Gallipoli Landings

This more formal account of the action on 25th April 1915 comes from The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) History of the European War from Official Sources.


By one o'clock on the morning of Sunday, April 25, 1915, the allied expeditionary force had arrived within five miles of the Gallipoli shore. Under cover of darkness the final dispositions were made and the ships maneuvered so that the timing of the several landings would be accurately synchronized. Shortly after one o'clock the landing boats were lowered from the transports.

Strung in lines of four and five the boats were slowly towed toward shore by steam pinnaces. Not a sound was heard but the panting of the engines of the little boats. The speed was accurately calculated to bring the parties close in shore with the first break of the dawn.

Accompanying the Australian and New Zealand troops, were a number of destroyers. Just as they reached the shallow water in front of the cliffs of Gaba Tepe, a Turkish lookout spied them in the hazy light of the morning. Instantly he gave the alarm and a flaring searchlight flashed its rays on the little flotilla.

The need for silence had disappeared. With a cheer the British troops leaped from their boats into the shoal water and splashed their way ashore. While many of them were still in their boats, however, the Turks opened fired. The whole ground had been carefully prepared and from every cover on the shore and the cliffs beyond a deadly fire was poured upon the Colonial troops.
Without faltering, however, the Australian and New Zealand troops, supported by a squadron of battleships and destroyers, came on straight at the strongly intrenched Turks. The first of the Australians to reach the shore were the Third Brigade under Colonel Sinclair Maglagan. With a rush they charged the first Turkish lines, bayoneted the defenders, and scrambled up the steep cliffs that rise a hundred feet in the air.

Fortunately for the British troops, as these and subsequent events proved, there had been a slight miscalculation in the landing, and the men had actually gone ashore a mile and a half northeast of Gaba Tepe, instead of at that point. Gaba Tepe is so rugged and uninviting that it was believed that the Turks would not trouble to intrench it. Actually the Turks appeared to have intrenched and prepared every inch of the coast. But at Sari Bair, where the Australian and New Zealand troops actually landed, the character of the ground, although not so advantageous at first, afforded much more protection once the men were ashore. Sir Ian Hamilton, in his graphic account of the operations, subsequently said:

"Owing to the tows having failed to maintain their exact direction, the actual point of disembarkation was rather more than a mile north of that which I had selected, and was more closely overhung by steeper cliffs. Although this accident increased the initial difficulty of driving the enemy off the heights inland, it has since proved itself to have been a blessing in disguise, inasmuch as the actual base of the force of occupation had been much better defiladed from shell fire.

"The beach on which the landing was actually effected is a very narrow strip of sand about 1,000 yards in length, bounded on the north and the south by two small promontories. At its (p. 442) southern extremity, a deep ravine with exceedingly deep, scrub-clad sides, runs inland in a northeasterly direction. Near the northern end of the beach a small but steep gully runs up into the hills at right angles to the shore. Between the ravine and the gully the whole of the beach is baked by the seaward face of the spur which forms the northwestern side of the ravine. From the top of the spur the ground falls almost sheer, except near the southern limit of the beach where gentler slopes give access to the mouth of the ravine behind. Farther inland lie in a tangled knot the under-features of Sari Bair separated by deep ravines which take a most confusing diversity of direction. Sharp spurs, covered with dense scrub and falling away in many places in precipitous sandy cliffs, radiate from the principal mass of the mountain, from which they run northwest, west, southwest and south to the coast."

As fresh British troops came ashore they cast aside their heavy packs and followed their comrades across the forty feet of open beach and into the scrub that covered the side of the cliffs. Halfway up the Turks had prepared a second position. Attacking it in open formation the Third Brigade succeeded in clearing it within fifteen minutes of the time they came ashore, despite the desperate and brave defense of the Turks.

Meanwhile some of the landing boats, subjected to the terrible fire of the Turkish guns, were having a bad time. The towing ropes of three of them were cut by the fire and the boats drifted helplessly about under the withering rain of bullets that rapidly wiped out their cargoes of men. But despite these mishaps the First and Second Brigades were hurried ashore to support the Third. Soon, in the face of terrible difficulties including the narrowness of the beach, there were between 3,000 and 4,000 allied troops ashore.

By this time the Turks, by means of the mobile carriages prepared for them by the Germans, had maneuvered some heavy artillery into position on the heights inland. Also some of their warships, moored in the Narrows, began throwing heavy shells across the peninsula into the allied fleet standing close inshore. So dangerous and accurate became this fire that the transports (had to be ordered out to sea and this delayed the operations seriously.

At Gaba Tepe and on the heights to the north of the beach the Turks posted guns and enfiladed the Narrows beach. Thus the troops, as they landed, had to make their way through a rain of shrapnel, machine gun and rifle fire that wiped out hundreds. Despite the success of the Australian Brigades in clearing the beach and the face of the cliff, the Turkish fire never seemed to slacken.

