The wind, which had continued to blow hard on April 22, abated next day, and in the afternoon the transports bearing the covering force of the 29th Division began very slowly to move out from Mudros harbour. In that land-locked inlet, the water was now still, and singularly blue. “The black ships,” as the navy called the transports owing to their fresh coat of black paint, wound their way in and out among others still lying at anchor. They passed the battleships and cruisers of our own fleet; they passed the Anzac transports, which were to follow them next day; they passed the battleships and transports of the French contingents, and the five-funnelled Russian cruiser Askold, lying nearer the little islands which protect the entrance of the far-extended haven; and as they passed, the pellucid air which still illuminates the realms of ancient Greece rang with the cheers of races whose habitation the Greeks had not imagined. Perhaps it is in Greek history that we find the nearest parallel to such a scene of heroic joy, the preface to heroic disaster. For when the bright troops of Athenians started for the conquest of Sicily, we read that nearly the whole population of the city accompanied their five-mile march down the Piræus; that there, in sacred silence, libation to the gods was made; and issuing in line ahead from the harbour, the transport galleys raced, in pure exhilaration of heart, to the pointed island of Ægina, fifteen miles away, while far in the air bystanders heard the cries of invisible spirits, like the wailings of women upon the Phœnician shore lamenting the beauty of Adonis yearly wounded.84

The British covering force consisted mainly of the 86th Brigade (29th Division), under Brigadier-General S. W. Hare, but two battalions of the 87th Brigade and half a battalion of the 88th were attached to it, beside the Plymouth Battalion of the Royal Naval Division, as the General’s own reserve, and the Anson Battalion, detailed for beach duties. Their three transports were escorted by the Euryalus (flagship of Admiral Wemyss, commanding the first and fourth of the seven squadrons into which the fleet was divided), the Implacable, and the Cornwallis, and their station was Tenedos. The next afternoon (Saturday, April 24) they were followed from Mudros harbour by the Queen Elizabeth (flagship of Admiral de Robeck), with Sir Ian Hamilton and the General Headquarter Staff on board, leading the other battleships in line ahead. After them went the Anzac covering force, consisting of the 3rd Brigade under Colonel Sinclair Maclagan (the Queensland, South Australian, West Australian, and a mixed Australian and Tasmanian battalion). The remainder of the Anzac army corps followed, escorted by the Queen (flagship of Admiral Thursby, commanding the second squadron), the London, and the Prince of Wales. Their destination was a point off Imbros, near Cape Kephalos, where they were to wait during the night till the moon went down. The covering force occupied four transports, beside the 1500 men of the brigade placed upon the Queen. General Birdwood’s headquarters were on the Minnewaska, and about thirty transports carried the remainder of his corps. As they passed out of harbour, leaving the Lemnian shore with which many, by practised landings, had become familiar, they too were greeted with tumultuous cheering by the ships which had not started yet, and tumultuously they replied. Moved onward irresistibly into imminent death, knowing that by the morrow’s afternoon at least one in ten of their numbers would have fallen in all the splendour of youthful vitality, still they cheered like schoolboys bound for a football match or a holiday by the sea. Excitement, comradeship, the infectious joy of confronting a dangerous enterprise side by side, made them cheer. Never before had those men known what battle means, but the sinking dread of the unknown, which all men feel as the shadow of extreme peril approaches, was allayed by the renunciation of self, and the clear belief that, whoever else was wrong in the world, it was not they.

The night was very still. The three-quarter moon set soon after 3 a.m., and there was total darkness over sea and mountains until a cold and windless dawn gradually appeared. The water was smooth as a mirror, and a thin veil of mist covered the shore. Just before the sun rose in a blaze of gold, four of the battleships and four cruisers opened fire upon the defences at the main landing-places round Cape Helles, and continued a heavy bombardment. At the same time, the landing of the covering parties at the five selected points around the end of the Peninsula began, and account of them may here be given in succession from the extreme right flank at S to the extreme left at Y.

On the evening of the 24th, about 750 of the 2nd South Wales Borderers under Colonel Casson had come on board the Cornwallis in four trawlers from their transport. Just before sunrise they put off in the trawlers again, each trawler towing six boats, and proceeded up the strait for about 2½ miles to the point called Eski Hissarlik or De Tott’s Battery, on the north-east end of Morto Bay. The Cornwallis followed, with the Lord Nelson as covering ship, but, being delayed by the Agamemnon and some French mine-sweepers coming across her course, she did not reach the point till the men had approached the shore, rowing the boats as best they could, though unaccustomed to the water, and encumbered with their packs, rifles, and trenching tools. Almost before the boats grounded, they leapt into the sea, and struggled to shore, under a heavy rifle fire which immediately opened from the Turkish trenches.

