As Anzac Day comes around once again, I thought that this year I would look at the Campaign through the eyes of those who were there. While we tend to think the Gallipoli campaign was mainly an Australian and New Zealand affair, we must remember that many other nationalities were involved, including Newfoundland which was then a Crown Colony separate from Canada. This was also to be the Newfoundland Regiment's first overseas adventure. John Gallishaw in Trenching at Gallipoli describes recruitment in St. John's: "From the posting of the
first notices bearing the simple message, "Your King and Country Need
You," a motley crowd streamed into the armoury in St. John's. The city
brigades, composed mostly of young, beautifully fit athletes from rowing crews,
football and hockey teams, enlisted in a body. Every train from the interior
brought lumbermen, fresh from the mills and forests, husky, steel-muscled,
pugnacious at the most peaceful times, frankly spoiling for excitement. From
the outharbours and fishing villages came callous-handed fishermen, with backs
a little bowed from straining at the oar, accustomed to a life of danger. Every
day there came to the armoury loose-jointed, easy-swinging trappers and
woodsmen, simple-spoken young men, who, in offering their keenness of vision
and sureness of marksmanship, were volunteering their all." After training in Scotland and at Aldershot, came the long-awaited day "when Kitchener himself pronounced them "just the men I want for the Dardanelles".
It was on 27 February 1915 that the first shots were fired in the Gallipoli air war. A Turkish Captain Cemal lifted off in an: "outdated Blériot had a large wheel attached to
the joystick; the cockpit resembled the product of an illicit affair between a
motor vehicle and a Da Vinci sketch. It was all leather steering-wheel and
bird-like wings. On his lap Cemal carried four round hand grenades. These were
similar in size to a cricket ball except
that each had a wick, was filled with explosive and was bound in a hard metal
case. Cemal puffed on a cigar as he coaxed his Blériot out to sea, both hands
on the wheel. Before long he had found it: a British warship, belching
black coal smoke as it steamed out of range of the coastal gun batteries. In
what can only be described as a David and Goliath moment, Cemal turned the
wheel towards this grey monster. The wings warped in sympathy with the tension
on its wires, the tail fin turned and the Blériot gracefully pointed its nose
at HMS Majestic. With his left hand
Cemal picked up one of the bombs nestled in his lap and brought it towards his
face. The fuse spat as it met the glowing cigar end. Like a pilot of old he
tossed the sizzling bomb down towards the ship below. With a crack, the metal ball
split apart, but not over the wooden deck. Coolly Cemal dropped three more
bombs while flying in a large gentle loop. Honour satisfied and both hands now
back on the wheel, Cemal returned to the grass aerodrome outside Çannakale. He
had managed to eke out of the Blériot a top speed of 60mph on his triumphant
flight home." Hugh Dolan - Gallipoli Air War.
Planning for a land invasion on the Gallipoli Peninsula began in early March, although it was hoped that the British and French Navies would be able to disable the forts along this waterway and secure access to the Sea of Marmara leading to Constantinople. Sir
Ian Standish Monteith Hamilton takes up the story: "Next morning, that is the
12th instant (12 March 1915), I was working at the Horse Guards
when, about 10 a.m., K. (Lord Kitchener) sent for me. I wondered! Opening the
door I bade him good morning and walked up to his desk where he went on writing
like a graven image. After a moment, he looked up and said in a matter-of-fact
tone, “we are sending a military force to support the Fleet now at the
Dardanelles, and you are to have Command.” … my knowledge of the Dardanelles was
nil; of the Turks nil; of the strength of our own forces next to nil. Although
I have met K. almost every day during the past six months, and although he has
twice hinted I might be sent to Salonika; never once, to the best of my
recollection, had he mentioned the word Dardanelles. I had plenty of time for these
reflections as K, after his one tremendous remark had resumed his writing at
the desk. At last he looked up and inquired, “Well?” Sir Ian Hamilton - Gallipoli Diary
On the 18th March 1915 the British and French navies, under the command of Admiral John de Robeck, began their bombardment of the Turkish forts along the Dardanelles. Initially the attack went well: "Then as Bouvet turned, Admiral de Robeck could
see from his bridge a large explosion on the starboard side of the vessel. And
with the explosion came fire and haze, haloed in black smoke that curled up
thickly. The fires grew denser, and the smoke rose higher.