Because of the nature of the country there could be no central control over the advance fighting and no continued communications between the several forces making their way to the top of the cliffs. The battle resolved itself into a series of fights between small parties, or even individual soldiers, whose one object was to kill as many of the enemy as possible and make their way as far inland as possible in the first rush.

By two o'clock about twelve British regiments had been landed and the ground gained consolidated and prepared against counterattack. Thousands of Turkish troops were by this time pouring along the road from Maidos and by the middle of the afternoon it was calculated that there were fully 20,000 of them before the Australian and New Zealand troops. The latter, in the meantime, had been further reenforced by two batteries of Indian Mountain Artillery. The pressure of the constantly increasing Turkish force compelled General Birdwood, who came ashore about this time, to contract his lines and to reach a decision that, at that time at least and until the arrival of more troops, no further advance could be made. The Gaba Tepe landing had not been the surprise that was expected and the Turks had proved to be in unexpected strength.
About three o'clock the Turkish counterattacks began. Absolutely regardless of human life, they threw themselves in dense masses against the Second and Third Brigades. The British battleships, the Queen, the London, the Prince of Wales, the Triumph and the Majestic, posted close inshore, poured a devastating fire on the advancing Turkish troops as they came into the open.

About five o'clock the Turks, after repeated assaults upon the British lines, massed for a final attempt to drive the invaders into the sea. On and on they came, concentrating on the hard-pressed Third Brigade as the weak spot in the British defense. Fighting gamely against heavy odds, this Australian Brigade which had borne the brunt of the landing attack and which had been almost continually counterattacked all afternoon, gave way slowly, selling every inch of ground dearly. Hundreds of the brave Turkish troops were mown down by the machine guns which the Australians had by this time brought ashore. At nightfall, however, General Birdwood, as a consequence of the persistence of the enemy, had to contract his lines further.
As night settled on the battle field on the ridge above Gaba Tepe and Sari Bair, and the two forces rested from sheer exhaustion, the British troops, who once were well inland toward Maidos, their objective, were barely hanging onto the ridge overlooking the shore of the Gulf of Saros. All their water and food and munitions and reenforcements had to be brought ashore across the exposed beach, while the landing of the necessary artillery in the face of the Turkish fire was a feat to appal the bravest. But though their hold on their position was precarious it was tenacious and, in the end, effective. If they had not won all they expected to win they had at least won a foothold in the face of terrific difficulties.

While the Australians and New Zealanders were fighting desperately beyond Gaba Tepe, the other forces of the allied army were accomplishing similar deeds of heroism at the tip of the peninsula.

Coming down the coast of the peninsula from Gaba Tepe, about three miles from the extreme southwestern tip, was what was known as Beach Y. It was almost due west of the important town of Krithia, and the landing was intended primarily to protect the left flank of the British landing forces from attack by the considerable forces believed to be concentrated there.
The actual landing seems to have been somewhat of a surprise to the Turks. Indeed, subsequent events showed that they were correct in their estimate that a landing at the so-called Beach Y would be a mistake. A narrow strip of sandy beach led to the cliffs, two hundred feet high, that were believed to be almost unscalable. It is easy to be wise after the event, but military writers subsequently declared that if the Turks had been prepared to defend the position, the force that landed at Beach Y would have been wiped out in the preliminary attempt to establish a footing.

The force assigned to this point of attack consisted of the First King's Own Scottish Borderers, and the Plymouth Battalion of the Royal Naval Division, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Koe. The latter was under orders, if the landing proved successful, to work his way south to effect a junction with the force landing at Beach X, some two miles away.

About five o'clock, Koe's force appeared off Beach Y, on the transports Braemar Castle and Southland, and escorted by the battleship Goliath, and the cruisers Amethyst and Sapphire. The Turks had posted a large force at Beach Y 2, between Beach Y and Beach X, but half of the Scottish Borderers were ashore before the Turkish command had realized what was happening. As a result Colonel Koe's force was partly established on the cliffs before the Turks had begun to arrive.

But if the initial stages were unexpectedly easy for this force, difficulties soon developed. Once on the heights, Colonel Koe ordered an advance to link up with the force at Beach X. The British troops had not gone far when they ran into the Turkish troops from Beach Y. So large was this force and so determined an opposition did it offer to the British troops that Colonel Koe soon decided it would be impossible, with the two battalions at his disposal, to accomplish the task assigned him.

Early in the afternoon the little British force was dismayed by the approach on its left flank of a large force of Turks from Krithia, which threatened to cut it off from the landing beach. Reluctantly Colonel Koe, just before he received a fatal wound, gave the order to intrench