In perfect order, but at great speed, these veteran troops made for the height, some scrambling up the cliff, some approaching by a gradual slope on the west side. They were already nearing the summit when a mixed naval party of about 100 marines and sailors put to shore, and were of great assistance in taking two lines of trenches and working side by side with the South Wales Borderers, who were already driving the Turks down the farther slope of the ridge. Guns from the Asiatic side opened fire upon the beach, but most of the shells, striking the mud at the water’s edge, did not burst, and the Cornwallis, firing by signal from shore, silenced the battery about 10 a.m. Being urgently summoned from W Beach, and seeing that the soldiers now held the position firmly, Captain Davidson then withdrew the naval party, and steamed to his second position down the strait.85 Colonel Casson’s battalion clung to the point they had gained for the critical forty-eight hours of the landing, thus preventing Turkish reinforcements from coming down to Seddel Bahr, and protecting the right flank of our possible advance. The post was then taken over by the French, who held it throughout the campaign, though much exposed to the Asiatic guns. This successful enterprise cost about sixty casualties, including Major Margesson, who was killed.

Walking along the coast south-west from De Tott’s Battery, one rounds the two-mile arc of Morto Bay, near the middle of which the combined “Deres” or watercourses of the Krithia region run out into the strait. Across the valley, nearly a mile inland, a few lofty piles of an ancient, perhaps Byzantine, aqueduct then stood, probably at one time carrying water to a more ancient town than Seddel Bahr. Later in the campaign they were destroyed, but for some months they formed a conspicuous landmark. Along the rest of the bay the land slopes gently down to the beach, and had been laid out in gardens cypress-fringed, such as Islam loves. The gardens were now entrenched and thickly netted with barbed wire; but the bay would have afforded the finest landing-place upon the southern Peninsula, had it not been fully commanded by guns across the strait. Upon the south-west point of the bay, the old Turkish castle and fortress of Seddel Bahr, projecting boldly into the sea, guards the entrance to the strait, and, as already described, at the foot of its towers and curtain-walls are still heaped the huge round stones which the Turks once deemed sufficient to hurl at intruders beating up against the current. Behind the castle was huddled a grey stone village or small town, of the usual Turkish character, with narrow and winding alleys between secretive houses, and just beyond the point there projected a low reef of rocks round which the deep-blue water, hurrying out to the open sea, perpetually eddied.

From the Seddel Bahr point the coast falls back a little into the shallow arc of a bay barely over a quarter of a mile long if one follows the sandy beach. Around the curve, the ground rises rather steeply, almost exactly in the form of a classic theatre, to which the beach would serve as orchestra and the sea as stage. This little bay, to be renowned as V Beach, ends on the western side in precipitous cliffs, round the foot of which it is possible to clamber over masses of fallen rocks, but no path leads. On the top of the cliff stood one of the most powerful of the entrance forts destroyed by the naval attack on February 19. The beach itself is narrow—about 10 yards across—and was edged by a small but perpendicular bank, not over 4 or 5 feet in height. The slopes of the theatre were at that time covered with grass, to be changed later on for dust and heavy sand. The slope measures about 200 yards from beach to summit. Along the edge of the beach ran an entanglement of the peculiarly strong barbed wire used by the Turks; a second entanglement ran round the curving slope two-thirds of the way up, and a third joined the two at right angles at the eastern end of the bay. The upper part of the semicircle was strongly entrenched and armed with pom-poms, while in the ruins of the old fortress, in the village, and in a shattered barrack on the top of the western summit, machine-guns and a multitude of snipers were concealed. Nature and man’s invention had converted the little bay into a defensive engine of manifold destruction.

At daybreak the Albion opened a heavy bombardment. There was no answer. The little semicircle remained still as an empty theatre, and sanguine spirits hoped that defence had been abandoned. Transhipping rapidly from a fleet-sweeper, three companies of the 1st Dublin Fusiliers and a party of the Anson Battalion, Royal Naval Division, arranged themselves in six tows, each made up of a pinnace and four cutters, and carrying 125 men apiece. In line abreast the tows started for the shore over the glassy water, pale with morning. Except for the continuous crash of our bursting shells, not a sound came from the shore. On the right of the main party of tows loomed a large collier, called the River Clyde, but known to the classical as the “Trojan Horse,” and to the unlearned as the “Dun Cow.” She carried the 1st Munster Fusiliers, half the 2nd Hampshire Regiment, one company of the Dublin Fusiliers, and details of sappers, signallers, field ambulance, and an Anson beach-party. Commander Edward Unwin, R.N., was in charge of her, a man of eagle features and impetuous but noble personality, inclined to pour imprecations upon “the Army” while he assisted them with untiring ingenuity and a courage conspicuous even on that heroic day. His orders were to run his ship hard aground after the tows had landed their first party. A hopper alongside the collier was then to proceed under her own steam and momentum, towing a string of lighters so as to form a pontoon for the troops, who were to issue from square iron doors opening close up to the ship’s bow on the port and starboard sides. But the tow-rope attaching the lighters to the hopper fouled; the current drove the River Clyde ashore 30 yards west of the spot designed; and tows and ship touched ground almost at the same moment. The hopper ran forward with the lighters, which were secured after a short delay. The gangways dropped. Shoving each other eagerly forward, the Munster Fusiliers rushed from the opened ports.

