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Military History Journal -
Vol 6 No 4
Gallipoli: The Landings of 25 April 1915
by S. Monick
On 6 June 1944 there occurred
widespread commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the
Allied invasion of France. However, the point is
frequently overlooked that the Allied invasions of enemy
territory in World War II (initiated by ‘Operation Torch’,
the landings in North Africa in 1943) were anticipated
by a major Allied landing on enemy territory in World
War I. The writer is referring, of course, to the
landings on the Gallipoli Peninsula by combined British,
French, Australian and New Zealand forces, with the
object of eliminating Turkey as an enemy power. The
strategic reasons motivating this invasion have been
discussed in a previous article.(1) The invasion of the
Gallipoli Peninsula may be said to represent the ‘second
key’ by which the straits of the Dardanelles were to be
‘unlocked’ by the Allied powers, with the resultant
access to the Black Sea, the ‘back door’ to Russia. The
first key had been the endeavour to force these straits
by purely naval assault, culminating in the ill-fated
action of 18 March 1915, which forms the theme of an
earlier article.(2) In the following article it is not
the intention of the writer to provide a detailed
analysis of the entire Gallipoli campaign from the time
of the landings of 25 April to the final evacuation of
January 1916. Rather, it is intended to analyze in depth
the events of the first day of this invasion, the
strategic failures of which may be considered to be the
root of the ultimate frustration of the Allied
endeavours in European Turkey. There are, indeed, few
episodes in military history, if any, which can compare
with the Gallipoli invasion of 25 April 1915 in
illustrating the long term strategic and political
disasters which may accrue from the personality weakness
of a commander; in this instance Lt Gen Sir Ian Hamilton.
The Objective: The Topography of
the Gallipoli Peninsula
The southern end of the Gallipoli
Peninsula is dominated by the relatively low bald hump
of a ridge known to the Turks as Achi Tepe and to the
British (as a result of a map error) as Achi Baba.
Although only approximately 210 m high, it bestrides the
peninsula and absolutely dominates the ground to the
south. The Achi Baba ridge rises in an extremely gentle
slope. To the east of the summit the Dardanelles is
hidden from view until one traverses the two kilometres
to the lesser summit of Tenkir Kepe. From here it is
possible to see most of the Dardanelles up to the
Narrows. But two deep-plunging gorges — the Soghanli and
Saghir Deres — lie between the Achi Baba ridge and the
Kilid Bahr plateau, some 6,4 km to the north-east. Thus,
although the distances on the Gallipoli Peninsula are
short, the ground is so broken and rough, and the paths
so few, that progress north of Achi Baba and the Kilid
Bahr plateau is very slow indeed.
Approximately 16,1 km to the north-west
from Achi Baba a much higher ridge, almost 300 m in
height, dominates the sky line. This is Sari Bair (Turkish
for the ‘yellow ridge’) which forms the vertebrae, so to
speak, of this part of the peninsula. It has three
summits, all of approximately the same height, separated
from each other by a kilometre of undulating crest line.
The most northern summit, 381 m high, is called Koja
Chemen Tepe; the next highest, Besim Tepe, became known
to the British as ‘Hill Q’; the third, 285 m high, is
called Chunuk Bair. Between the southern Sari Bair
foothills and the western extremities of the Kilid Bahr
plateau a low, bare and almost flat plain stretches
across the peninsula from the blunt promontory of Gaba
Tepe on the west coast to the small village of Maidos on
the Dardanelles shore. The Sair Bair hills climb gently
westwards away from the Dardanelles but, on the west
coast, they collapse suddenly from the triple crests
into an impossible range of steep ravines, washaways and
cliffs cascading abruptly down to the Aegean. To the
north of Sari Bair is Suvla Plain and a great salt lake.
A triangle of bleak hills surrounds Suvla Plain on three
sides, making it appear as an enormous natural
amphitheatre (Map 1).
Prelude to Invasion: Allied Delays
and Turkish Preparations
Kitchener ordered 70 000 troops to
the Aegean with the simple instruction ‘to help the Navy
to reap the fruits of success’. He had given command of
this force on 12 March 1915 to Lt Gen Sir Ian Hamilton,
whose force consisted of the experienced 29th Division,
the untried ANZAC, the Royal Naval Division, and the
French Corps. His senior commanders were Lt Gen Sir W.