The ship trembled
and lost way, and the men began scrambling about her decks. More explosions
began to shoot fire and smoke upwards. It was apparent to the Admiral that the
ship had been badly struck and was in deep trouble. The fires burned, the
damage control parties could not stifle them, and then, a moment later, another
explosion occurred, and Bouvet swung
over to her starboard side, trembled and turned, to capsize and sink before the
startled eyes of the assembled fleet. De Robeck watched and
waited. He was proceeding according to plan. About twenty minutes later, the
reserve line of six battleships passed by the others and moved in to engage the
forts. Only one Turkish fort was sending up any shells at all at the time, and
they concentrated on it. Suddenly there was an explosion against the side of Irresistible, and that caused the forts
to start firing furiously on her. The firing continued until 4.11, the ships
working over the fortifications but not stopping the Turkish return fire. At
that moment, Inflexible, the old
flagship, hit a mine – just as Admiral de Robeck was noting with considerable
satisfaction that the personnel of the forts seemed to be fleeing." Edwin P. Hoyt - Disaster at the Dardanelles
Henry Morgenthau Sr, the American Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire took a close interest in the developments on the Dardanelles: "Let us suppose that the
Allies had returned, say on the morning of the nineteenth, what would have
happened? The one overwhelming fact is that the fortifications were very short
of ammunition. They had almost reached the limit of their resisting power when
the British fleet passed out on
the afternoon of the 18th. I had
secured permission for Mr George A. Schreiner, the well-known American
correspondent of the Associated Press, to visit the Dardanelles on this
occasion. On the night of the 18th, this correspondent discussed the
situation with General Mertens, who was the chief technical officer at the
straits. General Mertens admitted that the outlook was very discouraging for
the defence. “We expect that the
British will come back early tomorrow morning,” he said, “and if they do, we
may be able to hold out for a few hours.” General Mertens did not
declare in so many words that the ammunition was practically exhausted, but Mr
Schreiner discovered that such was the case. The fact was that Fort Hamidié,
the most powerful defence on the Asiatic side, had just seventeen
armour-piercing shells left, while at Kilid-ul-Bahr, which was the main defence
on the European side, there were precisely ten." “I should advise you to
get up at six o’clock tomorrow morning,” said General Mertens, “and take to the
Anatolian hills. That’s what we are going to do.” Ambassador Morgenthau then makes an interesting assessment: "Yet
it is my opinion that this exclusively naval attack was justified. I base this
judgement purely upon the political situation which then existed in Turkey.
Under ordinary circumstances such an enterprise would probably have been a
foolish one, but the political conditions in Constantinople then were not ordinary.
There was no solidly established government in Turkey at that time. A political
committee, not exceeding forty members, headed by Talaat, Enver and Djemal,
controlled the Central Government, but their authority throughout the empire
was exceedingly tenuous. As a matter of fact, the whole Ottoman state, on the
eighteenth day of March, 1915, when the Allied fleet abandoned the attack, was
on the brink of dissolution." Henry Morgenthau Sr - Ambassador Morgenthau's Story
As the day of the invasion approached, Sir Ian Hamilton addressed the troops from the island of Lemnos: "21st
April 1915. Soldiers of France
and of the King Before
us lies an adventure unprecedented in modern war. Together with our comrades of
the Fleet, we are about to force a landing upon an open beach in face of
positions which have been vaunted by our enemies as impregnable. The
landing will be made good, by the help of God and the Navy; the positions will
be stormed, and the War brought one step nearer to a glorious close. “Remember,”
said Lord Kitchener when bidding adieu to your Commander, “Remember, once you
set foot upon the Gallipoli Peninsula, you must fight the thing through to a
finish.” The
whole world will be watching your progress. Let us prove ourselves worthy of
the great feat of arms entrusted to us."
