Current Information:

Age-23

5/6, Great Winchester Street, EC2

Gallipoli 1915

On 25 April, British, Australian and New Zealand forces landed on the Gallipoli peninsular . 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 an 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.

During the night of 6/7th August, 11th Division landed at Suvla and the following morning 10th Division began landing. The plan was that they would come ashore on A Beach but because of a great deal of confusion there some landed on C Beach and others on the northern shore of the bay and all plans had to be changed. The 5th Royal Irish Fusiliers battalion of 31 Brigade took part in the capture of the Chocolate Hills and then remained in these forward positions until 12th August when they moved across the bay to the Kiretch Tepe Sirt ridge of hills running along the northern side of Suvla Bay. On 15th August they were in reserve during the divisional attack along the crest of this ridge and that night relieved 6th Royal Irish Fusiliers in the captured positions where, almost immediately they came under attack. During 16th August 5th Royal Irish Fusiliers faced machine-gun fire from the left and artillery fire from the right along with a number of counter attacks, many resulting in hand to hand fighting.  Nevertheless they held their position all day until ordered to fall back to their starting line. One of their many casualties during this day of heavy fighting was Cecil Crosley.