Hardly had the first man set foot on the gangways, when the invisible enemy broke the silence with an overwhelming outburst of rifle fire, pom-poms, and machine-guns. The Munster Fusiliers of the first company fell so thick that many were suffocated or crushed by the sheer weight of the dead dropping upon them. Few if any of those eager Irishmen struggled across the lighters to the beach unwounded. In the tows, the boats were riddled with holes, and the greater number destroyed. The Dublin Fusiliers and the crews supplied by the navy were shot down either in the boats or as they leapt into the shallow water and attempted to rush across the narrow beach. A few succeeded in reaching the low and perpendicular bank of sand, and lay under its uncertain cover, unable to show a head above the top without death. The Turks had carefully marked the ranges of every point along the shore with stakes, and they fired in security from dug-outs and deep trenches, against which no naval bombardment availed.

Inspired by a courage which baffles reason with amazement (for what reasonable motive had these men—these Irishmen—to spring into the face of instant death?), the second company of Munster Fusiliers crowded upon the gangway, and rushed along the lighters over the dead bodies of their friends. As they ran, the end of the pontoon nearest the shore was torn loose by the rip of the current, and drifted off into deep water. The men fell in masses, and many, either to escape the torrent of bullets or in passionate eagerness to reach the shore, attempted to swim to land, but were dragged down by the weight of their equipment, and lay visible upon the sand below. With unwavering decision, the sailors laboured to restore the pontoon. Commander Unwin ran down the gangway and, plunging into the sea, worked beside the men. Midshipman Malleson and Midshipman Drewry (in honour of whom the French afterwards named the jetty which they built on the spot) swam out, carrying ropes to and from the drifting lighters under the ceaseless splash of bullets and shells. The names of all these have become celebrated, and they won the most envied of all our country’s distinctions, but it is almost invidious to select even such names as theirs among the men and boys of every rank, and of both services, whose self-devotion made that day and place so memorable.86

By such devoted efforts, a reserve lighter was brought into position, and the pontoon again completed. A third company of the Munster Fusiliers dashed along it, with similar heroism, towards the shore, suffering terrible loss from accurate and low-firing shrapnel, now added to the other missiles of death. The survivors joined the survivors under shelter of the low bank of sand. There was a brief pause in the attempt to land, but when it began again, the pontoon was again carried adrift by the current, bearing upon it a number of Hampshire men, together with Brigadier-General Napier, commanding the 88th Brigade, and his Brigade-Major, Captain Costeker. They lay down flat upon the lighters, but nearly all were killed as they lay, including these two officers of distinguished military name. Connection with the shore was thus severed. Nearly all the boats in the tows had been destroyed, and some were idly drifting, manned only by the dead. The dead lay upon the lighters, and below the water, and awash upon the edge of the beach. The ripple of the tormented sea broke red against the sand.

One of the tows had taken half a company of the Dublin Fusiliers to a point called the “Camber Beach,” just north-east of the Seddel Bahr castle. Perhaps they were intended to threaten the enemy’s position from his left flank by creeping round the castle and attacking the village streets. This they proceeded to do, and, as the Turks had not entrenched this position, the Irishmen with great skill crawled from cover to cover till they reached the village windmills and the entrance to the houses. There they were overwhelmed by the crowd of snipers. Many were killed, some cut off, only twenty-five returned. The wounded had to be left. One who afterwards saw the dead in a room said the bodies were charred, and the base of a 6-in. shell lay there. Probably hence arose reports of mutilation.87

Before noon, any further attempt to effect a landing was abandoned, and the main body of troops which was to have followed close upon the covering party was diverted to W Beach. The mixed survivors of Dublin and Munster Fusiliers, and of the Hampshire companies, remained crouching behind the low parapet of the bank, with no food or water beyond such small quantities as they had brought with them. There they lay, exposed to the full blaze of sun, and only just sheltered from the incessant rain of bullets and shells. But for some machine-guns mounted on the bows of the River Clyde and protected by sandbags, the Turks would have found little difficulty in exterminating their whole number. With them were two officers of the General Staff—Colonel Doughty-Wylie, our humane and gallant military consul at Konia during the Adana massacres in 1909, and Colonel W. de L. Williams (Hampshire Regiment), who did their utmost to hearten the men during the remaining hours of that terrible day and through the night. As the Turks had no big guns on the spot, and the fire of the Asiatic guns was to some extent checked by the fleet, the remainder of the party on board the River Clyde were comparatively secure. The heavy loss in officers included the General of the 88th Brigade, as we have seen, and Colonel Carrington Smith, commanding that brigade’s Hampshire Regiment, both killed. During the afternoon and evening the naval boats were constantly engaged in removing the wounded from the River Clyde and other points where they could be reached. In this duty Commander Unwin again distinguished himself, going along the shore in a lifeboat and rescuing the wounded lying in shallow water, under persistent fire from the semicircular heights. Throughout the day and far into the moonlit night the Queen Elizabeth, Cornwallis, and Albion and other ships maintained a heavy bombardment, which restrained the furious Turkish attempts at counter-attack, and assisted the remainder of the covering party in landing from the River Clyde under the comparative darkness. But later in the night the noise of battle was renewed. Outbursts of rifle and machine-gun fire, varied by shells thrown over from W Beach by two of our own field guns, allowed the wearied men no rest; and at dawn the Albion turned on her 12-in. shells, like trains rushing headlong down a tunnel to the crash of collision.