And on the 23rd Sir Ian showed his sensitive and poetic side: "Nunc
Dimittis,
O Lord of Hosts! Not a man but knows he is making for the jaws of death. They
know, these men do, they are being asked to prove their enemies have lied when
they swore a landing on Gallipoli’s shore could never make good. They know that
lie must pass for truth until they have become targets to guns, machine guns
and rifles huddled together in boats, helpless, plain to the enemy’s sight. And
they are wild with joy; uplifted! Life spins superbly through their veins at
the very moment they seek to sacrifice it for a cause. O death. Where is thy
sting? O grave, where is thy victory? A
shadow has been cast over the wonders of the day by a wireless to say that
Rupert Brooke is very dangerously ill – from the wording we hear there can be
no hope." Sir Ian Hamilton - Gallipoli Diary
The invasion fleet approached the Peninsula and tensions mounted: "Picture yourself on a ship
that was more crowded with men than ever ship had been before, in a harbour
more crowded with ships than ever
harbour had been crowded before, with more
fears in your mind than had ever crowded into it before, knowing that in a few
hours you would see battle for the first time. Having comrades crowding round,
bidding you good-bye and informing you that as your regimental number added up
to thirteen, you would be the first to die, remembering that you hadn't said
your prayers for years, and then comforting yourself with the realization that
what is going to happen will happen, and that an appeal to the general will not
stop the battle, anyway, and you may as well die like a man, and you will feel
as did many of those young lads, on the eve of the 25th of April, 1915. There
was some premonition of death in those congregations of khaki-clad men who
gathered round the padres on each ship and sang "God be with you till we
meet again." You could see in men's faces that they knew they were
"going west" on the morrow—but it was a swan-song that could not
paralyze the arm or daunt the heart of these young Greathearts, who intended that
on this morrow they would do deeds that would make their mothers proud of them. Captain R. Hugh Knyvett - "Over There" with the Australians
Finally the Anzacs stormed ashore: "At 4.53 a.m. there came a
very sharp burst of rifle fire from the beach, and we knew that our men were at
last at grips with the enemy. The sound came as a relief, for the suspense of
the prolonged waiting had become intolerable. The fire only lasted for a few
minutes, and then a faint cheer was wafted across the water. How comforting and
inspiring was the sound at such a moment! It came as a message of hope, for its
meaning was clear: a foothold had been obtained on the beach. At 5.23 a.m. the fire
intensified, and we could tell from the sound that our men were in action. It
lasted until 5.28 and then died down somewhat. It was impossible to see what
was happening, although dawn was breaking, because we were looking due east
into the sun, slowly rising behind the hills, and there was also a haze over
the sea. At 5.26 a.m., astern, we
saw the outline of some of the transports looming up as they approached the
coast, conveying the remainder of the 1st Australian Division and the New
Zealanders. The first news came with the return of our boats. A steam pinnace
stopped alongside with two recumbent forms on deck, and a small figure, pale
but cheerful, waving his hand astern. They were one of our midshipmen just
sixteen years of age, shot through the stomach, but regarding his injury more
as a fitting consummation to a glorious holiday ashore than a serious wound,
together with a stoker and petty officer, all three wounded by the first burst
of musketry, which caused many casualties in the boats just as they reached the
beach. From them we learnt what had happened during those first wild moments.
