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 What follows is an essay written and submitted by David Goodwin looking at the First World War Battle of Gallipoli, in which David's Great Uncle Francis Willie Goodwin took part.
Willie Goodwin left Colwall just after his father, Edward Goodwin, died. Edward, known as Ned, lived just below the Wyche and would use his horses to carry people's heavy loads up the Wyche.
The first bend up the Wyche is still known as Goodwin's corner.
[Editor]
Independent Study submitted as part requirement for the
B.A. (Hons.) degree in the Field of History at
Worcester College of Higher Education.
May 1998
Abstract
This Study looks at both the Australian, and New Zealand (Anzac) involvement in the Battle of Gallipoli. This campaign, started as a side issue of the First World War, and took place on the Gallipoli peninsula, a part of Turkey, in the Eastern Mediterranean. The campaign began as a purely maritime one, but led to the involvement of land based troops after the failure of the original Naval plan. Troops involved in the invasion came from Great Britain, her Empire, and France, and none of them achieved any success in their attempts to defeat the Turks, and capture the peninsula. The Anzacs in particular suffered significant casualties as a new and untried fighting force, while holding on to a small foothold on Gallipoli for eight months. In the meantime their fearsome fighting initiated a legend that was to be maintained wherever Anzac troops were to fight throughout the war.
Contents
Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 The Preparations
Chapter 3 The Landings
Chapter 4 The Beachhead
Chapter 5 The Evacuation
Conclusion
In the writing of this piece of work I have been encouraged by my tutor Dr. Gerry Douds, and my family. In particular I would like to thank Pauline, a relative, who supplied the copy of Willie Goodwin’s Australian War Record, that first got me interested in the Anzacs at Gallipoli.
Chapter 1
Introduction
In this piece of work, it is intended to look at the Battle of Gallipoli, a First World War battle which took place on the Gallipoli peninsula in the Mediterranean. This battle began on the 25th of April 1915, when as well as troops from Great Britain and France, there were troops from the Empire including forces from India, Australia, and New Zealand taking part. (See Appendix 1.) The troops from the Antipodes were jointly known as the Anzacs, the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, and they became renowned for their fighting ability, indeed a legend grew up around them following their escapades on the battlefields of Gallipoli, which will be returned to in a later chapter.
Interest in the Anzacs, and the battle of Gallipoli, came about while researching the Goodwin family history. The existence of the name of Willie Goodwin on the local war memorial had been known for many years, and upon making enquiries it was found that Willie Goodwin was actually Lieutenant Francis William Goodwin MC. and Bar, and was in fact a relative, who had fought in the Australian Army at Gallipoli, later going on to fight in Europe, where he was killed in action on the Western Front in 1917.
In Australia the memory of Gallipoli was originally marked, from just after the end of the war, with Anzac Day. This was on the day of the start of the battle, April 25th, and also became a National Holiday. In more recent times however this had not been the case, and the memory of the battle had rather fallen out of favour, and not been well kept, until that is there was a renewal of interest following the making and release of films such as Gallipoli by Peter Weir in 1981. This particular film helped to reestablish the awareness of the Australian public in the battle through its sympathetic handling of the lives and subsequent fates of the men who went to fight, and as a result Anzac Day once more became popular. The film portrayed the Anzac soldier as an ordinary ‘bloke’, and followed him from joining up. It showed why many of them actually did join, and then followed them through good times in training in Egypt, to the worst of times clinging to a narrow strip of land, and facing almost certain death with bravery.
The Battle of Gallipoli was in many ways a ‘first’. It was the first modern amphibious landing of troops in battle, and the first battle where troops from around the British Empire were raised in their separate countries to be used in conjunction with troops from Britain itself. Although, previously a large force of more than 16,000 Australians and New Zealanders had in fact been involved in the Boer Wars, they were Empire troops, and not raised by either Australia or New Zealand itself, as those that fought in The Great War were.
To begin with it would be of interest to know why Gallipoli was chosen for the site of a battle at all?
