In the Landing section…
- Why did the Anzacs land at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915?
- Trace events in the War which led up to the landing
- Read a brief Background to the landing in Denis Winters' book, 25 April 1915 - The Inevitable Tragedy
- Reports by the war correspondent Charles Bean of the landing
- Read
the book: A
duty clear before us
- North Beach and the Sari Bair Range by Richard Reid - Learn about the campaign from the accounts of a siganller from the 16th Battalion
- First to Fall – Read about the dawn 'Landing' at Gallipoli
More detail below…
Why did the Anzacs land at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915?
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? Find out from the options below.
Trace events in the War which led up to the landing at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915 (includes a war map outlining the events of that day).
Also read a brief description of the landing – an excerpt from Denis Winter's book, 25 April 1915 – The Inevitable Tragedy.
Reports by War Correspondents at the Landing
The Australians rose to the occasion. They did not wait for orders, or for the boats to reach the beach, but sprang into the sea, formed a sort of rough line, and rushed at the enemy’s trenches. Their magazines were not charged, so they just went in with the cold steel, and it was over in a minute for the Turks in the first trench had been either bayoneted or had run away, and the Maxim guns were captured.[Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, from the first report in Australia of the Australian landing at Gallipoli, reprinted from the Hobart Mercury, 8 May 1915]
Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett's first-hand reports of the Anzac landing at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915.
"The censorship has now passed beyond all reason...There are now at least four censors all of whom cut up your stuff. Maxwell starts it then Ward then General Braithwaite and finally Sir Ian Hamilton."
[Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, excerpt from his diary]
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.
Also read the behind the scenes story of Ashmead-Bartlett's 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.
Bullets struck fireworks out of the stones along the beach. The men did not wait to be hit, but wherever they landed they simply rushed straight up the steep slopes. Other small boats...were digging for the beach with oars. These occupied the attention of the Turks in the trenches, and almost before the Turks had time to collect their senses, the first boatloads were well up towards the trenches. Few Turks awaited the bayonet.
Read Charles Bean's first report of the Anzac landing.
A
duty clear before us
– North Beach and the Sari Bair Range
Researched and written by Richard Reid
"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."
[Lieutenant William Cameron, 9th Australian Light Horse, Diary, 5 August 1915, just before the opening of the Anzac August offensive, quoted in B Gammage, The Broken Years - Australian Soldiers in the Great War, Penguin Books, 1975, p. 68]
Read the story of North Beach and the Sari Bair Range, Gallipoli Peninsula 25 April – 20 December 1915.