The tows had reached the beach, when a party of
Turks, entrenched on the
foreshore, opened up a sharp fusilade from rifles and a maxim. Fortunately,
much of this fire was high, but nevertheless many men were hit as they sat
huddled together forty or fifty in a boat. It was a trying moment, but the
Australian volunteers rose to the occasion. They neither waited for orders, nor
for the boats to reach the beach, but, springing into the sea, waded ashore,
and, forming some sort of a rough line, rushed straight on the flashes of the
enemy’s rifles. Their magazines were not even charged, and they went in with
cold steel; I believe I am right in saying that the first Turk received a
Dominion bayonet in him at five minutes after 5 a.m., on April 25th.
It was all over in a
minute. The Turks in the first trench were bayoneted, or ran away, and a maxim
gun was captured. Then the Australians found themselves facing foothills of
loose sandstone, covered with thick scrub, and somewhere half-way up the Turks
had a second trench strongly held, from which they poured a heavy fire on the
troops below, and on the boats pulling back to the destroyers for the second
landing party. Here was a tough proposition to tackle in the darkness, but
these Dominion soldiers went about it in a practical way. They stopped a few
minutes to pull themselves together, to get rid of their packs, and charge
their magazines. Then this race of athletes proceeded to scale the hill without
responding to the enemy’s fire. They lost men, but did not stop, and in less
than a quarter of an hour the Turks were out of their second position, either
bayoneted or in full flight. Thus were the first foothills above Anzac Cove seized." Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett - The Uncensored Dardanelles
Further along the Peninsula, at Cape Helles, the former collier, the River Clyde was run aground at V-Beach. George Davidson, a medic with the Field Ambulance describes the horrific scenes as the ship came under fire: "The first few loads escaped with comparatively few
casualties, but soon the fire was so hot and accurate that practically not a
man got to the shelter of the 10 to 12-foot high sandbank beyond the narrow
strip of sand. About 300 yards to our left was a high projecting rock, a
continuation of the high ground that closed in that side of the long slope of V
Beach, and from here came that infernal shower of bullets that was causing such
terrible havoc. From the Clyde one
could easily tell where the bullets were coming from by their sputter in the
water.
Mustapha Kemal, the Turkish commander on the Gallipoli Peninsula, was awoken on the morning of the 25th by the naval bombardment. He set out to personally assess the situation. "Kemal saw at once what was
happening. Here was no small enemy force; here was a major offensive. With his
acute grasp of military essentials he knew that the Sari Bair ridge, and
especially the Chunuk Bair crest, was now the key to the entire Turkish
defence. Its capture would enable the enemy to dominate all sides of the peninsula. A single battalion would be totally insufficient to hold it. The
whole of his division would be needed. Acting on his own responsibility and
exceeding his authority as a divisional commander, he thus ordered his best
regiment, the Fifty-Seventh, with a mountain battery, to advance up the ridge
to the crest of Koja Chemen. As it happened the regiment was already drawn up
for a field exercise planned for that day. Kemal reported what he had done to
corps headquarters then rode with an ADC and his chief medical officer to its
headquarters to hasten and lead the advance. Kemal’s decision was a bold one. He
was committing the bulk of von Sanders reserve on the basis of not very clear
information as to the strength of the enemy, but only on that of his own
intuitive conviction that this was the crucial attack. Had his judgement been
wrong, had the enemy planned another important landing elsewhere, there would
have been only one Turkish regiment left to resist it. But he was right, and
his abounding self-confidence knew it." Kemal rode towards the landing beaches at the head of a company. "Seeing that his men were tired from their arduous
climb, he ordered their officers to give them a ten-minute break. Then he moved
on himself, with a few of his staff, towards Chunuk Bair. They started to ride
but, finding the terrain too rough, dismounted and proceeded on foot. Near the
crest they came upon a company of men streaming down over the ridge in full
retreat. They were a unit of the outpost screen, spread out to watch for the
landings, which for more than three hours had been the only force to oppose the
enemy. Kemal
stopped them and asked, “What’s up? Why are you running away?” “They
come, they come”. Was the reply. “Who
comes?” “Sir,
the enemy. Ingiliz, Ingiliz.” “Where?”
