Background to the Landing
Gallipoli
- Map showing the lead up to the Gallipoli Campaign. A larger version appears on the Lead up events page in the Landing section.
The AIF was raised to fight against German forces, but en route to Britain in October 1914 it was diverted to Egypt because of a shortage of suitable accommodation and training areas in Britain. It was fortuitous, therefore, that the AIF was on the spot when British attention turned to the possibility of attacking Turkey through the Dardanelles, the narrow straits leading to the Sea of Marmara and the Turkish capital, Constantinople. The First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, had for some time been concerned over the comparatively inactive role played by the Royal Navy, and there was growing anxiety within the War Council about the military situation on the Western Front, where there seemed to be little headway against the German advance. On 2 January 1915, the British government received an urgent appeal from Russia, asking for a British attack on Turkey to divert the Turks from the Caucasus where Russian forces were in danger of being overrun. This spurred Churchill to ask the Commander of the British Squadron in the Aegean if the Dardanelles could be forced and Constantinople taken by naval forces alone, i.e. without a substantial land contribution. The answer Churchill received was heavily qualified, but he did not inform the War Council of these reservations, and on 19 February 1915 the naval attack on the Dardanelles began. It was an utter failure, the combination of Turkish mines and mobile howitzers being more than a match for the fleet of ageing battleships that had been committed to the operation.
Although one of the initial attractions of the Dardanelles operation had been that it would not require a significant number of troops, and even then mainly in a garrison role on the Gallipoli peninsula once the straits had been forced and the Turks cleared from the area, the War Council gradually came to the view that troops would have to be landed on the peninsula to overcome the Turkish defences so that mine clearing operations could proceed with minimal interference, thus allowing the fleet to force the straits and advance towards Constantinople. The only regular British division not committed to the Western Front, the 29th, was not deemed sufficient by itself to carry out the land operations against the Turks. Churchill added the Royal Naval Division, the French committed a division, and the Australian and New Zealand forces, then training in Egypt, were conveniently on hand to swell the available numbers.
The Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, General Sir Ian Hamilton, decided to mount his main attack at the base of the Gallipoli peninsula, landing the bulk of his forces on five beaches around Cape Helles, with a secondary landing by Australian and New Zealand troops designed to seize the Sari Bair Ridge, thereby providing cover for the remainder of the force to move to the eastern side of the peninsula thus cutting it off from Turkish reinforcements. The Royal Naval Division would mount a diversionary attack, and the French would land on the Asiatic coast to prevent heavy Turkish batteries from interfering with the British landings at Cape Helles.
- Troops lowering themselves into tow boats for the landing at Anzac, 6 am, 25 April 1915. (AWM A01829)
Sir William Birdwood, General Officer Commanding Australian and New Zealand forces, had little time to prepare. The 3rd Brigade had been on the island of Lemnos, off the coast of Gallipoli, since early March; it was joined on April 12th by the 1st and 2nd Brigades, and together they carried out a number of practice landings. Time was short, however, and the operation, originally scheduled for April 23rd, was postponed by bad weather until the 25th.
At 3.30 am the battleships and their attendant transports anchored in total darkness some 3500 yards off the Gallipoli coast. The troops were loaded into ships' boats and towed by steamers which at 4 am cast off the tows; the boats were then rowed ashore. It soon became clear, as the boats bunched together, that they had taken a wrong direction and that the troops would be landed about a mile to the north of the planned landing site, an area marked by rugged cliffs rather than the more open country of the intended landings. The result was disaster for the ANZAC troops: chaos on the crowded beach, and utter confusion as the tangle of rugged spurs and ravines rendered the already inadequate maps completely useless. Some troops managed to advance inland, but the terrain forced them to split into small groups that quickly lost contact with each other. In mid-morning, Turkish troops under Mustapha Kemal (later, as Kemal Ataturk, president of Turkey) mounted a vigorous counter-attack, and most of the early ANZAC gains were lost. That evening, Bridges and Birdwood both advised withdrawal, but Hamilton ruled that an evacuation could not reasonably be carried out, and ordered the troops to dig in.
Thus began an eight-month campaign that failed to achieve any of its objectives. By the end of the first day, 25 April 1915, 621 Australians had been killed in action, the great majority of them having no known grave. These were the first Anzacs to fall.