Gallipoli ANZAC Tour

Having seen the memorials at and near Helles Point, we were keen to see the ANZAC area of operations too. Coincidentally, shortly after setting out from Marmaris, we had met a Danish couple who recommended that we read Birds Without Wings by Louis de Bernières, a book set in and around a mixed Christian and Muslim village on the Lycian coast of Turkey and, later, the battlefields of Gallipoli. We visited the Lycian coast last October and will go back again this year and the descriptions of village life in the book resound wonderfully with what we have seen there already. The Danish couple said that they had read the book as they travelled up the Dardarnelles and with the Gallipoli scenes set primarily around the ANZAC sector we wanted to see the area for ourselves too.

The Gallipoli Peninsula is surprisingly large and it would have been a very long cycle ride on our folding bikes (across, we found out, some very steep, hilly terrain) from our anchorage at Anit Limanı to the sites associated with the ANZAC operations at Gallipoli. We therefore decided to join a commercial half day tour from Çanakkale. The Anzac Hotel, near the ferry terminal, has a long-standing arrangement with Crowded House Tours and, despite not being resident at the hotel, we were able to make a booking through them – cost TL85 pp (approx £21 each) which included ferry tickets, lunch and an excellent, English-speaking guide.

Ferry crossing from Çanakkale to Eceabat on the Dardarnelles side of the Gallipoli Peninsula    

We met up with part of the group at Çanakkale and were escorted across to Eceabat on the ferry. Here, after lunch, we met up with the rest of our tour group, most of whom had come down from Istanbul.

The amphibious assault on the Gallipoli Peninsula took place as a result of the failure of the Allied navies to force a passage through the Dardarnelles and on to Istanbul. However, it was over a month after the 18 March 1915 naval defeat that the landings actually took place, which provided the Ottomans with plenty of time to prepare their defences. Our guide laid out the background to the campaign on the short drive across the peninsula from Eceabat on the way to our first stop.

Brighton Beach

On the morning of 25 April 1915, the ANZAC troops were supposed to land at a beach known to the Allies as Brighton Beach, a kilometre or so north of Kabetepe on the west side of the peninsula at its narrowest point. From here they were to move east to the vicinity of Eceabat and take the defensive gun emplacements guarding The Narrows, as well as move north to take the high ground of Chunuck Bair. As we saw when we arrived at Brighton Beach, our first stop of the tour, this would have been an excellent landing beach, albeit with some Ottoman defense in the vicinity and a reinforcement brigade not too far to the rear. However, the beach is shallow sloping and wide but not deep with gentle foothills behind it.

ANZAC Cove

Stop number 2 was ANZAC Cove, which is where the troops actually did land just before dawn on 25 Apr 1915. Quite why they ended up so far north is unknown for certain but they had been brought across from Limnos by ship and then rowed ashore from some distance off, all under cover of darkness. GPS, of course, did not exist then and with no land-based and/or lit navigational aids available and variable currents to contend with, it is hardly surprising that one or more navigational errors were made.

ANZAC Cove – formally renamed as such by the Turkish authorities in 1985    

ANZAC Cove during the campaign

Unlike Brighton Beach, ANZAC Cove is quite steeply shelving. Similarly, the ground immediately behind the beach slopes steeply, hardly an ideal place to fight ashore and regroup. Further behind still, the ground goes up nearly vertically.

North Beach and the Sphinx pinnacle. The ANZAC troops had trained in Egypt, hence the name they gave the pinnacle

Many of the ANZAC troops landed just to the north of ANZAC Cove at what became known as North Beach. The terrain here is very similar, though the beach itself is much wider. Despite having landed in the wrong place by several miles and with horrific terrain to fight across, the ANZAC troops managed to make it to within a few hundred yards of their high ground objective, Chunuck Bair, by about 11am, before being beaten back by the Ottoman 57^th Regiment, led by Mustafa Kemal (later Kemal Atatürk). Not until August did they get as far again.

Looking up from North beach at the high ground the ANZACs had to fight their way up    

Today, the annual Dawn Service on 25^th April is held at the ANZAC Commemorative Site at North Beach, rather than at ANZAC Cove, because so many people come to attend the ceremony. This year, the 100^th anniversary of the campaign, the service was attended by (restricted to) 10,000 people and watched by thousands more on a live internet stream.