Birdwood (ANZAC), Maj Gen Sir Aylmer Hunter-Weston (29th
Division), and Maj Gen A. Paris (Royal Naval Division).
The French Corp was commanded by Gen A.G.L. d’Amade, and
comprised a motley collection of Zouaves and detachments
from the Foreign Legion. The full order of battle of the
Mediterranean Expeditionary Force in April 1915 was as
follows:
29th Division (Maj Gen A.G. Hunter-Weston)
86th Brigade
2 Royal Fusiliers
1 Lancashire Fusiliers
1 Royal Munster Fusiliers
1 Royal Dubtdn Fusiliers
87th Brigade
2 South Wales Borderers
1 King’s Own Scottish Borderers
1 Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers
1 Border Regiment
88th Brigade
4 Worcestershire Regiment
2 Hampshire Regiment
1 Essex Regiment
1/5 Royal Scots (Territorial Force)
XV Bde, Royal Horse Artillery (B, L and Y Batteries)
XVII Bde, Royal Field Artillery (13th, 26th and 92nd
Btys)
CXLVII Bde, Royal Field Artillery (10th, 97th and 368th
Btys)
460th (Howitzer) Bty, Royal Field Artillery
4th (Highland) Mountain Bde, Royal Garrison Artillery (Territorial
Force)
90th Heavy Bty, Royal Garrison Artillery
14th Siege Bty, Royal Garrison Artillery
1/2 London, 1/2 Lowland and 1/1 West
Riding Field Coys, Royal Engineers (Territorial Force)
Divisional Cyclist Coy
Total personnel: 17 649
Royal Naval Division (Maj Gen A.
Paris)
1st (Naval) Brigade (Brig Gen D. Mercer, RMLI)
Drake Battalion
Nelson Bn
Deal Bn, RMLI
2nd (Naval) Brigade (Cdre O. Blackhouse, RN)
Howe Rn
Hood Bn
Anson Bn
3rd (Royal Marines) Brigade (Brig Gen C.N. Trotman,
RMLI)
Chatham Bn, RMLI
Portsmouth Bn, RMLI
Plymouth Bn, RMLI
Motor and Maxim Sqn (Royal Naval Air Service)
1st & 2nd Field Coys, Engineers
Divisional Cyclist Coy
Total personnel: 10 007
Australian and New Zealand Army
Corps (ANZAC)
(Lt Gen Sir W. Birdwood)
1st Australian Division (Maj Gen W.T. Bridges)
1st Australian Brigade
1st (NSW) Battalion
2nd (NSW) Bn
3rd (NSW) Bn
4th (NSW) Bn
2nd Australian Brigade
5th (Victoria) Bn
6th (Victoria) Bn
7th (Victoria) Bn
8th (Victoria) Bn
3rd Australian Brigade
9th (Queensland) Bn
10th (S. Australia) Bn
11th (W. Australia) Bn
12th (5. & W. Australia and Tasmania) Bn
I (NSW) Field Artillery Bde (1, 2 & 3 Btys)
II (Victoria) Field Artillery Bde (4, 5 & 6 Btys)
III (Queensland) Field Artillery Bde (7, 8 & 9 Btys)
1, 2 & 3 Field Coys, Engineers
New Zealand and Australian Division (Maj Gen Sir A.
Godley)
New Zealand Brigade
Auckland Battalion
Canterbury Bn
Otago Bn
Wellington Bn
4th Australian Brigade
13th (NSW) Bn
14th (Victoria) Bn
15th (Queensland & Tasmania) Bn
16th (S. & W. Australia) Bn
New Zealand Field Artillery Brigade (1, 2 & 3 Btys)
New Zealand Field Howitzer Battery
Field Coy, New Zealand Engineers
Corps Troops
7th Indian Mountain Artillery Brigade
Ceylon Planters Rifle Corps
Total strength: 30 638
Corps Expeditionnaire D’Orient
(Gen A.G.L. d’Amade)
1st Division (Gen Masnou)
175th Regiment
Regt de Marche d’Afrique (2 bns Zouaves, 1 bn Foreign
Legion)
Colonial Brigade
4th Colonial Regt (2 bn Senegalese, 1 bn Colonial)
6th Colonial Regt (2 bns Senegalese, 1 bn Colonial)
6 Btys of artillery (75 mm)
2 Btys of artillery (65 mm)
Total strength: 16 762
Combined strength of total force: 75 056
The Royal Naval Division arrived at
Alexandria in March 1915 with a bizarre array of
equipment, including Rolls Royce armoured cars, motor
cars, motor cycles, some machine guns of varying degrees
of antiquity, two 12 pr guns, one 6.7 inch howitzer,
three 4.7 inch guns mounted on pontoons for river
operations and rifles of a different calibre from the
remainder of the Expeditionary Force. A curious feature
of the RND was the large number of literary men that it
attracted. The most famous of them was, of course,
Rupert Brooke, the darling of the ‘new Georgians’ who
died on a French hospital ship on 23 April off Skyros
from blood poisoning caused by an insect bite. Another
literary personality who was a member of the RND at
Gallipoli was Compton Mackenzie, who sailed for Cape
Helles in May 1915.
