by Peter Hart
All along the line the advance staggered to a halt or recoiled before the Turkish line was reached. Overall, with the exception of trivial French gains, the attack was a failure. Hunter-Weston responded by ordering a repeat performance of his master plan on 7 May. This resulted in no advance of any importance and another swathe of casualties. By now it should have been obvious that the French were entering a death trap. As they drew ever nearer to Kereves Dere they found themselves facing a precipitous ravine, while a series of increasingly mature Turkish defence works barred their way as they tried to push along the near-bank.
With hindsight it seems incredible that after two such clear-cut failures another attempt should be ordered. But Hamilton had little choice. He could either attack again or accept defeat. And every day that passed allowed the Turks to improve their defences and move up more reserves. The Allies simply had to try again. Thus a third attack was ordered for 10.30 on 8 May.
This time the New Zealand Brigade was flung into the equation, launching an unsupported attack through the 29th Division positions and along Fir Tree Spur. This attack was carried out in some confusion. Earlier that morning the brigade had been moved forward in preparation, in broad daylight across open ground. Private Cecil Malthus was with the Canterbury Battalion when they left a support trench occupied by the Dublin Fusiliers and the Munsters.
‘New Zealanders prepare to advance!’ Where on earth were the enemy and what were our objectives? Hastily we threw off our packs and piled them in heaps – which were promptly looted by the Irishmen – and it was only in the act of springing over the parapet that we were told of another line of British still lying 100 yards ahead of us. We sprinted the distance all abreast, in fine style, and thanks to our smartness it was only in the last few yards that the enemy woke up and loosed his fire. The tragedy of it was that from that moment he remained awake, and we were left with the certainty, in our next advance, of having to face a living stream of lead.19
Private Cecil Malthus, Canterbury Battalion, New Zealand Brigade, NZ&A Division, NZEF
The New Zealanders had now reached the British front line occupied by the Worcesters. At 10.30 it was time for them to make their attack. The Wellington Battalion was on the left, the Auckland in the centre and the Canterbury on the right. Private Malthus was with the scouts who went over first.
For 200 yards we sprinted, thinking oddly how beautiful the poppies and daisies were, then from sheer exhaustion we rushed to ground in a slight depression and lay there panting. We had kept about 10 yards apart, but soon the spaces were filled by those of our mates who managed to get so far. Now the storm was let loose, and increased every moment in fury, until a splashing, spurting shower of lead was falling like rain on a pond. Hugging the ground in frantic terror we began to dig blindly with our puny entrenching tools, but soon the four men nearest me were lying, one dead, two with broken legs, and the other badly wounded in the shoulder. A sledgehammer blow on the foot made me turn with a feeling of positive relief that I had met my fate, but it was a mere graze and hardly bled. Another bullet passed through my coat, and a third ripped along two feet of my rifle sling. Then the wounded man on my right got a bullet through the head that ended his troubles. And still without remission the air was full of hissing bullets and screaming shells.20
Private Cecil Malthus, Canterbury Battalion, New Zealand Brigade, NZ&A Division, NZEF
Eventually they managed to dig shallow pits and gained some measure of safety. The New Zealanders had been slaughtered advancing in isolation.
Hamilton then intervened to order a general advance timed for 17.30 that afternoon, as a very last throw of the dice. All along the line units tried to respond but for most it was either physically impossible or they made minor advances that achieved nothing but cost a lot. In a morass of failure the Australian 2nd Brigade, which had been ordered out of reserve, attacked in splendid isolation along the bare slopes of Krithia Spur. The mistakes made during the failed assault of the New Zealanders that morning were repeated: a lack of any coherent planning or organisation; an advance under fire before they had even got to the front line; slaughter as they tried to locate the Turkish front line.
The noise was terrific and shells burst in hundreds over the enemy’s position. Then came the order, ‘Prepare to advance in 10 minutes!’ We were to advance in ‘fighting order’, each man taking a pick or a shovel. Spent bullets began to drop and men were hit before we began to move. The bombardment ceased and we began the mad rush across the open, pelted by rifle and machine gun fire and shrapnel. No formation was kept and our objective appeared to be utterly unknown to officers and men alike.21
Lance Corporal Eric Moorhead, 5th (Victoria) Battalion, 2nd Brigade, 1st Division, AIF
The Turks were ready for them and on the bare, open spur they presented an easy target.