At V Beach, in spite of the incalculable courage and skill of the Irish Regulars and the sailors combined, the landing on the 25th had failed. At W Beach, not much more than half a mile north-west, over the cliff of Cape Helles where the lighthouse and Fort I had stood, the English covering party displayed equal heroism and gained greater success. W Beach is a shallower but longer arc of sandy shore, curving between Cape Helles and Cape Tekke, the two extreme points of the Peninsula. Between the two inaccessible cliffs and the fallen rocks which the sea washes, a gully has been cut by a short watercourse, draining the extremity of the high and slightly undulating plateau in which the Peninsula ends. Except after heavy rains, the gully is dry, but its occasional stream, working upon the sandstone formation, and aided by the north-east wind blowing dust over the plateau’s surface, has piled up low heaps of sand dune, at that time covered with bent-grass, spring flowers, and the aromatic herbs which flourish upon the dry seacoasts of the Near East. Along its gentle curve the actual beach is rather more than a quarter of a mile in length, and its broadest part, where the gully runs out, is some 40 yards across. Hidden in the shallows a strong wire entanglement had been laid, and another protected the whole length of the beach from end to end at the water’s edge. To check communication with V Beach, two redoubts had been constructed upon the plateau south-east, and from them thick entanglements ran down to the cliffs edge at Cape Helles. Other entanglements on the north-west cut off communication with the more distant X Beach. The top rows, as it were, of the theatre, broken near the centre of the gully, were strongly entrenched; machine-guns, commanding the beach by converging fire, were lodged in caves upon the cliffs on both sides; and the land and sea were planted with mines. In his dispatch, Sir Ian Hamilton justly says:

These unsurpassed soldiers were men of the 1st Lancashire Fusiliers (86th Brigade), and, in their honour, W Beach was afterwards generally known as “Lancashire Landing.” The Euryalus was the guardian ship of this covering party, and after half an hour’s naval bombardment, to which no answer came, eight picket boats in line abreast, towing four cutters apiece, steamed toward the shore till they reached the shallows, and the tows were cast off to row to land. As at V Beach, the Turks maintained their silence till the boats grated. Then, in an instant, a storm of lead and iron swept down upon the Lancashire men. Some leapt into the water, and were caught by the hidden entanglement there. The foremost hurled themselves ashore, and struggled with the terrible wire, compared with which our British barbed wire is as cotton to rope. In vain the first line hacked and tore. Machines and rifles mowed them flat as with a scythe. Witnesses eagerly watching from the distant ships asked each other, “What are they resting for?” But they were dead.

Fortunately two of the tows, carrying a company, with which was General S. W. Hare, C.O. of this 86th Brigade, put to shore a little to the left of the central beach, and found shelter under a ledge of rock at the foot of Cape Tekke cliff. Here they escaped the cross-fire, and were able partly to enfilade the enemy’s trenches. The Brigadier-General was severely wounded, either at this time or a little later, but part of the company succeeded in scrambling up the rocks in front of them to the summit, and a party from three tows to the right of the beach were equally successful upon the Cape Helles side.89 Meanwhile the covering warships had moved close in to bombard the trenches along the edge of the summit, and the beach entanglements were at last broken. The companies, re-formed under cover of the cliffs on both sides of the beach, chiefly to the left, and supported by the arrival of further tows, began the assault on the highest point of the plateau above the bay (known as Hill 138, about the spot where the military cemetery was afterwards laid out). In the centre the assault was made with bayonets only, the rifles being clogged with sand. By 11.30 three trenches had been taken—in spite of the explosion of many land mines—the point was occupied, and communication established with the landing-party at X Beach, to be afterwards described.90

Similarly, a small party of Lancashire Fusiliers succeeded in scrambling to the summit of the cliff on the right above Cape Helles, but were there held up by the redoubts and entanglements, and there they lost Major Frankland, Brigade-Major of the 86th. No further advance could be made till 2 p.m., when, owing to the positions held by the companies on the left, the landing had become fairly secure. Colonel Woolly-Dod, of the Divisional General Staff, then took the place of General Hare in command, and the Worcester and Essex Regiments were sent to reinforce the covering party. Following a heavy naval bombardment they advanced, the Essex leading, cut passages through the entanglements, and after two hours’ contest captured the redoubt, though with heavy loss.

An attempt was then made to relieve the terrible situation at V Beach by advancing along the top of the headland north-east. Lancashire and Royal Fusiliers from W and X Beaches came over in small parties to assist the Worcesters. The distance to V Beach was not great—barely half a mile—and if it could have been covered, the enemy must have abandoned their V Beach trenches. Wire-cutters fearlessly advanced. From headquarters on the Queen Elizabeth they could be watched, clipping the powerful entanglements as though pruning a garden at home. But the rows of wire were too thick, the fire from the ruins of No. 1 Fort too deadly. Exhausted by a sleepless night and the hot day’s fighting, these bravest of men abandoned the attempt, and sought rest in the trenches along the summit of the cliffs now deserted by the enemy. Violent counter-attacks were repeated through the night. Except the Anson Battalion beach-party and a company of sappers, there were no available reserves. But the lines defending W Beach were held, and the landing of stores, rations, and water in kerosine tins (for the Divisional supply of which General Hunter-Weston’s Staff had provided) began without interruption. Part of the remainder of the division also disembarked, and the sappers set to work at constructing the road which afterwards wound up the dusty ascent from the beach to the plateau.