Apart from command, Hamilton was
given precious little else. He had a hopelessly out-of-date
map of the Dardanelles defences, an intelligence report
of the Turkish army as it was in 1903, and a phrase book
and a tourist’s guide for sightseers in Constantinople.
As one writer comments: ‘He might have been forgiven for
assuming that he was taking 70 000 troops for a spring
cruise in the Aegean followed by a pleasant summer
holiday overlooking the Golden Horn.’(3)
When Hamilton was given his command
he was General Officer Commanding the Central Force in
England. Such was the confusion prevailing in the higher
command regarding the Dardanelles Campaign that, when
Hamilton left Charing Cross station on 13 March, he had
one set of orders from Churchill (‘Land with all
available troops as soon as possible.’) and a completely
conflicting set of orders from Kitchener (‘Undertake
military operations only in the event of the fleet
failing to get through after every effort has been
exhausted.’).
This confusion extended from the
political establishment to infuse the counsels of the
military/naval commanders. At the root of this confusion
was the lack of a basic comprehension of combined
operations. Hamilton and de Robeck viewed combined
operations from two totally different and diametrically
opposed viewpoints. De Robeck was under the impression
that the Army would first occupy the peninsula and thus
allow his fleet to pass through the Dardanelles and
attack the defensive forts unhindered. Hamilton
conceived of a naval assault to first silence the shore
batteries. Moreover, there was no on-the-spot commander
to brief them. Only Maurice Hankey, Secretary to the War
Council, appears to have entertained any sensible doubts
concerning the operation. As he pointed out, no one had
yet even considered whether there were sufficient troops
available for a successful invasion. The Greeks, when
they had spoken of capturing the peninsula, had
submitted a plan involving an army of 150 000. Kitchener
had derisively said that half that number of British
troops would be ample and had added that, in any event,
whether there were enough or not, there were no more
available. He had in fact emphasized that the 29th
Division was only ‘on loan’ and must be returned after
use: ‘rather as if he saw it being shaken out of a
parcel, deployed in bloodless battle, then dusted off,
repacked and sent back again.’(4)
The War Council had ineptly decided
that the Greek island of Lemnos should be the military
base, apparently because it had a natural harbour large
enough to accommodate a fleet of troopships. It had
little else. There was a pier that would have served as
a landing stage for a pleasure launch and no other
facilities whatsoever for loading or unloading ships.
The entire population of the island was half that of the
Army of 70 000 it was proposed to base there; whilst the
water supply was totally inadequate. Rear Admiral Wemyss
was placed in command of the forces on the island of
which he was made Governor. Impossible as it was to
disembark and accommodate the forces required for the
operation, nobody in Whitehall had considered the need
of a depot ship or other means of supplying the needs of
70 000 men. As a result, many were returned to Egypt or
dispersed among the other Aegean islands. Those that
remained had to live aboard the troopships in the
harbour. However, it was gradually discovered that these
troopships themselves were in a state of chaos. They had
been packed for hurried departures from Egypt and
Britain, with no thought of rational packing and loading.
As a result, it soon proved impossible to locate needed
supplies, let alone organize the Army for action. Many
of the heavier weapons were hopelessly antiquated; less
than half the necessary artillery was present;
ammunition was of the wrong size; shells contained
shrapnel instead of high explosive; the redistribution
of troopships around the Aegean and Mediterranean had
separated men, vehicles and animals that belonged
together. In view of this rampant chaos it is not
surprising that Hamilton decided that he could only
reorganize his forces in the safety of Alexandria some
950 km distant. Accordingly, Hamilton embarked his
forces for Alexandria on 24 March 1915, intending to
return to Lemnos with his army and ready to launch the
attack on the peninsula on 14 April.
