and ammunition, Inevitably, their position was soon overrun by the Turks. What was left of the battalion retired to its original position. During this action the battalion lost 8 officers killed or wounded, and 22 men killed, 128 wounded and 49 missing.
The 6th Battalion had arrived at Suvla Bay with 26 officers and about 800 men. By the end of August no fewer than 21 officers and 198 men had been killed – a quarter of the battalion’s strength.
As autumn arrived, the campaign ground to a halt and settled into an uncomfortable form of trench warfare. This was a disastrous state of affairs for the Allied forces. Momentum slowly drained away from the campaign as an uneasy stalemate emerged. Inevitably there was a general sense of frustration. According to Major H.C.B. Wemyss of the Royal Signals:
Extreme heat with dust and flies, very limited fresh water and no cover reduced men’s stamina, while icy blizzards later on discovered any weaknesses. Variations in shelling and sniping made one day differ from another. No rest areas existed. No houses, no canteens, no leave or any prospect of it, and irregular mails from home – so time rolled on. [CAB 45/230]
Heavy rain in the autumn followed by snow turned the once dry-as-dust trenches into muddy quagmires, and conditions for the men deteriorated yet further. Clem Attlee, a company commander in the South Lancashires, bullied his men into staying alive by insisting on regular exercise and ‘fairly frequent issues of rum’, while dysentery, frostbite and drowning decimated the other companies in the battalion.
Confidence in the operation was dwindling, particularly as the French were reluctant to divert attention away from the battles in France. It did not help that the British and French were planning to support their Serbian allies by landing in Salonika. To Hamilton’s great dismay, some troops were diverted away from Gallipoli and sent to Salonika. As it was, Hamilton was already facing increasing criticism from London as grim news of the expedition reached home, along with complaints of his mismanagement of the campaign.
London and Paris began to suggest that the Allied forces should be evacuated. Hamilton retaliated by estimating that casualties in any such evacuation would run at up to 50 per cent: a startlingly high figure. On 11 October Hamilton was summoned to London to appear before the politicians and military men of the Dardanelles Committee; he never returned to Gallipoli.
Hamilton was replaced by Sir Charles Monro, who had previously commanded the Third Army on the Western Front. He was asked by Lord Kitchener ‘to report fully and frankly on the military situation’. Monro consulted his divisional commanders, who were unanimous that their men were in no fit state to take the offensive. Indeed, they feared they would not be able to survive a sustained Turkish onslaught, in part because most of the men were too weak physically to put up much of a fight. Monro thus recommended evacuation as soon as was practicable. Winston Churchill, however, later viewed Monro’s achievement with a somewhat jaundiced eye: ‘he came, he saw, he capitulated’, he wrote. However, Monro was proved to be right and Churchill wrong.
In London, only Kitchener remained unpersuaded, and decided to see the situation for himself. Braving the winter storms, he arrived at Gallipoli on 10 November. Once ashore, Kitchener did not take long to make up his mind. Standing with General Birdwood at a post high above Anzac, he put his hand on the general’s arm and said: ‘Thank God, Birdie, I came to see this for my
self. You were quite right. I had no idea of the difficulties you were up against.’ Accepting the inevitable, he recommended evacuation on 15 November, overriding suggestions by the navy that they be allowed to attempt another naval assault.
It took the War Cabinet until 7 December to finally commit to evacuation. But by then the Allied troops were severely affected by the winter weather. On 12 November a severe storm had flooded many dug-outs and washed away stores, and previously dry watercourses became raging torrents, drowning many men. Hundreds more died of exposure. The troops at Suvla were worst affected as there was little shelter. For their part the Turks were equally hit by the storm.
The rain could be torrential. The weekly report of the Royal Naval Division for 21 December commented:
A thunderstorm and heavy rain last night did more damage than a month’s shelling. In many places trenches and communicating trenches are impassable and everywhere mud renders movement slow and difficult. This has seriously interfered with works in progress, every spare man being required to assist in drainage and necessary repairs. [ADM 137/3086]
Fortunately when the evacuation began, there was a long spell of fine weather. Some 83,000 men and 186 guns, plus stores, were successfully taken off from Anzac Cove and Suvla Bay between 10 and 20 December. The evacuation from Helles took place a few days later, between 28 December and 9 January 1916.
Men waiting at Suvla to be evacuated. The evacuation in December and January was undoubtedly the most successful part of the whole sorry story, with only three men lost.
ANZAC troops engaged in a training exercise. Contemporary captions said that the men were going over the top to charge a Turkish position just before the evacuation, but the men’s dress and demeanour suggest this was not the case.