100 Events of the Gallipoli Campaign
January 1916
1 January 1916
Joseph Murray, Hood Battalion, Royal Naval Division, Helles, wrote:
The beginning of the New Year. It looks much the same as the old one and shells instead of bells heralded it in.
2 January 1916
Private J Robins, 5th Battalion, Wiltshire Regiment, was shot at dawn on the beach at Helles for ‘Wilfully disobeying an order given by a superior officer in the execution of his duty’.
6 January 1916
On hearing of the coming evacuation, Joseph Murray, Hood Battalion, Royal Naval Division, at Helles, wrote:
I was extremely angry as I had for a long time cherished the hope that I would leave this inhospitable graveyard, defiant and with my head held high. I could not admit, even to myself, that we had been beaten after the sacrifice of so many men … to desert our fallen comrades and sneak away in the dark without a fight is a revolting thing and the thought of it nauseates me.
7 January 1916
Turkish forces at Helles launched a major attack on the remaining 19,000 British troops. The attack was preceded by a furious artillery bombardment but many Turkish soldiers, realising that the British were leaving the peninsula, refused to leave their trenches. The attack failed.
8 January 1916
On the night of 8–9 January, 17,000 British soldiers were evacuated from Helles, bringing the three-week evacuation, and the Gallipoli campaign, to a close. In just over a week, 35,000 soldiers, 3,689 horses and mules, 127 guns, 328 vehicles, and 1,600 tons of stores had been taken off Helles. Approximately 508 horses and mules were slaughtered or left behind.
10 January 1916
Turkish newspapers reported that ‘the whole of the Gallipoli Peninsula is now free from the enemy. They are driven out of Sedduülbahir (Sed-el - Bahr)’.