It was apparent that de Robeck and
Hamilton were embarking upon an enterprise in which none
of the essential elements of success were present. These
elements were undivided command, thorough knowledge of
the enemy defences and order of battle, precise details
of the terrain where troops were to be landed, surprise,
and a plan for the actual operation that was firm yet
flexible and understood by everybody. The absence of a
supreme commander is, in the circumstances,
understandable, for the War Council had never envisaged
a combined operation as such. However, what is neither
understandable nor forgivable is lack of intelligence
concerning the enemy. For four years prior to Turkey’s
entry into the war an unending stream of continuously up-dated
information had been communicated to the British War
Office from Constantinople. For the nine months
preceding the war Lt Col Cunliffe-Owen had held the post
of military attaché in Constantinople and had proved
himself to be a particularly astute and conscientious
officer. He had not only sent back the routine reports
that were required of him, but had made a complete
survey of the peninsula, reporting in full detail on gun
sites, mine-fields, torpedo tubes, and even the smoke
canisters that were later to cause such confusion during
the naval battle of 18 March. This information was
ignored, as indeed was Cunliffe-Owen himself, and
official quarters remained totally indifferent to both
throughout the campaign. Neither he nor his files of
detailed information were ever consulted. In a similar
manifestation of poor intelligence organization, the
only British admiral who had any local knowledge of
Turkish waters, Admiral Limpus, Chief of the pre-war
British Naval Mission to Constantinople, had been
withdrawn from the Dardanelles in September 1914, and
sent to manage the Malta dockyard.
If lack of intelligence was a most
serious deficiency in the Allied plan for the invasion
of the Gallipoli Peninsula, the lack of surprise was no
less so. The departure of the Allied fleet on 18 March
convinced the Turkish defenders under Gen L. von Sanders
that the — to them — inexplicable withdrawal of the
British/French naval forces heralded a land invasion.
Sanders’ initial supposition was strengthened by the
mass of intelligence he received daily concerning
British intentions, in the form of reports filtered back
from German agents in Alexandria, Greece and Syria. In
Alexandria itself the work of these German agents could
not have been simpler. Not only did the Egyptian
newspapers report fully on the movements of the British
military commanders, but as the ships were repeatedly
loaded and unloaded in the harbour and troops drilled on
the decks, every movement was blatantly noted and
photographed by reporters, fishermen and owners of dhows
who nightly sold their information in the alleys and
brothels. On the mainland of Greece and throughout the
numerous islands German agents were scattered in great
profusion. The King of Greece, Constantine, who was
married to the Kaiser’s sister, Princess Sophia, had
received his military training in Germany and held the
rank of Field Marshal in the German Army. Constantine’s
official policy of neutrality was opposed by Eleutherios
Venizelos, the Prime Minister, whose government favoured
the Allies. It was through Venizelos’ government that
the island of Lemnos had been seized as a naval base and
Rear Admiral Wemyss made Governor; and when Venizelos
government fell on 6 March 1915 it was replaced by a
strongly pro-German ministry. Thus, it should have been
no surprise to anybody that every move taken by Wemyss,
frantically preparing the harbour for the arrival of the
re-constituted Allied fleet, was known to Sanders almost
before it was made.
Through his Intelligence Section
Hamilton attempted to deceive the enemy by leading them
to think that the invasion would be made at Smyrna.
However, the enemy was not deceived in the slightest
degree. Whilst there was no activity to be discerned in
the direction of Smyrna, there was considerable activity
in the vicinity of the Gallipoli Peninsula and in the
Mudros harbour at Lemnos. British reconnaissance
aircraft flew over the peninsula daily photographing the
defences; a submarine attempting to scurry up the
Dardanelles (the B. 15) was detected, a lucky shot
killing the captain (T.S. Brodie) and six of her crew,
the remainder being taken prisoner. There was spasmodic
shelling from British warships; landing stages were
being built at Mudros; on the island of Imbros, close by,
there was a feverish assembling of troops; British
agents were known to be buying lighters and tugs whose
purpose could only be the transportation of the invading
army. Sanders was left in no doubt that the invasion
would be on an extensive scale. Indeed, he had even read
a newspaper interview with the French general, d’Amade,
in which the various methods of invading the peninsula
were freely discussed. With regard to intelligence, all
that the defenders lacked was a postcard from Hamilton
detailing the time, date and place of arrival. ‘Even
that’, one caustic historian subsequently commented,
‘would not have seemed outside the realm of possibility.’