Well, we charged, but what we charged goodness only knows – I never ran so much in my life. Then the machine guns started. That stopped our charging. We advanced by short rushes to within striking distance, but were too decimated to complete the attack. Captain Heron and I happened to be alongside each other and there was a wretched Turk enfilading us with stray shots. It was dark by this time. Heron and I took turns with the rifle and entrenching tool until Heron got an enfilading bullet over the right eye; I then had to dig for the two of us. We got down to cover without any further mishap. Why the Turks never counter-attacked that night and wiped the lot of us out – God alone knows. Think of it, a little band of men, not more than 300, stuck right out in front of the army with nothing to the right or left.22
Sergeant Cecil Eades, 7th (Victoria) Battalion, 2nd Brigade, 1st Division, AIF
In the end they had been stopped by the Turkish outpost line. Here was a truly futile attack and the casualties suffered were appalling. And any ground gained could have been occupied with minimal losses under the cover of darkness. As Hamilton told Kitchener:
The result of the operation has been failure, as my object remains unachieved. The fortifications and their machine guns were too scientific and too strongly held to be rushed, although I had every available man in today. Our troops have done all that flesh and blood can do against semi-permanent works and they are not able to carry them. More and more munitions will be needed to do so. I fear that this is a very unpalatable conclusion, but I can see no way out of it.23
General Sir Ian Hamilton, Headquarters, MEF
Next day he followed up with a more confident missive, stressing the value of hammering at the Turks until they gave way and expressing confidence that he could make progress with the addition to his force of two more divisions. With a logic that perhaps only he could have explained, Kitchener replied saying that he would send out just the 52nd Division as a reinforcement; surely a half-cocked response. Trenches and all their devilments had come to Helles. Only a total breakthrough could bring back open warfare. And on the upper slopes of Achi Baba the Turks were watching and waiting for the Allies’ next move.
AFTER THE SECOND BATTLE OF KRITHIA both sides took to trench warfare in earnest. There was one imaginative tactical initiative on the night of 12 May, when the 29th Indian Brigade launched an audacious attack on the Turkish defensive positions that surrounded the old Y Beach landing site. Eschewing a frontal attack the 1/6th Gurkhas instead crept under cover of darkness along the foot of the cliffs, behind the Turkish lines, and then climbed stealthily up the nullahs to surprise the Turks, who withdrew some 500 yards, allowing an advance to secure what would henceforth be known as Gurkha Bluff, just to the north of Y Beach. It had been a magnificent achievement, but the Turks were warned of the possibilities of such seaward outflanking moves and their defences soon reached right down to the waves. Front lines were solidified, support and reserve lines were carved out of the earth and communications trenches snaked between them.
I sometimes think that this war should go down in history as the ‘War of Spades’! Certainly the Dardanelles campaign was fought with that homely garden tool.
I once heard a woman name forty-six things she could do with a hairpin. It was a poor soldier that couldn’t do sixty-four with a spade after a month in Gallipoli!24
Captain Albert Mure, 1/5th Royal Scots, 88th Brigade, 29th Division
Behind the infantry the artillery were well dug in, tucked as far out of sight as possible of their Turkish opposite numbers perched up on the heights of Achi Baba. The rest camps were no safer nor comfortable than the front lines. They were still under fire and every man found what shelter he could, taking over or digging a grave-like hole in the unyielding ground. Then he would fix in place a waterproof sheet or blanket to provide a little shade and at least the illusion of cover should one of the Turkish shells drop in the vicinity. It was just a matter of luck.
Fortunately for the British and French, the Turks were desperately short of shells. But the British batteries were in the same predicament and were only allowed to fire at obvious targets or during attacks.
