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Born-Putney

7th Field Ambulance Cemetery, Gallipoli

Gallipoli 1915

On 25 April, British, Australian and New Zealand forces landed on the Gallipoli peninsula. The plan was that these forces would soon defeat a demoralised Turkish army, knock Turkey out of the war, open up the Mediterranean to the Russian navy and threaten Austro-Hungary from the south. None of these things were achieved despite nine months of hard fighting in terrible conditions. It was a heroic failure.

By July, 1915, and after much fierce fighting, stalemate had set in at Gallipoli both at Cape Helles where the British and French had landed and at Anzac Cove where the Australian and New Zealand Corps were unable to break out of their beach head. Fresh troops were needed and they were on their way in the shape of four divisions from Britain and things were put on hold until they arrived.

The plan for August was for a landing at Suvla Bay to the north of Anzac Cove whilst at the same time, the ANZAC Corps, reinforced by some of the new British troops would effect a breakout from Anzac Cove and establish a line across the peninsula. Whilst this was going on the troops in the south at Helles would stage a number of diversionary attacks. But it all went horribly wrong and much of the reason for this can be explained by inadequate planning and leadership. Nobody seemed to know what they were supposed to be doing and Lieutenant-General Stopford, in charge of the Suvla landings was particularly out of his depth. The landings at Suvla failed to link up with the forces at Anzac and the breakout from there did not happen despite valiant efforts by all concerned. The loss of life on all fronts was again enormous. L.A. Carlyon’s excellent  book “Gallipoli” gives a superb yet chilling account of the events.

The 13th Division, including the 7^th North Staffordshire battalion of 39 Brigade, arrived at Helles in July, 1915. 13th Division had been chosen to assist in the breakout from Anzac Cove during the August attack and on 3rd August they moved to this location in preparation. 7^th North Staffordshire were part of the second  column of the left attacking force which would make their way northwards up the coast before turning inland to attack the heights of Sari Bair from the north with the objective of capturing Hill 971.  On the night of 6/7^th August 7^th North Staffordshire began their advance by moving past Plugge’s Plateau to the mouth of Reserve Gully and by dawn had reached the Aghyl Dere valley. They began making their way across extremely difficult terrain toward Hill Q, their first objective, which they were due to attack that evening. The men were extremely tired and Turkish snipers in the surrounding hills further impeded their progress so that by the end of the day they had not reached their destination and halted for the night, some way short of it.  Very little, if any progress was made on the following day and that night the two British battalions of the second column tried to push forward to join up with the 6^th Gurkhas and attack Hill Q at 4.15am on 8^th August. However, their efforts were in vain. Their journey along the upper reaches of the Aghyle Dere was so difficult that progress was extremely slow. They were already tired out, companies lost touch with each other and by daylight the column was strung out and a long way from its destination. One company of 7^th North Staffordshire did manage to make contact with the Gurkhas and joined the attack on Hill 60, but the Turkish fire was so strong that they could not reach the summit. Frank Gentle was killed on the 8^th August, maybe during this attempt to capture Hill 60 or perhaps from sniper fire earlier in the day.