he asked. They pointed down the slope to a patch of scrub, from which a line of
Australians was freely advancing. They were closer to Kemal than his own
troops, whom he had left behind to rest. ‘Whether by logic or instinct’ as he
afterwards put it, he said to the retreating soldiers, "You
cannot run away from the enemy,” They protested, “Our ammunition is finished.” “You
have your bayonets,” he said. He commanded them to fixed bayonets and to lie
down on the ground. He sent an officer back to instruct his own infantrymen to
come up at the double, together with any available gunners from the mountain
battery. Then, as he observed, “When our men lay down, the enemy lay down. This
was the moment of time that we gained.” It
was a moment of hesitation by the Anzacs which may well have decided the fate
of the peninsula. While they hesitated the Fifty-Seventh Regiment began to come
up, and Kemal sent it straight into action. He rode through the forward
positions, driving the troops over the slope with unwavering energy. Placing
his mountain battery on the ridge, he helped to wheel its guns into position.
He directed operations from the skyline with a complete disregard for his own
safety. In an order of the day he wrote: ‘I don’t order you to attack, I order
you to die. In the time it takes us to die, other troops and commanders can
come and take our places.’ By the end of
the battle almost the whole of the Fifty-Seventh Regiment had died, charging
continuously through a curtain of enemy rifle-fire to win immortality in the
annals of the Turkish army." Lord Kinross - Ataturk: the Rebirth of a Nation
By the end of the day, the invading forces had secured bridgeheads, tenuous strips of land overlooked by the Turkish defenders. The troops dug in and in the succeeding weeks the battle deteriorated into a bloody see-saw of attack and counter-attack - and the body-count mounted. Veteran journalist Alan Moorhead went ashore shortly after the landings and reported what he saw: "No stranger visiting the ANZAC bridgehead ever
failed to be moved and stimulated by it. It was a thing so wildly out of life,
so dangerous, so high-spirited, such a grotesque and theatrical setting and yet
reduced to such a calm and almost matter-of-fact routine. The heart missed a
beat when one approached the ramshackle jetty on the beach, for Turkish shells
were constantly falling there, and it hardly seemed that anyone could survive.
Yet once ashore a curious sense of heightened living supervened. No matter how
hideous the noise, the men moved about apparently oblivious of it all, and with a trained and steady air as though they had lived there all their lives,
and this in itself was a reassurance to everyone who came ashore. The general
aspect was of a vast mining camp in some savage desert valley. Close to the
shore were the dug-outs of the generals, the wireless station, the telephone
exchange, the searchlights, a factory for making bombs, a corral for Turkish
prisoners, a smithy. Scores of placid mules sheltered in the gully until at
nightfall they began their work of taking ammunition and supplies to the men
in the trenches in the hills above – the water ration was a pannikin a day.
There was a smoking incinerator near the jetty and it erupted loudily
whenever an unexploded bullet fell into the flames. An empty shellcase served
as a gong for the headquarters officers’ mess. They ate bully beef, biscuits,
plum and apple jam and just occasionally, frozen meat; never vegetables,
eggs, milk or fruit.
Above
the beach a maze of goat tracks spread upwards through the furze and the last
surviving patches of prickly oak, and at every step of the way some soldier
had made his shelter in the side of the ravine: a hole dug into the ground, the
branches of trees or perhaps a piece of canvas for a roof, a blanket, a few
tins and boxes and that was all. As one progressed upwards there were many
crude notices of warning against enemy snipers: ‘Keep well to your left’, ‘Keep
You Head Down’, ‘Double Across One at a Time’. Then finally the trenches
themselves, where all day long the men stood to their arms, watching and
watching through their periscopes for the slightest movement in the enemy
lines. Cigarettes dangled from the mouths. They talked quietly." Alan Moorehead - Gallipoli
Passages selected by Neil S. Rawlins
Instagram accounts @dustonmyfeet and @antipodeanneil
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