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Born-Dulwich

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.

53^rd Division began landing at Suvla Bay during the evening of 8^th August and as the individual battalions came ashore they were immediately put at the disposal of 11^th Division and thrown into the fight. The 2/4^th Royal West Surrey (Queens) battalion of 160 Brigade, landed at C Beach at 2.30am on 9^th August and at 5.30am began making their way to Chocolate Hill moving across the open ground south and south-east of the dried up salt lake bed during which they suffered several casualties from shrapnel and rifle fire. At Chocolate Hill they joined up with the hard pressed troops of 33 Brigade. They moved around the northern spur of the hill to support the 6^th Dublin battalion and occupied some old Turkish trenches there. A further advance towards Scimitar Hill was stopped by heavy fire, some of which was British shells falling short. Trying again shortly after they managed to get to the summit but had to retreat when the scrub on the hill caught alight, forcing them back to the old Turkish trenches where they consolidated their position. On this first day in action for 2/4^th Queens, the battalion suffered over 250 casualties. One of these was Sidney Smith.