If one could scramble round the foot of Cape Tekke till the face of the cliff looking westward towards the Ægean and Gulf of Xeros was reached, rather over half a mile along the sea-washed rocks, one would come to a narrow strip of sand about 200 yards long. The cliff above it is lower and less steep, the surface soft and crumbling. This is X Beach, to be known afterwards as “Implacable Landing,” owing to the fine service of the guardian battleship Implacable (15,000 tons, 1901; Captain Lockyer). Here half the battalion of the 2nd Royal Fusiliers was disembarked from the Implacable in four tows of six boats each, the battleship advancing in the centre of them with anchor hanging over the bows to six fathoms, when it dragged. Captain Lockyer opened fire upon the slope and summit of the cliffs at very short range with every available gun, and under this protection the half-battalion landed with small loss. Using the same tows as they returned empty, the second half-battalion followed from two mine-sweepers. But the advanced party were already swarming up the face of the cliffs under Lieut.-Colonel Newenham (C.O., 2nd Royal Fusiliers). At the summit the fire from rifles, machine-guns, and shrapnel was very heavy. Securing his left with one company, and the front with part of another, and leaving one company to bring up ammunition and water, Colonel Newenham proceeded to effect communication with the Lancashire Fusiliers on W Beach. This was accomplished by a violent bayonet attack up the height on the top of Cape Tekke (Hill 114). In this attack the remainder of the battalion was engaged, encouraged by cheers from the Implacable, so close to shore had the ship put in. After heavy loss, the summit was taken about noon, and Royal Fusiliers shared with the W Beach troops in the endeavour to relieve V Beach. But meantime the centre above X Beach was severely threatened; Colonel Newenham was wounded; and the situation was only saved by the arrival of the 1st Borderers and the 1st Inniskilling Fusiliers of the 87th Brigade, whose Brigadier, General Marshall, had also been wounded.91

Rather less than a mile farther up the coast from X Beach one comes to a wide opening in the cliffs, known at that time as Y2, and later as Gully Beach. Along the shore it could be reached by climbing over rocks, but there was then no path. Along the summit it was easily reached by the usual Turkish tracks from the high ground at Cape Helles and Cape Tekke, but these tracks, like the rest of the Peninsula inland, were hidden from the sea by the slope of the ground from the edge towards the centre. The opening is caused partly by a short gully running from the summit almost at right angles to the beach, but especially by a long, deep gully, or “cañon,” coming down from the Krithia direction, and running for about three miles almost parallel with the sea, from which its existence is entirely concealed. In dry weather it shows a trickle of water in some places; after rain it becomes the bed of a torrent or a channel of liquid mud. Owing to our want of trustworthy maps, its course was at that time unknown, but it came to be called the Gully Ravine, or the Gully simply (in Turkish, Saghir Dere). Its depth might conceal an army in ambush, and its issue upon the shore forms a broad, flat beach, commanded by heights in a semicircle fronting the sea. Here the Turks had massed large forces of infantry, deeply entrenched, and supported by machine and Hotchkiss guns. Formidable as the position was, it could hardly have been stronger than V or W Beach, and one may conclude it was refused by the General in command mainly for want of men to storm another point at which the enemy would naturally expect attack. Perhaps also he considered the position not far enough removed from Helles to turn the defences there and threaten the line of retreat.

About two miles farther up the coast there is another beach known to the end of the campaign as Y. The navy put it at 7000 yards from Cape Tekke. So small is it, and the cleft or dry waterfall which forms it so steep and narrow, that the Turks had neglected the position as unassailable. Nevertheless, lying south-west from Krithia village, and about four miles from Cape Helles, it was chosen as a protection to our left flank and a threat to the enemy’s line of communication, or of retreat in the event of his withdrawal from the end of the Peninsula. It was intended to serve the same purpose as De Tott’s Battery (Eski Hissarlik) upon our extreme right, and, if it were securely held, its value was obvious.

The 1st King’s Own Scottish Borderers and one company of the South Wales Borderers had been detailed for this service, but the Commander-in-Chief added the Plymouth (Marine) Battalion, R.N.D., on account of the importance of the position, or because the landing-party was beyond reach of reinforcement. The Goliath, Sapphire, and Amethyst were the conducting ships, and at the first light the troops were put ashore by trawlers with four tows. They had to leap out into deep water owing to reefs, but reached the shore without opposition, and at once climbed the precipitous watercourse and cliffs on each side. The battleship Goliath shelled only the reported emplacements near X Beach, hoping to delude. But Turkish snipers immediately set to work, and the fire became more and more searching as the day went on. Still there was no organised attack, and the men dug shallow and far-extended trenches along the summit on both sides of the deep ravine, the Marine Battalion on the left, the K.O.S.B. in the centre, the S.W. Borderers on the right. Colonel Matthews of the Plymouth Battalion was in command throughout, but his second in command, Colonel Koe (K.O.S.B.), was mortally wounded early in the day. It was impossible to fulfil Staff orders by gaining touch with X Beach, because communication was shut off by the powerful Turkish force at Y2—a misfortune which might have been foreseen. During the afternoon, the sniping developed into assault. Turks were seen swarming out from Krithia, and others probably came up from Y2 along the Gully Ravine (Saghir Dere), which at this point is only a short distance away, and was hitherto unknown to our men.

