Battles at Cape Helles Gallipoli

Meanwhile a battle of a very different kind was being fought by the British at Cape Helles, some thirteen miles away to the south. It will be remembered that the 29th Division (with some additional troops) under Hunter-Weston was to make five separate landings around the toe of the peninsula in the vicinity of the village Sedd-el-Bahr. This was regarded as the spearhead of the whole Allied offensive. Sedd-el-Bahr had been scanned many times from the sea and it presented a perfect target for the naval guns.

To the right of ,the little cove there was a ruined medieval fortress with a minuscule village behind it. Beside this fortress the land sfoped quite gently down to a small gravelly beach no more than 300 yards long and 10 yards wide. Although it was known that this natural amphitheatre had been entrenched and sown with barbed wire it seemed likely that the whole area could be so savaged and cut about by the naval barrage that very little fight would be left in the defenders by the time the first British troops got ashore.

Accordingly at 5 a.m. in the uncertain first light of the morning the battleship Albion opened up a tremendous bombardment on the village and the cove. There was no reply from the shore. After an hour it was judged that the Turks there must either be demoralized or dead, and the River Clyde with her two thousand men on board was ordered to the shore. About twenty small boats all filled with men went with her. There was some little delay in the programme, for the current setting down the Dardanelles was much stronger than anyone had guessed, and the launches with the small boats in tow made slow headway against it. At one time the River Clyde got ahead of them and had to be brought back into position. Thus it was in broad daylight and on the calmest of seas that the soldiers approached the shore.

An unnatural stillness had succeeded the barrage. Neither on the beach nor in the fortress nor on the slopes above was there movement of any kind. At 6.77 a.m. the River Clyde grounded her bows without a tremor just below the fortress, and the first of the boats was within a few yards of the shore.

In that instant the Turkish rifle fire burst out. It was a frightful fire, and it was made more shocking by the silence that had preceded it. Far from being demoralized, the Turks had crept back to their trenches as soon as the bombardment was over, and they were now firing from a few yards away into the packed mass of screaming, struggling men in the boats. Some few among the British jumped into the water and got to the shelter of a little bank on the far side of the beach, and there they huddled while the storm of bullets passed over their heads. The others died in the boats just as they stood, crowded shoulder to shoulder, without even the grace of an instant of time to raise their rifles. When all were dead or wounded-the midshipmen and sailors as well as the soldiers - the boats drifted helplessly away.

This was the beach on which the Marines had walked in perfect safety two months before. Many strange scenes occurred because the men persisted in trying to do the things they had been told to do. A sailor from the Lord Nelson,· for example, managed to pole his cutter up to the beach, but when he turned to beckon his passengers to the shore he found that they were no longer alive. The boy was observed to be standing there in wonder when he too was struck and his boat slid back into the sea.

Meanwhile Commander Unwin was having difficulty aboard the River Clyde. Her bows were still divided by an expanse of deep water from the shore, and when they tried to bring the steam hopper round to fill the gap it was swept away to port by the current and lay broadside to the beach, where it was useless.

It was vital now that the two lighters should be brought round from the stern to make the causeway between the ship and the shore. Unwin left the bridge and dived overboard with a tow rope in his hand. He was at once followed into the water by an able seaman named Williams. Together the two men