Visit Gallipoli

After the failure to capture Hill 60, campaigning on Gallipoli came to an end. Both sides were exhausted and had lost heavily during the August battles. One result of the August battles in the Sari Bair Range beyond North Beach was a great extension of the Anzac area. This required the garrisoning of a whole new line of trenches and defensive positions, all of which needed food, ammunition, trenching equipment and other essential supplies. It was also assumed that what little had been won from the Turks on the Gallipoli peninsula would be held over the coming winter until a new campaign could be started in 1916. Thus it became necessary to look at the whole problem of supply, trench and road maintenance and medical facilities for the coming winter. Once winter weather started in earnest, it might prove difficult to land stores or evacuate the sick and wounded. As most sections of North Beach had now become safe from Turkish fire, it was decided to establish a new base there, a base that ultimately became larger than the one at Anzac Cove.

At the commencement of the August offensive a rudimentary pier was built at the centre of North Beach. This pier was out of sight of the Turkish artillery observers at Kabatepe, from where they relayed information to their guns in a position known as the Olive Grove. The guns at the Olive Grove regularly shelled transport vessels approaching Anzac Cove. On 8 August the usefulness of the North Beach pier became apparent when a barge-load of badly needed transport mules was shelled as it came into the Cove. The barge was towed around Ari Burnu point and its cargo unloaded in safety. Another attraction of the North Beach pier was that behind the beach was a large area of relatively flat ground protected by the cliffs behind the Sphinx. This area soon became the main depot for all the reserve stores at Anzac and winter supplies were steadily built up there during September and October.

Further along North Beach, opposite No 1 and No 2 Outposts, a sub-base was established during the August fighting. Here were the headquarters of General Alexander Godley’s New Zealand and Australian Division and the British 13th Division. It, too, became a busy site, especially during the August battles when, according to Charles Bean, ‘the activity around Godley’s headquarters … during August equalled that of Anzac [Cove]’. Dumps of fodder for the transport mules were built up at the Outposts base and lines of mules could be seen tethered there.

In preparation for the winter, tent hospitals were landed and erected. The British 16th Casualty Clearing Station received patients at a site near the Outposts. Unfortunately, enemy planes observed this new headquarters site and guns at the Olive Grove soon found the range. On 29 August, shells fell, killing six in the 13th British Division headquarters and wounding several more. Subsequent shelling hit the hospital, killing some patients. Charles Bean, however, felt this hitting of the hospital to be inevitable because it was sited so close to a major headquarters–‘the medical units could not and did not accuse the enemy of a breach of the rules of war’.