The Gallipoli peninsula, and in particular the piece of water known as the Dardanelles Straits protected the way to Russia through the Sea of Marmara, and the Black Sea, and were thought to be strategic to the war in 1914, for many reasons. The Straits were ruled by Turkey, who as yet had not joined the war in Europe, In a plan, thought up by Winston Churchill, at the time First Lord of the Admiralty, it was believed that by storming the Straits and bringing a Naval force into the Sea of Marmara close to Constantinople, the British could persuade Turkey, either not to enter the war, or to join it on the side of Britain and its allies. It was thought by the British War Council, that to begin with, it would not be necessary to involve land forces, as they believed that a small Naval Force of a handful of British and French Battleships would be more than enough to overcome the ancient forts protecting the Straits. After destroying these forts, the Force would then be able to steam through and threaten the town of Gallipoli, and even Constantinople. Lord Kitchener, who was also a member of the War Council, was himself a strong believer in this plan to force the Dardanelles, telling Sir Ian Hamilton who by then had been chosen to lead this Mediterranean Expeditionary Force that his ground troops would probably not be needed. Kitchener believed that “If a submarine was to pop up opposite the town of Gallipoli, and wave a Union Jack, the whole Turkish garrison on the Peninsula would turn and run. ”
The Straits were later to prove too well defended, and a number of British and French Warships were to be lost in trying to take them. These were old battleships, and not modern Dreadnoughts, and were lost mainly through a combination of being ships that were largely unprotected against modern weapons, such as mines, and torpedoes. At the same time the British underestimating the strength, and fighting ability of the Turks who were backed up by German advisers, weapons, and technology was also a factor. The ships main armament of huge Naval guns, were also largely ineffective against these forts, as a high explosive shell would pass straight through the walls of these forts, without destroying them, except in the case of a direct hit on the arsenal of a fort. As a result of this shelling, the forts big guns were put out of action but the buildings were only damaged enough to enable them to provide cover for smaller, more mobile guns. These smaller guns were to prove a hazard to the fleet of wooden hulled fishing vessels that had been brought in to try and clear the channel of mines.
Russia, as an ally of Britain, although it could raise a huge army, needed to be supplied with armaments and other materials for war. It also had stocks of grain that would have a ready market in Britain and France if they could actually be shipped out to these markets. Russia would also find itself in danger of an attack from the Turks, in the area of the Black Sea, if they were to join the war on the side of Germany, and the Central Powers.
Britain and Turkey had been allies and fought together in the Crimean war, so it would have been expected that Turkey would join the battle in Europe on the side of the British. Relations between the two countries were still reasonably good in the years leading up to the First World War, even though Turkey had been through a period of change. Turkey had actually experienced a coup d’etat leading to a Government take over, when the sultan had been deposed by the Young Turks in 1908.
Germany was looking for a way to bring Turkey into the war on its side, and already a number of German military advisers were involved with the Turkish military. The British government through Churchill and the Admiralty provided all the justification that the Turks needed to side with the Germans, in part through the seizing of two battleships that were being built in Britain for the Turkish Navy.
Churchill was worried because as they were near completion, these ships could be used against the British Navy if Turkey was to join the war as an enemy, so he ordered that they should not be handed over. This was a particularly bad move on his part, because the building of these ships had been financed through public subscription in Turkey, and it led to lot of Turkish bad feeling towards Britain. The Turks did indeed enter the war on the side of the Germans who, as a part of a package had promised to give them two cruisers, the Goeben and the Breslau in replacement for the battleships held by the British. Germany, had actually delivered them through the Straits only a matter of days before they were closed to shipping, preventing the British from pursuing them. Within a couple of months of the start of the war, it had become bogged down on the Western Front, and it would seem that the time was right for the opening of a second front in the East through the Dardanelles.
But, why and how was Australia to become involved?
In 1914, Australia was still part of the British Empire, although now a dominion, and so would be at war with Germany if Britain declared war. Just before the outbreak of war the Australian Labor Party had won the National Election, and the new Prime Minister Andrew Fisher had declared at the town of Colac in Victoria in August 1914, as part of his election campaign that `Australia would stand behind the mother country and help to defend her to the last man and the last shilling `. At the same time the former Prime Minister Joseph Cook, a Liberal, had also said that in order to help Britain, Australia would give it control of its Navy and raise a force of some 20,000 men to send to Europe, or any where that they were needed.
