An Cosantóir

An Cosantóir July/August 2015 www.dfmagazine.ie 30 | by TERRy MCLAUGHLIN I n early 1915 as trench warfare along the Western Front settled into stalemate, conflicting ideas about how to break the impasse started to emerge on the Allied side. Mainly these fell into two categories, 'westerners', who thought the war could only be won on the battlefields of Flanders and France, and 'east- erners', who believed that opening another front in the east was the way forward. Prominent easterners included the Minister for Munitions and future Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, who wanted to 'knock away the props' by attacking and defeating Germany's allies in the east, and Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty and political head of the Royal Navy. Churchill supported a plan to force the Dardanelles (a narrow, 38-mile long strait, varying from four miles to one mile in width, between the Gallipoli peninsula and the western coast of Turkey) to gain access to the Sea of Marmara for the Royal Navy, which would then be in a position to bombard Constantinople. Gaining control of the Ottoman capital would allow passage through the Bosphorus into the Black Sea. Having a route from the Mediter- ranean through to the Black Sea would allow Britain and France a direct resupply connection with their ally Russia in the east. At the time land routes were cut off by the Western Front, sea routes to the far north were impassable in winter, and the German High Seas Fleet controlled access through the Baltic Sea. In addition to the advantages of the direct connection with Russia, Churchill also believed Germany would be forced to move large amounts of manpower and equipment from the Western Front to assist their Ottoman allies. Receiving permission from the War Cabinet, Churchill at first attempted a purely naval operation. Two attempts in February and March by a combined British/French fleet failed, losing sev- eral ships to mines and fire from the numerous Turkish forts and mobile artillery batteries that lined the Dardenelles. Realising that a naval operation on its own would not be suffi- cient, plans were quickly drawn up for a land invasion of Gallipoli with the intention of taking control of the forts from the landward side. Two landing sites were selected. One, just north of Gebe Tepe, would be assaulted by the newly-formed Australian New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC), and would become known as Anzac Cove. Secondly, at Cape Helles, at the southern tip of the peninsula, the British 29th Division, which included several regular Irish regi- ments that had arrived back from service in India, would make landings at five beaches and Burma after the war broke out. Due to the Ottoman Empire's poor performance in the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 and against the Russians in the Caucasus in 1915, Allied commanders believed they would not face much opposi- tion. This was a fatal underestimation. At Gallipoli the Turkish soldiers were defending their motherland from invasion and they were well led with a number of German officers as well as Lt Col Mustafa Kemal, a fearless military man who would later become the leader and founder of modern Turkey under the title of Kemal Ataturk (Father of the Turks). Also the four-week delay between the naval attacks and the troop landings gave the defenders time to put in place a large number of fortified positions dominat- ing the high ground overlooking the beaches. Unsure of exactly where the invasion would take place the Turks held the bulk of their forces in a central location ready to move rapidly to wher- ever they were required. During the hours of darkness before sunrise on April 25th the untested ANZACs came ashore without meeting any opposition and started to move slowly inland. The commander of the 29th Division, Maj Gen Aylmer Hunter- Weston, chose to wait until daybreak for his force's landings in order to avoid confusion in the dark. The fate that awaited the invading troops depended on which beach they landed at. Oppo- sition was minimal at three of the beaches but not at 'V' and 'W' beaches where the Turks laid down a withering hail of rifle and machine gun fire. At 'V' Beach the 1st Royal Dublin Fusiliers and the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers were the first to disembark from the SS River Clyde, which deliberately ran aground as close to the shore as possible. Such was the ferocity of the fire they faced, that of the Disaster in the Dardanelles Members of the 7th Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers preparing to leave Royal Barracks (Collins Bks) in Dublin for Basingstoke in April 1915. They were amongst the Irish troops who were inspected by the King at Basingstoke. Photo: National Museum of Ireland Irish soldiers prior to their departure from Royal Barracks (Collins Bks) in Dublin for action in World War One. Photo: National Museum of Ireland King George V inspects the 29th Division in March 1915 just before they embarked for Gallipoli.

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