Life has been, on the whole, pretty dull here, enlivened only by an occasional fight. Whenever enough ammunition arrives we arrange a battle and push the enemy back a bit. The amount of ground we gain depends entirely on how much ammunition, particularly high explosives, we have to expend. There is no doubt that if we had sufficient to fight for, say, seven days on end at the outside, we should get the Turks on the run and be right through at once.25
Captain Herbert Lush Wilson, Y Battery, 15th Brigade, Royal Horse Artillery
Lush Wilson was in one sense entirely correct: in trench warfare conditions it was almost impossible for infantry to progress without support from the massed power of the guns. Yet at the same time he was misunderstanding the situation at Helles. The absence of shells was not a mysterious or avoidable situation; it was absolutely inevitable, given the munitions crisis that had enveloped the British Empire in 1915. Indeed, even if they had access to unlimited ammunition they would not have had the guns or gunners to fire them. There was never the slightest possibility that this state of affairs could be changed at the behest of Kitchener, Hamilton, Hunter-Weston or Captain Lush Wilson. And of course the reverse argument was equally true: if the Turks had all the ammunition and guns they wanted they too could have swept all before them, but they did not have the artillery resources either. Only the French were properly equipped for modern warfare.
Although artillery was key to dominating the battlefield, another old weapon had been reborn in the desperate fighting that followed the landings. It had become apparent that, as on the Western Front in December 1914, hand grenades were essential for the rough and tumble of close-quarter trench fighting. Yet their use did not form part of the basic training given to the fresh drafts of recruits that had flooded the barracks and depots in England; most of the British soldiers had never seen a grenade, let alone thrown one. Nor indeed had the army authorities yet settled on a standard design for the weapon. The most common bomb in use at Helles was the ‘jam tin’ bomb. This was not some elliptical army term!
We made our bombs or hand grenades out of used jam tins. This contained stones, a piece of gun cotton to explode it, various wads and a circular wooden piece wired to the top of the jam tin as a lid. Through this lid a detonator was inserted. To prime this grenade a piece of fuse about 2 inches long was cut and inserted into the detonator. Theoretically, this was fired by laying a match head against the top of the fuse and rubbing a match box against it. In fact it was invariably fired by a lighted cigarette. Once the fuse was lit the grenade exploded in 7 seconds. So in action one held it for 3 seconds and then threw it. If it was thrown too soon it could be picked up by the enemy and thrown back as sometimes happened.26
Lieutenant George Horridge, 1/5th Lancashire Fusiliers, 125th Brigade, 42nd Division
When new battalions or replacement drafts arrived at Helles they were given an ominous introduction to the battlefield that would make, break or destroy them. During their night approach in small minesweepers or drifters they would have been able to discern the dim outline of Sedd el Bahr fort. Most came ashore passing through the River Clyde, now acting as a jetty. Few were unaware of the awful, recent bloody history of the V Beach landing. Now they were treading where heroes had passed before. But most of them felt tremors to their very souls as they heard the deep boom of the guns, the rattle of the machine guns, the sharp random crack of rifles. Every so often they could see a Very light flare splutter its way across the night sky. As they marched away from V Beach they passed by the cemetery full of the men who had died on 25 April and in the fighting that had followed. To nervous young soldiers it was as if the very gates of hell lay open before them.
Overall the countryside had begun to show the strain of having a whole army corps encamped in it. In late April and early May it had looked so very different.
The flowers were growing in rich profusion – poppies, marigolds, dog daisies, and blue flowers, something like violets. They were all wild and presented one glorious mass of colour, most gorgeous and lovely to behold.27
Private Ridley Sheldon, 1/6th Manchester Regiment, 127th Brigade, 42nd Division
Now, in late May, most of the flowers were long gone. In fact vegetation of any sort was becoming rare. It was as if a horde of locusts had passed across the Peninsula. The plants were not the only things to disappear.
The frogs began as soon as it was dark and kept it up for hours, making it impossible to sleep. Rumour had it that the Frenchmen ate the whole lot, but I think that is a slander – it was the drying up of the bogs that caused the frogs to disappear.28
Corporal Thomas Rowatt, Headquarters, Royal Artillery, 29th Division
Helles was fast becoming unrecognisable. The beaches were huge store depots, roads were cut into the sides of cliffs, villages were razed almost to the ground, trees disappeared over night. This was not the moonscape of the Western Front battlefields; there was not enough artillery on either side to scene-shift to that extent. But it was becoming a dull and desolate vista.