Recruiting took off at great speed throughout the country, and while it was not exactly clear whether these men were signing up to fight for the Empire, their country, or themselves, generally the strength of the ties with the old country were strong enough to overcome any opposition they may have had to joining in a fight. Willie Goodwin, who it is believed emigrated to Australia after the death of his father in 1912, was one of the first contingent of enlisted men, signing up on the 29th of August 1914 , with an Army Number of 17, into the 8th battalion of the Australian Imperial Force as they were then known. This battalion was formed in Victoria, it consisted entirely of men recruited in the State of Victoria, West Australia, and was to become part of the 2nd Brigade of the AIF.
After sifting through the recruits, to sort out as many of the undesirables, and those ineligible on health grounds as possible, the rest, if they had not been in the services before, were given some very basic training, as it was originally planned to set up a training ground in Britain on Salisbury Plain to train these raw troops. For this it was decided to transport this army to Europe as soon as it was possible, and the convoy containing both Australians and New Zealanders left Australian waters on the 1st of November 1914.
While this convoy was actually under way, the War Council which had just been formed to take over the running of the war, decided that it was necessary that a second front should be opened up in the East, as Turkey had entered the war. The idea was to prevent Egypt from being overrun, and to protect Britain’s route to the colonies such as India. The destination of the convoy was therefore changed from Europe to Egypt, where the troops were to protect the Suez canal, and to continue training for a possible assault on Turkey.
In the subsequent chapters, it is proposed to look firstly at the preparations for the landings, including time the Anzacs spent in Egypt, and then at the actual landings on Gallipoli, at a place called Gaba Tepe, which was later to become known as Anzac Cove. The life of the Anzacs on the beach head after the landings, will also be examined, where they were to spend the next eight months clinging onto the narrow beachhead, making very little progress inland, while repulsing ferocious counter attacks by the Turks. Then finally the evacuation of the entire area of Anzac Cove, and Suvla Bay, without a single casualty, this was to be a far cry from the landings, and was to be the only successful part of the whole campaign.
Chapter 2
The Preparations
Australia went to war in 1914 because it had no choice, being a colony of Great Britain, and when Britain declared war, Australia was also at war. Australia had been warned by Britain in July 1914, that war was imminent. In Australia the build up to war also coincided with a General Election, and within a couple of days the prospective candidates were using the expectation of war to get the people behind them.
After the Australian government had offered twenty thousand men to support Britain, how did it intend to raise this force?, and just how successful was recruitment in Australia?
Australia had no standing army to raise a fighting force from, so any contingent that Australia offered to the fight in the war would have to be recruited from the men of the country who had volunteered. Recruitment in Australia was very successful, with men marching great distances and flocking to sign up all over the country, many wanting to go to war for different reasons. A great many of these men had either been born in Britain, or had strong family ties with it, and even those men who had no real connection with Britain still wanted to join in. Signing on to become a soldier would mean steady employment and a regular wage for some, as the Australian forces along with the other Dominion troops were paid a wage of six shillings a day, compared with the sum of only two shillings a day paid to British troops. Others were simply looking for the adventure that they thought was lacking in their lives.
The Australian contingent was raised wholly on a volunteer basis, and because of this it was necessary to vet them to separate out some of the more undesirable elements. This was an ongoing activity that was even carried on once the army was training in Egypt, and men considered undesirable were sent home. On one occasion C.E.W. Bean , official Australian war correspondent, recounts that the authorities intended to return around five or six hundred men who were as he calls it, ‘endangering Australia’s good name by being drunkards, or shirkers or had made themselves unfit for service by incurring disease ’. In the end only 132 such disciplinary cases were sent back to Australia, along with 169 invalids on an Australian merchant ship in February 1915.
It was later suggested that conscription into the Army was necessary on a couple of occasions, particularly when the number of recruits declined towards the latter part of the war. Conscription was made the issue of a referendum on both occasions, once in October 1916, and then again in December 1917. This issue was defeated on both occasions, so that Australia was able to feel proud, and boast at the end of the war that it had been the only country to have an Army that had been made up completely of volunteers. This was not strictly true however, as the Hughes Government on October 2nd 1915 did actually go as far as calling up men between the ages of 21 and 35, but only to do service within Australia itself. This order was later changed after the first referendum had taken place, and on the 22nd of November all those called up under this scheme were allowed to leave and return home.
