Chapter 3


The Landings

The landings on the Gallipoli peninsula were planned to take place in three different areas.  Firstly the Anzacs were intended to land on the Aegean side of the peninsula, in a cove just to the North of a high point at Gaba Tepe, half way up the coast.  The British Forces were to land at a point on the southern tip of Gallipoli called Sedd el Bahr, and the French contingents were to land on the Turkish mainland at Kum Kale, directly opposite the British landing site.  
These landing sites had previously been part of a proposed invasion by the Greek Army who had intended to attack overland at the same time as a fleet was attacking the Straits.  This Greek plan had been in existence for some time, dating as far back as 1911-12, and was very much the same as the one eventually used by Britain and its allies.  The Greeks proposed that a huge force of as many as sixty thousand men would be landed near Gaba Tepe, moving overland to capture villages on the Dardanelles, and then moving south to link up with a smaller force landed at Sedd el Bahr.  At the same time a further thirty thousand men were to attack Kum Kale, on the Turkish mainland as a diversion.    
The preparation for the landing of so many men on the beaches at Gallipoli could not be carried out in secrecy, but the exact time, and the locations of the attack could be kept more or less secret, and should have been enough to give the attacking forces an advantage.  This element of surprise was more than likely squandered by landing the Anzac troops in the wrong place, around a mile to the north of their intended site.  The Australians, particularly the 3rd Brigade, were intended to be the first troops ashore, landing in the dark, just before dawn, and had the invasion gone ahead on the 23rd of April as originally planned this would have been the case.  However the weather had turned bad just before the day that the invasion was intended, and by the 25th, the day that the invasion actually went ahead, the time allowed for landing the first troops before daylight would be half an hour shorter.  Because General Birdwood’s plan to land this army owed so much to it being done under the cover of darkness, the success of the landings had to rely on both accurate timekeeping and navigation, neither of which could be guaranteed.  
The Navy were in charge of getting the troops onto the beaches.  Once the boats carrying the invasion force had pulled away from the ships that had carried them from the crowded harbour of Mudros, on the Mediterranean Island of Lemnos, there was no turning back.  The invasion force of Anzacs was to be landed in three stages, with the 3rd Division, as trailblazers being landed on the beach in row boats, just before dawn, to secure the landing area for the rest of the force.  The second wave were to be brought closer into the shore towed by a group of destroyers, because it was assumed that by this time it would be daylight, the Turks would be firing at any boat in the water, and the destroyers would be able to give a degree of covering fire.  The third wave would be brought to the shore in the same way.  Due to a series of blunders the bulk of the troops were to be landed in broad daylight, in the wrong place, and in a totally confused state.  
Some sixty years after the landings, a Merchant Navy Officer of the Royal Navy Reserve, only nineteen at the time, but a seasoned sailor as many of his associates were as young as seventeen finally told his story.  He was in charge of one of the pinnaces , that were to take the Anzacs off the troopships and on to the beaches, and he gave an explanation for the landing being in the wrong place that differed from the official explanation.  The official verdict that came out of the Dardanelles Commission’s inquest was that there was an offshore current at the time which forced the flotilla of small boats further north than envisaged.  Midshipman J. Saville Metcalf RNR told a different story however, of how he had actually steered one of the boats towing the Australians away from the landing beach to avoid the heavy gunfire that was coming from that area, and some of the other boats had followed suit.  This lead to a confusion of the landing.  
As a result of being landed in the wrong place, and totally out of sequence with the prepared plans, the different battalions were confused, and no real movement inland was attempted in any organized way.  Small groups of men made their way up the cliffs and gullies as best they could, under rifle and machine gun fire, with shrapnel shells exploding around them.  Some of the men got so carried away with pursuing the Turks that they soon became lost and cut off from the rest of the force.  Later waves of troops that came ashore fared little better at all throughout the day, and by nightfall the Anzacs had penetrated only a little way inland, although some of the Australians had managed to get further than was thought on the first day, their position on the slopes of what was later known as Gun Ridge was not discovered until their remains were found in 1919.  Fighting had been fierce, and casualties had been very heavy all through the day of the landing, and when the night finally came it brought only a little relief for the men, as they were under almost constant shelling, and sniper fire whether they were on the hillsides or on the beach.    
