The Anzac landing: overview
Historians still debate whether the Anzac troops were landed at the correct place. Why did the Allied commanders send Australian troops to land on a beach before rugged hills, ridges and steep gullies? What was the objective? What happened?
‘The attack on Gallipoli was one of the more imaginative strategies of the First World War ... Gaining control of the Dardanelles would re-establish communications with Russia and release wheat and shipping locked in the Black Sea by Turkey.’ Trace events in the War which led up to the landing at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915. more ...
It was only shortly after the landing that high command let it be known that an error had been made – the landing should have been made on Brighton Beach, south of Anzac Cove and in a locality of relatively friendly topography.
The boat I was in landed on the point. There were three boats to the left of us containing 9th Battalion men, most of whom were killed or wounded in the boat on the extreme left. If Commander Dix states that he was on the extreme right, he is wrong, because the l0th Battalion and one of the 11th were on the right of my boat. I met Drake-Brockman after attacking and reaching the top of the point and he came up from the right side of the hill. The whole of the boats landed between the point and where afterwards the pier was built. My company was on the extreme left of the attack but the 9th Battalion boats landed to the left of us.
Read a brief description of the landing – an excerpt from Denis Winter's book, 25 April 1915 – The Inevitable Tragedy. more ...
Special feature: war correspondents at the landing
War correspondents Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett and Charles Bean both provided first-hand accounts of the landing. Ashmead-Bartlett's first report in Australia of the Anzac landing at Gallipoli was reprinted in the Hobart Mercury on 12 May 1915. The Australian Prime Mininister, Andrew Fisher made public Bean's first report of the Anzac landing on 17 May 1915.
Ashmead-Bartlett became increasingly frustrated with the military censorship of his reports on the Gallipoli campaign. Read his views on censorship in an extract from his diary and the behind the scenes story of his attempts to reveal what he saw as the truth about the campaign. Other excerpts from Ashmead-Bartlett's War Diary also reveal the truth behind the highly censored reports that the public read. more ...
Landing section highlights
The dawn 'Landing' was carried out by the four infantry battalions of the 3rd Brigade, First Australian Division. These men came from what Charles Bean, Australia's official historian, called the 'outer states' – Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania and Queensland. The 11th Battalion, from Western Australia, came ashore not at Anzac Cove, but on the beach beneath the slopes leading down from Ari Burnu Point and Plugge's Plateau. more ...
Ere another entry is made in this book we will have passed through a very trying time. We are leaving almost everything behind; whether we see it again or not will be a matter of luck. And now we go forward in the full consciousness of a 'duty clear before us', and ... we can only say 'Thy will be done'. God grant comfort to those in anxiety and sorrow and give our leaders wisdom."
Read the book A 'duty clear before us' - North Beach and the Sari Bair Range,
Gallipoli Peninsula 25 April – 20 December 1915.
In this work I have not touched upon the big historical facts, but have endeavoured to portray War as the soldier sees it, shorn of all its pomp and circumstance; the War that means cold and hunger, heat and thirst, the ravages of fever; the War that brings a hail of lead that tears the flesh and rends the limb, and makes of men, heroes.
In his book of drawings Crusading at Anzac, A.D. 1915, Signaller Ellis Silas of the 16th Battalion rendered dramatic scenes of the Battle of the Landing. more ...
