Early on 25 April 1915 Allied troops landed on the Gallipoli peninsula in Ottoman Turkey. The British 29th Division came ashore at Cape Helles, at the southern tip, and the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landed further north at what became Anzac Cove, while French troops made a diversion on the Asian shore. Both main landings got ashore at a heavy cost, but neither reached its objectives, and the campaign settled into a stalemate that ended with evacuation eight months later. The date is kept as Anzac Day in Australia and New Zealand.
Why Gallipoli
The aim was to open the Dardanelles, the strait leading to Constantinople, the Ottoman capital, and so to help Russia and perhaps knock Turkey out of the war. A naval attack on the strait's forts failed on 18 March 1915, when Britannica records three battleships sunk and three damaged, and it was decided that troops would have to take the peninsula first. General Sir Ian Hamilton assembled a force of British, French, Australian, New Zealand and Indian troops for the landing. The naval attacks had also warned the Ottomans, so the landing had lost the element of surprise.1
Cape Helles
The British 29th Division landed on five beaches at Cape Helles. At some beaches the troops got ashore with little trouble, but at W and V Beaches they met wire and well-sited defenses. At V Beach men came ashore from boats and from the River Clyde, a collier run aground with openings cut in her sides, and many were shot down before they reached the sand. The National Army Museum says only 21 of the first wave of 200 made it ashore there. At W Beach the 1st Battalion, Lancashire Fusiliers, won six Victoria Crosses, and the beach became known as Lancashire Landing. A French diversionary landing at Kum Kale, on the Asian shore, did its job and was later withdrawn.2
Anzac Cove
To the north, the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps went ashore before dawn near Gaba Tepe. In the dark the boats drifted north of the intended beach, and the men landed below steep cliffs, ravines and scrub. The Australian War Memorial puts the error at almost two kilometers. The Australians climbed the first ridges, but Ottoman reinforcements arrived, led by Mustafa Kemal, the future Atatürk, who counterattacked with the 57th Regiment. By nightfall the Anzacs held only a shallow beachhead. An evacuation was considered and ruled out, and the men were told to dig in.3
The cost of the first day
The Australian War Memorial says no one knows exactly how many Australians died on 25 April, perhaps 650, and that total Anzac casualties that day, including wounded, were about 2,000. The medical services were overwhelmed, and many wounded men waited on the beach until evening for boats.4
The whole campaign cost the Allies dearly. The National Army Museum gives over 220,000 Allied casualties out of nearly 500,000 men, and Britannica 213,980 British Commonwealth casualties. The Australian War Memorial counts 8,141 Australian dead. Ottoman losses were nearly as heavy: the National Army Museum calls them almost as many, and the Memorial notes Turkish memorials to at least 85,000 Ottoman dead. The last troops left Helles on 9 January 1916.5
Anzac Day
The first Anzac Day was held on 25 April 1916, with services in Australia and a march of more than 2,000 Australian and New Zealand troops through London. In the 1920s it became a national day of remembrance for all the Australians who died in the war. For Turks the campaign became a national victory, and the Australian War Memorial notes that today more Turks than Australians visit the old battlefield. The campaign as a whole is told in our article on Gallipoli.6
Also on this day
- 1707: Battle of Almansa. At Almansa, the Bourbon army of Philip V under the Duke of Berwick met the allied army of the Earl of Galway in the War of the Spanish Succession.