At twilight the repeated assaults increased in violence. Under the rising moon, line after line of Turks advanced, at some points reaching the trenches before they were cut down. Sir Ian mentions a pony led right through the trenches with a machine-gun on his back, and an eye-witness saw a German officer killed by a blow from a shovel as, with grenade in hand, he called upon a trench to surrender. All night the savage conflict continued, the Turks charging with religious courage, our men driving them back with the bayonet when the rifles became foul and choked with dirt. But just before daylight the shrapnel terrifically increased, the Turks swarmed round in irresistible crowds, the centre of the K.O.S.B. trenches was rushed, and the men driven headlong down the gorge. Only those who know the nature of the ground, the cliffs some 200 feet high, and the depth of the ravine, half hidden by thick and prickly scrub, can realise the horror of that scene, or the superb devotion of those who still remained to hold the summit while the wounded were being carried on waterproof sheets (without stretchers) down to the beach. More than half the officers and nearly half the men were killed or wounded. By morning it had become impossible to cling any longer to the position. Protected by a small and heroic rearguard, and by the heavy fire of the ships Goliath, Talbot, Dublin, Sapphire, and Amethyst, the wounded, the stores, and the survivors of the two battalions and the S.W. Borderers company were taken off by the boats and returned in the early afternoon on the warships to the southern end of the Peninsula. In spite of the heroism displayed, and in spite of the service in holding up a large Turkish force for the critical twenty-four hours, the effort at Y Beach failed, and the failure was serious.

About nine miles from Y Beach farther north along the coast, the snub-nosed promontory of Gaba Tepe suddenly projects. It is of no great height—just under 100 feet—but deep water washes the foot of the steep and rugged cliffs, its caves and artificial tunnels concealed guns which no shell could touch, and from those caves and tunnels nearly the whole coast north and south could be enfiladed. North, the coast falls into an open, gently sloping shore of quiet meadows and scattered olive groves, crossed by a track to the Old Village (Eski Keui) in the centre of the Peninsula, and so to Maidos on the strait. Next to Bulair, this is the shortest way over, for it measures less than five miles in a straight line. But on the right stands the threatening plateau of Kilid Bahr, strongly held, and forming a central base for the enemy’s army, and on the left rise the heights of Sari Bair, intersected by inextricable entanglements of gully and ravine. At the northern end of that gentle slope, rising like the fields around a Lowland loch, just where the cliffs begin again, the main landing of the Anzac corps was intended. Remembering the V and W Beaches, no one can call any position impregnable to such men as ours; but the spot was thickly wired from the water’s edge; it was fully exposed to the guns hidden on Gaba Tepe, in an olive grove farther inland, and on Kilid Bahr plateau itself; to advance over the gradual slope would have meant advancing up an unsheltered glacis crossed by almost impenetrable obstacles, in the face of entrenched and invisible machine-guns and rifles. It was fortunate that man’s proposals here went astray.

The object of the Anzac landing was to detain the Turkish forces on Kilid Bahr plateau, to check the reinforcement of the southern Peninsula by them or by other troops from the Bulair district, and to threaten the Turkish line of retreat. The enemy’s forces in these central regions were vaguely estimated at about 20,000; but reconnaissance had been impossible, the country was unknown, except in so far as it can be surveyed from the sea, and hitherto the Staff had no maps even fairly trustworthy, as the maps afterwards found on the bodies of Turkish officers were. The landing was officially called Z Beach, but was always known as “Anzac,” and so history will know it. As already stated, the covering force consisted of the 3rd Australian Brigade under Colonel Sinclair Maclagan. It was conveyed in four transports, but the first landing-party (about 1500 men) had been transferred at Mudros to the warships Queen (Admiral Thursby’s flagship), the London, and the Prince of Wales. Twelve tows were provided, each consisting of a steam pinnace and a trail of four cutters or “lifeboats,” and carrying about 125 men.92 As soon as the first party had started in the tows, the remainder of the covering party was to tranship from the transports into eight destroyers, and to follow slowly towards shore until taken off by the returning tows, three tows being allotted to each pair of destroyers. When the covering brigade had made sure of the landing, the transports of the whole army corps were to close in to shore and disembark. The Triumph, the Majestic, and the cruiser Bacchante were to cover the landing by gun-fire. As throughout the expedition, the entire organisation on the water was directed by the navy, and the boats were commanded by boy midshipmen, whose imperturbable calm in moments of extreme peril was, from beginning to end, and at every crisis, only rivalled by the dogged heroism of their crews.

