Current Information:

Age-38

Born-Mile End

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.

During the night of 6/7^th August, 11^th Division landed at Suvla when 32 and 33 Brigades came ashore on B Beach, south of Nibrunesi Point. The beach was undefended but due to a mix-up in the landings, with units finding themselves in the wrong positions and a lack of any decisive leadership, a great deal of confusion reigned for the next 36 hours. When things eventually got moving the 8^th West Riding battalion of 32 Brigade, after having taken part in the successful but costly capture of Lala Baba Hill, moved across the dried up salt lake bed on 8^th August to Sulajik in preparation for the assault on Tekke Tepe, the ridge of hills to the east of Suvla Bay. Had the British forces moved earlier here there was a good chance that the hills could have been captured but during the night of 8/9^th August, Turkish forces occupied the heights so when the attack by 8^th West Riding and other battalions was launched on 9^th August it met fierce machine-gun and rifle fire from in front, the flanks and even from behind coming from concealed enemy trenches. The battalion lost heavily and the survivors eventually made it back to their starting positions near Sulajik. One of their casualties during this day of fighting was James Irving.