Early in 1915 it seemed to the British Government that, since there were no longer any flanks to be turned on the Western front, the lines in France and Flanders were settling down to a siege and a war of positions. They therefore looked elsewhere for some more promising area of battle, since, if the front door of a fortress is barred, there may be an entrance by a back door. The place which promised best was the narrow straits called the Dardanelles, which led from the Ægean into the Sea of Marmora, and so to Constantinople. There full use could be made of the British fleet. The capture of the Straits would involve the fall of the capital, and this might drive Turkey out of the war. Success there would bring over to our side the hesitating Balkan neutral states. It would open the road for Russia to import munitions of war, and to export her accumulated supplies of wheat. Lastly, Russia was being hard pressed, and had appealed to the Western Allies for aid, and her request could not be refused.
Accordingly, it was decided to make an attempt upon the Dardanelles. The first effort was made by ships alone. But the Turks had powerful forts on both sides of the straits which could not be destroyed by naval guns. It was clear that the Dardanelles could not be opened until the Gallipoli Peninsula on the north side was captured. Unfortunately, the naval attack had forewarned the enemy, and he had enormously strengthened his position on the Gallipoli heights.
The forces put at Sir Ian Hamilton's disposal for the enterprise were the 29th Division of regulars and Territorials, two divisions from Australia and New Zealand, the Royal Naval Division, and a French brigade. Of these troops only the 29th Division had had any experience in war. Sir Ian Hamilton decided that the only possible landing-places were the beaches at the south-west end of the Peninsula, and another beach at Gaba Tepe, some distance up the northern side. His aim was, by landing at the point, to fight his way to Krithia village, and carry the Achi Baba ridge, while the Australians from Gaba Tepe could turn the right wing of the Turkish defence. Once the Achi Baba heights were captured the Straits would be ours.
The day originally fixed for the attempt was 23rd April. But on the 20th a storm rose which for forty-eight hours lashed the Ægean. On the 23rd it abated, and that afternoon the first of the black transports began to move out of Mudros harbour. Next day the rest of the force followed, all in wild spirits for this venture into the unknown. They recalled to one spectator the Athenians departing for the Sicilian expedition, when the galleys out of sheer light-heartedness raced each other to Ægina.
The morning of Sunday, the 25th, was one of those which delight the traveller in April in the Ægean. A light mist fills the air before dawn, but it disappears with the sun, and all day there are clear skies, still seas, and the fresh, invigorating warmth of spring. At the butt end of Gallipoli there are five little beaches, originally nameless, but now for all time to be known by the letters affixed to them on the war maps of the British Army. Beginning from the left, there is Beach Y, and, a little south of it, Beach X. Rounding Cape Tekke, we reach Beach W, where a narrow valley opens between the headlands of Tekke and Helles. Here there is a broad semicircular stretch of sand. South of Helles is Beach V, a place of the same configuration as Beach W, but unpleasantly commanded by the castle and village of Sedd-el-Bahr at its southern end. Lastly, inside the Straits, on the east side of Morto Bay, is Beach S, close to the point of Eski Hissarlik. The landing at Gaba Tepe, on the north side of the peninsula, was entrusted to the Australian and New Zealand troops; that at the Helles beaches to the 29th Division, with some units of the Naval Division. It was arranged that simultaneously the French should land on the Asiatic shore at Kum Kale, to prevent the Turkish batteries from being brought into action against our men at Beaches V and S.
Let us assume that an aeroplane enabled us to move up and down the shores of the peninsula and observe the progress of the different landings. About one in the morning the ships arrive at a point 5 miles from the Gallipoli shores. At 1.20 boats are lowered, and the troops line up on the decks. Then they embark in the flotillas, and steam pinnaces begin to tow them shorewards in the hazy half-light before dawn. The Australians destined for Gaba Tepe are carried in destroyers which take them close in to the shore.
