Gallipoli Tour Day One
Tired, footsore, a bit exhilarated. The perfect end to a perfect day. Today was the first day of my tour with the Combined Services, Northwood Headquarters Staff. Fifteen of Britain’s finest Royal Navy, Army and RAF men and women banded together and bolstered by the addition of one Australian colossus for our three day tour of Gallipoli. We had travelled out by plane to Istanbul on Sunday and then had a fairly tedious journey on a small bus to Eceabat where we are staying at the TJ’s Tours hotel which is very popular with the army battlefield tours.
We started Day One bright and early leaping aboard our little coach and heading for the forts just along the Straits at Khilid Bahr. We looked at the renovated lower fort, then climbed up onto the Kilid Bahr Plateau to get a perspective from the massif that was the British objective overlooking the Turkish forts. (see below)
We had to crack on though and drove then to Backhouse Post en route to Sedd ul Bahr. We didn’t stop in quite the usual place so there was a little confusion in
finding it tucked away in the side of Achi Baba Gully. When we did it was evident that someone was camping out there, that or a suspiciously modern phone had been left by our brave lads in 1915. We then moved on to board the boat at Sedd ul Bahr in the little port where the Camber had been. The boat trip round the Sedd ul Bahr Castle V and W Beaches was a spectacular as ever:
We all get a clear view of why attacking the strong Turkish defences in these natural amphitheatres was an overconfident move. Then we anchored off W Beach and it was swimsuits and and the race into the water. The first man in took a huge leap from the stern but the most spectacular ‘bomber’ entrance was made by a large Australian who later repeated the jump from the top deck in an effort to recreate the impact of a Turkish shell close to the boat. He did! Strangely many of our clothes were a little damp afterwards!
Then it was back to the Camber and across the barbed wire, (what was that doing there?) and into the lower Sedd ul Bahr fort. We walked round the lower area, then climbed up onto the wall to enter the main courtyard. The group then ascended the somewhat dodgy steps to stand on the tower roof immediately overlooking where the River Clyde ran aground. What a superb view! Gingerly back down the stairs, pout of the castle and onto the spit of rocks where so many of the troops from the River Clyde died. We had a syndicate presentation and I played a recording of Private William Flynn describing struggling through the water under heavy fire onto the very spit where we were standing. Then across to V Beach Cemetery and up into Fort No 1 which has been renovated in true Turkish style - removing almost all its historical integrity. Up then to the Helles Memorial - always a sobering moment as you look a the thousand of names of those killed who have no known grave.
Then it was off to W Beach. Here the winter storms had exposed an old lighter parallel to the shore that I had never seen before. We looked at the seen of the 1st Lancashire Fusiliers landing, walking along the beach and examining the remains of the old cave which had been stuffed full of ammunition and exploded on the early morning of the final evacuation on 8 January 1916. Stones and boulders shot up into the air still covered the local area. Then back across the beach to follow the footsteps of Brigadier Stuart Hare up the cliffs just round the corner. En route we looked at the huge interconnected dugouts that lie just below the cliff top. As ever I enforced our rule that we all had to go in so that if they collapsed there would be no faffing on with rescue attempts and we could be the ‘Missing Northwoods’! Onto the top and a look at both the reservoirs left from 1915 and the myriad of defensive and communication trenches - on the hill. Then to Lancashire Landing Cemetery where there was a presentation in memory of Private William Keneally VC.
The coach lifted us from there to the path leading down to the very beautiful Gully Beach at the exit of the Gully Ravine. We could see the remnants of the abandoned lighter still int he sea and the well supposedly dug by Joe Murray the well known Hood Battalion veteran whom I had interviewed back in the mid-1980s. Back on the bus and up to the Nuri Yamut Turkish Memorial. This marked the British furthest point and was also a mausoleum for all the thousands of dead bodies collected by the Turks in the 1940s. The skulls are supposed to have littered the fields on Gully Spur and the upper Gully Ravine like a melon field. Then the walk through the upper reaches of the Gully. A fantastic walk; sometimes extremely difficult physically true, but dead easy in the summer. The front lines, the bones up a side gully, the unexpected pools that had to be circumnavigated while idiots threw stones close by in the water, the threat of a difficult exit through the maze of prickly bushes if the party got too out of hand. Eventually we emerged from the lowering cliffs of the ravine at Geoghagen’s Bluff. From there a fairly dull walk up Gully Spur back to the bus at the Turkish Monument.
Now it was time for something vital to any unit’s morale - an ice cream! And where better to get it than the village of Alcitepe or Krithia as it had been. Not really an objective at all it had attained a ludicrous importance in the mission creep of the campaign in 1915. Then on the bus up to the summit of Achi Baba. From the upper slopes of the hill we pondered on the obvious tactical importance of Achi Baba at Helles - it loomed over everything and from there Turkish artillery observers could accurately direct the fire of the concealed batteried on the reverse slopes. Then to the very crest - now we would see our reward a view of the Narrows! Oh no we wouldn’t! All we could see was the Straits where the French and British Fleet had manoeuvred on 18 March. We couldn’t see the Narrows Forts at all! Once again we realised that the Kilid Bahr Plateau was everything; Achi Baba was just the first day’s objective - just a stepping stone - to the real objective of dominating the Narrows Forts.
What a great day. Then back to the hotel, a shower a meal and a few pints with an Australian historian called Bill Sellars. And so to bed!