Also in 1915 a war census was proposed by the Labor government, to be held during September as a lead up to the referendum. This found that there were some sixty thousand fit men between the ages of 18 and 44 still in Australia. These men were intended to be targeted by the recruiting committees, who proposed to carry out the census from door to door, asking why these men had not volunteered, and these committees were actually empowered to ask the following questions :
1) Are you prepared to enlist now? If your answer is yes you will be given a fortnights notice before being called up.
2) Are you prepared to enlist at a later date? If so name the date.
3) If you are not prepared to enlist state the reasons why.
Enlistment still remained high throughout 1915, but the conscription idea still remained in a lot of peoples minds, mainly because they were worried that volunteering was not being judgemental enough, as only the youngest and fittest men were seen to be enlisting to fight.
Across the sea the New Zealand contingent was promised by the government to be a strong one, and was to be made up of seasoned troops from established regiments, many of which had previously fought for Britain in battles such as the Boer War, at the turn of the century. These troops were all trained men who had come through the territorial forces, and were members of regiments such as the Wellington and Otago Infantry Battalions that were soon to make a name for themselves at Gallipoli.
This new fighting force of Australian, and New Zealand troops was to become known as the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps[A&NZAC], and it was originally intended that they would be transported to Britain for training on Salisbury Plain, before being sent across to France to fight on the Western Front. While the transport convoy was under way however, there was a change of plan. Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, came up with a plan to outflank the stalemate situation on the Western Front, which seemed on the face of it simple, and easy to carry out. If it was successful, this plan would not only take the pressure off the war on the Western Front, but would also bring the possibility of a swift end to the War as well.
Churchill’s plan was to storm the vital waterway known as the Dardanelles, which was the gateway to the Black Sea, and to Russia. It was at first intended that by using only sea power this channel could be prevented from falling into enemy hands. Turkey, which controlled the Straits could be stopped from entering the war, while the other countries in the Mediterranean that were as yet undecided, could be either prevented from joining in, or persuaded to join in, on the side of Britain and her allies. Also, a permanent ice-free route to Russia to enable vital aid to reach them, and goods in exchange to be shipped out, could also be established and maintained through this channel once it was secured.
This plan was one of many ideas submitted by the various members of the War Cabinet, with Kitchener and Lloyd George both preferring different strategies in the East. Kitchener wanted to make sure that Egypt and the Suez Canal were made secure, while Lloyd George wanted to support Serbia by making an attack on the Balkans. Churchill’s plan was eventually agreed by the War Council, with a few criticisms voiced, particularly by General Haig, who as Commander in Chief of the British forces on the Western Front was worried that troops and vital supplies needed on the Western Front would be transferred to set up a new front in the East.
The plan which had seemed so straight forward soon met with difficulties, as the whole of the Eastern Mediterranean area soon knew of an impending attack. The existence of mines, a new weapon, had also been overlooked, or at least their use and capability had been underestimated by the British. The storming of the channel was a complete disaster, with the loss of a third of the naval force, and it was then further planned that an amphibious invasion of the Gallipoli peninsula, and the Dardanelles was needed to secure the straits before the Navy could continue. Kitchener was reluctant to spare troops from the fighting in France, so any fighting force would have to come from the Australasian contingent that was in the Red Sea and heading for Egypt.
On reaching Egypt, it was first planned that part of the force would be transported to help the South African government that was experiencing internal trouble, with another uprising by a group of Boers. While plans to bring this about were being devised, the problem was sorted out by South African forces themselves, under the leadership of General Louis Botha, who later went on to conquer what was then German South West Africa. While in Egypt, The Australian and New Zealand forces were officially combined under the leadership of General Sir Ian Hamilton.
Training in Egypt, was supposed to prepare the troops for what they would experience in a landing on Gallipoli, but there was nowhere that could compare with what they were about to face, and no one was firing real bullets at them. Training consisted in the main of route marches with full packs, practice at fighting pitched battles, and imaginary attacks, all in the heat of the desert, and as a result the men became very fit if not prepared. On one occasion the troops had to pretend that they were billeted in an imaginary French village, talking to and dealing with imaginary French people , which must have been very amusing for the natives that followed them everywhere.
