Landing at Cape Helles (Gallipoli)

Background

In March 1915 the Allied fleet had failed to force the Dardanelles by ships alone, and General Sir Ian Hamilton's Mediterranean Expeditionary Force was sent to take the Gallipoli peninsula so that the navy could get through the Straits. Hamilton decided to throw his main attack against the southern tip at Cape Helles, with the Kilid Bahr plateau, which overlooks the Narrows, as the ultimate objective. On the way stood Achi Baba, which the Turks used as their main observation post and artillery command point in the south.

The Ottoman Fifth Army under the German Marshal Liman von Sanders was spread to meet a landing anywhere. Two divisions stood at the Bulair isthmus, one held the Asiatic shore, the 19th Division waited in general reserve, and the 9th Division under Lieutenant-Colonel Halil Sami Bey guarded the whole coast from Suvla to Sedd el Bahr. Liman stressed mobility rather than rigid beach defence. British GHQ believed a full Turkish division lay south of Achi Baba; in fact there were only two battalions.

The navy refused a night landing because of the currents and confined waters, so the assault was made at first light on 25 April. The 29th Division took the Helles beaches. The Australian and New Zealand landing went in the same morning further north at what became Anzac, and a French regiment made a diversion at Kum Kale on the Asiatic shore.

The armies

Major-General Aylmer Hunter-Weston's 29th Division was regular infantry, the only regular division in the expedition. Two Royal Naval Division battalions were attached: the Plymouth Battalion, Royal Marine Light Infantry, for Y Beach, and the Anson Battalion for working parties. That gave Hunter-Weston 12½ fighting battalions, 7½ in the covering force and five in the main body. Rear-Admiral Rosslyn Wemyss ran the naval side. Fire support came from battleships and cruisers, but their flat-trajectory guns firing armour-piercing shell were poor against trenches and field guns. The SS River Clyde, a converted collier with sally ports cut in her sides and machine guns in her bows, was to run aground at V Beach and pour about 2,000 men ashore.

The defence of the southern zone fell to the 26th Regiment under Lieutenant-Colonel Kadri Bey. Its 3rd Battalion, under Major Mahmut Sabri Bey, held the Sedd el Bahr sector: a company at W, a company with four Maxim guns at Sedd el Bahr covering V, a platoon at S and twelve men watching X. Only W and V were wired and covered by machine guns. The 25th Regiment and two field batteries were in divisional reserve at Serafim Farm on the Kilid Bahr plateau.

The battle

Y and X Beaches, dawn. The flank landings went in first. At Y, on the Aegean cliffs well north of the tip, the 1st King's Own Scottish Borderers, a company of the 2nd South Wales Borderers and the Plymouth Battalion, about 2,000 men, were ashore unopposed between 5.15 and 5.45 a.m. At X, guarded by twelve men, the 2nd Royal Fusiliers reached the cliff top with no casualties by 6.30 a.m.

W Beach. The naval bombardment ran from 5 to 5.30 a.m. but did not cut the wire. At about 6 a.m. the 1st Lancashire Fusiliers rowed in under heavy rifle and machine-gun fire from one Ottoman company, cut through the belts of wire at the water's edge, and by 7.15 a.m. held a line under the cliffs. Six of them won the Victoria Cross, hailed in the press as "six VCs before breakfast", and the beach became Lancashire Landing. Brigadier-General Hare was wounded early. Hill 114 was taken by 11 a.m., linking with X, but Hill 138 was still in Turkish hands after 2 p.m., when the Worcestershires went up to help; the redoubts fell later, and the force did not push on to the second objective.

V Beach. Here the River Clyde grounded at 6.22 a.m. Of about 700 Royal Dublin Fusiliers who came in by boat around 6.30, some 300 were killed and many more wounded; men drowned under their equipment. When the Munsters and Hampshires ran down the gangways from the collier they were cut down; the steam hopper meant to bridge the gap to the beach swung broadside. The survivors sheltered under a low sandbank. At 10.21 a.m. Hamilton suspended the landing at V and diverted the follow-up troops to W. Six more VCs went to sailors and naval division men at V, among them Commander Edward Unwin. The rest of the Clyde's troops got ashore only after dark.