Not only did Sanders have every
incentive to strengthen the defences of the peninsula,
but he was provided by the Allies with the time in which
to do so. This factor emanated from the appalling Allied
logistics. Hamilton’s arrival in Alexandria on 26 March
had left him only three weeks in which to meet his
deadline of 14 April. He had only a few inexperienced
general staff officers to translate his plans into
practical details. Moreover, he quickly learnt that he
was lacking sufficient engineers, artillery and landing
craft — three vital elements in his force. (It was the
lack of landing craft which forced Hamilton to resort to
the amateurish practice of sending agents shopping
through the Middle East, buying up lighters and tugs.)
Indeed, the improvisations forced upon Sanders in
preparing the defences (cf. below) were as nothing
compared with those to which Hamilton had to resort. As
no maps had been provided, cartographers were set to
work tracing the one with which Hamilton had been
provided in London, and attempts were made to add to it
the new details of the defences revealed by aerial
reconnaissance. An English bookshop in Cairo was found
to have a stock of Raedeker guides described by the
Egyptian sales assistant as ‘exactly the thing for the
soldiers visiting Turkey’. They were bought uninspected
and found to be guides of the Rhine Valley. At the last
moment it was recalled that the water supply on Lemnos
was quite inadequate and the bazaars of Alexandria had
to be ransacked for skins, tins, bottles and any other
containers that could hold water — to the great profit
and delight of the merchants. Further, whoever had
arranged for such transports as had been sent out from
England was clearly as ignorant as Hamilton of the
terrain of the peninsula and had provided lorries that
would have been eminently suitable for properly surfaced
roads. With the knowledge that the majority of roads in
the peninsula were, in fact, little more than cart
tracks came the necessity to provide mules in abundance.
These were eventually bought and formed into the Zion
Mule Corps.
Embarkation of the repacked and
reorganized army at Alexandria had commenced on 10
April, and it arrived uneventfully at Lemnos during the
following eight days. At this point in time, when the
last shipping had returned to an enormously overcrowded
Mudros Harbour, the deadline of 14 April had, of course,
been abandoned. In addition to the problems involved in
the reorganization of the invasion force at Alexandria
elucidated above, the weather now occasioned further
delays. The climate of the Aegean in spring is
unpredictable, and during most of March and April storms
had been capriciously alternating with fine days. On 21
April, when de Robeck hesitantly gave the signal to
prepare to leave harbour and set sail for the beaches to
launch the attack of 23 April, a gale descended upon the
invasion fleet. Doubtful of the weather-resistant
qualities of the miscellany of vessels involved (the
fleet involved a motley collection of 200 warships,
tramp and pleasure steamers, caiques, trawlers, liners;
in short, any vessel that could be pressed into service
as a troopship) de Robeck countermanded the signal. The
attack was to be launched on 24 April. Then he
countermanded that order too, the gale showing no signs
of abating. Finally, but still with hesitation and doubt,
he ordered that the fleet should raise steam and move
out from the harbour on 23 April, and launch the attack
on 25 April.
Liman von Sanders’ 5th Army of 80 000
men, formed in six divisions, was concentrated in the
places that Sanders thought most likely to bear the
brunt of the Allied invasion.(5) These were Kum Kale and
Besika Bay on the Asiatic shore and, on the peninsula
itself, the southern tip extending up to Chunuk Bair,
the towns of Gallipoli and Bulair, and the Gulf of Saros.
In these areas he placed five of his six divisions; the
sixth, under the command of Lt Col Mustapha Kemal (the
future Kemal Attaturk, the ruler of Turkey) was placed
inland around the village of Boghali (Map 1). Within
these areas the defenders were widely dispersed, some
troops being posted watchfully on the western and
southern coastline of the peninsula and on the eastern
side of the Narrows at Chanak Kale; others, like Kemal’s,
being held inland in order to prevent any successful
advance of the Allied forces across the peninsula —
which would, of course, have cut the 5th Army in two —
and to be available as reinforcements in any area as
called upon. Having effected these |
