Gallipoli: The Ottoman Campaign

By Nigel Steel

Gallipoli tells of the disastrous campaign at Gallipoli in 1915 when the allies failed to knock Turkey out of the war. With then and now photographs the book provides detailed historical descriptions of the area and the events, all of which will appeal to the armchair historian and the intrepid visitor to the sites. It will prove an indispensable companion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Aug 12, 1998
• ISBN: 9781473814523

Book preview

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Isandhlwana by Ian Knight and Ian Castle

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Pen & Sword Books Ltd, 47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire S70 2AS

Battleground Europe

GALLIPOLI

Nigel Steel

Pen & Sword

MILITARY

This book is dedicated with respect and admiration to three late

friends who told me how it felt to be at Gallipoli over eighty years

ago.

To

Lieutenant-Colonel Malcolm Hancock MC

Ivor Powell

and

William Wright

First published in Great Britain in 1999

Reprinted in 2007 by

PEN & SWORD MILITARY

an imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

47 Church Street

Barnsley

South Yorkshire

S70 2AS

Copyright © Nigel Steel, 1999, 2007

ISBN 978 0 85052 669 1

The right of Nigel Steel to be identified as Author of this work

has been asserted by him in accordance with the

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is

available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical

including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and

retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing.

Printed and bound in Great Britain

By CPI UK

Pen & Sword Books Ltd incorporates the Imprints of

Pen & Sword Aviation, Pen & Sword Maritime, Pen & Sword Military,

Wharncliffe Local History, Pen & Sword Select,

Pen & Sword Military Classics and Leo Cooper.

For a complete list of Pen & Sword titles please contact

PEN & SWORD BOOKS LIMITED

47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70 2AS, England

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Website: www.pen-and-sword.co.uk

CONTENTS

Introduction by Series Editor

Acknowledgements

Author’s Introduction

Chapter 1

The Landings, 25 April

Chapter 2

Helles

S Beach

V Beach

Sedd el Bahr

The Helles Memorial

W Beach

X Beach

Chapter 3

The Northern Limits

The Helles Plain

The Krithia Road

Gully Ravine

The West Krithia Road

Chapter 4

Anzac Cove, April to August

Anzac Cove to Plugge’s Plateau

Russell’s Top to Baby 700

Pope’s Hill to Steele’s Post

Monash Gully to Lone Pine

Chapter 5

The August Offensive

Chapter 6

The Assault On Sari Bair

Baby 700 to Chunuk Bair

Reserve Gully to the Aghyl Dere

Chapter 7

The Landing At Sulva Bay

Lala Baba to Ghazi Baba

The Kiretch Tepe Sirt to Yilghin Burnu

Chapter 8

Hill 60

Afterword

References

Bibliography

Index

INTRODUCTION BY

SERIES EDITOR

It has been a long time coming, but it is a real pleasure to be able to write an introduction to this book, a completely revised and updated version of Nigel Steel’s earlier book. The Battlefields of Gallipoli – Then and Now. It is anticipated that this will be the first of a number of guides on that ill-fated expedition’s battlefield; it sets the scene for the heroism and stoic endurance that stretched through the spring, summer, autumn and early days of winter 1915.

The writing shows a profound knowledge of the campaign, of the battles and of the ground today, accompanied with a love of the landscape and a considerable empathy with those who were there. Alas, it is soon coming to the time when there will be no veterans of the campaign alive; books like this are all the more important as they attempt to explain what happened on the ground. And it is best if those who were there are allowed to speak for themselves, and Nigel Steel here makes good use of the various oral and documentary records that survive. History can become a plaything of societies and propagandists, so that we have come to a situation in which most people think this was an Australian campaign. Most certainly it was vitally important to that nation’s development and it helped to bring it out onto the world stage. But this has overshadowed the contribution of others, notably the Newfoundlanders, the New Zealanders and the British (and, indeed, the Irish) – and, perhaps, above all, the French.

Turkish prisoners of war being led down from the line by British troops in Gully Ravine. (Q15337)

Nigel Steel’s route through Gallipoli is in many ways a highly personal one – his descriptions of what can be seen come quite definitely from his heart. The narrative of events is cogent and well explained, put carefully into the context of the ground and of that most redoubtable and tenacious of foes, the Turk. By the time that the reader has finished the book – even if he or she has not been to this sad but beautiful place – the impact of the tragedy of Gallipoli will be that much clearer. I do not think that a military historian can be asked to achieve more.

Nigel Cave,

Ely Place, London

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Since The Battlefields of Gallipoli – Then and Now was first published by Leo Cooper in 1990 I have been helped by a great many people and I am concerned that I have forgotten to include some of them here. I hope they will forgive me. As my debt to those who assisted me in the years between 1985 and 1990 remains undiminished, I felt it best to incorporate these new names into my original list and so with these additions it is reproduced again here.