The operations are timed so that the troops reach the beaches at daybreak. Slowly and very quietly the boats and destroyers steal towards the land. A little before 5 an enemy's searchlight flares out. The boats are now in shallow water under the Gaba Tepe cliffs, and the men are leaping ashore. Then comes a blaze of rifle-fire from the Turkish trenches on the beach, and the men who have landed charge them with the bayonet. The whole cliff seems to leap into light, for everywhere trenches and caverns have been dug in the slopes. The fire falls most heavily on the men still in the boats, who have the difficult task of waiting as the slow minutes bring them shoreward.
The Australians do not linger. They carry the lines on the beach with cold steel, and find themselves looking up at a steep cliff a hundred feet high. In open order they dive into the scrub, and scramble up the loose yellow rocks. By a fortunate accident their landing is farther north than was intended, just under the cliffs of Sari Bair. At Gaba Tepe the long slope would have given the enemy a great advantage in defence; but here there is only the 40-foot beach and then the cliffs. He who knows the Ægean in April will remember those fringed sea walls and bare brown slopes. From a distance they look as arid as the Syrian desert, but when the traveller draws near he finds a paradise of curious and beautiful flowers—anemone, grape hyacinth, rock rose, asphodel, and amaryllis. Up this rock garden the Australians race, among the purple cistus and the matted creepers and the thickets of myrtle. They have left their packs at the foot, and scale the bluffs like chamois. It is an achievement to rank with Wolfe's escalade of the Heights of Abraham. Presently they are at the top, and come under the main Turkish fire. But the ground gives good cover, and they set about entrenching the crest of the cliffs to cover the boats' landing. This is the position at Sari Bair at 7 a.m.
As we journey down the coast we come next to Beach Y. There at 7 a.m. all is going well. The 1st King's Own Scottish Borderers and the Plymouth battalion of the Naval Division, landing at a place which the enemy thought wholly impracticable, have without difficulty reached the top of the cliffs. At Beach X things are even better. The Swiftsure has plastered the high ground with shells, and the landing ship, the Implacable, has anchored close to the shore in six fathoms of water. With scarcely a casualty the 2nd Royal Fusiliers have gained the cliff line.
The Landing Beaches at Gallipoli.
There has been a harder fight at Beach W, between Tekke and Helles, where the sands are broader. The shore has been trenched throughout, and wired and mined almost to the water's edge, and in the scrub behind are hidden the Turkish snipers. Though our ships have bombarded the shore for three-quarters of an hour, they cannot clear out the enemy, and do not seem to have made much impression on the wire entanglements. The first troops have landed to the right under the cliffs of Cape Helles, and have reached the top, while a party on the left has scaled Cape Tekke. But the men of the 1st Lancashire Fusiliers who landed on the shore itself have had a fiery trial. They suffered heavily while still on the water, and on landing came up against unbroken lines of wire, while snipers and concealed machine-guns rained death on them. Here we have had heavy losses, and at 7 a.m. the landing has not yet succeeded.
The case is more desperate still at Beach V, under Sedd-el-Bahr. Here, as at Beach W, there are a stretch of sand, a scrubby valley, and flanking cliffs. It is the strongest of the Turkish positions, and troops landing in boats are exposed to every type of converging fire. A curious expedient has been tried. A collier, the River Clyde, with 2,000 men of the 2nd Hampshires, 1st Dublin Fusiliers, and 1st Munster Fusiliers on board, and eight boat-loads towed by steam pinnaces, approached close to the shore. The boat-loads—the rest of the Dublin Fusiliers—suffered horribly, for when they dashed through the shallows to the beach they were pinned to the ground by fire. Three lines of wire entanglements had to be forced, and a network of trenches. A bank of sand, 5 or 6 feet high, runs at the back, and under its cover the survivors have taken shelter. In the steel side of the ship doors have been cut, which open and disgorge men into the lighters alongside, like some new Horse of Troy. But a tornado of shot and shell rained on her, and of the gallant men who leaped from the lighters to the reef and from the reef to the sea, very few reached the land. Those