Lone Pine Cemetery – the main Australian memorial

Having looked up at the heights the troops had to fight across to get towards their objectives, and marvelled at how quickly they managed to get so far (though they were later bogged down in virtually the same position for the entire campaign) we were able to luxuriate in a coach ride up through the heat. The main Australian memorial is at Lone Pine Cemetery, which is located on a strategically important plateau at the south of the ANZAC sector. As befits many ‘strategically important plateau’ the views from it are wonderful. On 6 August 1915 the Australians began a 4-day long diversionary battle here against well-entrenched Ottomen soldiers in order to reduce the movement of Ottoman reinforcement troops towards the Allied ‘main effort’ up another ridgeline towards Chunuck Bair. The cemetery stands on the very ground over which the fighting raged but, eventually, the Australians overcame all the Ottoman counter-attacks and they held the ground until they were withdrawn from the peninsula in December 1915.

The peninsula is filled with memorials of all types. The one shown left commemorates an unknown Ottoman soldier who leapt into No Man’s Land to take an injured Allied soldier back to his own lines. Our guide also told us of the one day truce in the ANZAC sector which was arranged, at the height of the summer after a few days of particularly fiece fighting, to allow each army to retrieve and bury its own dead.

On the high ground, well above the landing beaches, the remains of the Allied and Ottoman trenches can still be clearly seen. The road which runs across the site was built on No Man’s Land – just the width of the road separated the opposing front lines. Nearby is The Nek, the ground over which the Australian Light Horse made a famous 4-wave attack against Ottoman trenches. This was another diversionary attack but in just 40 minutes 300 Australians were dead and today there are just 10 headstones in the cemetery of identified bodies which marks the site, the rest are unknown.

Turkish cemetery for the 57^th Infantry Regiment

The 57^th Infantry Regiment is one of the most famous Ottoman units that served at Gallipoli. On the first day of the land campaign the regiment was in the path of the ANZAC forces who were nearly at their objective of Chunuck Bair. The soldiers of the 57^th were hugely outnumbered and had relatively little ammunition and were about to withdraw from their positions when Lt Col Mustafa Kemal appeared and gave the following order: ‘I am not ordering you to attack. I am ordering you to die. During in the time it takes us to die other forces and commanders will take our place.’ All those who received that order died during the campaign, though not all in that successful bayonet defence of Chunuck Bair. Since then, though the Turkish Army has both a 56^th and a 58^th Infantry Regiment, there is no longer a 57^th as a token of respect to those who died at Gallipoli.

The ridgeline the ANZACs fought up to reach the peak at Chunuck Bair    

The attacks at Lone Pine and The Nek were all about diverting Ottoman reinforcements from the Allied ‘main push’ of 6 August 1915 – the reattack on Chunuck Bair. The picture above clearly shows the terrain over which the New Zealanders were fighting as they battled up the ridge to take the peak. Interestingly though, we were told that in 1915 there were virtually no trees on the peninsula, even at the start of the campaign, as they had almost all been chopped down by local people for firewood.

The New Zealand Memorial at Chunuck Bair and beside it, to one side, a memorial for Atatürk    

Unlike the battle on 25 April 1915, on 6 August the New Zealanders were, quite amazingly, successful at taking peak. However, they only managed to hold the high ground until 10 August when, at dawn, Mustafa Kemal led a counter attack and the Ottomans retook Chunck Bair.

The view down to The Narrows from the peak at Chunuck Bair    

Our tour ended at Chunuck Bair, from where we could, like those few New Zealanders, glimpse The Narrows – the main Allied objective for the Gallipoli Landings. The tour group we were with mostly comprised Australians and New Zealanders and, just before leaving, some of the New Zealanders performed a ceremonial Haka at the New Zealand Memorial in honour of those who gave their lives in the Gallipoli Campaign.

We arrived back at BV 7 hours after leaving her so it was a long tour but we were very glad that we took the time to visit the ANZAC area and understand the Australian and New Zealand perspective of the Gallipoli campaign.

Çanakkale, Turkey