Beginning with the formal acknowledgements, most of the contemporary material has been taken from the archive collections held in the Imperial War Museum. Principally the old photographs in this book have been taken from the Photograph Archive and much of the unpublished written material from the Department of Documents and I am grateful to the Keepers of those Departments, the Assistant Director, Collections and to the Trustees of the Museum for their help and permission to reproduce them here. The negative numbers of each IWM photograph is included after the appropriate caption. I would also like to thank the copyright holders of the collections of private papers listed in the bibliography for their permission to include quotations in the text. In addition, I consulted the Papers of General Sir Ian Hamilton at the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King’s College London and I am grateful to the Trustees of the Liddell Hart Centre for allowing me access to the papers and for their permission to include quotations in the book. I would also like to thank Sir Ian’s literary executors. Finally I am grateful to the following for allowing me to use material I have recorded with them: the late Joe Guthrie; the late Lieutenant Colonel M E Hancock; the late Ivor Powell; and the late William Wright. I would also like to thank the Keeper of the Sound Archive for her permission to use extracts from the IWM interviews with Colonel Hancock and Major G B Horridge. All books from which quotations have been taken are listed in the bibliography at the end and I would like to acknowledge the permission of their publishers to include extracts from them here. The maps drawn for the book have all been based on official maps printed at the time of the campaign or as part of the Official Histories published after the end of the war and I am grateful to HMSO for permission to reproduce adapted versions of these maps.

On a more personal note, I would like to thank again the three Gallipoli veterans to whom the book is dedicated: Malcolm Hancock, Ivor Powell and William Wright, and also the following who have helped at various times during the writing of this book: the President and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford; also from Oxford University the boards of the English and History Faculties; my grandfather, parents and wife’s parents; all of my colleagues with whom I have worked in the Department of Documents over the past ten years but particularly Rod, Phil, Simon, Stephen, Penny, Tony, Dave, Wendy, and in various other departments at the IWM: Greg Smith, Richard Bayford, Colin Bruce, Mike Hibberd, Paul Cornish, Neil Young, Bryn Hammond, Rosaleen King, Judy Newland, the ever obedient Peter Hart and my para-colleague Malcolm Brown; Professor Sir Michael Howard; Dr Mike Weaver; Dr Rhodri Williams; David Richardson, Volkan Susluoglu and Philip Noakes of the CWGC; Dr Mete Tunçoku; Tolga Ornek, Kemal Gokakin, Oktay Gokakin, all the members of their film crew, Ekrem Boz and Izzet Yilderim without all of whose help and kindness in April 1998 the revisions would not have been possible; Stewart Gamble; Leo Cooper, Tom Hartman, Charles Hewitt, and Roni Wilkinson; Tom Bader; Harry Musselwhite who, probably without realizing it, set me off on the path to Gallipoli; David Evans; our two good friends who roamed with us over the Peninsula in July, 1987, Bob and Jacqui Ridge-Stearn; and my wife Marion. I consider myself fortunate indeed as, without her companionship, critical judgement and unstinting support, I would never have done any of this, and it was for her that I began it in order to discover how and why her great-uncle, Corporal Harry Allen, was killed above Gully Ravine on 28 June, 1915.

The author – then and now! (1988/1998)

INTRODUCTION

For seventy years after the end of the fierce fighting that took place there, Gallipoli remained an exquisitely beautiful place. Enveloped by an air of tragic loneliness, the battlefields seemed overwhelmingly sad. Writing in 1956 Alan Moorehead, the first modern historian of the campaign, observed that,

The cemeteries at Gallipoli are unlike those of any other battlefield in Europe…. In winter moss and grass cover the ground, and in summer a thick carpet of pine needles deadens the footfall. There is no sound except for the wind in the trees and the calls of the migrating birds who have found these places the safest sanctuary on the peninsula…. Often for months at a time nothing of any consequence happens, lizards scuttle about the tombstones in the sunshine and time goes by in an endless dream.¹

Yet beneath this pervasive aura of pathos the striking magnificence of the countryside continued to shine through like sunshine piercing a cloud after a summer storm. Communication was difficult and security tight. The Dardanelles, both its shorelines and the whole of the surrounding area, remained firmly within the grip of the Turkish military authorities. There were few visitors and little to disturb the tranquil isolation of the landscape.

Beginning in around 1985 things began to change. New metalled roads started to appear. At first they linked the villages that were spread across the south-western half of the peninsula. But gradually the network was extended further into the hinterland, reaching out to formerly inaccessible points that no-one had been able to visit regularly since 1915. Houses were also built, particularly across the open bowl above V Beach at Cape Helles and the attractive strip of coastline running south from Suvla Bay. Retrospective memorials, bigger and more bombastic than the original, modest, obelisks that they often replaced, were thrust up. The character of the battlefield changed.

