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Seddülbahir Fort and Ertuğrul Cove
Send me reinforcements…
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- The Yahya Çavuş Şehitlik ve Aniti, the Sergeant Yahya memorial to the left of Ertuğrul Rampart at Ertuğrul Cove, Seddülbahir.
From the top of the Ertuğrul Rampart at the tip of the Gallipoli peninsula, the most south-easterly point of mainland Europe, the view is magnificent. To the left is the mouth of the Dardanelles and two and a half miles across the straits is Kum Kale and beyond that the ruins of Troy. A young British officer, the poet Patrick Shaw-Stewart, who fought the Turks here in 1915, was conscious that not far away was the ancient battleground of Homer’s Iliad:
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- View from Ertuğrul Rampart over Ertuğrul Cove looking towards Seddülbahir Fort.
Was it hard, Achilles,
So very hard to die?
Thou knowest, and I know not –
So much the happier I.
I will go back in the morning
From Imbros over the sea;
Stand in the trench, Achilles,
Flame-capped, and shout for me.
On the morning of 25 April 1915, the British deliberately ran aground at Ertuğrul Cove (they called it ‘V Beach’) below the rampart an old steamer, the River Clyde. From the holds of the River Clyde came a stream of British Empire soldiers, men of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, the Royal Munster Fusiliers, the 2nd Hampshire Regiment, and a few men of the Royal Naval Division. Other smaller tows brought the bulk of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers to the beach. The heroism of the British landings here is a well-known story but less acknowledged is the stout defence put up by the small local Turkish garrison. It was witnessed from out at sea on the Dreadnought battleship HMS Queen Elizabeth by the British commander, General Sir Ian Hamilton:
Through our glasses we could quite clearly watch the sea being whipped up all along the beach and about the River Clyde by a pelting storm of rifle bullets. We could see also how a number of our daredevils were up to their necks in the tormented water trying to struggle on to land.
[Hamilton, quoted in Les Carlyon, Gallipoli, Sydney 2001, p.203]
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- The landing from the River Clyde at Ertuğrul Cove (V Beach) on 25 April 1915 as featured in H W Wilson and J A Hammerton (eds), The Great War, London, 1916, p.7. This imaginative reconstruction of the Landing shows the men of the Munster Fusiliers and the Hampshire Regiment rushing out of the sides of the specially cut doors in the sides of the steamer. The original plan called for the soldiers to then reach the shore by passing over barges forming a bridge between the ship and the beach. In reality, the barges did not reach the beach and dozens of men were killed as they tried to make their way across the barges and into the water.
Above Ertuğrul Cove and in the old fort of Seddülbahir (Barrier of the Sea) the Turks had only a small number of men and four old machine guns. As the British boats came into the beach, and when men tried to land from the River Clyde, these machine guns did terrible work. A Royal Naval Air Service observer flying above the battle that morning reported that the shallow waters of the cove were ‘absolutely red with blood’. Midshipman George Drewry, who was awarded the Victoria Cross for his courage at this landing, wrote to his father: ‘I never knew blood smelt so strong before’.
To the left of the Ertuğrul Rampart is a monument to the Turkish soldiers who defended Ertuğrul Cove - the Yahya Çavuş Şehitlik ve Aniti, the Sergeant Yahya cemetery and memorial. Sergeant Yahya, 10th Company, 3rd Battalion, 26th Regiment, took over the company when the commander Lieutenant Abdürrahim was killed. For most of 25 April 1915 the sergeant and other isolated pockets of Turks in the Seddülbahir Fort beside Ertuğrul Cove, fought back the British landings. The Sergeant Yahya memorial imagines him and his men charging with bayonets fixed towards the cove; in reality, they did far more damage with their rifles.
The defence of Ertuğrul Cove was a desperate affair for the Turks. In charge of the 3rd Battalion, 26th Regiment, was Major Mahmut who, when he ordered one of his platoon commanders, Abdul Rahman, at Seddülbahir Fort to lead a charge at the enemy, received this response:
Send the doctors to carry off my wounded, alas! alas! My Captain for God’s sake send me reinforcements because hundreds of soldiers are landing. Hurry up, what on earth will happen, my Captain.
However, the Turks managed to pin the British down during 25 April and it was only under cover of darkness that the remaining men on the River Clyde could be landed. On the morning of 26 April 1915, a charge was led up from the beach and through Seddülbahir village by Colonel Charles Doughty-Wylie. Force of numbers now pushed the Turks back. Doughty-Wylie was killed and his grave, the only single Allied grave outside a cemetery on Gallipoli, stands today just above Seddülbahir. Of the small Turkish garrison who defended Ertuğrul Cove, the British official historian wrote that:
… they rendered a service to the defence which it would be difficult to exaggerate … There can be little doubt that the failure to capture ‘V’ Beach till the 26th was the main cause of the collapse of the British plan.
[Quoted in Phil Taylor and Pam Cuper, Gallipoli: A Battlefield Guide, Kenthurst, 1989, p.106]