The whole force assembled at a point about half-way between Imbros and the intended landing. It was 1.30 a.m. of the 25th. The smoke rising against the westering moon probably betrayed their presence, but they waited till the moon set behind the jagged mountains of Imbros soon after three. As directed, the first tows were then manned, and the three warships moved abreast slowly towards the shore, followed by the trailing boats. At 4.10 a.m. they stopped, within about one and a quarter mile of shore, and the tows moved slowly forward, the destroyers following them at about half an hour’s interval. Probably it was in that interval that the salutary mistake occurred. Whether misled by ignorance of the coast and by the starlit darkness, or carried unconsciously by a current which sets along shore towards the Gulf of Xeros, the tows approached land rather more than a mile north of the appointed landing. The beach to which they made is a shallow arc of sand stretching for about half a mile between two small projections in the coast-line—Ari Burnu to the north, and what the Australians called Hell Spit to the south. One deep ravine, starting from an almost precipitous cliff (to be known as “Plugge’s Plateau”) divides the arc near the northern extremity at right angles to the shore; but confusedly broken and steep, though not absolutely precipitous, ground rises all around the cove—“Anzac Cove”—to a general height of over 200 feet. Wherever the ground—a mixture of soft sandstone and marl—was not too steep for vegetation, it was then covered with thick green or blackish scrub, chiefly prickly oak, difficult to penetrate, and in places six feet high. In later months the scrub served as a danger signal, for the spots where it remained were exposed to rifle or shell-fire. Everywhere else it disappeared, leaving the yellow surface bare.

The tows approached the beach in absolute silence. Trusting to the cliffs, the Turks had neglected defence at this point, but for two slight trenches—one close to the water’s edge, the second a little up the height. Even these seem to have been left unmanned, for about a battalion of Turks was dimly perceived running along the shore, no doubt hurried up from the open ground where our landing had been intended. Just before 5 a.m. they opened fire, and many of the soldiers and crews were struck in the boats. The Australians made no answer, but before the keels grated, leapt into water up to their chests, and surged ashore. Throwing off their packs, they dashed straight with the bayonet upon the enemy wherever they could see him. The two trenches were carried with a rush, and still the men charged on. They began to struggle up the gully and the steep ascent on its right (afterwards called Maclagan’s Ridge). The tows returned for the remainder of the brigade on the destroyers, and these men joined in the rush and scramble. Some of the tows crossed each other, and added to the excited confusion. Some, either for want of space or yielding to the current, passed north of Ari Burnu and attempted a landing on the broad and open beach beside fishermen’s huts, standing almost in front of the perpendicular and strangely shaped cliff afterwards called “The Sphinx.” Here they suffered terrible loss from rifles and machine-guns; for this beach, gradually broadening out till it merges into the open, marshy plain at the mouth of Anafarta Biyuk valley, extends to Suvla and the Salt Lake, and the Turks were here prepared to oppose a landing. A few of the boats went adrift, having no men left to control them. One at least swayed with the current, full of dead. Several had to be left for some days aground against the beach, full also of dead.

Crossing the top of Maclagan’s Ridge, the scattered groups of the 3rd Brigade suddenly looked down into a deep valley running right across their advance. It was the hidden valley afterwards known as Shrapnel Gully. From its issue upon the beach just south of Hell Spit, it runs up north-east for something over a mile through the very heart of the subsequent position. Many gullies and small watercourses (all dry except after heavy rain) lead into it, and it afterwards became the chief means of communication with the outposts along the centre of the Anzac lines. Down into this valley the 3rd Brigade plunged. The thick bushes and devious watercourses split them up. Battalions and companies lost touch in haphazard advance. Shrapnel from the opposite height and both flanks swept the valley in bursting storms. From the rear and every side, hidden snipers picked the isolated men off as they struggled forward. Officers fell. Orders ceased. In separate knots, without leading or control, the men ran, and leapt, and stumbled on. Right across the valley they struggled, shouting their battle-song, “Australia will be there,” bayoneting all Turks they caught, and cursing as they fell. Up the opposing heights they climbed—heights so steep on the face that, later in the campaign, steps had to be cut for paths, and supplies were hauled up by pullies. Over the top of that steep ridge the groups charged on. Many got farther than Anzacs were ever to go again. Some looked down into the valleys where the nearest Turkish camps of Koja Dere and Boghali stood. Many disappeared for ever into the unknown wilderness. “They refused to surrender,” the Turks said at the armistice of a month later—“they refused to surrender, so we had to kill them all.”

In a contest of such confusion, the thought of time is lost, and it becomes impossible to trace the course of consecutive events. But early in the morning—some say at 5.30, others about 9.30—there was a pause in the firing for about an hour. The Turks appear to have been overwhelmed by the dash and violence of an assault such as that leisurely and dreamy race had never imagined. It seems to have been about this time that Major Brand (Brigade-Major of the 3rd Brigade) with a party of the 9th (Queensland) and 10th (South Australian) battalions, standing on one of the sharp crests, and seeing a redoubt and earthworks upon a hillside below, charged down the valley and captured a battery of three Krupp guns. The Turks, after the pause, were then advancing to their first counter-attack, and the Australians were compelled to spike and destroy the guns instead of getting them away. But it was a serviceable deed.