Although this in itself at first seemed disappointing, on calmer reflection the changes do appear to have been beneficial. Combined they have made Gallipoli a more open place; one that is much easier to visit. Large numbers of people now come, most conspicuously a trail of young Australians and New Zealanders passing briefly through the place where their countries first made their own independent entrances onto the world’s stage. The Turks also visit, particularly in sizeable groups on days associated with their great victories such as 18 March and 10 August. It is right that they should do so. For, after all is said and done by the frustrated descendants of the Allied troops, Gallipoli was a Turkish triumph. Soon after the war the remains of the Ottoman empire underwent a huge upheaval. Under the charismatic leadership of Mustafa Kemal, who had first established his reputation during the campaign, the central Anatolian territory eventually emerged as the democratic republic that exists today. Many of the Turkish statues and memorials now focus on Kemal, or Atatürk as he became known, as much as the forces that, in part, he commanded.

The best time to visit Gallipoli is in the early summer. Although by then the magnificent wild flowers which spread across the old battlefields in the late spring have all but disappeared and the lush rich tones of green have dissolved into a harsher wash of yellow, the bleaker perspectives seem more characteristic of the landscape as it appeared during the war. Movement is also easier, with fewer crops to disturb and a hard, dry soil underfoot that makes the going easier. It is important to remember at Helles and Suvla that the fields surrounding the cemeteries are not just part of a historical landscape but an integral part of the local economy. The wheat, sunflowers and melons that grow across them must be treated with respect and care taken to avoid causing any damage. Likewise the more marginal parts of the peninsula such as inside Gully Ravine or along the Kiretch Tepe Sirt are isolated and a long way from the nearest houses. Common-sense must be applied when visiting them and sensible precautions taken to minimize risks. Çanakkale, the region’s largest town and centre of government, can be reached with relative ease from Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir. Although the main roads are in poor condition and often crowded, there are regular bus services, the commonest means of public transport in Turkey. Once at Çanakkale tours of the battlefields are run by a number of travel agencies in the town or individual visits can be arranged either by taxi or minibus. For those planning on spending more time on the peninsula cars can be hired and driven from the three main cities. But accommodation on the peninsula itself is limited and needs to be investigated in advance.

The aim of this book is not to give another detailed account of the complete Gallipoli campaign, for this I would, naturally, refer visitors to Defeat at Gallipoli.² It is intended instead to relate the battlefields, beaches and cemeteries to the central parts of the fighting that took place on and around them; to describe them as they appeared during the fighting and contrast this with how they can be found today. On all three stages of the campaign a curtain has since fallen of peace and serenity. Beneath its heavy velvet the great and bloody energy of the campaign lies smothered, while along the sorrowful course of the cemeteries’ trees dark shadows move upon the stage like ghosts abroad determined to keep alive the spirits of the dead. For Gallipoli has not yet been able to overcome its sense of haunted unrest.

At Helles, and to a large extent at Suvla, where the ground is generally flat, farms have re-established themselves as they have in France and Flanders. To find evidence of the battle one needs a helpful map and the mental ability to suppress the crops and see only the underlying fall of the land. Time and the farmers have swept away all traces of the intensely desperate life that once clung so tenaciously onto these same fields. At Ari Burnu, where the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps bit out their tiny fortress, all is different. Nothing has been done. The British Army cleared up in 1919 when the peninsula was re-occupied after the armistice. The dead were buried and most of the remaining debris removed. Later, in 1923 when the Turks regained their European territories, the cemeteries that had been created there were guaranteed under the terms of the Treaty of Lausanne. But whereas at Suvla and Helles this then allowed the farmers to resume their natural role, at Anzac the terrain made this impossible; as no-one had been there before the war no-one tried to return.

Today the Anzac area is a national park dedicated to the memory of those who died on both sides. From halfway along Brighton Beach to the Chailak Dere the ground is tightly controlled. There are restrictions on activities such as camping which is forbidden and also the construction of permanent buildings, the one exception being the very civilized flushing toilets now found immediately beyond Ari Burnu Cemetery! The reasons why it is so important to respect these rules were made dramatically clear in July 1994 when a devastating fire swept through the whole of the park. It was started accidentally by a shepherd cooking corn on the slopes of Chunuk Bair and from there it spread north to the edges of the Suvla Plain and south halfway to Helles. The long term effect of the fire on the landscape appears to have been slight and in many ways it has ironically restored a more historically recognisable appearance to the battlefields, particularly along the seaward slopes of Sari Bair which had become heavily wooded.