You know the pictures in the papers of such and such a place after German occupation? Well, this place was a perfect garden when we first came. Already the ground is cut up into trenches and the horses have stamped the grass away: engineers have put long wooden troughs where the old walls stood before and the trees are torn to pieces to make screens for guns. By the time fresh troops arrive behind us it will be bare as a rock.29
Lieutenant Patrick Duff, 460th Battery, 147th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery
Unfortunately it was not rock but bare earth, which was then stirred up by the coastal winds and the endless marching feet to cover everything with a thick layer of choking dust.
Newcomers to this increasingly bleak environment soon found that to show oneself above ground was to risk sudden death at the hands of the Turkish snipers, who soon gained a fearsome reputation for accuracy.
Johnny arrived in our sector of the trench, bursting with eagerness and curiosity; wouldn’t even wait to divest himself of his full pack but must needs stick his head over the parapet, ‘I must take a look at these Turks!’ Too late to hear the warning cry of one of our chaps, ‘Get down, tha’ silly young bugger, get down!’ Before you could count three his forehead was neatly drilled. These Turkish snipers are terrific.30
Private Charles Watkins, 1/6th Lancashire Fusiliers, 125th Brigade, 42nd Division
Just a moment’s loss of concentration, allowing an inch or two of head to show above the parapet, was enough to end it all. There were few second chances.
There was one of our fellows lying on the floor of the trench, apparently asleep; so thinking he might be trodden on when darkness came on, for there is no twilight out there, I called to him to get up. He took not the slightest notice; upon this, I went to him and pushed him with my foot, but there was no response whatever. Then stooping down, I saw to my horror and dismay that the back of his head had been blown away and his brains lay scattered under him. It was a sickening sight.31
Private Ridley Sheldon, 1/6th Manchester Regiment, 1
27th Brigade, 42nd Division
Soon the dead were all around them: lying in No Man’s Land, built into the parapets, dug into the floor of the trench. Second Lieutenant Fred Jones wrote home describing the problem:
I had to dig a dugout for protection from the shells. I had only gone down about three feet when I saw a piece of cloth, which I tried to pull out of the way but I found it was part of a dead Turk who had been buried there. However, there was no time to waste, so my sergeant and I slept on the Turk that night. I felt awfully afraid that first night or two, when the shells were screaming all over and the bullets were ‘pingponging’ all around. But I am quite used to them now. Expect me home safe and sound as soon as we have finished off the Turks. Within the last few hours two Turks’ shells here have burst within 20 yards of me, but I am bullet-proof, you see if I am not!32
Second Lieutenant Fred Jones, 1/9th Manchester Regiment, 126th Brigade, 42nd Division
His luck ran out just eleven days later. No dramatic scene; Jones died almost unnoticed.
We were standing in Shrapnel Gully from which our trenches branched off. Lieutenant Jones and two other officers were stood at the top talking. Suddenly, Lieutenant Jones fell down. One of the officers said, ‘Have you slipped, Jones?’ but when they looked at him he was dead.33 They carried him away on a stretcher and buried him in the gully.34
Corporal T. Valentine, 1/9th Manchester Regiment, 126th Brigade, 42nd Division
The snipers made it extraordinarily difficult and dangerous to retrieve and bury many of the corpses, and so they lay there, rapidly decomposing in the summer heat.
One gets used to anything in war, but I think that the acrid, pungent odour of the unburied dead, which gets into your very mouth, down your tortured throat, and seems even to taint and taste your food, is really the worst thing you have to face on active service. Before long you grow quite inured, if not indifferent even, to the sight of the unburied dead. But to the death smell no one can grow used or callous. Rot and decay and the stench of putrefaction are the supreme and the final degradation of our flesh. And the uncontrollable nausea that the smell of the dead too long unburied must cause the living is not, I believe, solely a physical nausea. But, except through one’s nostrils, one grows steeled, if not dense and heartless. You see horrible sights which in peace-time would make your gorge rise uncontainably, and you take them, in the swelter of war, as a matter of course. I have seen men in the trenches making a fire and cooking their bacon close to the corpse of a comrade who had ‘gone west’ not a yard away, not an hour before, and who had shared their last meal with them.35