The beach by this time was in a state of total confusion, as it had on it piles of stores, ammunition, rations and water containers that had all been landed during the day, along with soldiers packs and equipment that had been rapidly abandoned as they came ashore.  There were also many wounded, and dead men on the beach, the wounded waiting to be transferred to the hospital ships when boats could be spared to transport them.  There were also numbers of men on the beach still trying to find the rest of their units, while up in the hills above the beach, the night allowed some of them to try and take stock of their first day on Gallipoli.  It was during the first night that the idea of an evacuation was first discussed by the Commanding Officers.  
The Officer Commanding  the Australian 1st Division, General Bridges conferred with both Generals Godley and Walker on the beachhead, that evening, and could see no real alternative to re-embarkation of the troops, but he was reluctant to make such an order himself, so he consulted General Birdwood.  Birdwood, after some thought, also believed that he was not in a position to give such an order, so he went to the top and asked General Hamilton the Commander in Chief for a decision.  Hamilton with the help of his General Staff, finally decided that it would be too costly, in terms of the lives of his troops, to attempt to take them back off the beaches, as there were no piers or jetties built for the men to embark from.  He also believed that because the forces were in such a confused state, that to give an order to disengage from the ground that they had so far managed to take at great cost, would lead to an even greater loss of life in a free for all, to get to the beach, under fire.  Hamilton then sent a message to Birdwood in which he pointed out that it would take at least two days to re-embark the men.  He also sought to give some encouragement by telling Birdwood that the Australian submarine AE2 had passed through the Narrows and torpedoed a Turkish boat within the Straits.  Closing he said that both Birdwood and Godley should make a personal appeal to their men, and gave the now famous p.s. ‘You have got through the difficult business, now you have only to dig, dig, dig, until you are safe’.  This seems to have the desired effect, as there was never any talk of evacuation again.  The start of the battle went very badly for the Anzacs, and not only were their intended objectives for the first day never reached, but they were never to be reached in the whole of the time that they spent on Gallipoli.  
Later in August 1915 another landing was attempted further north of Anzac at Suvla Bay.  This landing here was to be carried out by newly recruited British troops, under the leadership of Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Stopford.  The planned attack at Suvla Bay was to enable the situation at Anzac Cove to be relieved, allowing the Anzac forces to finally leave the beach head that they had occupied since April, and the preparations were made by General Birdwood himself.   Before the attack, Birdwood was replaced by Stopford who had come straight from being in command of a static situation on the Western Front.  Stopford had told Birdwood that he was completely in favour of the plan, but by the time that it was put into action he had changed it completely  without Birdwood’s knowledge.  
In Birdwood’s original plan there were to be three landing sites in the bay, with the intention of outmanoeuvring any Turkish resistance, and getting behind the Turks defending the heights above Anzac Cove.  This landing plan however was changed by Stopford, and his senior staff who through being conditioned to events on the Western Front, did not believe that this action would work.  Stopford’s eventual plan was to land, and secure the beach area, and then wait for the guns and artillery that he an his Staff as veterans of the Western Front thought were vital for any successful attack, to be brought ashore.  During the time that the troops had to wait for the guns to be brought ashore, there was time when they went swimming, or brewed tea, especially as the area was found to be virtually defenceless with few Turks in the area.  
This was seen by the troops on the heights above Anzac, and was the incident that was reported in the film Gallipoli, and unfortunately coincided with Australian attacks on the heavily defended areas of Lone Pine, and The Nek which were so mercilessly cut down by the Turks.  
It is said that Mustapha Kemal Bey leader of the Turkish Army in the area was  himself was in the location of the Anzac landings, and coming across a group of his men who were retreating, ordered them to stay and not to fight but to die for Turkey, and this is said to have turned them around.