S Beach. Three companies of the 2nd South Wales Borderers landed at Morto Bay around 7.30 a.m., took de Tott's Battery for 63 casualties over two days, and then dug in as ordered.

Y Beach, the lost chance. At 9.21 a.m. Hamilton asked Hunter-Weston whether he wanted more men landed at Y; Hunter-Weston, intent on the main beaches, declined. Lieutenant-Colonel Godfrey Matthews walked inland towards Krithia without seeing a Turk, then pulled back to the cliff top. Command between Matthews and Lieutenant-Colonel Archibald Koe was unclear, and little digging was done. At 1 p.m. Halil Sami sent a reserve battalion, a field battery and machine guns to drive the landing into the sea. Attacks began at 5.40 p.m. and came on all night; Koe was mortally wounded and Matthews' signals for reinforcement went unanswered. By dawn the Ottomans had drawn off, but amid confused orders the force re-embarked, the last men leaving by 11 a.m. on 26 April.

26 April: Sedd el Bahr. Mahmut Sabri's men, reinforced by two more companies, held the village and old fort above V through the night. On the morning of the 26th Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Doughty-Wylie and Captain G. N. Walford led the survivors of V Beach forward; about 2.30 p.m. the castle on Hill 141 fell and Doughty-Wylie was killed at the summit, both men winning posthumous VCs. By 3 p.m. V Beach was secure. That afternoon the Ottoman line fell back towards Krithia under fire from the fleet.

Aftermath

The British were ashore, but well short of their first-day objective of Achi Baba. The official historian judged the first day more favourable to the Turks than to the British: in the south Hamilton had 12½ battalions ashore by 1 p.m. against two, yet the defenders held their ground. Losses were severe on both sides. The Turkish official account admits 1,898 casualties south of Achi Baba in two days, about 400 per battalion engaged; the Dublins and Munsters were all but destroyed at V, and within a week the British had about 8,900 casualties. The French, who had taken Kum Kale for 778 casualties, re-embarked and landed on the British right on 27 April.

On 28 April Hunter-Weston attacked towards Krithia with about 14,000 tired men, poorly briefed, and was stopped short of the village with some 3,000 Allied casualties: the First Battle of Krithia. Helles became a trench stalemate until the British left from Lancashire Landing on 9 January 1916, the last troops off the peninsula.

Argument centres on Y Beach, where 2,000 men outnumbered every Turk south of Achi Baba and were left idle, and on Hunter-Weston's grip of the battle from HMS Euryalus. Turkish memory honours Mahmut Sabri's battalion, whose defence of Seddülbahir is credited with lasting some 36 hours.

Wargaming it

Helles is a classic opposed-landing problem in miniature. Each beach is a self-contained scenario: V and W are frontal assaults against wire, a company of riflemen and a few machine guns, with naval gunfire that rarely hits what matters; S and X are quick, nearly bloodless lodgements; Y is a test of nerve with nobody to fight until dusk. Platoon- or company-level skirmish suits V or W, with boats arriving in waves and a hard time limit. For the whole landing, a battalion-level game on the area south of Achi Baba lets one player run all five beaches.

The interesting decisions are about command and information. The British player should not know the true Ottoman strength; GHQ believed a whole division lay south of Achi Baba. Y Beach is the great "what if": does Matthews march on Krithia or dig in, and does Hunter-Weston accept Hamilton's offer of more men at 9.21 a.m.? Model slow signals from the beach to the flagship. The Ottoman player, with tiny forces, must decide when to commit the reserve from Serafim Farm and where; Halil Sami's choice to send a battalion to Y at 1 p.m. is the key move. River Clyde rules, gangways as a killing zone and the hopper's failed bridge, make V Beach memorable. A night phase at Y, and a 26 April scenario for Sedd el Bahr and Hill 141, round out a campaign.

Maps and pictures

Pictures from the time

Photographs by the armies' photographers and the press, and drawings made at the time: free-to-use pictures from the battle's category on Wikimedia Commons. Each opens its file page there, with the full caption and source.