The naval campaign reached its zenith on the 18th March 1915, with an all out attempt to force the Straits, which was driven off by the Turkish and German defenders, in a unique battle between land and sea forces.
There is an account in Sir Ian Hamilton’s Gallipoli Diary of a minesweeper detonating a mine near his ship, during the battle. If that mine had hit his ship history may have been different.
No further naval attempt was made to force the Straits. Whether or not the Turks were running out of large calibre shells and whether all that was needed was one final push to break through to Constantinople, which Churchill certainly believed, has remained a matter of controversy ever since.
Exploiting the divisions within the Young Turk government and bribing them into making peace would have been a much simpler solution to invading the country.
My main intention in writing this book was to chronicle the missed opportunities that led up to the stalemate of the Gallipoli campaign. Unfortunately there were just too many, particularly on the first day of the landings, besides the campaign and the Suvla Bay debacle. I have instead focused on a few of the key events and decisions of the first day.
Mustafa Kemal’s (Atatürk) decisive action that stopped the Australian and New Zealand advance. The taking of Hill 114 and the landing at W beach where 6 Victoria Crosses were won ‘before breakfast’, by Captain Cuthbert Bromley, Captain Richard Willis, Sergeant Arthur Richards, Sergeant Frank Stubbs, Corporal John Grimshaw and Private William Kenealy (Many of the events depicted at the landings are drawn from their experiences). There is some debate as to whether there were machine guns at the beach. The point for the book is that the professional soldiers landing thought they were facing machine guns, so it is only natural that Johnny would feel the same.
Robin Prior in ‘Gallipoli, the End of the Myth’, points out that once Hill 114 was taken the British were in a position to outflank the Turkish line, but the troops at X beach had no further objective than to take the hill and had not been issued with contingency plans to exploit any possible advantage.
Hamilton’s plan to distract the enemy through as series of landings and dummies does seem to have worked in that von Saunders delayed deploying his strategic reserve. Whether that delay was significant is another matter, von Saunders’s plan to hold the invasion with a covering force also seems to have worked; with the invasion stalled at V beach he had sufficient time to counter the landings.
Peter Hart (‘The Great War: 1914-1918’/‘Gallipoli’) argues that von Sanders plan was perfectly formulated to counter Hamilton, who had spread his forces too thinly between the various landing sites.
If the reports from prisoners about the number of Turkish troops at Cape Helles had been believed and had Hamilton been more flexible in his approach he might have been able to use troops at X, Y and S beaches to flank the defences holding up the attack at V beach. However, entombed in the conning tower of HMS Queen Elizabeth, he would have found it difficult had he wanted to.
I would like to thank Sharpe Books for publishing my novel and their help in editing the book. Beth for finding the articles in the Royal United Service Institution Journal (once I gave her the RIGHT references). If she hadn’t done that I probably wouldn’t have written the book.
I’d also like to thank Emma for going from my long suffering girlfriend to my long suffering wife through the course of writing the book and for coming to Paris, Turin, Venice, Sofia and Istanbul with me just to look at the train stations! She was the first person to read the book and her feedback helped to make this a much better novel. I’d also like to thank her mum, Frédérique, for her help with research. Not to mention my mum for all her constant help and support, and passing on her love of books and history.
A huge thank you to Hazel for her help with proofing the first draft. I’d also like to thank Dave B for the trips to Portsmouth Historic Dockyard and last and obviously least Daz for the Llanelli reference.
The National Archives had some interesting documents concerning the War Council, the Imperial War Museum Research & Archive room was a treasure trove of accounts of every aspect of the campaign from sailors who served on trawlers and ships that tried to force the Straits, to a letter Captain Willis wrote to his father shortly after the landings at W beach. Other firsthand accounts that I found really helpful and inspired me are: ‘Old Soldiers Never Die’, by Frank Richards; ‘Storm of Steel’, by Ernst Junger, translated by Michael Hofmann; ‘The Secret Battle’, by Alan Herbert; ‘The Dardanelles Disaster in Soldiers' Words and Photographs’, by Richard van Emden and Stephen Chambers; ‘Trench Warfare 1914-1918: The Live and Let Live System’, Tony Ashworth; ‘Gallipoli: The Landings at Helles 25 April 1915’, Huw Rodge; and ‘VCs of the First World War: Gallipoli,’ by Stephen Snelling.
If you enjoyed ‘The Assassins’ please leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads and follow me on:
Goodreads
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15142092.Alan_Bardos
https://www.instagram.com/alanbardos
https://twitter.com/BardosAlan