So soon as it was light, the guns hidden on Gaba Tepe and hidden guns on some hill to the north poured converging shrapnel upon the boats coming to shore, and upon the beach itself, although it was to some extent protected by Hell Spit and Ari Burnu. The Triumph and Bacchante succeeded in keeping down the fire from Gaba Tepe at intervals, but it repeatedly burst out again with fury. Under this recurrent storm of shell, the 1st (New South Wales) and the 2nd (Victoria) Brigades, closely followed by two brigades of the New Zealand and Australian Division (the New Zealand and the 4th Australian), put to shore. All had landed soon after midday, and two batteries of Indian mountain guns came into action. But the losses were severe, and the shelling so heavy that the remaining artillery could not be landed. In the extremity of peril and excitement, battalions and brigades became hopelessly mixed up, and many groups lost touch with units and officers. But for the most part, the 2nd Brigade appears to have climbed to the right of the 3rd or covering brigade, to have crossed the long (Shrapnel) gully nearer its mouth, and to have advanced up the continuation of the farther ridge towards the point afterwards called M‘Laurin Hill (Colonel M‘Laurin being C.O. of the Victorians). The 1st Brigade appears to have supported the 3rd, and held a position on its left, probably near “Pope’s Hill.” The extreme left of the whole position, which gradually took the shape of an irregular semicircle or triangle, was later occupied and held by the joint Division of New Zealanders and Australians. Near the centre the Auckland Battalion under Colonel Plugge held “Plugge’s Plateau,” overlooking the beach. To the left, the New Zealanders stormed the steep ridge afterwards known as “Walker’s,” from Brigadier-General H. B. Walker, of the General Staff. Just beyond “The Sphinx” it rises steeply from the beach to a height which faces the sea in a sheer precipice of 150 feet, and its long summit became the main line of defence on the north and north-east. Moving still farther left, over a broad beach (“Ocean Beach”) and fairly open ground, afterwards crossed by the “Great Sap,” Captain Cribb with a party of New Zealanders rushed a strong redoubt and store at the “Fishermen’s Huts” and established the outlying position of “No. 1 Post.”

In the afternoon and early evening, the 4th Australian Brigade (2nd Division) under Colonel Monash, apparently advancing from the beach straight across the central ridge, filled in the dangerous gaps between the Australian brigades on the right and the New Zealanders on the left. The upper end of “Shrapnel Gully,” leading up to “Pope’s Hill” between “Walker’s Ridge” and the steep farthest line of defence afterwards held by “Quinn’s Post,” “Courtney’s” and “Steel’s,” was accordingly known as “Monash Gully.”

By the evening the Anzac position, which varied little for the next three months, was thus roughly drawn, and the names of the officers who had seized the various points were vaguely attached to them. The whole position was hardly more than three-quarters of a mile deep by a mile and a half long, not counting the outpost by Fishermen’s Huts. In fact, on the first day hardly more than a mile in length was gained. But to the end it was almost impossible to realise how small the area was, so steep are its heights and so entangling its valleys and ravines. Entangled in those ravines, exhausted by scaling the heights, and lost in the deep scrub of that unknown country, the Anzacs fought till dark to maintain their plot of ground against repeated counter-attacks. There was no time to dig in. From Koja Dere, Boghali, and Kilid Bahr plateau, the Turks rolled up waves of reinforcement. It was estimated that 20,000 came clashing against the 3rd Brigade and the left of the 2nd in the middle morning. The attack was renewed at 3 p.m. and again at 5. Groups of Australians were driven back from the most advanced positions; many were cut off and shot down. Only along the edge of the heights beyond Shrapnel Valley a thin line held, growing hourly thinner.

In the afternoon, General Birdwood came ashore with the Divisional Generals. The beach was a scene of wild and perilous confusion. Men, stores, ammunition, and watercans were being dumped on the sand as the boats brought them in. Parties loaded up with rations, water, and cartridges were climbing out to supply the firing lines. In long streams the wounded were staggering or being carried down to lie on the beach till boats could take them off, at first to hospital ships, and afterwards to any kind of ship which the navy could allot. For here, as elsewhere, the casualties had been greatly underestimated. Originally only two hospital ships had been provided for the whole attack, and though the navy lent two more, the supply was not nearly adequate. On the small beach, Colonel N. R. Howse (Assistant Director of Medical Service to the Corps) hurriedly erected a dressing-station; but the wounded, however heroic in their suffering, suffered much. And over the whole scene, shrapnel crashed and shrieked perpetually, while the air was filled with the tearing wail of bullets passing in thousands across the beach from the cliffs above, and dropping like hail-stones upon the boats and sea. At nightfall the Turks, shouting their battle-cry of “Allah, Allah Din!” renewed the attack with intensified violence. Appeals for reinforcement came pouring in. It seemed impossible to hold on. Orders to prepare for evacuation were whispered from group to group.93