Current Information:

Age-23

4, Ripple Hall Cottages, Rippleside, Barking

Gallipoli 1915

On 25 April, British, Australian and New Zealand forces landed on the Gallipoli peninsula. The plan was that these forces would soon defeat a demoralised Turkish army, knock Turkey out of the war, open up the Mediterranean to the Russian navy and threaten Austro-Hungary from the south. None of these things were achieved despite nine months of hard fighting in terrible conditions. It was a heroic failure.

By July, 1915, and after much fierce fighting, stalemate had set in at Gallipoli both at Cape Helles where the British and French had landed and at Anzac Cove where the Australian and New Zealand Corps were unable to break out of their beach head. Fresh troops were needed and they were on their way in the shape of four divisions from Britain and things were put on hold until they arrived.

The plan for August was for a landing at Suvla Bay to the north of Anzac Cove whilst at the same time, the ANZAC Corps, reinforced by some of the new British troops would effect a breakout from Anzac Cove and establish a line across the peninsula. Whilst this was going on the troops in the south at Helles would stage a number of diversionary attacks. But it all went horribly wrong and much of the reason for this can be explained by inadequate planning and leadership. Nobody seemed to know what they were supposed to be doing and Lieutenant-General Stopford, in charge of the Suvla landings was particularly out of his depth. The landings at Suvla failed to link up with the forces at Anzac and the breakout from there did not happen despite valiant efforts by all concerned. The loss of life on all fronts was again enormous. L.A. Carlyon’s excellent book “Gallipoli” gives a superb yet chilling account of the events.

While two brigades from the 10th Division landed at Suvla Bay on 6^th August, 29 Brigade, which included the 6^th Leinster battalion, landed that morning at Anzac Cove and became part of the force attempting the breakout from there. On 9^th August they were attached to the New Zealand Brigade whose objective was the dominating heights of Chunuk Bair and 6^th Leinster moved northwards to Rhododendron Ridge, coming under heavy shell fire as they did so which caused nearly 50 casualties. That night, after the New Zealanders had captured Chunuk Bair, 6^th Leinster relieved them on the summit where they spent the next two days desperately fending off Turkish counter attacks before being withdrawn to the beach. Frederick Freshwater died from wounds on 14^th August and it is likely that he was wounded during this operation.