Probably the most worrying aspect however, was that there were instances that foretold of the way things were to be on Gallipoli. Bean again tells of one such incident where around a third of the division marched out of camp as if they were going to the Suez Canal, but unfortunately due to the watch of one of the Colonel’s being wrong, the Artillery started out some four minutes behind the rest of the troops . The lack of good, accurate timekeeping would have disastrous consequences later at the attack on The Nek, when valuable time was lost in starting an attack either because a covering barrage finished early, or because an Australian Commander’s watch was wrong. In another training incident, due to muddled orders, the men of one battalion charged at another, armed only with bayonets, a typically British way of fighting, that had been practiced for many years. Unfortunately they were charging against men armed with machine guns and as a result they were all ‘killed’ .
When not in training, boredom was one of the biggest problems that the troops had to overcome in Egypt, and as a result they were notoriously high spirited on their trips into areas such as Cairo, the nearest habitation to the sprawling camp at Mena, on leave. On a couple of occasions they got totally carried away, and their riots became condemned even by their own people. Even Bean, in his diary says that ‘There was a great deal of drunkenness, and I could not help noticing that what people in Cairo said was true - the Australians were responsible for most of it. There were rowdy, noisy British Territorials, and rowdy, drunken New Zealanders, but my own observation was that the Australians were easily the most noticeable, and the most frequent offenders were Australians. ’
The most notorious rioting took place in the red light districts of the Wassa area of Cairo on Good Friday 1915, when the area was set on fire by the troops enraged by the bad drink and diseased whores that they said were supplied to them by the Egyptians. The drink that they were offered as whisky was very often mixed with large amounts of methylated spirits, and this combination led to the deaths of Australians on more than one occasion. Egypt was retained as a training camp throughout the campaign, and the Good Friday rioting was not to be the last, even though the first of the Anzac troops left for the Island of Lemnos on their way to the Gallipoli peninsula soon after. The 3rd Brigade of the AIF. who were to be the first troops ashore in the battle, spent most of their time on Lemnos practicing for the first time getting on and off the boats they were to use, and in making an attack on the coastline.
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.
Chapter 4
The Beachhead
Once ashore the problems of securing a beachhead position had to be overcome. As the Anzac landings were bungled, and did not take place in the area that was originally intended, this left the men that had survived being either shot at and killed, wounded, or even drowned under the weight of the equipment that they were carrying, the problem of scaling the crumbling cliffs and slopes to get off the beach. The men who had made it to the shore in the first flotilla of small boats were of the 3rd Brigade of the Australian Army who had previously practiced landing only on reaching Lemnos a month before the start of the battle. Once ashore, they were supposed to regroup, and quickly push forward, dealing with any resistance from the Turks, and allowing the rest of the force to continue on into the interior of the peninsula. However, because of a catalogue of errors that befell the attacking armies, such as being landed in the wrong place, and without the cover of darkness, also combined with the unexpected strength in the Turkish resistance, a beachhead position was hard fought to establish and to maintain. For the next eight months the Anzacs were not to move out of the positions that they had gained in the first few days, apart from a few poorly planned and ill fated attacks.
One such attack that was planned for 2 May, only a week after the landing, was up a hill called Baby 700, named after its height above sea level. Men of the New Zealand forces were supposed to scale a cliff in the dark, in order to capture and hold the Turkish position that was giving a great deal of problems to the men trying to move off the beach. This attack failed, with the New Zealanders suffering appalling casualties.
Another disastrous attack involving the men from New Zealand was to the highest point of the peninsula, the Sari Bair range, and in particular a summit called Chunuk Bair. Men of the New Zealand battalions, were intended to fight their way up to the heights. This was to be achieved by crossing a series of gullies through some pretty difficult terrain, and then eventually overcoming the defending forces that were by now well dug in. After some particularly fierce fighting the New Zealanders had managed to gain control of the heights, which had a commanding view of the landing area below it, as well as the first view of the Straits. But, however, before they could consolidate their position, they were shelled by the guns of the fleet, killing most of those that managed to fight their way to that position. Other attacks were planned to break out of the deadlock of the beach head such as the attack at Lone Pine, and the Nek, where many Australians were to lose their lives.
