1915
A Gallipoli boat
The birth of the nation
Lifeboats such as this – the No. 5 timber lifeboat from Troopship A3, formerly the P&O ship SS Devanha – ferried diggers to the beach at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915 in groups of thirty.
The SS Devanha was built in 1905 and covered the run from Great Britain to India and the Far East until it was requisitioned for the Great War. All requisitioned vessels continued to be manned by their normal Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company staff of officers and peacetime P&O crews. After disgorging its troops, the Devanha steamed up the Turkish coast as a feint. It then began duty as a hospital ship, transporting the wounded to hospital bases. His Majesty’s Hospital Ship Devanha remained on duty for the entire Gallipoli campaign. Having put the troops on the beach, these kinds of boats later took them away.
The Gallipoli campaign was a defining moment for Australia and New Zealand. Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914. As Australia was still a dominion of the Empire, it was also at war. Australian forces immediately captured German territories in Samoa, New Guinea and New Britain – the first blood of the war. On 9 November 1914 the HMAS Sydney sank the German raider SMS Emden. Meanwhile, the army assembled the all-volunteer AIF.
The Tsar requested his allies open a front against the Ottoman Empire to take pressure off Russia’s southern flank and allow it access through the Dardanelles to the Mediterranean, and Australian and New Zealand troops joined the French and British in this plan. In classical times the Dardanelles – a 61-kilometre strait connecting the Aegean Sea to the Sea of Marmara and thence to the Black Sea – were known as Hellespont. This area has been contested since the Trojan War, and the Australian experience would be no less tragic.
Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, proposed a massive naval and army invasion on the Gallipoli peninsula – a barren landscape of rocky, rugged scrub with high hills overlooking comparatively narrow beaches and possessing little fresh water or shelter. The Allies had very poor intelligence on the area under attack and often relied on tourist maps.
By 15 April, the Turks had 62 077 troops waiting for the Allied attack. The Ottoman Fifth Army was commanded by a German officer, Otto Liman von Sanders, and under him Mustafa Kemal, a 34-year-old lieutenant colonel familiar with the Gallipoli peninsula who was Turkey’s most exceptional military mind. The Turks were completely underestimated.
Allied troops went ashore first before dawn. There was confusion and panic in the darkness, and all they could do was get on dry land and dig.
The hills above Anzac Cove were defended by the Turkish 57th Infantry Regiment, who ran out of ammunition. Kemal ordered the men to fix bayonets as he said, ‘I do not order you to fight, I order you to die. In the time which passes until we die, other troops and commanders can come forward and take our places.’ The entire regiment was lost. In their memory, there is today no 57th Regiment in the Turkish Army.
By the end of the first day the two sides found themselves in a stalemate that persisted for the rest of the year. The Australians were pinned down in their trenches and dugouts, and dysentery was endemic. As many as half of the diggers at any time were incapacitated by illness. The bodies of the fallen on both sides gave the place an extra stench.
In August the Anzacs staged an offensive, including the legendary Battle of Lone Pine, after which seven Victoria Crosses were awarded. According to Private Tom Billings, ‘As we captured Lone Pine we felt like wild beasts and as fast as our men went down another would take his place but soon the wounded were piled up three or four deep and the moans of our poor fellows and also the Turks we tramped on was awful.’
For six months across these battle zones – Hill 60, the Nek and others, which have become legend – the Allies and Turks went back and forth. The net result was only death. By the end of the summer it was clear the situation was hopeless, and a withdrawal was planned.
Plans for the evacuation of Gallipoli began in October. The loss of this front shook up the high command and Churchill resigned as First Lord of the Admiralty. The carefully staged withdrawal was completed in January 1915 and the Devanha was the last hospital ship to leave.
In Turkey, the Gallipoli campaign is known as the Battle of Çanakkale and marked on 18 March – the Turkish national day. Kemal’s reputation as a national hero was made in those bloody months, and after the war he led the War of Liberation and became the founder of modern Turkey.
The Gallipoli campaign saw 8709 Australians killed and 19 441 wounded, and was characterised by the incompetence of British officers. And yet the Australians performed with great courage, common sense and resilience. We lodged our young nation into international affairs and the diggers brought great credit to Australia.
In April 1916 the first Anzac Day was celebrated in London, Brisbane and Melbourne. Organised marches by veterans began in 1925. The Gallipoli campaign was the baptism by fire of three nations.