Current Information:

135 Bolls Lane, South Acton

Pieta Military Cemetery, Malta

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 an heroic failure.

By the middle of June 1915, there had been three attempts at Helles to capture the village of Krithia and the heights of Achi Baba beyond it and all three had failed at great cost of human life. Future plans now revolved around fresh divisions arriving from Britain but that was still six weeks off and in the meantime it was a matter of holding the line and through a series of small attacks and raids trying to undermine, often literally, the Turkish positions.

2nd Royal Fusiliers, 86 Brigade, 29th Division had been in the thick of the fighting since the landings. Charles Ayres died from unknown causes on 11th June, 1915, after having been sent back to Malta. Gallipoli was not a healthy place to be in the summer of 1915. With all the dead bodies lying around, fierce heat, swarming flies and a great shortage of drinking water, let alone any to wash with, disease was rife. At one stage it was reckoned that up to 80% of the troops ashore had dysentery, many of them barely being able to stand. Many of the deaths at Gallipoli were from these diseases.