The attack on the Nek was particularly powerfully portrayed in the Peter Weir film Gallipoli, where wave after wave of Australian troops of the Light Horse Regiment were shown charging a heavily defended Turkish position, armed with only empty rifles, and bayonets.
In the film the officer who gave the order that sent so many men to a certain death was portrayed as being British, when it was more likely for him to have actually been an Australian. Most of the first month on the peninsula was spent by the Anzacs securing their positions as best they could under sniper fire, and intermittent shrapnel shelling. Attempts to break out of the beachhead were stopped by determined Turkish defence, while the Anzacs had to do a lot of repelling of Turkish attacks, which saw the fiercest fighting on May 19/20.
Mustapha Kemal Bey, a young officer in charge of the Turkish troops in the area, was determined that the attackers should be driven into the sea, and spent the early part of May preparing a huge force to attack the Anzac positions. These massive increase in the Turkish numbers was seen by the crew of an Australian spotter plane during a reconnaissance flight, and reported. This build up combined with a reduction in the number of attacks the Turks had made in the area led the Anzac leaders rightly to conclude that they were about to be attacked in force.
The Turks began their attack at around 3.30 in the morning of the 19th of May, with some 42,000 men involved, while the strength of the Anzac force in the area was believed to be nearer 12,000. The main thrust of the Turkish attack was centred on a small plateau (400 plateau), and by the end of the first part of the battle, some 10,000 Turks were critically wounded, and as many as 3,000 lay dead. One Anzac soldier said that they ’waited for the attack to get within range, opened up with rapid fire, and brought them down in their hundreds ’. The Anzac casualties received were reported as being 160 dead, and 468 wounded, with nearly 100,000 bullets being fired at the Turks during this time. Later in the month an armistice was arranged to bury some of the mounds of decaying bodies that lay in the area between the opposing trenches, because the smell was terrible, and life on the peninsula was becoming hard enough.
Life on the Anzac beach head was particularly hard as all the food and water had to be brought to the beaches from Egypt, and then transported to the different trenches by the soldiers themselves. Water was particularly hard to find, as there was little natural water on the peninsula, and as the Turks would have control of any that there was it was thought that it would have been most likely poisoned by them. Other hardships that they faced were the plagues of flies that swarmed every where, and were instrumental in the spread of diseases such as dysentery. The flies were at their worst in the summer months, and were everywhere. The number of decaying bodies lying in no mans land between the Anzac and Turkish trenches were the breeding ground for the huge number of flies, and because of this and their swarming around the food and drink that the men were trying to have, diseases spread. ‘I could never get used to them, crawling in ones soup, sticking in ones jam, it was horrible. If we were eating bread and jam it was a race to get it in ones mouth before the flies got entangled - to me the fly pest was the worst hardship of the campaign ’.
Another infestation that all troops on Gallipoli had to contend with was lice, that bred in the seams of the battledress that they wore. Various ways of dealing with this pest were tried, including over the counter powders from chemist shops that the families of the soldiers were requested to send to them. Unfortunately none of these could combat the lice, and other ways of fighting the lice problem were necessary, including the government proposing that every man should be supplied with a little bag of camphor, that he was to wear around his neck to combat the lice. However many of the men were convinced that any amount of camphor worn around the neck could do nothing at all for lice that bred in the seams under the arms, and under the crotch, and one man even opened up the bag he was wearing and found a nest of lice inside it. Needless to say this idea was rapidly dispensed with and the men went back to a daily inspection of the seams of their clothing. During the time spent on Gallipoli there was an acute shortage of weapons such as field guns along with the ammunition for them, and at the start of the campaign the MEF were not supplied with any weapons such as Trench Mortars or hand grenades.