Battleground Europe: Gallipoli is a revised and updated edition of The Battlefields of Gallipoli – Then and Now which was published by Leo Cooper in 1990. This new version of the book follows very closely the general format of the previous and in many places is identical to it, moving through the battlefield areas in an overall sweep, from Helles up to Suvla, describing each significant feature in turn and relating them to both maps and photographs. By moving in this way the text hopefully provides first a basic guide to the landscape but also through this a reminder of the major events of the campaign so that the significance of each place can be fully appreciated by the visitor on the spot. It also compares the contemporary wartime battlefields with their situation today, over eighty years later, by combining photographs with literary descriptions. By the end of the journey, on the peaceful summit of Hill 60, the traveller will have been presented with an overall picture of the whole environment of Gallipoli, as it was then and as it remains today.

The geography of the battlefields is very complicated, particularly at Anzac. It is hoped finally that this book will help to dispel the inevitable confusion of names and places and eventually allow this new clarity to increase the understanding of the historical events themselves.

As to why one should be interested in Gallipoli at all after so many years have passed, perhaps the best explanation has been given by the Official British Historian of the campaign, Brigadier General C F Aspinall-Oglander, who wrote at the start of his ‘Epilogue’:

The drama of the Dardanelles campaign by reason of the beauty of its setting, the grandeur of its theme and the unhappiness of its ending, will always rank amongst the world’s classic tragedies. The story is a record of lost opportunities and eventual failure; yet it is a story which men of British race may ponder if not without pain yet certainly not without pride; for amidst circumstances of unsurpassed difficulty and strain the bravery, fortitude and stoical endurance of the invading troops upheld most worthily the high traditions of the fighting services of the Crown.³ (Official History)

Chapter One

THE LANDINGS, 25 APRIL

The inexorable train of events that led to the campaign at Gallipoli had its roots in the British government’s response to a request from Russia for help in their struggle against the Turks in the Caucasus. On 2 January 1915 the Secretary of State for War, Field Marshal Lord Kitchener, informed the Russians that ‘a demonstration’ would be made against the Turks.¹ However, as no troops were available Kitchener felt that it would have to be a naval action and the most appropriate place for this would be against the Dardanelles, the narrow length of water leading from the Mediterranean into the Sea of Marmara. Over the ensuing weeks, in a series of clearly defined steps and mainly at the instigation of the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, this simple act of drawing Turkish resources away from the Caucasus was transformed into an elaborate scheme for the Navy to attack and seize the Dardanelles with the aim of affording even greater aid to Russia than had originally been anticipated. The naval commander in the Mediterranean, Vice-Admiral Sackville Carden, prepared a plan involving four stages that was finally approved by the War Council on 28 January.

The first two stages of Carden’s plan, the reduction of the defences around the entrance to the Dardanelles, were completed by the middle of March. The third stage, the reduction of the defences around the Narrows, the narrowest length of the Dardanelles, was set for 18 March. But by this time Carden had been replaced in command by Vice-Admiral John de Robeck. Initially the navy did well, subduing the fire from the shore as had been expected. But as the second division of ships began to withdraw in the early afternoon the first in a series of mysterious losses occurred. By the end of the day three ships had been lost and another three severely damaged. The extent of these casualties, together with their apparent lack of explanation, disconcerted de Robeck and the renewal of the attack on the following day was cancelled. Instead, at a meeting on 22 March, it was decided that a military force would first have to land on the peninsula to free the area around the Narrows before the Navy could clear a passage through them.

Vice-Admiral Carden

Vice-Admiral De Robeck

The initial decision to send the 29th Division, the last regular division of the British army not yet engaged on the Western Front, to support the Navy had been taken by Kitchener on 16 February but overturned by him four days later on the basis that it could not after all be spared. However, on 10 March this decision was again reversed and the 29th Division was despatched to the Mediterranean on

Reviews for Gallipoli

[jenianb · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A superb tour de force. Whilst all the facts, figures, regiments, armies, etc, make it a difficult read there can be no doubt that the authors' work should result in a review of everything we 'knew' about the Gallipoli Campaign.The first English language study of the campaign to draw heavily on Turkish sources, it disproves many of the long held beliefs of the 'English-language historiography' (the author's phrase). For example, the belief that the Ottoman guns were almost out of ammunition following the naval assault on 18 March 1915, and just one more push was required to break through into the Sea of Marmara and Constantinople, is firmly and positively put to rest. Also, the Ottoman forces defending the penninsula immediately prior to the allied landings were, contrary to western belief, well organised, trained, equipped and led.This book should be on the shelf of anyone with even a passing interest in the Gallipoli Campaign.