The Turks were supplied with a succession of different types of German made hand grenades that were very useful in the fighting at places such as Courtney’s and Quinn’s Post where the opposing trenches were only a few yards apart. One resourceful Anzac in this area became adept at throwing these back at the enemy, especially the early grenades which were detonated by a protruding ten second fuse, which had to be lit before being thrown. Equally resourceful were the Anzacs who made their own grenades known as jam-tin grenades because they were made out of empty tins that were packed with any bits of shrapnel lying around, bullets, explosive and piece of cloth for a fuse. These weapons were made in their hundreds, but unfortunately were unpredictable, and could be as dangerous for those throwing them as their intended targets.
Later in the year with the Anzacs still clinging to their precarious positions, a change of season brought the first of the rains. Heavy rainfall flooded the trench systems sometimes to a depth of as much as 6-8 feet, and because of this many soldiers were drowned in the trenches they had dug to avoid being shot by snipers. Worse was still to come with the onset of winter. This brought both snow, a new experience for many Australians, and conditions so cold that men weakened by both disease and meager rations found it a struggle to cope. Many suffered either frostbite, or worse still, froze to death where they were.
Chapter 5
The Evacuation
The evacuation of the troops at Anzac Cove had been thought about briefly in the evening of the first day, but the evacuation of the troops from the positions that they were still clinging on to did not come until the following December for the Anzacs, and even later, in January 1916, for the British at Helles.
By the time of the evacuation, Hamilton had been replaced as the Officer Commanding the MEF by General Sir Charles Monro, who was a committed ‘Westerner’ which meant that he did not agree with a war in the East at all. In fact he thought that in order to win the war every available man and weapon would be needed on the Western Front, and that all other theatres of war were irrelevant distractions to the business of winning the war. Churchill had also been removed from the post of First Lord of the Admiralty. Lord Kitchener had been put in charge of the army on Gallipoli, and had decided to visit the area in early November 1915 to see for himself.
The decision to evacuate the whole of the peninsula was being discussed by parliament back in Britain, when the weather that had been threatening for some time finally broke. The evacuation of Anzacs was agreed by a top level conference including Kitchener, Munro, and Birdwood, who was given the task of getting the men off safely. The evacuation of the Anzac Cove and Suvla Bay areas was again to be tackled in three stages under the plan thought up by Lieutenant General Birdwood who on the recall of Hamilton had been placed in overall control of the Forces on Gallipoli
Willie Goodwin was evacuated from Anzac cove and Gallipoli in December 1915. His rank at the time was that of acting Regimental Sergeant Major, and in March 1916 he left Alexandria with the rest of the Australian Army, to travel to France and eventually become part of the British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front. In August 1916
he was awarded the Military Cross for gallant conduct during the fighting at Pozieres, on the Somme, having been promoted to Second Lieutenant only two weeks before. Willie was later awarded a bar to his MC for conspicuous gallantry in rescuing wounded men, during which he himself was wounded, and on being evacuated to hospital, at last was able to return to England, a little over two years after leaving Australia. After being promoted to Lieutenant, and spending the most part of 1917 either in Hospital or training troops was returned to his old battalion in Belgium, where three weeks later he was killed near Zonnebeke, in the battle of Passchendaele.
Chapter 6
Conclusion
The Battle of Gallipoli was undoubtedly a defeat for the forces of the British Empire, but has always been more remembered by the Australians as a defeat, but a heroic one. It was a baptism of fire for the majority of volunteers of the Australian Imperial Forces, and even though they lost less men than either the French or the British during the campaign, it has always been associated more with the Anzacs.
The Battle of Gallipoli saw the end of many careers, including that of General Hamilton who was blamed by many for the defeat, for delegating too much of the decision making to his subordinates who were clearly not up to the job. Winston Churchill’s career was ended for a time,
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Taken from Hickey, M, Gallipoli
This 8th battalion, which with the exception of a brief but disastrous spell at the other Gallipoli battlefield at Cape Helles during May 1915, spent the entire campaign on the battlefields at Anzac Cove, where it had landed on the morning of the 25th of April. Willie however was wounded in the leg on the first day at Anzac, and must have been an early casualty as he was lucky in being returned to Egypt, although this trip took the best part of five days, where he was treated at the Heliopolis General Hospital. This was based in a luxury hotel that had been commandeered as a Hospital for Australian troops, before they even left Egypt, or the landings took place.
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